Into the Blue

The strange and tremendously dramatic story of an airplane pilot, intoxicated with the exaltation of great altitudes, setting his course, with his sweetheart, for the stars—by the distinguished author of “Nach Verdun” and “Out of the Night.”

It was in a bitterly pessimistic frame of mind that, having seen my baggage into the hotel, I went for a first walk along the asphalted esplanade of Southbeach. I had no pleasure in the baking sun, in the glittering stretch of the English Channel that veiled itself in a fine-weather mist all around the half-horizon. The exuberant, bold-eyed flappers, promenading in groups of three or four, the vivid polychromatism of their taste in sports-coats, seemed to me merely objectionable. The hordes of worthily respectable middle-class families complete with children—with many children—that blackened the sands and overflowed into the fringe of the water oppressed my soul with their formidable multiplicity.

I thought, in a savage emphasis of contrast, of the neat little yacht that should now be bearing me across the North Sea to the austere perfection of the Norwegian fiords. And I cursed myself for the childish imbecility of exasperation with which—when, at the last moment, with my suitcases all packed, I had received a telegram informing me that the yacht had come off second-best in a collision with a coaltramp—I had picked up Bradshaw and sworn to myself to go to whatever place I should blindly put my finger upon as I opened the page. The oracle had declared for Southbeach—Southbeach in mid-August! I shrugged my shoulders—so be it! My holiday was spoiled anyhow. To Southbeach I would go. And now, as I contemplated it, I was appalled. What was I going to do with myself?

A paddle-wheel excursion-steamer came up to the pier, listing over with the black load aboard of her. Up and down the beach, in five-minute trips, a seaplane went roaring some eight hundred feet above the heads of the gaping crowd. I had done all the flying I wanted in the war, thank you very much. Other potentialities of amusement there were apparently none. If I could not discover a tolerably decent golf-course, I was a lost man.

I am not going to give the chronicle of that first day. It would be a study in sheer boredom. That night, after one of those execrable dinners which are the peculiar production of an English seaside hotel, I had pretty well made up my mind that—oracle or no oracle—I would shake the sand of Southbeach off my feet on the morrow. Sitting over my coffee in the lounge, I was in fact already consulting the time-table for a morning train, when my cogitations were suddenly interrupted by a violent slap on the shoulder.

“Hello, Jimmy!”

I looked up with a start, before my identification of the voice had time to complete itself.

“Toby!—Toby Selwyn—by all that’s splendid!” It was years since I had seen him, but in this dreary desert of uninteresting people he came like an angel of companionship, and I welcomed him with delight. “Sit down, man. Have a drink!”

He did so, ordered a whisky-and-soda from the hovering waiter. I looked at him as one looks at an acquaintance of old times, seeking for changes. I had not seen him since the Armistice, when our squadron of fighting scouts was demobilized and a cheery crowd of daredevil pilots was dispersed to the four quarters of the globe.

He had not greatly altered. His face was a little thinner, more mature. His hair was still the same wild red mop. His eyes—peculiar in that when he opened them upon you, you saw the whites all round the pupil—had still that strange look in them, as though somewhere deep down in them his soul was like a caged animal, supicious and restless, which I so well remembered. The reason for his nickname jumped back into my mind. It was from his little trick of suddenly and disconcertingly going “mad dog,” not only when he swooped down, against any sort of odds, upon a covey of Huns, but in the mess. Some one had called him “Mad dog;” it had been affectionately softened to “dog Toby;” and “Toby” he remained.

“And what on earth are you doing here?” I asked.

He smiled grimly.

“Earning my living, old bean. Introducing all the grocers in England to the poetry of flying, at ten bob a head.”

“So that was your machine I saw going up and down the sea-front today?”

“It was. Five-minute trips—two bob a minute, and cheap at the price. Had to do something, you know. So I hit on this. There are worse things. Put my last cent into buying the machine—ex-Government, of course. She’s a topping bus!” His voice freshened suddenly with enthusiasm. “It’s almost a shame to use her for hacking up and down like this. You must come and have a look at her.”

“Thanks,” I replied, “I’d like to, but—”

Our conversation was abruptly interrupted. Toby had jumped to his feet. Coming in through the door of the lounge was—miracles never happen singly!—an only-too-familiar, smiling and middle-aged married couple and—Sylvia! Toby obscured me from them for an instant as he went eagerly toward them—an instant where I weighed the problem of whether to stay or bolt. The last time Sylvia and I had met she had told me, with a pretty sympathy that ought to have softened the blow, that she would always be glad to have me as a friend, but— The problem was resolved for me, before I could decide. Toby was leading the trio up to me.

“I want to introduce an old pal of mine—Jimmy Esdaile.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bryant shot a swift smile at each other and then to me as we shook hands. Sylvia almost grinned. I felt a perfect fool. “Good evening, Mr. Esdaile,” said Sylvia in her sweetest tones, her gray eyes demurely alight.

Mr. Esdaile! The last time, it had still been “Jimmy.” It is true that since I had somewhat boorishly informed her, upon that occasion, that I had no manner of use for being her friend, I had scarcely a legitimate grievance if now she chose to be frigid.

“Wont you sit down, all of you?” I suggested. “Mr. Bryant, you’ll take a Grand Marnier with your coffee, I know.”

“Thanks, Jimmy, I will,” said Mr. Bryant, seating himself. I saw Toby stare. His astonishment visibly increased as Mrs. Bryant, having comfortably disposed herself upon the settee, added in her motherly fashion: “And what in the world are you doing here, Jimmy?”

“That’s what I’m asking myself,” I replied. Toby cut me short in what might have been a witty answer had I been allowed to finish it.

“You people know each other, then?” he demanded.

Mr. Bryant smiled.

“Yes. We’ve met Jimmy before—haven’t we, Sylvia?”

“He used to be an acquaintance of ours in London,” corroborated Sylvia imperturbably, delicately underlining the word acquaintance.

Toby probed me with a peculiar look, suddenly almost hostile. I could guess that he was asking himself whether I had come to Southbeach in pursuit of Sylvia. One did not need to be a detective to discover his own eager interest in her. It was patent, with no attempt at concealment. Those strange hungry restless eyes of his seemed to devour her. Quite apart from any personal feelings—any time during the last six months I could have assured you, with perfect sincerity, that my heart was stone dead,—I didn’t like it. Toby was not the sort of chap—

But I had no opportunity to intervene. Mr. and Mrs. Bryant, with a genuine kindly interest in me and my doings that at any other time I should have appreciated, monopolized me. And Sylvia flirted with him, demurely but outrageously. She called him Toby with the most natural ease in the world. He, poor devil, was awkward in an uncertainty whether she were playing with him, jerkily spasmodic in his answers, devouring her all the time with those strange eyes of his, wherein I recognized that same caged-animal look familiar to me as a preliminary to an outburst of “mad dog” on those nights when there was ragging in the mess. She, I could see, was enjoying herself at playing with fire.

At last I could stand it no longer. I switched off from the amiable platitudes I was exchanging with her parents, interrupted her in her markedly exclusive conversation with him.

“I didn’t know Toby was a friend of yours, Syl—Miss Bryant,” I said.

She turned candid eyes upon me.

“Oh, yes, we have known Toby quite a long time—soon after you dropped us—nearly six months, isn’t it, Toby?”

She took, evidently, a malicious pleasure in reiterating his Christian name. I messed up the end of my cigarette before I remembered not to chew it. Toby looked up suspiciously.

“I had no idea, either, that you were a friend of the family, Esdaile,” he said. He also had dropped the “Jimmy.”

Sylvia answered for me.

“Not exactly a close friend,” she said sweetly. “Are you, Mr. Esdaile? We had almost forgotten each other’s existence.”

I could have smacked her.

Toby looked immensely relieved. I could see that, for the moment at least, he definitely put certain doubts out of his mind. He seemed to be trying to make up for his spasm of hostility when next he spoke.

“He’s an old pal of mine, anyway, aren’t you, Jimmy? It’s like old times to see you again. D’you remember that little scrap with a dozen Huns over Charleroi? That was a good finish-up—the day before the Armistice.”

I remembered well enough—remembered that after that last fight, at the very end of the war, I had landed by a miracle with my nerve suddenly gone. I had never been in the air since—for a long time could not look at an airplane without a fit of trembling.

Sylvia glanced at me in surprise. The secret humiliation of that finish had made me pretty close about my war-doings.

“Oh, you two knew each other in the war, then?” she said.

“I should rather think we did!” replied Toby. “Jimmy was my squadron-leader—and he’s some scientist in the air, let me tell you.” His tone of admiration smote me like a bitter irony. “Don’t forget you’re coming to look over that bus of mine tomorrow morning, Jimmy.”

“I don’t know that I can,” I replied. “I’m off back to town tomorrow.” I said this with a glance to Sylvia which found her quite unmoved.

“Are you, really?” she said. “What, on a Sunday?” Her eyebrows went up in mocking admiration for my courage.

Confound it! I remembered suddenly that tomorrow was Sunday. I can put up with any reasonable amount of hardship, but the prospect of a Sunday train on a South Coast railway!

“Kamerad!” I surrendered. “I go back on Monday.”

“Good!” said Toby. “The tender conscience of the local municipality does not permit them to allow me to earn my living on the Sabbath. Tomorrow is a dies non. We’ll spend the morning tinkering about the machine together. It’ll be like old times, before we went up for a jolly old scrap with the Hun-bird. She’s worth looking at, too—built for a radius of a thousand miles and a ceiling of over twenty thousand feet.”

“Really!” I said, with a touch old-time professional interest. “But what on earth do you want a machine like that for? She’s surely scarcely suitable for giving donkey-rides up and down a beach?”

“She does all right,” replied Toby. “And I like to feel that I’ve got something with power to it. That I could if I wanted to—” His curious restless eyes lost expression, as though the soul behind them no longer saw me, contemplated something remote.

“Could what?” I challenged him.

He came back to perception of my presence.

“Eh? Oh, nothing.” He looked at me with that familiar sudden suspiciousness which seemed to accuse one of attemped espionage into the secrets of his soul. I remembered that even in the mess, intimate as we had all been together, he had always been a queer chap. One had never really known what he was thinking or planning. He turned now to Sylvia.

“Miss Bryant has promised me that one day she will let me take her for a flight,” he said, banishing the hardness of his eyes with that little smile of his which was so peculiarly attractive when he chose to exert his charm.

“I’ll come tomorrow,” she replied promptly. “And then you’ll have to take me gratis.”

“Of course I will!” he answered, clutching at her promise with a flash of eager delight in his eyes. “You didn’t imagine I was going to charge you for it, did you? That’s settled, then.”

Mrs. Bryant interposed in motherly alarm.

“Oh, Sylvia! Don’t do any of your madcap tricks!—You will be careful, wont you, Mr. Selwyn?” She turned to me. “Are you sure she will be safe with him, Jimmy?”

“My dear Mrs. Bryant,” I assured her, “if there is a better pilot in the world than Toby, I don’t know him.”

Mr. Bryant took the pipe from his mouth and glanced cautiously at his wife.

“I’d rather like to go up too,” he said.

But Mrs. Bryant vetoed this volubly and emphatically.

“No, no, no!” she exclaimed. “Not two of you together! Suppose anything happened!”

I smiled at her nervous fears.

“Nothing will happen, Mrs. Bryant—make your mind easy. Toby’s perfectly safe. And if Mr. Bryant would like a flight, I’m sure Toby would be pleased to take him.”

Toby was looking at Sylvia’s father with his enigmatic eyes.

“Of course I will,” he said. “But I don’t want to worry Mrs. Bryant. I will take Mr. Bryant another time.”

The conversation drifted off to other topics. At last, Mrs. Bryant rose for bed.

“And mind, Mr. Selwyn,” she warned him smilingly as she shook hands with him, “I shall try hard to persuade Sylvia not to go.”

“But you wont succeed, Mother!” announced Sylvia radiantly. “Good night, Toby. Good night, Mr. Esdaile!” With which parting shot she left us, and the lounge was suddenly horribly empty.

We sat there for yet some time, Toby and I, puffing at our pipes in silence. He leaned back on the settee, with his eyes closed. I was thinking—never mind what I was thinking; but my thoughts ranged far into the dreary future of my life. My glance fell on him, scrutinizing him, probing him, weighing him, as he lay there all unconscious of it. About his feelings I had no doubt. Were they reciprocated? I remembered that peculiarly attractive smile of his, the alluring touch of mystery about him—and almost hated him for them. That was the kind of thing which appealed to women, I reflected bitterly.

He opened his eyes.

“‘Puro è disposto a salire alle stelle,’” he murmured to himself, staring as at a vision where this somewhat gaudy hotel lounge had no place.

“What’s that?” I said, not quite catching his words.

“Eh?” He looked at me as though he had forgotten my presence, was only now reminded of it by my voice. “Oh, that’s the last line of the Purgatorio—where Dante, having drunk forgetfulness of the earth from Lethe, is ready to ascend with Beatrice into the stars of the Paradiso. .... All right, Jimmy,” he added, with a smile of sardonic superiority which irritated me, “don’t worry yourself with trying to understand. You wont. You’re one of those whose idea of the fit habitation for the divine soul shining through the eyes of your beloved is a bijou residence in a London suburb. After a few years of you, your wife, whoever she is, will be another Mrs. Bryant.”

“Many thanks!” I replied, somewhat nettled, and a little puzzled also. This was a new Toby. We were not given to cultivating poetry in our mess. “But since when have you taken to studying Dante in the original?”

“Oh, I’ve had plenty of time,” he answered, his eyes straying away from me evasively. “I’ve lived pretty much by myself these last few years.” He rose to his feet, cutting short the subject. “Let’s go for a stroll, shall we? Get a breath of fresh air into our lungs.”

I assented willingly enough. At the back of my mind was an obscure idea that, in the stimulated sense of comradeship evoked between two friends who walk together under a night sky, he might open himself to some confidence that would help me to a more precise definition of the relationship that subsisted between himself and Sylvia. In this I was disappointed. He walked along the asphalt promenade, now almost deserted, with the sea to our left marked only by an irregular faintly gleaming line of white in the black obscurity, without a word. He did not even respond to my efforts at conversation. Apparently he did not hear them. Overhead, the metallic blue-black heaven was powdered with a multitude of stars, twinkling down upon us from their immense remoteness. He threw his head back to contemplate them as we walked in silence. He baffled me, kept me somehow from my own private thoughts.

Suddenly he switched upon me.

“There can’t be nothingness all the way, can there?” he demanded of me with a curious vehemence of interrogation. His hand made an involuntary half-gesture toward the scintillating dome of stars. “There must be something!” His manner had the disconcerting intensity of a man who has been brooding overlong in solitude. “At a distance everything melts into the blue. I have seen blank blue sky where on another day there’s a range of mountains sharp and clear across the horizon. And they pretend that in all those millions of miles there is nothing—nothing but empty space!” He finished on a note of scorn.

“But surely the astronomers—” I began.

“Pah!” he interrupted me. “What do you or the astronomers know about it? Shut up!”

Shut up, I did. He was evidently not in the mood for reasonable conversation. He also shut up, pursuing in silence thoughts I could not follow. At last he brusquely suggested returning to the hotel.

Next morning, when I met him in the breakfast-room, he was quite his old cheery self, and whatever resentment of his last night’s rudeness still rankled in me, vanished in the odd charm of his smile. He reminded me of my promise to spend the morning with him tinkering about his seaplane. I acquiesced, for two reasons. First, I had nothing else to do, and I still retained enough of the impress of my old flying days to be genuinely interested in looking over a machine. Secondly, Sylvia would be coming to it for her flight. An uneasy night had not brought me to any satisfying theory of her real attitude toward him.

It was a bright sunshiny morning as we left the hotel, but a southwest breeze ruffled the surface of the sea; and the white isolated clouds that drifted across the blue overhead were evidently the advance-guards of a mass yet invisible beyond the horizon. Within an hour or two the sky would almost certainly be overcast. For the moment it was fine, however, and I enjoyed the fresh clarity of the air as we walked down the pier together. At its extremity, on the leeward side of the steamer landing-stage, the seaplane rode the running waves like a great bird that had alighted with outspread wings, the water splashing and sucking against her floats as she jerked and slackened on her mooring-ropes.

We hauled in on them, clambered down into her. She was, as he explained to me, intended for a super-fighting-scout, with an immense radius, a great capacity for climb, and a second machine-gun. The space where this second machine-gun had been, just behind the pilot, was now filled with four seats, in pairs behind each other, for the passengers, and he had had her landing-wheels replaced by floats. The morning was still young—nine o’clock struck just as we got on board the machine; and for the next two hours we pottered about her, cleaning her powerful motor, tautening the wire stays to her wings, looking into a hundred and one technical details that would have no interest for anyone but the expert. I enjoyed myself, and Toby was almost pathetically delighted to have some one with him who could enter into his enthusiasms. He had, I could guess, been leading a very solitary life for a long while.