Part 16 (2/2)

”Somehow I got back to our fellows; G.o.d knows I wish I hadn't.

”Every man in our escadrille paid in his own way unconscious tribute to Esme's memory. We were awfully and justly proud of him,-it's something to have died for France,-but for all of us the fun, the excitement, of the work had gone, been snuffed out. No one turned corkscrew somersaults, Esme's great stunt; no one did any of his special tricks any more, not even to show off before the new men.

”We got one of those French immortelle wreaths, tied to it his name and the number of the machine he was driving and dropped it inside their lines. The next morning just at sunrise one of their men flew over our hangars and threw down a stone. Painted on it in German was, 'Your dead sends thanks'! That's just like them, brutal, and the last word on their side.

”There's always work to be done in war, each day's effort to be made, and the mercy of constant doing helped me. I used to try to forget the fighting and the horrors and go back to the old days.

”Esme never was like other men in certain ways-all the early things that were unconsciously part of him, I suppose. Even as a little shaver at school he couldn't be made to understand the 'why' of a school-boy's code. He used to rush headlong into anything and everything, and he generally came out on top. He did the most outrageous things calmly, unthinkingly, and we always made excuses, forgave him, because he was Esme. At college the men were sometimes rather nasty to him, partly because he couldn't understand their points of view; and he used to stare a minute and then loll away. He never hurried,-perhaps it was his Oriental blood,-but he always got there, and could make his very lolling an insult.

”I used to wonder just what it was that made Esme a great aviator. He was a phenomenally good pilot, although he himself never seemed to realize his remarkable ability. His losing control of his machine that day was inexplicable. But one can't tell. That high up the slightest thing uncounted on means death. Those days after-

”A month went by. One morning our anti-aircrafters started, and we rushed to see what was doing, and there, just a blot against the unclouded sky, was a plane turning corkscrew somersaults one after another as it came lower and lower. I went mad for a few minutes; _only_ Esme could turn corkscrews in such a way. I got the captain, and begged him to give orders for our gunners to stop. I must have made him feel the certainty of the wild thing I believed, for he gave the order. It was one of our own machines, in it Esme, alone-Esme in the flesh before us, drawn and haggard and old, but Esme.

”At first he couldn't speak. We called it strain; perhaps in any other man we shouldn't, even in our minds, have given it its real name-emotion. He was like a girl. When I put my arm across his shoulders in the old, familiar way, he began to weep silently.

”The fellows were awfully decent and drifted away out of kindness, leaving him alone with me. We went to our tent, the one we'd shared together, and there, after a little while, he told me how it all happened.

”When the two machines fell together in a tangled heap, by some miraculous chance he was unhurt. The German was dead before they landed, he thought.

”Then began the slow, torturing weeks. They kept at him day and night, night and day. They never left him alone, not just guards, but some one always near him whose only business it was to _watch_ him.

”He was a marked man. The Germans knew him to be our best, perhaps the best aviator in all the Allied armies, and they needed him. They tried every sort of h.e.l.lish torture on him, things one mustn't think about, to get him to take up one of their photographers over the French trenches, knowing he could do certain notorious tricks which would prove him our man and so render the taking of the necessary pictures comparatively safe. He stuck it out, growing weaker and weaker, until the order came that he was to take up their man in his own machine (they'd used their diabolical skill to reconstruct it), or- Perhaps if it had been an order to shoot him then and there, his courage would have held out; but the other- He was broken, weakened, driven; he gave in.

”They'd taken photographs for miles along the French and British fronts when Esme noticed the strap which held the camera man was loosened. The man was busy adjusting the films for a new set. Esme pulled, the strap gave way; he lurched the machine suddenly, and turned it over,-his famous somersault trick,-and then, without looking back or down, made for our camp.

”Sometimes one forgets to guard one's expression. I suppose mine showed the horror I couldn't help feeling. He put his hand out to touch me, but I jumped up and moved away. 'Marston,' he said, 'what's the matter?

Aren't you glad? There wasn't any other way but to give in to them.

_You_ don't know what it's like to feel yourself dying by inches, a little piece more every day, all the time knowing you can't die _enough_, and then the chance to be free once more, in the air, clean; you only fifty miles away, and one man between us-one man. What was his life among so many? It's war, Marston; war.'

”I failed him then. I didn't stop to think of his overwrought condition, mentally and physically. He simply wasn't responsible. I had a quick vision of the way the other men would take it, of how I'd try and try to explain Esme's action because it was Esme's, and all the time I'd know the explanations weren't any good. We have a code all our own; no rules, no mention ever made of its interpretation-just an aviator's honor.

”Now, looking back, I can't think why Esme's dropping the man out seemed so hideous. It did, though, and I failed him. He wanted to hear me say the words of welcome he'd counted on, and I just stood and looked at him. He was making queer, whimpering little noises, with his mouth wobbling all over his face, and I watched him. He was suffering, and I looked on.

”After a while the whimperings turned into words, and the words started with giggles. 'A-aren't you g-glad, Marston? A-aren't you g-glad?

A-aren't you?'

”I turned on him, all the friends.h.i.+p and the memories of the years behind swept away. I didn't know what I was saying. I'm not sure now; something about the things one doesn't do, that it wasn't war the way we fought it to drop a man thousands of feet who was only doing his duty.

It was murder. Over and over I said it-that word murder. He wasn't my friend; he was a murderer!

”I went out of the tent to escape his staring, pleading eyes-child's eyes. Even while I was saying the words I knew he didn't understand. He had done what he thought justifiable, necessary, he wanted to get back to me, and I called him a murderer.

”Once just as I started for the mess to get him something to eat I thought I heard him call my name; but I went on. I needed more time.

”I was gone perhaps ten minutes. When I reentered the tent it was empty.

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