Hope Takes Flight Page 7

  “I’ll get it,” Lylah said. She had been in the theater for ten years, but she had never tired of receiving those who came backstage—a trait which puzzled the rest of the troupe, who considered these devoted fans little more than pests. She opened the door, opened her mouth to say something…then froze where she was.

  “Lylah! It’s really you!” Gavin burst out. He stood there, a broad smile on his face, then stepped in and took her in his arms.

  Lylah, too surprised to speak, could do nothing but cling to him. Finally she drew back and looked up at him. “Gavin,” she gasped, “what in the world—?”

  “Surprised you this time, didn’t I? Well, it took a lot of doing to work out this surprise, I can tell you for sure.” Gavin was dressed in a shapeless suit that looked as though it had come from a third-rate pawn shop. He grinned at her. “Aren’t you going to ask me in, Sis?”

  “Oh, come in, come in!” Lylah grabbed his arm, pulled him inside, and looked over at her friend. “Helen, this is my brother Gavin. Gavin, this is Helen Ulric.” Then she turned again and shook his arm almost fiercely. “What in the world are you doing? I just got a letter a week ago, saying you’d run away from home!”

  Gavin stood there, looking pleased with himself. “Well,” he admitted, “reckon I’m a little bit old to be running away from home…at twenty-two. What I did was run away to New York and beg enough money from Amos to get me to England.”

  “But…but what are you doing here?” Lylah stammered. She had not realized until this moment how much she missed her family, and now she held on to his arm firmly.

  Gavin glanced at Helen Ulric, then decided he could speak freely. “You remember that pilot, Lincoln Beachey? I pestered him until he finally taught me to fly. I’ve come over here to join the French Air Force.”

  The world seemed to stop for Lylah. It was all she had dreaded, and she had hoped it would never happen. She had seen the releases of the casualty lists and knew how men were dying like flies at the Marne and other awful places. “You can’t, Gavin, you can’t do it! This isn’t your war!”

  Helen got up quickly. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone. I know you want to talk.” She put out her hand to Gavin and said, “I’m glad to meet you. This is some sister you have here, you know.”

  Gavin took her hand and squeezed it so hard she winced. “Yes, ma’am. Reckon I know that.”

  Helen left the room and Lylah said to her brother, “C’mon. Let’s go somewhere else. We can’t talk here.”

  They left the theater, walked to a small restaurant only four blocks away and sat down at a table for two.

  “You’ll have to pay for it, Sis,” Gavin said with chagrin. “I just barely had enough money to get here.”

  “All right now, tell me all about it,” Lylah said after they had ordered.

  She listened as Gavin poured out his heart. He told her how miserable life at the farm had been—not just recently, but for years—and how he couldn’t stand his stepmother another minute. He finally wound up by saying, “You ought to know, Lylah. You couldn’t stand it even when Mom was alive. I just couldn’t take any more of Agnes!”

  Lylah shook her head and searched for the words that would make him change his mind. But she really knew that it was hopeless. Gavin was stubborn, she knew, with that same adamant quality that had driven her from the farm. As she sat looking at him, so youthful and handsome, she wanted to cry. But she willed back the tears. What’s done is done, and I’ll have to do the best I can for him. “All right, Gavin. I won’t fuss at you anymore. Now, tell me about the family.”

  They talked all through the meal, then sat drinking coffee for hours, until finally the owner of the restaurant approached, coughing slightly as he placed the bill on the table. Lylah looked up, startled, then turned to Gavin with a laugh. “We always could talk all night, couldn’t we?” She paid the bill, and the two walked outside into the night air.

  “I’ll get you a room at my hotel,” Lylah said.

  “Fine, Sis, but it’ll just be for one night. Tomorrow I join the Foreign Legion.”

  Lylah stopped dead still, her mouth agape. “You’ll do what? Join the Foreign Legion?”

  Gavin looked chagrined. “Well, I didn’t know ’til I got here that the French Air Force doesn’t accept anyone except Frenchmen. So, I’ve got to join the Foreign Legion so I’ll be a Frenchman. They take volunteers with no questions asked.”

  Holding onto Gavin’s arm, Lylah began walking again, and when they reached the hotel, she said quietly, “All right, Gavin. If you’ve got to do it, I guess you’ve got to do it. Besides, I can’t talk, can I? Look what I’ve done with my life.”

  Gavin said quickly, “Aw, Sis, you haven’t done so bad. You’re a famous actress! Everybody back home is proud of you.”

  Tears stung Lylah’s eyes, and she shook her head without answering. At the desk, she registered Gavin for the night, saying no more than was necessary.

  Upstairs, he walked her to her room, then said, “I’ll be gone when you get up in the morning, Sis. But you’ll be hearing from me. You’ll see my name in the newspapers one of these days—‘Yankee Ace Shoots Down 10 Aircraft in One Day!’”

  Lylah kissed him and whispered, “Good night, my dear, good night. Don’t forget to write.” Then she went inside, fell across her bed, and wept as she had not wept since she was a child.

  When Gavin walked into the room, he was startled to see that it was full of tough-looking specimens of every race under the sun. There were even a couple of dark-skinned Negroes and one or two whose real color was nearly indistinguishable, so colored were they with plain ordinary dirt.

  Feeling very small and more than a little afraid, he backed up against the wall to wait until his name was called. But he had come this far, and he wouldn’t back out now.

  Finally his name was called and Gavin moved across the room, entering a small office. It was occupied largely by various charts and a much-harassed, beetle-browed individual with a booming voice. He had the caduceus of the Medical Corps on the deep red velvet tabs of his uniform collar.

  “Strip,” he ordered, and Gavin immediately pulled off his clothes and dropped them to the floor.

  Impersonally, as if Gavin were a horse, the doctor gave him a brief once-over and, seeing that he had the regulation torso—arms and legs—he grunted, and Gavin knew the first hurdle had been surmounted.

  Then the doctor picked up a dirty, grease-spotted towel and laid it on Gavin’s chest. Gavin shuddered at the thought of how many chests like those in the anteroom that same towel had already covered.

  “Breathe deeply,” the doctor grunted.

  Gavin breathed, his heart beating like a trip-hammer. With his ear to Gavin’s chest, protected by the towel from contamination, the doctor listened for something—waterfalls? volcanic upheavals?—but didn’t seem to hear anything alarming. Briskly he nodded approval, and Gavin drew a sigh of relief.

  He stood Gavin in front of a chart, the letters of which looked as large as one of the signs in Times Square and commanded him to read. “The second line,” he said. “I see there a ‘B.’ What do you see?”

  “Uhh…I see a ‘B’.”

  “Bon!” he exploded enthusiastically.

  The doctor continued to read the chart, allowing Gavin to read it after him, never once trying to confuse him by calling the wrong letter. He wasn’t taking any chances that Gavin would be wrong, and his ‘Bon!’ grew even more enthusiastic with every answer.

  They went on to the color chart, where the process was repeated.

  “I see red. What do you see?”

  “I see red, Major.”

  “Bon. I see green. What do you see?”

  “Oh, I see green, Major.”

  Finally the major gave Gavin a friendly pat on the bare back, which sent him staggering across the room, signed his name to the papers with an official flourish, and congratulated him on being a perfect physical specimen. He said—as far as Gavin could make out—tha
t Gavin was well qualified to get himself killed for France at any time.

  Gavin dressed and went back to the outer office, where he signed his name to a paper that gave the French Foreign Legion permission to send him anywhere they saw fit.

  “Wonderful!” the sergeant said, beaming. “Now, you can go to war for France!”

  With his instructors and twenty-nine other pupils in his class watching from a safe distance, Lieutenant Manfred von Richthofen, lately of the Supply Corps, determined to appear as if what was about to take place was the most natural thing in the world. But when the engine of the ancient two-seater started, his look of composure slipped away in a blast of smoke and air. His safety helmet, strapped loosely under his chin, blew off and pulled taut against his neck. His partly unbuttoned jacket filled with air until it looked like an inflated brown sausage. His scarf unwound and disappeared. As the noise and the vibrations intensified, he touched the controls and the old biplane started to move.

  As it bounced over the field and rapidly gained speed, von Richthofen squeezed the controls as tightly as he could and promised God that if he would let him complete his solo in safety, he would never do anything wrong again. When the tail lifted off the ground, he felt a little sick at his stomach. But suddenly the jouncing stopped. Although the ground seemed as close as before, now he was airborne, and he pulled back on the stick, bringing the nose up, and into the blue corridors of the open sky.

  At the exact moment that Gavin Stuart was taking the eye test in the office of the Foreign Legion, Baron Manfred von Richthofen was making his solo flight. He had been a soldier in the German army for several years, but had quickly decided that the Cavalry, where he was assigned, was not going to win this war. He had been intrigued with the idea of airplanes and asked for a transfer to the Air Service. Instead, he had been transferred to the Supply Corps, whereupon he had written a haughty letter, beginning: “My Dear Excellency, I have not gone to war to collect cheese and eggs, but for another purpose.…” He had ended with another request for transfer to the Air Service and, to his complete astonishment, had been assigned to the air station at Cologne.

  At this moment, however, von Richthofen was trying to remember a few of the instructions he had been given by his teacher—a man called Zeumer—who had consumption and was determined to find an early grave by being shot down in the air. At least Manfred remembered enough to put the old plane through its paces and did so with some satisfaction.

  What happened next was completely unexpected. Having cut his engine for the long ride that was supposed to end in a smooth landing, he felt his airplane move unexpectedly to one side. He overcorrected with the stick and pedals, and the biplane hit the ground hard, bounced, and nosed over.

  As Zeumer pulled him out of the cockpit of the crumpled airplane, von Richthofen rushed to explain. “I lost my balance.” He was afraid that was the end of his career as a pilot, but crashes by beginners were common at Cologne. Two days later, with the laughter and sarcasm of his companions still ringing in his ears, he made a series of successful landings.

  Zeumer met him after the last one and said grumpily, “Well, I guess you’re not going to kill anybody. Any of us, anyway. Now, let’s see if we can make a pilot out of you so you can kill the French and the English.”

  6

  LYLAH AND THE KNIGHT

  Oh, Helen, it looks like a fairyland!”

  Lylah turned from the window of her large bedroom to face Helen Ulric, her eyes bright with excitement. “I’ve always loved snow,” she confessed. “We never got much of it back home in Arkansas. But every time we had any at all, my father had to make me come in. I wanted to be out in it every minute of the day and night.”

  Helen smiled and shrugged. “Well, you’ll get enough of it here in Germany. It’s already over a foot deep, and there’s likely to be more by morning. Come along. We’ll go outside and watch it fall, since you like it so much.”

  The two had reached Helen’s home at Schweivnitz, about forty miles southwest of Breslau, on December 22. They had arrived in a flurry of snow and for the next two days, Lylah went for long walks with her friend and sampled the rather dull German-style cooking served by Helen’s mother. It was a placid setting and Lylah gradually unwound from the pressures of the nightly performances.

  “We have a treat,” Helen said one day soon after their arrival. “At least, I think it’s a treat. We’re going to stay over Christmas with my relatives, the von Richthofens. Their place is only a half hour from here. I think you’ll enjoy meeting them.”

  The two women packed a few things and left later in the day. It was a thrill for Lylah to ride in the sleigh driven by Helen’s family servant. The runners hissed sibilantly across the snow which still drifted in lazy flakes from a wintry sky.

  By the time they arrived at the von Richthofen estate, the watery sun was out again, but it gave no heat. Hurrying inside out of the cold, Helen said, “I think the whole family’s here…even Manfred.”

  As they entered, a tall, attractive woman came to greet them. “We’re so glad to have you,” she told Lylah warmly.

  She put out her hand, and when Lylah shook it, she found it firm and strong. Indeed, everything about Kunigunde von Richthofen was strong. She had a strong full-bodied figure. Large bright blue eyes dominated an aristocratic face, offset only by her wealth of auburn hair, carefully done up.

  “The boys have gone out hunting with their father,” she said, “so that will give us time to get acquainted.”

  She took the two young ladies into the study, where they had coffee so thick that Lylah could hardly drink it. Mrs. von Richthofen plied her American guest with questions. She was interested, Lylah saw at once, in America’s position on the war. All of Germany was interested, as were France and England. It was obvious that, sooner or later, the Allies would be drained dry of the machinery of war, while across the sea were strong young men by the millions and factories by the hundreds to turn out the guns and tanks needed to crush the German armies. The Germans looked with apprehension to America, while the Allies hungered for her entrance into the war. Carefully Frau von Richthofen steered the conversation, getting the information she wanted without being demanding in the least.

  Later that afternoon, the men came in from hunting. The head of the family, Albrecht von Richthofen, stood erect, with a soldierly stance and clicked his heels as he took Lylah’s hand, bowed low and kissed it, welcoming her to his house. He introduced her to his two sons. “This is my younger son, Lothar,” he said, “and this is the eldest son of my house, Manfred.”

  Both young men acknowledged the introduction with a slight bow, and then Albrecht von Richthofen took over, as was the custom of a Prussian father. In that time and in that place, the father was almost omnipotent in his own household.

  As the visit passed, Lylah learned that these von Richthofens were Teutonic primitives, given to strength and muscle and keenness of eye, with no doubt about their skill or their proper place in the world.

  Lylah observed that Manfred’s mother was of the same stock—rigid, conservative, getting the most out of the land, worshipful of order, and expected rights of small country nobility.

  The von Richthofen estate was orderly and ran with precision and efficiency. Lylah had found the family home rather tasteless and grim, but clean. Since hunting was a way of life, the decor sported elk and deer horns in the hallways. Among the trophies of successful hunts hung portraits of solid thick faces, stern and unsmiling, turning black under old varnish, with not a masterpiece among them.

  Manfred’s father, half godhead of the family, followed the traditions established by these solemn ancestors and gave the code as a lover of order in the Schweivnitz tradition in which they lived.

  On the second day of her visit, Lylah was surprised when Manfred approached her with an invitation to accompany him on a hunting trip just outside the estate.

  Lylah beamed. “Why, thank you! That would be exciting.”

  She put
on her warmest clothes—a wool dress, heavy overcoat, and hat that pulled down over her ears—and met Manfred in the study. Pulling down a gun from the gunrack on the wall, he handed it to her. “This should be light enough for you,” he said, smiling. “Do you shoot?”

  “When I was a girl I did,” Lylah said. She returned his smile, adding, “But I may need some lessons to bring me up to date.”

  “Of course.”

  The two left the house, bearing their weapons, and walked across the top of the snow, now frozen solid enough to support their weight. Manfred led her away from the manor, around the side, following a trail that went directly into the huge evergreens, rising up against the laden winter sky. Their feet made a grinding noise, for the snow was gritty beneath, and Manfred kept her entertained with stories of his past hunts.

  Lylah had already been informed by Helen that Lothar was a womanizer, whereas Manfred took little interest in girls. He was, she knew, only twenty-three years old, and she felt a hundred years older than he. So as they walked along, enjoying the crisp, cold air and the wintry landscape, she was surprised to find him far more outgoing than she had expected.

  “Quiet now,” he said when they reached a spot deep in the forest. “I think we may find something around that bend.”

  He showed her how to load the gun, then carefully instructed her on the safety features that must be observed. Then the two of them moved slowly ahead as quietly as possible.

  As they stepped into a clearing, there was a sudden whirring that startled Lylah, and she saw birds rising from the ground.

  “Shoot!” Manfred cried.

  Lylah raised the single-shot shotgun, followed the flight of the birds, and pulled the trigger. She heard the roar of Manfred’s gun in her ear and then she felt his hand on her shoulder.

  “Wonderful!” he cried. “You got him!”