Within the hour Rankin was ringing that familiar bell on the other side of the river. The girl kept him waiting, to stride nervously up and down the veranda. A wry grin twisted his firm, straight lips. She hadn’t forgotten that little difference, then, and her ultimatum.
When she finally came out, after fully five minutes’ delay, Rankin knew at once from the hard, set look about her usually dimpled mouth, and the steadiness of her gray eyes, that she had been schooling her determination, and that she still considered the barrier to exist. He knew well enough what it was, too, and his first rueful words were meant to remove it.
“Well, Eileen, I’m out of it at last.”
“Out of what?” There was a half hope and a hint of willing surrender in her eager question.
“Out of aviation—for keeps.”
“Oh, Jack! Did you really? I—I never thought—” The joyous exclamation stammered down to a more diffident, almost apologetic statement with a rising color. “I never really thought you’d ever give up so much, just for me.”
Now there was a whole lot of plain human in Jack Rankin. He didn’t ordinarily lie without necessity; but here was a sudden, irresistible temptation positively thrust at him to steal at least a little credit out of a situation which held nothing but the bitterest disappointment for him. His hesitation was just for a fraction of a second, and then he prevaricated by inference.
Nor was he overskilful about it. He was just wise enough to hold his peace and to squeeze her outstretched hand with a world of meaning. Her surrender was instant and complete. With radiant eyes in which there was just a hint of tears, she led him to the comfortable hammock, plethoric with pillows, which swung in the veranda breeze.
“I know it’s an awfully big thing to have asked you, Jack,” she comforted him with the half regretful confidence of a big-hearted girl who has just forced a sacrifice from her lover. “But you understand now how I felt about it, don’t you, dear? I just couldn’t marry you as long as you stayed in that horrible business.
“I could never sleep without seeing that awful grand stand and that field where poor Bob— Oh, I can’t bear to think about it. And with Jim sticking to it yet; he’s so obstinate. One in the family is bad enough. I just couldn’t bear it, Jack.”
Rankin just patted the round curve of her shoulder and still said nothing. Bob was one of the many who had paid the toll to the greatest of all games; Jim was the other brother. Rankin understood how the girl felt, and the scrupulous conscience which besets every decent young man when he is in love smote him.
Almost he confessed. But when a beautiful, tearful girl jumps to a conclusion and makes a self-sacrificing hero out of one, how shall a man who is ordinarily human disillusion her? Jack Rankin stifled the still, small voice and postponed the telling to a vague, more propitious future. Sufficient to the day the evil thereof. He would have trouble enough explaining his absence from the navy-yard, should his commanding officer by any chance look for him before his return. In the mean while, there were matters of infinitely greater importance.
Given a beautiful girl, a hammock, and the impending prospect of an indefinite separation, three o’clock in the afternoon arrives all too soon. When Ensign Rankin came to the officers’ mess, hurrying to make up for lost time, and trying to carry off an air of innocence as if he had been looking for his chief for quite a while, a couple of juniors looked furtively at him.
His guilty conscience was quick to catch the glance, and he knew that his nemesis had overtaken him. But of the full virulence of its malice he had no inkling as yet.
“Seen anything of my skipper?” he asked with an assumption of ease.
“No,” said one of them shortly.
“Not for hours and hours,” added the other with equally ominous brevity.
“Hours and hours?”
“Yes. He was looking for you. Making knots all round the yard.”
“Why so anxious?”
“Commandant’s looking for you now.” Rankin hid his anxiety by threatening to slay the last speaker.
“But why? Why? Let me in on the mystery, won’t you?”
“Leggo, you deserting ruffian! Why? Because your ship put out from her berth under telegraphic orders at just about five bells this afternoon. That’s why. Now you’d better go hide till you can think up a good excuse.”
Smash! The bomb had fallen! No wonder the whole navy-yard had been looking for him. Missing ship was a serious enough thing in itself; and when it had happened in the face of direct orders it became a matter for the outraged attention of the commandant himself, with prospects of Court martial looming dark in the immediate background.
Even Rankin sensed that he had offended beyond his realization. With the instinct of quick thinking which is so essential to the man who takes his life up into the shifting air currents, his mind flashed to the wireless plant. Perhaps he would be able to communicate with his commanding officer and rejoin at the first port of call. He made the radio station in just two jumps. The operator saluted him quite hastily.
“Yes, sir. Crowded with official business just now, sir; but I’ll be able to put your message through in about fifteen minutes. Where can I send the answer, sir? I guess I’ll have no trouble pickin’ up your ship.”
“His ship” again. The words jarred with an indefinable sensation. It conveyed an impression of irrevocable divorce from his ambition—aviation. Everybody seemed to regard him already as a part of the line organization. And, what was more, there was a distinct air of congratulation about it; as though it let him into an honorable and super-select fraternity.
He murmured an abstract instruction to send the reply to the quarters of Junior Lieutenant Mason, and went there to wait for it, dodging furtively behind the various yard buildings to avoid a possible message from the commandant before he should be able to produce the news of his rejoining as a measure of mitigation.
Fifteen minutes drifted on to thirty. But Rankin hardly noticed. His mind was occupied with that queer idea about “his ship.” He saw the thing in vague pictures. Himself, in charge of a gun-crew directing practice; himself, officer of the deck; himself, again, a brother officer in the comfortable relaxation of the ward-room with some of the first gentlemen of the world. Always himself holding down some position of trust as a member of a great and proud organization—a United States fighting-ship!
The thing obsessed him. There was an illusive stirring of his emotions, a vague thrill about it all. But, hang it all, what had he to do with ships at all? His ambition was to be a flier.
Into his abstraction broke two men engaged in speech.
“Operator reports very sorry, sir, but he can’t get in touch with your ship, sir. Somethin’ must be wrong with her wireless for the present; or mebbe it’s static in the air. All messages are bad just now. He’ll try again in a half an hour or so.”
The retribution which dogs the steps of the wrong-doer! Before Rankin could commiserate himself on his ill-luck the other man saluted and spoke up. His belt and side arms proclaimed him an orderly at a glance.
“Commandant’s compliments, sir, and he’d like to see you immediately.”
It had come! The inevitable! Ensign Rankin had to face his fate without a single extenuating circumstance in hand! He strode to the interview with something less of carelessness than had been his habit. For some reason the fact of having missed his ship troubled him more than he had ever thought possible.
In the commandant’s office he waited for some minutes in silence. That stern, self-possessed autocrat let him stand unheeded. He was nervously agitated over the papers which he held, official radio forms. He bit his pencil, frowning. At last he scribbled a message on a pad, fired it at an orderly, and looked up sharply at the delinquent officer. His tone was snappily brusk.
“H-m. Just arrived, I suppose. Well, my message was meant to reach you hours ago. Sorry. Can’t attend to your case just now. Urgent matters come to hand. You will consider yourself confined to the officers’ mess till I can find time to send for you again.”