Chapter 11

Julia had changed little; for in her case, neither marriage nor maternity had laid its transmogrifying, touch upon her. Her deep blue-gray eyes - of which the brown-gold lashes seemed like reeds shadowing lonely lakes - had turned as strange as Peachy’s; but it was a different strangeness. Her mouth - that double sculpturesque ripple of which the upper lip protruded an infinitesimal fraction beyond the lower one - drooped like Clara’s; but it drooped with a different expression. She had the air of one who looks ever into the distance and broods on what she sees there. Perhaps because of this, her voice had deepened to a thrilling intensity. Her hair was pulled straight back to her neck from the perfect oval of her face. It hung in a single, honey-colored braid, and it hung to the very ground. She always wore white.

“Do you remember” - Chiquita began presently. Her lazy purring voice grew soft with tenderness. The dreamy, unthinking Chiquita of four years back seemed suddenly to peer through the unwieldy Chiquita of the present - “how we used to fly - and fly - and fly - just for the love of flying? Do you remember the long, bright day-flyings and the long, dark night-flyings?

“And sometimes how we used to drop like stones until we almost touched the water,” Lulu said, a sparkle in her cooing, friendly little voice. “And the races! Oh, what fun! I can feel the rush of the air now.”

“Over the water.” Peachy flung her long, slim arms upward and a delicious smile sent the tragedy scurrying from her sunlit face. “Do you remember how wonderful it was at sunset? The sky heaving over us, shot with gold and touched with crimson. The sea pulsing under us lined with crimson and splashed with gold. And then the sunset ahead - that gold and crimson hole in the sky. We used to think we could fly through it some day and come out on another world. And sometimes we could not tell where sea and sky joined. How we flew - on and on - farther each time - on and on - and on. The risks we took! Sometimes I used to wonder if we’d ever have the strength to get home. Yet I hated to turn back. I hated to turn away from the light. I never could fly towards the east at sunset, nor towards the west at sunrise. It hurt! I used to think, when my time came to die, that I would fly out to sea - on and on till I dropped.”

“I loved it most at noon,” Chiquita said, “when the air was soft. It smelled sweet; a mixture of earth and sea. I used to drift and float on great seas of heat until I almost slept. That was wonderful; it was like swimming in a perfumed air or flying in a fragrant sea.”

“Oh, but the storms, Julia!” Lulu exclaimed. A wild look flared in her face, wiped oft entirely its superficial look of domesticity. “Do you remember the heavy, night-black cloud, the thunder that crashed through our very bodies, the lightning that nearly blinded us, and the rain that beat us almost to pieces?”

“Oh, Lulu!” Julia said; “I had forgotten that. You were wonderful in a storm, How you used to shout and sing and leap through the air like a wild thing! I used to love to watch you, and yet I was always afraid that you would hurt yourself.”

“I loved the moonlight most. I do now.” The petulance went out of Clara’s eyes; dreams came into its place. “The cool softness of the air, the brilliant sparkle of the stars! And then the magic of the moonlight! Young child-moon, half-grown girl-moon, voluptuous woman-moon, sallow, old-hag-moon, it was alike to me. Pete says I’m ‘fey’ in the moonlight. He, says I’m Irish then.”

“I loved the sunrise,” said Julia. “I used to steal out, when you girls were still sleeping, to fly by dawn. I’d go up, up, up. At first, it was like a huge dewdrop - that morning world - then, colder and colder - it was like a melted iceberg. But I never minded that cold and I loved the clearness. It exhilarated me. I used to run races with the birds. I was not happy until I had beaten the highest-flying of them all. Oh, it was so fresh and clean then. The world seemed new-made every morning. I used to feel that I’d caught the moment when yesterday became to-day. Then I’d sink back through layer on layer of sunlight and warm, perfume-laden, dew-damp breeze, down, down until I fell into my bed again. And all the time the world grew warmer and warmer. And I loved almost as well that instant of twilight when the world begins to fade. I used to feel that I’d caught the moment when to-day had become to-morrow. I’d fly as high as I could go then, too. Then I’d sink back through layer on layer of deepening dusk, while one by one the stars would flash out at me - down, down, down until my feet touched the water. And all the time the air grew cooler and cooler.”

“My wings! My wings!” Peachy did not shriek these words with maniacal despair. She did not whisper them with dreary resignation. She breathed them with the rapture of one who looks through a narrow, dark tunnel to measureless reaches of sun-tinted cloud and sea.

“Do you remember the first time we ever saw them?” Lulu asked after a long time. This was obviously a deliberate harking back to lighter things. A gleam of reminiscence, both mischievous and tender, fired her slanting eyes.

The others smiled, too. Even Peachy’s face relaxed from the look of tension that had come into it. “I often think that was the happiest time,” she sighed, “those weeks before they knew we were here. At least, they knew and they didn’t know. Ralph said that they all suspected that something curious was going on - but that they were so afraid that the others would joke about it, that no one of them would mention what was happening to him. Do you remember what fun it was coming to the camp when they were asleep? Do you remember how we used to study their faces to find out what kind of people they were?”

“And do you remember” - Chiquita rippled a low laugh - “how we would leap into the air if they stirred or spoke in their sleep? Once, Honey started to wake up - and we were off over the water before he could get his eyes open.”

“Oh, but Honey told me that he heard us laugh that time,” Lulu explained. “He told the men the next day and, oh, how they joked him.”

“And then,” Chiquita went on, “once Billy actually did wake up. You were bending over him, Julia. I remember we all kept as still as the dead. And you - oh, Julia, you were wonderful - you did not even breathe. He seemed to fade back into sleep again.”

“He says now that I hypnotized him,” Julia explained.

“Do you remember,” Clara took it up, “that we even considered kidnapping one of them? If we’d known what to do with him, I think we might have tried it.”

“Yes,” said Chiquita. “But I think it was just as well we didn’t. We wouldn’t have carried it off well. There’s something about them that’s terrifying. Do you remember that time we saved Honey from the shark, how we trembled all the time we carried him through the air. He knew it, too - I noticed how triumphantly he smiled.”

“Honey told me once” - Lulu lowered her voice - “that it was the fact that we trembled - that we seemed so much women, in spite of being creatures of the air - that made him determine to capture us.”

“Well, there’s something about them that weakens you,” Chiquita said in a puzzled tone. “It’s like a spell. At first I always felt quivery and trembly if I stood near them.”

“It’s power,” Julia explained.

“I used even to be afraid of their voices,” Chiquita went on.

“Oh, so was I,” Lulu agreed. “I felt as I did when I heard thunder for the first time. It went through me. It made me shake. I was afraid, but I wanted to hear it again.”

“Do you remember the first time we saw them walk!” Clara said. Her face twisted with the expression of a past loathing. “How it disgusted us! It seemed to me the most hideous motion I had ever seen - so unnatural, so ungraceful, so repellent. It took me a long time to get used to that. And as for their running - ”

“It’s curious how that feeling still lingers in us,” exclaimed Peachy. “That contempt for the thing that walks. Occasionally Angela starts to imitate the boys - it seems as if I would fly out of my skin with horror. I shall always feel superior to Ralph, I know.”

“Do you remember the first talks we ever had after we’d got our first glimpse of them?” asked Clara. “How astonished we were - and half frightened and yet - in a queer way - excited and curious?

“And after we got over our fright,” Lulu carried the memories along, “and had made up our minds we didn’t care whether they discovered us or not, what fun we had with them! How we played over the entire island and yet it took them such a long time to discover us.”

“Oh, they’re awfully stupid about seeing or guessing things,” Peachy said disdainfully. “My mind always leaps way ahead of Ralph’s.”

“Do you remember that at first we used to have regular councils,” Lulu asked, “before - before - - ”

“Before we agreed each to go her own way,” Peachy finished it for her.

“All of us pitted against you, Julia.” Chiquita sighed. “I often think now, Julia, how you used to talk to us. How you used to beg us not to go to the island. How you argued with us! The prophecies you made! They’ve all come true. I can hear you now: ‘Don’t go to the island.’ ‘Come away with me and we will fly back south before it is too late.’ ‘Come away while you can!’ ‘In a little while it will be too late.’ In a little while I shall not be able to help you!”

“And how we fought you, Julia!” Clara said. “How we denied everything you said, every one of us knowing in her heart that you were right!”

“But,” Julia said, “later, I told you that I might not be able to help myself, and you see I wasn’t.”

“Did they ever guess that we had quarrelled, I wonder?” Clara asked.

“Yes,” Lulu answered eagerly. Honey guessed it. Now, wasn’t that clever of him?”

“Not so very,” Clara replied languidly. “I guessed that they had quarrelled. And I had a strong suspicion,” she added consciously, “that it was about us.”

“I wonder,” Peachy said somberly, “what would have happened if we had taken Julia’s advice.”

“Are you sorry, Peachy?” Julia asked.

“No, I’m not sorry exactly,” Peachy answered slowly. “I have Angela, of course. Are you sorry, Julia?”

“No,” replied Julia.

“Julia,” Peachy said, “what was it changed you? I have always wanted to ask but I have never dared. What brought you to the island finally? What made you give up the fight with us?”

The far-away look in Julia’s eyes grew, if possible, more far-away. She did not speak for a while. Then, “I’ll tell you,” she said simply. “It is something that I have never told anybody but Billy. When you first began to leave me to come to this island alone, I was very unhappy. And I grew more and more unhappy. I missed flying with you. And especially flying by night. Flying alone seemed melancholy. I came here at first, only because I was driven by my loneliness. I said to myself that I’d drift with the current. But that did not help any. You were all so interested in your lovers that it made no difference whether I was with you or not. I began to think that you no longer cared for me, that you had out-grown me, that all my influence over you had vanished, that, if I were out of the way, the one tie which held you to me would break and you would go to these men. I grew more and more unhappy every instant. That was not all. I was in love with Billy, but I did not know it. I only knew that I was moody and strange and in desperate despair. And, so, one day I decided to kill myself.”

There was a faint movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed scarcely to breathe.

“One day, I flew up and up. Never before had I gone half so high. But I flew deliberately higher and higher until I became cold and colder and numb and frozen - until my wings stopped. And then - “ She paused.

“What happened?” Clara asked breathlessly.

“I dropped. I dropped like a stone. But - but - the instant I let myself go, something strange happened - a miracle of self-revelation. I knew that I loved Billy, that I could not live in any world where he could not come to me. And the instant that I realized that I loved him, I knew also that I could not die. I tried to spread my wings but they would not open. It was terrific. And that sense of despair, that my wings which had always responded - would not - now - oh, that was hell. How I fought! How I struggled! It was as though iron bands were about me. I strained. I tore. Of course, all this was only a moment. But one thinks a million things in a moment like that - one lives a thousand years. It seemed an eternity. At last my wings opened and spread. They held. I floated until I caught my breath. Then I dropped slowly. I threw myself over the bough of a tree. I lay there.”

There was an interval of intense silence.

“Did you faint?” Peachy asked in an awed voice.

“I wept.”

“You wept, Julia?” Peachy said. “You!”

“I had not wept since my childhood. It was strange. It frightened me almost as much as the fall. Oh, how fast the tears came - and in such floods! Something melted and went away from me then. A softness came over me. It was like a spell. I have never been the same creature since. I cry easily now.”

“Did you tell Billy?” Clara asked.

“He saw me,” Julia answered.

“He saw - .” It came from her four listeners as from one woman.

“That’s what changed him. That’s what determined him to help capture us. He said that he was afraid I would try it again. I wouldn’t have, though.”

Nobody spoke for a long time.

“Julia! It was Chiquita who broke the silence this time. There is something I, too, have always wanted to ask you. But I have never dared before. What was it tempted you to go into the Clubhouse that day? At first you tried to keep us from going in. You never seemed to care for any of the things they gave us. You threw away the fans and the slippers and the scarfs. And you smashed your mirror.”

“Billy asked me this same question once,” Julia answered. “It was that big diamond - the Wilmington ‘Blue.’ I caught a glimpse of it through the doorway as it lay all by itself on the table, flashing in the sunlight. I had never before in my life seen any thing that I really wanted. But this was so exquisite, so chiseled, so tiny, so perfect, There was so much fire and color in it. It seemed like a living creature. I was enchanted by it. When I told Billy, he laughed. He said that the lust for diamonds was a recognized earth-disease among earth-people, especially earth-women. He said that many women had been ruined by it. He said that it was a common saying among men that you could catch any woman in a trap baited with diamonds. I have never got over the sting of that. I blush always when I think of it. Because - although I don’t exactly understand why - it was not quite true in my case. That is a thing which always bothers me in conversation with the men. They talk about us as if they knew all about us. You’d think they’d invented us. Not that we’re not simple enough. We’re perfectly simple, but they’ve never bothered to study us. They say so many things about us, for instance, that are only half true - and yet I don’t know exactly how to confute them. None of us would presume to say such things about them. I’m glad,” she ended with a sudden fierceness, “that I threw the diamond away.”

“Julia,” and now it was Lulu who questioned, “why do you not marry Billy when you love him so?” The seriousness of her tone, the warmth of affection in her little brown face robbed this question of any appearance of impertinence.

“Lulu,” Julia answered simply, “I don’t know why. Only that something inside has always said, ‘Wait!’”

“Well, you did well,” Peachy said bitterly, for, at least, Billy loves you just as much as at first. I don’t see him racing over to the Clubhouse the moment his dinner is eaten. I don’t see him spending his Sundays in long exploring tramps. I don’t see him making plans to go off into the interior for a week at a time.”

“But he would be just like all the others, Julia,” Clara exclaimed carefully, “if you’d married him. Keep out of it as long as you can!”

“Don’t ever marry him, Julia,” Chiquita warned. “Keep your life a perpetual wooing.”

“Marry him to-morrow, Julia,” Lulu advised. “Oh, I cannot think what my life would have been without Honey-Boy and Honey-Bunch.”

“I shall marry Billy sometime,” Julia said. “But I don’t know when. When that little inner voice stops saying, ‘Wait!’”

“I wonder,” Peachy questioned again, “what would have happened if - ”

“It would have come out just the same way. Depend on that!” Chiquita said philosophically. “It was our fate - the Great Doom that our people used to talk of. And, after all, it’s our own fault. Come to this island we would and come we did! And this is the end of it - we - we sit moveless from sun-up to sun-down, we who have soared into the clouds. But there is a humorous element in it. And if I didn’t weep, I could laugh myself mad over it. We sit here helpless and watch these creatures who walk desert us daily - desert us - creatures who flew - leave us here helpless and alone.”

“But in the beginning,” Lulu interposed anxiously, “they did try to take us with them. But it tired them so to carry us - for or that’s - what in effect they do.”

“And there was one time just after we were married when it was all wonderful,” said Peachy. “I did not even miss the flying, for it seemed to me that Ralph made up for the loss of my wings by his love and service. Then, they began to build the New Camp and gradually everything changed. You see, they love their work more than they do us. Or at least it seems to interest them more.”

“Why not?” Julia interpolated quietly. “We’re the same all the time. We don’t change and grow. Their work does change and grow. It presents new aspects every day, new questions and problems and difficulties, new answers and solutions and adjustments. It makes them think all the time. They love to think.” She added this as one who announces a discovery, long pondered over. “They enjoy thinking.”

“Yes,” Lulu agreed wonderingly, “that’s true, isn’t it? That never occurred to me. They really do like thinking. How curious! I hate to think.”

“I never think,” Chiquita announced.

“I won’t think,” Peachy exclaimed passionately. “I feel. That’s the way to live.”

“I don’t have to think,” Clara declared proudly. “I’ve something better than thought-instinct and intuition.”

Julia was silent.

“Julia is like them,” Lulu said, studying Julia’s absent face tenderly. “She likes to think. It doesn’t hurt, or bother, or irritate, or tire - or make her look old. It’s as easy for her as breathing. That’s why the men like to talk to her.”

“Well,” Clara remarked triumphantly, “I don’t have to think in order to have the men about me. I’m very glad of that.”

This was true. The second year of their stay in Angel Island, the other four women had rebuked Clara for this tendency to keep men about her - without thinking.

“It is not necessary for us to think,” said Peachy with a sudden, spirited lift of her head from her shoulders. The movement brought back some of her old-time vivacity and luster. Her thick, brilliant, springy hair seemed to rise a little from her forehead. And under her draperies that which remained of what had once been wings stirred faintly. “They must think just as they must walk because they are earth-creatures. They cannot exist without infinite care and labor. We don’t have to think any more than we have to walk; for we are air-creatures. And air-creatures only fly and feel. We are superior to them.”

“Peachy,” Julia said again. Her voice thrilled as though some thought, long held quiescent within her, had burst its way to expression. It rang like a bugle. It vibrated like a violin-string. “That is the mistake we’ve made all our lives; a mistake that has held us here tied to this camp for or four our years;the idea that we are superior in some way, more strong, more beautiful, more good than they. But think a moment! Are we? True, we are as you say, creatures of the air. True, we were born with wings. But didn’t we have to come down to the earth to eat and sleep, to love, to marry, and to bear our young? Our trouble is that - ”

And just then, “Here they come!” Lulu cried happily.

Lulu’s eyes turned away from the group of women. Her brown face had lighted as though somebody had placed a torch beside it. The strings of little dimples that her plumpness had brought in its wake played about her mouth.

The trail that emerged from the jungle ran between bushes, and gradually grew lower and lower, until it merged with a path shooting straight across the sand to the Playground.

For a while the heads of the file of men appeared above the bushes; then came shoulders, waists, knees; finally the entire figures. They strode through the jungle with the walk of conquerors.

They were so absorbed in talk as not to realize that the camp was in sight. Every woman’s eye - and some subtle revivifying excitement temporarily dispersed the discontent there - had found her mate long before he remembered to look in her direction.

The children heard the voices and immediately raced, laughing and shouting, to meet their fathers. Angela, beating her pinions in a very frenzy of haste, arrived first. She fluttered away from outstretched arms until she reached Ralph; he lifted her to his breast, carried her snuggled there, his lips against her hair. Honey and Pete absently swung their sons to their shoulders and went on talking. Junior, tired out by his exertions, sat down plumply half-way. Grinning radiantly, he waited for the procession to overtake him.

“Peachy,” Julia asked in an aside, “have you ever asked Ralph what he intends to do about Angela’s wings? ”

“What he intends to do?” Peachy echoed. “What do you mean? What can he intend to do? What has he to say about them, anyway?”

“He may not intend anything,” Julia answered gravely. “Still, if I were you, I’d have a talk with him.”

Time had brought its changes to the five men as to the five women; but they were not such devastating changes.

Honey led the march, a huge wreath of uprooted blossoming plants hanging about his neck. He was at the prime of his strength, the zenith of his beauty and, in the semi-nudity that the climate permitted, more than ever like a young wood-god. Health shone from his skin in a copper-bronze that seemed to overlay the flesh like armor. Happiness shone from his eyes in a fire-play that seemed never to die down. One year more and middle age might lay its dulling finger upon him. But now he positively flared with youth.

Close behind Honey came Billy Fairfax, still shock-headed, his blond hair faded to tow, slimmer, more serious, more fine. His eyes ran ahead of the others, found Julia’s face, lighted up. His gaze lingered there in a tender smile.

Just over Billy’s shoulder, Pete appeared, a Pete as thin and nervous as ever, the incipient black beard still prickling in tiny ink-spots through a skin stained a deep mahogany. There was some subtle change in Pete that was not of the flesh but of the spirit. Perhaps the look in his face - doubly wild of a Celt and of a genius - had tamed a little. But in its place had come a question: undoubtedly he had gained in spiritual dignity and in humorous quality.