Chapter 12

Ralph Addington followed Pete. And Ralph also had changed. True, he retained his inalienable air of elegance, an elegance a little too sartorial. And even after six years of the jungle, he maintained his picturesqueness. Long-haired, liquid-eyed, still with a beard symmetrically pointed and a mustache carefully cropped, he was more than ever like a young girl’s idea of an artist. And yet something different had come into his face, The slight touch of gray in his wavy hair did not account for it; nor the lines, netting delicately his long-lashed eyes. The eyes themselves bore a baffled expression, half of revolt, half of resignation; as one who has at last found the immovable obstacle, who accepts the situation even while he rebels against it.

At the end of the line came Merrill, a doubly transformed man, looking at the same time younger and handsomer. Bigger and even more muscular than formerly, his eyes were wide open and sparkling, his mouth had lost its rigidity of contour. His look of severity, of asceticism had vanished. Nothing but his classic regularity remained and that had been beautifully colored by the weather.

The five couples wound through the trail which led from the Playground to the Camp, the men half-carrying their wives with one arm about their waists and the other supporting them.

The Camp had changed. The original cabins had spread by an addition of one or two or three to sprawling bungalow size. Not an atom of their wooden structure showed. Blocks of green, cubes of color, only open doorways and windows betrayed that they were dwelling-places. A tide of tropical jungle beat in waves of green with crests of rainbow up to the very walls. There it was met by a backwash of the vines which embowered the cabins, by a stream of blossoms which flooded and cascaded down their sides.

The married ones stopped at the Camp. But Billy and Julia continued up the beach.

“How did the work go to-day, Honey?” Lulu asked in a perfunctory tone as they moved away from the Playground.

“Fine!” Honey answered enthusiastically.

“You wait until you see Recreation Hall.” He stopped to light his pipe. “Lord, how I wish I had some real tobacco! It’s going to be a corker. We’ve decided to enlarge the plan by another three feet.”

“Have you really?” commented Lulu. “Dear me, you’ve torn your shirt again.”

“Yes,” said Honey, puffing violently, “a nail. And we’re going to have a tennis court at one side not a little squeezed-up affair like this - but a big, fine one. We’re going to lay out a golf course, too. That will be some job, Mrs. Holworthy D. Smith, and don’t you forget it.”

“Yes, I should think it would be,” agreed Lulu. “Do you know, Honey, Clara’s an awful cat! She’s dreadfully jealous of Peachy. The things she says to her! She knows Pete’s still half in love with her. Peachy understands him on his art side as Clara can’t. Clara simply hands it to Pete if he looks at Peachy. Even when she knows that he knows, that we all know, that she tried her best to start a flirtation with you.”

“And to-day,” Honey interrupted eagerly, “we doped out a scheme for a series of canals to run right round the whole place - with gardens on the bank. You see we can pipe the lake water and - - .”

“That will be great,” said Lulu, but there was no enthusiasm in her tone. “And really, Honey, Peachy’s in a dreadful state of nerves. Of course, she knows that Ralph is still crazy about Julia and always will be, just because Julia’s like a stone to him - oh, you know the kind of a man Ralph is. The only woman you can depend on him to be faithful to is the one that won’t have him round. I don’t think that bothers Peachy, though. She adores Julia. If she could fly a little while in the afternoon - an hour, say - I know it would cure her.”

“Too bad. But, of course, we couldn’t let you girls fly again. Besides, I doubt very much if, after so many cuttings, your wings would ever grow big enough. You don’t realize it yourself, perhaps, but you’re much more healthy and normal without wings.”

“I don’t mind being without them so much myself” - Lulu’s tone was a little doubtful - “though I think they would help me with Honey-Boy and Honey-Bunch. Sometimes - .” She did not finish.

“And then,” Honey went on decidedly, “it’s not natural for women to fly. God never intended them to.”

“It is wonderful,” Lulu said admiringly, “how men know exactly what God intended.”

Honey roared. “If you’d ever heard the term sarcasm, my dear, I should think you were slipping something over on me. In point of fact, we don’t know what God intended. Nobody does. But we know better than you; the man’s life broadens us.”

“Then I should think - “ Lulu began. But again she did not finish.

“We’re going to make a tower of rocks on the central island of the lake,” Honey went on. “We’ll drag the stones from the beach - those big, beauty round ones. When it’s finished, we’re going to cover it with that vine which has the scarlet, butterfly flowers. Pete says the reflections in the water will be pretty neat.”

“Really. It sounds charming. And, Honey, Chiquita is so lazy. Little Junior runs wild. He’s nearly two and she hasn’t made a strip of clothing for him yet. It’s Frank’s fault, though. He never notices anything. I really think you men ought to do something about that.”

“And then,” Honey went on. But he stopped. “What’s the use? “ he muttered under his breath. He subsided, enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke and listened, half-amused, half-irritated, to Lulu’s pauseless, squirrel-like chatter.

“My dear,” Frank Merrill said to Chiquita after dinner, “the New Camp is growing famously. Six months more and you will be living in your new home. The others - Pete especially - are very much interested in Recreation Hall. They have just worked out a new scheme for parks and gardens. It is very interesting, though purely decorative. It offers many absorbing problems. But, for my own part, I must confess I am more interested in the library. It will be most gratifying to see all our books ranged on shelves, classified and catalogued at last. It is a good little library as amateur libraries go. The others speak again and again of my foresight during those early months in taking care of the books. We have many fine books - what people call solid reading - and a really extraordinary collection of dictionaries. You see, many scholars travel in the Orient, and they feel they must get up on all kinds of things. I suggested to-day that we draw up a constitution for Angel Island. For by the end of twenty years, there will be a third generation growing up here. And then, the population will increase amazingly. Besides, it offers many subjects for discussion in our evenings at the Clubhouse, etc., etc., etc.”

Holding the tired-out little junior in her lap, Chiquita rocked and fanned herself and napped - and woke - and rocked and fanned herself and napped again.

“Oh, don’t bore me with any talk about the New Camp,” Clara was saying to Pete. “I’m not an atom interested in it.”

“But you’re going to live there sometime,” Pete remonstrated, wrinkling in perplexity his fiery, freckled face.

“Yes, but I don’t feel as if I were. It’s all so far away. And I never see it. If I had anything to say about it, I might feel differently. But I haven’t. So please don’t inflict it on me.”

“But it’s the inspiration of building it for you women,” Pete said gravely, “that makes us men work like slaves. We’re only doing it for your sake. It is the expression of our love and admiration for you.”

“Oh, slush!” exclaimed Clara flippantly, borrowing from Honey’s vocabulary. “You’re building it to please yourself. Besides, I don’t want to be an inspiration for anything.”

“All right, then,” Pete said in an aggrieved tone. “But you are an inspiration, just the same. It is the chief vocation of women.” He moved over to the desk and took up a bunch of papers there.

“Oh, are you going to write again this evening?” Clara asked in a burst of despair.

“Yes.” Pete hesitated. “I thought I’d work for an hour or two and then I’d go out.”

Clara groaned. “If you leave me another minute of this day, I shall go mad. I’ve had nothing but housework all the morning and then a little talk with the girls, late this afternoon. I want something different now.”

“Well, let me read the third act to you,” Pete offered.

“No, I don’t feel like being read to. I want some excitement.”

Pete sighed, and put his manuscript down.

“All right. Let’s go in swimming. But I’ll have to leave you after an hour.”

“Are you going to see Peachy?” Clara demanded shrilly.

“No.” Pete’s tone was stern. “I’m going to the Clubhouse.”

“How has everything gone to-day, Billy?” Julia asked, as they sat looking out to sea.

“Rather well,” Billy answered. “We were all in a working mood and all in good spirits. We’ve done more to-day than we’ve done in any three days before. At noon, while we were eating our lunch, I showed them your plans.”

“You didn’t say - .”

“I didn’t peep. I promised, you know. I let them assume that they were mine. They went wild over them, threw all kinds of fits. You see, Pete has a really fine artistic sense that’s going to waste in all these minor problems of construction and drainage. I flatter myself that I, too, have some taste. Addington and Honey are both good workmen - that is, they work steadily under instruction. Merrill’s only an inspired plumber, of course. Pete and I have been feeling for a long time that we wanted to do something more creative, more esthetic. This is just the thing we needed. I’m glad you thought it out; for I was beginning to grow stale. I sometimes wonder what will happen when the New Camp is entirely built and there’s nothing else to do.”

Billy’s voice had, in spite of his temperamental optimism, a dull note of unpleasant anticipation.

“There’ll be plenty to do after that.” Julia smiled reassuringly. “I’m working on a plan to lay out the entire island. That will take years and years and years. Even then you’ll need help.”

“That, my beloved,” Billy said, “until the children grow up, is just what we can’t get - help.”

Julia was silent.

“Julia,” he went on, after an interval, in which neither spoke, “won’t you marry me? I’m lonely.”

The poignant look - it was almost excruciating now - came into Julia’s eyes.

“Not now, Billy,” she answered.

“And yet you say you love me!”

The sadness went. Julia’s face became limpid as water, bright as light, warm as flame. “I love you,” she said. “I love you! I love you!” She went on reiterating these three words. And with every iteration, the thrill in her voice seemed to deepen. “And, Billy - .”

“Yes.”

“I’m not quite sure when - but I know I’m going to marry you some time.”

“I’ll wait, then,” Billy promised. “As long as I know you love me, I can wait until - the imagination of man has not conceived the limit yet.”

“Well, how have you been to-day?” Ralph asked. But before Peachy could speak, he answered himself in a falsetto voice that parodied her round, clear accents, I want to fly! I want to fly! I want to fly!” His tone was not ill-tempered, however; and his look was humorously a affectionate, as one who has asked the same question many times and received the same answer.

“I do want to fly, Ralph,” Peachy said listlessly. “Won’t you let me? Oh, please let my wings grow again?”

Ralph shook his head inflexibly. “Couldn’t do it, my dear. It’s not womanly. The air is no place for a woman. The earth is her home.”

“That’s not argument,” Peachy asserted haughtily. “That’s statement. Not that I want to argue the question. My argument is unanswerable. Why did we have wings, if not to fly. But I don’t want to quarrel - .” Her voice sank to pleading. “I’d always be here when you came back. You’d never see me flying. It would not prevent me from doing my duty as your wife or as Angela’s mother. In fact, I could do it better because it would make me so happy and well. After a while, I could take Angela with me. Oh, that would be rapture!” Peachy’s eyes gleamed.

Ralph shook his head. “Couldn’t think of it, my dear. The clouds are no place for my wife. Besides, I doubt if your wings would ever grow after the clipping to which we’ve submitted them. Now, put something on, and I’ll carry you down on the beach.”

“Tell me about the New Camp, and what you did to-day!” Peachy asked, after an interval in which she visibly struggled for control.

“Oh, Lord, ask anything but that,” Addington exclaimed with a sudden gust of his old irritability. “I work hard enough all day. When I get home, I want to talk about something else. It rests me not to think of it.”

“But, Ralph,” Peachy entreated, “I could help you. I know I could. I have so many ideas about things. You know Pete says I’m a real artist. It would interest me so much if you would only talk over the building plans with me.”

“I don’t know that I am particularly interested in Pete’s opinion of your abilities,” Addington rejoined coldly. “My dear little girl,” he went on, palpably striving for patience and gentleness, “there’s nothing you could do to help me. Women are too impractical. This is a man’s work, besides. By the way, after we’ve had our little outing, I’ll leave you with Lulu. Honey and Pete and I are going to meet at the Clubhouse to work over some plans.”

“All right,” Peachy said. She added, “I guess I won’t go out, after all. I feel tired. I think I’ll lie down for a while.”

“Anything I can do for you, dear?” Addington asked tenderly as he left.

“Nothing, thank you.” Peachy’s voice was stony. Then suddenly she pulled herself upright on the couch. “Oh - Ralph - one minute. I want to talk to you about Angela. Her wings are growing so fast.”

VII

“Where’s Peachy?” Julia asked casually the next afternoon.

“I’ve been wondering where she was, too,” Lulu answered. “I think she must have slept late this morning. I haven’t seen her all day.”

“Is Angela with the children now?” Julia went on.

“I suppose so,” Lulu replied. She lifted herself from the couch. Shading her hands, she studied the group at the water’s edge. Honey-Boy and Peterkin were digging wells in the sand. Junior making futile imitative movements, followed close at their heels. Near the group of women, Honey-Bunch crept across the mat of pine-needles, chasing an elusive sunbeam. “No, she’s not there.”

“Now that I think of it, Angela didn’t come to play with Peterkin this morning,” said Clara. “Generally she comes flying over just after breakfast.”

“You don’t suppose Peachy’s ill,” asked Chiquita, “or Angela.”

“Oh, no!” Lulu answered. “Ralph would have told one of us.”

“Here she comes up the trail now,” Chiquita exclaimed. “Angela’s with her.”

“Yes - but what’s the matter?” Lulu cried.

“She’s all bent over and she’s staggering.”

“She’s crying,” said Clara, after a long, intent look.

“Yes,” said Lulu. “She’s crying hard. And look at Angela - the darling! She’s trying to comfort her.”

Peachy was coming slowly towards them; slowly because, although both hands were on the rail, she staggered and stumbled. At intervals, she dropped and crawled on hands and knees. At intervals, convulsions of sobbing shook her, but it was voiceless sobbing. And those silent cataclysms, taken with her blind groping progress, had a sinister quality. Lulu and Julia tottered to meet her. “What is it, oh, what is it, Peachy?” they cried.

Peachy did not reply immediately. She fought to control herself. “Go down to the beach, baby,” she said firmly to Angela. “Stay there until mother calls you. Fly away!”

The little girl fluttered irresolutely. “Fly away, dear!” Peachy repeated. Angela mounted a breeze and made off, whirling, circling, dipping, and soaring, in the direction of the water. Once or twice, she paused, dropped and, bounding from earth to air, turned her frightened eyes back to her mother’s face. But each time, Peachy waved her on. Angela joined Honey-Boy and Peterkin. For a moment she poised in the air; then she sank and began languidly to dig in the sand.

“I couldn’t let her hear it,” Peachy said. “It’s about her. Ralph - .” She lost control of herself for a moment; and now her sobs had voice. “I asked him last night about Angela and her flying. I don’t exactly know why I did. It was something you said to me yesterday, Julia, that put it into my head. He said that when she was eighteen, he was going to cut her wings just as he cut mine.”

There came clamor from her listeners. “Cut Angela’s wings!” “Why?” “What for?”

Peachy shook her head. “I don’t know yet why, although he tried all night, to make me understand. He said that he was going to cut them for the same reason that he cut mine. He said that it was all right for her to fly now when she was a baby and later when she was a very young girl, that it was ‘girlish’ and ‘beautiful’ and ‘lovely’ and ‘charming’ and ‘fascinating’ and - and - a lot of things. He said that he could not possibly let her fly when she became a woman, that then it would be ‘unwomanly’ and ‘unlovely’ and ‘uncharming’ and ‘unfascinating.’ He said that even if he were weak enough to allow it, her husband never would. I could not understand his argument. I could not. It was as if we were talking two languages. Besides, I could scarcely talk, I cried so. I’ve cried for hours and hours and hours.”

“Sit down, Peachy,” Julia advised gently. “Let us all sit down.” The women sank to their couches. But they did not lounge; they continued to sit rigidly upright. “What are you going to do, Peachy?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll throw myself into the ocean with Angela in my arms before I’ll consent to have her wings cut. Why, the things he said. Lulu, he said that Angela might marry Honey-Boy, as they were the nearest of age. He said that Honey-Boy would certainly cut her wings, that he, no more than Honey, could endure a wife who flew. He said that all earth-men were like that. Lulu, would you let your child do - do - that to my child?”

Lulu’s face had changed - almost horribly. Her eyes glittered between narrowed lids. Her lips had pulled away from each other, baring her teeth. “You tell Ralph he’s mistaken about my son,” she ground out.

“That’s what I told him,” Peachy went on in a breaking voice. “But he said you wouldn’t have anything to do or say about it. He said that Honey-Boy would be trained in these matters by his father, not by his mother. I said that you would fight them both. He asked me what chance you would have against your husband and your son. He - he - he always spoke as if Honey-Boy were more Honey’s child than yours, and as though Angela were more his child than mine. He said that he had talked this question over with the other men when Angela’s wings first began to grow. He said that they made up their minds then that her wings must be cut when she became a woman. I besought him not to do it - I begged, I entreated, I pleaded. He said that nothing I could say would change him. I said that you would all stand by me in this, and he asked me what we five could do against them. He, called us five tottering females. Oh, it grew dreadful. I shrieked at him, finally. As he left, he said, ‘Remember your first day in the Clubhouse, my dear! That’s my answer.’” She turned to Clara. “Clara, you are going to bear a child in the spring. It may be a girl. Would you let son of mine or any of these women clip her wings? Will you suffer Peterkin to clip Angela’s wings?”

Clara’s whole aspect had fired. Flame seemed burst from her gray-green eyes, sparks to shoot to from her tawny head. “I would strike him dead first.”

Peachy turned to Chiquita. The color had poured into Chiquita’s face until her full brown eyes glared from a purple mask. “You, too, Chiquita. You may bear girl-children. Oh, will you help me?”

“I’ll help you,” Chiquita said steadily. She added after a pause, “I cannot believe that they’ll dare, though.”

“Oh, they’ll dare anything,” Peachy said bitterly. Earth-men are devils. What shall we do, Julia? she asked wearily.

Julia had arisen. She stood upright. Curiously, she did not totter. And despite her shorn pinions, she seemed more than ever to tower like some Winged Victory of the air. Her face ace glowed with rage. As on that fateful day at the Clubhouse, it was as though a fire had been built in an alabaster vase. But as they looked at her, a rush of tears wiped the flame from her eyes. She sank back again on the couch. She put her hands over her face and sobbed. “At last,” she said strangely. “At last! At last! At last!”

“What shall we do, Julia?” Peachy asked stonily.

“Rebel!” answered Julia.

“But how?”

“Refuse to let them cut Angela’s wings.”

“Oh, I would not dare open the subject with Ralph,” Peachy said in a terror-stricken voice. “In the mood he’s in, he’d cut her wings tonight.”

“I don’t mean to tell him anything about it,” Julia replied. “Rebel in secret. I mean - they overcame us once by strategy. We must beat them now by superior strategy.”

“You don’t really mean anything secret, do you, Julia?” Lulu remonstrated. “That wouldn’t be quite fair, would it?”

And curiously enough, Julia answered in the exact words that Honey had used once. “Anything’s fair in love or war - and this is both. We can’t be fair. We can’t trust them. We trusted them once. Once is enough for me.”

“But how, Julia?” Peachy asked. Her voice had now a note of querulousness in it. “How are we going to rebel?”

Julia started to speak. Then she paused. “There’s something I must ask you first. Tell me, all of you, what did you do with your wings when the men cut them off?”

The rage faded out of the four faces. A strange reticence seemed to blot out expression. The reticence changed to reminiscence, to a deep sadness.

Lulu spoke first. “I thought I was going to keep my wings as long as I lived. I always thought of them as something wonderful, left over from a happier time. I put them away, done up in silk. And at first I used to look at them every day. But I was always sad afterwards - and - and gradually, I stopped doing it. Honey hates to come home and find me sad. Months went by - I only looked at them occasionally. And after a while, I did not look at them at all. Then, one day, after Honey built the fireplace for me, I saw that we needed something - to - to - to sweep the hearth with. I tried all kinds of things, but nothing was right. Then, suddenly, I remembered my wings. It had been two years since I’d looked at them. And after that long time, I found that I didn’t care so much. And so - and so - one day I got them out and cut them into little brooms for the hearth. Honey never said anything about it - but I knew he knew. Somehow - .” A strange expression came into the face of the unanalytic Lulu. “I always have a feeling that Honey enjoys using my wings about the hearth.”

Julia hesitated. “What did you do, Chiquita?”

“Oh, I had all Lulu’s feeling at first, of course. But it died as hers did. You see this fan. You have often commented on how well I’ve kept it all these years - I’ve mended it from month to month with feathers from my own wings. The color is becoming to me - and Frank likes me to carry a fan. He says that it makes him think of a country called Spain that he always wanted to visit when he was a youth.”

“And you, Clara?” Julia asked gently.

“Oh, I went through,” Clara replied, “just what Lulu and Chiquita did. Then, one day, I said to myself, ‘What’s the use of weeping over a, dead thing?’ I made my wings into wall-decorations. You’re right about Honey, Lulu.” For a moment there was a shade of conscious coquetry in Clara’s voice. “I know that it gives Pete a feeling of satisfaction - I don’t exactly know why (unless it’s a sense of having conquered) - to see my wings tacked up on his bedroom walls.”