Angel Island Part 22

"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 h.e.l.l. 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."

n.o.body 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 l.u.s.t 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 pa.s.sionately. "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 l.u.s.ter. 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."