Angel Island Part 23

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-G.o.d. 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 p.r.i.c.kling 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.

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 cla.s.sic 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 ca.n.a.ls 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.

G.o.d never intended them to."

"It is wonderful," Lulu said admiringly, "how men know exactly what G.o.d 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 G.o.d intended. n.o.body 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, b.u.t.terfly 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, cla.s.sified 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 const.i.tution 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 ma.n.u.script 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 a.s.sume 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 antic.i.p.ation.