Angel Island Part 8

Clara was not exactly beautiful, although she had many points of beauty.

Her straight red hair clung to her head like a close-fitting helmet of copper. Her skin balanced delicately between a brown pallor and a golden sallowness. Her long, black lashes paled her gray eyes slightly; her snub nose made charming havoc of what, without it, would have been a conventional regularity of profile. She was really no more slender than the normal woman, but, compared with her mates, she seemed of elfin slimness; she was shapely in a supple, long-limbed way. There was something a little exotic about her. Her green and gold plumage gave her a touch of the fantastic and the bizarre. Prevailingly, she arrayed herself in flowers that ran all the shades from cream and lemon to yellow and orange. She was like a parrot among more uniformly feathered birds.

Clara never flew high. It was apparent, however, that if she made a tremendous effort, she could take any height. On the other hand, she flew more swiftly than either Lulu or Chiquita. She seemed to keep by preference to the middle alt.i.tudes. She hated wind and fog; she appeared only in calm and dry weather. Perhaps this was because the wind interfered with her histrionics, the fog with the wavy complications of her red hair. For she postured as she moved; whatever her hurry, she presented a picture, absolutely composed. And her hair was always intricately arranged, always decked with leaves and flowers.

"By jiminy, I'd make my everlasting fortune off you," Honey Smith once addressed her, as she flew over his head, "selling you to the moving-picture people."

Wings straight up, legs straight out, arms straight ahead, delicately slender feet, and strong-looking hands dropping like flowers, her only answer to this remark was an enigmatic closing of her thick-lashed lids, a twist into a pose even more sensuously beautiful.

"Say, I'm tired waiting," Ralph Addington growled one day, when the lovely trio flew over his head in a group. "Why doesn't that blonde of mine put in an appearance? Oh, Clara, Lulu, Chiquita," he called, "won't you bring your peachy friend the next time you call?"

It was a long time, however, before the "peachy one" appeared. Then suddenly one day a great jagged shadow enveloped them in its purple coolness. The men looked up, startled. She must have come upon them slowly and quietly, for she was close. Her mischievous face smiled alluringly down at them from the wide triangle of her blue wings.

Followed an exhibition of flying which outdid all the others.

Dropping like a star from the zenith and dropping so close and so swiftly that the men involuntarily scattered to give her landing-room, she caught herself up within two feet of their heads and bounded straight up to the zenith again. Up she went, and up and up until she was only a blue shimmer; and up and up and up until she was only a dark dot. Then, without warning, again she dropped, gradually this time, head-foremost like' a diver, down and down and down until her body was perfectly outlined, down and down and down until she floated just above their heads.

Coming thus slowly upon them, she gave, for the first time, a close view of her wonderful blondeness. It was a sheer golden blondeness, not a hint of tow, or flaxen, or yellow; not a touch of silver, or honey, or auburn. It was half her charm that the extraordinary strength and vigor of her contours contrasted with the delicacy and dewiness of her coloring, that from one aspect, she seemed as frail as a flower, from another as hard as a crystal. She had, at the same time, the untouched, unstained beauty of the virgin girl, and the hard, muscular strength of the virgin boy. Her skin, white as a lily-petal and as thick and smooth, had been deepened by a single drop of amber to cream. Her eyes, of which the sculpturesque lids drooped a little, flashed a blue as limpid as the sky. Teeth, set as close as seed-pearls, gleamed between lips which were the pink of the faded rose. The sunlight turned her golden hair to spun gla.s.s, melted it to light itself. The shadow thickened it to fluid, hardened it to ma.s.sy gold again. The details of her face came out only as the result of determined study. Her chief beauty--and it amounted to witchery, to enchantment--lay in a constant and a constantly subtle change of expression.

During this exhibition the men stood frozen in the exact att.i.tudes in which she found them. Ralph Addington alone remained master of himself.

He stood quiet, every nerve tense, every muscle alert, the expression on his face that of a cat watching a bird. At her second dip downward, he suddenly jumped into the air, jumped so high that his clutching fingers grazed her finger-tips.

That frightened her.

Her upward flight was of a terrific speed--she leaped into the sky. But once beyond the danger-line her composure came back. She dropped on them a coil of laughter, clear as running water, contemptuous, mischievous.

Still laughing, she sank again, almost as near. Her mirth brought her lids close together. Her eyes, sparkling between thick files of golden lash, had almost a cruel sweetness.

She immediately flew away, departing over the water. Ralph cursed himself for the rest of the day. She returned before the week was out, however, and, after that, she continued to visit them at intervals of a few days. The sudden note of blue, even in the distance it seemed to connote coquetry, was the signal for all the men to stop work. They could not think clearly or consecutively when she was about. She was one of those women whose presence creates disturbance, perturbation, unrest.

The very sunshine seemed alive, the very air seemed vibrant with her.

Even when she flew high, her shadow came between them and their work.

"She sure qualifies when it comes to fancy flying," said Honey Smith.

"She's in a cla.s.s all by herself."

Her flying was daring, eccentric, temperamental, the apotheosis of brilliancy--genius. The sudden dart up, the terrifying drop down seemed her main accomplishment. The wonder of it was that the men could never tell where she would land. Did it seem that she was aiming near, a sudden swoop would bring her to rest on a far-away spot. Was it certain that she was making for a distant tree-top, an unexpected drop would land her a few feet from their group. She was the only one of the flying-girls who touched the earth. And she always led up to this feat as to the climax of what Honey called her "act." She would drop to the very ground, pose there, wavering like an enormous b.u.t.terfly, her great wings opening and shutting. Sometimes, tempted by her actual nearness and fooled by her apparent weakness, the five men would make a rush in her direction. She would stand waiting and drooping until they were almost on her. Then in a flash came the tremendous whirr of her start, the violent beat of her whipping progress--she had become a blue speck.

She wore always what seemed to be gossamer, rose-color in one light, sky-color in another; a flexible film that one moment defined the long slim lines of her body and the next concealed them completely. Near, it could be seen that this drapery was woven of tiny buds, pink and blue; afar she seemed to float in a shimmering opalescent mist.

She teased them all, but it was evident from the beginning that she had picked Ralph to tease most. After a long while, the others learned to ignore, or to pretend to ignore, her tantalizing overtures. But Ralph could look at nothing else while she was about. She loved to lead him in a long, wild-goose chase across the island, dipping almost within reach one moment, losing herself at the zenith in another, alighting here and there with a will-o'-the-wisp capriciousness. Sometimes Ralph would return in such an exhausted condition that he dropped to sleep while he ate. At such times his mood was far from agreeable. His companions soon learned not to address him after these expeditions.

One afternoon, exercising heroic resolution, Ralph allowed Peachy to fly, apparently unnoticed, over his head, let her make an unaccompanied way half across the island. But when she had pa.s.sed out of earshot he watched her carefully.

"Say, Honey," he said after half an hour's fidgeting, "Peachy's settled down somewhere on the island. I should say on the near sh.o.r.e of the lake. I don't know that anything's happened--probably nothing. But I hope to G.o.d," he added savagely, "she's broken a wing. Come on and find out what she's up to, will you?"

"Sure!" Honey agreed cheerfully. "All's fair in love and war. And this seems to be both love and war."

They walked slowly, and without talking, across the beach. When they reached the trail they dropped on all fours and pulled themselves noiselessly along. The slightest sound, the snapping of a twig, the flutter of a bird, brought them to quiet. An hour, they searched profitlessly.

Then suddenly they got sound of her, the languid slap of great wings opening and shutting. She had not gone to the lake. Instead, she had chosen for her resting-place one of the tiny pools which, like pendants of a necklace, partially encircled the main body. She was sitting on a flat stone that projected into the water. Her drooped blue wings, glittering with moisture, had finally come to rest; they trailed behind her over the gray boulder and into a ma.s.s of vivid green water-gra.s.ses.

One bare shoulder had broken through her rose-and-blue drapery. The odor of flowers, came from her. Her hair, a braid over each breast, oozed like ropes of melted gold to her knees. A hand held each of these braids. She was evidently preoccupied. Her eyelids were down. Absently she dabbled her white feet in the water. The noise of her splashing covered their approach. The two men signaled their plans, separated.

Five minutes went by, and ten and fifteen and twenty. Peachy still sat silent, moveless, meditative. Not once did she lift her eyelids.

Then Addington leaped like a cat from the bushes at her right.

Simultaneously Honey pounced in her direction from the left.

But--whir-r-r-r--it was like the beating of a tremendous drum. Straight across the pond she went, her toes shirring the water, and up and up and up--then off. And all the time she laughed, a delicious, rippling laughter which seemed to climb every scale that could carry coquetry.

The two men stood impotently watching her for a moment. Then Honey broke into roars of delight. "Oh, you kid!" he called appreciatively to her.

"She had her nerve with her to sit still all the time, knowing that we were creeping up on her, didn't she?" He turned to Ralph.

But Ralph did not answer, did not hear. His face was black with rage. He shook his fist in Peachy's direction.

Of the flying-girls, there remained now only one who held herself aloof, the "quiet one." It was many weeks before she visited the island. Then she came often, though always alone. There was something in her att.i.tude that marked her off from the others.

"She doesn't come because she wants to," Billy Fairfax explained. "She comes because she's lonely."

The "quiet one" habitually flew high and kept high, so high indeed that, after the first excitement of her tardy appearance, none but Billy gave her more than pa.s.sing attention. Up to that time Billy had been a hard, a steady worker. But now he seemed unable to concentrate on anything.

It was doubtless an extra exasperation that the "quiet one" puzzled him.

Her flying seemed to be more than a haphazard way of pa.s.sing the time.

It seemed to have a meaning; it was almost as if she were trying to accomplish something by it; and ever she perfected the figure that her flight drew on the sky. If she soared and dropped, she dropped and soared. If she curved and floated, she floated and curved. If she dipped and leaped, she leaped and dipped. All this he could see. But there were scores of minor evolutions that appeared to him only as confused motion.

One thing he caught immediately. Those lonely gyrations were not the exercise of the elusive coquetry which distinguished Peachy. It was more that the "quiet one" was pushed on by some intellectual or artistic impulse, that she expressed by the symbols, of her complicated flight some theory, some philosophy of life, that she traced out some artless design, some primary pattern of beauty.

Julia always seemed to shine; she wore garments of gleamy-petalled, white flowers, silvery seaweeds, pellucid marsh-gra.s.ses, vines, golden or purple, that covered her with a delicate l.u.s.tre. Her wings were different from the others; theirs flashed color, but hers gave light; and that light seemed to have run down on her flesh.

"What the thunder is she trying to do up there?" Ralph asked one day, stopping at Billy's side. Ralph's question was not in reality begotten so much of curiosity as of irritation. From the beginning the "quiet one" had interested him least of any of the flying-girls as, from the beginning, Peachy had interested him most.

"I don't know, of course." Billy spoke with reluctance. It was evident that he did not enjoy discussing the "quiet one" with Ralph. "At first my theory was that flying was to her what dancing is to most girls. But, somehow, it seems to go deeper than that--as if it were art, or even creation. Anyway, there's a kind of bi-lateral symmetry about everything she does."

Billy fell into the habit, each afternoon, of strolling away from the rest, out of sound of their chaff. On the gra.s.sy top of one of the reefs, he found a spot where he could lie comfortably and watch the "quiet one." He used to spin long day-dreams there. She looked so remote far up in the boiling blue, and so strange, that he had an inexplicable sensation of reverence.

Now it was as though, in watching that aerial weaving and interweaving, he were a.s.sisting at a religious rite. He liked it best when the white day-moon was afloat. If he half-shut his eyes, it seemed to him that she and the moon made twin crescents of foaming silver, twin bubbles of white fire, twin films of fairy gossamer, twin vials that held the very essence of poetry. Somehow he had always connected her with the moon.

Indeed, in her whiteness, her coldness, her aloofness, she seemed the very sublimation of virginity. His first secret names for her were Diana and Cynthia. But there was another quality in her that those names did not include--intellectuality. His favorite heroes were Julius Caesar and Edwin Booth--a quaint pair, taken in combination. In the long imaginary conversations which he held with her he addressed her as Julia or Edwina.

Days and days went by and he could discover no sign that she had noticed him. It was typical of the "d.a.m.ned gentleman" side of Billy that he did not try to attract her attention. Indeed, his efforts were ever to efface himself.

One afternoon, after a long vigil in which, unaccountably, Julia had not appeared, he started to return to camp. It was a late twilight and a black, velvety one. The trees against a darkening curtain of sky had turned to bunches of tangled shadow, the reefs and rocks against the papery white of the sand to s.m.u.tches and blobs of soot. Suddenly--and his heart pounded at the sound--the air began to vibrate and thrill.

He stopped short. He waited. His breath came fast; the vibration and thrill were coming closer.

He crystallized where he stood. It scarcely seemed that he breathed. And then--.

Something white and nebulous came floating out of the dusk towards him. It became a silver cloud, a white sculptured spirit of the air. It became an angel, a fairy, a woman--Julia. She flew not far off, level with his eyes and, as she approached, she slowed her stately flight.

Billy made no movement. He only stood and waited and watched. But perhaps never before in his life had his eyes become so transparently the windows of his soul. Quite as intently, Julia's eyes, big, gray, and dark-lashed, considered him. It seemed to Billy that he had never seen in any face so virginally young such a tragic seriousness, nor in any eyes, superficially so calm, such a troubled wonder.

He did not stir until she had drifted out of earshot, had become again a nebulous silver cloud drifting into the dusk, had merged with that dusk.

"What makes your eyes shine so?" said Honey, examining him keenly when he reached camp.