The Trimming of Goosie Part 14

And he read, beneath Bison Billiam's pointing finger: "It shall be regarded as a part of this agreement that the length of the flying apparatus, whatsoever it may be, shall be determined by the party of the first part."

"I won't!" thundered Charles-Norton.

"Goosie, dear," implored Dolly; "Goosie, dear, only two feet, and it's in the contract, Goosie, dear----"

He turned upon her fiercely. "Why can't you eat pine-nuts?" he cried; "why, why, why?"

She drew back a step and looked at him with great large eyes, and as he met them, he saw them fill slowly with tears. "I can't," she said simply; "I can't, Goosie." Again Charles-Norton had that sensation of a wreath falling about his neck, a heavy wreath within the soft flowers of which was hidden a good stout chain. "All right; go ahead," he said, with a sigh.

Dolly, with the firmness of a surgeon inexorably sure of what is best for his patient, curtailed the "flying apparatus" to the required length.

"Now, let's see you," said Bison Billiam.

And Charles-Norton repeated his performance, more heavily this time, in smaller compa.s.s. But when he descended, again he was met by Bison Billiam's disapproving head-shake. "We'll have to take off another foot,"

said Bison Billiam.

"But why?" remonstrated Charles-Norton (with the first cut there had already come to him a certain la.s.situde, an indifference, almost, which made him much more tractable). "Why do you want my wings short?" (also he was conscious of a feeling of aspiration amidships, of aspiration for something else than pine-nuts). "Don't you want me to fly well? What the deuce is the matter?"

"It won't do; it won't do at all," said Bison Billiam, in a tone almost of discouragement. "Can't you _see_ it won't do?" he went on impatiently.

"It's too smooth; there's no effort in it. Lord, you do it as though it were _easy_! And there's no _danger_ in it, man! Lord, I sit here and watch you without batting an eye-lid; feeling sure you can't fall. That's not what I want. I want the audience to get excited, to palpitate! I don't want them to sit there like lambs watching a cloud, or a bird flying. Your act isn't worth two-bits a week. I want men to groan, children to scream, women to faint! Lop 'em off!"

Again Charles-Norton submitted himself to Dolly's gentle fingers and cold scissors, and repeated his act with shortened wings. This happened three times. Three times the scissors zipped, down eddied to the ground, and Charles-Norton tried again, more heavily, more soddenly, his being invaded by the emptiness of the old days, the shorn days.

At the end of the third flight, Bison Billiam remained silent a long time, evidently the prey of a heavy discouragement. Suddenly the light of inspiration sprang to his brow; his voice rang clear in the glade. "Cut six inches off the left wing," he cried, "and leave the right as it is.

Shear the left and leave the right as it is!"

Charles-Norton gazed at him open-mouthed. But by this time there was little left in him strong enough for rebellion. He closed his mouth again. Dolly interceded with a glance of her soft eyes, but Bison Billiam was aglow with his idea. "Cut!" he cried.

Dolly cut.

This time the result was eminently satisfactory. With great effort, with cracking sinew and sweating brow, Charles-Norton managed to circle the meadow once with heavy, awkward flapping. His neck was awry with the uneven pressure, his fine body was twisted; he almost struck the ground between each stroke, and as he was pa.s.sing his audience on the beginning of a second lap, he lost control suddenly, turned clear over, and flopped to earth at their feet.

Bison Billiam could not restrain his enthusiasm now. He clapped his hands, he skipped about like a child. "Fine; fine!" he cried, and his deep voice rang clear to the crest; "that's the stuff; now we've got it!

By Jove," he swore, his satisfaction rising to delirium, "I'll give you four hundred _and fifty_ a week!"

They left immediately, Charles-Norton dressing, for the first time in many days, in his city suit of clothes. The wings, even though--rectified, bulged the coat, but this was hidden by the cape of his mackintosh, which Dolly, providentially, had brought with her from the city. They wended their way back along the trail to the camp, Charles-Norton bronzed like a farmer, choking in his white collar, Dolly very pretty in her tailor suit, her furs, and her toque, Bison Billiam resplendent on his white horse; and before them Nicodemus trotted demurely, a dress-suit case in each saddle-bag, another slung atop. They left him at the camp, grazing philosophically on his old dump. Charles-Norton gave him an affectionate farewell slap, Dolly kissed him on the nose, and they then climbed aboard the shining private-car which stood ready for them on the siding. One end of the private-car was a luxurious stable, in which the white horse climbed along a cleated gang-way. A half-hour later the pa.s.sing Overland train picked up the car, and slowly clicking along the summit, they saw, between two snow-sheds, the little meadow, its lake, and its cabin, pa.s.s by, out of their vision, out of their lives.

Charles-Norton took off his coat, which felt very tight. A private-car had a freedom, and comforts, which a public-car has not; a faint appreciation of this fact came to Charles-Norton as he settled back, coatless, in his upholstered chair, and with it the first vague snuggle of readjustment. This feeling became clearer after the dainty breakfast served by Bison Billiam's white-capped cook, and expressed itself in a sigh almost of content when Bison Billiam, with the coffee, pa.s.sed him a great fat cigar. Charles-Norton threw a surrept.i.tious glance at the heavy band; it was a dollar cigar.

Life, after all, has its compensations.

CHAPTER XVIII

And now, how about Charles-Norton and Dolly?

Well, they are getting along very well; very well, very well indeed.

Of course, they have their little differences--as have most couples.

Mostly, it is about wings. There seems to be a something fundamental about both Charles-Norton and Dolly which irresistibly makes them diverge on the question of the proper length of wings (male wings at least). For a time, in fact, during the first months of their intoxicating public success and before they had arrived to the present adjustment, the question threatened to bring the conjugal craft to a final wreck.

Strangely enough (or naturally enough) it is a catastrophe that eased the situation. One night, after Dolly, in a sudden access of resentment, had taken an immoderate whack out of the left wing, Charles-Norton tumbled to the ground in the midst of his performance, and broke his ankle.

It was, of course, in an agony of remorse that Dolly nursed her husband during his long month of enforced and bed-ridden idleness. Luckily, Bison Billiam behaved beautifully. He let the salary run on during the whole course of Charles-Norton's incapacity, and then, with genial inspiration, prevailed upon him, when he had recovered, to make his public reappearance with the heavy plaster-of-paris cast still upon the injured leg--which immensely increased the Flying Wonder's popularity and success.

A _modus vivendi_ was agreed upon after this, which is still in force and works very well. Bison Billiam was made the permanent arbitrator of the wing question. Whenever they have a little difference now, Charles-Norton and Dolly go to Bison Billiam, and, standing before him hand in hand, listen to a sage adjudication of their rights and their wrongs. They call him Papa Bison.

And so, they are quite happy. Dolly, of course, takes a keen pleasure in her home. She has a neat little brick house, with a white door, near the Riverside Drive, and a butler. A butler always had been Dolly's secret dream.

Charles-Norton, also, though unconsciously perhaps, gets a good deal of pleasure out of the house (and the butler), for Dolly, with innate genius, has given it an air of quiet elegance and culture which he secretly enjoys. There is, also, a certain contentment in living life along a definite routine. He flies every night but Sunday, and two afternoons a week. And then, if Dolly has her house, he has his automobile.

A big, high-powered, red automobile. He goes out in it with Dolly every Sunday. When he arrives to a certain point in a certain highway, where the road is smooth and hard, and undulates up and down like a Coney Island chute for many miles, he leans forward and puts his chin close to the back of the chauffeur, who is French, and looks like Mephistopheles.

"Let her out," he says.

The chauffeur, with a grin, "lets her out"--and they swoop down and up, down and up, in increasing speed. The road is a ribbon, which she rolls hungrily within her; the trees, the rare houses on both sides, coalesce into two solid, whirling walls.

"Faster," says Charles-Norton.

The world becomes two parallel planes of solid atmosphere, rushing along close to right and left; the air strikes their faces like a fist, closing their nostrils till they gasp; the machine's hum becomes a cry; its flaps rise like wings.

"Faster," says Charles-Norton.

He seems to leave his body; it wafts off behind on a current of air, like a hat--and he is only a soul, a delicious kernel of soul ecstatically drunk, floating like an atom through the eternities.

"Faster," he says.

But he is aware now of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His body, catching up from behind, drops about him again--and then he knows.

It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little Dolly hysterical with fear.

"Slow up," he says to the chauffeur.

The world gradually changes from a mere blur of parallel lines to visible groupings of matter. Trees, houses, the road, the sky reappear as through a curtain torn before them. The chauffeur wipes his brow. "Ah, Monsieur!" he says.

And Dolly, very pale, says with an impatience that seems weary, as though it were repeating itself for the thousandth time "Oh, Goosie, why, why, why will you scare me so?"

Charles-Norton is penitent, but a bit morose. "Gee," he says; "that wasn't fast. That wasn't fast." His eyes go off, very far; a vague, vague yearning, covered over with layer and layer of resignation, palpitates faintly at the pit of his being. "You don't know what speeding is," he murmurs; "you don't know----"

The machine, at smooth half-speed, is returning toward the city. "I won't go with you again," says Dolly.

But she always does. She doesn't like to ride fast, and he does, but she never lets him ride alone. 'Cause she loves him!

He will have to be more careful now, however. The other evening, as they sat in the cozy reading-room (lined with editions de luxe) after the performance, she got upon his knee and, hiding his eyes with her hands so he could not look at her, whispered something in his ear.

Charles-Norton sat silent a long moment after that. Then he said, as though speaking to himself: "I wonder if _he_ will--if _he_ will also--if _he_ will----"

"I wonder; I wonder!" said Dolly, ecstatically, her eyes wide upon a splendid vision.