Angel Island Part 21

Julia had changed little; for in her case, neither marriage nor maternity had laid its transmogrifying, touch upon her. Her deep blue-gray eyes--of which the brown-gold lashes seemed like reeds shadowing lonely lakes--had turned as strange as Peachy's; but it was a different strangeness. Her mouth--that double sculpturesque ripple of which the upper lip protruded an infinitesimal fraction beyond the lower one--drooped like Clara's; but it drooped with a different expression.

She had the air of one who looks ever into the distance and broods on what she sees there. Perhaps because of this, her voice had deepened to a thrilling intensity. Her hair was pulled straight back to her neck from the perfect oval of her face. It hung in a single, honey-colored braid, and it hung to the very ground. She always wore white.

"Do you remember"--Chiquita began presently. Her lazy purring voice grew soft with tenderness. The dreamy, unthinking Chiquita of four years back seemed suddenly to peer through the unwieldy Chiquita of the present--"how we used to fly--and fly--and fly--just for the love of flying? Do you remember the long, bright day-flyings and the long, dark night-flyings?

"And sometimes how we used to drop like stones until we almost touched the water," Lulu said, a sparkle in her cooing, friendly little voice.

"And the races! Oh, what fun! I can feel the rush of the air now."

"Over the water." Peachy flung her long, slim arms upward and a delicious smile sent the tragedy scurrying from her sunlit face. "Do you remember how wonderful it was at sunset? The sky heaving over us, shot with gold and touched with crimson. The sea pulsing under us lined with crimson and splashed with gold. And then the sunset ahead--that gold and crimson hole in the sky. We used to think we could fly through it some day and come out on another world. And sometimes we could not tell where sea and sky joined. How we flew--on and on--farther each time--on and on--and on. The risks we took! Sometimes I used to wonder if we'd ever have the strength to get home. Yet I hated to turn back. I hated to turn away from the light. I never could fly towards the east at sunset, nor towards the west at sunrise. It hurt! I used to think, when my time came to die, that I would fly out to sea--on and on till I dropped."

"I loved it most at noon," Chiquita said, "when the air was soft. It smelled sweet; a mixture of earth and sea. I used to drift and float on great seas of heat until I almost slept. That was wonderful; it was like swimming in a perfumed air or flying in a fragrant sea."

"Oh, but the storms, Julia!" Lulu exclaimed. A wild look flared in her face, wiped oft entirely its superficial look of domesticity. "Do you remember the heavy, night-black cloud, the thunder that crashed through our very bodies, the lightning that nearly blinded us, and the rain that beat us almost to pieces?"

"Oh, Lulu!" Julia said; "I had forgotten that. You were wonderful in a storm, How you used to shout and sing and leap through the air like a wild thing! I used to love to watch you, and yet I was always afraid that you would hurt yourself."

"I loved the moonlight most. I do now." The petulance went out of Clara's eyes; dreams came into its place. "The cool softness of the air, the brilliant sparkle of the stars! And then the magic of the moonlight!

Young child-moon, half-grown girl-moon, voluptuous woman-moon, sallow, old-hag-moon, it was alike to me. Pete says I'm 'fey' in the moonlight.

He, says I'm Irish then."

"I loved the sunrise," said Julia. "I used to steal out, when you girls were still sleeping, to fly by dawn. I'd go up, up, up. At first, it was like a huge dewdrop--that morning world--then, colder and colder--it was like a melted iceberg. But I never minded that cold and I loved the clearness. It exhilarated me. I used to run races with the birds. I was not happy until I had beaten the highest-flying of them all. Oh, it was so fresh and clean then. The world seemed new-made every morning. I used to feel that I'd caught the moment when yesterday became to-day.

Then I'd sink back through layer on layer of sunlight and warm, perfume-laden, dew-damp breeze, down, down until I fell into my bed again. And all the time the world grew warmer and warmer. And I loved almost as well that instant of twilight when the world begins to fade.

I used to feel that I'd caught the moment when to-day had become to-morrow. I'd fly as high as I could go then, too. Then I'd sink back through layer on layer of deepening dusk, while one by one the stars would flash out at me--down, down, down until my feet touched the water.

And all the time the air grew cooler and cooler."

"My wings! My wings!" Peachy did not shriek these words with maniacal despair. She did not whisper them with dreary resignation. She breathed them with the rapture of one who looks through a narrow, dark tunnel to measureless reaches of sun-tinted cloud and sea.

"Do you remember the first time we ever saw them?" Lulu asked after a long time. This was obviously a deliberate harking back to lighter things. A gleam of reminiscence, both mischievous and tender, fired her slanting eyes.

The others smiled, too. Even Peachy's face relaxed from the look of tension that had come into it. "I often think that was the happiest time," she sighed, "those weeks before they knew we were here. At least, they knew and they didn't know. Ralph said that they all suspected that something curious was going on--but that they were so afraid that the others would joke about it, that no one of them would mention what was happening to him. Do you remember what fun it was coming to the camp when they were asleep? Do you remember how we used to study their faces to find out what kind of people they were?"

"And do you remember"--Chiquita rippled a low laugh--"how we would leap into the air if they stirred or spoke in their sleep? Once, Honey started to wake up--and we were off over the water before he could get his eyes open."

"Oh, but Honey told me that he heard us laugh that time," Lulu explained. "He told the men the next day and, oh, how they joked him."

"And then," Chiquita went on, "once Billy actually did wake up. You were bending over him, Julia. I remember we all kept as still as the dead.

And you--oh, Julia, you were wonderful--you did not even breathe. He seemed to fade back into sleep again."

"He says now that I hypnotized him," Julia explained.

"Do you remember," Clara took it up, "that we even considered kidnapping one of them? If we'd known what to do with him, I think we might have tried it."

"Yes," said Chiquita. "But I think it was just as well we didn't. We wouldn't have carried it off well. There's something about them that's terrifying. Do you remember that time we saved Honey from the shark, how we trembled all the time we carried him through the air. He knew it, too--I noticed how triumphantly he smiled."

"Honey told me once"--Lulu lowered her voice--"that it was the fact that we trembled--that we seemed so much women, in spite of being creatures of the air--that made him determine to capture us."

"Well, there's something about them that weakens you," Chiquita said in a puzzled tone. "It's like a spell. At first I always felt quivery and trembly if I stood near them."

"It's power," Julia explained.

"I used even to be afraid of their voices," Chiquita went on.

"Oh, so was I," Lulu agreed. "I felt as I did when I heard thunder for the first time. It went through me. It made me shake. I was afraid, but I wanted to hear it again."

"Do you remember the first time we saw them walk!" Clara said. Her face twisted with the expression of a past loathing. "How it disgusted us! It seemed to me the most hideous motion I had ever seen--so unnatural, so ungraceful, so repellent. It took me a long time to get used to that.

And as for their running--"

"It's curious how that feeling still lingers in us," exclaimed Peachy.

"That contempt for the thing that walks. Occasionally Angela starts to imitate the boys--it seems as if I would fly out of my skin with horror.

I shall always feel superior to Ralph, I know."

"Do you remember the first talks we ever had after we'd got our first glimpse of them?" asked Clara. "How astonished we were--and half frightened and yet--in a queer way--excited and curious?

"And after we got over our fright," Lulu carried the memories along, "and had made up our minds we didn't care whether they discovered us or not, what fun we had with them! How we played over the entire island and yet it took them such a long time to discover us."

"Oh, they're awfully stupid about seeing or guessing things," Peachy said disdainfully. "My mind always leaps way ahead of Ralph's."

"Do you remember that at first we used to have regular councils," Lulu asked, "before--before----"

"Before we agreed each to go her own way," Peachy finished it for her.

"All of us pitted against you, Julia." Chiquita sighed. "I often think now, Julia, how you used to talk to us. How you used to beg us not to go to the island. How you argued with us! The prophecies you made! They've all come true. I can hear you now: 'Don't go to the island.' 'Come away with me and we will fly back south before it is too late.' 'Come away while you can!' 'In a little while it will be too late.' In a little while I shall not be able to help you!"

"And how we fought you, Julia!" Clara said. "How we denied everything you said, every one of us knowing in her heart that you were right!"

"But," Julia said, "later, I told you that I might not be able to help myself, and you see I wasn't."

"Did they ever guess that we had quarrelled, I wonder?" Clara asked.

"Yes," Lulu answered eagerly. Honey guessed it. "Now, wasn't that clever of him?"

"Not so very," Clara replied languidly. "I guessed that they had quarrelled. And I had a strong suspicion," she added consciously, "that it was about us."

"I wonder," Peachy said somberly, "what would have happened if we had taken Julia's advice."

"Are you sorry, Peachy?" Julia asked.

"No, I'm not sorry exactly," Peachy answered slowly. "I have Angela, of course. Are you sorry, Julia?"

"No," replied Julia.

"Julia," Peachy said, "what was it changed you? I have always wanted to ask but I have never dared. What brought you to the island finally? What made you give up the fight with us?"

The far-away look in Julia's eyes grew, if possible, more far-away. She did not speak for a while. Then, "I'll tell you," she said simply. "It is something that I have never told anybody but Billy. When you first began to leave me to come to this island alone, I was very unhappy. And I grew more and more unhappy. I missed flying with you. And especially flying by night. Flying alone seemed melancholy. I came here at first, only because I was driven by my loneliness. I said to myself that I'd drift with the current. But that did not help any. You were all so interested in your lovers that it made no difference whether I was with you or not. I began to think that you no longer cared for me, that you had out-grown me, that all my influence over you had vanished, that, if I were out of the way, the one tie which held you to me would break and you would go to these men. I grew more and more unhappy every instant.

That was not all. I was in love with Billy, but I did not know it. I only knew that I was moody and strange and in desperate despair. And, so, one day I decided to kill myself."

There was a faint movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four rec.u.mbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed scarcely to breathe.

"One day, I flew up and up. Never before had I gone half so high. But I flew deliberately higher and higher until I became cold and colder and numb and frozen--until my wings stopped. And then--" She paused.