Angel Island Part 26

"I don't see it," interposed Clara emphatically. "I don't see what we get out of walking or what Angela will get out of it. Suppose we learned to walk? The men would stop helping us along. We'd lose the appeal of helplessness."

"But what is there about what you call 'the appeal of helplessness'

that makes it worth keeping?" Julia asked, smiling affectionately into Clara's eyes. "Why shouldn't we lose it?"

"Why, because," Clara exclaimed indignantly, "because--because--why, because," she ended lamely. Then, with one of her unexpected bursts of mental candor, "I'm sure I don't know why," she admitted, "except that we have always appealed to them for that reason. Then again," she took up her argument from another angle, "if we learn to walk, they won't wait on us any more. They may even stop giving us things. As it is now, they're really very generous to us."

The others smiled with varying degrees of furtiveness. Pete, as they all knew, could always placate an incensed Clara by offering her some loot of the homeward way: a bunch of flowers, a handful of nuts, beautifully colored pebbles, sh.e.l.ls with the iridescence still wet on them. She soon tired of these toys, but she liked the excitement of the surprise.

"Generous to us!" Chiquita burst out--and this was as unexpected as Lulu's face-about. "Well, when you come to that, they're never generous to us. They make us pay for all they give us. They seem generous--but they aren't really--any more than we are."

"They are far from generous," said Peachy. "They are ungenerous. They're tyrants. They're despots. See how they took advantage of our innocence and ignorance of earth-conditions."

"I protest." A note that they had never heard from Julia made steel of the thrilling melody of her voice. "You must know that is not true!"

she said in an accusing voice. "Be fair to them! Tell the truth to yourselves! If they took advantage of our innocence and ignorance, it was we who tempted them to it in the first place. As for our innocence and ignorance--you speak as, if they were beautiful or desirable. We were innocent and ignorant of earth-conditions because we were too proud to learn about them, because we always a.s.sumed that we lowered ourselves by knowing anything about them. Our mistake was that we learned to fly before we learned to walk."

"But, Julia, what are we going to do about Angela?" Peachy asked impatiently.

"I'm coming to that presently," Julia answered. "But before--I want to ask you a question. Do you remember the big cave in the northern reef--the one we used to hide in?"

"Oh, I remember," Lulu said, "perfectly."

"Did you ever tell Honey about it?" Julia turned to her directly.

"No. Why, we promised never to tell, didn't we? In case we ever needed a place of refuge--."

"Have any of you ever told about it?" Julia turned to the others. "Think carefully! This is important."

"I never have told," Peachy said wearily. "But about Angela--."

"Have you, Chiquita?" Julia interrupted with a strange insistence.

"I have never thought of it from that day to this," Chiquita answered.

"Nor I," replied Clara. "I'm not sure that I could go to it now. Could you, Julia?"

"Oh, yes," Julia answered eagerly, "I've--." She stopped abruptly. "But now I want to talk to you, and I want you to listen carefully. I am going to tell you why I think we should learn to walk. It is, in brief, for Angela's sake and for the sake of every girl-child that is born on this island. For a long time, you will think that I am talking about other things. But you must be patient. I have seen this situation coming ever since Angela's wings began to grow. I could not hurry it--but I knew it must come. Many nights I have lain awake, planning what I should say to you when the time came. The time has come--and I am going to say it. It is a long, long speech that I shall deliver; and I am going to speak very plainly. But you must not get angry--for you know how much I love you and how much I love your children.

"I'm going back to our young girlhood, to the time when our people were debating the Great Flight. We thought that we were different from them all, we five, that we were more original and able and courageous. And we were different. For when our people decided to go south to the Snowlands, the courage of rebellion grew in us and we deserted in the night. Do you remember the wonderful sense of freedom that came to us, and how the further north we flew, the stronger it became? When we found these islands, it seemed to us that they must have been created especially for us. Here, we said, we would live always, free from earth-ties--five incorruptible air-women.

"Then the men came. I won't go into all that. We've gone over it hundreds and hundreds of times, just as we did this afternoon, playing the most pathetic game we know--the do-you-remember game. But after they came, we found that we were not free from earth-ties. For the Great Doom overtook us and we fell in love. Then came the capture. And we lost our wings."

She paused a moment.

"Do you remember that awful day at the Clubhouse, how Chiquita, comforted us? I--I failed you then; I fainted; I felt myself to blame for your betrayal. But Chiquita kept saying, 'Don't be afraid. They won't hurt us. We are precious to them. They would rather die than lose us. They need us more than we need them. They are bound to us by a chain that they cannot break.' And for a long time that seemed true. What we had to learn was that we needed them just as much as they needed us, that we were bound to them by a chain that we could not break.

"I often think"--Julia's voice had become dreamy--"now when it is so different, of those first few months after the capture. How kind they were to us, how gentle, how considerate, how delicate, how chivalrous!

Do you remember that they treated us as if we were children, how, for a long time, they pretended to believe in fairies? Do you remember the long fairy-hunts in the moonlit jungle, the long mermaid-hunts in the moonlit ocean? Do you remember the fairy-tales by the fire? It seemed to me then that life was one long fairy-tale. And how quickly we learned their language! Has it ever occurred to you that no one of them has ever bothered to learn ours--none except Frank, and he only because he was mentally curious? Then came the long wooing. How we argued the marriage question--discussed and debated--each knowing that the Great Doom was on her and could not be gain-said.

"Then came the betrothal, the marriages, and suddenly all that wonderful starlight and firelight life ended. For a while, the men seemed to drift away from each other. For a while, we--the 'devoted five,' as our people called us--seemed to drift away from each other. It was as though they took back something they had freely given each other to give to us. It was as though we took back something we had freely given each other to give to them.

"Then, just as suddenly, they began to drift away from us and back to each other. Some of the high, wors.h.i.+ping quality in their att.i.tude toward us disappeared. It was as though we had become less beautiful, less interesting, less desirable--as if possession had killed some precious, perishable quality."

"What that quality is I do not know. We are not dumb like stones or plants, we women. We are not dull like birds or beasts. We do not fade in a day like flowers. We do not stop like music. We do not go out like light. What it was that went, or when or how, I do not know. But it was something that thrilled and enchanted them. It went--and it went forever."

"It was as though we were toys--new toys--with a secret spring. And if one found and pressed that spring, something unexpected and something unbelievably wonderful would happen. They hunted for that spring untiringly--hunted--and hunted--and hunted. At last they found it.

And after they found it, we no longer interested them. The mystery and fascination had gone. After all, a toy is only a toy."

"Then came our great trouble--that terrible time of the illicit hunting.

Every man of them making love to some one of you. Every woman of you making love to some one of them. That was a year of despair for me.

I could see no way out. It seemed to me that you were all drifting to destruction and that I could not stay you. And then I began to realize that the root of evil was only one thing idleness. Idle men! Idle women!

And as I wondered what we should do next, Nature took the matter in her hands. She gave all you women work to do."

Julia paused. Her still gray eyes fixed on faraway things.

"Honey-Boy was born, then Peterkin, then Angela, then Honey-Bunch. And suddenly everything was right again. But, somehow, the men seemed soon to exhaust the mystery and fascination of fatherhood just as they had exhausted the mystery and fascination of husbandhood. They became restless and irritable. It seemed to me that another danger beset us--vague, monstrous, looming--but I did not know what. You see they have the souls of discoverers and explorers and conquerors, these earth-men. They are creators. Their souls are filled with an eternal unrest. Always they must attempt one thing more; ever they seek something beyond. They would stop the sun and the moon in their courses; they would harness the hurricane; they would chain the everlasting stars. Sea, earth, sky are but their playgrounds; past, present, future their servants; they l.u.s.t to conquer the unexplored areas of s.p.a.ce and time. It came to me that what they needed was work of another kind. One night, when I was lying awake thinking it over, the idea of the New Camp burst on my mind. Do you remember how delighted they were when I suggested it to them, how delighted you were, how gay and jubilant we all were, how, for days and days, we talked of nothing else? And we were as happy over the idea as they. For a long time, we thought that we were going to help.

"We thought that we were going with them every day, not to work but to sit in the nearby shade, to encourage them with our praise and appreciation. And we did go for a month. But they had to carry us all the way--or nearly carry us. Think of that--supporting a full-grown woman all that weary road. I saw the feeling begin to grow in them that we were burdens. I watched it develop. Understand me, a beautiful burden, a beloved burden, but still a burden, a burden that it would be good to slip off the back for the hours of the working day. I could not blame them. For we were burdens. Then, under one pretext or another, they began to suggest to us not to go daily to the New Camp with them.

The sun was too hot; we might fall; insects would sting us; the sudden showers were too violent. Finally, that if we did not watch the New Camp grow, it would be a glorious surprise to us when it was finished.

"At first, you were all touched and delighted with their gallantry--but I--I knew what it meant."

"I tried to stem the torrent of their strange, absorption, but I could not. It grew and grew. And now you see what has happened. It has been months since one of us has been to the New Camp and all of you, except Peachy and myself, have entirely lost interest in it. It is not surprising. It is natural. I, too, would lose interest if I did not force myself to talk with Billy about it every night of my life.

Lulu said yesterday that it seemed strange to her that, after working together all day, they should want to get together in the Clubhouse at night. For a long time that seemed strange to me--until I discovered that there is a chain binding them to each other even as there is a chain binding them to us. And the Bond of Work is stronger than the Bond of s.e.x because Work is a living, growing thing."

"In the meantime, we have our work too--the five children. But it is a little constructive work--not a great one. For in this beautiful, safe island, there is not much that we can do besides feed them. And so, here we sit day after day, five women who could once fly, big, strong, full-bodied, teeming with various efficiencies and abilities--wasted. If we had kept our wings, we could have been of incalculable a.s.sistance to them. Or if we could walk--."

"But I won't go further into our situation. I want to consider Angela's."

"You are wondering what all this has to do with the matter of Angela's flying. And now I am going to tell you. Don't you see if they wait until she is a woman before they cut her wings, she will be in the same case that we are in, unable either to fly or to walk. Rather would I myself cut her wings to-night and force her to walk. But on the other hand, should she grow to womanhood with wings, she would be no true mate to a wingless man unless she could also walk. No, we must see to it that she both flies and walks. In that case, she will be a perfect mate to the wingless man. Her strength will not be as great as his--but her facility will be greater. She will walk well enough to keep by his side; and her flying will supplement his powers."

"And then--oh, don't you see it--don't you see why we must fight--fight--fight for Angela, don't you see why her wings are a sacred trust with us? Sometime, there will be born here----Clara," she turned her look on Clara's excited face, "it may be the baby that's coming to you in the spring--sometime there will be born here a boy with wings.

Then more and more often they will come until there are as many winged men as winged women. What will become of our girl-children then if their mates fly as well as walk away from them. There is only one way out. And there is only one duty before us--to learn to walk that we may teach our daughters to walk--to preserve our daughter's wings that they may teach their sons to fly."

"But, Julia," Peachy exclaimed, after an instant of dead silence.

There was a stir of wonder, flutelike in her voice, a ripple of wonder, flamelike on her face. "Our feet are too fine, too soft. Ralph says that mine are only toy feet, that no creature could really get along on them."

She kicked the loose sandals off. Tiny, slim, delicately chiseled, her feet were of a china whiteness, except where, at the tips, the toes showed a rose-flush or where, over the instep, the veins meandered in a blue network.

"Of course Peachy's feet are smaller than mine," Lulu said wistfully.

"But even my workaday little pads wouldn't carry me many steps." From under her skirts appeared a pair of capable-looking, brown feet, square, broad but little and satin-smooth.

"Mine are quite useless," Chiquita sighed. "Oh, why did I let myself grow so big?" There was a note of despair in her velvet voice. "It's almost as if there were no muscles in them." She pulled aside her scarlet draperies. In spite of her increasing size, her dusky feet had kept their aristocratic Andalusian lines.

"And I've always done just the things that would make it impossible for me to walk," said Clara in a discouraged tone. "I've always taken as much care of my feet as my hands--they're like gla.s.s." This was true. In the pale-gold of her skin, the pink nails glittered brilliantly.

"And think of your own feet, Julia," Lulu exclaimed. "They're like alabaster. Pete says that from the artist's point of view, they're absolutely perfect. You don't imagine for an instant that you could take a step on them, unsupported?"

"No?" said Julia. "No?" With a swift leap of her body, she stood on the feet in question. And as the other stared, stupefied, she walked with the splendid, swinging gait of an Amazon once, twice, thrice around the Playground.