Angel Island, Inez Haynes Gillmore [the two towers ebook txt] 📗

and died and flared again in her eyes; roses of a living flame

bloomed and faded and bloomed again in her cheek. Her look went straight

to her father’s face, clung there in luminous entreaty. Peterkin, more

than ever like a stray from some unreal, pixy world, surveyed the scene

with his big, wondering, gray-green eyes. Honey-Boy, having apparently

just waked, stared, owl-like, his brows pursed in comic reproduction of

his father’s expression. Junior grinned his widest grin and padded the

air unceasingly with his pudgy hands. Honey-Bunch slept placidly in

Julia’s arms.

 

Julia advanced a little from her group and dropped a single

monosyllable. “Well?” she said in an inflexible, questioning voice.

 

Nobody answered her. Instead Addington called in a beseeching voice:

“Angela! Angela! Come to me! Come to dad, baby!”

 

Angela’s dead little wings suddenly flared with life; they fluttered in

a very panic. She stretched out her arms to her father. She turned her

limpid gaze in an agony of infantile entreaty up to her mother’s face.

But Peachy shook her head. The baby flutter died down. Angela closed her

eyes, dropped her head on her mother’s shoulder; the tears started from

under her eyelids.

 

“Shall Angela fly?” Julia asked. “Remember this is your last chance.”

 

“No,” Ralph said. And the word was the growl of a balked beast.

 

“Then,” Julia said sternly, “we will leave Angel Island forever.”

 

“You will,” Ralph sneered. “You will, will you? All right. Let’s see you

do it!” Suddenly he started swiftly down toward the trail. Come, boys!”

he commanded. Honey followed - and Billy and Pete.

 

But, suddenly, Julia spoke. She spoke in the loud, clear tones of her

flying days and she used the language of her girlhood. It was a word of

command. And as it fell from her lips, the five women leaped from the

top of the knoll. But they did not fall into the lake. They did not

touch its surface. They flew. Flew - and yet it was not flight. It was

half-flight. It was scarcely flight at all. Compared with the

magnificent, calm, effortless sweep of their girlhood days, it was

almost a grotesque performance. Their wing-stumps beat back and forth

violently, beat in a very agony of effort. Indeed these stunted fans

could never have held them up. They supplemented their efforts by a

curious rotary movement of the legs and feet. They could not rise very

far above the surface of the water, especially as each woman was

weighted by a child; but they sustained a steady, level flight to the

other side of the lake.

 

The men stared for an instant, petrified. Then panic broke. “Come back,

Lulu!” Honey yelled. “Come back!” “Julia!” Billy called hoarsely,

“Julia! Julia! Julia!” He went on calling her name as if his senses had

left him. Pete’s lips moved. Words came, but no voice; he stood like a

statue, whispering. Merrill remained silent; obviously he could not even

whisper; his was the silence of paralysis. Addington, on the other hand,

was all voice. “Oh, my God!” he cried. “Don’t leave me, Peachy! Don’t

leave me! Peachy! Angela! Peachy! Angela!” His voice ascended on the

scale of hysteric entreaty until he screeched. “Don’t leave me! Don’t

leave me!” He fell to his knees and held out his arms; the tears poured

down his face.

 

The women heard, turned, flew back. Holding themselves above the men’s

heads, they fluttered and floated. Their faces were working and the

tears flowed freely, but they kept their eyes steadily fixed on Julia,

waiting for command.

 

Julia was ghastly. “Shall Angela fly?” she asked. And it was as though

her voice came from an enormous distance, so thin and expressionless and

faraway had it become.

 

“Anything!” Addington said. “Anything! Oh, my God, don’t leave us!”

 

Julia said something. Again this word was in their own language and

again it was a word of command. But emotion had come into her voice -

joy; it thrilled through the air like a magic fluid. The women sank

slowly to earth. In another instant the two forces were in each other’s

arms.

 

“Billy,” Julia said, as hand in hand they struck into one of the paths

that led to the jungle, “will you marry me?”

 

Billy did not answer. He only looked at her.

 

“When?” he said finally. “Tomorrow?”

 

“To-day,” Julia said.

 

Sunset on Angel Island.

 

The Honeymoon House thrilled with excitement. At intervals figures

crowded to the narrow door; at intervals faces crowded in the narrow

window. Sometimes it was Lulu, swollen and purple and broken with

weeping. Sometimes it was Chiquita, pale and blurred and sagging with

tears. Often it was Peachy, whose look, white and sodden, steadily

searched the distance. Below on the sand, Clara, shriveled, pinched,

bent over, her hands writhing in and out of each other’s clasp, paced

back and forth, her eye moving always on the path. Suddenly she stopped

and listened. There came first a faint disturbance of the air, then

confusion, then the pounding of feet. Angela, white-faced, frightened,

appeared, flying above the trail. “I found him,” she called. Behind came

Billy, running. He flashed past Clara.

 

“How is she?” he panted.

 

“Alive,” Clara said briefly.

 

He flew up the steps. Clara followed. Angela dropped to the sand and Jay

there, her little head in the crook of her elbow, sobbing.

 

Inside a murmur of relief greeted Billy. “He’s come, Julia,” Peachy

whispered softly.

 

The women withdrew from the inner room as Billy passed over the

threshold.

 

Julia lay on the couch stately and still. One long white hand rested on

her breast. The other stretched at her side; its fingers touched a

little bundle there. Her wings - the glorious pinions of her girlhood -

towered above the pillow, silver-shining, quiescent. Her honey-colored

hair piled in a huge crown above her brow. Her eyes were closed. Her

face was like marble; but for an occasional faint movement of the hand

at her side, she might have been the sculpture on a tomb.

 

Her lids flickered as Billy approached, opened on eyes as dull as

stones. But as they looked up into his, they filled with light.

 

“My husband - ” she said. Her eyes closed.

 

But presently they opened and with a greater dazzle of light. “Our

son - ” The hand at her side moved feebly on the little bundle there.

That faint movement seemed a great effort. Her eyes closed again.

 

But for a third time she opened them, and now they shone with their

greatest glory. “My husband - our son - has - wings.”

 

And then Julia’s eyes closed for the last time

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Angel Island

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

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