Angel Island by Inez Haynes Gillmore (read novel full .txt) 📖

>proposition. It’s like jacking deer. I’m not for it. And, O Lord, what’s

the use of chewing the rag so much about it? Wait a while. We’ll get

them yet, I betchu!”

 

All of Honey’s sex-pride flared in this buoyant assurance. It had

apparently not yet occurred to him that he would not conquer Lulu in the

end and conquer her by merely submitting to her wooing of him.

 

And in the meantime, the voiceless tete-a-teteing of the five couples

continued.

 

“Say, Ralph,” Honey said one day in a calm interval, “it’s just occurred

to me that we haven’t seen those girls, flying in a bunch for quite some

time. Don’t suppose they’ve quarrelled, do you?”

 

Everybody stopped work to stare at him. “I bet that’s the answer,” Ralph

exclaimed. His voice held the note of one for whom a private

mystification has at last broken.

 

“But what do you suppose they’ve quarrelled about?” Pete Murphy asked.

 

“Me,” Honey said promptly.

 

Ralph laughed absent-mindedly. “It’s a hundred to one shot that they’re

quarrelling about us, though,” he said. For some mysterious reason this

theory raised his spirits perceptibly.

 

“But - to get down to brass tacks,” Pete asked in a puzzled tone, “what

have we done to make them quarrel?”

 

“Oh, we’ve done nothing,” Ralph answered with one of his lordly

assumptions of a special knowledge. It’s just the disorganization that

always falls on women when men appear on their horizon. They’re

absolutely without sex-loyalty, you know. They seem to have principle

enough in regard to some things, a few things. But the moment a man

appears, it’s all off. West of Suez, they’ll lie and steal; east of

Suez, they’ll betray and murder as easy as breathe.”

 

“Cut that out, Addington,” Pete Murphy commanded in a dangerous voice.

“I won’t stand for that kind of talk.”

 

Ralph glared. “Won’t stand for it?” he repeated. “I’d like to know how

the hell you’re going to help yourself?”

 

“I’ll find a way, and pretty damned quick,” Pete retorted.

 

It was the closest approach to a quarrel that had yet occurred. The

other three men hastily threw themselves into the breach. “Shut up, you

mick,” Honey called to Pete. “Remember you came over in the steerage.”

 

Pete grinned and subsided.

 

“As sure as shooting,” Honey said, “those girls have quarrelled. I bet

we never see them again.”

 

It was a long time before they saw any of them; but, curiously enough,

the next time the flying-girls visited the island they came in a group.

 

It had been sultry, the first of a long series of sticky, muggy days.

What threatened to be a thunderstorm and then, as Honey said, failed to

“make good,” came up in the afternoon. Just as the sky was at its

blackest, Honey called, “Hurroo! Here they come!”

 

The effect of the approach of the flying-maidens was so strange as to

make them unfamiliar. There was no sun to pour a liquid iridescence

through their wings. All the high lights of their plumage had dulled.

Painted in flat primary colors, they looked like paper dolls pasted on

the inky thundercloud. As usual, when they came in a group, they wove in

and out in a limited spherical area, achieving extraordinary effects in

close wheeling.

 

As the girls made for the island, a new impulse seized Honey. He ran

down the beach, dashed into the water, swam out to meet them.

 

“Come back, you fool!” Frank yelled.

 

There may be sharks in that water.

 

But Honey only laughed. He was a magnificent swimmer. He seemed

determined to give, in an alien element, an exhibition which would equal

that of the flying-girls. The effect on them was immediate; they broke

ranks and floated, watching every move.

 

To hold their interest, Honey nearly turned himself inside out.

 

At first he tore the water white with the vigor of his trudgeon-stroke.

Then turning from left to right, he employed the side-stroke. From that,

he went to the breast-stroke. Last of all, he floated, dove, swam under

water so long that the girls began uneasily to fly back and forth, to

twitter with alarm.

 

Finally he emerged and floated again.

 

“He swims like a motor-boat!” said Ralph admiringly.

 

Suddenly Lulu fluttered away from her companions, dropped so low that

she could have touched Honey with her hand, and flew protectingly above

him.

 

The men on the beach watched these proceedings with a gradual diminution

of their alarm, with the admiration that Honey in the water always

excited, with the amusement that Lulu’s fearless display of infatuation

always developed.

 

“Oh, my God!” Frank called suddenly. “There’s a shark!”

 

Simultaneously, the others saw what he saw - a sinister black triangle

swiftly shearing the water. They ran, yelling, down to the water’s edge

and stood there trying to shout a warning over the noise of the surf.

 

Honey did not get it at once. He was still floating, his smiling,

upturned face looking into Lulu’s smiling, down-turned one. Then,

rolling over, he apparently caught a glimpse of the black fin bearing so

steadily on him. He made immediately for the shore but he had swum far

and fast.

 

Lulu was slower even than he in realizing the situation. For a moment,

obviously piqued at his action, she dropped and hung in the rear.

Perhaps her mates signaled to her, perhaps her intuition flashed the

warning. Suddenly she looked back. The scream which she emitted was as

shrill with terror as any wingless woman’s. Swooping down like an eagle,

she seized Honey under the shoulders, lifted him out of the water. His

weight crippled her. For though the first impulse of her terror carried

her high, she sank at once until Honey hung just above the water.

 

And continuously she screamed.

 

The other girls realized her plight in an instant. They dropped like

stones to her side, eased her partially of Honey’s weight. Julia alone

did not touch him. She floated above, calling directions. The group of

girls arose gradually, flew swiftly over the water toward the beach. The

men ran to meet them.

 

“Don’t go any further,” Billy commanded in a peremptory voice unusual

with him. “They’ll not put him down if we come too near.”

 

The men hesitated, stopped.

 

Immediately the girls deposited Honey on the sand.

 

“Did you notice the cleverness of that breakaway?” said Pete. “He

couldn’t have got a clinch in anywhere.”

 

But to do Honey justice, he attempted nothing of the sort. He lay flat

and still until his rescuers were at a safe height. Then he sat up and

smiled radiantly at them. “Ladies, I thank you,” he said.

 

“And I’ll see that you get a Carnegie medal if it takes the rest of my

life. I guess,” he remarked unabashed, as his companions joined him, “it

will be fresh-water swimming for your little friend hereafter.”

 

Nobody spoke for a while. His companions were still white and Billy

Fairfax even shook.

 

“You looked like an engraving that used to hang over my bed when I was a

child,” said Ralph, with an attempt at humor that had, coming from him,

a touching quality, “a bunch of, angels lugging a dead man to heaven.

You’d have been a ringer for it if you’d had a shave.”

 

“Well, the next time the girls come, I’m going to swim out among the

pretty sharks,” said Pete, obviously trying to echo Ralph’s light note.

“By Jove, hear them chatter up there. They’re talking all at once and at

the top of their lungs just like your sisters and your cousins and your

aunts.”

 

“They’re as pale as death, too,” observed Billy. “Look at that!”

 

The flying-maidens had come together in a compact circular group, hands

over each other’s shoulders, wings faintly fluttering. Perceptibly they

clung to each other for support. Their faces had turned chalky; their

heads drooped. Intertwined thus, they drifted out of sight.

 

“Lord, they are beautiful, close-to!” Honey said. “You never saw such

complexions! Or such eyes and teeth! And - and - by George, such an

effect of purity and stainlessness. I feel like a - and yet, by - .” He

fell into an abstraction so deep that it was as though he had forgotten

his companions.

 

For several days, the girls did not appear on Angel Island. All that

time, the capture argument lay in abeyance. Even Ralph, who had

introduced the project, seemed touched by the gallantry of Honey’s

rescue. Honey, himself, was strangely subdued; his eternal monologue had

dried up; he seemed preoccupied. Nevertheless, it was he, who, one

night, reopened the discussion with a defiant flat: “Well, boys, I might

as well tell you, I’ve swung over to Ralph’s side. I’m for the capture

of those girls, and capture as soon as we can make it.”

 

“Well, I’ll be - ” said Billy. “After they saved your life! Honey, I

guess I don’t know you any more.”

 

“What’s changed you?” Pete asked in amazement.

 

“Can’t tell you why - don’t know myself why when you get the answer tell

me. Only in the ten minutes that those girls packed me through the air,

I did some quick thinking, I can’t explain to you why we’ve got the

right to capture them. But we have. That’s all there is to it.”

 

War broke out with a new animosity; for they had, of course, now

definitely divided into sides. Their conversation always turned into

argument now, no matter how peaceably and innocently it began.

 

The girls had begun to visit the island again, singly now, singly

always. Discussion died down temporarily and the wordless tete-a-teteing

began again. Lulu hovered ever at Honey’s shoulder. Clara postured

always within Pete’s vision. Chiquita took up her eternal vigil on

Frank’s reef. Peachy discovered new wonders of what Honey called “trick

flying.” Julia became a fixed white star in their blue noon sky.

 

A day or two or three of this long-distance wooing, and argument

exploded more vehemently than ever. Honey and Ralph still maintained

that, as the ruling sex of a man-managed world, they had the right of

discovery to these women. Frank still maintained that, as a supra-human

race, the flying-girls were subject to supra-human laws. Billy and Pete

still maintained that, as the development not only of the race but of

the individual depended on the treatment of the female by the male, the

capture of these independent beings at this stage of civilization would

be a return to barbarism.

 

After one night of wrangling, they came to the agreement that no one of

them would take steps towards capture until all five had consented to

it. They drew up a paper to this effect and signed it.

 

Their cabins were nearly completed now. Boundless leisure threatened to

open before them. More and more in the time which they were alone they

fell into the habits which their individual tastes developed. Frank

still worked on his library. He had transferred the desk and the

bookcases to the interior of his hut. He spent all his spare time there

arranging, classifying, and cataloguing his books. Billy fell into an

orgy of furniture-making and repairing. Addington began, unaided, to

build a huge cabin, bigger than the others, and separated a little

distance from them. Nobody asked him what it was for. Honey took long

solitary walks into the interior of the island. He returned with great

bunches of uprooted flowers which he planted against the cabin-walls.

Pete dragged out from an unexplored trunk a box of water-colors, a block

of paper. Now, when he was not working on a symphonic poem, he was

coping