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

they are any better or any

worse than we - they’re about the same. Soon after we captured them, you

remember, we entered into an agreement that no one of us would ever let

his wife’s wings grow without the consent of all the others. One minute

after I had given my word, I was sorry for it. But you kept your word to

me in the agreement that I forced on you before the capture; and, so, I

shall always keep mine to you. But I regret it more and more as time

goes on. You see I’m so constituted that I can’t see anything but

abstract justice. And according to abstract justice we have no right to

hold these women bound to the earth. If the air is their natural

habitat, it is criminal for us to keep them out of it. They’re our

equals in every sense - I mean in that they supplement us, as we

supplement them. They’ve got what we haven’t got and we’ve got what they

haven’t got. They can’t walk, but they can fly. We can’t fly, but we can

walk. It is as though they compelled us, creatures of the earth, to live

in the air all the time. Oh, it’s wrong. You’ll see it some day.”

 

“I never listened to such sophistry in my life,” said Ralph in disgust.

You’ll be telling us next,” he added sarcastically, that we hadn’t any

right to capture them.”

 

“We hadn’t,” Frank replied promptly. “On reflection, I consider that the

second greatest crime of my existence. But that’s done and can’t be

wiped out. They own this island just as much as we do. They’d been

coming to it for months before we saw it. They ought to have every kind

of right and freedom and privilege on it that we, have.”

 

“I’d like to hear,” Addington said in the high, thin tone of his peevish

disgust, “the evidence that justifies you in saying that. What have they

ever done on this island to put them on an equality with us? Aren’t they

our inferiors from every point of view, especially physically?”

 

“Certainly they are,” agreed Honey, not peevishly but as one who

indorses, unnecessarily, a self-evident fact. “They’ve lived here on

Angel Island as long as we have. But they haven’t made good yet, and we

have. Why, just imagine them working on the New Camp - playing tennis,

even.”

 

“But we prevented all that,” Frank protested. “We cut their wings.

Handicapped as they were by their small feet, they could do nothing.”

 

“But,” Honey ejaculated, “if they’d been our physical equals, they would

never have let us cut their wings.”

 

“But we caught them with a trick,” Frank said, “we put them in a

position in which they could not use their physical strength.”

 

“Well, if they’d been our mental equals, they’d never let themselves get

caught like that.”

 

“Well - but - but - but - ” Frank sputtered. “Now you’re arguing

crazily. You’re going round in a circle.”

 

“Oh, well,” Honey exclaimed impatiently, let’s not argue any more. You

always go round in a circle. I hate argument. It never changes, anybody.

You never hear what the other fellow says. You always come out of it

with your convictions strengthened.”

 

Frank made a gesture of despair. He drew a little book from his pocket

and began to read.

 

“There’s one thing about them that certainly is to laugh,” Honey said

after a silence, a glint of amusement in his big eyes, “and that is the

care they take of those useless feet of theirs. Lulu’s even taken to

doing hers up every night in oil or cream. It’s their particular vanity.

Now, take that, for instance. Men never have those petty vanities. I

mean real men - regular fellows.”

 

“How about the western cowboy and his fancy boots?” Frank shot back over

his book.

 

“Oh, that’s different,” Ralph said. “Honey’s right. That business of

taking care of their feet symbolizes the whole sex to me. They do the

things they do just because the others do them - like sheep jumping over

a wall. Their fad at present is pedicure. Peachy’s at it just like the

rest of them. Every night when I come home, I find her sitting down with

both feet done up in one of those beautiful scarfs she’s collected,

resting on a cushion. It’s rather amusing, though.” Ralph struggled to

suppress his smile of appreciation.

 

“Clara’s the same.” Pete smiled too. “She’s cut herself out some high

sandals from a pair of my old boots. And she wears them day and night.

She says she’s been careless lately about getting her feet sunburned.

And she’s not going to let me see them until they’re perfectly white and

transparent again. She says that small, beautiful, and useless feet were

one of the points of beauty with her people.”

 

“Julia’s got the bug, too.” Billy’s eyes lighted with a gleam of

tenderness. “Among the things she found in the trunk was a box of white

silk stockings and some moccasins. She’s taken to wearing them lately.

It always puts a crimp in me to get a glimpse of them - as if she’d

suddenly become a normal, civilized woman.”

 

“Now that I think of it,” Frank again came out of his book. “Chiquita

asked me a little while ago for a pair of shoes. She’s wearing them all

the time now to protect her feet - from the sun she says.”

 

“It is the most curious thing,” Billy said, “that they have never wanted

to walk. Not that I want them to now,” he added hastily. “That’s their

greatest charm in my eyes - their helplessness. It has a curious appeal.

But it is singular that they never even tried it, if only out of

curiosity.”

 

“They have great contempt for walking,” Honey observed. “And it has

never occurred to them, apparently, that they could enjoy themselves so

much more if they could only get about freely. Not that I want them to -

any more than you. That utter helplessness is, as you say, appealing.”

 

“Oh, well,” Ralph said contemptuously, “what can you expect of them? I

tell you it’s lack of gray matter. They don’t cerebrate. They don’t

co-ordinate. They don’t correlate. They have no initiative, no creative

faculty, no mental curiosity or reflexes or reactions. They’re nothing

but an unrelated bunch of instincts, intuitions, and impulses - human

nonsense machines! Why if the positions were reversed and we’d lost our

wings, we’d have been trying to walk the first day. We’d have been

walking better than they by the end of a month.”

 

“I like it just as it is,” Pete said contentedly. “They can’t fly and

they don’t want to walk. We always know where to find them.”

 

“Thank God we don’t have to consider that matter,” Billy concluded.

Apparently the walking impulse isn’t in them. They might some time, by

hook or crook, wheedle us into letting them fly a little. But one thing

is certain, they’ll never take a step on those useless feet.”

 

“Delicate, adorable, useless little feet of theirs,” Pete said softly as

if he were reciting from an ode.

 

“There’s something moving along the trail, boys,” Frank said quietly. “I

keep getting glimpses of it through the bushes - white - blue - red and

yellow.”

 

The others stopped, petrified. They scowled, bending an intent gaze

through the brilliant noon sunshine.

 

“Sure I get it!” Billy answered in a low tone. “There’s something

there.”

 

“I don’t.” Honey shaded his eyes.

 

“Nor I.” Pete squinted.

 

“Well, I don’t see anything,” Ralph said impatiently. “But providing you

fellows aren’t nuts, what the devil can it be?”

 

“It’s - ” Billy began. Then, “My God!” he ended.

 

Something white glimmered at the end of the trail. It grew larger,

bulked definitely, filled the opening.

 

“Julia!” Billy gasped.

 

“And she’s - she’s - .” Honey could not seem to go on.

 

“Walking,” Billy concluded for him.

 

“And Peachy!” Ralph exclaimed.

 

“And why - and - and - - .” It was Pete who stopped for breath this time.

 

“And she’s walking!” Ralph concluded for himself.

 

“And Clara! And Lulu! And Chiquita!” they greeted each one of the women

as fast as they appeared. And in between them came again and again their

astonished “And walking!”

 

The five women were walking, and walking with no appearance of effort,

swiftly, lightly, joyously. Julia, at the head, moved with the frank,

free, swinging gait of an Amazon. Peachy seemed to flit along the

ground; there was in her progress something of the dipping, curving

grace of her flight. Clara glided; her effect of motionless movement was

almost obsidian. Chiquita kept the slow, languid gait, both swaying and

pulsating, of a Spanish woman. Lulu trotted with the brisk, pleasing

activity of a Morgan pony.

 

Their skirts had been shortened; they rippled away from slim ankles. The

swathing, wing-like draperies had disappeared; their slit sleeves

fluttered away from bare shoulders. The women did not pause. They came

on steadily, their eyes fixed on the group of men.

 

The faces in that group had changed in expression. Ralph’s became black

and lowering. Honey looked surprised but interested; his color did not

vary; Billy turned a deep brick-red. Pete went white. Frank Merrill

alone studied the phenomenon with the cool, critical eye of scientific

observation.

 

The women paused at a little distance where the path dipped to coil

around a little knoll. They abandoned the path to climb this knoll; they

climbed it with surprising ease; they almost flew up the sides. They

stood there silently grouped about Julia. For an instant the two parties

gazed at each other.

 

Then, “What does this mean, Peachy?” Ralph asked sternly.

 

Julia answered for Peachy.

 

“It means - rebellion,” she said. ” It means that we have decided among

ourselves that we will not permit you to cut Angela’s wings. It means

that rather than have you do that, we will leave you, taking our

children with us. If you will promise us that you will not cut Angela’s

wings nor the wings of any child born to us, we in our turn will promise

to return to our homes and take our lives up with you just where we left

off.”

 

A confused murmur arose from the men. Ralph leaped to his feet. He made

a movement in the direction of the women, involuntary but violent.

 

The women shrank closer to Julia. They turned white, but they waited.

Julia did not stir.

 

“Go home, you - ” Ralph stopped abruptly and choked something back.

 

“Go at once!” Billy added sternly.

 

“I’m ashamed of you, Clara,” Pete said.

 

“Better go back, girls,” Honey advised. He tried to make his tone

authoritative. But in spite of himself, there lingered a little pleading

in it. To make up, he unmasked the full battery of his coaxing smile,

his quizzical frown, his snapping dimples. “We can’t let Angela fly

after she’s grown up. It isn’t natural. It isn’t what a woman should be

doing.”

 

Frank said nothing.

 

Julia looked at them steadily an instant.

 

“Come!” she said briefly to her little band. The women ran down the

knoll and disappeared up the trail.

 

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ralph remarked.

 

“Well, when you come to that, I’ll be damned,” Honey coincided.

 

“Who was it said that God did not intend them to walk?” Frank asked

slyly.

 

“So that’s what all this bandaging of feet meant,” Billy went on,

ignoring this thrust. “They were learning to walk all the time.”