Angel Island by Inez Haynes Gillmore (read novel full .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

******This file should be named angis10.txt or angis10.zip******

 

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, angis11.txt

VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, angis10a.txt

 

This etext was produced by David Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>.

***

More information about this book is at the top of this file.

 

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance

of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.

Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,

even years after the official publication date.

 

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til

midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.

The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at

Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A

preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment

and editing by those who wish to do so.

 

Most people start at our Web sites at:

http://gutenberg.net or

http://promo.net/pg

 

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project

Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new

eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).

 

Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement

can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is

also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the

indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an

announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

 

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/eBook03 or

ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/eBook03

 

Or /eBook02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

 

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,

as it appears in our Newsletters.

 

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

 

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The

time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours

to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright

searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our

projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value

per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2

million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text

files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+

We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002

If they reach just 1-2% of the world’s population then the total

will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year’s end.

 

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!

This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,

which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

 

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

 

eBooks Year Month

 

1 1971 July

10 1991 January

100 1994 January

1000 1997 August

1500 1998 October

2000 1999 December

2500 2000 December

3000 2001 November

4000 2001 October/November

6000 2002 December*

9000 2003 November*

10000 2004 January*

 

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created

to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

 

We need your donations more than ever!

 

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people

and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,

Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,

Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,

Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New

Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,

Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South

Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West

Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

 

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones

that have responded.

 

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list

will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.

Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

 

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

 

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally

request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and

you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,

just ask.

 

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are

not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting

donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to

donate.

 

International donations are accepted, but we don’t know ANYTHING about

how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made

deductible, and don’t have the staff to handle it even if there are

ways.

 

The most recent list of states, along with all methods for donations

(including credit card donations and international donations), may be

found online at http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html

 

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

 

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

PMB 113

1739 University