Inez Haynes Gillmore

“ She was the only one of the flying-girls who touched the earth. And she always led up to this feat as to the climax of what Honey called her “act.” She would drop to the very ground, pose there, wavering like an enormous butterfly, her great wings opening and shutting. Sometimes, tempted by her actual nearness and fooled by her apparent weakness, the five men would make a rush in her direction. She would stand waiting and drooping until they were almost on her. Then in a flash came the tremendous whirr of her start, the violent beat of her whipping progress—she had become a blue speck. ”

“ All this destruction ran from north to south between two reefs of black rock. It edged a broad bow-shaped expanse of sand, snowy, powdery, hummocky, netted with wefts of black seaweed that had dried to a rattling stiffness. To the east, this silvery crescent merged finally with a furry band of vegetation which screened the whole foreground of the island.
The day was perfect and the scene beautiful. They had watched the sun come up over the trees at their back. And it was as if they had seen a sunrise for the first time in their life. ”

“ She was the darkest of all the girls, a raven black. As Lulu was all coppery shine and shimmer, all satiny gloss and gleam, so Chiquita was all dusk in the coloring, all velvet in the surfaces. Her great heavy-lidded eyes were dusk and velvet, with depth on depth of an unmeaning dreaminess. Her hair, brows, lashes were dusk and velvet; and there was no light in them. Her skin, a dusky cream on which velvety shade accented velvety shadow, was colorless except where her lips, cupped like a flower, offered a splash of crimson. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 lust to conquer the unexplored areas of space 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. ”

“ For the first day, Pete entertained himself with exploration, clambering from one reef to another, pausing only to look listlessly off at the horizon, climbing a pine here and there, swinging on a bough while he stared absently back over the island. But although his look fixed on the restless peacock glitter of the sea, or the moveless green cushions that the massed trees made, it was evident that it took no account of them; they served only the more closely to set his mental gaze on its half-seen vision. ”

“ Angela flew down from the tip of a billow, came fluttering and flying up the beach. Once or twice, for no apparent reason, her wings fell dead, sagged for a few moments; then her little pink, shell-like feet would pad helplessly on the sand. Twice she dropped her pinions deliberately; once to climb over a big root, once to mount a boulder that lay in her path. “Don’t walk, Angela!” Peachy called sharply at these times. “Fly! Fly!” And obediently, Angela stopped, waited until the strength flowed into her wings, started again. ”

“ Frank Merrill listened to each with the look on his face, half perplexity, half irritation, which always came when the conversation took a humorous turn. “I am myself inclined to look upon them as an entirely new race of beings, requiring new laws,” he said thoughtfully.
Although the quick appearance and the quick departure of the girls had upset the men temporarily, they went back to work at once. And as though inspired by their appearance, they worked like tigers. As before, they talked constantly of them, piling mountains of conjecture on molehills of fact. ”

“ Julia answered. “Of course we’re not. I mean we have one kind of happiness—the happiness that come’s from being loved and having a home and children. But there is another kind of happiness of which when you cut our wings we were no longer capable—the happiness that comes from a sense of absolute freedom. We can bear that for ourselves, but not for our daughters. Angela and all the girl-children who follow her must have the freedom that we have lost. Will you give it to them?”
“No!” Ralph yelled. And “Go home!” Honey said brutally. ”

“ Again she sank slowly, hovered an instant close to the sand, brought her face near to a mirror, bounced up, dipped down, brought her face nearer, fluttered, put out one hand, withdrew it, put out the other, withdrew it, put out both, seized a mirror firmly, darted to the zenith.
“Well, what do you know about that!” said Billy. And, “Oh, the angels!” exclaimed Pete. Ralph’s face opened in the fatuous grin which always meant satisfaction with him. Honey turned somersaults of delight. Even Frank twinkled.
For, high up in the heaven, five heads positively bumped over the meager oval of silver. ”

“ 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, shells 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. ”

“ One afternoon, after a long vigil in which, unaccountably, Julia had not appeared, he started to return to camp. It was a late twilight and a black, velvety one. The trees against a darkening curtain of sky had turned to bunches of tangled shadow, the reefs and rocks against the papery white of the sand to smutches and blobs of soot. Suddenly—and his heart pounded at the sound—the air began to vibrate and thrill. ”

“ Darting, diving, glancing, curving, wheeling, they interwove in what seemed the premeditated figures of an aerial dance. If they were conscious of the group of men on the beach, they did not show it; they seemed entirely absorbed in their flying. Their wings, like enormous scimitars, caught the moonlight, flashed it back. For an interval, they played close in a group inextricably intertwined, a revolving ball of vivid color. ”

“ 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 said. “They’re creatures neither of flesh nor of marble—they’re ideals. They’re made of stars, sunlight, moonshine. I believe in treating them like beings of a higher world.”
“I disagree with all of you,” Frank said ponderously, “I don’t believe in treating them as if they were pets or dolls, or goddesses on pedestals or ideals. I believe in treating them like human beings, the other half of the race. I don’t see that they are any better or any worse than we—they’re about the same. ”

“ They grew gradually to bewildering shapes and colors, for the girls came dressed in gowns woven of brilliant flowers. And the torrents of their beautiful hair floated loose. This time they held themselves grouped close; they kept themselves aloof, high. But again came the sinuous interplay of flower-clad bodies, the flashing evolution of rainbow wings, the dazzling interweaving of snowy arms and legs. It held the men breathless.
“They’re like goldfish in a bowl,” Billy Fairfax said. ”

“ They were headed down the beach, hugging the shore. Swim as hard as they could, Honey and Frank managed but to keep up with them. Ralph overtook them only in their brief resting-periods. Further inshore, carried ceaselessly a little forward and then a little back, Julia floated; floated with an unimaginable lightness and yet, somehow, conserved her aspect of a creature cut in marble.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful in any art, ancient or modern,” Billy concluded. “When those strange draperies that they affect get wet, they look like the Elgin marbles.” ”

“ Billy seemed to be ransacking his vocabulary for abstract nouns.
“And that sense you have,” Pete broke in eagerly, “of molding a virgin mind. It gives you a feeling of responsibility that’s fairly terrifying at times. But there’s something else mixed up with it—the instinct of the artist. It’s as though you were trying to paint a picture on human flesh. You know that you’re going to produce beauty.” ”

“ Everybody turned. There, heading straight towards them, an unbelievable orange patch sailing through the blue sky, flew the “plain one.”
“Lulu! Lulu! Here I am, Lulu,” Honey called in his most coaxing tone and with his most radiant smile. Lulu did not descend, but, involuntarily it seemed, she turned her course a little nearer to Honey. She fluttered an instant over his head, then flew straight as an arrow eastward.
“She’s a looker, all right, all right,” Ralph Addington said, gazing as long as she was in sight. “I guess I’ll trade my blonde for your brunette, Honey.” ”

“ Chiquita announced.
“I won’t think,” Peachy exclaimed passionately. “I feel. That’s the way to live.”
“I don’t have to think,” Clara declared proudly. “I’ve something better than thought-instinct and intuition.”
Julia was silent.
“Julia is like them,” Lulu said, studying Julia’s absent face tenderly. “She likes to think. It doesn’t hurt, or bother, or irritate, or tire—or make her look old. It’s as easy for her as breathing. That’s why the men like to talk to her.”
“Well,” Clara remarked triumphantly, “I don’t have to think in order to have the men about me. ”

“ Artistically, he had all the perception of the Celt plus the acquired sapience of the painter’s training. If he could have existed in a universe which consisted entirely of sound and color, a universe inhabited only by disembodied spirits, he would have been its ablest citizen; but he was utterly disqualified to live in a human world. He was absolutely incapable of judging people. His tendency was to underestimate men and to overestimate women. His life bore all the scars inevitable to such an instinct. ”

“ Honey Smith developed an abnormality equal to Ralph Addington’s, but in the opposite direction. His spirits never flagged; he brimmed with joy-in-life, vitality, and optimism. It was as if he had some secret mental solace.
“Damn you and your sunny-side-up dope!” Ralph Addington growled at him again and again. “Shut up, will you!”
One day Frank Merrill proposed a hike across the island. Billy Fairfax who, at the head, had set a brisk pace for the file, suddenly dropped back to the rear and accosted Honey Smith who had lagged behind. ”

“ But women should be inaccessible,” he ended with a sigh.
“Not so inaccessible as they were, though,” Ralph Addington said. Again the appearance of the women had transformed him physically and mentally. He moved with the nervous activity of a man strung on wires. His brown eyes showed yellow gleams like a cat’s. “They’re flying lower and slower to-night.”
It did seem as though the fog, light as it was, definitely impeded their wings. It gave to their movements a little languor that had a plaintive appealing quality. Perhaps they realized this themselves. ”

“ The great wings furled close like blades leaping back to scabbard; the flying-girls dropped sheer in a dizzying fall. Half-way to the ground, they stopped simultaneously as if caught by some invisible air plateau. The great feathery fans opened—and this time the men got the whipping whirr of them—spread high, palpitated with color. From this lower level, the girls began to fall again, but gently, like dropping clouds. ”

“ Peachy said in a terror-stricken voice. “In the mood he’s in, he’d cut her wings tonight.”
“I don’t mean to tell him anything about it,” Julia replied. “Rebel in secret. I mean—they overcame us once by strategy. We must beat them now by superior strategy.”
“You don’t really mean anything secret, do you, Julia?” Lulu remonstrated. “That wouldn’t be quite fair, would it?”
And curiously enough, Julia answered in the exact words that Honey had used once. “Anything’s fair in love or war—and this is both. We can’t be fair. We can’t trust them. We trusted them once. Once is enough for me.” ”

“ 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. ”