Angel Island - Inez Haynes Gillmore (novels to improve english .TXT) 📗

it seemed to him that she

and the moon made twin crescents of foaming silver, twin bubbles of

white fire, twin films of fairy gossamer, twin vials that held the very

essence of poetry. Somehow he had always connected her with the moon.

Indeed, in her whiteness, her coldness, her aloofness, she seemed the

very sublimation of virginity. His first secret names for her were Diana

and Cynthia. But there was another quality in her that those names did

not include - intellectuality. His favorite heroes were Julius Caesar

and Edwin Booth - a quaint pair, taken in combination. In the long

imaginary conversations which he held with her he addressed her as Julia

or Edwina.

 

Days and days went by and he could discover no sign that she had noticed

him. It was typical of the “damned gentleman” side of Billy that he did

not try to attract her attention. Indeed, his efforts were ever to

efface himself.

 

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.

 

He stopped short. He waited. His breath came fast; the vibration and

thrill were coming closer.

 

He crystallized where he stood. It scarcely seemed that he breathed. And

then - .

 

Something white and nebulous came floating out of the dusk towards him.

It became a silver cloud, a white sculptured spirit of the air. It

became an angel, a fairy, a woman - Julia. She flew not far off, level

with his eyes and, as she approached, she slowed her stately flight.

Billy made no movement. He only stood and waited and watched. But

perhaps never before in his life had his eyes become so transparently

the windows of his soul. Quite as intently, Julia’s eyes, big, gray, and

dark-lashed, considered him. It seemed to Billy that he had never seen

in any face so virginally young such a tragic seriousness, nor in any

eyes, superficially so calm, such a troubled wonder.

 

He did not stir until she had drifted out of earshot, had become again a

nebulous silver cloud drifting into the dusk, had merged with that dusk.

 

“What makes your eyes shine so?” said Honey, examining him keenly when

he reached camp.

 

It was the first time Billy had known Julia to fly low. But he

discovered gradually that only in the sunlight did she haunt the zenith.

At twilight she always kept close to the earth. Billy took to haunting

the reefs at dusk.

 

Again and again, the same thing happened.

 

Suddenly - and it was as if successive waves of electricity charged

through his body - the quiet air began to purr and vibrate and drum. Out

of the star-shot dusk emerged the speeding whiteness of Julia. Always,

as she approached, she slowed her flight. Always as she passed, her

sorrowing gray eyes would seek his burning blue ones. Billy could bring

himself to speak of this strange experience to nobody, not even to

Honey. For there was in it something untellable, unsharable, the wonder

of the vision and the dream, the unreality of the apparition.

 

The excitement of these happenings kept the men entertained, but it also

kept them keyed up to high tension. For a while they did not notice this

themselves. But when they attempted to go back to their interrupted

work, they found it hard to concentrate upon it. Frank Merrill had given

up trying to make them patrol the beach. Unaided, day and night he

attended to their signals.

 

“Well,” said Honey Smith one day and, for the first time, there was a

peevish note in his voice, “that ‘natural selection’ theory of yours,

Ralph, seems to have worked out to some extent - but not enough. We seem

to be comfortably divided, all ten of us, into happy couples, but hanged

if I’m strong for this long-distance acquaintance.”

 

“You’re right there,” Ralph Addington admitted; “we don’t seem to be

getting any forwarder.”

 

“It’s all very pretty and romantic to have these girls flying about,”

Honey continued in a grumbling tone, “but it’s too much like flirting

with a canary-bird. Damn it all, I want to talk with them.”

 

Ralph made a hopeless gesture. “It is a deadlock, I admit. I’m at my

wits’ end.”

 

Perhaps Honey expressed what the others felt. At any rate, a sudden

irascibility broke out among them. They were good-natured enough while

the girls were about, but over their work and during their leisure, they

developed what Honey described as every kind of blue-bean, sourball,

katzenjammer and grouch.” They fought heroically against it - and their

method of fighting took various forms, according to the nature of the

four men. Frank Merrill lost himself in his books. Pete Murphy began the

score of an opera vaguely heroic in theme; he wrote every spare moment.

Billy Fairfax worked so hard that he grew thin. Honey Smith went off on

long, solitary walks. Ralph Addington, as usual, showed an exasperating

tendency towards contradiction, an unvarying contentiousness.

 

And then, without warning, all the girls ceased to come to the island.

Three days went by, five, a week, ten days. One morning they all passed

over the island, one by one, an hour or two between flights; but they

flew high and fast, and they did not stop.

 

Ralph Addington had become more and more irascible. That day the others

maintained peace only by ignoring him.

 

“By the gods!” he snarled at night as they all sat dull and dumb about

the fire. “Something’s got to happen to change our way of living or

murder’ll break out in this community. And we’d better begin pretty

quick to do something about it. What I’d like to know is,” and he

slapped his hand smartly against a flat rock, “coming down to cases - as

we must sooner or later - what is our right in regard to these women.”

III

“I don’t exactly like your, use of the word right, Ralph,” said Billy.

“You mean duty, don’t you?”

 

“And he’d better change that to privilege,” put in Pete Murphy,

scowling.

 

“Shut up, you mick,” Honey interposed, flicking Pete on the ear with a

pebble. “What do you know about machinery?”

 

Pete grinned and subsided for a moment. Honey could always placate him

by calling him a mick.”

 

“No,” Ralph went on obstinately, addressing himself this time to Billy,

“I mean right. Of course, I mean right,” he went on with one of his,

gusty bursts of, irritation. “For God’s sake, don’t be so high-brow and

altruistic.”

 

“How about it, Frank?” Billy said, turning to Merrill.

 

“Well,” said Frank slowly, “I don’t exactly know how to answer that

question. I don’t know what you mean by the word - right. I take it that

you mean what our right would be if these flying-maidens permitted

themselves to become our friends. I would say, that, in such a case, you

would have the only right that any man ever has, as far as women are

concerned - the right to woo. If he wins, all well and good. If he

loses, he must abide by the consequences.”

 

“You’re on, Frank,” said Billy Fairfax.

 

You’ve said the last word.”

 

“In normal condition, I’d agree with you,” Ralph said. “But in these

conditions I disagree utterly.”

 

“How?” Frank asked. “Why?” He turned to Ralph with the instinctive

equability that he always presented to an opponent in argument.

 

“Well, in the first place, we find ourselves in a, situation

unparalleled in the world’s history.” Ralph had the air of one who is

saying aloud for the first time what he has said to himself many times.

At any rate, he proceeded with an unusual fluency and glibness.

“Circumstances alter cases. We can’t handle this situation by any of the

standards we have formerly known. In fact, we’ve got to throw all our

former standards overboard. There are five of these girls. There are

five of us. Voila! Following the laws of nature we have selected each of

us the mates we prefer. Or, following the law that Bernard Shaw

discovered, the ladies have selected, each of them, the mates that they

prefer. They are now turning themselves inside out to prove to us that

we selected them. Voila! The rest is obvious. If they come to terms, all

right! If they don’t - ” He paused. “I repeat that we are placed in, a

situation new in the history of the world. I repeat the bromidion -

circumstances alter cases. We may have to stay on this island as long as

we live. I am perfectly willing to confess that just now I’d rather not

be rescued. But it’s over our months that we’ve been here. We must think

of the future. The future justifies anything. If these girls don’t come

to terms, they must be made to come to terms. You’ll find I’m right.”

 

“Right!” exclaimed Billy hotly. “What are you talking about? Those are

the principles of an Apache or a Hottentot.”

 

“Or a caveman,” Pete added.

 

“Well, what are we under our skins but Hottentots and Apaches and

cave-men?” said Ralph. “Now, I leave it to you. Look facts in the face.

Use your common sense. Count out civilization and all its artificial

rules. Think of our situation on this island, if we don’t capture these

women soon. We can’t tell when they’ll stop coming. We don’t know what

the conditions of their life may be. The caprice may strike them

to-morrow to cut us out for good. Maybe their men will discover it - and

prevent them from coming. A lot of things may happen to keep them away.

What’s to become of us in that case? We’ll go mad, five men alone here.

It isn’t as though we could tame them by any gentle methods. You can’t

catch eagles by putting salt on their tails. In the first place, we

can’t get close enough to them, because of their accursed wings, to

prove that we wouldn’t harm them. They’ve sent us a challenge - it’s a

magnificent one. They’ve thrown down the gage. And how have we

responded? I bet they think we’re a precious lot of molly-coddles! I bet

they’re laughing in their sleeves all the time. I’d hate to hear what

they say about us. But the point I’m trying to make is not that. It’s

this: we can’t afford to lose them. This place is a prison now. It will

be worse than that if this keeps up - it’ll be a madhouse.”

 

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re advocating marriage by capture?”

Billy asked in an incredulous voice.

 

“I mean to tell you I’m arguing capture,” Ralph said with emphasis.

“After that, you, can trust the marriage question to take care of

itself.”

 

Argument broke out hydra-headed. They wrangled the whole evening. Theory

at first guided them. In the beginning, names like Plato, Nietzsche,

Schopenhauer preceded quotation; then, came Shaw, Havelock-Ellis,

Kraft-Ebing, Weininger. Sleep deadened their discussion temporarily but

it burst out at intervals all the next day. In fact, it seemed to

possess eternal vitality, eternal fascination. Leaving theory, they went

for parallels of their strange situation, to history, to the Scriptures,

to fiction, to drama, to poetry.

 

Honey ended every discussion with a philosophic, “Aside from the

question of brutality, this marriage by capture isn’t a sporting