Maiden Flight (13 page)

In May of '26, as soon as we wrapped up the purchase of the
Star
, I made another excuse to stop in Dayton on my way east. This time it wasn't a pleasure trip, however. Katharine had finally thrown in the towel and decided she couldn't face telling Orv about us after all. She entrusted the thankless mission to me instead. I was to speak to her brother alone, man to man, for all the world as if I were asking a father for his daughter's hand. Katharine declined even to be present during the interview. She was afraid she would cry if she was in the room, which was the last thing either of us wanted.

She met me at the station on the morning train, and we drove straight out to the house. The hillside was a mass of pinks and reds, with the hawthorn trees and redbuds in full glory. Orville greeted me as affably as ever, but I could see he was under a cloud. The tension in the air must have been contagious. When Katharine started in once more about deserting her poor little brother who needed her so much and so on, I'm sorry to say that my patience wore thin. I pointed out that it was pretty late in the game for her to speak of being uneasy about what we were doing. Moreover, she was being unfair to Orville. Katharine had made up her mind to be married months earlier. Her own brother had a right to be told.

When I broke the news to Orville the next day, he listened politely to my little speech. If he had already guessed what Katharine and I were planning, he gave no sign. On the contrary, it
was all too clear to me that he had never seriously entertained the possibility that his sister might actually leave him. He had gotten it into his head that she had prevented him from marrying when he was a young man, and that an implied agreement resulted that she should never marry. The truth is that Orville was so absorbed in his work he had no inclination to marry. Through Katharine's companionship and her part in making a home, he felt no need of taking a wife. If he, with his determination and will, had met somebody he had wanted to marry, I believe he would have gone ahead. And it would have been Katharine's duty to accept the situation, just as it was his duty to make the best of her decision.

Orville is not a man who can be argued with, however. He made his great success in aviation through his independence of character and his refusal to listen to others. The same qualities now got in the way of his taking a just view of Katharine's needs and desires. She has been a devoted sister to him all her life. She gave up her career as a teacher—work that she enjoyed more than anything else she has ever done—to devote herself to looking after him and Wilbur. He waves all that aside as negligible. He has convinced himself that she is indispensable to his happiness, and I fear his attitude will never change.

Orville put on a brave front when the three of us talked things over together that evening. I almost began to hope that we had brought him round to our view of the situation. Not until after I left the next day did he let his true feelings come out. According to Katharine, he refused to speak to her. He wouldn't even stay in the same house with her. Naturally, she was devastated. Her worst fears had come to pass. It felt like someone in the family had died, she told me. For my part, I wasn't convinced that Orville had taken
it all in. Katharine insists he didn't suspect anything at all until I talked to him. Is it possible that he failed to see what was in his own sister's heart? Or did he see it and shut it out by the sheer force of his stubborn, indomitable will?

To give credit where credit is due, when push came to shove, Harry didn't beat around the bush. He came straight out with the bad news, even knowing as he did that it would cut me to the quick. Would I could say the same for my sister. She let me coast along month after month in blissful ignorance, without so much as a hint that anything was going on between her and Harry. When the three of us sat around calmly discussing the situation after dinner that night, I was at a loss for words. What did they expect me to do—congratulate them on their happiness and wish them well? All I could think of was that they had been carrying on behind my back for months, not only here but on the island too.

Evidently, Harry isn't as unselfish and high-minded as I took him to be. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, in light of what I've seen of human nature. But I fault Katharine more than I do him. She lied to me—or at least failed to tell me the whole truth, which comes to the same thing. And she sided with Harry against me—
me
, her own flesh and blood. Getting held up by professional bandits like Glenn Curtiss is one thing. Distasteful as it may be, it's just business and nothing personal. But for Kate to go back on me like this is unforgivable. After all I've done to make her comfortable and secure, to build her a proper home and give her a place in the world, this is how she repays me.

We always agreed, Kate, Will, and I, that we would never marry. Not in so many words, perhaps, but that's neither here nor there. Where family is concerned, it shouldn't be necessary to spell out such mutual obligations, as if we didn't trust each other implicitly. Did Will and I need a contract to set up the Wright Company? Did I need to sign a piece of paper saying that I would remain a bachelor for his and Kate's sakes? Did Pop need a legal document to ensure that we would look after him in his old age? Pshaw! The Wrights have always stuck together. It's how we were brought up. It's what is right.

There is such a thing as a code of honor, even among thieves. Whatever else people may say about us, we Wrights have always conducted ourselves in an open and aboveboard fashion. Kate never acted less than honestly and honorably toward me—until Harry came into her life. Blast you and shame on you, Katharine Wright! What can have possessed you to let an outsider break up our family?

I ought to have foreseen how awful it would be. I didn't, quite, and I blame myself. Orv is so sensitive, and after Harry went away his face showed everything to me. He looked so pitiful, so dark under his eyes—just as he used to look when he was terribly worried and sick besides. Oh—my little brother! This is the first time there has been any trouble to amount to anything between us. Orv has always been so dear, and he has always been my special care. Harry can have no idea of how it hurt me to hurt him so.

Orv went into a kind of tailspin. Day after day he moped around, sulking like a little boy. He used never to come home without hunting me up right away—I loved to feel wanted that way—but now he wouldn't stay in the house a minute. He started leaving for his laboratory early in the morning, even before Carrie came. He didn't sleep a wink for two nights and was so sick that he had to take aspirin. I was walking around like an automaton myself. I couldn't think or feel or do anything but force myself to go through motions. I was sick with anxiety and doubt—so discouraged, so guilty of having done something awfully wrong. Harry used to say he hadn't quite realized how much we live in the future until Isabel died and he came up against having no future to look forward to. So it was—so it
is
—for me with every thought of Orv.

I was foolish, of course, not to have seen it coming. Little Brother hadn't been acting quite right, quite normal, for weeks. For one thing, he was a lot more clingy than he usually was, and even the least bit boastful—
that
wasn't like him at all. One day—this was before he and Harry had their man-to-man talk—he came home from his office looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. It seemed the chief engineer of the Missouri Pacific Railroad had put his private car at Orv's disposal for the ride from St. Louis to Little Rock, to attend a meeting of the local Engineers Club. Bubbo waved the telegram in front of me and said now I could see that he was “some punkins.” If that doesn't beat all! I told him I wasn't bluffed a bit by his blow—I knew him a lot better than those people did!

After my engagement was out in the open, Orv became so desperately unhappy that I had to do something to console him. I
told him not to worry so, that I never intended to go off and leave him, and that Harry didn't want me to do that either. Once more I held out the possibility of the three of us making a home together in Kansas City, or my coming out regularly to stay with him in Dayton, as Harry had proposed. I don't know whether it was quite right—quite
straight
—for me to give Little Brother that relief. But I couldn't leave him without comfort when he was so heartbroken. I told myself over and over that Orv would come to feel differently in time, especially if he saw that we were being considerate of him.

I should have saved some of that comforting for myself! Harry kept urging me to follow my heart, but how could I be sure where it was leading? The one thing I was absolutely sure of was that I loved Orv and he loved me. We had been true to each other for over fifty years—longer than most marriages last. My love for Harry was strong and enduring too, of course, but it didn't have such deep roots. I always thought that the possibility of his ever coming to care for me the way he cared for Isabel had passed in Oberlin. At bottom, I still couldn't quite believe that he wasn't so hard-boiled emotionally as we all thought in those days. How long would this new passion of his last? Could I trust it? For that matter, could I trust my
own
feelings, which seemed to be whipping me this way and that like a flibbertigibbet?

If only I had had Harry's sublime belief that it was so right for us to be together that everything else must get out of the way. He had become such a stormy person—the very last thing any of us would have thought of him in college. For him love is like a bolt of lightning, while for me it is more like a burst of anger or joy—something that has to be examined rationally and dispassionately, without being purely selfish about it. If I'm being quite frank, I
don't feel so sure that the passionate love is absolutely necessary to our natures. It can be lovely—as it is with Harry—but it is not really a large part of our lives. The gentle love, the kind I have for Orv, is a much bigger part and has much more claim on us. That is the kind of love that lasts, I think.

What Harry said about it being pretty late to feel uneasy about what we were doing went in deep with me. It was so true, so unanswerably true. I had made my choice and there was no possible way out that I could see. Nothing could undo what had been done. I felt as if, after years and years of doing my best to be as much as I could be to Father and the boys, then to Father and Orv, and finally to Little Brother all alone, I had come to the end of it all.

Having done my duty and bearded the lion in his den, I was strong for moving full speed ahead with our wedding plans. Katharine, however, insisted on applying the brakes and letting Orville get used to the idea before we pressed it again. That approach might have worked but for one fatal flaw: her brother obviously had no intention of getting used to the idea—not then, not ever. He simply chose to walk away from it. He refused even to talk to Katharine about her forthcoming marriage. In a way, you have to admire Orville's ability to wall himself off from disagreeable thoughts and experiences. His whole character has been built on resisting outside influences. The relentlessness that makes him so absolutely honest and reliable is a wonderful asset to a scientist. But it won't do where human nature is concerned.

I had come to expect this kind of unreasonableness from Orville, but to run up against it in Katharine was disconcerting, to say the least. When she digs in her heels, she can be just as stubborn and hard to reason with as her brother. I felt trapped between a rock and a hard place—and there was no telling which of them was more immovable. Needless to say, Katharine took a different view of the situation. She still had visions of patching things up and bringing Orville out to live with us in Kansas City. As much as I would have liked to look through the rose-colored glasses she talks about, I judged the chance of that happening to be about as remote as traveling to the moon in a flying machine.

The prospect of making a home together with Harry made me feel all shivery inside. It's what sustained me during the long, cold months when neither Little Brother nor I could find the strength to face up to hard reality. I had such dear fancies about feathering our nest and making it cozy and bright. Most of Harry's furniture was in the colonial style, and I wanted to keep it that way. I pictured chintz wallpapers in some of the rooms upstairs and maybe plainer paper and the little figured stuff for hangings and bed draperies. I had my two mahogany pieces—the chiffonier and the dressing table that I bought with money I earned when I was teaching—and the cherry bureau and table that were my grandmother's. That plus a pair of twin beds was all we would need to furnish our room.

To take my mind off my troubles, I started to make an inventory of things I wanted to take with me to Kansas City. All the linen at home was marked K.W., so naturally that would be part
of my trousseau. All the silver in the house was mine too. It wasn't anything especially fine, but Will and Orv had started the collection for me the Christmas after they made their first flight, and I loved it. I had picked out the perfect spot for the polar-bear rug that Griff Brewer bought for me in Norway, between the living room and the library. I imagined a pretty Oriental rug in Harry's study upstairs, with a lovely big chair to sit in when we wanted to be close together and talk—and other things!

Orv gave me an allowance of four hundred a month to run Hawthorn Hill. The house in Kansas City doesn't cost us anywhere near that much, I'm happy to say. I love the idea of budgeting our income—and I've never been in favor of “keeping up” with the neighbors or anyone else. Father and Mother set an example on that, which I shall never forget nor cease to admire. I love fine things when you can have them easily and comfortably, but I certainly don't need them to be happy. I told Harry we could make a lovely home for each other by taking the greater care in all the things that didn't cost a penny. Then we would be able to have enough nice, fine things to add a little “velvet” to what was already lovely and sweet.

I was out in Kansas City a good deal of the time in my thoughts that spring and summer. I pictured Harry coming home from the paper in the evening—how he would burst in the door, full of boyish energy and enthusiasm, how he would call out to me, the way Orv used to do, and how he would always come hurrying up to kiss me if I should happen to be upstairs. I wanted that so much! I would be all dressed up for dinner and we'd have a pretty table and he'd “help me sit down,” as one of my friends calls it when men pull out the chairs and so on for the ladies. Maybe he would
even bring me a little surprise now and then. I was determined to keep up all the dear, sweet ways we had with each other when we were courting.

On Saturday nights, when Harry worked late, I'd be waiting up for him. He would honk his horn, and I'd run down and open the garage door. Then he'd get off his coat—maybe he'd have to do such a prosaic thing as look after the furnace for the night before we could go upstairs. But anyway, I'd have everything nice and cozy in the study, and we'd sit in the big chair and talk and talk and
talk
. Then I'd cuddle up close to him and tell him I wanted him to tell me again that he loved me—and we'd be off! I would stroke his face and hair and kiss him, and I'd want him to hold me close to him and love me the way I like to be loved. And we'd not have to hurry to bed because tomorrow would be Sunday and he wouldn't have to rush off to the office. We'd be all by ourselves, and we'd feel as if almost our
whole world
was in that one room.

I loved to tell Harry some of my little secret longings. I didn't want him ever to be indifferent about coming home to me. I knew I wouldn't feel alone in Kansas City ever, if he wanted me lots. I wanted to be with him a lot—a mighty big lot! I looked forward to getting all our interests and all our belongings in one place and feeling that everything in our lives belonged to us
together
. I had moments of wanting nothing more than the privilege of doing things for Harry's personal comfort—some humble little thing like getting him a good breakfast and sending him off in the morning happy and contented. It must be a “reversion to type”! I felt like the pathetic, middle-aged German teacher in the Josephine Bacon story who suddenly decides to chuck it all up and follow her heart.

In my daydreams, I saw myself coming downtown at noon once in a while to have lunch with Harry. Sometimes I would need the car during the day, and I could take him to and from the office, the way I did with Orv. But he would have the use of the car mostly. I wasn't going to have him going into the office on the streetcar regularly—no siree! He has earned more comfort than that. I am so proud of Harry's work—as proud as ever I was of Orv's. I can't imagine ever being jealous of it, the way some women are of their husbands' work, or foolish enough to want him to give it up for me. And I don't mind his going into the office evenings or Sundays or anytime he wants. After all, that care and devotion to their work are the reason he and Orv got where they are today.