Silver Wings (10 page)

“Thank me?” he said pleasantly. “For what?”

“Why, for helping me with that fish. I should have been terribly disappointed not to have caught a thing.”

“Oh, that!” he said. “That was nothing!” But Amory thought she saw a kind of puzzled curiosity in his eyes as he studied the other girl, yet admiration, too, and with it, a holding aloof. Did he read Diana’s shallowness and trickery, or ought she to give him some kind of a warning? Yet, why should she? It was no concern of hers, and likely he wouldn’t believe her if she should tell him the whole plot as she had heard it. Which wouldn’t be a nice thing to do either. It was none of her business, and she would just forget it.

Then suddenly the sound of a great plane came nearer, and they all stood breathless. Then Diana’s voice sang out, quite clearly. “There, I told you Teddy would come back in time for the first dance!”

But the big plane passed over the house toward the country club and did not even come low nor waver in its straight course across to the mountains, and a great disappointment came into Amory’s heart, although the instant before she had been quivering with dread lest he should have returned and would try to be openly friendly with her.

When the plane had sailed far in the moonlight and become a mere silver moth against the sky, she looked down and saw John Dunleith and Diana Dorne just disappearing down the hemlock drive and the other young people nudging and whispering after them in wicked glee. Amory decided that this was the time for her to disappear and was soon up in the safe shelter of her own room.

Sitting by her window in the dark with the great moon sailing over the mountains in the distance, and the cool dark lawn below where little nestling insects made sweet low sounds, and the dew distilled the sunlight of the day into rare, frail perfumes, Amory grew lonely. How was she to stand endless days like this all alone, in a world of her own? If only the work would last through the evening, too, it would not be so bad, for then she could have no chance to think. But this having a beautiful leisure and no one with whom to enjoy it was worse than no leisure at all. Of course there were books, and she might light her reading lamp and read over the story of Gareth again. But somehow she felt too restless for reading tonight. Where was the Gareth now, tonight, who had told her to think of him by that name?

She knelt a long time by her window, looking out into that pathless air through which he might be coming, and praying for him by the name he had told her to use. But there was an undertone of chiding in her heart that she was daring to do this for a stranger. She must look after her own thoughts and keep them to their right course!

The music had started downstairs now and floated sensuously out into the moonlight, calling in the young people who had drifted here and there about the grounds.

And up through the fringed hemlock drive came John Dunleith and Diana Dorne walking slowly together, the misty blue of her frock floating away from her little silver slippers like a wreath of frail fog. They came slowly, talking as they came, or rather, John Dunleith was talking, telling her about a mountain he had climbed, and the girl was listening, with white, uplifted face, earnestly attending to what he was saying. How well she acted her part. If Amory had not heard her plan the horrid joke, she never would have believed that this girl was not deeply enamored of the young man. A wave of disgust went over her once more that any girl could care to do the thing that this girl was doing. Would she really carry it out? And if she did, what would be the outcome? Would her own heart perhaps become entangled? Or had she perhaps her own heart too well fortified to fall before a poor man’s siege?

They came slowly and paused just below Amory’s window.

“Oh,” said the girl, “I must have dropped my shawl back there in the drive! Would you mind going back for it? I’m fearfully tired with all I’ve done today, and I’m afraid it will be ruined if it lies in the dew. It is embroidered white silk, with long fringe. You can’t miss it. Would you mind? I’ll just sit here by the window till you get back.”

The young man went at once, down into the darkness again, and came back presently with the shawl but walking more slowly and standing afar off from the window, looking in.

Diana had disappeared inside, and the music was going now with all its might—an unrestrained, modern-day dance. Amory remembered the talk of the morning and doubted not that Diana had found some other partner to help her carry out her plan. But the young man with the long white fringe dripping from his hand was not coming on toward the window, and she thought she heard a low whistle from his direction. Then a quick, alert shadow moved out of the darkness and joined him, and they came nearer to the terrace.

“Kid, will you take this shawl in to Miss Dorne and make my apologies?”

“Aw, take it yerself, pard. She don’t like me one bit.”

“It can’t be done, kid, not tonight. You’ll have to help me out. I fished all afternoon, and now I’ve got to go and get ready to preach. Thanks, kid, I knew you would!” And the man slipped away into the shadows.

Reluctantly, the boy came up to the window and waited till a pause came in the music.

“Hey, Di,” he called out rudely, “here’s yer shawl. John said he hadta study now.”

There was silence for a second while the whole gang of dancers took in the meaning of this message, and then a mocking laugh rang out, one that would not be silenced.

“Hey, Di!” called someone as the laughter died away. “Are you going to let the parson get away with that? Teddy and the parson both standing you up in one night? That’s too much!”

R
ising from the green of the airstrip and curving about to face the girl he had just left behind him on earth, Gareth Kingsley had a sudden reluctance to go. He watched her standing by the tall hedge with her hands outspread and the background of the rugged castle behind her, and felt it was a picture he would not soon forget. How sweet and unspoiled she was. How pretty she looked standing there against the dark of the hedge in her simple little blue frock. No frills and nonsense about her. No rouge and lipstick and affectations, just pure, simple girl, with a light in her eyes and some sense in her head and convictions about right and wrong.

His mother had been like that. He remembered her well, and her voice as she used to call him Gareth. And this had been the first girl he had ever seen that he cared to have call him by that name.

He watched her as she stood, her eyes lifted, wonder glowing in her face. What beautiful eyes! And she didn’t know it either. They were like a child’s, pure crystal over that deep wonderful blue.

He could feel her little book pressing over his heart, for the pocket was a tight fit, and it somehow warmed his spirit to think she had given it to him, something of her very own that she was fond of and enjoyed. A sudden desire seized him to leave something of his own with her, something to remind her of himself beyond that most chaste kiss he had left upon her fingers. He was coming toward her rapidly now. A moment more and she would be too far below unless he turned back again. He was reluctant to turn back after he had started.

He seized the corner of the handkerchief that fluttered from his pocket. He would throw that down. But there must be something to weight it, or it might fly into a treetop where she could never get it, or on top of the hedge where she would not even notice it.

Quickly, he snatched the silver wings that were pinned to his coat, that had been there since the decoration had been given him, and knotted the corner of the silk about it, flinging it out just in time.

Did she see it? He watched eagerly. Yes, she had caught it. He waved another farewell—smiling down on her, the little sweet girl in the blue frock—and mounted up to the heavens, a kind of delicious exhilaration filling his veins.

What was this that possessed him, anyway? Was he turning foolish, that a single girl could make him happy like that just to look at her? Was he falling for a girl at last? His heart! “Well, what of it?” his heart defiantly answered, and he laughed aloud with the engine as he rode along the sky.

What strange, unusual questions she had asked. Well, perhaps he was to blame for her asking them. They were only in her eyes, and she had not really intended to speak them aloud.

Did he know God? Was he saved?

He recognized the phraseology as kind of catchwords of some religious order perhaps, with which he was unfamiliar. But the words held a strange arresting quality and brought thoughts he had never entertained before.

Being saved implied a possible danger. And of course, being a flier, he had always known in the back of his mind that a flier sooner or later was doomed to fall. Somehow or other death got them all. But that it might get him he had never admitted, even to himself. He had a feeling that if he ever admitted such a possibility to himself, he would be doomed. But now he knew that the fact had been there in his mind all the time—admitted or not, it had crept in and was established. All he could do was refuse to look the fact in the face and go on as long as he held out. In fact, that very strategy had been a kind of a code with him—a religion of the skies, if one chose to call it so—a moral outfitting without which no man would dare leave the earth.

And now this girl had seemed to suggest that there was something more, something that he had left undone that would put him where he had no need to fear, even if the worst came.

He had never lived in an atmosphere where eternity was considered a fact of life. Live your best and get what you can out of it, and then what comes, comes, and it’s liable to be pretty good after all. That was his creed, and the creed of those with whom he came into contact. On the whole he considered himself to be as good as most, a trifle better than some, and it had never troubled him. Now suddenly, his thoughts were arrested. The clear eyes of the girl had seen something else. She had read him keenly, he could see that. She had seen a lack. Well, maybe sometime he would look into it. If a girl like that saw something worthwhile in knowing a God, and thought it possible, it was worth at least looking into.

He sailed off into the blue, breathing the clear air and delighting in the wildness about him and in the power of his engine. He loved to fly. He had utmost confidence in his machine, in himself. That anything bad could happen was so remote a possibility that it did not figure on his horizon at all.

Traffic in the skies was not much congested that morning. He passed but one plane till he was within an hour of New York. He watched it cutting through the morning, noted its build and the way it was running, mentally placed it among the class of planes he knew, and sailed on.

He was flying over small towns now, and looking down, he saw pleasant homes nestling along a cozy street, vines growing over porches, gardens growing, and children playing about. One sailed a miniature airplane into a tree. Nice little homes with brisk, loving wives tidying up the front porch or hanging little garments on the line. He had never paid much heed before to little homes like these. His life had been hedged about in mansions, with luxuries, but a little home like this one just below him would be pleasant with a girl like that one he had left behind in Briarcliffe. He had never seen a girl before that he felt he would care to take to a little house and try to be happy with her there. Most of the girls he knew wanted a palace and all that went with it, and somehow, setting up a new one on his own account with any of the young women in his crowd had never yet appealed to him.

He was flying lower now, just to notice these pleasant homes. There was a woman coming out of a door with a baby in her arms, pushing a little carriage down the steps ahead of her. She ought to be careful with a baby in her arms. Suppose she should fall down the steps. It was a tiny baby, with a blue coat the color of the dress his girl wore that morning when he bade her good-bye. It was—

Just then it happened—something indefinable about the sound of his engine. He turned his eyes sharply away from earth and gave strict attention to business.

There was something wrong. And it wasn’t any of the ordinary things that usually went wrong either. He knew that at the start. And now the engine had gone dead! The friendly roar that made things seem all right had ceased! He must do something about it! What ought he to do? There was no open space down there below him. Just houses—cozy little homes with children playing! And the baby! And the mother! Would the little girl in the blue dress remember to pray for him?

Two men stepped out of a rose arbor where they had been figuring by a table. They had pencils and notebooks in their hands and were looking up.

“Something must be the matter up there!” said the younger man. “See! His nose is pointing down! Look how low he is going! How slow! I never saw anyone do anything like that! Why, that’s dangerous! Marcella, take the baby in the house, quick! There really ought to be some regulation about the air. People have no right—”

“Oh, he’s only doing some stunt,” said the other man easily. “He’ll right himself in a minute. See there! His nose is pointing up again!”

“But his engine isn’t running. Listen! I heard it when it stopped. That’s what made me come out to look! And see! He’s dropping again!”

“There, he’s pointing the nose up again. See? He’s only turning somersaults again or making circles or something!”

“He’s crazy!” shouted the younger man. “Don’t you see his tail is falling all the time? He couldn’t do stunts with his engine shut off, could he?”

“Don’t ask me! They do almost anything in the skies nowadays.”

Up in the air Gareth Kingsley was doing his best, trying this and that—the usual emergency acts that men of his profession are trained to know. But none of them worked! Steadily, slowly, like a feather on a sultry day, the great bird was wavering toward the ground, and there were only little cozy houses and children playing in the gardens and a baby in a mother’s arms, wherever he would land.

It was not so much the thought of himself wrecked, his unparalleled reputation as a flyer gone! It was not what would be his own future even. It was that somehow now his frenzied brain had conceived the idea that down there with the children in the little cozy yards and with the mother and the baby, close under his plane, stood a little sweet, white-faced girl in a blue frock looking up at him with trusting eyes, unafraid and praying.