Silver Wings (23 page)

There came a morning when he had eaten the last bite of food and swallowed the last mouthful of water. It had hardly seemed worthwhile to bother about them, for what could those little mites of sustenance do but prolong the agony of the final separation of soul and spirit? But he duly swallowed them.

He was chilly much of the time now, chilled to his very bones. He had never known there could be such cold as came rushing over him at intervals, when he was not burning hot. Most of the time now, even when he was cold he was hot, too, fiery hot; hot in his head and his hands, and sick and hot in his stomach that had long ago ceased to want food. Only that heat and terrible cold, succeeding each other, and that terrible weakness and restless moving of his limbs that were so tired—too tired to move, yet had to. He could scarcely believe that one who had felt so strong all his life could feel so weak now.

It was days since he had thought to watch the sky. He had been too engrossed with the little book and with getting ready to go above. He slept much at intervals and later in the day—or was it the following day? He could not remember a night. He roused with the burden that he must leave some message behind.

Feebly he felt in his pocket for his knife and began to scratch crude letters on the window frame. His breath came fast, and the effort to sit up was almost too much. Perhaps someday they would come and find the plane and read the letters of that phrase that rang in his head. They would put them in the paper, and she would know. Amory would understand!

He would have liked to begin it with the word darling so she would know it was meant for her, but that might expose her to embarrassment, his fevered brain reasoned, so he would only put the other words. But she would understand.

With a great effort he scratched three words, then he was seized with a terrible dizziness. Fighting against it with all his iron will, he finished the last word, crudely—weak—so weak!

“GARETH, CHILD OF GOD!” it read. He had finished the name of God. His hand dropped!

“Oh, I can’t make it!” he cried. “But you will understand—darling!”

His hand fell feebly on his knee, slipped off, and drooped limply, and a shudder ran through his whole frame.

“D-a-r-l-i-n-g—!” he whispered.

T
he morning they found the plane the radios all over the land rang with the news—broke in through jazz and daily dozens and recipes for making pies, and interrupted grave lectures on abstract themes and talks to mothers on how to bring up their children.

Kingsley’s plane had been found at last wedged in an iceberg floating in the Arctic Ocean, far above the most northern line that he had expected to take. Its oil line was broken, its engine gone bad from a crash, its radio dead, its landing gear broken, and the food supply gone. But Kingsley himself was nowhere to be seen, though the entire region had been carefully searched and would continue to be searched for miles around.

A careful examination of the plane for some sort of message from the flier had revealed nothing save a mysterious sentence scratched crudely on the inside of the cabin window.

“Gareth, child of God!”

It was supposed that the flier might have abandoned his plane hurriedly and tried to reach the mainland over the ice, possibly before the iceberg had separated itself from the coast or had drifted so far out to sea; but it was a hazardous chance to take, and he had probably met his death in the icy waters.

Neither newspaper nor radio announcer offered any solution of the mysterious sentence carved on the cabin window, though the unexplained sentence caused much useless discussion and surmise.

But to Amory, coming upon the paper before anyone else in the house was about, the words spoke volumes. This was a message all her own, and he had sent it that way so others would not understand!

Trembling between radiance and tears, she stood and read the entire column, looking earnestly at the picture that was used at the head, so lifelike, with that grin, just as he had looked when he tried to convince her they were properly introduced. He seemed to be looking at her now and trying to make her understand.

“Gareth, child of God!”

That meant that he had found the Lord before he died! It meant perhaps that he had read her little book and learned to know what it meant!

Later in the day she bought the paper and read in other columns about the desolate spot where the plane rested; read and tried to picture it all out and live over the time he might have spent there, carving that sentence for her.

When she had finished, she laid the paper on the bed and dropping down beside it, put her face against the picture and whispered softly, “Darling!”

After a little while she got up and went and searched out the little silver wings and pinned them inside her dress over her heart. They were hers, now, forever, by his last will and testament.

Then, with an exalted look upon her face, like one who had been through great joy and great sorrow hand in hand, she went about her work again. It would not be necessary now to explain all this to Aunt Hannah and Aunt Jocelyn. They would never understand, and it was too sacred to be talked over. If Gareth had lived! But now, it was her secret to keep till the day they met again.

The world went wild with mourning for a few days, of course. Bells were tolled solemnly, buildings were draped with black, flags were hung at half mast, even services were held after a due time had elapsed for the possibility of finding a trace of the missing man. Mrs. Whitney bought some new and becoming black dresses and told the girls they really ought not to plan to give any dances for at least three months.

A service was held in one of the fashionable churches of Briarcliffe, instigated by a far-seeing official who wanted to curry favor with the Whitneys and who talked fervently of wanting to honor “one of our very own of whom we are proud.”

The church was draped in black with masses of costly flowers.

There was tender, fitting musing along the line of heroism and the triumph of the conqueror. A man of nationwide reputation was imported from New York to pronounce an eloquent eulogy on the brave young hero who laid down his life in the cause of science and Progress with a capital P. He counted him unquestionably with the great of the ages, such as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and even Jesus Christ. The chancel was a mass of white lilies and glowing roses, and before the altar was laid a crown of olive leaves with the victor’s palm. It was all most beautiful and perfect, and Leila Whitney, heavily draped in black, leaning on her husband’s arm, walked with stately measure, her black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes, and her family and guests walking behind.

But at home in her room, quietly beside her bed, knelt the little secretary, praying!

It was the evening of that day when they had all gone to the service to please Mrs. Whitney.

John Dunleith was down in the arbor with his book beside him. He had been working on his next Sabbath’s sermon, but when the dusk came down he cast aside his book and threw back his head against the rustic trellis, looking out where the gorgeous sunset still lingered softly in the sky.

Ned had gone, much against his will, to see a boy who was visiting a neighbor. He would not have gone if the neighbor had not telephoned his mother, and his mother insisted.

There were lights in the house and the general air of relief that comes when a funeral is over and the family are returned from the grave. The voices of Doris and Caroline could be heard laughing without restraint again, unrebuked. They were all glad to have the incident finished and their duty of mourning complete.

John sat thinking of his cousin whom he had seen but seldom and remembered only as a cheerful, lovable companion. He was wondering what the end of that life had been.

Up in the branches of the trees above there were soft little murmurings of birds settling for the night, nestlings crowding one another for more space under a wing. Little insects spoke in sleepy voices in the grass, and a tree toad chimed out like a bell. John Dunleith sat listening to it all and heard, too, a soft indefinable stir among the flowers, like someone in quiet garments moving down the path, and before he saw her he knew who it would be.

Diana had kept much away from him for the last few days. Only at meals had he seen her, and then she sat at the other end of the table and talked very quietly. She had not addressed a word to him nor looked his way for several days.

Now she came slowly down the garden path, her head drooping, her whole attitude most humble.

She came straight to the arbor as if she had seen him even in the darkness, and pausing in the doorway, she spoke in a low, clear voice. “Mr. Dunleith, I have come to confess something to you!” There was utmost sweetness and humility in her tone.

John Dunleith sprang to his feet at once.

“Sit down,” he said and then pleasantly, as she dropped onto the arbor bench, “I am no priest, Miss Dorne. Why should you confess to me?”

“Because,” she said, looking down at her white hands clasped nervously together and speaking with shame in her voice, “because it was against you I—sinned!”

He watched her gravely, eagerly, glad that the darkness hid the tenderness that must shine in his eyes, but he said nothing.

“I am ashamed—oh, so much ashamed,” she went on. “I have come to understand what you are now, and now I see how terrible this will appear to you, the thing I tried to do to you. You haven’t any idea how hard it is for me to tell you just what it was I did.”

“Don’t try,” said John Dunleith. “It will be all right with me—”

“But no,” she said quickly. “I must tell you. I cannot rest until you know it all. I have been outrageous! I got up a plot before you ever came, to drive you away! I had no malicious intent of course; it was to be only a practical joke. We didn’t want you here, because you were religious. We thought you wouldn’t fit. And I offered—”

Dunleith lifted his hand in protest.

“Spare yourself, please. I know all about it, and it was forgiven before you spoke.”

“You know all about it?” Diana lifted a white, frightened face for a moment and stared at him through the darkness. “But how could you know?”

“Neddy overheard and came to me with the tale the day I got here,” he said lightly, trying to laugh it off as if it were of no consequence.

“Oh!” said the girl and dropped her face into her hands, sitting still and suffering in the soft rose-perfumed darkness. He put out his hand and touched the border of her white dress.

“Don’t!” he said. “It does not matter now!”

“Oh, but it does!” she said, lifting her miserable eyes to his. “You don’t understand. There is more to it than that. Neddy wouldn’t have understood either. I planned to make you fall in love with me. I have done it before with other men, and I thought it would be a pleasant pastime. I planned—I actually planned—to pretend to be good, to get you to sort of convert me, if I couldn’t do it any other way! And when I found what you were, I was angry that I could not conquer you. I had never seen a man like you before.”

She stopped and dropped her face in her hands again, and he could see her shoulders heaving as if she were suppressing sobs.

He rose and came toward her.

“I knew all that, Diana!” he said tenderly and laid his hand on her bowed gold head like a blessing.

The quivering shoulders grew steady, and the girl’s breath was held, as if she were afraid the blessing would leave her.

“I don’t see how you can ever forgive me!” she said at last in a low, penitent tone. “A man like you—for me to presume—I don’t see how you ever can!”

“It is because I love you, Diana,” he said simply, with rare depth of earnestness in his voice. “You see, you did work your purpose, after all, little one. You did make me fall in love with you.”

She quivered beneath his hand.

“Even though you knew how vile I was?”

“Even though I knew!”

“But I wasn’t fit for you to love!” broke forth the penitent voice again. “I don’t deserve that you should speak to me!”

“That has nothing at all to do with it,” said the man, sitting down beside her and drawing her close to his side with a strong protecting arm. “Diana, I love you! Don’t you see how love covers it all? I love you next in the world to my Lord, and every day since I saw you first and knew what you were trying to do, I have been praying for you. And the more I prayed for you the more tenderly I loved you. Don’t you see how these human relationships are just beautiful pictures of God’s love for us?”

“Oh,” said Diana suddenly. “If I should pray—if you should pray for me—do you think He would let me be born again the way you preached last Sunday?”

“He certainly would. You have only to accept Him, and the thing is done.”

“And when—if—He comes to take you away in the clouds the way you said He was coming pretty soon, would He let me go, too?”

“He most assuredly would, you precious child!”

“Then let’s ask Him now,” said Diana softly.

He folded his arms close about her, and with her face against his, he prayed for her and for himself and for them both and then sealed it with a kiss that made her know what it meant to be really loved by a man like this one.

Neddy, released at last from his social duties, hurrying in search of his comrade, came rubber-soled to the garden and heard the voice of prayer.

He stopped stealthily, listening, and heard such words as reached the heart of even a child who was not supposed to understand; heard, too, the kiss that sealed the covenant, and turned with stricken, awe-filled eyes and stole away more silently than he had come.

“Good night!” he murmured to himself when he had attained the seclusion of one of his boyish haunts behind the garage where nobody ever came. “Good night! That’s the end of Cousin John! But I guess the joke’s on Diana after all! She thought she was stringing him, but he got her! How’ll she make out cooking dinner for a missionary in Africa while he’s out killing lions, I wonder?”

When Diana came into the house that night, she was wearing on the third finger of her left hand a quaint old ring of twisted yellow gold in which was set one magnificent ruby. Dunleith had kept it with him since ever his mother was taken away. It had been her engagement ring.