Her wings

Contents

I. In which the Hero meets the Other Hero i

II. In which, a good many Years after the

Heroes meet, the Heroine lifts her Veil 13

Chapter I In Which The Hero Meets The Other Hero

“WANT a lift?” said the boy on the milk cart, pulling up the bay horse with a jerk and a rattle of cans.

“ Bet I do 1 ” cried the sturdy, tramping boy in the fisherman’s high boots and brown leather coat, with the split bamboo pole and the trout basket over his shoulder. “ Thanks ! ” he added, as he swung himself up. “ Did n’t know I was tired till now.”

“ Get any ? ” said the other, with a shy lookingaway at the horse’s ears, as the reins slackened, and they trotted on.

“Three — mites. I ’ll give ’em to a girl’s cat next door. The brooks are too high. But flowers ! Gee ! My basket’s full — for my mother. Such trilliums ! ‘ Trillia,’ I suppose I should say, according to Professor Pollux. This is better than walking, isn’t it!”

“ Likely ’t is. I don’t walk much, ’cept for cows and in seedin’ time. Then it ’s work, not walkin’.”

“That’s so! It is different! I never thought,” laughed the fisherman, taking off his cap to give the breeze a chance at his moist, close-cut, yellow hair with its unwelcome curliness. “ You a farmer ? ” And he turned and looked quite directly at the boy, who did not look at him, but kept his eyes ahead on the horse and the curve of the grassy wood road under the fresh-leafed birches.

“I — I work for a farmer,” he hesitated, a slow color tinging his brown neck in the collarless, open cottonade shirt, and creeping up into his lean brown cheeks.

“ Whew ! But you ’re clever to — to support yourself,” the other exclaimed. “You make me feel like a kid. And we ’re about the same age, I ’ll bet. I ’m seventeen in August.”

The faint color deepened again, and the brown, big-wristed hands in the rolled-up sleeves gave the reins a jerk.

“About — about the same,” he said unsmilingly.

It was nearly eleven o’clock of a day in early June. Back in the woods the laurel was like snow ; and the modest crimson of wild strawberries and the blue-white of quaker-ladies broidered the green of young ferns along the roadside. Presently the wood road would merge itself into a meadow road among drifts of laurel too pink for any earthly snow ; and then, after splashing through a brook, lose itself in the white state road near the railway station. There was a leisurely train at 11.30 that landed milk cans and country shoppers in the near-by young city, at noon sharp.

The fisherman stopped his interested scanning of the lanky, brown-eyed boy with the stubborn cowlick, and wondered what made him shy off so about his age.

“My name’s Howard Craig,” he said abruptly. “ What’s yours? ”

The other did n’t shy off there. Instead, he shied on Howard a quite direct and quite friendly glance.

“Will Leaf,” he said unhesitatingly.

“Really!” Was he shying off again, and making up that quite impossible name ?

Again the color rose above the open neck of the limp blue shirt.

“Why not!” he exclaimed quickly. “It’s good enough fer me, anyhow.”

Craig colored, too.

“Why, of course it’s — it’s good enough for anybody,” he cried heartily. “ I beg your pardon for being fresh. But it ’s — it ’s such a right name for you. And names don’t always fit, you know. Rose Sweet, say, for an old maid Math, teacher. Had her in the Holton High School last year. Gee ! but she was sour — and no rose, I tell you!”

He stopped, breathless with his apologies, and threw back his head in a laugh. “ But your name just fits — that’s why I seemed fresh.”

Again the other shied on him that quick, friendly glance, almost like a bird’s before it is frightened away.

“Skunk cabbage er terbacco?” he said, with a gleam of a smile. “ Er catnip er wormwood? There’s leaves an’ leaves.”

“ Oh, none of those. Say, I ’m not fooling ! But I can’t explain. Somehow — say, leaves like those and those and those. They Te like your name.” And he pointed with his bamboo pole up into the delicate intricacy of young birch and young oak and young maple and finally tasseling juniper, intervaled with blue sky.

The gleam of a smile had faded, but the dark eyes had not shied away.

“ I never thought of my name ’cept ter answer to it fifty-’leven times a day,” he said, reaching for the whip. “ But your name ’s got the stuff in it.”

“ Mine was my father’s,” Craig said, with a proud briefness. ‘‘Was yours your father’s?”

Leaf gave the bay a cut that sent them flying out into the open of the meadow with a lively clatter of cans.

“Naw, it wasn’t,” he answered, almost roughly. “This here gollderned horse! You’d think ’t was a funeral ’stid of a train ter ketch.” This time the flooding color was deep and well up into the roughened dark hair.

Craig had caught the back of the seat to steady himself as they flew down among laurel clumps and young mulleins and columbines. Leaf’s knuckles were white as he strained at the lines. What had made him shy off so roughly at just a simple question? Any fellow might ask such a question. It was no knockdown offense. Then they slowed up a little hill and over the crest, and the white knuckles relaxed into their usual brown, the high color cooled.

Out of the silence, Leaf turned to him timidly with his asking glance. “ I can show ye some secret places fer trout,” he said, “ ef you ’ll come. I ’ll bet I know every trout and pickerel in these hills. An’ I ’ve got most Sundays t’ myself an’ no one ’ll ketch us.”

Somehow, Craig’s heart felt a quick pang. “ Oh, thank you ! I just wish I could. I ’d lots rather fish than go to Europe. But, you see, I’ve got to — mother and I — a week from Saturday. Mother says I must get at least a glimpse of things before I go into Harvard next fall. But I ’d much rather camp and tramp and live in the woods all summer.”

“ Next spring, will you ? ” A faint melancholy shadowed the eagerness of his glance.

They were downhill now, splashing through a brimming brook that, higher up, eddied around cowslip and watercress.

“ Of course I will. I ’d like nothing better if I ’m anywhere around here. It’s a long time to plan ahead. Sometime I will, sure.”

‘‘You’ve — you’ve a — a heap of things ahead of you, ain’t you?” Leaf said presently, out of another little silence. He had looked away again, fitting the whip into the stand and letting the bay choose his own gait as they turned into the white state road. Not far ahead a silvery plume of steam and the hum of wheels came from the gristmill this side of the station.

“ Gee ! I should think I had ! Mother keeps me on the jump, too. You see, that’s the trouble in being named for — for some one. You’ve just got to be things if he was. People are always at you. And I ’ve got Harvard to do, and then the Harvard Med. Dad was a lawyer, a judge, but I can’t go that dry stuff. Cutting things off and curing people, that ’s for me. But I ’d like to let up once, just to see how it feels.” And Craig ran his hand through the crinkly light hair he had not inherited from his father and frowned his smooth forehead into quite a mature wrinkle.

“It must cost a whole heap to — to be things,” Leaf hesitated. “ Same as paying out a lot for fertilizers, ain’t it, to get your crop ? ”

“ It does. It costs a fearful lot. But dad left it all for just that, mother says. So it ’s up to me.”

They had trotted past the sawmill and were nearing the little red station with the purple petunias and the scarlet geraniums in the agent’s window.

“You goin’ to Holton?” Leaf asked, as a far whistle sounded above hoofs on macadam. “It’s seven minutes yet. They ’re loadin’ on strawberries at Jenkins’s. I was to Holton once, when I came here, but I don’t remember much.”

Craig did some rapid reasoning. Holton was the only railway outlet for this region of trout brooks and hill pastures.

“Yes, I live there, but it isn’t very interesting,” he said kindly. “ I ’d trade you my life for yours any day.” The question of the truth or untruth of this assertion was of no consequence when there was such a chance to be generous.

Leaf gave him another of his alluringly shy glances. “ Not if you was to try it,” he said, with a faint gleam of a smile. “ There ain’t nothin’ ahead. An’ you ’ve got to be somethin’.”

“But heaps of things in it — things to do and know about that townfolks never do get wise on.”

In his pity and his generosity he would have declared that the lore of the farmer boy was more to be desired than all Harvard’s degrees, had they not just then made a close landing at the station platform. The bay horse could have brought the milk cans to the train quite without any assistance from a driver.

Craig’s right hand went into his right trousers pocket and crumpled a dollar bill in his fist. When he sprang lightly to the platform Leaf was already unloading his cans.

“Say, I’m awfully much obliged to you,” he said heartily, holding out his hand. “And — and this — this isn’t to pay for the lift. That’s been too jolly and friendly — ”

At first, after landing a can, Leaf had held out a wide-open brown palm with the friendliest and least timid of his glances. But at Craig’s next words he jerked it back fiercely and tugged at another can, his face flushing dark.

“ I don’t want any er yer money,” he cried roughly. “I ain’t askin’ ye fer anything, am I?”

The train rounded the curve below and whistled shrilly.

Craig had crimsoned, too. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “ I did n’t mean — Good-bye ! I must get my ticket. You’ve been awfully kind.”

But Leaf went on with his unloading and gave him no further glance. The train slowed down and brought the baggage car into line with the bay horse, whose ears did not betray the smallest surprise at the achievements of science, and with the tall boy in blue cottonade, among the milk cans.

“ Hello, Leaf ! ” called the man in shirt sleeves with a pencil behind his ear, out of the car doorway. “ Seen any lady-slippers ? ”

“ Naw,” said Leaf briefly, handing up a can.

Craig had got his ticket and stood hesitatingly on the steps of the Pullman. He was wondering what to say if he dared to go back and try to make it right. Somehow, he did n’t want to go away and not make it right. He must decide quickly. There was only one more can to load on of Leaf’s lot. The train bell rang. Leaf came running up the platform. His face was quite as white as any milk, and his breath came short. Craig feared the proud, thin line of his lips.

“ Say,” Leaf cried, with shrill distinctness, running along as the train began to move, “ I ain’t afraid to tell ye. I ain’t tried to hide it. I don’t mind yer airs. I’m — I’m a state ward. I — I ” — the train was getting too fast for him — “I don’t know nothin’ — nothin’ about my ” — he was screaming shrilly now — “ my father ’cept that he — was a mean coward.” He fell back as the train swept by. Craig could see his white face as he stopped short where the platform ended and stood there, with his bitter words on his lips.

That night, farmer Josiah Tibbetts sat in his stocking feet and shirt sleeves by the kitchen table, reading his weekly “ Gazette.” It was a hot night. A litter of dead moths lay around under the big lamp with the scrap of red flannel in its odorous kerosene. Now and then a white sheet of heat lightning flashed at the open door and revealed the flagstones, and the piled wood in the woodshed. A fitful little wind swayed the high flame into a smudge against the clear lamp chimney, and brought in faint sweetnesses from the woods, elder and wild grape and swamp honeysuckle ; and heavy June bugs that bumped against Mrs. Tibbetts’s shelves of pots and pans, and the green pump opposite the big brick oven. From the dark of the bedroom opening off the kitchen came a sound not unlike the June bug’s labored buzzing as Mrs. Tibbetts slept off the weariness of much skimming of cream and churning of butter. More dreamful, surely, was the voice of the brook not far from the house, tuned high by a week of showers.

Presently, the lightning revealed more than doorway and woodshed. Leaf stood hesitating on the threshold. His face still held its whiteness of the morning. His eyes were large with the darkness out of which he had come. He leaned against the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his sagging trousers.

Mr. Tibbetts looked up over his glasses. The lamp

IO behind him made a curious halo of his stiff white hair, and shone red through his large ears.

“ Hev ye put the calf to the cow and fixed up the bars?” he said, peering higher over his round spectacles. “Ain’t sick, be ye?”

“Naw, I ain’t sick. I jest been a-thinkin’,” the boy drawled, staring at the lamp. “ I ’ve jest been a-wonderin’. How long sence I come here? That’s what I been a-countin’ up, and somehow I can’t seem to git nowhere.”

The old man put down his paper and drew his white stubbly beard through his fist reflectively.

“ How long sence you come here? Almost forgot myself, it ’s been such a long spell. Mis’ Tibbetts, she can tell ye in the mornin’.”

“’Bout nine year, ain’t it?” Leaf persisted. “Nine or ten year? An’ I was about seven when I come. Seems I can remember feelin’ about seven when I see the brook for the first time an’ all the pigeons an’ doves on the corn-house.”

“Jest about seven, I calculate,” Mr. Tibbetts agreed, again assisting memory with the slow drawing of his beard through his fist. “ Fust thing I remember was your havin’ two teeth out in front an’ gittin’ scared at that big Rhode Island red rooster, an’ screamin’ fit to kill. But Mis’ Tibbetts, she c’n tell ye jest to a minute how long you been here. What ye want to know fer, anyhow? Somebody been meddlin’?”

; Leaf sat down on the doorstep and looked away

HER WINGS ii from the lamp out to where the lightning more and more frequently whitened the dark.

“ Naw,” he said slowly. “Nobody ’s been meddlin’. I been meddlin’ myself. I been wonderin’ how old I am an’ — an’ — about how long it ’s — it ’s got to last

— an’ — an’ about nothin’ bein’ ahead.”

Mr. Tibbetts yawned resonantly and squinted off his glasses.

“ Mis’ Tibbetts, she ’ll tell ye in the mornin’,” he repeated. “ She keeps it all written down on a paper in the Bible. But ’t ain’t wuth while ter worry. Ain’t I alius been square with ye? ”

Leaf’s chin was propped in his hands. His back was turned to the lamp. It was an attitude that asked for a mother’s hand on the bent head with the roughened dark hair and for an arm around the thin young shoulders.

“ Yes, you ’ve alius been square,” he said. “ I ain’t complainin’. I ’m jest a-lookin’ at things. An’ — an’

— an’ somehow it don’t jest look like it’s a square deal — livin’.”

Mr. Tibbetts hung his vest over the back of the chair, and began to wind his fat old silver watch.

“ It ain’t square to — to jest start people livin’ without askin’ if they’ve a min’ to, an’ then givin’ ’em no show,” Leaf muttered on.

The old man held his watch to his ear for a long minute. The lightning flashed white into the dark of the shed and around the boy on the doorstep.

“ Naw, it ain’t a square deal,” Mr. Tibbetts said slowly. “Ye’re jest right there. The Lord knows it ain’t a square deal.” He had gone to the door and stood with one hard old hand on the boy’s shoulder. Then, after a little silence broken only by the voice of the brook, “Looks a heap like rain, don’t it? I never did see such a spell of rain. An’ Mis’ Tibbetts she left a big cut er apple-custard pie in the pantry. It’ll set all right on your young stomach. ”

Chapter II In Which, A Good Many Years After The

HEROES MEET, THE HEROINE LIFTS HER VEIL

The little boy was getting very tired of the magazines on the table in Dr. Craig’s waiting-room. There was a faint bluish shadow under his heavy dark eyes.

“ Don’t tear, dearie ! Don’t tear,” his mother whispered, as he leaned his head limply against her mussed linen waist and jerked petulantly at the ragged pages of a “Munsey.”

Georgia Frame, in her clinging black gown and crisp new mourning- veil, felt as petulant as the child. From the wide viewpoint of her grief, it seemed to her that she could see with clairvoyant distinctness into all possible kinds of dissatisfaction. She understood fully the impulse of those small, nervous fingers to jerk and tear the pages. That was exactly her own impulse toward life — to jerk and tear out all the pages and then throw the cover away. Poor little chap ! He was beginning early. She put down the “ Literary Digest,” which she had been trying to read, and leaned across the table.

“ Do let him ! ” she said, with a smile that was quite spoiled as a smile by the sudden tears that brimmed her eyes. “ Do let him tear it — one page, at least.

He ’ll feel a lot better, and the doctor won’t mind. He ’d say to let him.”

The mother of the little boy smiled back at her out of round, clear, blue eyes, with a mouth as fresh and delicate as his own.

“ But the principle,” she protested. “ They do get so spoiled when they ’re ill, and” — the smile fading and the mouth growing older — “little Joy has been ill so much, poor little soul ! ” and she drew him closer to her bosom. His eyes were gravely fixed on Georgia, and the “ Munsey ” had dropped from his fingers. “ Ever since he was born, poor little soul ! But now he’s going to get well and strong,” his mother murmured on, her mouth against his soft, pale-brown hair.

The door of the doctor’s office opened. In his fresh white linen, he stood holding it ajar for a woman leading out a pallid, thin-legged little girl. The little girl’s face was upturned to his quite confidingly.

“All night in the fresh air, Mrs. Burke,” he was finishing heartily. “ It ’ll make a new girl of her.”

And from smiling down at the child, he looked up, across the room, over the heads of the dozen or so patients, and smiled at Georgia Frame. Then a uniformed nurse closed his door.

Georgia gave him but a wan response and colored faintly. Then she turned again to the little boy and his mother.

“ He’s tired waiting,” she said softly. “ I ’m not in the least bit of a hurry. You take my turn and go in next. Do, please ! I have n’t a thing to hurry for ! ”

“ Oh, dear, no ! ” the other began. “ He is not so very tired, are you, Joy, dear? And you are too — ” She had put out her hand impulsively toward Georgia, her mouth young again in its smile.

Quite suddenly Georgia reddened in the shadow of her veil and caught the hand in both her own.

“ Joy ! ” she exclaimed. “ Joy? It all came in a flash

— when you smiled and put out your hand. It can’t be that you are Linda Joy — in college — years ago

— that — that — ”

The other’s fair round face had crimsoned. She leaned forward eagerly. “ That ran away and got married,” she finished in a whisper. “ Of course I am. And you — Somehow I felt I knew you the minute I saw you. But so much ” — she dropped her eyes to the child — “so much has happened since then. And you are Georgia Frame. Of course I haven’t forgotten. Why, I helped vote you in for class president.” She drew her hand from Georgia’s and smoothed the hair back from Joy’s white forehead.

“Yes, everything has happened — since — to me,” Georgia said, aware again of herself. “ It ’s such ages ago. Nine years, isn’t it? You look — almost just the same — except for this.” And she smiled at little Joy whose delicately veined lids drooped to his white cheeks.

“ He has two brothers and two sisters,” his mother whispered on, now quite unsmiling and pale once more.

i6

Georgia’s hand went out again toward her. “ And your — your husband,” she began.

“ Dead,” the other said quite simply, lifting calm eyes. “ Mr. Rush has been dead two years. And you — ? You, too, have — ”

“ Mother died three weeks ago — ” Georgia began.

The doctor’s door opened again, this time wide enough to reveal him at his desk against an open window framing the yellowing top of a maple tree, the high roof of a new apartment building beyond, and above it the blue October sky. The nurse closed the door quickly and came toward Georgia.

“ Your turn,” she whispered.

When the little exchange of turns had been effected and Joy and his mother had been led away, Georgia sank back into herself with a sigh. Had it not been for Linda and the child and the strange reunion, she would have gone away then without the interview she had promised Dr. Craig, and, in a measure, promised her mother before the end had come. How many times during those last poignant weeks, when she and her mother were playing at hoping, and making-believe that the grim hospital was a summer resort, — how many times had she not promised that she would take good care of herself ! And how many times had not her mother said, “ Promise me that you will run in to see Howard and get him to give you a tonic.” To her mother, Dr. Craig had been still just “ Howard,” the nice boy who had lived next door. And how many times she had said to him, looking up from her white bed, with those ever-smiling eyes of hers, “And you will see that Georgia doesn’t wear herself out with her work and her troublesome mother? You will look out for her.” And Dr. Craig had promised. And when, last night, he had called her up on the telephone at Mrs. Pretty’s, the dressmaker’s, across the hall, and reminded her of her promise and ventured the guess that she was not taking care of herself, what was there to do but to say that she would come? But now, she would run away in a minute if it were not that she had come upon Linda Joy again. Linda Joy, of all people in the world ! She had been the joke of the class, the pretty, easy-going Linda, who, in the very face of all the strenuous high-mindedness of her classmates, had thrown away her future and married a boy sweetheart. And — here she was — paying the fiddler! Little Joy was crying piteously now, there in the doctor’s office, such a little wail of a cry ! And in Georgia’s memory, as vivid as his cry, was the old classroom at college, with Linda Joy in the red sweater, writing love letters under the cover of her English notebook, while Miss Sherrill lectured upon the “Greek Ideal in English Poetry.” Poor, giddy little Linda ! She certainly had sold her birthright without any bargaining !

Little Joy’s crying had ceased. Presently the door opened and his mother came out with him in her arms. His small hand unclasped itself from Dr. Craig’s fingers. Linda’s cheeks were pink.

“ Again to-morrow, please, Mrs. Rush,” the doctor said gravely. He did not look at Georgia and smile.

Linda came over quickly and sank into her chair, holding the child close with one hand, with the other reaching for his little red coat and the white sailor hat stamped gallantly “ S.S. Minnesota.” She was biting trembling lips.

“He was so kind — so kind!” she whispered in little breaks. “ But I know he thinks it ’s something serious. I know it ! Mother’s boy ! ” And she drew the elastic softly under Joy’s chin.

Joy lifted large, puzzled eyes. “He’s not a bad man, muvver! It didn’t hurt,” he said.

Linda beamed into his eyes. “ No, darling ! Mother knows he didn’t hurt. He’s a good, good man. Mother knows!” And she got up and drew a bulging shopping bag over her arm and held out her hand to meet the one Georgia had outstretched.

Georgia, too, had risen and thrown back her veil. “Oh, my dear! My dear! I’m so homesick for old times,” she said, almost passionately. “It’s so good to see you now — now — after all these years. And I know Joy will be all right. I’m sure of it. Dr. Craig is so fine and so — so tender. I know all about him. And you won’t let me lose you again, will you, Linda? Now that I’ve found you after all these years! This city is so big and lonesome.”

Linda paused in her going ; little Joy stood weakly against her on the table. Her eyes still glistened, but her mouth was gay.

“Lose me! Of course not — if you want to keep me,” she said. “I haven’t amounted to a thing, Georgia. I’m a disgrace to the class. And you’re so fine — with your wonderful teaching and your Woman’s Suffrage speeches and everything. I read all about you in the papers. I’m just nothing. But then I have the children. Now, do come — if you don’t change your mind after you think it over.”

“ I shall not change my mind,” Georgia protested. “ I will come — truly — if you will tell me where and when — ”

Linda drew Joy up into her arms and started again.

“ When ? Any time ! And, of course, I forgot you did n’t know where. Why, a shabby old house at Russet Four Corners, on the Spring Road. Trolley to Russet Center and then ten minutes’ walk over the fields. Anybody will tell you. And the children would love to meet — ”

“ Oh, I ’ll find the way if I may come.” And then almost shyly she held out her hand to Joy, who, leaning a little wearily on his mother’s shoulder, again regarded her gravely. “Good-bye, little man.”

He let her take his hand. Then quite suddenly a very small smile like his mother’s came into the corner of his mouth. “There are white rabbits,” he said softly.

Linda laughed. “There! You’ll have to come,” she exclaimed. “That’s a great honor, — for Joy to notice you. Good-bye!”

In the few minutes before her turn came, Georgia did not return to “The Status of Women in Iceland,” nor did she drop back into a drowning sense of the utter emptiness of her own life. In the very brief interval she was too amazed at the maternal in Linda, at the splendor of it in what had seemed to her — Georgia, and the rest of the class — close quarters. The perfect understanding between Linda and the child ! Her “ Mother knows” ! And in college she had known nothing ! And how she had held his frail little body into all the soft curves of her neck and arms and bosom ! And twelve years before she had been a flyaway thing in a red Tam and a redder sweater, with the hairpins always dropping out of her loosened blond hair. A miracle had happened to Linda ! Then, in a wayward, searing flash, the miracle associated itself with her own experience — the hospital a month before and with her holding her mother’s frailness close, remembering the old promise, the promise that had made and moulded her life — to keep free, free, of woman’s slavery, and to give full sweep to her wings.