Above the rock stretched the bough of a big pine. As she contemplated it, a look of wonder grew in Angela’s eyes, of question, of uncertainty. Suddenly it became resolution. She spread her wings, bounded into the air, fluttered upwards, and alighted squarely on the bough.
“Oh, Angela!” Peachy called anxiously. Then, joyously, “Look at my baby. She’ll be flying as high as we did in a few years. Oh, how I love to think of that!”
She laughed in glee—and the others laughed with her. They continued to watch Angela’s antics, their faces growing more and more gay. Julia alone did not smile; but she watched the exhibition none the less steadily.
Three years had brought some changes to the women of Angel Island; and for the most part they were devastating changes. They were still wingless. They wore long trailing garments that concealed their feet. These garments differed in color and decoration, but they were alike in one detail-floating, wing-like draperies hung from the shoulders.
Chiquita had grown so large as to be almost unwieldy. But her tropical coloring retained its vividness, retained its breath-taking quality of picturesqueness, retained its alluring languor. She sat now holding a huge fan. Indeed, since the day that Honey had piled the fans on the beach, Chiquita had never been without one in her hand. Scarlet, the scarlet of her lost pinions, seemed to be her color. Her gown was scarlet.
Lulu had not grown big, but she had grown round. That look of the primitive woman which had made her strange, had softened and sobered. Her beaute troublante had gone. Her face was, the face of a happy woman. The maternal look in her eyes was duplicated by the married look in her figure. She was always busy. Even now, though she chattered, she sewed; her little fingers fluttered like the wings of an imprisoned bird. Indeed, she looked like a little sober mother-bird in her gray and brown draperies. She was the best housewife among them. Honey lacked no creature comfort.
Clara also had filled out; in figure, she had improved; her elfin thinness had become slimness, delicately curved and subtly contoured. Also her coloring had deepened; she was like a woman cast in gold. But her expression was not pleasant. Her light, gray-green eyes had a petulant look; her thin, red lips a petulant droop. She was restless; something about her moved always. Either her long slender fingers adjusted her hair or her long slender feet beat a tattoo. And ever her figure shifted from one fluid pose to another. She wore jewels in her elaborately arranged hair, jewels about her neck, on her wrists, on her fingers. Her green draperies were embroidered in beads. She was, in fact, always dressed, costumed is perhaps the most appropriate word. She dressed Peterkin picturesquely too; she was always, studying the illustrations in their few books for ideas. Clara was one of those women at whom instinctively other women gaze—and gaze always with a question in their eyes.
Peachy was at the height of her blonde bloom; all pearl and gold, all rose and aquamarine. But something had gone out of her face—brilliance. And something had come into it—pathos. The look of a mischievous boy had turned to a wild gipsy look of strangeness, a look of longing mixed with melancholy. In some respects there was more history written on her than on any of the others. But it was tragic history. At Angela’s birth Peachy had gone insane. There had come times when for hours she shrieked or whispered, “My wings! My wings! My wings!” The devoted care of the other four women had saved her; she was absolutely normal now. Her figure still carried its suggestion of a potential, young-boy-like strength, but maternity had given a droop, exquisitely feminine, to the shoulders. She always wore blue—something that floated and shimmered with every move.
Julia had changed little; for in her case, neither marriage nor maternity had laid its transmogrifying, touch upon her. Her deep blue-gray eyes—of which the brown-gold lashes seemed like reeds shadowing lonely lakes—had turned as strange as Peachy’s; but it was a different strangeness. Her mouth—that double sculpturesque ripple of which the upper lip protruded an infinitesimal fraction beyond the lower one—drooped like Clara’s; but it drooped with a different expression. She had the air of one who looks ever into the distance and broods on what she sees there. Perhaps because of this, her voice had deepened to a thrilling intensity. Her hair was pulled straight back to her neck from the perfect oval of her face. It hung in a single, honey-colored braid, and it hung to the very ground. She always wore white.
“Do you remember”—Chiquita began presently. Her lazy purring voice grew soft with tenderness. The dreamy, unthinking Chiquita of four years back seemed suddenly to peer through the unwieldy Chiquita of the present—“how we used to fly—and fly—and fly—just for the love of flying? Do you remember the long, bright day-flyings and the long, dark night-flyings?