Out of the Air

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

Dear Spink:

This is the kind of letter one never writes. But if you knew my mental chaos.... And I’ve got to tell somebody about the thing that I can speak about to nobody. If I don’t.... What do you suppose I’ve done? I’ve bought a house. Yep— I’m a property owner now. Of course you guess! Or do you guess? It’s the Murray place. I could just make it and have enough left over for a year or two or three. But after that, Spink, I’m going to work because I’ll have to.

I suppose you’re wondering why I did it. You’re not puzzled half as much as I am; although in one way I know exactly why I did it. Perhaps I didn’t do it at all. Anyway, I didn’t do it of my own volition. Somebody made me. I’m going to tell you about that presently.

Yes, it’s all mine: beautiful old square-roomed house with its carved panelings and its generous Colonial fireplaces; its slender doors and amusing door-latches; an upstairs of ample bedrooms; an old garret with slave quarters; the downstairs with that little, charmingly incongruous, galleried, mid-Victorian addition; barn; lawn; flower-garden. And how beautiful I’m making that flower-garden you’ll never suspect till you see it. But you won’t see it for quite a while—I withdraw all my invitations to visit me. I don’t want you now, Spink; although I never wanted you so much in my life. I’ll want you later, I think. Of course it isn’t from you personally—you beetle-eyed old scout—that I’m withdrawing my invitation; it’s from any flesh-and-blood being. If you had an astral self— I don’t want anybody. I never wanted to be alone so much in my life. In a moment I’m going to tell you why.

And the wine-glass elms are mine; and the lilacs and syringas and the smoke-bush and the hollyhocks; and all the things I’ve planted; my Canterbury bells (if they come up); my deep, rich dahlias and my flame-colored phlox (if ditto). All mine! Gee, Spink, I never felt so rich in my life, because what I’ve enumerated isn’t twenty-five per cent of what I own. In a minute I’m going to tell you what the remaining seventy-five per cent is.

This place is full of birds and bees. I watch them from the house. Spink, we flying-men are boobs. Have you ever watched a bee fly? I spend hours, it seems to me, just studying them—trying to crab their act. And the other day there was an air-fight just over my roof. A chicken-hawk attacked by the whole bird population. It was a reproduction in miniature of a bombing-machine pursued by a dozen combat-planes. Spink, it was the best flying I’ve ever seen. You should have seen the sparrows keeping on his tail! The little birds relied on their quickness of attack, just as combat planes do. They attacked from all angles with such rapidity that the hawk could do nothing but run for his life. The little birds circled about, waiting for the moment to dive. A combat-plane dives; its machines go ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta and it turns off before the gunner can swing his guns over. The birds dived, picked furiously at his eyes while the hawk turned bewildered from one attack to another. But the little birds did something that planes can’t even attempt—they hovered over him almost motionless, waiting their moment to attack. Here I am talking of flying! Flying! Did I ever fly? When I got to New York, Greenwich Village seemed strange and unnatural, just a pasteboard dream. Pau—Avord—Verdun—were the only real things in my life. Now they’re shadows like Greenwich Village. Quinanog—the Murray place—and Lutetia—seem the only real things.

I’m going to tell you all about it in a moment. I sure am. The world seems to be full of landing-places, but for some reason I can’t land. Every time, I seem to come short on the field; or overshoot it. Perhaps it’s because I feel it ought not to be told— Perhaps it’s because I feel you won’t believe me—

But I’ve got to do it. So here goes!

Spink, the remaining seventy-five per cent that I own in this place is— This place is haunted. Not by a ghost, but by ghosts! There are not one of them, but four. Three I see occasionally. But one of the quartet—I see her all the time. She is Lutetia.

It began— Well, it all goes back to your rooms in New York. They’re haunted too, but you don’t know it, you wall-eyed old grave-digger, you. Not because you’re inept or unsensitive or anything stupid— It’s because there’s something they want to say to me—a message they want to give to me alone. But I can’t stop to go into that now. To return to your apartment, something ... used to come ... to my bed at night ... and bend over me ... I don’t know who it was or what it was, except that it was masculine. And how I knew that, I dunno.