Again the five women appeared at the beginning of the trail. Their faces
were white now, hollow and lined; but as ever, they bore a look of
extraordinary pristineness. And this time they brought the children.
Angela lay in her mother's arms like a wilted flower. Her wings sagged
forlornly and her feet were bandaged. But stars of a brilliant blue
flared and died and flared again in her eyes; roses of a living flame
bloomed and faded and bloomed again in her cheek. Her look went straight
to her father's face, clung there in luminous entreaty. Peterkin, more
than ever like a stray from some unreal, pixy world, surveyed the scene
with his big, wondering, gray-green eyes. Honey-Boy, having apparently
just waked, stared, owl-like, his brows pursed in comic reproduction of
his father's expression. Junior grinned his widest grin and padded the
air unceasingly with his pudgy hands. Honey-Bunch slept placidly in
Julia's arms.
Julia advanced a little from her group and dropped a single
monosyllable. "Well?" she said in an inflexible, questioning voice.
Nobody answered her. Instead Addington called in a beseeching voice:
"Angela! Angela! Come to me! Come to dad, baby!"
Angela's dead little wings suddenly flared with life; they fluttered in
a very panic. She stretched out her arms to her father. She turned her
limpid gaze in an agony of infantile entreaty up to her mother's face.
But Peachy shook her head. The baby flutter died down. Angela closed her
eyes, dropped her head on her mother's shoulder; the tears started from
under her eyelids.
"Shall Angela fly?" Julia asked. "Remember this is your last chance."
"No," Ralph said. And the word was the growl of a balked beast.
"Then," Julia said sternly, "we will leave Angel Island forever."
"You will," Ralph sneered. "You will, will you? All right. Let's see you
do it!" Suddenly he started swiftly down toward the trail. Come, boys!"
he commanded. Honey followed - and Billy and Pete.
But, suddenly, Julia spoke. She spoke in the loud, clear tones of her
flying days and she used the language of her girlhood. It was a word of
command. And as it fell from her lips, the five women leaped from the
top of the knoll. But they did not fall into the lake. They did not
touch its surface. They flew. Flew - and yet it was not flight. It was
half-flight. It was scarcely flight at all. Compared with the
magnificent, calm, effortless sweep of their girlhood days, it was
almost a grotesque performance. Their wing-stumps beat back and forth
violently, beat in a very agony of effort. Indeed these stunted fans
could never have held them up. They supplemented their efforts by a
curious rotary movement of the legs and feet. They could not rise very
far above the surface of the water, especially as each woman was
weighted by a child; but they sustained a steady, level flight to the
other side of the lake.