Silver Wings

by Grace Livingston Hill

  She knelt a long time by her window, looking out into that pathless air through which he might be coming, and praying for him by the name he had told her to use. But there was an undertone of chiding in her heart that she was daring to do this for a stranger. She must look after her own thoughts and keep them to their right course!

  The music had started downstairs now and floated sensuously out into the moonlight, calling in the young people who had drifted here and there about the grounds.

  And up through the fringed hemlock drive came John Dunleith and Diana Dorne walking slowly together, the misty blue of her frock floating away from her little silver slippers like a wreath of frail fog. They came slowly, talking as they came, or rather, John Dunleith was talking, telling her about a mountain he had climbed, and the girl was listening, with white, uplifted face, earnestly attending to what he was saying. How well she acted her part. If Amory had not heard her plan the horrid joke, she never would have believed that this girl was not deeply enamored of the young man. A wave of disgust went over her once more that any girl could care to do the thing that this girl was doing. Would she really carry it out? And if she did, what would be the outcome? Would her own heart perhaps become entangled? Or had she perhaps her own heart too well fortified to fall before a poor man’s siege?

  They came slowly and paused just below Amory’s window.

  “Oh,” said the girl, “I must have dropped my shawl back there in the drive! Would you mind going back for it? I’m fearfully tired with all I’ve done today, and I’m afraid it will be ruined if it lies in the dew. It is embroidered white silk, with long fringe. You can’t miss it. Would you mind? I’ll just sit here by the window till you get back.”

  The young man went at once, down into the darkness again, and came back presently with the shawl but walking more slowly and standing afar off from the window, looking in.

  Diana had disappeared inside, and the music was going now with all its might—an unrestrained, modern-day dance. Amory remembered the talk of the morning and doubted not that Diana had found some other partner to help her carry out her plan. But the young man with the long white fringe dripping from his hand was not coming on toward the window, and she thought she heard a low whistle from his direction. Then a quick, alert shadow moved out of the darkness and joined him, and they came nearer to the terrace.

  “Kid, will you take this shawl in to Miss Dorne and make my apologies?”

  “Aw, take it yerself, pard. She don’t like me one bit.”

  “It can’t be done, kid, not tonight. You’ll have to help me out. I fished all afternoon, and now I’ve got to go and get ready to preach. Thanks, kid, I knew you would!” And the man slipped away into the shadows.

  Reluctantly, the boy came up to the window and waited till a pause came in the music.

  “Hey, Di,” he called out rudely, “here’s yer shawl. John said he hadta study now.”

  There was silence for a second while the whole gang of dancers took in the meaning of this message, and then a mocking laugh rang out, one that would not be silenced.

  “Hey, Di!” called someone as the laughter died away. “Are you going to let the parson get away with that? Teddy and the parson both standing you up in one night? That’s too much!”

  Chapter 6

  Rising from the green of the airstrip and curving about to face the girl he had just left behind him on earth, Gareth Kingsley had a sudden reluctance to go. He watched her standing by the tall hedge with her hands outspread and the background of the rugged castle behind her, and felt it was a picture he would not soon forget. How sweet and unspoiled she was. How pretty she looked standing there against the dark of the hedge in her simple little blue frock. No frills and nonsense about her. No rouge and lipstick and affectations, just pure, simple girl, with a light in her eyes and some sense in her head and convictions about right and wrong.

  His mother had been like that. He remembered her well, and her voice as she used to call him Gareth. And this had been the first girl he had ever seen that he cared to have call him by that name.

  He watched her as she stood, her eyes lifted, wonder glowing in her face. What beautiful eyes! And she didn’t know it either. They were like a child’s, pure crystal over that deep wonderful blue.

  He could feel her little book pressing over his heart, for the pocket was a tight fit, and it somehow warmed his spirit to think she had given it to him, something of her very own that she was fond of and enjoyed. A sudden desire seized him to leave something of his own with her, something to remind her of himself beyond that most chaste kiss he had left upon her fingers. He was coming toward her rapidly now. A moment more and she would be too far below unless he turned back again. He was reluctant to turn back after he had started.

  He seized the corner of the handkerchief that fluttered from his pocket. He would throw that down. But there must be something to weight it, or it might fly into a treetop where she could never get it, or on top of the hedge where she would not even notice it.

  Quickly, he snatched the silver wings that were pinned to his coat, that had been there since the decoration had been given him, and knotted the corner of the silk about it, flinging it out just in time.

  Did she see it? He watched eagerly. Yes, she had caught it. He waved another farewell—smiling down on her, the little sweet girl in the blue frock—and mounted up to the heavens, a kind of delicious exhilaration filling his veins.

  What was this that possessed him, anyway? Was he turning foolish, that a single girl could make him happy like that just to look at her? Was he falling for a girl at last? His heart! “Well, what of it?” his heart defiantly answered, and he laughed aloud with the engine as he rode along the sky.

  What strange, unusual questions she had asked. Well, perhaps he was to blame for her asking them. They were only in her eyes, and she had not really intended to speak them aloud.

  Did he know God? Was he saved?

  He recognized the phraseology as kind of catchwords of some religious order perhaps, with which he was unfamiliar. But the words held a strange arresting quality and brought thoughts he had never entertained before.

  Being saved implied a possible danger. And of course, being a flier, he had always known in the back of his mind that a flier sooner or later was doomed to fall. Somehow or other death got them all. But that it might get him he had never admitted, even to himself. He had a feeling that if he ever admitted such a possibility to himself, he would be doomed. But now he knew that the fact had been there in his mind all the time—admitted or not, it had crept in and was established. All he could do was refuse to look the fact in the face and go on as long as he held out. In fact, that very strategy had been a kind of a code with him—a religion of the skies, if one chose to call it so—a moral outfitting without which no man would dare leave the earth.

  And now this girl had seemed to suggest that there was something more, something that he had left undone that would put him where he had no need to fear, even if the worst came.

  He had never lived in an atmosphere where eternity was considered a fact of life. Live your best and get what you can out of it, and then what comes, comes, and it’s liable to be pretty good after all. That was his creed, and the creed of those with whom he came into contact. On the whole he considered himself to be as good as most, a trifle better than some, and it had never troubled him. Now suddenly, his thoughts were arrested. The clear eyes of the girl had seen something else. She had read him keenly, he could see that. She had seen a lack. Well, maybe sometime he would look into it. If a girl like that saw something worthwhile in knowing a God, and thought it possible, it was worth at least looking into.

  He sailed off into the blue, breathing the clear air and delighting in the wildness about him and in the power of his engine. He loved to fly. He had utmost confidence in his machine, in himself. That anything bad could happen was so remote a possibility that it did not figure on his horizon at all.

  Traffic in the skie
s was not much congested that morning. He passed but one plane till he was within an hour of New York. He watched it cutting through the morning, noted its build and the way it was running, mentally placed it among the class of planes he knew, and sailed on.

  He was flying over small towns now, and looking down, he saw pleasant homes nestling along a cozy street, vines growing over porches, gardens growing, and children playing about. One sailed a miniature airplane into a tree. Nice little homes with brisk, loving wives tidying up the front porch or hanging little garments on the line. He had never paid much heed before to little homes like these. His life had been hedged about in mansions, with luxuries, but a little home like this one just below him would be pleasant with a girl like that one he had left behind in Briarcliffe. He had never seen a girl before that he felt he would care to take to a little house and try to be happy with her there. Most of the girls he knew wanted a palace and all that went with it, and somehow, setting up a new one on his own account with any of the young women in his crowd had never yet appealed to him.

  He was flying lower now, just to notice these pleasant homes. There was a woman coming out of a door with a baby in her arms, pushing a little carriage down the steps ahead of her. She ought to be careful with a baby in her arms. Suppose she should fall down the steps. It was a tiny baby, with a blue coat the color of the dress his girl wore that morning when he bade her good-bye. It was—

  Just then it happened—something indefinable about the sound of his engine. He turned his eyes sharply away from earth and gave strict attention to business.

  There was something wrong. And it wasn’t any of the ordinary things that usually went wrong either. He knew that at the start. And now the engine had gone dead! The friendly roar that made things seem all right had ceased! He must do something about it! What ought he to do? There was no open space down there below him. Just houses—cozy little homes with children playing! And the baby! And the mother! Would the little girl in the blue dress remember to pray for him?

  Two men stepped out of a rose arbor where they had been figuring by a table. They had pencils and notebooks in their hands and were looking up.

  “Something must be the matter up there!” said the younger man. “See! His nose is pointing down! Look how low he is going! How slow! I never saw anyone do anything like that! Why, that’s dangerous! Marcella, take the baby in the house, quick! There really ought to be some regulation about the air. People have no right—”

  “Oh, he’s only doing some stunt,” said the other man easily. “He’ll right himself in a minute. See there! His nose is pointing up again!”

  “But his engine isn’t running. Listen! I heard it when it stopped. That’s what made me come out to look! And see! He’s dropping again!”

  “There, he’s pointing the nose up again. See? He’s only turning somersaults again or making circles or something!”

  “He’s crazy!” shouted the younger man. “Don’t you see his tail is falling all the time? He couldn’t do stunts with his engine shut off, could he?”

  “Don’t ask me! They do almost anything in the skies nowadays.”

  Up in the air Gareth Kingsley was doing his best, trying this and that—the usual emergency acts that men of his profession are trained to know. But none of them worked! Steadily, slowly, like a feather on a sultry day, the great bird was wavering toward the ground, and there were only little cozy houses and children playing in the gardens and a baby in a mother’s arms, wherever he would land.

  It was not so much the thought of himself wrecked, his unparalleled reputation as a flyer gone! It was not what would be his own future even. It was that somehow now his frenzied brain had conceived the idea that down there with the children in the little cozy yards and with the mother and the baby, close under his plane, stood a little sweet, white-faced girl in a blue frock looking up at him with trusting eyes, unafraid and praying.

  The nose of his plane was pointing desperately downward now, and he spoke out loud. “Oh, God! If You’ll just right me now, I’ll take time off as soon as I get to New York and try to find You!”

  He was not aware that he was praying. He was working all the time, and now his desperate fingers touched some vital part of the machinery, and suddenly the engine spoke. With a great sigh like a relieved prisoner, it spoke, then sighed, then roared, and bit hold of the air again. Gareth felt the plane quiver beneath him, felt the great bird rise, and knew that he was in control again. Up and up, till the little village was safely far away, out and beyond and away from that place where God had stopped him on his way, he flew. What had been the matter he did not know. None of the reasoning that he had been taught fitted the facts. By all the laws of science, he ought to be a wreck on some of those little cottage roofs over there. If what had seemed to happen had been true, his engine could not of itself have righted itself.

  If the fault had been in himself, some mental aberration, it had never happened before, and he could not account for it any more than he could account for some strange break in his machinery that had miraculously cured itself and gone on. But if it was his own mental breakdown that had caused that almost horrible accident, then he ought never to fly again.

  As he went steadily, strongly on again into the morning, the trembling in his limbs slowly steadying, his confidence returning rapidly, his brain clearing keenly, he came to a conclusion. Whatever the immediate cause of that sudden cessation of machinery, whether actual or mental; whether it could ever be clearly demonstrated or not for the satisfaction of any who might learn of the happening; for himself he was satisfied that God had been calling his attention, and he knew that the vow he had made in the stress of his anxiety must be kept as soon as he reached his destination.

  And now, as he drew a deep breath of thankfulness and realized that he was really going on normally again, he understood that the safest thing to do would be to seek a good landing field where he could find a mechanic, and go over his machinery carefully before he progressed further. In his heart he did not believe that this was necessary. He felt in his spirit that the thing would not happen again; nevertheless, he knew that he had no right to take chances after a warning like this, so he sought a field a few miles farther ahead and went down.

  It took some time to go carefully over every part, but conscientiously he let nothing escape, and finally satisfied that he had done all that the best flyer alive could do in like circumstances, he embarked and set sail once more.

  It was late when he reached New York. The men he was to meet were impatient. They had made their plans, and they wanted him to be ready to start on his recordsetting hop the next morning. It mattered nothing to them that the next morning would be the Sabbath day. The better the day, the better the deed. As his sponsors, they felt the time was ripe for his particular stunt, and they would brook no delay.

  Neither did the day mean anything to Gareth. But there was something on his mind.

  “I’m not at all sure I can make it,” he said firmly. “There is something I must do first.”

  “How long will it take you?”

  “Why, I can’t tell you that. It may take only an hour or two. I can’t tell till I try.”

  “But couldn’t someone do it for you? You know, Kingsley, it’s important that we seize the right moment. Your act is the logical follow-up of Norrington’s trip last week, and we have information that makes it pretty sure the Boris Brothers are planning to do something along these same lines within a few days now. We’ve got to beat ’em to it, you know, or your goose is cooked!”

  “Can’t help it!” said Gareth pleasantly, with his good-natured grin. “This has got to be done first.”

  “But what’s the nature of this duty? Can’t you tell us? Maybe we can help hurry it up.”

  Gareth looked at them earnestly, those four hardheaded businessmen, holding the purse strings tight and opening the bag only to let more money in. He saw himself asking any one of those men how to find God. How could they help him? They di
d not know God themselves. They did not believe in Him. But he did, now! He knew there was a God, and he meant to find Him before he did anything else. Never would he venture into the air again until he had within himself the talisman of which the little blue-eyed Amory had told him.

  So, though they urged and bullied and bribed, he was firm, till they hurried him off at last and told him to make it snappy, that the world was waiting for his return, and thousands of dollars were hanging in the balance.

  Gareth went out. He had no idea where he was going.

  He stepped into a cheap little restaurant and swallowed a cup of bitter coffee, and then he started out on the street to find a church. Saturday afternoon, and the half-holiday crowds out in full force. He was not familiar with churches in New York, nor anywhere else, but his common sense told him that a church ought to be the place where he might find out about God. It did not occur to him that most churches were not open on Saturday afternoons.

  But after walking blocks he did find a church with its side door open, and stepping in, he met a janitor.

  “Yes, the minister’s in,” said the janitor. “He just came into his study awhile back to get a book or two. I don’t think he’s left yet, but I’m not so sure he can see you. He doesn’t see callers afternoons usually, especially not Saturday afternoons. Have you an appointment? I could give him your name.”

  “No,” said Gareth, “but you can tell him I won’t keep him long. I just wanted to ask him a question or two.”

  “You’re not a salesman, are you? He won’t see salesmen at all.”

  “No, I’m an aviator,” Gareth said with a laugh.

  “Well, you wouldn’t want me to tell him what you’ve come about, would you? So he might judge if he could see you today or not? Because he might want you to wait till Monday.”