Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1920-06-26


herself on the same old treadmill,
walking out the endless miles OF DO
ing the right thing in the right way,
keeping up the same old shoW of line
age,-lineage and moncy--leading a
little world, never facing the great
She felt a great dependency. a ter
ror of the morrow that would bring
the end Of. nothing but that ncverthe-
less would mark the death of part OF
Andrea Pellor. Then a start
ling emotion seized her. The sources
Of this nights impulses became re-
vealed: she knew now why she ached
for freedom and why it had beer
given her to see her youth 80 near
and yet so completely detached. 1t
was because she had come to the
great fork in the fair road of life. be-
cause just here she must turn her
back on maids dreams of romance.
She realized, almost with the sharp
ness Of a recoil, that she was on the
verge of becoming forever a woman
without a history. She looked back
and saw that she had never done one
outre thing; she looked forward and
saw LndL she prODiUly never WOulu'
she looked down and
edged the almost precipitous cliff. a
little to one side, it was broken and
from the breach a red clay path de-
scended in long vertiginous switch
back slants, the last OF which shot
down to the level Of the wide sands
of the beach, shining white in the re-
flected light Of the full moon. Upon
the pale stretch Of sand was a far
away blur, a dark, .wide-winged blot.
She concentrated her unbelievins
gaze upon it until she made it out be-
yond a doubt. 1t was an aeroplane.
Two midget figures moved around it
busily.
Andrea watched the midgets dream
lily and thought of all the stories she
had read about f1ying-machine elope-
ments. They had invariably bored
her for they had always seemed W re
duce Romance from filmy tissues to a
mechanical basis, very noisy and
smelling of grease. gasoline and over
alls. But as she stood there, her
diaphanous second-best party dress
~spice-ladened breezes Of an Indian
Ocean dawn and her eyes full of the
still. fairy light Of a tropic moon, the
thing drying it's vast wings on tn. dis
tant sands seemed like a giant moth,
strayed from some Arabian Night and
sent in answer to the cry of child
hoods valiant fancy.
Who were those midget dots? Were
they men or genii? Whence had they
and whittier would they go?
Did they talk with tongues or like
Andrea wondered all these things,
suddenly stopped wondering, skipped
up the ladder-like stair from the gar
den to her room, snatched up a warm
cloak affair which buttoned in a nigh
collar at her neck and that fell sheer
in ever widening folds from her
shoulders to her ankles and in less
time than it would take to say j, k
Robinson a hundred and fifty times
she was Slipping and sliding down the
path of many slants.
She came upon the aerOplane so
suddenly that she forgot to be disap-
pointed at its gross materialism. 1t
was very real indeed; so were the men
who attended 1t. One was the tallest,
blacklist, nakedest native she had yet
seen. a mighty statue in unimagincd
bronze paganly clothed only at the
loins with a spotted pelt. The other
was a white man gone brown in the
sum-. He was neither very young nor
old, he carried himself erect with the
bearing Of a nan who is full-grown
and knows it and when he moved he
gave an exhibition of LONG, thin mus
Giles under a perfect central control.
He wore goggles so hat she could not
see his eyes, but his mouth seemed
to be possessed of a smile that never
wavered in spite of the fact that he
held a piece of wire between his teeth
and was otherwise intent on a number
of things.
1t vas the black man who first
sensed Andrea's presence and gave
warning to his master in a low, gut
tural, rolling string of flowing vowels.
The white mai did not look round; he
merely shrugged his shoulders and
went on with his job. Andrea watch
ed him in silence until she was con-
WINGED hat everything that could be
done to the machine was about to be
accomplished and it's proprietor on
the verge of flying away and then,
emboldened by that unwaverinp
smile, she said in such a voice as chill
dren use when pleading for cake,
please, Mr.. Man, take me with: you"
She knew a good deal about flying
she knew that they couldn't
stay up very long and that if they
were worth anything at all they in
variably came back to where they
from like w~ell-trained homing
pigeons. She had left her door locked
and shefigured that she would be back
long before Aunty Gwen could work
herself up to the point Of having it
broken in. This machine looked like
a fairly good one, rather the worse for
wear u wasn't hat the best posi-
BILE proof that it had steady and set
tied habits? When her voice. rang
across the silence of the false dawn,
clear n light as a silver bell giving
tongue across snow. the white man
started and dropped the wrench he
then let it fall to the ground
deliberately and turned to look her
T She was certainly something to see
and to wonder at. Her brown hair was
bit mussed like a sea leased into
catspaws by puffs Of air. Her eyes Of
Irish blue danced with a light young
er than her face-a light that attends
the eternal wistful child within us
but beneath their shining gaze were
shadows and her cheeks were over
chin was a bit Of black court plaster,
mask Of a tiny sign Of too
much chocolates and too little exer-
else. She was slim enough to look
tall in spite. Of that cloak-like affair
of dark blue g~love-cloth that fell from
her shoulders to her ankles in ever
folds.
Through all his inspection the
mans fac never changed. He looked
her owe deliberately, Judged. deliber-
ately and deliberately let down the
little ladder that gave access to the
seat. He helped her up
without q word, strapped her in and
then turned to pour out voluble In
in dialect to. the bronze
that stood at attention, black
eyes fixed IN his masters face, red
lips repeating Hike a prompter 1t a