EDEN

WHEN you have made an aeroplane, the next thing is to make it fly. And

however agreeable an admiring audience may be while one is fiddling with

definite and concrete objects of wood, canvas, and metal, one is apt,

for the flight itself--the great flight, the flight by which the

aeroplane shall stand or fall--to desire solitude.

That was why Edward drew the yellow blind up and the dimity curtain

aside and turned his bed round, so that the sun at its first rising

should strike through his dreams and awaken him. The sun did exactly

what it was expected to do, and Edward awoke saying "Bother" before he

remembered that "Bother" was not at all what he meant. Then he got up

and splashed gently, so as not to break the audible sleep of the people

in the next room, stole down the creaking, twisted stairs in his

tennis-shoes, soft-footed as a cat, drew the bolts of the back door, and

slipped out, closing the door noiselessly behind him. He was careful to

draw the bolt into its place again by means of a bit of fishing-line.

You can do this quite easily with an old door that does not fit very

closely--if you are careful to mark with chalk on the outside of the

door, as Edward did, the exact place where the bolt is. Having thus

secured the door against passing tramps or burglars, he went out across

the highroad, soft with thick, white dust, where the dew lay on hedge

and grassy border, and the sun made diamonds of the dew. Charles,

choking himself in the stable, grew faint with distance.

Beyond the village was a meadow suited to his needs. It was bordered on

one side by a high red-brick wall, above whose moss-grown coping the

rounded shapes of trees leaned. A wood edged it on two other sides, and

in the front was a road.

Here he made his preparations, wound up his machine, and, after one or

two false starts, got it going. He meant to fly it like a kite, and to

this end he had tied one end of a ball of fine twine to the middle of

its body. Now he raised it above his head and launched it. The little

creature rose like a bird; the ball of string leaped and jumped between

his feet, as he paid out the line; the whirring wings hung poised a

second, at the level of the tree-tops, and then, caught by the wind,

sailed straight toward the red wall, burrowed into the trees, and

stopped. He ran toward the wall, winding up the string, and stood below,

looking up. He could not see the winged loose thing. He tweaked the

string and his tweak was met with uncompromising resistance. The

aeroplane had stuck in a chestnut-tree, and hung there, buzzing.

Edward measured the wall with his eye. It was an old wall, of soft red

brick, from which the mortar had fallen away. In its crannies moss grew,

and ragged-robin and ground-ivy hung their delicate veil in the angles

of its buttresses--little ferns and wall-flowers run to seed marked its

courses, the yellow snapdragon which English children call toad-flax

flaunted its pure sulphur-colored plumes from the ledge below the

coping. An architect would have said that the wall wanted pointing; a

builder would have pointed it--an artist would have painted it. To an

engineer in grief for a lost toy the wall presented itself as an

obstacle to be climbed. He climbed it.

He thrust the string into his jacket pocket, and presently set hand and

foot to the hold that the worn wall afforded. In half a minute he was

astride the coping; next moment he had swung by his hands and let

himself go on the wall's other side. It was a longer drop than he

expected; it jarred him a little, and his hat tumbled off. As he picked

this up he noticed that the wall on the inside had been newly pointed.

The trees were a good thirty feet from the wall. There would be no

getting back by the way he had come. He must find a gate. Meantime the

little aeroplane's buzzing had grown faint and ceased. But the twine led

him to the tree, as the silken clue led Queen Eleanor to the tower of

Fair Rosamond. The next thing was to climb the tree and bring down the

truant toy.

The park spread smooth and green before him--the green smoothness that

comes only to English grass growing where grass has been these many

years. Quiet trees dotted the smooth greenness--thickening about the

house, whose many chimneys, red and twisted, rose smokeless above the

clustered green. Nothing moved in all the park, where the sun drank the

dew; birds stirred and twittered in the branches--that was all. The

little aeroplane had stopped its buzzing. Edward was moved to thank Fate

that he had not brought Charles. Also he was glad that this trespass of

his had happened so early. He would get down the aeroplane and quietly

go out by the lodge gate. Even if locked, it would be climbable.

The chestnut-tree, however, had to be climbed first. It was easy

enough, though the leaves baffled him a little, so that it was some time

before he saw the desired gleam of metal and canvas among the dappled

foliage. Also, it was not quite easy to get the thing down without

injuring it, and one had to go slowly.

He lowered it, at last, by its string to the ground from the lowest

branch, then moved along a little, hung by his hands, and dropped.

He picked up the toy and turned to go. "Oh!" he said, without meaning

to. And, "I beg your pardon," without quite knowing what for.

Because, as he turned he came face to face with a vision, the last one

would have expected to see in an English park at early day. A girl in a

Burmese coat, red as poppies, with gold-embroidered hem a foot deep. Her

dress was white. Her eyes were dark, her face palely bright, and behind

her dark head a golden-green Japanese umbrella made a great ridged halo.

"I beg your pardon," said Edward again, and understood that it was

because he was, after all, trespassing.

"I should think you did," said the vision, crossly. "What on earth do

you mean by it? How did you get in?"

Edward, standing a little awkwardly with the aeroplane in his hands,

looked toward the wall.

"I came over after this," he said. "I'm very sorry. I was flying the

thing and it stuck in the tree. If you'll tell me the way to the lodge,

I'll--I hope I didn't scare you."

"I couldn't think what it was," she answered, a little less crossly. "I

saw the tree tossing about as if--as if it had gone mad."

"And you thought of dryads and hastened to the spot. And it was only an

idiot and his aeroplane. I say--I _am_ sorry--"

"You can't help not being a dryad," she said, and now she smiled, and

her smile transformed her face as sunlight does a landscape. "What I

really thought you were was a tramp. Only tramps never climb trees. I

couldn't think how you got in here, though. Tramps never climb walls.

They get in sometimes through the oak fence beyond the plantations."

"It was very intrepid of you to face a tramp," he said.

"Oh, I love tramps," she said; "they're always quite nice to you if you

don't bully them or patronize them. There were two jolly ones last week,

and I talked to them, and they made tea out in the road, you know, and

gave me a cup over the fence. It _was_ nasty." She shuddered a little.

"But I liked it awfully, all the same," she added. "I wish I were a

tramp."

"It's not a bad life," said he.

"It's _the_ life," she said, enthusiastically. "No ties, no

responsibilities--no nasty furniture and hateful ornaments--you just go

where you like and do what you like; and when you don't like where you

are, you go somewhere else; and when you don't like what you're doing,

you needn't go on doing it."

"Those are very irresponsible sentiments--for a lady."

"I know. That's why I think it's so dull being a woman. Men can do

whatever they want to."

"Only if they haven't their living to earn," said Edward, not quite so

much to himself as he would have liked.

There was a little pause, and then, still less himself, he blundered

into, "I say, it is jolly of you to talk to me like this."

She froze at once. "I forgot," she said, "that we had not been

introduced. Thank you for reminding me."

Edward's better self was now wholly lost, and what was left of him could

find nothing better to answer than, "Oh, I say!"

"What I ought to have said," she went on, her face a mask of cold

politeness, "is that you can't possibly get out by the lodge. There are

fierce dogs. And the lodge-keepers are worse than the dogs. If you will

follow me--at a distance, for fear I should begin to talk to you

again--I'll show you where the gardener's ladder is, and you can put it

up against the wall and get out that way."

"Couldn't I get out where the tramps get in?" he asked, humbly. "I don't

like to trouble you."

"Not from here. We should have to pass close by the house."

The "we" gave him courage. "I say--do forgive me," he said.

"There's nothing to forgive," said she.

"Oh, but do," he said, "if you'd only see it! It was just because it was

so wonderful and splendid to have met you like this . . . and to have

you talk to me as you do to the other tramps."

"You're not a tramp," she said, "and I ought not to have forgotten it."

"But I am," said he, "it's just what I really and truly am."

"Come and get the ladder," said she, and moved toward the wall.

"Not unless you forgive me. I won't," he added, plucking up a little

spirit, "be indebted for ladders to people who won't forgive a man

because he speaks the truth clumsily."

"Come," she said, looking back over her shoulder.

"No," he said, obstinately, not moving. "Not unless you forgive me."

"It can't possibly matter to you whether I forgive you or not," she

turned to say it. And as she spoke there came to Edward quite suddenly

and quite unmistakably the knowledge that it did matter. Sometimes

glimpses do thus suddenly and strangely come to us--and that by some

magic inner light that is not reason we know things that by the light of

reason we could never know.

"Look here," he said. "I'll go after that ladder in a minute. But first

I've got something to say to you. Don't be angry, because I've got to

say it. Do you know that just now--just before I said that stupid thing

that offended you--you were talking to me as though you'd known me all

your life?"

"You needn't rub it in," she said.

"Do you know why that is? It's because you _are_ going to know me all

your life. I'm perfectly certain of it. Somehow or other, it's true.

We're going to be friends. I sha'n't need to say again how jolly it is

of you to talk to me. We shall take all that as a matter of course.

People aren't pitchforked into meetings like this for nothing. I'm glad

I said that. I'm glad you were angry with me for saying it. If you

hadn't I might just have gone away and not known till I got

outside--and then it would have been a deuce and all of a business to

get hold of you again. But now I know. And you know, too. When shall I

see you again? Never mind about forgiving me. Just tell me when I shall

see you again. And then I'll go."

"You must be mad," was all she could find to say. She had furled her

sunshade and was smoothing its bamboo ribs with pink fingers.

"You'll be able to find out whether I'm mad, you know, when you see me

again. As a matter of fact--which seems maddest, when you meet some one

you want to talk to, to go away without talking or to insist on talk and

more talk? And you can't say you didn't want to talk to me, because you

know you did. Look here, meet me to-morrow morning again--will you?"

"Certainly not."

"You'll be sorry if you don't. We're like two travelers who have

collected all sorts of wonderful things in foreign countries. We long to

show each other our collections--all the things we've thought and

dreamed. If we'd been what you call introduced, perhaps we shouldn't

have found this out. But as it is, we know it."

"Speak for yourself," she said.

"Thank you," he said, seriously. "I will. Will you sit down for ten

minutes? This tree-root was made for you to sit down on for ten

minutes, and I will speak for myself."

"I can't," she said, and her voice--there was hurry in it, and

indecision, but the ice had gone. "You must come at once for that

ladder. It's getting more dangerous every moment. If any one saw you

here there'd be an awful row."

"For you?"

"Yes, for me. Come on."

He followed her along the wall under the chestnuts. There was no more

spoken words till they came to the ladder.

Then, "Right," he said. "Thank you. Good-by." And set the ladder against

the wall.

"Good-by," said she. "I'll hand the aeroplane up to you?"

"Stand clear," he said, half-way up the ladder. "I'll give it a sideways

tip from the top--it'll fall into its place. It's too heavy for you to

lift. Good-by."

He had reached the top of the wall. She stood below, looking up at him.

"There won't be any row now?"

"No. It's quite safe."

"Then have you nothing to say?"

"Nothing. Yes, I have. I will come to-morrow. You'll misunderstand

everything if I don't."

"Thank you," he said.

She came up the ladder, two steps, then handed him his toy. Then the

ladder fell with a soft thud among the moss and earth and dead leaves;

his head showed a moment above the wall, then vanished.

He went thoughtfully through the dewy grass, along the road, and back to

his inn.

Tommy met him by the horse-trough. "You been flying it?" he asked,

breathlessly.

"Yes. She went like a bird."

"How far did she go?" Tommy asked.

"I don't quite know," said Edward, quite truly, "how far she went. I

shall know better to-morrow."