Silver Wings (25 page)

“Came back?”

“Yes, came back to me through the mail!”

“You don’t say!” said Whitney, sitting up very straight. “Where from? Do you know?”

Was this girl trying to put something over on him?

“Why, it was wrapped in a New York hotel envelope, but the postmark is Alaska, somewhere in Alaska. I can’t make it all out.”

“You don’t say!” said Whitney, excitedly. “Have you got that envelope with you? Can I see it? I’d like to see it. I’d like to see the Testament, too, if you don’t mind.”

He studied the wrapper carefully and then turned to examine the book. He read Amory’s name on the fly leaf, lingered over it in fact, and then slowly turned the pages, noting the marked passages.

“Well, I suppose the explanation is simple enough,” he said. “Somebody probably picked this up, some of the fliers who found the plane, maybe, and mailed it to you. It is interesting to have it back, of course, but nothing to worry about.”

“Yes, but there is a date at the end,” explained Amory anxiously, “and the date is only two days before those airmen were there; and I’m almost sure he wrote it himself! He signed his name.”

Whitney fluttered the leaves to the end and found the penciled lines.

“Why, what’s this?” said the man. “Gareth! That’s not his name! He’s Theodore!”

“Gareth was the name his mother used to call him,” explained Amory gently. “I don’t think most people knew him by that name.” She had thought this all out and knew it was the only way to explain her part in the matter.

Whitney looked at her with interest.

“Oh, I see! And he asked you to call him by that name? Hmm! But say, wasn’t that the name they found carved on the plane, some peculiar sentence. Wasn’t it Gareth?”

Amory’s cheeks were pink, but she answered with dignity: “Yes, Mr. Whitney.”

“Well, say, why didn’t you come forward and explain that when the whole world was in a rumpus about it?”

“Why, I—I didn’t see that it would help anything. It couldn’t possibly help to find him. They knew it was his plane without that identification. And I thought it might be misunderstood!”

She was looking him bravely in the eyes, and he warmed to her story.

“I see,” he said, “and that’s why you want me to keep this under my hat, too, is it?”

“If you feel that you can, Mr. Whitney.”

“I sure can, and I sure will!” he said heartily. “There are too many cats around this house to set one of them on a poor little brave mouse like you. I certainly honor you for your courage and self-control. And now, what do you think I ought to do about this? I know you have some idea up your sleeve, or you would not have come to me now.”

“I don’t want you to do anything unless you think you ought to. I just wasn’t sure, that’s all!”

“But what was your idea?”

“Well, I couldn’t help thinking that he might be alive somewhere and maybe needing some help, and I didn’t want to take the responsibility of keeping this to myself. But I do hope nobody else will have to know about it. We were just good friends, you know.”

“I see,” said Whitney, eyeing her with growing admiration. “Well, I think Ted was very fortunate to have a friend like you. I’ll take care, however, that nobody else knows anything about this. You think he’s alive, don’t you?”

Amory looked up with a lighting of her eyes.

“I can’t help but feel that way sometimes.”

“Well, I’ve had a sneaking thought like that myself sometimes. It’s like Ted to shut his mouth till he’s good and ready to appear again, say he’s been hurt or sick or anything. Well, we’ll see. Do you happen to know whether there are any of the folks around? I’d like a little privacy around that telephone, if it is a possible thing.”

“I think the girls have gone to the country club with Mrs. Whitney,” said Amory, “and Mr. Dunleith and Miss Dorne are with Neddy somewhere.”

“Good! Then you stick around nearby while I telephone. I might want to ask you a question.”

Amory, lingering in the hall, heard the master of the house telephoning to New York.

“Yes, this is Whitney. I’m still thinking of sending out that search expedition, but I want it done in strict privacy, see? No broadcasting or newspapers butting in. And I’ve got a line on something that makes me think the boy’s alive perhaps, but I wouldn’t have Mrs. Whitney get onto it for the world till we’re sure. She’s too nervous to be stirred up again. So keep this strictly under your hat. Yes, something new has happened. I don’t mind telling if you keep it to yourself. Don’t even let Mallory know. He can’t keep his mouth shut. But you see, it’s this way. A member of the family has received a little book through the mail that Ted had with him, and it’s postmarked Alaska and addressed in his own handwriting. Looks like a new line, doesn’t it? But it may be just another false alarm. However, go ahead and get busy. I’ll run up tomorrow and tell you more, if I can get away without exciting suspicion. Mrs. Whitney is in a terribly nervous state, you know, and it wouldn’t do to excite her hopes again. It might prove serious. Yes, he was her favorite nephew.”

When Whitney was through at the telephone he smiled at Amory.

“There, little girl, I’ve got the ball rolling, and we’ll find that kid if we have to comb the whole of Alaska. I have a hunch that you’re right, but keep it under your hat, and I’ll do the same. Even if he is ‘just a friend’ as you say, I guess it hasn’t been an easy time for you all these weeks. You’ve been a brave little girl, and I don’t mind saying I’m glad you’re in our house.”

Amory went to her room with shining eyes and a heart more at rest than it had been since Gareth’s disappearance. In fact there seemed to be a songbird down in her being somewhere that was singing at the top of his lungs, “Darling! Darling! Darling!” and she pressed her hand over the silver wings hiding over her heart and rejoiced.

T
he next morning at the breakfast table Henry Whitney laid down his newspaper and addressed his wife.

“Where’s that secretary of yours, Leila? Can she take dictation? I’d like her to get out a few letters this morning if you don’t need her all the time.”

Leila Whitney laid down her glasses thoughtfully and reflected.

“Well,” she said, “I was going to ask her to run into town and do a few errands for me, but if you need her, of course that can wait till afternoon. There really isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t have her do something for you now and then. I have had so little work for her during this enforced quiet that I’m afraid she’ll get lazy. It never does to be too easy on servants.”

“I shouldn’t call her a servant, if you ask me. However, that’s your business. All I want won’t take her half an hour, and then she can go to the city, if you like. Send her to me in the library.”

So Amory went down and took down three or four letters in shorthand, business matters, that did not seem important, and when she was done and about to leave the room Whitney said, “Oh, by the way, three of Ted’s friends start this afternoon in their own planes for Alaska. They’re taking a doctor and medicines and food and all sorts of contrivances to bring him back in case they find him sick or injured. I thought you’d like to know.”

She thanked him with such a shining look that after she was gone he sat reflectively looking off at the sky and said to himself: “Friend of hers! H’m! Yes, I guess he is!”

The days passed, and Amory prayed.

Life at the mansion went on much as it had all summer, save that Mrs. Whitney kept talking about moving into town for the winter, and the girls were planning large festivities ahead.

Amory was busier than ever, for now Mr. Whitney had taken to having her work for him an hour or two every morning. He found her swift accuracy and her clear common sense a great help in getting rid of a lot of begging letters that were constantly pouring down upon him. She seemed to know by instinct just which ones were frauds and which were real worthy causes.

But save for an occasional “Nothing new yet” when he met her questioning eyes, Whitney had not mentioned the expedition again.

And Amory asked no questions. It was not her place. She had done her duty, and now there was nothing left but to pray. But daily she rejoiced that she had been led to go to Mr. Whitney instead of his wife with her perplexity. In fact, she felt that if it had come to that, she would have had to keep the whole matter to herself. Mrs. Whitney would have been simply incapable of seeing anything but wrong in any acquaintance between her secretary and her beloved nephew.

Sometimes as she sat in her lovely room at work and glanced up toward the mountains in the distance where she had watched Gareth sail away, she wondered what would happen if he should really be alive and come home.

And then she put the thought from her as unworthy. She had nothing whatever to do with that. If Gareth was saved, really saved to all eternity, and if he came home alive, she could be happy no matter what came next. It was a great thing to be glad for, and she would not let it be spoiled. Little details like what Mrs. Whitney might say if the young man acknowledged his friendship with her were too trivial to be counted.

Then she would remind herself that she was in all probability thinking about a man whose body was beneath the icy waters of an Arctic sea; a man the world counted as dead and buried and enrolled with bygone heroes. Why would her heart persist in thinking he was alive?

It happened one day when she sat by her window quietly working, just as she had dreamed it might do. She glanced up from her desk, and there in the distance came a speck that widened into a great bird, wafting silver wings.

She drew her hand across her eyes to dispel the vision that had been there so many times in imagination that it seemed to be stamped upon her retinas.

But the vision was coming on, nearer and nearer, and she could hear the hum of a great motor sailing through the sky.

She put down her pen, for her hand was trembling, and her lips had that weak trembly feeling that comes with sudden excitement.

On came the great bird, as one had come once before on the first night of her arrival, and slowly swung and glided lower. It was going to land! Yes, it was almost down, and she could see someone in it, two persons! Oh, she must not tremble so. In any event, she was not down there. She would not have to appear. She would just stay here and get calm. No one would know in the least that she was interested.

The girls were rushing out from the house now. Mrs. Whitney was on the terrace with strained, startled face. She could see Diana and John Dunleith hurrying from the woods, with Neddy sprinting ahead. Yes, there was Mr. Whitney coming out on the terrace, a smile of anticipation on his face. Why, could he have expected this arrival? She must get calm. Her heart was beating wildly. At most, it was probably only one of Gareth’s friends come to report on a fruitless search. She must remember that no one knew of the search but herself and Mr. Whitney.

And now the fliers were coming through the garden gate. She strained her eyes to see. Forgetting that she must not be seen, she leaned far out as the two men in fliers’ helmets walked up the garden path between the late fall flowers that nodded so cheerfully in the autumn sunshine.

It was then, just as he passed out from under the big maple tree, that he looked up and looked straight into her eyes and smiled. Just as he had done before! Oh, was it his spirit she was seeing? She must not, must not— But ah! The others were looking up also. She drew back quickly but not before her eyes had given him a shy answering glance.

It was himself, his blessed self, walking in the flesh! Those blue eyes could belong to no other!

She got herself behind the curtain just in time and saw him greeting the others. She saw that he was thinner, with a ghastly pallor, and did not stand quite as jauntily as before, but his grin was the same and his dear blue eyes. He stooped and kissed his aunt and cousins, shook hands with his uncle, slapped the panting Neddy on the shoulder, and then turned back to his aunt again, with a slight lifting of his eyes to the window above.

“Aunt Leila, you’ve got my best girl here somewhere. Won’t you call her, please? I really can’t wait another minute to see her.”

Mrs. Whitney’s face was a study, with various emotions struggling together like a scrimmage in a football game.

“Oh, my dear Teddy!” she began in dismay. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. She is not—”

“Don’t tell me she isn’t here!” he cried. “Why, I understood it to be a permanent arrangement.”

Leila Whitney raised her eyes and saw Diana and John just entering the garden gate.

“Oh yes, Diana is here,” she answered sweetly, “but, Teddy dear—”

“Oh, is Diana here, too?”

Gareth wheeled and held out a thin white hand.

“Congratulations, Di, I heard the glad news up in New York on the way down. You couldn’t get a better man than my cousin John, and now you’re my cousin, too, aren’t you? For that I shall kiss you!” He stooped and gave her a resounding smack, and then turning to John with his dear old grin, he took his hand in both of his and gave him a grip so fierce that one would never suspect he had been lying at death’s door for weeks.

“John, old boy! I’m glad you’ve got her. She’s a highflier, but you’ll make her what she ought to be. I suspect she needed you all along!”

Amid the somewhat puzzled laughter that followed, the returned wanderer wheeled back to his aunt.

“But I want Amory Lorrimer, Aunt Leila, where are you hiding her? They told me she was still here. You didn’t know it, but she’s my best girl! We’ve been friends for quite a while now. If I’d known I was going to make such a long trip of it, I’d have told you before I left.”

He had done it. He had kept his word and told them all that she was his friend! That was all he meant of course, just friends. “Best girl” didn’t mean anything today; but Amory, hiding rosy and startled behind her curtain, told herself that she must not let her heart presume upon a word he had said. He was only vindicating her character in case anyone had found out about the Testament and the wings.

But Mrs. Whitney was standing there bewildered, utterly undone.