Authors -- Fiction; Ghosts -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
And the wine-glass elms are mine; and the lilacs and syringas and the
smoke-bush and the hollyhocks; and all the things I've planted; my
Canterbury bells (if they come up); my deep, rich dahlias and my
flame-colored phlox (if ditto). All mine! Gee, Spink, I never felt so
rich in my life, because what I've enumerated isn't twenty-five per cent
of what I own. In a minute I'm going to tell you what the remaining
seventy-five per cent is.
This place is full of birds and bees. I watch them from the house.
Spink, we flying-men are boobs. Have you ever watched a bee fly? I spend
hours, it seems to me, just studying them--trying to crab their act. And
the other day there was an air-fight just over my roof. A chicken-hawk
attacked by the whole bird population. It was a reproduction in
miniature of a bombing-machine pursued by a dozen combat-planes. Spink,
it was the best flying I've ever seen. You should have seen the sparrows
keeping on his tail! The little birds relied on their quickness of
attack, just as combat planes do. They attacked from all angles with
such rapidity that the hawk could do nothing but run for his life. The
little birds circled about, waiting for the moment to dive. A
combat-plane dives; its machines go ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta and it turns off
before the gunner can swing his guns over. The birds dived, picked
furiously at his eyes while the hawk turned bewildered from one attack
to another. But the little birds did something that planes can't even
attempt--they hovered over him almost motionless, waiting their moment
to attack. Here I am talking of flying! Flying! Did I ever fly? When I
got to New York, Greenwich Village seemed strange and unnatural, just a
pasteboard dream. Pau--Avord--Verdun--were the only real things in my
life. Now _they're_ shadows like Greenwich Village. Quinanog--the Murray
place--and Lutetia--seem the only real things.
I'm going to tell you all about it in a moment. I sure am. The world
seems to be full of landing-places, but for some reason I can't land.
Every time, I seem to come short on the field; or overshoot it. Perhaps
it's because I feel it ought not to be told-- Perhaps it's because I
feel you won't believe me--
But I've got to do it. So here goes!
Spink, the remaining seventy-five per cent that I own in this place is--
This place is haunted. Not by a ghost, but by _ghosts_! There are not
one of them, but four. Three I see occasionally. But one of the
quartet--I see her all the time. She is Lutetia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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