It was, of course, in an agony of remorse that Dolly nursed her husband
during his long month of enforced and bed-ridden idleness. Luckily, Bison
Billiam behaved beautifully. He let the salary run on during the whole
course of Charles-Norton's incapacity, and then, with genial inspiration,
prevailed upon him, when he had recovered, to make his public
reappearance with the heavy plaster-of-paris cast still upon the injured
leg--which immensely increased the Flying Wonder's popularity and
success.
A _modus vivendi_ was agreed upon after this, which is still in force and
works very well. Bison Billiam was made the permanent arbitrator of the
wing question. Whenever they have a little difference now, Charles-Norton
and Dolly go to Bison Billiam, and, standing before him hand in hand,
listen to a sage adjudication of their rights and their wrongs. They call
him Papa Bison.
And so, they are quite happy. Dolly, of course, takes a keen pleasure in
her home. She has a neat little brick house, with a white door, near the
Riverside Drive, and a butler. A butler always had been Dolly's secret
dream.
Charles-Norton, also, though unconsciously perhaps, gets a good deal of
pleasure out of the house (and the butler), for Dolly, with innate
genius, has given it an air of quiet elegance and culture which he
secretly enjoys. There is, also, a certain contentment in living life
along a definite routine. He flies every night but Sunday, and two
afternoons a week. And then, if Dolly has her house, he has his
automobile.
A big, high-powered, red automobile. He goes out in it with Dolly every
Sunday. When he arrives to a certain point in a certain highway, where
the road is smooth and hard, and undulates up and down like a Coney
Island chute for many miles, he leans forward and puts his chin close to
the back of the chauffeur, who is French, and looks like Mephistopheles.
"Let her out," he says.
The chauffeur, with a grin, "lets her out"--and they swoop down and up,
down and up, in increasing speed. The road is a ribbon, which she rolls
hungrily within her; the trees, the rare houses on both sides, coalesce
into two solid, whirling walls.
"Faster," says Charles-Norton.
The world becomes two parallel planes of solid atmosphere, rushing along
close to right and left; the air strikes their faces like a fist, closing
their nostrils till they gasp; the machine's hum becomes a cry; its flaps
rise like wings.
"Faster," says Charles-Norton.
He seems to leave his body; it wafts off behind on a current of air, like
a hat--and he is only a soul, a delicious kernel of soul ecstatically
drunk, floating like an atom through the eternities.
"Faster," he says.
But he is aware now of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills
into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His
body, catching up from behind, drops about him again--and then he knows.
It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little Dolly hysterical with fear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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