 Chapter 36 There were, as Ruth had remarked, families. When Carl was formally invited to dine at the Winslow's on a night late in April, his only anxiety was as to the condition of his dinner-coat. He arrived in a state of easy bristness. Planning apt and sensible remarks about the business situation for Mason and Mr. Winslow. As the maid opened the door, Carl was wondering if he would be able to touch Ruth's hand under the table. He had an anticipatory fondness for all of the small friendly family group, which was about to receive him, and he was cast into a den of strangers, most of them comprised in the one eclectic person of Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow. Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow was the general commanding in what soever group she was placed in by Providence, with which she had thus strong influence. At a White House reception she would pleasantly but firmly have sent the president about his business, and have taken his place in a receiving line. Just now she sat in a prehistoric S-chair near the center of the drawing-room, pumping out of Phil Donalovey most of the facts about his chief's private lives. Aunt Emma had the soul of a six-foot Dowager Duchess, and should have had an eagle nose and a white pompadour. Actually she was of medium height, with a not unduly maternal bosom, a broad commonplace face, hair the color of faded grass, a blunt nose with slightly enlarged pores, and thin lips that seemed to be a straight line, when seen from in front, but seen in profile, puffed out like a fishes. She had a habit of nodding intelligently even when she was not listening, and another habit of rubbing her left knuckles with the fingers of her right hand. Not imposing in appearance was Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow, but she was born to discipline a court. An impeccable widow was she, speaking with a broad A, and dressed exquisitely in a black satin evening gown. By such simple hearted traits as being always right about unimportant matters, and by idealistic wrong about important matters, politely intruding into everything being earnest about the morality of the poor and auctioned bridge and the chaperoning of nice girls, possessing a working knowledge of Wagner and Rodin, wearing fifteen dollar corsets, and believing on her bended knees that to true gates in Winslow's were the noblest families in the social register. Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow had persuaded the whole world, including even her near English butler, that she was a superior woman. Family traditions said that she had only to raise a finger to get into really smart society. On the death of Ruth's mother, Aunt Emma had taken it as one of her duties. Along with symphony concerts and committees, to rear Ruth properly, she had been neglecting this duty so far to permit the invasion of a barbarian named Erickson, only because she had been in California with her young son, Arthur. Just now, while her house was being opened, she was staying at the Winslow's, with Arthur and a peculiar, beastly Japanese spaniel named Takasan. She was introduced at Carl's. She glanced him over and passed him on to Olive Donalovey. All in forty-five seconds, when Carl had recovered from his sensation of being a kitten drowned in a sack, he said agreeable things to Olive and observed the situation in the drawing room. Phil was marked out for Aunt Emma's favors. Mr. Winslow sat in a corner, apparently Christ with restorative conversation administered by Ruth. Mason Winslow was hauntingly attentive to a plain, well-dressed amiable girl named Florence Cruden, who had prematurely gray hair, the weak end habit, and a weakness for baby talk. Ruth's medical student brother, Bobby Winslow, was not there. The more he saw of Bobby's kind Aunt Emma, the more Carl could find it in his heart to excuse Bobby for having escaped the family dinner. Carl had an uncomfortable moment when Aunt Emma and Mr. Winslow asked him questions about the development of the Tura car. But before he could determine whether he was being deliberately inspected by the family, the ordeal was over. As they went into dinner, Mr. Winslow, taking in Aunt Emma like a small boy accompanying the school principal, Ruth had the chance to whisper, "'My hawk, be good. Please believe I'm not responsible. It's all Aunt Emma's doing this dreadfully stately family dinner. Don't let her pull you. I'm frightened to death, and—yes, Phil, I'm coming.'" The warning did not seem justified in view of the attractive table. Candles, cut glass, a mound of flowers on a beveled mirror, silvery linen, and grapefruit with champagne. Carl was on one side of Aunt Emma, but she seemed more interested in Mr. Winslow at the end of the table, and on the other side Carl had a safe companion in Olive Donnellovey. Across from him was Florence Crudden, Phil, and Ruth, Ruth shimmering in a gown of yellow satin which broke the curve of her fine-fleshed shoulder only by a narrow band. The conversation played with people. Florence Crudden told to applause and laughter of an exploratory visit to the College of the City of New York, and her discovery of a strange race, young Jews mostly who went to college to study, and had no sense of the nobility of making fraternities. "'Such outsiders,' she said, "'can't you imagine the sort of a party they'd have? They'd all stand around to discuss psychology and dissecting puppies in Greek roots. Phil, I think it would be a lovely punishment for you to have to join them, to work in a laboratory all day and wear a celluloid collar.'" "'Ah, another sort. Greasy grinds, we used to call them. There were plenty of them in Yale,' John descended Phil. "'Maybe they do wear celluloid collars, if they do, because they're poor,' protested Ruth." "'My dear child,' sniffed Aunt Emma, "'with collars only twenty-five cents apiece?' "'Don't be silly.'" Mr. Winslow declared with portly timidly, "'I am, my collars don't cause me but fifteen. Mason, dear, let's not discuss it at dinner. Tell me, all of you, the scandal I've missed by going to California, which reminds me. Did I tell you I saw that miserable, Amy Bustlin, you remember, that married the porter or the superintendent or something in her father's factory? I saw her and her husband at Pasadena, and they seemed to be happy. Of course, Amy would put the best face she could on it. But they must have been miserably unhappy, such a sad affair, and she could have married quite decently.'" "'What do you mean by decently?' demanded Ruth." Carl was startled. He had once asked Ruth the same question about the same phrase. "'Aunt Emma revolved like a gun turret, getting Ruth's range,' remarked Cami. "'My dear child, you know quite well what I mean. Don't, I beg you. Bring any socialistic problems to dinner till you have really learned something about them. Now, I want to hear all the nice scandals I have missed.'" There were not many she had missed, but she kept the conversation sternly to discussions of people whose names Carl had never heard. Again he was obviously an outsider. Still ignoring Carl and Emma demanded of Ruth and Phil, sitting together opposite her. "'Tell me about the good times you children have been having, Ruthie, and I'm so glad that Phil and you finally went to the William Turingers, and your letter about the Bo-Arts Festival was charming, Ruthie. I quite envied you and Phil.'" The dragon continued talking to Ruth while Carl listened, and the intercedes of his chatter to Olive. "'I hope you haven't been giving all your time in beauty sleep doing too much of that settlement work, Ruthie. And Heaven only knows what germs you will get there. Of course, I should be first to praise any work for the poor, ungrateful and shiftless though they are. What with my committees and the true-gate temperance home for young working girls. It's all very well to be sympathetic with them, but when it comes to a settlement house in Heaven knows I have given them all the counsel and suggestions I could, though some of the professional settlement workers are as pert as they can be, and I really do believe some of them think they are trying to end poverty entirely just as though the Lord would have sent poverty into the world if he didn't have a pretty good reason for it. You will remember the Bible says, the poor you always have with you, and as Florence Barkley says in her novels, which may seem a little sentimental, but they are of such good moral effect you can't supersede descriptors even in the most charming social circles. To say nothing of the blessings of poverty, I'm sure they're much happier than we are with our honorous duties. I'm sure that any of these ragamuffin, anarchists and socialists and anti-militanists want to take over my committees, they are welcome if they'll take over the miserable headaches and worried hours they give me, trying to do something for the poor. They won't even be clean, but even in model tenements they will put coal in bathtubs, and so I do hope you haven't just been wearing yourself to the bone, working for ungrateful dirty little children, Ruthie. No, anti-dear, I've been quite as discreet as any Winslow should be. You see, I'm selfish too, aren't I, Carl? Oh, very. Ed Emma seemed to remember then that some sort of a man whose species she didn't quite know sat next to her. She glanced at Carl again, gave him up as an error in social judgment, and went on. No, Ruthie, not selfish so much as thoughtless about the duties of a family like ours. And I was always the first to say that with the Winslow's are as fine a stock as the true gates. And I am going to see that you go out more the rest of this year, Ruthie. I want you and Phil to plan right now to attend the charity league dances next season. You must learn to concentrate your attention. Anti-dear, please, leave my wickedness till the next time we... My dear child, now that I have the chance to get all of us together, I'm sure Mr. Erickson will pardon the rest of us our little family discussion. I want to take you and Master Phil to task together. You are both of you negligent of social duties. Duties they are, Ruthie, for man was not born to serve alone. Though Phil is far better than you, with your queer habits, and heaven only knows where you got them neither your father nor your dear sainted mother was slack or selfish. Dear aunt, you let's admit that I'm a black sheep with a little black bustle and a habit of budding all sorts of ash cans. And let Phil go on his social way rejoicing. Ruth was jaunty, but her face was strained and she bit her lip with staccato nervousness. When she was not speaking, Carl ventured to face the dragon. Miss Winslow, I'm sure Ruth has been better than you think. She has been learning all these fendishly complicated new dances. You know, a poor businessman like myself finds them. Yes, said Aunt Emma. I am sure she will always remember that she is a Winslow and must carry on the family traditions, but sometimes I'm afraid she gets under bad influences because of her good nature. She said it loudly. She looked Carl in the eye. The whole table stopped talking. Carl felt like a tramp who has kicked a chain bulldog and discovers that the chain is broken. He wanted to be good, not make a scene. He noticed with intent a dignation that Phil was grinning. He planned to get Phil off in a corner, not necessarily a dark corner in beating. He wanted to telegraph Ruth, dared not. He relized in a quarter of a second that he must have been discussed by the family and did not like it. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to speak. Awkwardly said, wondering all the while if she meant what her tone said she meant by bad influences. Yes, but just going to say, I believe settlement work is a good influence. Please don't discuss, Ruth was groaning when Aunt Emma sternly interrupted. It is good of you to take up the cudgels, Mr. Erickson, and please don't misjudge me. Of course I realize that I am only a silly old woman, and that my passion, to see the whizzles keep to their fine standards is old-fashioned, but you see it is a hobby of mine that I have devoted years to, and you who haven't known the whizzles so very long. Her manner was almost courteous. Yes, and so, Carl mumbled agreeably, just as she dropped the courtesy and went on. You can't judge, in fact. This is nothing personal, you know. I don't suppose it's possible for Westerners to have any idea how precious family ideals are to Easterners. Of course we're probably silly about them, and it's splendid your wheatlands, and not caring who your grandfather was, but to make up for those things we do have to protect what we have gained through the generations. Carl longed to stand up, to defy them all to cry, if you mean that you think Ruth has to be protected against me, have the decency to say so. Yet he kept his voice gentle. But why be narrowed to just a few families in one's interests? Now this settlement, one isn't narrowed. There are plenty of good families for Ruth to consider when it comes time for my little girl to consider alliances at all. Aunt Emma coldly stated. I will shut up, he told himself. I will shut up. I'll see this dinner through, and then never come near this house again. He tried to look casual, as though the conversation was safely finished. But Aunt Emma was waiting for him to go on. In the general stillness her corsets creaked with belligerent attention. He played with this fork in a, well, if that's how you feel about it, perhaps it would be better not to discuss it any further. My dear madam, manner growing every second more fleshed, embarrassed, sick, angry, trying harder every second to look unconcerned. Aunt Emma hawked a delicate and ladylike hawk in her patrician throat. Perfectory to a new attack. Carl knew he would be tempted to retort rudely. Then, from the door of the dining-room, whippered the high voice of an excited child. Oh, mama, oh, cousin Ruthie, nurse says hawk, Eric's in his ear. I want to see him. Every one turned toward a boy of five or six, round as a baby chicken in his fuzzy, miniature pajamas, protectingly holding a cotton-mungy under his arm, sturdy and shy and defiant. Why, Arthur, on my son. Oh, the darling baby from the table. Come here, Arthur. And let's hear your troubles before nurse nabs you, old son, said Phil, not at all condescendingly, rising from the table, holding out his arms. Oh, no! Just let me go. I want to see hawk, Eric's in. Is that hawk, Eric's in? Demanded the son of Aunt Emma, pointing at Carl. Yes, sweetheart, said Ruth softly, proudly. Running madly about the end of the table, Arthur jumped at Carl's lap. Carl swung him up and inquired. What is it, old man? Are you hawk, Eric's in? At your command, captain. Aunt Emma rose and said masterfully, Come, little son, now you've seen Mr. Eric's in. It's up to Betty again, up to Betty. Oh, no, please don't, mama. I've never seen an aviator before, none all my life. And you promised me, cross your heart, at Pasadena you did, I could see one. Arthur's face showed signs of imminent badness. Well, you may stay for a while then, said Aunt Emma, weakly unconscious, that her sway had departed from her, while the rest of the table grinned except Carl, who was absorbed in Arthur's ecstasy. I'm going to be an aviator, too. I think an aviator is braver than anybody. I'd rather be an aviator than a general policeman or anybody. I've got a picture of you on my scrapbook. You've got a funny hat like cousin Bobby wears when he plays football in it. Should I get the picture of my scrapbook? Honest. We came in another? Aunt Emma made one more attempt to coax Arthur up to bed. But his majesty refused, and she compromised by scolding his nurse and sending up for his dressing-gown a small blue dressing-gown on which yellow ducks and white bunny rabbits paraded proudly. Like our blue bowl, Carl commanded to Ruth. Not till after coffee in a drawing-room would Arthur consent to go to bed. This real head of the Emma Wilson family was far too much absorbed in making Carl tell of his long races and why does a flying machine fly? What's a wind pressure? Why does wind shove up? Why is the wings curved? Why does it want to catch the wind? The others listened, including Aunt Emma. Carl went home early. Ruth had the opportunity to confide, Hawk, dear, I can't tell you how ashamed I am of my family for enduring anybody so rude and opinionated as Aunt Emma. But it's all right now, isn't it? No, no, don't kiss me, but dear dreams, Hawk. Phil's voice from behind shuddered, oh, Erickson, just second. Carl was not at all pleased. He remembered that Phil had listened with obvious amusement to his agonized attempt to turn Aunt Emma's attacks. Said Phil while Ruth disappeared. Which way are you going? Hawk, to the subway with you. You win, old man. I admire your nerve for facing Aunt Emma. What I wanted to say, I hope to thunder you don't think I was in any way responsible for Mrs. Winslow's linking me and Ruth the way they did. Oh, you understand, I admire you, like the devil for knowing what you want and going after it. I suppose you'll have to convince Ruth yet, but, by Jove, you've convinced me. Glad you had Arthur for an ally. They don't make Kitty seem better. God, if I could have a son like that. I turn off here. Good luck, Erickson. Thanks a lot, Phil. Thanks. Good night, Carl. END OF CHAPTER XXXVIII Long Beach on the first taut Sunday of May when motorists come out from New York, half ready to open asphalt hearts, to see in sky Carl's first side of it, save from an airplane, and he was mad happy to find real shore so near the city. Ruth and he were picnicking, vulgar and unashamed among the dunes at the end of the long boardwalk, like the beer-drinking, pickle-eating parties of fishermen and the family groups with red tablecloths, great basket lunches, and colored Sunday supplements. Ruth declared that she preferred them to the elegant loungers who were showing off new motorcoats on the boardwalk. But Carl, and she had withdrawn a bit from the crowds, and in the dunes, had made a nest, with a book and a magazine and a box of chocolates, and Carl's collapsible lunch-kit. Not New York only, but all of Ruth's relatives were forgot, and Emma True Great Winslow was a myth of the dragon-haunted past. Here all was fresh, color and free, spaces looking to open sea. Behind the dunes, with her tragedies of pale grass, revealed the sharp, under-shadowed green of marshes, and an inland bay that was blue as bluing a starling blue. Bordered by the emerald marshes, to one side, afar, not troubling their peace, were the crimson roofs of fantastic houses, like chalets and California missions and villas of the Riviera, with gables and turrets of red tiles. Before their feet was the cream-colored beach marked by ridges of driftwood, mixed with small glistening shells, long ranks of pale yellow seaweed, and the delicate wrinkles in the sand that were the tracks of receding waves, the breakers left the beach wet and shining for a moment, like plates of raw-colored copper, making one cry out with its flashing beauty. Then, at last, the ice lifted to unbroken blue water. Nothing between them and Europe saved rolling waves and wave-fressed like white plumes. The sea was of a diafemus blue, that shaded through a bold steel blue, and a lucent blue. He nammeled to a rich ultramarine, which absorbed and healed. The office-worn mind, the sails of tacking sloops were a blossom, seagulls swooped, a tall surf fisherman in a red flannel shirt, and shiny black hip-boots, drove out into the water, and cast with a long curve of his line. Cumulus clouds, whose pure white was shaded with a delicious golden tone, were baronio above and out on the skyline, steamers raced by. Round them was the warm intimacy of the dune sands beyond was infinite space, calling to them to be big and unafraid. Talking, falling into silence, touched with the mystery of sun and sea, they confessed youth's excited wonder about the world. Carl sitting cross-legged, rubbing his ankles, a springy figure in blue flannel and a daring tie, while Ruth in deep rose linen, her throat bright and bare, lay with her chin in her hands, a flush beneath the gentle bron of her cheeks, her white-clad ankles crossed under her skirt, slender against the gray sand, thoughtful of eye, lost in happiness. Someday, Carl was musing, your children and mine will say, you certainly lived in the most marvelous age in the world. Think of it. They talk about the romance of the Crusades and the Romans, and all that, but think of the miracles we've seen already. And we're only kids, aviation and the automobile and wireless and moving pictures and electric locomotives and electric cooking, and the use of radium in the X-ray, and the linotype, and the submarine and labor movement, the IWW, the syndication, and all that. Not that I know anything about the labor movement, but I suppose it's the most important of all. And Metnikov and Erlich, oh yes, and a good share of the development of the electric light and telephone and the phonograph, golly, in just a few years. Yes, Ruth added. The Montessori system of education? That's what I think is the most important. See that sailboat hot? Like a lily. And the late afternoon gold on those marshes. I think this salt breeze blows away all the bad roof. Oh, don't forget the attempts to cure cancer and consumption. So many big things starting right now while we're sitting here. Lord, what an age. Romance? Why, there's more romance in a wireless spark. Think of it. Little lonely wallowing steamer at night, out in the dark, slamming out a radio like 40,000 tigers spitting, and a man getting it here on Long Island. More romance than in all the galleons that ever sailed the purple tropics. Which they mostly ain't purple, but dirty green. Anything's possible now. World cools off? All right. We'll move on some other planet. It gets me going. Don't have to believe in ferries to give the imagination a job today. Glad I've been an aviator. Gives me some place in it all anyway. I'm glad to, Hawk. Terribly glad. The sun was crimsoning, the wind grew chilly. The beach was scattered with campfires. Their own little fires settled into compact live coals, which in the dark of the Dune Hollow spread over a million bits of quartz, a glow through which frequented the antique sea fleas. Carl's cigarette had the fragrance that comes only from being impregnated with the smoke of an outdoor fire, the waves were luric, and a group at the next fire-cruined old black joe, the two lovers curled in their nest, hand moved towards hand. Ruth whispered, it's sweet to be with all these people and fires. Will I really learn not to be supercilious? Honey, you supercilious democracy? No, the dickens. Let's not talk about theories any more, but just about us. Her hand tight-coiled as a snail-shell was closed in his. Your hand is asleep in my hand's arms, he whispered. The ball of his thumb pressed her thumb, and he whispered once more, see? Now our hands are kissing each other, we. We must watch them better. Your thumb is like a fairy. Again his thumb hardened with file and wrench and steering-wheel touched hers. It was startling like a kiss of real lips. Lightly she returned the finger kiss, answering differently. Our hands are mad, silly hands to think that Long Beach is a tropical jungle. You aren't angry at them? N-no. He cradled her head on his shoulder, his hand gripped her arm, till she cried, you hurt me. He kissed her cheek. She drew back as far as she could. Her hand against his chest held him away for a minute. Her defense suddenly collapsed and she was relaxed and throbbing in his arms. He slipped his fingers under her chin and turned up her face till he could kiss her lips. He had not known the lips of man and woman could be so long so stirring. Yet at first he was disappointed. This was, after all, but a touch. Just a touch as finger against finger. But her lips grew more intense against his, returning and taking the kiss, both of them giving and receiving at once. Wondering at himself for it, Carl thought of other things. He was amazed that while other lips were hot together, he worried as to what train Ruth thought to take after dinner. Yet with such thoughts conferring he was in an ecstasy beyond sorrow, praying that to her as to him. There was no pain but instead a rapture in the sting of her lips, as her teeth cut a little into them, a kiss, thing that to polite novels sketch as a second's unbodied bliss, how human it was, with teeth and lips to consider common as eating. And divine as a martyrdom, his lips were saying to her lips too vast and extravagant for a plain young man to venture upon in words. Lady to you I chant by reverence and faith everlasting in such unearthly music. As the angels use when with lambent wings they salute the marching dawn. Such lyric tributes and an emotion too subtle to fit into any words whatever his lips were saying. Then she was drawing back, rending the kiss and crying, You're almost smothering me. With his arms easily about her but with her weight against his shoulder. They and their love veiled from the basket parties by the darkness, he said criminally. See my arms are a little house for you, just as my hand was a little house for your hand once. My arms are the walls and your head and mine together are the roof. I love the little house. No. Say I love you. No. Say it. No. Please. Oh, hawk dear, I couldn't even if, just now, I do want to say it but I want to be fair. I am terribly happy to be in the house of hawk's arms. I'm not afraid of it, even out here in the dark dunes which Aunt Elmo wouldn't somehow approve. But I do want to be fair to you and I'm afraid I'm not when I let you love me this way. I don't want to hurt you ever. Perhaps it's egotistical for me but I'm afraid you would be hurt if I let you kiss me and then afterward I decided I didn't love you at all. But can't you some day? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure I know what love is. I'm not sure it's love that makes me happy as I really am when you kiss me. Perhaps I'm just curious and experimenting. I was quite conscious when you kissed me then, quite conscious and curious, and once I caught myself wondering for a half second what train we take. I was ashamed of that. But I wasn't ashamed of taking metal notes and learning what these kisses that we mentioned so glibly really are. Just experimenting, you see? And if you are too serious about our kiss, it wouldn't be at all fair to you. I'm glad you're frank, Blessed, and I guess I understand pretty well how you feel. But, after all, I'm fairly simple about such things. Blessed, blessed. I don't really know a thing. But I love you. His arms were savage again. He kissed her. Kissed her lips. Kissed the hull of her throat. Then he lifted her from the ground and would not set her down till she had kissed him back. You frighten me a lot then, she said. Did the child want to impress Ruth with his mighty strength? Well, she shall be impressed, Ock. I do hope. I do hate myself for not knowing my mind. I will try not to experiment. I want you to be happy. I do want to be honest with you if I'm honest with you. Will you try not to be too impatient till I do know just what I want? Well, I'm sick of the modern lover. I talk and talk about love. It seems as though Ritaie lost the power to be simple, like the old ballads. Or weren't the ballad people really simple, either? You say you are, so I think you will have to run away with me. But not till after dinner. Come. The moon was rising, swinging hands. They trumped towards the boardwalk. The crunch of their feet in the sand was the rhythmic spell of a magician, which she broke when she sighed. Should I have let you kiss me out there in the wild? Will you re-expect me after it? Princess, you're all the respect there is in the world. It seems so strange. We were absorbed in war and electricity and then— Love is war and electricity or else it's dull. And I don't think we too will ever get dull. If you do decide, you can love me. Will wander, cabin in Rockies with forty mountains for a garden's fence, and an eagle for our suburban train. And South Sea Island silhouetted sunset. Look, that moon! I always imagine it so clearly when I hear Hawaiian singers on the Victrola and a Hawaiian beach with fireflies in the jungle behind the phosphorus and sea in front of them and native girls dancing in garlands. Yes, in Paris boulevards, mysterious castle in the Austrian mountains with a hidden treasure in dark, secret dungeons and heavy iron armor and then bing, a brand new prairie town in Saskatchewan or Dakota with brand new sunlight on the fresh pine shacks and beyond the town the plains with brand new grass rolling. But seriously, Hawk, would you want to go to all those places if you were married? Would you practically? You know, even rich globetrotters go to the same sorts of places mostly and we wouldn't even be rich, would we? No, just comfortable, maybe five thousand a year. Well, would you really want to keep on going and take your wife? Or would you settle down like the rest and spend money so you could keep in shape to make money to spend to keep in shape? Seriously, I would keep going if I had the right girl to go with me. It would be mighty important which one though, I guess, and by that I mean you. Once when I quit flying I thought that maybe I'd stop wandering and settle down, maybe even marry a Girolium kind of a girl, but I was meant to hike for the hiking's sake. Only not alone any more, I need you. We'd go and go, no limit. And we wouldn't just go places either. We'd be different things. We'd be Connecticut farmers one year and run a mine in Mexico the next. And loaf in Paris the next. We had the money. Sometimes you almost tempt me to like you. Like me now? No, not now, but here's the boardwalk. Where's those steps? Oh yes, gee. I hate to leave the water without having a hand of swim. Wish we'd had one. Dairy to go waiting. Oh, odd-eyed, too. Do you think waiting would be silly and nice? Course you ought. Come on. Don't you remember how the sand feels between your toes? The moon brooded upon the long waves and questured among the ridges of Driftwood for pearly shells. The pools left by the waves were enticing. Ruth retreated into the shelter of the boardwalk, and came shyly out, clutching her skirts, her feet and ankles, silver in the night. The sand does feel good, but it's getting colder and colder. She wailed as she cautionally advanced into the water. I'll think up punishments for you. You're not only cause me to be cold, but you've made me abominably self-conscious. Don't be self-conscious, bless. We're just children exploring. He splashed out, coat off, trousers rolled up to knees above his thin muskier legs, galloping along the edge of the water like a large puppy, while she danced after him. They were still to the persuasive beauty of the night. Music from the topad jeweled hotels far down the beach, woven self into the peace on land and sea. A fish lying on shore was turned by the moon into ivory with carbon scales, before them reaching to the ancient towers of England and France, and the islands of the sea, was the whispering water, a tenderness that understood everything, made allowance for everything in her and in himself, folded its wings around him as he scanned her and stood like a slender statue of silver. Dark hair moon brightened, white arms holding her skirts, white legs round, which the spent waves sparkled with unworldly fire. He waited over to her and timidly kissed the edge of her hair. She rubbed her cheek against his. Now we must run. She said. She quickly turned back to the shadow of the boardwalk, to draw on her stockings and shoes, leaning on the sand like the supple maid of the ballads which she had been envying. They trapped along the boardwalk, with heels clicking like cast nets, conscious that the world was hushed in a night's old enchantment. As they had answered to companionship with the humble picnic parties among the dunes, so now they founded amusing to dine among the semi-great and semi-motorist at the Nassau. Ruth had a distinct pleasure when T. Wendler, horse fancier, aviation enthusiast, president of the first state bank of Sacramento, came up, reminded Carl of their acquaintanceship at the Oakland-Berkeley arrow-meat, and begged Ruth and Carl to join him, his wife and Senator Levert for coffee. As they waited for their train quiet with laughter, Ruth remarked, It was jolly to play with the personages. You haven't seen much of the frivolous side of me, it's pretty important. You don't know how much soul satisfaction I get out of dancing all night and playing tennis, with flannel-olfs and eating, Moroia's glacis, and chatting in a box at the opera till I spoil the entire evening for all the German music lovers, and talking to all the nice doggies from the tennis and racket club whenever I get invited to Piping Rock or Meadowbrook or any other country club that has ancestors. I want you to take a warning. Did you really miss Piping Rock much today? No. But I might tomorrow, and I might get horribly bored in our cabin in Rockies and hate the stony old peaks, and long for tea and scandal in the corner at the Ritz. Then we'd hike on to San Francisco, have tea at the St. Francis or the Fairmont or the Palace, then beat it for your Hawaii and Fireflies in the Bush. Perhaps, but suppose, just suppose, we were married and suppose the tour-car didn't go so awfully well, and we had to be poor and couldn't go running away, but had to stick in one beastly city flat and economize. It's all very well to talk of working things out together, but think of not being able to have decent clothes and going to the movies every night. When I see some of the girls who used to be so pretty and gay, and they went and married poor men, now they are so worn and tired, bedraggled, and perambulator-ness, and they worry about bitties and furnace and cabbages, and their hair is just scratched together with the dubbest hats. I'd rather be an idle rich. If we get stuck like that, I'd sell out and we'd hike to the mountain cabin anyway. Say, go up in the Santa Lucia's and keep wild bees, and probably get stung in the maybe subtle senses of the word. And I'd have to cook and wash. That would be fun as fun, but to have to do it? Ruth, honey, let's not worry about it now, anyway. I don't believe there's much danger, and don't let's spoil this bully day. It's been sweet. I won't croak any more. There's the train coming. End of Chapter 37 While the New York June grew hotter and hotter and stickier and stickier, while the crowds crammed together in the subway in a jam as unlovely as a pile of tomato cans and a public dump heap, grew pale and a damp heat, Carl labored in his office, and almost every evening called on Ruth, who was waiting for the first of July, when she was to go to Cousin Patton Curse in the Berkshires, Carl tried to bring her coolness. He ate only poached eggs on toast or soup and salad for dinner. That he might not be torpid. He gave her moss roses with drops of water like dew on these stems. They sat out on the box stoop, and unfriendly New York Street, adopting for a time the frank neighborliness of a village, and exclaimed over every breeze. They talked about the charm of forty degrees below zero, that is, sometimes. Their favorite topic was themselves. She still insisted that she was not in love with him. Who to date the idea of being engaged? She might someday go off and get married to someone, but engaged? Never. She finally agreed that they were engaged to be engaged to be engaged. One night, when they sought the windy house top, she twisted his arms about her and almost went to sleep, with her hair smooth beneath his chin. He sat motionless till his arms ached with the strain, till her shoulders seemed to stick into his like a bar of iron. Glad that she trusted him enough to doze into a warm slumber in the familiarity of his arms. Yet he dared not kiss her throat, as he had done at Long Beach. As lovers do, Carl had thought intently of her warning that she did not care for clothes dancing country clubs. Ruth would have been caressingly surprised had she known the thought and worried consciousness he gave to the problem of planning parties for her. Ideas were always popping up in the midst of his work, and never giving him rest till he had noted them down on memo papers. He carried them about on the backs of envelopes. Such notes as these. Join country club. Take R. Dancers there? Baskets of fruit for R. Invite Mason W. Lunch. Organized Territor NY2SF. Newspaper men on tour probably Forbes. Remember Walter's new altitude, sixteen thousand nine hundred and fifty-four. Hard to ask to Ruth. Rim. Country. Sea. He did get a card to the Peace Waters Country Club and take Ruth to a dance there. She seemed to know every other member and danced eloquently. He took her to the Josiah Bagby's for dinner, to the first night of a summer musical comedy. But he was still the stranger in New York and parties are not to be had by tipping waiters and buying tickets. Half of the half-dozen affairs which they attended were of her inspiration. He was invited to go yachting at Larchmont, motoring, swimming on Long Island with friends of herself and her brothers. One evening that strikes into Carl's memory of those days of the Pace du Tondre is the evening on which Phil Donnellaby insisted on celebrating a Yale baseball victory by taking them to dinner in the oak room of the Ritz Carlson. Under whose alabaster lights among the cosmopolites they dined elaborately and smoked slim imported cigarettes. The thin music of violins took them into the lonely gray groves of the land of wandering tunes till Phil began to talk, disclosing to them a devotion to beauty, a satirical sense of humor, and a final acceptance of Carl as his friend. A hundred other parties Carl planned while dining alone at inferior restaurants. A hundred times he took ten cent dessert instead of an exciting fifteen-cent strawberry shortcake to save money for those parties. Out of such sore thoughts of nickel coins is built a love, enduring and even tolerable before breakfast coffee. Yet always to him their real life was in simple John's out of doors, arranged without considering other people. Her father seemed glad of that. He once said to Carl, giving him a cigar, You children, it better not let Aunt Emma know that you are enjoying yourselves as you want to. How is the automobile business doing? It would be pleasant to relate that Carl was inspired by love to put so much of that celebrated American quality punch into his work that the Torah car was sweeping the market, or to picture with quietly falling tears the pathos of his business failure at the time when he most needed money. As a matter of fact the Torah car affairs were going as, in real life, most businesses go just fairly well. A few cars were sold, there were prospects of other sales. The Vansale Corporation neither planned to drop the Torah car nor elected our young hero as Vice President of the Corporation. In June, Gertrude Cowles and her mother left for Jerome. Carl had since Christmas seen them about once a month. Gertie had at first represented an unhappy old friend to whom he had to be kind. Then she seemed never to be able to give up the desire to see him tied down, rather by her affection or by his work. Carl came to regard her as an irritating foe of the freedom which he prized, the more because of the increasing bondage of the office. The last stage was pure indifference to her. Gertie was either a chance for simple sweetness which he failed to take, or she was a peril which he had escaped according to one's view over. But in any case he had missed or escaped her as a romantic hero escaped fire, flood, and plot. She met nothing to him, never could again. Life had flowed past her as except in novels with plots. Most lives do flow past temporary and fortuitous points of interest. Gertie was farther from him now than those dancing Hawaiian girls whom Ruth and he had hoped some day to see. Yet by her reaching out for his liberty Gertie had made him prize Ruth. The first of July, 1913, Ruth left for Patoncurs, Country House, and Berkshire's, near Pitfield. Carl wrote her every day. He told her, apropos of Torah cars and roof gardens and aviation records and Sunday motorcycling with Bobby Winslow, that he loved her. He even made, at the end of his letters, the old fashion lines of crosses to represent kisses. Whenever he hinted how much he missed her, how much he wanted to feel her startle in his arms. He wondered what she would read out of it. Wondered if she would put the letter under her pillow. She answered every other day with friendly letters, droll in her descriptions of the people she met. His call of love she did not answer directly. But she admitted she missed her play times. And once she wrote him, late on a cold Berkshire night, with a black rain and wind like a baying blood hound, it is so still in my room and so wild outside that I am frightened. I have tried to make myself smart in a blue silk dressing gown, and a tarnished lace breakfast cap, and I will write neatly with a quill pin from the Mayfair. But just the same, I am a lonely baby, and I want you here to comfort me. Would you be too shocked to come? I would put a knife a whole blanket on my bed, and a paper mache, turkey stagger, and head of a fellow over my bed, and pretend it was a cozy corner, that is, of course, if they still have paper mache ornaments. I suppose they still have in Harlem and Brooklyn. We would sit very quietly in two wicker chairs on either side of my fireplace and listen to the swollen brook and ravine just below my window. But with no hawk here, the wind keeps wailing that pan is dead, that there won't ever again be any sunshine in the valley, dear. It really isn't safe to be writing like this, after reading it, you will suppose that it's just you that I am lonely for, but of course, I'd be glad for Phil or Puggy Krillin, or your nice solemn Walter McManus, or any suitor who would make foolish noises and hide me from the wind's haunting. I will seal this up and not send it in the morning, your playmate Ruth. Here is one small kiss on the forehead, but remember, it is just because of the wind and rain. Presumably she did mail the letter, at least she received it. He carried her letters in his side pocket of his coat, till the envelopes were worn at the edges, nearly covered with smudged pencil notes about things he wanted to keep in mind, and would, of course, have kept in mind without making notes. He kept finding new meanings in her letters. He wanted them to indicate that she loved him. And any ambiguous phrase signified, successively, that she loved, laughed at, loathed, and loved him. Once he got up from bed to take another look at her letter and see whether she had said, I hope you had a dear, good time at the Explorers Club dinner, or I hope you had a good time, dear. Carl was entirely sincere in his worried investigation of her state of mind. He knew that both Ruth and he had the instability as well as the initiative of a vagabond. So quickly could either of them break love's alliance, if bored. Carl himself, being anything but bored, was as faithfully devoted as the least enterprising of moral young men. He forgot Gertie, did not write to Ishtranage, the artist, and when the van Zale office got a new telephone girl, a tall, langurious brunette, with shadowy eyes and fine cheeks, he did not even smile at her. But was Ruth so bound? She still refused to admit even that she could fall in love. He knew that Ruth and he were not romantic characters, but everyday people with a tendency to quarrel and demand and be slack, he knew that even if the rose-dream came true there would be drab spots on it. And now that she was away with Lennox and Polo to absorb her, could the gauche ignorant Carl Erickson that he privately knew himself to be retain her interest? Late in July he received an invitation to spend a weekend, Friday to Tuesday with Ruth, at the Patton Currers. The Brief Trip to the Brickshires was longer than any he had taken these nine months. He looked forward, adamantly, to the journey, remembering details of travel, such trivial touches as the over-brass wash bowls of the Pullman sleeper, and how, when the water is running out, the inside of the bowl is covered with a whitey film of water, which swiftly peels off. He recalled the cracked white paint of a steamer's ventilator, the abruptly stopping of the Foghorn. The vast smoky roof of a Philadelphia train shed clamorous with the train-bells of a strange town giving a sense of mystery to the traveller stepping from the car for a moment to stretch his legs, an ugly junction station platform, with resin oozing from the heavy planks in the spring sun, the polished pinnacle of the SS Panama. He expected keen joy in new fields and hills, yet all the way north he was trying to hold the train back. In a few minutes now he would see Ruth, and at this hour he did not even know definitely that he liked her. He could not visualize her. He could see the sleeve of her blue corduroy jacket. Her eyes he could not see. She was a stranger. Had he idealized her? He was apologetic for his unflattering doubt. But of what sort was she? The train was stopping at her station with rattling windows and a dispiring grind of wheels. Carl seized his overnight bag in suitcase with fictitious enthusiasm. He was in a panic. Emerging from the safe, impersonal train upon the platform, he saw her. She was waving to him from a one-seated veyotin, come alone to meet him. And she was the adorable, the perfect comrade. He thought jubilantly as he strode along the platform. She's wonderful, lover, should say I do. When they drove under the elms past white cottages in the village green, while they were talking so lightly and properly that none of the New England gossips could be wounded in the sense of propriety, Carl was learning her anew. She was an outdoor girl now in low-coloured blouse and white linen skirt. He rejoiced in her modulating laugh, the contrast of blue eyes and dark brows under her Panama hat, her full dark hair, with a lock sun-drenched her bare throat, boisly brown, feminally smooth, the sweet, clean, fine-textured girl flesh, of the hollow of one shoulder faintly to be seen in the shadow of her broad drooping collar. One hand, with a curious ring of rose quartz and steel points, excitedly pounding a tattoo of greeting with a whip-handle, her spirited irreverences regarding the people they passed, chatter which showed the world transformed as though ruby glass, a Ruth radiant, understanding his comrade. She was all that he had believed during her absence and doubted while he was coming to her. But he had no time to repent of his doubt. Now, so busy was he exalting to himself, slipping a hand under her arm. Love her, I should say I do. The carriage rolled out of town with the rhythmic creak of a country buggy. Climbed a hill range by means of the black oily state road and turned upon a sandy side road, a brook ran beside them. Sunny fields alternated with wood-sleeved floored, quiet, holy, miraculous after the weary city. Below was a vista of downward sloping fields divided by creeper-covered stone walls. Then a sun-meshed valley set with ponds like shining glass dishes on a green tablecloth. Beyond all, a long reach of hillsides covered with unbroken fleecy forests, like green down. So much unspoiled country in, yet there's people herded in subways, complained Carl. They drove along a level road lined with wild raspberry bushes and followed with thin-jade light from the shading maples. They gossiped of the patent curves and the brick-shars, of the difference between the professional English weakender and the American who still has something of the naive provincial delight of going visiting of New York and the Dunaways, but their talk lulled to a nervous hush. It seemed to him that a great voice cried from the clouds. It is Beside Ruth that you are sitting, Ruth whose arm you feel. In silence he caught her left hand. As he slowly drew back her hand and the reins with it, to stop the ambling horse, the two children, stared straight at each other, hungry, tremendously afraid. Their kiss not only their lips, but their spirits met without one reserve. A straining long kiss, as though they were forcing their lips into one body of living flame, a kiss in which his eyes were blind to the enchantment of the jade light about them. His ears deaf to brook in rustling forest. All his senses were concentrated on the close warmth of her misty lips, the curve of her young shoulder, her woman's sweetness and longing. Then his senses forgot even her lips and floated off into a blurred trance of bodyless happiness. The kiss of Nirvana. No foreign thought or trains or people or the future came now to drag him to earth. It was the most devoted, most sacred moment he had known. As he became again conscious of lips and cheek and brave shoulders and of her wide-spread fingers gripping his upper arm, she was slowly breaking the spell of the kiss. But again and again she kissed him, hasty, savage tokens of rejoicing possession. She cried, I do know now, I do love you. Blessed. In silence they stared into the woods while her fingers smoothed his knuckles. Her eyes were faint with tears in the magic jade light. I didn't know a kiss could be like that. She marveled presently. I would have believed Selfish Ruth couldn't give all of herself. Yes, it was the whole universe. Oh dear, I wasn't experimenting that time. Glad, glad. To know I can really love. Not just curiosity. I've wanted you so all day I thought four o'clock would ever come. Oh darling, my dear, dear heart. I don't even know for sure I'd like you when you came. Sometimes I wanted terribly to have your silly, foolish, childish, pale hair on my breast. Such hair. Ladies hair. But sometimes I didn't want to see you at all. And I was frightened at the thought of your coming. And I fussed around in the house till Mrs. Pat laughed at me and accused me of being in love. And I denied it. And she was right. Blessed, I was scared to death all the way up here. I didn't think you could be as wonderful as I knew you were. That sounds mixed but blessed, blessed. You really love me? You really love me? It's hard to believe I've actually heard you say it. And I love you so completely. Everything. I love you. That is such an adorable spot to kiss just below your ear, she said. Darling, keep me safe in the little house of arms, for there's only room for you and me. No room for offices or hand-emma's. But now, we must hurry on. The wagon had been coming along the road. As they entered the Rhododemron line drive of the Peyton Kerr place, Carl remembered a detail. Not important, but usual. Oh yes, he said. I've forgotten to propose. Need you, proposals sound like contracts. And all those other dull forms. Not like that kiss. See, there's Pat Kerr, Jr., waving at us. Can you just make him out? There on the upper balcony? He's a darling as child with ash-colored hair cut dutch down. I wonder if you didn't look like him when you were a boy. With your light hair? Not a chance. I was a grubby kid, made noises. Gee, what a fully placed in the house. Will you marry me? Yes, I will. It is a dear place. Mrs. Pat is... when? Always fussing over it. She plants narcissists and crocuses in the woods. So you find them growing wild. I like those awnings against the white walls. May I consider that we are engaged then, Miss Winslow? Engaged for the next marriage? Oh, no. Not engaged, dear. Don't you know it's one of my principles? But look. Not to be engaged, Hock. Everybody brings the cunning old jokes out of the mothballs when you're engaged. I'll marry you, but... Marry me next month, August. Nope. September? Nope. Please, Ruthie, I... yes, September. Nice month. September is autumn, harvest moon, and apples to swipe. Come on, September. Well, perhaps September we'll see, oh, Hock dear. Can you conceive of us actually sitting here and solemnly discussing being married? Us? The babes in the woods? And I've only known you three days or so, seems to me. Well, as I was saying, perhaps I'll marry you in September. Hmm, frightens me to think of it, frightens me, and oz me, and mazes me, and to death all at once. That is, I shall marry you unless you take to wearing pearl-grade derbies or white evening ties with black edging, or kill mason in a duel, or do something equally disgraceful, but engaged, I will not be. And we'll put the money for a diamond ring into a big Davenport. Are we going to be dreadfully poor? Oh, not pawn-shop poor. I made Vinzial boost my salary last week, and with my tour-car stock I'm getting a little over four thousand dollars a year. Is that lots or little? Well, it will give us a decent apartment and a nearly decent maid, I guess, and if the tour-car keeps going we can beat it off for a year, wandering after maybe three or four years. I hope so. Here we are, that's Mrs. Pat waiting for us. The Pat and Kerr house, set near the top of the highest hill in the range of the Berkshars, stood out white, against a slope of crisp green and old manor house of long lines and solid beams, with striped awnings of red and white, and in front of brick terrace with basket chairs, a swinging couch, and a wicker tea table, already welcoming spread with a service of royal Dalton. From the terrace one saw miles of valley and hills and villages strung on Rambling River. The valley was a golden bowl filled with the peace of afternoon, a world of sun and listening woods. On the terrace waited a woman of thirty-five, of clever face, a bit worn in the edges, carefully covered hair and careless white blouse with a tweed walking skirt. She was gracefully holding out her hand greeting Carl. It's terribly good of you to come clear out into our wilderness. She was interrupted by the bouncing appearance of a stocky, handsome, red-faced, full-chin, curly black-haired man of forty, in riding breeches and boots and a silk shirt, with him an excited, small boy in robbers. Pat and Kerr senior and junior. Here you are, senior, observantly remarked. Glad to see you, Erickson. You and Ruthie have been a deuce of a time coming up from town. Holding hands along the road, eh? Lord these aviators. Pat. Animal. Protested Mrs. Kerr and Ruth simultaneously. All right, I'll be good. Saw you fly at Nassau Boulevard, Erickson. Turned my horn loose and hooded till they thought I was a militant. Like Ruthie here. Lord, what flying, what flying? I'd like to see you race wintermen, verdines, Ruthie. Will you show Mr. Erickson where his room is? Has poor old Pat got to go and drag a servant away from reading? Town topics, eh? I will, Pat, said Ruth. I will, Daddy, cried Pat, junior. No, I'm a son. I guess maybe Ruthie had better do it. There's a certain look in her eyes. Ball Jake. Salamander. Ruth and Karl passed through the wide Colonial Hall with mahogany tables and portraits of the Curves and the sort of Colonel Patton. At the far end was an open door, and a glimpse of an old-fashioned garden radiant with hollyhocks and canterbury and bells. It was a world of utter content. As they climbed the curving stairs Ruth tucked her arm in his saying, Now do you see why I won't be engaged? Pat Kerr is the best chum in the world, yet he finds even a possible engagement wildly humorous, like mothers-in-law or poets or falling on your ear. But gee, Ruth, are you going to marry me? You little child, my little boy-hawk. Of course I'm going to marry you. Do you think I would miss my chance of a cabin in the Rockies? My famous hawk, what everybody cheered at Nassau Boulevard? She opened the door of his room with a differential. Thy chambers, my lord. Come down quickly, she said. We mustn't miss a moment of these days. I am frank with you about how glad I am to have you here. You must be good to me. You will prize my love. A little, won't you? Before he could answer, she had run away. After half-homecomings and false-homecomings, the adventure had really come home. He inspected the gracious room, its chintz hangings, four-poster bed, low-wicker chair by the fireplace, fresh Cherokee roses on the mantel, a room of cheerfulness and open space. He stared into the woods where a cool light lay on moss and fern. He did not need to remember Ruth's kisses for each breath of hilltop air, each emerald of moss, each shining mahogany surface in the room, repeated to him that he had found the grail, whose other name is Love. Saturday they loafed over breakfast, the sun licking the treetops and the ravine outside the windows, and they motored with the curves to Lenox, returning through the darkness. Till midnight they talked on the terrace, they loafed again the next morning, and let the fresh air dissolve the office grime which had been coating his spirit. They were so startingly original as to be simple-hearted country-lovers, in the afternoon declining Kerr's offer of a car, and rambled off on bicycles. From a rise they saw water gleaming among the trees. The sullen green of pine set off the silvery green of barley, and an orchard climbed the next rise. The smoky shadow of another hill range promised long, cool forest roads. Grows were flying overhead. Going where they would, the aviator and the girl who read psychology modern lovers stood hand in hand as though the age of machinery were a myth, as though he were a piping minstrel and shea shepherdess. Before them was the open road and all around them the hum of bees. A close, listless heat held Monday afternoon, even on the hilltop. The clay tennis court was baking, the worn bricks of the terrace reflected a furnace glow. The Kerr's had disappeared for a nap, Carl lounging with Ruth on this swinging couch in the shade, thought of the slaves in New York offices and tenements. Then, because he would himself be back in an office next day, he let the glare of the valley soothe him with its wholesome heat. Certainly would like a swim, he remarked. Couldn't we bike down to Fisher's Pond or maybe take the ford? Let's, but there's no bath house. Put a bathing suit under your dress, sun'll dry it in no time after the swim. As you command, my liege. And she ran in to change. They motored down to Fisher's Pond, which is a lake, and stopped in a natural wooded opening, like a dim-lighted green room. From its stretch the enamored lake, the further side reflecting unbroken woods, the nearer water-edge was exquisite in its cleanness. They saw perched fantastically floating over the pale sand-bottom. Among scattered reeds, whose watery green stalks were like the thin columns of a dancing hall for small fishes. The surface of the lake satiny as the palm of a girl's hand, broken to tiniest ripples against white quartz petals on the hot shore. Cool flashing golden sanded, the lake coaxed them out of their forest room. A lot like the Minnesota lakes, only smaller, said Carl. I'm going right in. About ready for a swim? Come on. I'm afraid she suddenly plumped on the earth and hugged her skirts about her ankles. Well, I'm blessed. What are you scared of? No sharks here, and no undertow, nice white sand. Oh, Hock, I was silly. I felt I was such an independent modern woman. And I aren't. I've always said it was silly for girls to swim in a woman's bathing suit, skirts are so cumbersome. So I put on a boy's bathing suit under my dress, and I'm terribly embarrassed. Why, blessed. Well, I guess you'll have to design. His voice was somewhat shaky. Awful scare to Carl. Yes, I thought I wouldn't be with you, but I'm self-conscious as can be. Well, gee, I don't know. Of course, well, I'll jump in and you can decide. He peeled off his white plantles and stood in his blue bathing suit. Not statue-like, not very brown now, but trim-waisted, shapely armed, wonderful clean of neck and jaw. With a wee, he dashed into the water and swam out, overhand. As he turned over in glass back, his heart caught to see her standing on the creamy sand. A shy, elfin figure. The boy's bathing suit of black wool. A woman and slim boy in one. Silken, throated, and graceful limbed. Curiously smaller than one dressed. Her white skirt and blouse lay tumbled about her ankles. She raised rosy arms to hide her flesh face and her eyes, as she cried, Don't look! You obediently swam on with a tenderness more poignant than longing. He heard a slashing behind him and turned again to see her racing through the water. Those soft, yet not narrow shoulders rose and fell sturdily under the wet black wool. Her eyes shone, and she was all comrade-boy, save for her dripping, splendid hair. Singing, Come on, lazy! She headed across the pond, he swam beside her, reveling in the well-being of cool water and warm air. Till they reached the solemn shade beneath the trees on the other side and floated in the dark, still water, splashing idle hands, gazing into forest hollows, spying upon the brisk business of squirrels among the acorns. Back at the Greenwood Room, Ruth wrapped her sailor blouse about her, and they squatted like unself-conscious children on the beach. While from a field a distant locust fiddled his august vandango, and in flame-colored pride an oriole went by, fresh sky, sunfish-like tropic shells in the translucent water, arching reeds, dipping their olive-green points in the water, wavelets, rushing against a gray, neglected rowboat. And beside him Ruth. Musingly they built a castle of sand, an hour of understanding so complete that it made the heart melancholy. When he sighed, giddily, come on, blessed, we're dry now. It seemed that they could never again know such rapt tranquility. Yet they did, for that evening when they stood on the terrace, trying to forget that he must leave her and go back to the lonely city in the morning, when the mist reached chilly tentacles up from the valley, they kissed a shy goodbye, and Carl knew that life's real adventure is not adventuring, but finding the playmate with whom to quest life's meaning. End of Chapter 39 Chapter 40 of Trill of the Hawk The sleeper-fox recording is in the public domain recording by Mike Venditti. Trill of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis Chapter 40 After six festival months of married life, in April or May 1914, the happy Mrs. Carl Erickson did not have many modern theories of marriage in general, though it was her theory that she had such theories. Like a majority of intelligent men and women, Ruth was in her rebellion against the mechanical marriage of slipper mourning and obedience. Emphatic but vague. She was of precise opinion regarding certain details of marriage, but in general as inconsistent as her library. It is a human characteristic to be belligerently sure as to whether one prefers plush or tan upholstery on car seats, but not to consider whether government ownership of railroads will improve upholstering. To know with certainty of perception that it is a bore to have one's husband laugh at one's petty economy of matches or string or ice, but to be blandly willing to leave all theories of polygamy, polandery, monogamy, and veritism to the clever Russian Jews. As regards details, Ruth definitely did want a bedroom of her own, a desire which her mother would have regarded as somehow immodest. She definitely did want shaving and hair brushing kept in the background. She did not want Carl the lover to drift into Carl the husband. She did not want him to lose touch with other people, and she wanted to keep the spice of madness, which from the first had seasoned her comradeship. These things she delightfully had in May 1914. They were largely due to her own initiative, Carl's drifting theories of social structure, concerned for the most part the wages of workmen and the ridiculousness of class distinctions, reared in the farming district, the amateur college, the garage, and the hangar. He had not, despite imagination, devoted two seconds to such details as the question of whether there was freedom and repose. Not to speak of a variety of tastes as regards to opening windows and sleeping diagonally across a bed and having separate bedrooms, much though he had been persuaded to read of modern fiction. His race still believed that marriage bells and roses were the proper portions of marriage to think about. It was due to Ruth, too, that they had so amiable a flat. Carl had been made careless above surroundings by years of hotels and furnished rooms. There was less real significance for him in the beauty of his first home than in the fact that they, too, had a bathroom of their own, that he no longer had to go, clad in a drab bathrobe, laden with shaving materials and a towel and talcum powder and a broken hand mirror and a toothbrush, like a perambulating drugstore toilet counter, down a boarding-house hall to that modified hall bedroom with a tin tub, which his doctor landlord had called a bathroom. Pictures, it must be admitted, give a room an air pleasant it is to sit in large chairs by fireplaces and feel yourself a landed gentleman. But nothing filled Carl with a more delicate and truly spiritual satisfaction than having a porcelain tub, plenty of hot water and the privilege of leaving his shaving brush in the Erickson bathroom with a fair certainty of finding it there when he wanted to shave in a hurry. But careless of surroundings or not, Carl was stirred when on their return from honeymooning in the Adirondacks, he carried Ruth over the threshold and they stood together in the living-room of their home. It was a room to live in and laugh in. The woodwork was white enameled, the walls covered with gray Japanese paper. There were no porters between living-room and dining-room and small hall, so that the three rooms with their light-reflecting walls gave an effect of spaciousness to rather a cramped and old-fashioned apartment. There were not many pictures and no bric-a-brac, yet the rooms were not bare, but clean and trim and distinguished. With the large Davenport and the wing-chair, chintz cushioned brown willow-chairs, and Ruth's upright piano, excellent mahogany, and a few good rugs, there were only two or three vases and they genuinely intended for holding flowers, and there was a bare mantelpiece that rested the eyes over the fuzzy clean gas-log. The pictures were chosen because they led the imagination on. Etchings and color prints, largely by unknown artists, like windows looking on delightful country. The chairs assembled naturally in groups. The whole unit of three rooms suggested people talking. It was home, first and last, though it was one cell in one layer of a seven-story building. On a street walled in with such buildings in a city which lined up more than three hundred of such streets from its southern tip to its northern limit along the Hudson, and threw in a couple of million people in Brooklyn and the Bronx. They lived in the nineties between Broadway and Riverside Drive, a few blocks from the Winslow House in distance, but one generation away in matter of decoration. The apartment house itself was completely old-fashioned, with an intermittent elevator run by an intermittent negro youth who gave most of his time to the telephone switchboard and mysterious duties in the basement, also with a downstairs hall that was narrow and carpeted and lined with offensively dark wood. But they could see the Hudson from their living-room on the sixth floor at the back of the house. The agent assured them that probably not till the end of time would there be anything but low private houses between them and the river. They were not haunted by Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow, and Ruth, who had long been oppressed by late Victorian brick-and-brack and American Louis XV furniture, so successfully adopted elimination as the key note that there was not one piece of furniture bought for the purpose of indicating that Mr. and Mrs. Carl Erickson were well to do. She dared to tell friends who, before the wedding inquired what she wanted, that checks were welcome and need not be monogrammed. Even Aunt Emma had been willing to send a check, provided they were properly married at St. George's Church. Consequently, their six rooms showed a remarkable absence of such usual wedding-presence as prints of the smugly smiling and euphoric Mona Lisa. Three muffin stands in three degrees of marquerie, three electro-royalitis, four punch bowls, three sets of almond dishes, a pair of bird carvers that did not carve, a bust of Dante in New Art Marble, or a deluxe set of de mosupan translated by a worthy lady with a French lexicon. Instead, they bought what they wanted, rather an important thing to do. But, like most importances, thoroughly worthwhile. The living room was their own. Carl's bedroom was white and simple, though spotty with aviation metals and silver cups, and model planes sketchily rendered in gold, and signed photographs of aviators. Ruth's bedroom was also plain and white in dull Japanese gray, a simple room with that simplicity of hand embroidery, real lace, and fine linen appreciated by exclamatory women friends. She taught Carl to say, dog, instead of dog, for dog. Wata, instead of wata? For water. Whether she was more correct in her pronunciation or not, does not matter, New York, said dog, and it amused him just then to be very eastern. She taught him the theory of house lighting. Carl had no financial objection to unshaded incandescent bulbs glowing from the ceiling, but he came to like the shaded electric bulbs which Ruth installed in the living room. When she introduced four candles as sole lighting of the dining room table, however, he grumbled lovably, had his inability to see what he was eating. She retired to her bedroom, and he huffily went out to get a cigar. At the cigar counter, he repented of all the unkind things he had ever done or could possibly do, and returned to eat humble pie, and eat it by candlelight. Inside of two weeks, one of the things which Carl had always known was that the harmonious candlelight brought them closer together at dinner. The teaching in this period of adjustments was not all on Ruth's part. It was due to Carl's insistence that she tried to discover what her theological beliefs really were. She admitted that only at Twilight Vespers, with a gale of violins in an arched roof, did she really worship in church. She did not believe that priests and ministers who seemed to be ordinary men as regards earthly things had any extraordinary knowledge of the mysteries of heaven. Yet she took it for granted that she was a good Christian. She rarely disagreed with the Dunlubbies who were Catholics or her aunt Emma who regarded anything but High Church Episcopalianism as bad form, or her brother Mason, who was an uneasy Unitarian or Carl, who was an unaggressive agnostic. Of the four it was Carl who seemed to have the greatest interest in religions. He blurred out such monologues as, I wonder if it isn't pure egotism that makes a person believe that the religion he is born to is the best. My country, my religion, my wife, my business. We think that whatever is ours is necessarily sacred, or in other words that we are gods. And then we call it faith and patriotism. The Hindu or the Christian is equally ready to prove to you, and mind you he may be a wise old man with a beard, that his national religion is obviously the only one. Find out what you yourself really do think, and if you turn out a sun-worshipper or a hard-shell Baptist. Why, good luck. If you don't think for yourself then you're admitting that your theory of happiness is the old dog asleep in the sun. And maybe he is happier than a student. But I think you like to experiment with life. His arguments were neither original nor especially logical. They were largely given to him by Bone Stillman, Professor Frazier, and Chance Paragraph since Stray Radical magazines, but to Ruth politely reared in a house with three maids, where it was as tactless to discuss God as to discuss sex. His deferences seemed terrifyingly new. She was not the first to had complacently gone to church after reading Bernard Shaw, but she did try to follow Carl's loose reasoning to find out what she thought and what the spiritual fashions of her neighborhood made her think, she thought. The process gave her many anxious hours of alternating impatience with fixed religious dogmas and loneliness for the comfortable refuge of a personal God whose yearning had spoken to her in the Gregorian chant. She could never get herself to read more than two chapters of any book on the subject, nor did she get much light from the conversation. One set of people supposed to Christianity had so entirely disappeared from intelligent circles that it was not worth discussion. Another set supposed that no one but cranks ever thought of doubting the essentials of Christianity, and that therefore it was not worth discussion. And to a few superb women who she knew their religion was too sweet a reality to be subjected to the noisy chatter of discussion. Gradually Ruth forgot to think often of the matter, but it was always in the back of her mind. They were happy, Carl and Ruth. To their flats came such of Ruth's friends as she kept because she liked them for themselves, with a fantastic assortment of personages and awkward rovers whom the ex-aviator knew. The Erickson's made an institution of the Bruncheon, breakfast luncheon, at which coffee and eggs and deviled kidneys, a table of auction bridge, and a Davenport of talk and a wing chair of Sunday papers, were to be had on Sunday morning from ten to one. At Bruncheon, Walter McMonney's told two Florence Courdin his experiences in exploring Southern Greenland by airplane, with a shillow-spanning exposition. At Bruncheon, Bobby Winslow, now an intern, talked baseball with Carl. At Bruncheon, Phil Donalovey regarded cynically all the people he did not know and played picket in a corner with Ruth's father. Carl and Ruth joined the Peace Waters Country Club, and in the spring of 1914 went there nearly every Sunday afternoon for tennis and a dance. Carl refused golf, however. He always repeated a shabby joke about the shame of taking advantage of such a tiny ball. He seemed content to stick to office, home, and tennis court. It was Ruth who planned their weekend trips, proposed at 8 a.m. Sunday, and began at two that afternoon. They explored the tangled rocks and woods of Lloyd's Neck on Long Island, sleeping in an abandoned shack, curled together like kittens. They swooped on a Dutch village in New Jersey, spent the night with an old farmer, and attended the Dutch Reformed Church. They'd cramped from New Haven to Hartford over Easter. Carl was always ready for their gypsy journeys. He responded to Ruth's visions of foaming South Sea Isles, but he rarely sketched such pictures of himself. He had given all of himself to joy in Ruth. Like many men called adventurers, he was ready for anything but content with anything. It was Ruth who was finding new voyages. She kept up her sentiment work and progressed to an active interest in the Women's Trade Union League and took part in picketing during a Panama hat-worker strike. She may have had more curiosity than principal, but she did badger policemen pluckily. She was studying Italian, the Montessori method. Cooking, she taught new dishes to her maid. She adopted a careless suggestion of Carl and violently increased the maid's salary, thereby shaking the rock-rib foundations of Upper West Side Society. In nothing did she find greater satisfaction than in being neither the bride nor the little woman, nor any like degrading thing which recently married girls are by their sentimental spinster friends expected to be. She did not whisper the intimate details of her honeymoon to other young married women. She did not run about quantity and tentatively telling of her difficulty with household work. When a purring baby-talking acquaintance gurgled, how did the Ruthie Bride spend her morning? Did she cook some little dainty for her husband? Nothing, Brishwa. I'm sure. In reply, Ruth pleasantly observed. Not a chance. The Ruthie Bride cursed out the janitor for not shooting up a dainty cabbage in the dumb-waiter, and then counted up her husband's cigarette coupons and skipped right down to the premium parlours with him and got him a pair of pale blue Boston garters and a cunning granite-wear stoopan, and then sponged lunch off Olive Donnelly of E. But nothing, Brishwa. Such experience told to Carl, he found diverting. He seemed, in the spring of 1914, to want no weathers.