L
ong Beach, on the first hot Sunday of May, when motorists come out from New York, half-ready to open asphalt hearts to sea and sky. Carl's first sight of it, save from an aeroplane, 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 board-walk, like the beer-drinking, pickle-eating parties of fishermen and the family groups with red table-cloths, grape-basket lunches, and colored Sunday supplements. Ruth declared that she preferred them to the elegant loungers who were showing off new motor-coats on the board-walk. But Carl and she had withdrawn a bit from the crowds, and in the dunes had made a nest, with a book and a magazine and a box of chocolates and Carl's collapsible lunch-kit.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. Aunt Emma Truegate 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 their traceries of pale grass, reveled the sharp, unshadowed green of marshes, and an inland bay that was blue as bluing, a startling 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 eyes lifted to unbroken bluewater—nothing between them and Europe save rolling waves and wave-crests like white plumes. The sea was of a diaphanous blue that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue enamel to a rich ultramarine which absorbed and healed the office-worn mind. The sails of tacking sloops were a-blossom; sea-gulls swooped; a tall surf-fisherman in red flannel shirt and shiny black hip-boots strode 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 baronial above; and out on the sky-line the 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 silences 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 brown of her cheeks, her white-clad ankles crossed under her skirt, slender against the gray sand, thoughtful of eye, lost in happiness.
"Some day," 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 wirelessand moving pictures and electric locomotives and electric cooking and the use of radium and the X-ray and the linotype and the submarine and the labor movement—the I. W. W. and syndicalism and all that—not that I know anything about the labor movement, but I suppose it's the most important of all. And Metchnikoff and Ehrlich. 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, "and Montessori's system of education—that's what I think is the most important.... See that sail-boat, Hawk! Like a lily. And the late-afternoon gold on those marshes. I think this salt breeze blows away all the bad Ruth.... 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 forty thousand 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—a'right, we'll move on to some other planet. It gets me going. Don't have to believe in fairies to give the imagination a job, to-day. Glad I've been an aviator; gives me some place in it all, anyway."
"I'm glad, too, Hawk, terribly glad."
The sun was crimsoning; the wind grew chilly. The beach was scattered with camp-fires. Their own fire settled into compact live coals which, in the dusk of the dune-hollow, spread over the million bits of quartz a glow through which pirouetted the antic sand-fleas. Carl's cigarette had the fragrance that comes only from being impregnated with the smoke of an outdoor fire. The waves were lyric, and a group at the next fire crooned"Old Black Joe." The two lovers curled in their nest. Hand moved toward hand.
Ruth whispered: "It's sweet to be with all these people and their fires.... Will I really learn not to be supercilious?"
"Honey! You—supercilious? Democracy—— Oh, 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 startlingly like a kiss of real lips.
Lightly she returned the finger-kiss, answering diffidently, "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 gripping 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 kiss of man and woman could be so long, so stirring. Yet at first he was disappointed. This was, after all, but a touch—just such 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 their lips were hot together, he worried as to what train Ruth ought 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 the 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 martyrdom. His lips were saying to her things too vast and extravagant for a plain young man to venture upon in words:
"Lady, to you I chant my 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, 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, quiveringly: "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 loveyou."'
"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 in it, even out here on the dark dunes—which Aunt Emma 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 of me, but I'm afraid you would behurt 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'tknow! 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 half a second what train we'd take. I was ashamed of that, but I wasn't ashamed of taking mental notes and learning what these 'kisses,' that we mention so glibly, really are. Just experimenting, you see. And if you weretooserious 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 hollow of her throat. Then he lifted her from the ground and would not set her down till she had kissed him back.
"You frightened me a lot, then," she said. "Did the child want to impress Ruth with his mighty strength? Well, she shall be impressed. Hawk, 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, will you try not to be too impatient till I do know just what I want?... Oh, I'm sick of the modern lover! I talk and talk about love; it seems as though we'd 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 tramped toward the board-walk. The crunch of their feet in thesand was the rhythmic spell of a magician, which she broke when she sighed:
"Should I have let you kiss me, out here in the wilds? Will you respect 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 two 'll ever get dull—if you do decide you can love me. We'll wander: cabin in the Rockies, with forty mountains for our garden fence, and an eagle for our suburban train."
"And South Sea islands silhouetted at 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 and a phosphorescent sea in front and native girls dancing in garlands."
"Yes! And Paris boulevards and a 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 globe-trotters 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 Joralemon kind of a girl. But I was meant to hike for the hiking's sake.... Only, not alone any more. Ineedyou.... 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, if we had the money."
"Sometimes you almost tempt me to like you."
"Like me now!"
"No, not now, but—— Here's the board-walk."
"Where's those steps? Oh yes. Gee! I hate to leave the water without having had a swim. Wish we'd had one. Dare you to go wading!"
"Oh, ought I to, do you think? Wading would be silly. And nice."
"Course you oughtn't. Come on. Don't you remember how the sand feels between your toes?"
The moon brooded upon the lulled waves, and quested among the ridges of driftwood for pearly shells. The pools left by the waves were enticing. Ruth retreated into the shelter of the board-walk and came shyly out, clutching her skirts, her feet and ankles silver in the light.
"The sand does feel good, but uh! it's getting colder and colder!" she wailed, as she cautiously advanced into the water. "I'll think up punishments for you. You've not only caused me to be cold, but you've made me abominably self-conscious."
"Don't be self-conscious, blessed. We are just children exploring." He splashed out, coat off, trousers rolled to the knee above his thin, muscular legs, galloping along the edge of the water like a large puppy, while she danced after him.
They were stilled to the persuasive beauty of the night. Music from the topaz jeweled hotels far down the beach wove itself into the peace on land and sea. A fish lying on shore was turned by the moon into ivory with carven 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 round him as he scanned her that 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 waded 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 board-walk, to draw on her stockings and shoes, kneeling on the sand like the simple maid of the ballads which she had been envying.
They tramped along the board-walk, with heels clicking like castanets, conscious that the world was hushed in night's old enchantment.
As they had answered to companionship with the humble picnic-parties among the dunes, so now they found it amusing to dine among the semi-great and the semi-motorists at the Nassau. Ruth had a distinct pleasure when T. Wentler, horse-fancier, aviation enthusiast, president of the First State Bank of Sacramento, came up, reminded Carl of their acquaintanceship at the Oakland-Berkeley Aero Meet, and begged Ruth and Carl to join him, his wife, and Senator Leeford, for coffee.
As they waited for their train, quiet after 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 flanneled oafs and eatingmarrons glacésand 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 Racquet Club whenever I get invited to Piping Rock or MeadowBrook or any other country club that has ancestors. I want you to take warning."
"Did you really miss Piping Rock much to-day?".
"No—but I might to-morrow, and I might get horribly bored in our cabin in the Rockies and hate the stony old peaks, and long for tea and scandal in a 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 Touricar 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—ugh! 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 and bedraggled and perambulatorious, and they worry about Biddies and furnaces and cabbages, and their hair is just scratched together, with the dubbest hats—I'd rather be an idle rich."
"If we got stuck like that, I'd sell out and we'd hike to the mountain cabin, anyway, say go up in the Santa Lucias, and keep wild bees."
"And probably get stung—in the many subtle senses of that word. And I'd have to cook and wash. That would be funasfun, but to have to do it——"
"Ruth, honey, let's not worry about it now, anyhow. I don't believe there's much danger. And don't let's spoil this bully day."
"It has been sweet. I won't croak any more."
"There's the train coming."
W
hile 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 on a public dump-heap, grew pale in the 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 Kerr's, 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 the stems. They sat out on the box-stoop—the 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; hooted at the idea of being engaged. She might some day go off and get married to some one, but engaged? Never! She finally agreed that they were engaged to be engaged to be engaged. One night when they sought the windy housetop, she twined 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 shoulder seemed to stick into his like a bar of iron; glad that she trusted him enough to doze into 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 care for clothes, dancing, country clubs. Ruth would have been caressingly surprised had she known the thought and worried conscientiousness 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 about, on the backs of envelopes, such notes as these:
Join country clb take R dances there?Basket of fruit for RInvite Mason W lunchOrgnze Tcar tour NY to SFNewspaper men on tour probly ForbesRem Walter's new altitude 16,954R to Astor RoofRem country c
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 Bagbys' 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 memories of those days of thepays du tendreis the evening on which Phil Dunleavy insisted on celebrating a Yale baseball victory by taking them to dinner in the oak-room of the Ritz-Carlton, 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 WanderingTunes, 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 a ten-cent dessert instead of an exciting fifteen-cent strawberry shortcake, to save money for those parties. (Out of such sordid 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 jaunts 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 had better not let Aunt Emma know that you are enjoying yourselves as you want to! How is the automobile business going?"
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 Touricar 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 Touricar 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 VanZile Corporation neither planned to drop the Touricar, nor elected our young hero vice-president of the corporation.
In June Gertrude Cowles and her mother left for Joralemon. 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, as she seemed never to be able to give up the desire to see him tied down, whether by her affection or by his work, Carl came to regard her as an irritating foe to the freedom which he prized the more because of the increasing bondage of the office. The last stage was pure indifferenceto 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 of her; but in any case he had missed—or escaped—her as a romantic hero escapes fire, flood, and plot. She meant 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 hoped some day to see. Yet by her reaching out for his liberty Gertie had first made him prize Ruth.
The 1st of July, 1913, Ruth left for the Patton Kerrs' country house in the Berkshires, near Pittsfield. Carl wrote to her every day. He told her, apropos of Touricars and roof-gardens and aviation records and Sunday motor-cycling with Bobby Winslow, that he loved her; he even made, at the end of his letters, the old-fashioned 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 their descriptions of the people she met. His call of love she did not answer—directly. But she admitted that she missed their playtimes; and once she wrote to him, late on a cold Berkshire night, with a black rain and wind like a baying bloodhound:
It is so still in my room & so wild outside that I am frightened. I have tried to make myself smart in a blue silk dressing gown & a tosh lace breakfast cap, & I will write neatly with a quill pen from the Mayfair, but just the same I am a lonely baby & I want you here to comfort me. Would you be too shocked to come? I would put a Navajo blanket on my bed & a papier maché Turkish dagger & head of Othello over my bed & pretend it was a cozy corner, that is of course if they still havepapier maché ornaments, I suppose they still live in Harlem & Brooklyn. We would sitveryquietly in two wicker chairs on either side of my fireplace & listen to the swollen brook in the 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 on the valley. Dear, it reallyisn'tsafe 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 Crewden or your nice solemn Walter MacMonnies oranysuitor who would make foolish noises & hide me from the wind's hunting. Now I will seal this up &NOTsend it in the morning.
It is so still in my room & so wild outside that I am frightened. I have tried to make myself smart in a blue silk dressing gown & a tosh lace breakfast cap, & I will write neatly with a quill pen from the Mayfair, but just the same I am a lonely baby & I want you here to comfort me. Would you be too shocked to come? I would put a Navajo blanket on my bed & a papier maché Turkish dagger & head of Othello over my bed & pretend it was a cozy corner, that is of course if they still havepapier maché ornaments, I suppose they still live in Harlem & Brooklyn. We would sitveryquietly in two wicker chairs on either side of my fireplace & listen to the swollen brook in the 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 on the valley. Dear, it reallyisn'tsafe 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 Crewden or your nice solemn Walter MacMonnies oranysuitor who would make foolish noises & hide me from the wind's hunting. Now I will seal this up &NOTsend it in the morning.
Your playmate Ruth
Here is one small kiss on the forehead but remember it is just because of the wind & rain.
Here is one small kiss on the forehead but remember it is just because of the wind & rain.
Presumably she did mail the letter. At least, he received it.
He carried her letters in the side-pocket of his coat till the envelopes were worn at the edges and 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 a 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 the vagabond. As quickly as they had claimed each other, 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 Istra Nash theartist, and when the VanZile office got a new telephone-girl, a tall, languorous 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 every-day 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 in it. And now that she was away, with Lenox and polo to absorb her, could the gauche, ignorant Carl Ericson, that he privately knew himself to be, retain her interest?
Late in July he received an invitation to spend a week-end, Friday to Tuesday, with Ruth at the Patton Kerrs'.
T
he brief trip to the Berkshires was longer than any he had taken these nine months. He looked forward animatedly to the journey, remembering details of travel—such trivial touches as the oval brass wash-bowls of a Pullman sleeper, and how, when the water is running out, the inside of the bowl is covered with a whitish film of water, which swiftly peels off. He recalled the cracked white paint of a steamer's ventilator; the abruptly stopping zhhhhh of a fog-horn; 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 traveler 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 binnacle of the S.S.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 sortwasshe?
The train was stopping at her station with rattling windows and a despairing grind of the wheels. Carl seized his overnight bag and suit-case 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 phaeton, 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. Love her? Should say I do!"
While they drove under the elms, past white cottages and 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-collared 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, boyishly brown, femininely 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 the whip-handle; her spirited irreverences regarding the people they passed; chatter which showed the world transformed as through 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 busily was he exulting 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 woods leaf-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 shiningglass dishes on a green table-cloth; beyond all, a long reach of hillsides covered with unbroken fleecy forest, like green down....
"So much unspoiled country, and yet there's people herded in subways!" complained Carl.
They drove along a level road, lined with wild raspberry-bushes and full of a thin jade light from the shading maples. They gossiped of the Patton Kerrs and the Berkshires; of the difference between the professional English week-ender and the American, who still has something of the naïve provincial delight of "going visiting"; of New York and the Dunleavys. But their talk lulled to a nervous hush. It seemed to him that a great voice cried from the clouds: "It is besideRuththat 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, tremulously 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 and rustling forest. All his senses were concentrated on the close warmth of her misty lips, the curve of her young shoulder, her woman sweetness and longing. Then his senses forgot even her lips, and floated off into a blurred trance of bodiless happiness—the kiss of Nirvana. No foreign thought of 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, hastily, 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 wouldn't have believed selfish Ruth could give all of herself."
"Yes! It was the whole universe."
"Hawk dear, I wasn't experimenting, that time. I'm glad, glad! To know I can really love; not just curiosity!... I've wanted you so all day. I thought four o'clock wouldn't ever come—and oh, darling, my dear, dear Hawk, I didn'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! lady's 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 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—— Oh, 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, where there's only room for you and me—no room for offices or Aunt Emmas!... But not now. We must hurry on.... If a wagon had been coming along the road——!"
As they entered the rhododendron-lined drive of the Patton 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 allthose other dull forms; not like—that kiss.... See! There's Pat Kerr, Jr., waving to us. You can just make him out, there on the upper balcony. He is the darlingest child, with ash-blond hair cut Dutch style. 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 bully place. And the house!... Will you marry me?"
"Yes, I will!... Itisa dear place. Mrs. Pat is——"
"When?"
"——always fussing over it; she plants narcissuses 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, no, not engaged, dear. Don't you know it's one of my principles——"
"But look——"
"——not to be engaged, Hawk? Everybody brings the cunnin' old jokes out of the moth-balls when you're engaged. I'll marry you, but——"
"Marry me next month—August?"
"Nope."
"September?"
"Nope."
"Please, Ruthie. Aw yes, September. Nice month, September is. Autumn. Harvest moon. And apples to swipe. Come on. September."
"Well, perhaps September. We'll see. Oh, Hawk dear, can you conceive of us actually sitting here and solemnly discussing beingmarried? Us, the babes in the wood? And I've only known you three days or so, seems to me.... Well, as I was saying,perhapsI'll marry you in September (um! frightens me to think of it; frightens me and awes me and amuses me to death, all at once). That is, I shall marry you unless you take to wearingpearl-gray 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 VanZile boost my salary, last week, and with my Touricar stock I'm getting a little over four thousand dollars a year."
"Is that lots or little?"
"Well, it 'll give us a decent apartment and a nearly decent maid, I guess. And if the Touricar keeps going, we can beat it off for a year, wandering, after maybe three four years."
"I hope so. Here we are! That's Mrs. Pat waiting for us."
The Patton Kerr house, set near the top of the highest hill in that range of the Berkshires, stood out white against a slope of crisp green; an old manor house of long lines and solid beams, with striped awnings of red and white, and in front a brick terrace, with basket-chairs, a swinging couch, and a wicker tea-table already welcomingly spread with a service of Royal Doulton. From the terrace one saw miles of valley and hills, and villages strung on a 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 at the edges, carefully coiffed 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-chinned, curly-black-haired man of forty, in riding-breeches and boots and a silk shirt; with him an excited small boy in rompers—Patton Kerr, Sr. and Jr.
"Here you are!" Senior observantly remarked. "Gladto see you, Ericson. You and Ruthie 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, Ericson. Turned my horn loose and hooted till they thought I was a militant, like Ruthie here. Lord! what flying, what flying! I'd like to see you race Weymann and Vedrines.... Ruthie, will you show Mr. Ericson where his room is, or has poor old Pat got to go and drag a servant away from readingTown Topics, heh?"
"I will, Pat," said Ruth.
"I will, daddy," cried Pat, Jr.
"No, my son, I guess maybe Ruthie had better do it. There's a certain look in her eyes——"
"Basilisk!"
"Salamander!"
Ruth and Carl passed through the wide colonial hall, with mahogany tables and portraits of the Kerrs and the sword of Colonel Patton. At the far end was an open door, and a glimpse of an old-fashioned garden radiant with hollyhocks and Canterbury 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, youaregoing 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 deferential, "Thy chamber, milord!... 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 home-comings and false home-comings the adventurer 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 spaces. He stared into 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 tree-tops in the ravine outside the windows; and they motored with the Kerrs 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 startlingly original as to be simple-hearted country lovers, in the afternoon, declining Kerr's offer of a car, and rambling off on bicycles.
From a rise they saw water gleaming among the trees. The sullen green of pines 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. Crows 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 she a 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 Kerrshad disappeared for a nap. Carl, lounging with Ruth on the 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 woodland-opening like a dim-lighted greenroom. From it stretched the enameled lake, the farther side reflecting unbroken woods. The nearer water-edge was exquisite in its clearness. They saw perch 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, broke in the tiniest of ripples against white quartz pebbles 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 af-fraid!" She suddenly plumped on the earth and hugged her skirts about her ankles.
"Why, blessed, what you scared of? No sharks here, and no undertow. Nice white sand——"
"Oh, Hawk, I was silly. I felt I was such an independent modern woman a-a-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 decide." His voice was somewhat shaky. "Awful scared of 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 flannels and stood in his blue bathing-suit, not statue-like, not very brown now, but trim-waisted, shapely armed, wonderfully clean of neck and jaw. With a "Wheee!" he dashed into the water and swam out, overhand.
As he turned over and glanced back, his heart caught to see her standing on the creamy sand, a shy, elfin figure in a boy's bathing-suit of black wool, woman and slim boy in one, silken-throated and graceful-limbed, curiously smaller than when dressed. Her white skirt and blouse lay tumbled about her ankles. She raised rosy arms to hide her flushed face and her eyes, as she cried:
"Don't look!"
He obediently swam on, with a tenderness more poignant than longing. He heard her splashing 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 comradely 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 their greenwood room, Ruth wrapped her sailor blouse about her, and they squatted like un-self-conscious children on the beach, while from a field a distant locust fiddled his August fandango 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 rustling 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, "Getting late; come on, blessed; we're dry now," it seemed that they could never again know such rapt tranquillity.
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 good-by, and Carl knew that life's real adventure is not adventuring, but finding the playmate with whom to quest life's meaning.