I
n October, 1912, a young man came with an enthusiastic letter from the president of the Aero Club to old Stephen VanZile, vice-president and general manager of the VanZile Motor Corporation of New York. The young man was quiet, self-possessed, an expert in regard to motors, used to meeting prominent men. He was immediately set to work at a tentative salary of $2,500 a year, to develop the plans of what he called the "Touricar"—an automobile with all camping accessories, which should enable motorists to travel independent of inns, add the joy of camping to the joy of touring, and—a feature of nearly all inventions—add money to the purse of the inventor.
The young man was Carl Ericson, whom Mr. VanZile had seen fly at New Orleans during the preceding February. Carl had got the idea of the Touricar while wandering by motor-cycle through Scandinavia and Russia.
He was, at this time, twenty-seven years old; not at all remarkable in appearance nor to be considered handsome, but so clean, so well bathed, so well set-up and evenly tanned, that one thought of the swimming, dancing, tennis-playing city men of good summer resorts, an impression enhanced by his sleek corn-silk hair and small, pale mustache. His clothes came from London, his watch-chain was a thin line of platinum and gold, his cigarette-case of silver engraved in inconspicuous bands—a modest and sophisticated cigarette-case, which he had possessed long enough to forget that he had it. He was apparently too much the easy, well-bred, rather inexperienced Yale or Princeton man (not Harvard; there was a tiny twang in his voice, and he sometimes murmured"Gee!") to know much about life or work, as yet, and his smooth, rosy cheeks made it absurdly evident that he had not been away from the college insulation for more than two years.
But when he got to work with draftsman and stenographers, when a curt kindliness filled his voice, he proved to be concentrated, unafraid of responsibility, able to keep many people busy; trained to something besides family tradition and the collegians' naïve belief that it matters who wins the Next Game.
His hands would have given away the fact that he had done things. They were large, broad; the knuckles heavy; the palms calloused by something rougher than oar and tennis-racket. The microscopic traces of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his skin. And two of his well-kept but thick nails had obviously been smashed.
The men of the same rank as himself in the office, captains and first lieutenants of business, said that he "simply ate up work." They fancied, with the eager old-womanishness of office gossip, that he had a "secret sorrow," for, though he was pleasant enough, he kept very much to himself. The cause of his retirement from aviation was the theme of many romantic legends. They did not know precisely what it was he had done in the pre-historic period of a year before, but they treated him with reverence instead of the amused aloofness with which an office usually waits to see whether a new man will prove to be a fool or a "grouch," a clown or a good fellow. The stenographers and filing-girls and telephone-girls followed with yearning eyes the hero's straight back. The girl who discovered, in an oldNew York Chroniclelining a bureau drawer, an interview with Carl, became very haughty over its possession and lent it only to her best lady friends. The older women, who knew that Carl had had a serious accident, whispered in cloak-room confidences, "Poor fellow, and so brave about it."
Yet all the while Carl's china-blue eyes showed no trace of pain nor sorrow nor that detestable appeal for sympathy called "being brave about his troubles."
There were many thoughtful features which fitted the Touricar for use in camping—extra-sized baggage-box whose triangular shape made the car more nearly streamline, special folding silk tents, folding aluminum cooking-utensils, electric stove run by current from the car, electric-battery light attached to a curtain-rod. But the distinctive feature, the one which Carl could patent, was the means by which a bed was made up inside the car as Pullman seats are turned into berths. The back of the front seat was hinged, and dropped back to horizontal. The upholstery back of the back seat could be taken out and also placed on the horizontal. With blankets spread on the level space thus provided, with the extra-heavy top and side curtains in place, and the electric light switched on, tourists had a refuge cleaner than a country hotel and safer than a tent....
The first Touricar was being built. Carl was circularizing a list of possible purchasers, and corresponding with makers of camping goods.
Because he was not office-broken he did not worry about the risks of the new enterprise. The stupid details of affairs had, for him, a soul—the Adventure of Business.
To be consulted by draftsmen and shop foremen; to feel that if he should not arrive at 8.30a.m.to the second the most important part of all the world's business would be halted and stenographers loll in expensive idleness; to have the chief, old VanZile, politely anxious as to how things were going; to plan ways of making a million dollars and not have the plans seem fantastic—all these made it interesting to overwork, and hypnotized Carl into a feeling of responsibility which was less spectacular than flying before thousands, but more in accordance with the spirit of the time and place.
Inside the office—busy and reaching for success. Outside the office—frankly bored.
Carl was a dethroned prince. He had been accustomed to a more than royal court of admirers. Now he was a nobody the moment he went twenty feet from his desk. He was forgotten. He did not seek out the many people he had met when he was an aviator and a somebody. He believed, perhaps foolishly, that they liked him only as a personage, not as a person. He sat lonely at dinner, in cheap restaurants with stains on the table-cloths, for he had put much of his capital into the new Touricar Company, mothered by the VanZile Corporation; and aeroplanes, accessories, traveling-expenses, and the like had devoured much of his large earnings at aviation before he had left the game.
In his large, shabby, fairly expensive furnished room on Seventy-fifth Street he spent unwilling evenings, working on Touricar plans, or reading French—French technical motor literature, light novels, Balzac, anything.
He tried to keep in physical form, and, much though the routine and silly gestures of gymnasium exercises bored him, he took them three times a week. He could not explain the reason, but he kept his identity concealed at the gymnasium, giving his name as "O. Ericson."
Even at the Aero Club, where scores knew him by sight, he was a nobody. Aviation, like all pioneer arts, must look to the men who are doing new things or planning new things, not to heroes past. Carl was often alone at lunch at the club. Any group would have welcomed him, but he did not seek them out. For the first time he really saw the interior decorations of the club. In the old days he had been much too busy talking with active comrades to gaze about. But now he stared for five minutes together at the stamped-leather wall-covering of the dining-room. He noted, much too carefully for a happy man, the trophies of the lounging-room. But at one corner he never glanced. For here was a framedpicture of the forgotten Hawk Ericson, landing on Governor's Island, winner of the flight from Chicago to New York.... Such a beautiful swoop!...
There is no doubt of the fact that he disliked the successful new aviators, and did so because he was jealous of them. He admitted the fact, but he could not put into his desire to be a good boy one-quarter of the force that inspired his resentment at being a lonely man and a nobody. But, since he knew he was envious, he was careful not to show it, not to inflict it upon others. He was gracious and added a wrinkle between his brows, and said "Gosh!" and "ain't" much less often.
He had few friends these days. Death had taken many; and he was wary of lion-hunters, who in dull seasons condescend to ex-lions and dethroned princes. But he was fond of a couple of Aero Club men, an automobile ex-racer who was a selling-agent for the VanZile Corporation, and Charley Forbes, the bright-eyed, curly-headed, busy, dissipated little reporter who had followed him from Chicago to New York for theChronicle. Occasionally one of the men with whom he had flown—Hank Odell or Walter MacMonnies or Lieutenant Rutledge of the navy—came to town, and Carl felt natural again. As for women, the only girl whom he had known well in years, Istra Nash, the painter, had gone to California to keep house for her father till she should have an excuse to escape to New York or Europe again.
Inside the office—a hustling, optimistic young business man. For the rest of the time—a dethroned prince. Such was Carl Ericson in November, 1912, when a letter from Gertrude Cowles, which had pursued him all over America and Europe, finally caught him:
—— West 157th St.
New York.
Carl dear,—Oh such excitement, we have come toNew Yorkto live! Ray has such a good position with a big NY real estateco. & Mama & I are going to make a home for him even if it's only just a flat (but it's quite a big one & looks out on the duckiest old house that must have been adorning Harlem for heaven knows how long,) & our house has all modern conveniences, elevator & all.Think, Carl, I'm going to study dancing at Madame Vashkowska's school—she was with the Russian ballet & really is almost as wonderful a dancer as Isadora Duncan or Pavlova. Perhaps I'll teach all these ducky new dances to children some day. I'm just terribly excited to be here, like the silliest gushiest little girl in the world. And I do hope so much you will be able to come to NY & honor us with your presence at dinner, famous aviator—our Carl & we are soproudof you—if you will still remember simple people like us do comeany time. Wonder where you will be when this reaches you.I read in the papers that your accident isn't serious but I am worried, oh Carl you must take care of yourself.
Carl dear,—Oh such excitement, we have come toNew Yorkto live! Ray has such a good position with a big NY real estateco. & Mama & I are going to make a home for him even if it's only just a flat (but it's quite a big one & looks out on the duckiest old house that must have been adorning Harlem for heaven knows how long,) & our house has all modern conveniences, elevator & all.
Think, Carl, I'm going to study dancing at Madame Vashkowska's school—she was with the Russian ballet & really is almost as wonderful a dancer as Isadora Duncan or Pavlova. Perhaps I'll teach all these ducky new dances to children some day. I'm just terribly excited to be here, like the silliest gushiest little girl in the world. And I do hope so much you will be able to come to NY & honor us with your presence at dinner, famous aviator—our Carl & we are soproudof you—if you will still remember simple people like us do comeany time. Wonder where you will be when this reaches you.
I read in the papers that your accident isn't serious but I am worried, oh Carl you must take care of yourself.
Yours as ever,
Gertie.
P.S. Mama sends her best regards, so does Ray, he has a black mustache now, we tease him about it dreadfully.
P.S. Mama sends her best regards, so does Ray, he has a black mustache now, we tease him about it dreadfully.
G.
One minute after reading the letter, in his room, Carl was standing on the chaste black-and-white tiles of the highly respectable white-arched hall down-stairs asking Information for the telephone number of —— West 157th Street, while his landlord, a dry-bearded goat of a physician who had failed in the practise of medicine and was now failing in the practise of rooming-houses, listened from the front of the hall.
Glad to escape from the funereally genteel house, Carl hastily changed his collar and tie and, like the little boy Carl whom Gertie had known, dog-trotted to the subway, which was going to take him Home.
B
efore the twelve-story Bendingo Apartments, Carl scanned the rows of windows which pierced the wall like bank-swallows' nests in a bold cliff.... One group of those windows was home—Joralemon and memories, Gertie's faith and understanding.... It was she who had always understood him.... In anticipation he loitered through the big, marble-and-stucco, rug and rubber-tree, negro hallboy and Jew tenant hallway.... What would the Cowleses be like, now?
Gertie met him in the coat-smelling private hall of the Cowles apartment, greeted him with both hands clasping his, and her voice catching in, "Oh,Carl, it's so good to see you!" Behind Gertie was a swishing, stiff-backed Mrs. Cowles, piping in a high, worn voice: "Mr. Ericson! A friend from home! And such a famous friend!"
Gertie drew him into the living-room. He looked at her.
He found, not a girl, but a woman of thirty, plump, solid, with the tiniest wrinkles of past unhappiness or ennui at the corners of her mouth; but her eyes radiant with sweetness, and her hair appealingly soft and brown above her wide, calm forehead. She was gowned in lavender crêpe de Chine, with panniers of satin elaborately sprinkled with little bunches of futurist flowers; long jet earrings; a low-cut neck that hinted of a comfortable bosom. Eyes shining, hands firm on his arm, voice ringing, she was unaffectedly glad to see him—her childhood playmate, whom she had not beheld for seven years.
Mrs. Cowles was waiting for them to finish their greetings. Carl was startled to find Mrs. Cowles smaller thanhe had remembered, her hair nearly white and not perfectly matched, her face crisscrossed with wrinkles deeper than her age justified. But her old disapproval of Carl, son of a carpenter and cousin of a "hired girl," was gone. She even laughed mildly, like a kitten sneezing. And from a room somewhere beyond Ray shouted:
"Be right there in a second, old man. Crazy to have a look at you."
Carl did not really see the living-room, their background. Indeed, he never really saw it. There was nothing to see—chairs and a table and pictures of meadows and roses. It was comfortable, however, and had conveniences—a folding card-table, a cribbage-board, score-pads for whist and five hundred; a humidor of cigars; a large Morris chair and an ugly but well-padded couch of green tufted velvetine.
They sat about in chairs, talking.
Ray came in, slapped Carl on the back, roared: "Well, here's the stranger! Holy Mike! have you got a mustache, too? Better shave it off before Gert starts kidding you about it. Have a cigar?"
Carl felt at home for the first time in a year; for the first time talked easily.
"Say, Gertie, tell me about my folks, and Bone Stillman."
"Why, I saw your father just before we left, Carl. You know he still does quite a little business. We got your mother to join the Nautilus Club—she doesn't go very often; but she had a nice paper about 'Java and Its Products,' and she helps us a lot with the rest-room. I haven't seen Mr. Stillman for a long, long time. Ray, what has——"
Ray: "Why, I think old Bone's off on some expedition 'r other. Fellow told me Bone was some kind of a forest ranger or mine inspector, or some darn thing, up in the Big Woods. He must be pretty well along toward seventy now, at that."
Carl: "So dad's getting along well. His letters aren't very committal.... Oh, say, Gertie, what ever became of Ben Rusk? I've lost track of him entirely."
Gertie: "Why, didn't you know? He went to Rush Medical College. They say he did splendidly there; he stood awfully well in his classes, and now he's in practise with his father, home."
Carl: "Rush?"
Gertie: "Yes, you know, in Chi——"
Carl: "Oh yes, sure; in Chicago; sure, I remember now; I saw it when I was there one time. Why! That's the school his father went to, wasn't it?"
Ray: "Yes, sure, that's the one."
The point seemed settled.
Carl: "Well, well, so Bendidstudy medicine, after——Oh,say, how's Adelaide Benner?"
Gertie: "Why, you'll see her! She's coming to New York in just a couple of weeks to stay with us till she gets settled. Just think, she's to have a whole year here, studying domestic science, and then she's to have a perfectly dandy position teaching in the Fargo High School. I'm not supposed to tell—you mustn't breathe awordof it——"
Mrs. Cowles (interrupting): "Adelaide is a good girl....Ray! Don't tilt your chair!"
Gertie: "Yes,isn'tshe, mamma.... Well, I was just saying: between you and me, Carl, she is to have the position in Fargo all ready and waiting for her, though of course they can't announce it publicly, with all the cats that would like to get it, and all. Isn't that fine?"
Carl: "Certainly is.... 'Member the time we had the May party at Adelaide's, and all I could get for my basket was rag babies and May flowers? Gee, but I felt out of it!"
Gertie: "We did have some good parties,didn'twe!"
Ray: "Don't call that much of a good party for Carl!Ring off, Gert; you got the wrong number that time, all right!"
Gertie (flushing): "Oh, Ididn'tmean——But we did have some good times. Oh, Carl, will youeverforget the time you and I ran away when we were just babies?"
Carl: "I'll never forget——"
Mrs. Cowles: "I'll never forget that time! My lands! I thought I should die, I was so frightened."
Carl: "You've forgiven me now, though, haven't you?"
Mrs. Cowles: "My dear boy, of course I have!" (She wiped away a few tears with a gentlewoman handkerchief of lace and thin linen. Carl crossed the room and kissed her pale-veined, silvery old hand. Abashed, he subsided on the couch, and, trying to look as though he hadn't done it——)
Carl: "Ohhhhhsay, whatever did become of——Oh, I can't think of his name——Oh,youknow——I know his name well as I do my own, but it's slipped me, just for the moment——You know, he ran the billiard-parlor; the son of the——"
(From Mrs. Cowles, a small, disapproving sound; from Ray, a grin of knowing naughtiness and a violent head-shake.)
Gertie (gently): "Yes.... He—has left Joralemon.... Klemm, you mean."
Carl (hastily, wondering what Eddie Klemm had done): "Oh, I see.... Have there been many changes in Joralemon?"
Mrs. Cowles: "Do you write to your father and mother, Carl? You ought to."
Carl: "Oh yes, I write to them quite often, now, though for a time I didn't."
Mrs. Cowles: "I'm glad, my boy. It's pretty good, after all, to have home folks that you can depend on, isn't it? When I first went to Joralemon, I thought it was a little pokey, but now I'm older, and I've been thereso long and all, that I'm almost afraid of New York, and I declare I do get real lonely for home sometimes. I'd be glad to see Dr. Rusk—Ben's father, I mean, the old doctor—driving by, though of course you know I lived in Minneapolis a great many years, and I do feel I ought to take advantage of the opportunities here, and I've thought quite seriously about taking up French again, it's so long since I've studied it——You ought to study it; you will find it cultivates the mind. And you must be sure to write often to your mother; there's nothing you can depend on like a mother's love, my boy."
Ray: "Say, look here, Carl, I want to hear something about all this aviation. How does it feel to fly, anyway? I'd be scared to death; it's funny, I can't look off the top of a sky-scraper without feeling as though I wanted to jump. Gosh! I——"
Gertie: "Now you just let Carl tell us when he gets ready, you big, bad brother! Carl wants to hear all about Home first.... All these years!... You were asking about the changes. There haven't been so very many. You know it's a little slow there. Oh, of course, I almost forgot; why, you haven't been in Joralemon since they built up what used to be Tubbs's pasture."
Carl: "Not the old pasture by the lake? Well, well! Is that a fact! Why, gee! I used to snare gophers there!"
Gertie: "Oh yes. Why, you simply wouldn'tknowit, Carl, it's so much changed. There must be a dozen houses on it, now. Why, there's cement walks and everything, and Mr. Upham has a house there, a real nice one, with a screened-in porch and everything.... Of course you know they've put in the sewer now, and there's lots of modern bath-rooms, and almost everybody has a Ford. We would have bought one, but planning to come away so soon——Oh yes, and they've added a fire-escape to the school-house."
Carl: "Well, well!... Oh, say, Ray, how is Howard Griffin getting along?"
Ray: "Why, Howard's graduated from Chicago Law School, and he's practising in Denver. Doing pretty well, I guess; settled down and got quite some real-estate holdings.... Have 'nother cigar, old man?... Say, speaking of Plato, of course you know they ousted old S. Alcott Woodski from the presidency, for heresy, something about baptism; and the dean succeeded him.... Poor old cuss, he wasn't as mean as the dean, anyway.... Say, Carl, I've always thought they gave you a pretty raw deal there——"
Gertie (interrupting): "Perfectly dreadful!... Ray,don'tput your feet on that couch; I brushed it thoroughly, just this morning.... It was simply terrible, Carl; I've always said that if Plato couldn't appreciate her greatest son——"
Mrs. Cowles (sleepily): "Outrageous.... And don't put your feet on that chair, Ray."
Ray: "Oh, leave my feet alone!... Everybody knew you were dead right in standing up for Prof Frazer. You remember how I roasted all the fellows in Omega Chi when they said you were nutty to boost him? And when you stood up in Chapel——Lord! that was nervy."
Gertie: "Indeed you were right, and now you've got so famous I guess——"
Carl: "Oh, I ain't so——"
Mrs. Cowles: "I was simply amazed.... Children, if you don't mind, I'm afraid I must leave you. Mr. Ericson, I'm so ashamed to be sleepy so early. When we lived in Minneapolis, before Mr. Cowles passed beyond, he was a regular night-hawk, and we used to sit—sit—" (a yawn)—"sit up till all hours. But to-night——"
Gertie: "Oh, must you go so soon? I was just going to make Carl a rarebit. Carl has never seen one of my rarebits."
Mrs. Cowles: "Make him one by all means, my dear, and you young people sit up and enjoy yourselves just as long as you like. Good night, all.... Ray, will youplease be sure and see that that window is fastened before you go to bed? I get so nervous when——Mr. Ericson, I'm very proud to think that one of our Joralemon boys should have done so well. Sometimes I wonder if the Lord ever meant men to fly—what with so many accidents, and you know aviators often do get killed and all. I was reading the other day—such a large percentage——But we have been so proud that you should lead them all, I was saying to a lady on the train that we had a friend who was a famous aviator, and she was so interested to find that we knew you. Good night."
They had the Welsh rarebit, with beer, and Carl helped to make it. Gertie summoned him into the scoured kitchen, saying, with a beautiful casualness, as she tied an apron about him:
"We can't afford a hired girl (I suppose I should say a 'maid'), because mamma has put so much of our money into Ray's business, so you mustn't expect anything so very grand. But you'd like to help, wouldn't you? You're to chop the cheese. Cut it into weenty cubes."
Carl did like to help. He boasted that he was the "champion cheese-chopper of Harlem and the Bronx, one-thirty-three ringside," while Gertie was toasting crackers, and Ray was out buying bottles of beer in a newspaper. It all made Carl feel more than ever at home.... It was good to be with people of such divine understanding that they knew what he meant when he said, "I suppose therehavebeen worse teachers than Prof Larsen——!"
When the rabbit lay pale in death, a saddeningdébâcleof hardened cheese, and they sat with their elbows on the Modified Mission dining-table, Gertie exclaimed:
"Oh, Ray, youmustdo that new stunt of yours for Carl. It's screamingly funny, Carl."
Ray rose, had his collar and tie off in two jocund jerks, buttoned his collar on backward, cheerily turned his waistcoat back side foremost, lengthened his face to anexpression of unctuous sanctimoniousness, and turned about—transformed in one minute to a fair imitation of a stage curate. With his hands folded, Ray droned, "Naow, sistern, it behooveth us heuh in St. Timothee's Chutch," while Carl pounded the table in his delight at seeing old Ray, the broad-shouldered, the lady-killer, the capable business man, drop his eyes and yearn.
"Now you must do a stunt!" shrieked Ray and Gertie; and Carl hesitatingly sang what he remembered of Forrest Haviland's foolish song:
"I went up in a balloon so bigThe people on the earth they looked like a pig,Like a mice, like a katydid, like flieses and like fleasen."
"I went up in a balloon so bigThe people on the earth they looked like a pig,Like a mice, like a katydid, like flieses and like fleasen."
Then, without solicitation, Gertie decided to dance "Gather the Golden Sheaves," which she had learned at the school of Mme. Vashkowska, late (though not very late) of the Russian ballet.
She explained her work; outlined the theory of sensuous and esthetic dancing; mentioned the backgrounds of Bakst and the glories of Nijinsky; told her ambition to teach the New Dancing to children. Carl listened with awe; and with awe did he gaze as Gertie gathered the Golden Sheaves—purely hypothetical sheaves in a field occupying most of the living-room.
After the stunts Ray delicately vanished. It was not so much that he statedly went off to bed as that, presently, he was not there. Gertie and Carl were snugly alone, and at last he talked—of Forrest Haviland and Tony Bean, of flying and falling, of excited crowds and the fog-filled air-lanes.
In turn she told of her ambition to do something modern and urban. She had hesitated between dancing and making exotic jewelry; she was glad she had chosen the former; it was so human; it put one in touch with People.... She had recently gone to dinner with real Bohemians,spirits of fire, splendidly in contrast with the dull plodders of Joralemon. The dinner had been at a marvelous place on West Tenth Street—very foreign, every one drinking wine and eating spaghetti and little red herrings, and the women fearlessly smoking cigarettes—some of them. She had gone with a girl from Mme. Vashkowska's school, a glorious creature from London, Nebraska, who lived with the most fascinating girls at the Three Arts Club. They had met an artist with black hair and languishing eyes, who had a Yankee name, but sang Italian songs divinely, upon the slightest pretext, so bubbling was he withjoie de vivre.
Carl was alarmed. "Gosh!" he protested, "I hope you aren't going to have much to do with the long-haired bunch.... I've invented a name for them—'the Hobohemians.'"
"Oh no-o! I don't take them seriously at all. I was just glad to go once."
"Of course some of them are clever."
"Oh yes, aren't they clever!"
"But I don't think they last very well."
"Oh no, I'm sure they don't last well. Oh no, Carl, I'm too old and fat to be a Bohemian—a Hobohemian, I mean, so——"
"Nonsense! You look so—oh, thunder! I don't know just how to express it—well, soreal! It's wonderfully comfortable to be with you-all again. I don't mean you're just the 'so good to her mother' sort, you understand. But I mean you're dependable as well as artistic."
"Oh, indeed, I won't take them too seriously. Besides, I suppose lots of the people that go to Bohemian restaurants aren't really artists at all; they just go to see the artists; they're just as bromidic as can be——Don't you hate bromides? Of course I want to see some of that part of life, but I think——Oh, don't you think those artists and all are dreadfully careless about morals?"
"Well——"
"Yes," she breathed, reflectively. "No, I keep up with my church and all—indeed I do. Oh, Carl, you must come to our church—St. Orgul's. It's too sweet for anything. It's just two blocks from here; and it isn't so far up here, you know, not with the subway—not like commuting. It has theloveliestchapel. And the most wonderful reredos. And the services are so inspiring and high-church; not like that horrid St. Timothy's at home. I do think a church service ought to be beautiful. Don't you? It isn't as though we were like a lot of poor people who have to have their souls saved in a mission.... What church do you attend? Youwillcome to St. Orgul's some time, won't you?"
"Be glad to——Oh, say, Gertie, before I forget it, what is Semina doing now? Is she married?"
Apropos of this subject, Gertie let it be known that she herself was not betrothed.
Carl had not considered that question; but when he was back in his room he was glad to know that Gertie was free.
At the Omega Chi Delta Club, Carl lunched with Ray Cowles. Two nights later, Ray and Gertie took Carl and Gertie's friend, the glorious creature from London, Nebraska, to the opera. Carl did not know much about opera. In other words, being a normal young American who had been water-proofed with college culture, he knew absolutely nothing about it. But he gratefully listened to Gertie's clear explanation of why Mme. Vashkowska preferred Wagner to Verdi.
He had, in the mean time, received a formal invitation for a party to occur at Gertie's the coming Friday evening.
Thursday evening Gertie coached him in a new dance, the turkey trot. She also gave him a lesson in the Boston, with a new dip invented by Mme. Vashkowska, which was certain to sweep the country, because, of course,Vashkowska was the only genuinely qualifiedmaîtresse de dansein America.
It was a beautiful evening. Home! Ray came in, and the three of them had coffee and thin sandwiches. At Gertie's suggestion, Ray again turned his collar round and performed his "clergyman stunt." While the impersonation did not, perhaps, seem so humorous as before, Carl was amused; and he consented to sing the "I went up in a balloon so big" song, so that Ray might learn it and sing it at the office.
It was captivating to have Gertie say, quietly, as he left: "I hope you'll be able to come to the party a little early to-morrow, Carl. You know we count on you to help us."
T
he party was on at the Cowles flat.
People came. They all set to it, having a party, being lively and gay, whether they wanted to or not. They all talked at once, and had delicious shocks over the girl from London, Nebraska, who, having moved to Washington Place, just a block or two from ever so many artists, was now smoking a cigarette and, wearing a gown that was black and clinging. It was no news to her that men had a tendency to become interested in her ankles. But she still went to church and was accepted by quite the nicest of the St. Orgul's set, to whom Gertie had introduced her.
She and Gertie were the only thoroughly qualified representatives of Art, but Beauty and Gallantry and Wit were common. The conspirators in holding a party were, on the male side:
An insurance adjuster, who was a frat-brother to Carl and Ray, though he came from Melanchthon College. A young lawyer, ever so jolly, with a banjo. A bantling clergyman, who was spoken of with masculine approval because he smoked a pipe and said charmingly naughty things. Johnson of the Homes and Long Island Real Estate Company, and his brother, of the Martinhurst Development Company. Four older men, ranging from thin-haired to very bald, who had come with their wives and secretly looked at their watches while they talked brightly with one another's wives. Five young men whom Carl could not tell apart, as they all had smooth hair and eye-glasses and smart dress-shirts and obligingsmiles and complimentary references to his aviating. He gave up trying to remember which was which.
It was equally hard to remember which of the women Gertie knew as a result of her girlhood visit to New York, which from their membership in St. Orgul's Church, which from their relation to Minnesota. They all sat in rows on couches and chairs and called him "You wicked man!" for reasons none too clear to him. He finally fled from them and joined the group of young men, who showed an ill-bred and disapproved tendency to sneak off into Ray's room for a smoke. He did not, however, escape one young woman who stood out from themêlée—a young woman with a personality almost as remarkable as that of the glorious creature from London, Nebraska. This was the more or less married young woman named Dorothy, and affectionately called "Tottykins" by all the St. Orgul's group. She was of the kind who look at men appraisingly, and expect them to come up, be unduly familiar, and be crushed. She had seven distinct methods of getting men to say indiscreet things, and three variations of reply, of which the favorite was to remark with well-bred calmness: "I'm afraid you have made a slight error, Mr. Uh—— I didn't quite catch your name? Perhaps they failed to tell you that I attend St. Orgul's evvvv'ry Sunday, and have a husband and child, and am not at all, really, you know. I hope that there has been nothing I said that has given you the idea that I have been looking for a flirtation."
A thin, small female with bobbed hair was Tottykins, who kept her large husband and her fat, white grub of an infant somewhere in the back blocks. She fingered a long, gold, religious chain with her square, stubby hand, while she gazed into men's eyes with what she privately termed "daring frankness."
Tottykins the fair; Tottykins the modern; Tottykins who had readThree Weeksand nearly all of a wicked novel in French, and wore a large gold cross; Tottykinswho worked so hard in her little flat that she had to rest all of every afternoon and morning; Tottykins the advanced and liberal—yet without any of the extremes of socialists and artists and vegetarians and other ill-conditioned persons who do not attend St. Orgul's; Tottykins the firmly domestic, whose husband grew more worried every year; Tottykins the intensely cultured and inquisitive about life, the primitively free and pervasively original, who announced in public places that she wanted always to live like the spirit of the Dancing Bacchante statue, but had the assistant rector of St. Orgul's in for coffee, every fourth Monday evening.
Tottykins beckoned Carl to a corner and said, with her manner of amused condescension, "Now you sit right down here, Hawk Ericson, and tell meallabout aviation."
Carl was not vastly sensitive. He had not disliked the nice young men with eye-glasses. Not till now did he realize how Tottykins's shrill references to the Dancing Bacchante and the Bacchanting of her mud-colored Dutch-fashioned hair had bored him. Ennui was not, of course, an excuse; but it was the explanation of why he answered in this wise (very sweetly, looking Tottykins in the eyes and patting her hand with a brother-like and altogether maddening condescension):
"No, no, that isn't the way, Dorothy. It's quitepasséto ask me to tell you all about aviation. That isn't done, not in 1912. Oh Dor-o-thy! Oh no, no! No-o! No, no. First you should ask me if I'm afraid when I'm flying. Oh, always begin that way. Then you say that there's a curious fact about you—when you're on a high building and just look down once, then you get so dizzy that you want to jump. Then, after you've said that——Let's see. You're a church member, aren't you? Well then, next you'd say, 'Just how does it feel to be up in an aeroplane?' or if you don't say that then you've simply got to say, 'Just how does it feel to fly, anyway?' But if you're justterriblyinterested, Dorothy, you might askabout biplanesversusmonoplanes, and 'Do I think there'll ever be a flight across the Atlantic?' But whatever you do, Dorothy, don't fail to ask me if I'll give you a free ride when I start flying again. And we'll fly and fly——Like birds. You know. Or like the Dancing Bacchante.... That's the way to talk about aviation.... And now you tell meallabout babies!"
"Really, I'm afraid babies is rather a big subject to tell all about! At a party! Really, youknow——"
That was the only time Carl was not bored at the party. And even then he had spiritual indigestion from having been rude.
For the rest of the time:
Every one knew everybody else, and took Carl aside to tell him that everybody was "the most conscientious man in our office, Ericson; why, the Boss would trust him with anything." It saddened Carl to hear the insurance adjuster boom, "Oh you Tottykins!" across the room, at ten-minute intervals, like a human fog-horn on the sea of ennui.
They were all so uniformly polite, so neat-minded and church-going and dull. Nearly all the girls did their hair and coquetries one exactly like another. Carl is not to be pitied. He had the pleasure of martyrdom when he heard the younger Johnson tell of Martinhurst, the Suburb Beautiful. He believed that he had reached the nadir of boredom. But he was mistaken.
After simple and pleasing refreshments of the wooden-plate and paper-napkin school, Gertie announced: "Now we're going to have some stunts, and you're each to give one. I know you all can, and if anybody tries to beg off—my, what will happen——! My brother has a new one——"
For the third time that month, Carl saw Ray turn his collar round and become clerical, while every one rustled with delight, including the jolly bantling clergyman.
And for the fourth time he saw Gertie dance "Gatherthe Golden Sheaves." She appeared, shy and serious, in bloomers and flat dancing-shoes, which made her ample calves bulge the more; she started at sight of the harvest moon (and well she may have been astonished, if she did, indeed, see a harvest moon there, above the gilded buffalo horns on the unit bookcase), rose to her toes, flapped her arms, and began to gather the sheaves to her breast, with enough plump and panting energy to enable her to gather at least a quarter-section of them before the whistle blew.
It was not only esthetic, but Close to the Soil.
Then, to banjo accompaniment, the insurance adjuster sighed for his old Kentucky home, which Carl judged to have been located in Brooklyn. The whole crowd joined in the chorus and——
Suddenly, with a shock that made him despise himself for the cynical superiority which he had been enjoying, Carl remembered that Forrest Haviland, Tony Bean, Hank Odell, even surly Jack Ryan and the alien Carmeau, had sung "My Old Kentucky Home" on their last night at the Bagby School. He felt their beloved presences in the room. He had to fight against tears as he too joined in the chorus.... "Then weep no more, my lady."... He was beside a California poppy-field. The blossoms slumbered beneath the moon, and on his shoulder was the hand of Forrest Haviland....
He had repented. He became part of the group. He spoke kindly to Tottykins. But presently Tottykins postponed her well-advertised return to her husband and baby, and gave a ten-minute dramatic recital from Byron; and the younger Johnson sang a Swiss mountaineer song with yodels.
Gertie looked speculatively at Carl twice during this offering. He knew that the gods were plotting an abominable thing. She was going to call upon him for the "stunt" which had been inescapably identified with him, the song, "I went up in a balloon so big." He met the crisis heroically. He said loudly, as the shaky strains of theSwiss ballad died on the midnight mountain air of 157th Street (while the older men concealed yawns and applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat rapped on the radiator): "I'm sorry my throat 's so sore to-night. Otherwise I'd sing a song I learned from a fellow in California—balloon s' big."
Gertie stared at him doubtfully, but passed to a kitten-faced girl from Minnesota, who was quite ready to give an imitation of a child whose doll has been broken. Her "stunt" was greeted with, "Oh, how cun-ning! Please do it again!"
She prepared to do it again. Carl made hasty motions of departure, pathetically holding his throat.
He did not begin to get restless till he had reached Ninety-sixth Street and had given up his seat in the subway to a woman who resembled Tottykins. He wondered if he had not been at the Old Home long enough. At Seventy-second Street, on an inspiration that came as the train was entering the station, he changed to a local and went down to Fifty-ninth Street. He found an all-night garage, hired a racing-car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island, a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery with falling snow.
C
arl wished that Adelaide Benner had never come from Joralemon to study domestic science. He felt that he was a sullen brute, but he could not master his helpless irritation as he walked with Adelaide and Gertie Cowles through Central Park, on a snowy Sunday afternoon of December. Adelaide assumed that one remained in the state of mind called Joralemon all one's life; that, however famous he might be, the son of Oscar Ericson was not sufficiently refined for Miss Cowles of the Big House on the Hill, though he might improve under Cowles influences. He was still a person who had run away from Plato! But that assumption was far less irritating than one into which Adelaide threw all of her faded yearning—that Gertie and he were in love.
Adelaide kept repeating, with coy slyness: "Isn't it too bad you two have me in the way!" and: "Don't mind poor me. Auntie will turn her back any time you want her to."
And Gertie merely blushed, murmuring, "Don't be a silly."
At Eightieth Street Adelaide announced: "Now I must leave you children. I'm going over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I do love to see art pictures. I've always wanted to. Now be as good as you can, you two."
Gertie was mechanical about replying. "Oh, don't run away, Addy dear."
"Oh yes, you two will miss an old maid like me terribly!" And Adelaide was off, a small, sturdy, undistinguishedfigure, with an unyielding loyalty to Gertie and to the idea of marriage.
Carl looked at her bobbing back (with wrinkles in her cloth jacket over the shoulders) as she melted into the crowd of glossy fur-trimmed New-Yorkers. He comprehended her goodness, her devotion. He sighed, "If she'd only stop this hinting about Gertie and me——" He was repentant of his irritation, and said to Gertie, who was intimately cuddling her arm into his: "Adelaide's an awfully good kid. Sorry she had to go."
Gertie jerked her arm away, averted her profile, grated: "If you miss her so much, perhaps you'd better run after her. Really, I wouldn't interfere, not forworlds!"
"Why, hello, Gertie! What seems to be the matter? Don't I detect a chill in the atmosphere? So sorry you've gone and gotten refined on me. I was just going to suggest some low-brow amusement like tea at the Casino."
"Well, you ought to know a lady doesn't——"
"Oh, now, Gertie dear, not 'lady.'"
"I don't think you're a bit nice, Carl Ericson, I don't, to be making fun of me when I'm serious. And why haven't you been up to see us? Mamma and Ray have spoken of it, and you've only been up once since my party, and then you were——"
"Oh, please let's not start anything. Sorry I haven't been able to get up oftener, but I've been taking work home. You know how it is—you know when you get busy with your dancing-school——"
"Oh, I meant to tell you. I'm through, justthroughwith Vashkowska and her horrid old school. She's a cat and I don't believe she ever had anything to do with the Russian ballet, either. What do you think she had the effrontery to tell me? She said that I wasn't practising and really trying to learn anything. And I've been working myself into——Really, my nerves were in such a shape, I would have been in danger of a nervous breakdown if I had kept on. Tottykins told me how she hada nervous breakdown, and had me see her doctor, such a dear, Dr. St. Claire, so refined and sympathetic, and he told me I was right in suspecting that nobody takes Vashkowska seriously any more, and, besides, I don't think much of all this symbolistic dancing, anyway, and at last I've found out what I really want to do. Oh, Carl, it's so wonderful! I'm studying ceramics with Miss Deitz, she's so wonderful and temperamental and she has the dearest studio on Gramercy Park. Of course I haven't made anything yet, but I know I'm going to like it so much, and Miss Deitz says I have a natural taste for vahzes and——"
"Huh? Oh yes, vases. I get you."
"(Don't be vulgar.)——I'm going to go down to her studio and work every other day, and she doesn't think you have to work like a scrubwoman to succeed, like that horrid Vashkowska did. Miss Deitz has a temperament herself. And, oh, Carl, she says that 'Gertrude' isn't suited to me (and 'Gertie' certainly isn't!) and she calls me 'Eltruda.' Don't you think that's a sweet name? Would you like to call me 'Eltruda,' sometimes?"
"Look here, Gertie, I don't want to butt in, and I'm guessing at it, but looks to me as though one of these artistic grafters was working you. What do you know about this Deitz person? Has she done anything worth while? And honestly, Gertie——By the way, I don't want to be brutal, but I don't think I could stand 'Eltruda.' It sounds like 'Tottykins.'"
"Now really, Carl——"
"Wait a second. How do you know you've got what you call a temperament? Go to it, and good luck, if you can get away with it. But how do you know it isn't simply living in a flat and not having any work to doexceptdeveloping a temperament? Why don't you try working with Ray in his office? He's a mighty good business man. This is just a sugges——"
"Now really, this is——"
"Look here, Gertie, the thing I've always admired about you is your wholesomeness and——"
"'Wholesome!' Oh, that word! As Miss Deitz was saying just the other day, it's as bad——"
"But you are wholesome, Gertie. That is, if you don't let New York turn your head; and if you'd use your ability on a real job, like helping Ray, or teaching—yes, or really sticking to your ceramics or dancing, and leave the temperament business to those who can get away with it. No, wait. I know I'm butting in; I know that people won't go and change their natures because I ask them to; but you see you—and Ray and Adelaide—you are the friends I depend on, and so I hate to see——"
"Now, Carl dear, you might let me talk," said Gertie, in tones of maddening sweetness. "As I think it over, I don't seem to recall that you've been an authority on temperament for so very long. I seem to remember that you weren't so terribly wonderful in Joralemon! I'm glad to be the first to honor what you've done in aviation, but I don't know that that gives you the right to——"
"Never said it did!" Carl insisted, with fictitious good humor.
"——assume that you are an authority on temperament and art. I'm afraid that your head has been just a little turned by——"
"Oh, hell.... Oh, I'm sorry. That just slipped."
"Itshouldn'thave slipped, you know. I'mafraidit can't be passed over soeasily." Gertie might have been a bustling Joralemon school-teacher pleasantly bidding the dirty Ericson boy, "Now go and wash the little hands."
Carl said nothing. He was bored. He wished that he had not become entangled in their vague discussion of "temperament."
Even more brightly Gertie announced: "I'm afraid you're not in a very good humor this afternoon. I'm sorry that my plans don't interest you. Of course, Ishould be very temperamental if I expected you to apologize for cursing and swearing, so I think I'll just leave you here, and when you feel better——" She was infuriatingly cheerful. "——I should be pleased to have you call me up. Good-by, Carl, and I hope that your walk will do you good."
She turned into a footpath; left him muttering in tones of youthful injury, "Jiminy! I've done it now!"
He was in Joralemon.
A victoria drove by with a dowager who did not seem to be humbly courting the best set in Joralemon. A grin lightened Carl's face. He chuckled: "By golly! Gertie handled it splendidly! I'm to call up and be humble, and then—bing!—the least I can do is to propose and be led to the altar and teach a Sunday-school class at St. Orgul's for the rest of my life! Come hither, Hawk Ericson, let us hold council. Here's the way Gertie will dope it out, I guess. ('Eltruda!') I'll dine in solitary regret for saying 'hell'——No. First I'm to walk down-town, alone and busy repenting, and then I'll feed alone, and by eight o'clock I'll be so tired of myself that I'll call up and beg pretty. Rats! It's rotten mean to dope it out like that, but just the same——Me that have done what I've done—worried to death over one accidental 'hell'!... Hey there, you taxi!"
Grandly he rode through the Park, and in an unrepentant manner bowed to every pretty woman he saw, to the disapproval of their silk-hatted escorts.
He forgot the existence of Gertie Cowles and the Old Home Folks.
But he really could not afford a taxicab, and he had to make up for it by economy. At seven-thirty he gloomily entered Miggleton's Restaurant, on Forty-second Street, the least unbearable of the "Popular Prices—Tables for Ladies" dens, and slumped down at a table near the window. There were few diners. Carl was as much a stranger as on the morning when he had first invadedNew York, to find work with an automobile company, and had passed this same restaurant; still was he a segregated stranger, despite the fact that, two blocks away, in the Aero Club, two famous aviators were agreeing that there had never been a more consistently excellent flight in America than Hawk Ericson's race from Chicago to New York.
Carl considered the delights of the Cowles flat, Ray's stories about Plato and business, and the sentimental things Gertie played on the guitar. He suddenly determined to go off some place and fly an aeroplane; as suddenly knew that he was not yet ready to return to the game. He read theEvening Telegramand cheerlessly peered out of the window at the gray snow-veil which shrouded Forty-second Street.
As he finished his dessert and stirred his coffee he stared into a street-car stalled in a line of traffic outside. Within the car, seen through the snow-mist, was a girl of twenty-two or three, with satiny slim features and ash-blond hair. She was radiant in white-fox furs. Carl craned to watch. He thought of the girl who, asking a direction before the Florida Lunch Room in Chicago, had inspired him to become a chauffeur.
The girl in the street-car was listening to her companion, who was a dark-haired girl with humor and excitement about life in her face, well set-up, not tall, in a smartly tailored coat of brown pony-skin and a small hat that was all lines and no trimming. Both of them seemed amused, possibly by the lofty melancholy of a traffic policeman beside the car, who raised his hand as though he had high ideals and a slight stomach-ache. The dark-haired girl tapped her round knees with the joy of being alive.
The street-car started. Carl was already losing in the city jungle the two acquaintances whom he had just made. The car stopped again, still blocked. Carl seized his coat, dropped a fifty-cent piece on the cashier's desk, did not wait for his ten cents change, ran across the street(barely escaping a taxicab), galloped around the end of the car, swung up on the platform.
As he took a seat opposite the two girls he asked himself just what he expected to do now. The girls were unaware of his existence. And why had he hurried? The car had not started again. But he studied his unconscious conquests from behind his newspaper, vastly content.
In the unnatural quiet of the stalled car the girls were irreverently discussing "George." He heard enough to know that they were of the rather smart, rather cultured class known as "New-Yorkers"—they might be Russian-American princesses or social workers or ill-paid governesses or actresses or merely persons with one motor-car and a useful papa in the family.
But in any case they were not of the kind he could pick up.
The tall girl of the ash-blond hair seemed to be named Olive, being quite unolive in tint, while her livelier companion was apparently christened Ruth. Carl wearied of Olive's changeless beauty as quickly as he did of her silver-handled umbrella. She merely knew how to listen. But the less spectacular, less beautiful, less languorous, dark-haired Ruth was born a good comrade. Her laughter marked her as one of the women whom earth-quake and flood and child-bearing cannot rob of a sense of humor; she would have the inside view, the sophisticated understanding of everything.
The car was at last free of the traffic. It turned a corner and started northward. Carl studied the girls.
Ruth was twenty-four, perhaps, or twenty-five. Not tall, slight enough to nestle, but strong and self-reliant. She had quantities of dark-brown hair, crisp and glinty, though not sleek, with eyebrows noticeably dark and heavy. Her smile was made irresistible by her splendidly shining teeth, fairly large but close-set and white; and not only the corners of her eyes joined in her smile, but even her nose, her delicate yet piquant nose, which couldquiver like a deer's. When she laughed, Carl noted, Ruth had a trick of lifting her heavy lids quickly, and surprising one with a glint of blue eyes where brown were expected. Her smooth, healthy, cream-colored skin was rosy with winter, and looked as though in summer it would tan evenly, without freckles. Her chin was soft, but without a dimple, and her jaws had a clean, boyish leanness. Her smooth neck and delicious shoulders were curved, not fatly, but with youth and happiness. They were square, capable shoulders, with no mid-Victorian droop about them. Her waist was slender naturally, not from stays. Her short but not fat fingers were the ideal instruments for the piano. Slim were her crossed feet, and her unwrinkled pumps (foolish footgear for a snowy evening) seemed eager to dance.
There was no hint of the coquette about her. Physical appeal this Ruth had, but it was the allure of sunlight and meadows, of tennis and a boat with bright, canted sails, not of boudoir nor garden dizzy-scented with jasmine. She was young and clean, sweet without being sprinkled with pink sugar; too young to know much about the world's furious struggle; too happy to have realized its inevitable sordidness; yet born a woman who would not always wish to be "protected," and round whom all her circle of life would center....
So Carl inarticulately mused, with the intentness which one gives to strangers in a quiet car, till he laughed, "I feel as if I knew her like a book." The century's greatest problem was whether he would finally prefer her to Olive, if he knew them. If he could speak to them——But that was, in New York, more difficult than beating a policeman or getting acquainted with the mayor. He would lose them.
Already they were rising, going out.
He couldn't let them be lost. He glanced out of the window, sprang up with an elaborate pretense that he had come to his own street. He followed them out, stillconning head-lines in his paper. His grave absorption said, plain that all might behold, that he was a respectable citizen to whom it would never occur to pursue strange young women.
His new friends had been close to him in the illuminated car, but they were alien, unapproachable, when they stood on an unfamiliar street-crossing snow-dimmed and silent with night. He stared at a street-sign and found that he was on Madison Avenue, up in the Fifties. As they turned east on Fifty-blankth Street he stopped under the street-light, took an envelope from his pocket, and found on it the address of that dear old friend, living on Fifty-blankth, on whom he was going to call. This was to convince the policeman of the perfect purity of his intentions. The fact that there was no policeman nearer than the man on fixed post a block away did not lessen Carl's pleasure in the make-believe. He industriously inspected the house-numbers as he followed the quickly moving girls, and frequently took out his watch. Nothing should make him late in calling on that dear old friend.
Not since Adam glowered at the intruder Eve has a man been so darkly uninterested in two charmers. He stared clear through them; he looked over their heads; he observed objects on the other side of the street. He indignantly told the imaginary policemen who stopped him that he hadn't even seen the girls till this moment; that he was the victim of a plot.
The block through which the cavalcade was passing was lined with shabby-genteel brownstone houses, with high stoops and haughty dark doors, and dressmakers' placards or doctors' cards in the windows. Carl was puzzled. The girls seemed rather too cheerful to belong in this decayed and gloomy block, which, in the days when horsehair furniture and bankers had mattered, had seemed imposing. But the girls ascended the steps of a house which was typical of the row, except that fivemotor-cars stood before it. Carl, passing, went up the steps of the next house and rang the bell.
"What a funny place!" he heard one of the girls—he judged that it was Ruth—remark from the neighboring stoop. "It looks exactly like Aunt Emma when she wears an Alexandra bang. Do we go right up? Oughtn't we to ring? It ought to be the craziest party—anarchists——"
"A party, eh?" thought Carl.
"——ought to ring, I suppose, but——Yes, there's sure to be all sorts of strange people at Mrs. Hallet's——" said the voice of the other girl, then the door closed upon both of them.
And an abashed Carl realized that a maid had opened the door of the house at which he himself had rung, and was glaring at him as he craned over to view the next-door stoop.
"W-where——Does Dr. Brown live here?" he stuttered.
"No, 'e don't," the maid snapped, closing the door.
Carl groaned: "He don't? Dear old Brown? Not live here? Huh? What shall I do?"
In remarkably good spirits he moved over in front of the house into which Ruth and Olive had gone. People were coming to the party in twos and threes. Yes. The men were in evening clothes. He had his information.
Swinging his stick up to a level with his shoulder at each stride, he raced to Fifty-ninth Street and the nearest taxi-stand. He was whirled to his room. He literally threw his clothes off. He shaved hastily, singing, "Will You Come to the Ball," from "The Quaker Girl," and slipped into evening clothes and his suavest dress-shirt. Seizing things all at once—top-hat, muffler, gloves, pocketbook, handkerchief, cigarette-case, keys—and hanging them about him as he fled down the decorous stairs, he skipped to the taxicab and started again for Fifty-blankth Street.
At the house of the party he stopped to find on the letter-box in the entry the name "Mrs. Hallet," mentioned by Olive. There was no such name. He tried the inner door. It opened. He cheerily began to mount steep stairs, which kept on for miles, climbing among slate-colored walls, past empty wall-niches with toeless plaster statues. The hallways, dim and high and snobbish, and the dark old double doors, scowled at him. He boldly returned the scowl. He could hear the increasing din of a talk-party coming from above. When he reached the top floor he found a door open on a big room crowded with shrilly chattering people in florid clothes. There was a hint of brassware and paintings and silken Turkish rugs.
But no sight of Ruth or Olive.
A maid was bobbing to him and breathing, "That way, please, at the end of the hall." He went meekly. He did not dare to search the clamorous crowd for the girls, as yet.
He obediently added his hat and coat and stick to an uncomfortable-looking pile of wraps writhing on a bed in a small room that had a Copley print of Sargent's "Prophets," a calendar, and an unimportant white rocker.
It was time to go out and face the party, but he had stage-fright. While climbing the stairs he had believed that he was in touch with the two girls, but now he was separated from them by a crowd, farther from them than when he had followed them down the unfriendly street. And not till now did he quite grasp the fact that the hostess might not welcome him. His glowing game was becoming very dull-toned. He lighted a cigarette and listened to the beating surf of the talk in the other room.
Another man came in. Like all the rest, he gave up the brilliant idea of trying to find an unpreëmpted place for his precious newly ironed silk hat, and resignedly dumped it on the bed. He was a passable man, with a gentlemanly mustache and good pumps. Carl knewthat fact because he was comparing his own clothes and deciding that he had none the worst of it. But he was relieved when the waxed mustache moved a couple of times, and its owner said, in a friendly way: "Beastly jam!... May I trouble you for a match?"
Carl followed him out to the hostess, a small, busy woman who made a business of being vivacious and letting the light catch the fringes of her gold hair as she nodded. Carl nonchalantly shook hands with her, bubbling: "So afraid couldn't get here. My play——But at last——"
He was in a panic. But the hostess, instead of calling for the police, gushed, "Soglad youcouldcome!" combining a kittenish mechanical smile for him with a glance over his shoulder at the temporary butler. "I want you to meet Miss Moeller, Mr.—uh—Mr——"
"I knew you'd forget it!" Carl was brotherly and protecting in his manner. "Ericson, Oscar Ericson."
"Oh, of course. How stupid of me! Miss Moeller, want you to meet Mr. Oscar Ericson—you know——"
"S' happy meet you, Miss Mmmmmmm," said Carl, tremendously well-bred in manner. "Can we possibly go over and be clever in a corner, do you think?"
He had heard Colonel Haviland say that, but his manner gave it no quotation-marks.
Presumably he talked to Miss Moeller about something usual—the snow or the party or Owen Johnson's novels. Presumably Miss Moeller had eyes to look into and banalities to look away from. Presumably there was something in the room besides people and talk and rugs hung over the bookcases. But Carl never knew. He was looking for Ruth. He did not see her.
Within ten minutes he had manœuvered himself free of Miss Moeller and was searching for Ruth, his nerves quivering amazingly with the fear that she might already have gone.
How would he ever find her? He could scarce ask the hostess, "Say, where's Ruth?"
She was nowhere in the fog of people in the big room.... If he could find even Olive....
Strolling, nodding to perfectly strange people who agreeably nodded back under the mistaken impression that they were glad to see him, he systematically checked up all the groups. Ruth was not among the punch-table devotees, who were being humorous and amorous over cigarettes; not among the Caustic Wits exclusively assembled in a corner; not among the shy sisters aligned on the davenport and wondering why they had come; not in the general maelstrom in the center of the room.
He stopped calmly to greet the hostess again, remarking, "You look so beautifully sophisticated to-night," and listened suavely to her fluttering remarks. He was the picture of the cynical cityman who has to be nowhere at no especial time. But he was not cynical. He had to find Ruth!
He escaped and, between the main room and the dining-room, penetrated a small den filled with witty young men, old stories, cigarette-smoke, and siphons. Then he charged into the dining-room, where there were candles and plate much like silver—and Ruth and Olive at the farther end.