TRAITS
Thefirst evening at the Bogarts' was a trying one for Minga. Her life, the restless, high-strung, half-bred and wholly careless life of her age, had kept her taut as a little bowstring for sensation. It was a life formed, not so much on its own desires, as on highly colored superficial presentments in the moving pictures and theatre posters, also on those remarkably insinuating sheets, the "Society" Fashion Magazines, where the cut of one's coat and the number of one's pockets are prophesied between photographs of the important Mrs. So-and-So, or the gossiping and not too scrupulous Madame X.
The rather uninspired family dinner ended amid the soft perfunctory observances of Miss Aurelia, punctuating the indifferent curt ejaculations of the young people and the moody silence of the Judge; then Minga took a hand. She sat at the table humming a little air. "Know that?" she inquired of Dunstan; "that's 'Don't take off another thing, Polly, my dear.' Piggy Purse-proud sings it in 'The Other Pair of Stockings.'"
These statements were received in silence. Sard and Dunstan, mindful of the Judge's preferences in dinner conversation, looked askance at each other, but Minga glanced brightly around the table. To thisyoung person there were no inhibitions, no reserves; above all, she was no respecter of persons. A man who had just completed a new up-to-date garage or aeroplane would win her casual interest, but a mere upholder of the laws of the country seemed to her hardly to have outline. Curiously enough, however, her insouciance and matter-of-fact pertness sometimes reached to that buried stream of human sensation that underlay the granite of Bogart's surface. As he looked at the little figure, now rising from the table, he noted the color of her dress and spoke of it.
"Let me see, that's rose color, isn't it?" remarked the Judge, stiffly. His wrinkled square-nailed hand was on the back of the chair, and his eyes, gooseberry and hard, yet had the sort of deference a man gives some charming face and figure that refreshes him. Minga's head, bent back, looked coolly up into his face.
"That color, Judgie"—it was her absurd intimate title for him—"that color is called 'Sauce Box.'"
"Well named." The Judge had for a second a glint in his eyes.
"Isn't it?" asked Minga. She turned her bobbed head with the lively shake of a young animal and asked suavely: "Now what, for instance, is the name of the cloth of your coat?"
"Ha!" ... Dunstan, prowling about, looking for cigarettes, upset a pile of books and arrested a plundering hand. He winked at Sard over Minga's unconscious head, saying meanwhile plaintively, "Why can't I find any matches? This family sinkslower every day!" Dunstan watched to see how his father was taking Minga's innocent question.
"What kind of cloth does a Chief Justice wear, anyhow; something impenetrable, I suppose, calculated to endure, impervious to shouts and howls and woman's tears," he ventured.
Miss Aurelia, waving the maid with the coffee service out on the western veranda, looked at her nephew approvingly. "That's a very interesting idea of yours, Dunstan." The timid lady, intent on keeping the conversation in a calm backwater, went on to supply that as nearly as she could remember there was no mention of "the cloth" judicially, but only for the clergy, and when one thought of it, went on the rising muffled voice, serenely unconscious—"The coats of the clergy were blacker and smoother and—er—more dignified than anyone's else—I've often been struck by it at weddings—and—er—funerals," said Miss Aurelia.
"I shall look for it at the next—er—execution," said Dunstan as he rolled his eyes at Minga.
"Now Bishop Cravanette while dining here wore a velvet Oxford coat, I remember," Miss Aurelia thrilled to her topic, "he dined here—it was at the time of the laying of the corner-stone of the—er—church—they—he——"
Dunstan, winding a long arm around Sard's neck, another around Minga's shoulders, reeled the two girls out of the room. "She's off, Bishop Cravanette!" he murmured. "That means the rest of the evening; all on your account, Minga, unless somebody chokes her. Bishop Cravanette," Dunstan's mouth modeled on Miss Aurelia's pursy one, too full of its white teeth. "Seems to me the most ideal man for his—er—very high calling. His wife less so. The qualifications of a bishop's wife should be—er—she—he, I remember they—er—I had an aunt——"
Sard put her hand over his mouth, but the boy murmured through his sister's punishing fingers, "Minga, get Aunt Reely to tell the story of Sard's name to-night. Then that will be over!"
Sard took his cigarette case out of his pocket. "That will do for you," she lovingly tweaked his ear; "now light up, put up, shut up; you're getting facetious at your own vulgarity, as Father says."
But Dunstan, imitating Miss Aurelia's fussy ways, was dusting off his chair preparatory to sitting down. In spite of his long, awkward, muscular form this imitation of soft settling and sighing was ludicrously exact. Dora, bringing in the coffee tray, put an end to it, however, and the Judge and Miss Reely joined the young people. Sard rose till her aunt and father were seated, but Minga and Dunstan coolly sat, the former smoking until the waitress disappeared. Then Minga, behind her curved hand, grew confidential. She leaned toward Judge Bogart like a woman of the world.
"Tell me about that new murderer of yours," she begged. She had forgotten Sard's instructions "don't you start the subject."
Miss Aurelia interrupted nervously. She waved the sugar tongs.
"Two lumps, Minga, dear?"
"I don't take coffee, thank you," returned Minga imperturbably. She put her hand on the august knee of Sard's father. "Tell me all about that murderer, Dora's brother."
It was an unwritten law in the Bogarts' household that the affairs of his judicial calling should never be mentioned to the Judge. He took his cigar from his mouth and slowly turned his head; the hard old eyes, the mouth set in two gray lines under the crisply trimmed mustache, revealed the iron rigors of the human face set to the inexorable, for it was through the inexorable power of decision that the Judge had risen to his fame locally and abroad. These things suddenly confronted with that most amazing audacity, that marvelous magnet, the unwitting bold, clear-eyed face of woman-youth, softened perceptibly. The two gray lines of lip moved slightly. Minga's little pink cheeks, curly hair, her rosy dress, the little inconsequent hand on the Judge's knee, these things had a flavor and power, the depth of which the girl could not possibly guess. Yet Minga did most things very deliberately. Now she naughtily twisted her mouth at Sard.
"Ah, come on now, Judgie," turning her quizzical head to one side. "You can't have all the fun of jugging bad boys. After all, you only represent the people—that's us—let us in on it!"
Dunstan, blowing smoke in the air, almost held his breath. Sard, staring, put down her coffee cup. They both saw the queer gleam come into the concentratedeyes. A big hand steely with golf came down hard on Minga's indolent little fist. "Young lady!" said Judge Bogart, slowly and decisively, "you ought to be spanked."
"Oh, brother," purred Miss Reely, "I don't think—it doesn't seem——" Then to Minga, "Why, I am sure you didn't mean—why, George—I don't think you ever said a thing like that. I feel that Minga was only asking for information." Sard and Dunstan quivered with silent laughter; but the Judge rose in quick displeasure. Minga passed her hand slowly down his sleeve. "Ah, Judgie, dear," she pouted, "I didn't mean anything. I didn't know that judges took the Hippocratic oath and everything." One would have thought that there were tears of vexation and embarrassment in the girl's voice, but she turned a naughty stare on Dunstan. "Well, your father is a crab, a perfect crab!" Minga's tone somehow had nothing that could be modernly recognized as rudeness. It was merely spoiled privilege that made her snap her fingers decisively and look revengefully at the retreating judicial back—perhaps Judge Bogart felt what is true of the Mingas of this world, that they have an amazing power of removing the solemn humbug of prestige from its intrenchment and are therefore dangerous. The Judge heard the petulant, "I'll get even with you," but he did not smile or turn the disapproving back, so the little guest turned rather drearily to Miss Aurelia. This sort of evening for Minga was incredibly dull; it must be enlivened in some way. Stifling a yawn, not too cleverly, Mingaremarked: "Dunstan says maybe you'll tell us how Sard got her queer name."
Sard, herself, had followed her father into the library to put records on his talking machine. The Judge's favorite way of spending a spring evening was to deny all callers and to sit by the window in front of the square refrigerator-looking instrument while Sard, like a slave, drew forth and deposited the records of his choice. Through the windows of the unlighted room showed squares of black sky with one or two stars hanging. A young vine tapped against the wire netting or beckoned with leaf fingers. The Judge never looked at his daughter standing straight and ready for his signal of approval or displeasure. She chose the more sentimental and romantic of airs and sometimes when they pleased him, he softened; his eyes closed at the finale ofLa SonnambulaorDonna e Mobile; he would sometimes snort, clear his throat and say, "Very pretty, very pretty." Sard would smile a little, looking rather wistfully at him. Perhaps when her father heard this music he wandered down the paths of youth, paths of wistfulness and wanting to do right, paths such as hers must be: what had been his laws? What had at last made him this curt, severe, unapproachable man? "What were your laws, Father?" the girl almost whispered. "Did you always live under the law?"
"Very pretty—very pretty," snapped the Judge. "The best machines are accurate, that's the idea, accurate; no banging, tinpanning; accuracy, that's the test of music."
The girl, gravely obedient to him, listened to those comments. At college Sard had heard all the New Testament in modern music, the superb ranges, the exquisite far countries of sound and rhythm. For her the Russian compositions had spelled the awful darkness of a dark land, through which in splendid bursts came the hope of full golden wheat fields, the piteous tragic faces of a people longing to rise and walk from the shackles of years into their own souls' birthright. The Spanish gravity and witchery as of dancing lights in the mountains, the French stringing of water pearls and culling of moonlit flowers; the exquisite question of modern unresolved chords, or the striding rhythms and deep chests of the masculine Bach fugues. Frolicking rural joy of the old gigues and morrices and the sombre human pathos of old folk songs—the girl harking back over those rich immemorial afternoons and evenings of the music at college, wondered at herself, putting on the records, setting the needles, half shrinking from the automatic preliminary whir. "The heart bowed down with weight of woe," she looked at the grizzled head of the man whose name she bore. Was his heart "bowed down with weight of woe," was there some sore spot in his heart where, if she might win, she might see him as he was in the old days of youth and his love; had he ever agonized, cared about the tragic injustices of life? Or, did he just coddle a sense of personal loss and woe?
"We love Foddie, don't we, little Sard, we aren't afraid of him? He won't put us inprison," the curious little sweet-smelling whispers came back to Sard; she felt the soft touch of curls on her face, all the flummery and subtle trappings of the lacy little mother. These people were Sard's parents and yet they were lost to her, as remote as if they had both died! Over and over the longing had come to Sard to put her arms around her father's neck and say, "Are you thinking of her too—these days?" but she could as soon have put her arms around the kitchen chimney.
On the east veranda as the moon rose the soft voice of Miss Aurelia was placidly relating:
"Yes, Sard's name is strange. Her father, however, has allowed her to keep it—we—your mother, Dunstan—they, well, it was thought that your father preferred a boy, but afterward you—er—came, Dunstan, and that, of course——"
"Yes, of course," drawled Minga. "You—er—came, Dunstan." The girl was delicately smoking, enjoying Miss Aurelia's horror and considering the diamond on her engagement finger. It flickered in the moonlight like a wicked eye. Miss Aurelia somewhat stiffly continued:
"Sardonyx was your mother's favorite stone—she—er—wore the Sardonyx signet ring of an ancestor."
"By Jove! you don't say," ejaculated Dunstan. He stuck his heels higher on the rail and struck a match; he leaned over the terrace to flick some ashes into a jardinière. "And so I suppose—at that time—because of that—she—he—I—er——"
"Stop it, you demon, stop it," murmured Minga; "you'll spoil the whole thing; it's wonderful, it's like knitting, knit two, purl two, turn——"
"So that Mrs. Bogart," recommenced Miss Aurelia with dignity, but being plunged into the enormous detail of her story, she floundered, helpless. "So that after little Sard, the—er—baby, you know—er—came—Mrs. Bogart believing—that is—or rather having been told—er—no—well, having expected a boy—got the idea of not being able to choose an appropriate name for a girl—and in consequence—afterward you understand."
Dunstan and Minga helpfully nodded—"afterward" they prompted!
"That is, when Sard was three days old, Mrs. Bogart suddenly said, that is, I have always understood that she said it suddenly—my brother would know accurately—she said, 'She's to be called Sardonyx'—'Sardonyx' like that."
"Really," drawled Minga.
"But Sardonyx was—er—quite masculine, as you see," continued Miss Aurelia with zest; the narrator turned her face somewhat eagerly and the pursy mouth, too full of teeth, continued: "This feminization of it was Mrs. Bogart's own—quite original, we thought. She made it Sardonice, very clever, everyone said—there was no opposition. I remember," added Miss Aurelia, "that at that time, for certain reasons, they were anxious not to have the—er—brain—too active—and we—er—tried in every way to distract her thought—but that is how Sard got her name'Sardonice'—most unusual," concluded Miss Aurelia a trifle apologetically.
"Why, she could have been named Jezebel, under the circumstances," remarked Dunstan. "But—er—as it is—we—er—call her 'Sardine' for short." The lad, lazily smoking, rolled one eye 'round on Minga.
"Dunstan——" reproved Miss Aurelia.
"Really?" Minga drawled the easy little word again, then with some recollection of the archaic thing called "manners," "Thanks ever so much, Miss Aurelia—I'm sure it was awfully clever of Mrs. Bogart; I always wondered how Sard got her name. Wouldn't it be fun to have a lot of girls with names like that—Emerald, Diamond, Sapphire, Jade—I could have been the Jade," remarked Minga with a demure chuckle.
"You've got your wish," observed Dunstan with emphasis. "A little red Jade, what?" He finished his cigarette, lingeringly pinned down the butt, extinguished it, then rose, stretching. "Well," with a look of sweet seriousness, "I'm off to have a whack at those old conditions."
"You mean you're off to bed because you're bored," said Minga scornfully. "You mean you're going to work out poker hands."
"Good-night, Polly Prunella," the lad bent over and kissed the top fluff of curls. The girl reached out a punishing hand and he drew back, chuckling. "You used to let me last year," he explained.
"Say," Minga demanded, boyishly, "what do you think I am? You do that again and see what willhappen." "Bing" with a heavy slap, the little rose-frocked figure pushed him backward. "My jiu jitsu," explained Minga modestly to the horrified Miss Aurelia. "I took Self-Defense all last year—I could tackle any New York gunman with that special undercut."
"Dunstan!" said Miss Aurelia, severely, to her nephew—"how ungentlemanly. Never—never let me see you do such a thing again."
"I won't," said Dunstan, penitently. He was looking at Minga with liking, friendly boyish eyes. "I shan't want to do it again, not just there. Hey, Minga, I'll kiss you better next time, what?"
"Go to bed, you big Swede," retorted that lady, but the little figure in rose-color now leaned over and patted Miss Aurelia's hand. "Do I seem awful?" she asked anxiously. "Mother says I do; I don't want you to dislike me—you don't like my smoking? The Persian hates it!"
"Oh, my dear," breathed kind Miss Aurelia, "I dislike you? But aren't the girls nowadays very lacking in manners, smoking and all?"
Minga consoled her. "We have to act like this nowadays, you know; that's why we don't need chaperones but, of course, there is a good deal of rough stuff if a boy doesn't know you're nice, and of course some girls aren't. Now you take any stag line at any dance; sometimes the fellows get silly and, well, they drink sometimes and, believe me, that needs some handling." Minga, head down, considered her slippers gravely.
Miss Aurelia stared...."The—er—stag line—why, Sard never——"
"Oh—well," Minga leaned her head back against the wall, her little feet beating time to the music within, "Sard doesn't go in so much for that kind of thing, all the boys really want to dance with her and she knows it and doesn't hit it up and she won't allow cut-ins and that kind of thing—but most of us like the excitement, the being grabbed, you know, and so the boys like to show each other what cavemen they are, and, well, they do get silly and rough-house and you have to handle them like a mother—I've grown old," said Minga, in a burst of confidence, "I've grown old just keeping some of these lads where they belong." The girl rose and pecked at Miss Aurelia's sagging cheek. "Isn't your hair lovely," she observed, "and what pretty feet you've got. Why don't you get married?"
"My—dear"—Miss Aurelia kept hold of the little brown hand and gasped, her eyes were wide with astonishment—"at—er—my age?"
"Sure," said Minga with conviction—"you're feminine and all that, you know—a lot of men stand for that still—take some old blasé clubman and stuff him into a husband."
Miss Aurelia, stunned, let go of the hand; she was as one paralyzed.
"Nighty night," said Minga lightly. "Do you care if I steal an orange? I shan't say good-night to Judgie, I've committed him to bread and water for three days." The girl laughed. "What's that thingthey're playing?" She hesitated, nodding her head toward the music-room.
Miss Aurelia thought it must be Dvorak's "New World. The Largo...."
Minga, curly head to one side, listened a moment, then she shivered. "A little too weird and woozy for me," she announced. "I hate Sard's taste in music; I want everything calcium-colored—Fizz," said Minga explanatorily, "and jazz and dizz!" She stood there, a little undetermined, listening and staring at the white moonlight on the water of the river stretched far out below the terrace.
Then Minga looked solemnly at Miss Aurelia. "Do you believe that love is divine?" she asked casually.
"Why," said Miss Aurelia, "why, my dear child, of course I do—it's—I always thought—I—we—sometimes—it is said to be."
But Minga, with a queer little self-conscious laugh, broke away from the gentle detaining hand. She walked up-stairs, whistling; as she passed Dunstan's door, she gave it a decided thump.
Later Sard slowly climbed the stairs to the tower room. The moonlight shone in patches and blocks of shimmering glamor on the floor and across the white bed. The girl stood looking out. She stared strangely with a look of concealed curiosity out to the seat under the enormous shadow of the great flowering horse-chestnut outside of the room where the music had been. All that evening Sard, soberly putting on records, had been conscious of a tall gaunt figure sitting on the rustic seat under the horse-chestnut, its head buried in its arms. Now the seat was empty, but Sard could see a man standing out on the lawn amid a ring of Norway spruce spreading on the sky. It was Colter.
WHOOPING IT UP
Lifethese days expressed itself in a ring of automobiles around the drive of Sard's home. Minga's coming stimulated the activities of a certain set known as the "Bunch," and the various hulking sedans or little roadsters lurching in the gutters were like so many beads on the rosary of her "popularity." In the village the prestige of the maidens was read by these signs. "Peggy Martin can't be very popular. I never see but one car in front of her house." "The Fairs must be very dull people. One never sees any parking on their driveway."
These machines, groomed and glossy, or in some cases dilapidated and frankly dirty, driven by a youth never contented to stay long in one place, had their own individual swan-songs and Iliads, their maladies, their insides, their prowess in speed and climbing, and furnished food for much of the conversation of Minga's associates. A tall, red-headed lad would inquire of his feminine neighbor, lolling in the canvas hammocks on the Judge's terrace of an evening, "Did you see her buck coming over the hill? The old maid! Didn't want to do the stunt on first, so I kicked her into second and she climbed it, the old girl, spitting and blowing. Well, I thought the cranky thing would bust a valve or something."
Then would follow serious dissertation on spark plugs and gas tanks, the new fuels, graded lubricating oils and service fuses.
"Where do you garage now, Dave?" inquired one tan-shirted hedonist.
"Oh, I garage on the front lawn," replied the careless Dave. "Mother hates it, says it spoils the grass, you know, but why bother about grass? Grass isn't fashionable any more—out of date, I tell her, to have grass and flowers and things. Cut all that out, I say, old stuff!"
Another youth, dapper, with the long-boned face of the manipulator of social things, deftly drew attention to his own brand new roadster. "Got Mother to jog the old gentleman some. Went out and played golf with him a couple of times. Result!" With negligent cigarette he indicated the graceful powerful shape. "Like that color? Not too loud, what?" The youth appealed to the girls sitting on the stone coping that swept the river-ward side of the house. "I don't want 'em to think I'm Mary Pickford or anything," was his modest suggestion.
The girls, swinging their feet encased in the flat, practical tennis shoes of the period, looked their usual momentary cold interest. Their heads, impertinently bobbed, or spectacularly "bunned," had abundant hair that covered bright enough little brains, but their mouths, trained into machine talk, dealt machine-like with little well-worn screws and cogs and belts of words, so that what they turned out was machine like; not related thought or challenging conversation, buttrite sentences and inferences and ejaculations that made small circles of thought.
Gertrude, the leader of the village girls, smiled dreamily at the car in question. "It's a good make, isn't it?" she said, then—"That firm's worth millions of dollars, they say, even in these after-the-war days." Minga nodded authoritatively, as one who knew. They all looked at her respectfully.
"The Mede says that to drive that car is to drive molten gold," said Minga—it was understood that Minga spoke of her father as the Mede. No one knew exactly what the allusion meant, but it showed somehow that Minga was no slave to parental authority and that she "knew" history.
"I want Dad to get a new car instead of a new piano," said Cynthia. "With the talking machine and George's cornet we don't really need a piano—but I do need a good roadster to—to get to the library and—and church," Cynthia inclined her head demurely.
"Yah—Yah!" they all jeered. "To get to the library and church! Some getting, I'll say!"
Dunstan looked up. "Whew!" he whistled, "to get to the beauty parlor, to the hashish joint, to the ice-cream palace, to the hooch chapel."
"Yah!" they all laughed, Gertrude a little more spitefully than the others. Cynthia Bradon, a lithe, ripe blonde of sixteen, had had experiences with many things. It was known that she had had a few "shots" of morphine and would swallow, for a wager, many hectic and sulphuric beverages. She had run away and been unaccounted for for a week, she had beenphotographed in a bathing suit by a moving picture man. Cynthia was not sensitive, and her beauty, peach-like and of a glowing dewiness, seemed about the most harmless beauty in the world, because it covered so empty and so trivial a soul. Among the elders, she was considered a lost character. Among those who knew her she was known to be merely silly, lazy and untidy.
Cynthia's own group accepted her without enthusiasm or criticism. She was regarded as one who was no obstructionist and who by sheer triviality added much to the gayety of nations. Her "line" was silliness. Long education by the sensational type of moving picture had removed from these young people any morbid sensitiveness. "Cinny," and "Cinema" as they called her, wanted to find out about morphine—let her. "Fancy," so named from Frances, was a fine swimmer, always diving against her mother's command. She had saved a child once—moral—if Fancy hadn't disobeyed her mother she couldn't have saved the child! Marjorie, who was fat and too evidently made up, was a good sport and awfully nice at picnics and sailed a boat well and was jolly and fair in all games. Gertrude, dubbed facetiously "the road-hog," had nearly killed an old man by running over him in breaking speed laws; but this fact instead of making her in any way taboo, only served to add to her interest as a rather tragic saturnine young person in extremely abbreviated skirts.
They were all far away from the tradition and early training of the parents who had borne them,spent incalculable money on them, scoured the realm for the best food for them; added to their youthful desires, their green sloths, given them leisure and opportunity and crammed them with diversion but neglected to set them an unswerving example of strong, frank, fearless, reverent and purposeful life. The young people of to-day analyzed like a sort of mischievous ivy or burdock burr, growing rank in the pure garden of our purpose, have become what they are merely by feeding on the soil around them. They are the curious sports of a few rather shameful vines and fruits of our own negligence.
When they speak flippantly of love and marriage, they do so with a very accurate knowledge of the percentage of divorces and the reasons for these divorces. When they reveal all that is legally possible of their fine young bodies, they do so after a war which placed the highest percentage on physical superiority and challenged the needs for privacy, and they do so impelled by frankness and a healthy Narcissism that is much better than our old time reticence, our concealment of deformity and weakness, our æsthetic half-revealing and suggesting that made so strong a desire for full revelation.
It would be rather a joke to find that in these ways youth may surpass us one day in virtue and purity. It is quite possible that Don Juan, about whom we whispered so much behind our hands, would make no impression at all upon the young men and women of Minga's group. Walt Whitman's great biologic, physiologic roaring they would frown over, puzzled.That one man, old, too, with a white beard, should speak familiarly of prostitutes and be so anxious to specify and catalogue arms and legs and thighs and bones and blood and bone-sockets, they would think "queer." But if one were to step out and say to a group like that on the Judge's loggia, "Don Juan was over-sexed. His amours were silly and maudlin because his great creator was an embittered and sensitive and suffering man" there would be a low understanding comment of "Uh, huh?—that so?" and a general cold-blooded note-taking as to Don Juan.
To go on about Whitman and suggest that Walt was a great human comrade who at a time when there were no "legs" and no "spades" spoken of in the world believed in men and women recognizing the glory of sex and helping each other; believed in something divine inside of each that works its way through, no matter how low we sink; believed that we must struggle and overcome, yet be honest while conquering, sincere about life while controlled with it, that would be to receive the casual answer, "Say, that's some little Walt. Where did he tend bar?" But these things would strike little fire. There would be no real interest until one mentioned a new machine, a scientific discovery, a sporting champion or a unique crime. Then keen faces would be bent upon you, keen eyes would interrogate—Facts, facts, facts! So youth pushes by all your dreams, all your virtues, all your sentimentalities and theories for its true meat—facts!
The light, the casual, the cynical, the flippant, thepondering of rather gross realities and in the cases of the girls a very destructive, squalid and ignorant playing with the great laws of life as given into the hands of men and women is the expression of America to-day. To deplore is futile, to try to train any group of children away from these general lines of license and freedom, impossible. It belongs to the age; that age is the aftermath of crazy luxury and wealth. There is some great biologic secret behind it all, and this biologic secret may be that such wealth, such leisure, such exhibition, as opposed to inhibition, as we once deemed desirable is undesirable, unendurable, in that it affects life with a kind of sponginess, a sort of quicksand whereon nothing may grow or be built. It may be that such surroundings as we have tried to give our children have made their bodies fine, but have shrunken and vitiated their souls, that their use of our hard-earned materialism has been to deny all our insistence upon worth and solidity and virtue but it bears one sure portent. To the observer of the "Minga group" all over America to-day it is apparent that this Youth will some day take itself in hand, that it will create a new ethic of worth and virtue that will bear more acute scanning than does ours. That, though they must stop and go back to hard things and solemn things, above all to recreate the things they have wasted; they are preparing for some enormous new Scheme, some great rational universalism; they will perform that duty ultimately, with a greater measure of understanding than our precepts could have given them. They will be free of all tangle and rot of the Seeming, they will know! They will go forward, keen, fearless, open-eyed, fit to help carry on the destiny of the whole world.
Soon the general restlessness on the terrace communicated itself in expression. "Where do we go from here?" asked one chap—he rose and did a short shuffling step, the others clapping their hands and whistling an air which ended with the plaintive refrain: "And the reason he didn't marry me, was his four merry wives across the sea." Minga stepped inside and slipped on the phonograph a record of Honolulu Jazz and to this brassy whistling clangor the couples clinched, and young, long, canvas-shoed, thin legs stepped about in one of the curious walking dances of the time. This over, they stopped and dawdled, staring at each other. There were a few personal sallies, one or two lazy whoops, and then the old thirst for sensation: "Where do we go from here?"
"I know," suggested the youth with the new car—"Dunce, listen to my hunch, love me for my bright ideas. All hike out to Lovejoy's for hot dogs and then back to Billy's for sundaes. Come on, be a sport, everybody, what matter if you've got no coin? I'm cahoots with you, I'll stand the multitude. Got me gold mine with me."
"I can't go," complained Dunstan moodily, "got a quizz coming at eight-thirty, the infernal Latin rooster. I'd like to choke him."
"Cut it out, cut it out!" came a chorus of stern voices.... "Say, Dunce, what's the matter withyah, gettin' queer? Hey? They only put Latin in the cirickulum to please the wives of the trustees. Yah! cut it out, man—say, if yuh don't have any fun, you'll go batty; the doctors all say so. Sure they do! Everybody does go batty that's high-brow and studies and all that drool. Say, cut it out, whoop it up if yuh want to keep from suicide. By heck! you'll do sumpin desperate if you keep up with this Latin, like that feller your old man is going to put in the Can. How about that trial; when is it coming off?"
"Chuck that," muttered Dunstan, a grave significant look in the direction of the house—"Governor is inside. Sard's coming out——"
"Sard's coming out," they chanted gibingly.
"Oh, the Mermaid Lady came out, you bet,She was not fully dressed:The pretty curls of her hair were wetI leave you to guess the rest."
This gem started by the young chap with the new car was taken up and chanted by his associates, all beating time and clapping in imitation of negro minstrels. It was done by way of changing an unwelcome subject and Sard, appearing at the door, put her finger on her lips. "If you want to sing," she said laughingly, "you'll have to go in swimming or something; Father's in his den and I'm sworn to keep things quiet."
"Getting up the data for the great day?" asked one boy saucily.
Sard shook her head at him, but Minga giggled."Wouldn't it be fun to go right in now, stand in a row in front of Judgie and say, 'We, the under-signed, beg for the freedom of Terence O'Brien, given into our hands,' you know the way they used to do in—in Bret Harte and places," finished Minga a little vaguely. "Get him out from under the law."
The group brightened; here was something to do, something unusual and racy and like the movies; they saw the drama of it.
"You'd have to have a writ of habeas corpus," said one young fellow. He wore large round glasses and looked solemn. "Who's his counsel?" he demanded of Sard, professionally.
She gave the name of a village lawyer—"I'm afraid it's only a form, though poor Dora's wages go for it, for I—I don't believe there is much defense," Sard bent her brows. "It's all wrong, you know; one of us would have the best counsel money could buy; if our own families couldn't afford it, some rich relative would come forward to save the name."
"That's right, she's dead right." The young faces ranged along the terrace wall looked solemnly on Sard; from trifling, aimless pleasure-seekers they became suddenly sober, filled with the sense of human tragedy of inequality and unfairness.
"Well, then, come on." Minga stood on audacious toes; she bowed like a preening butterfly. "Who'll follow? I'll lead!"
Lounging to their feet they made ready to follow her but Sard, older and steadier, restrained them. "That's idiotic," the girl said abruptly—"you don'tknow what a rage it would put Dad in, Minga! You've never seen him when he's really angry."
"Does he carry on some?" asked one of the boys.
Sard was silent for a moment, then, "He is quite terrible," she said quietly; "it would make things worse in every way to go to Dad now—besides you know as well as I do that he could officially do nothing, but," Sard, looking at them all, spoke low, "I have an idea, I've been thinking."
They always listened respectfully to Sard. She was the stuff of which leaders are made. Indifferent to popularity, caring only for the enterprise in which she was engaged, cool, controlled, just as she was in card games or swimming and tennis, now she took charge of the group as she had done a hundred times before.
"There's that famous lawyer who is spending the summer in the organ builder's house on the mountain; you know about him."
"Don't I," spoke up Minga, eagerly. "He's a great friend of my Cousin Eleanor Ledyard and her little Pudge; he writes Pudge the funniest letters.... My!" sighed Minga. "He's frightfully important; he's been counsel for all the millionaires and magnates, he has eyes like X-rays, they look you through and through. Wow! I'm afraid of him."
The other girl hesitated. "He's famous and all that," she said slowly. "Father knows him well, but I've read things he has written in the magazines and—and—he isn't—well, you know how things are done?" The group, curiously enough, in spite of no reading at all, did know how things are done. How fatally thelies, the subsidizing, the political trickery and chicanery persist in spite of the smug assumptions of virtues; the falsity of the effort to push the world back to an age where just the title of "Christian" would suffice instead of the more recent challenge which insists that the Christian be like Christ. They knew, these little sated, over-indulged, inexperienced sprouts of materialism, somehow or other, they knew.
"The loss of innocence" which their elders so much deplored has given them a cool fatal knowledge of the rottenness hitherto hidden from them; they know the failures and compromises upon which that æsthetic dream of "innocence" has been dreamed. They will have none of it.
Minga chasséd to the terrace steps; she pinned a scarf around her head turban-fashion and her eyes shone with adventurous gleam. "Say, listen," she said in the vernacular—"Say—listen—let's all pile in the machines and go up there on the mountain and stand in a row before Watts Shipman. Let's ask him to take Terence's case; let's ask him if he could get Terry off from a life's sentence. All of us—Yes. What? Serve Judgie right," added Minga, indignantly, "for not being willing to talk to me about it."
"Whew!" breathed a young chap in white flannels. The youth, in large horn-rimmed spectacles, went solemnly over to Sard and held out his hand, "I'm with you. It will make a sensation, anyway; maybe we couldn't get much out of Shipman but I'm with you, only what will Papa say?"
Sard had been thinking about that; a curious look inher eyes, she faced the boy. "Father's law is one thing," the girl said it without a trace of disrespect or rebellion, "but mine is another and I want to be true to mine! I don't know how you feel," she looked soberly at the owlish one, "but I can't be happy and know that there is so much tragedy in the world. I can't live under that law."
It was the old sad cry of youth, "Must my happiness, then, be bought at the expense of so much human frustration and misery?" But the owlish-eyed one repudiated this notion.
"You'll have to," he said oracularly—"somebody's always hurting somebody—someone is always getting happiness out of someone's else misery." The horn-rimmed eyes looked very mature and bitter.
But several of the group jumped down from the terrace and were now tinkering with the machines in the drive. Jeering cries came from one to another as the engines started up. "Minga goes with me!" "Aw! go on, you animal, she does not; she goes with me; right here, Minga, where there's a looking-glass and rouge and sachet powder and everything—Sard goes with Thorny Croft. Hey, Nonny, Nonny, the two nuts, the two high-brows! Cinny'll catch cold; she hasn't got enough clothes on; Cinny never has enough clothes on. How about the dance the other night? Well—well—well, we saw a good deal of Cinny!" Not delicate, not pretty, not dignified, not inspiring. But it belongs to the age, Messieur et Mesdames; what part have you had in making the age what it is?
THE EXPEDITION
Dear Watts:Pudge wants me to write and thank you for your letter. He was fascinated with the arrow-heads and listened with his accustomed solemnity to your remarks about "minding mother." An hour afterward I found him putting cold cream, which I have expressly forbidden him to touch, all over the kitten. Upon remonstrance he said blandly, "You didn't tell me not to put cold cream on the kitten, Mother, and she didn't say anything." It was all so funny and he was so naughty afterward! It opened up strange thoughts of all the responsibilities I shall have with him. I wondered if when Pudge grows up the first thing he will hear will be all the sad and ugly stories that are told of his father and if he will believe that they cast an irrevocable shadow on his own life. I have known young fellows who went steadily to the bad because their fathers were weak in some way. They thought they were foredoomed!I don't even know whether to go on letting him have his own name, his father's name, now disgraced and tragic, but how can I stop things? He is his father, he has his mouth, the beautiful, fateful mouth that always made me feel as if I were a ship, wrecked on it, and he has his hair and his voice and his reckless and beseeching ways. Oh, Watts, you saved my husband, all there was to save, brought him back home; though you couldn't save him from himself.Thanks for the arrow-heads, Watts, and please write me when you like. You seem to think I might notcare to hear. I have known why it was always Pudge you wrote to, but I have grown a little stronger, a little less like a wounded animal that wants to bite the hand held out to it. I hope your mountain top still holds the peace you first found there.
Dear Watts:
Pudge wants me to write and thank you for your letter. He was fascinated with the arrow-heads and listened with his accustomed solemnity to your remarks about "minding mother." An hour afterward I found him putting cold cream, which I have expressly forbidden him to touch, all over the kitten. Upon remonstrance he said blandly, "You didn't tell me not to put cold cream on the kitten, Mother, and she didn't say anything." It was all so funny and he was so naughty afterward! It opened up strange thoughts of all the responsibilities I shall have with him. I wondered if when Pudge grows up the first thing he will hear will be all the sad and ugly stories that are told of his father and if he will believe that they cast an irrevocable shadow on his own life. I have known young fellows who went steadily to the bad because their fathers were weak in some way. They thought they were foredoomed!
I don't even know whether to go on letting him have his own name, his father's name, now disgraced and tragic, but how can I stop things? He is his father, he has his mouth, the beautiful, fateful mouth that always made me feel as if I were a ship, wrecked on it, and he has his hair and his voice and his reckless and beseeching ways. Oh, Watts, you saved my husband, all there was to save, brought him back home; though you couldn't save him from himself.
Thanks for the arrow-heads, Watts, and please write me when you like. You seem to think I might notcare to hear. I have known why it was always Pudge you wrote to, but I have grown a little stronger, a little less like a wounded animal that wants to bite the hand held out to it. I hope your mountain top still holds the peace you first found there.
It was this letter that Watts Shipman saved until after his dinner, cooked by himself on a camp-fire out under the trees and served deftly and frugally with a sort of hermit cleanliness and economy. His pipe lit, the russet head of Friar Tuck on his knee, the man read and reread the pages. The deep eyes with their curiously grave and faithful look were puzzled, the long hands gripped once or twice on the paper, and the mouth curled down on the pipe-stem with a look of bafflement and grim disappointment.
"Pshaw!" Watts kicked away a twig. He changed his position on the log upon which he sat. Putting the letter safely in an inside pocket, he got out his knife and cut rather restlessly into a long smear of yellow lichen on a tree. "It's rather queer that a woman can talk like that, hold out her signal of distress and then not tell you she needs you—it's a queer thing," said Watts solemnly to his dog. "It's a queer thing, only a good woman can withhold herself; a bad woman can be subtle and elusive, a funny little beast, plotting, dreaming greedy, little clawing dreams and setting out her little poison traps for you, but a good woman merely draws the veil and you—well, Tuck, all you can do is to go home!"
Watts spoke the last words so loudly that Friar Tuck rose once. "Woof, woof," he barked loudlyinto his master's face. Watts laughed. "Hush, you baby, I know I said 'go home,' but I'm not going home, Tuck, no sir, not to those comfortable, luxurious bachelor apartments, not until I've roughed it a little longer and get the wisdom and rightness of the woods into me. For we can't take another whole summer off like this, boy, for a long time. We've got to make it last, you old blasé clubman."
The evening grew late. A very light breeze moved the tops of the hemlocks and their pointed heads moved darkly like nodding cowls, their brooding spell took the restlessness out of Shipman and he gazed lovingly up into their fronded gloom. "Thank God for trees, the great brotherhood of the woodland priests," he murmured. Watts filled his pipe, gazing affectionately at those dark brothers, saying softly, "The Greeks got you better than we do, the souls and conscience of you; they trained their minds to regard you as some great principle connected with man and woman and so it was easy for them to imagine you as gods and goddesses. But we," grumbled the lawyer, "we with our superb logic and 'practical' minds have crystallized you into just 'trees,' things that we plant for our shade and cut down for our fuel and on which we grow fruit. Friends," said the man softly, as he went to one tree trunk and laid his arm around it, "walk with us like teachers; be one with us, take us farther and farther into your counsels and your mysteries and your reticences." Watts Shipman laughed a little, then a guttural sound from Friar Tuck roused him from his revery.
"You did that before," pointing his pipe at the russet head and solemn eyes. "You," accusingly, "did that before." Friar Tuck groveled and whined. Watts, leaning over to pat him, laughed.
"Tuck, old chap, why do you cringe so? I've never hit you, nor as far as I know has any other man. Why do you act so humbly? You know as much as I do, the only difference is that you don't know you know, and I do; but, after all, I only think I know, and that doesn't prove anything, so cheer up,mon vieux;" but at a distinctly menacing growl from the dog, Watts walked to the edge of the cliff to where his lamp was placed, and stared into the darkness.
"Shut up, you old barometer, no one can be coming up the mountain road at this hour, anyway not on this spur." The man peered at his leather-cased wrist-watch. "After eleven o'clock, and no one uses that mountain road at night; the driving's rotten and the walking's too craggy and storm-bitten for anything but snakes and foxes. Unless——" Watts thought of the mysterious ways of moving-picture campers. Going to the edge of the height on which the organ builder's house stood, he peered down to the road curving far underneath. "By all that's American!" he breathed; "by the Great Original Flapper!"
For a long line of cars was ascending the steep mountain road, winding in and out of the turns. The young drivers, leaning out, cheered to each other, calling challenges, experimenting with different gears, and bawling advice and congratulations on the climbing power of their machines. The lateness of the hourseemed no curb to their haste or their assurance, nor did the impassable road rouse a feeling of insecurity. They were merely interested in the one car that should reach the top first.
In Dunstan's roadster Minga was advocating a swift rush that should pass the car ahead and gain the summit speedily. Sard and the young lawyer tried by their own prudence to communicate that saving quality to the others; here a driver shook his fist at some dare-devil brother, who passed him close to the ledge, thereby badly crowding his neighbors, who in turn swished into the road gutter until passed by one or two speed cranks trying to beat each other.
When at last every car had reached the summit there were confident giggles, little gasps from the girls and a catcall of triumph, a harassed ejaculation from the masculine drivers.
As they parked the machines in an orderly row on the mountain top, the great lights glared and the black forms crouched in powerful bulk on the uneven roadway, while the short-skirted, jaunty figures alighted with mingled sighs and stretches of relief.
"Moon's doing pretty well to-night," said Dunstan. He kissed his hand to it, calling up to the sky, "All right, Mr. God, we like your little old scout moon. Some sky-dynamo, what? Savez? We like it!"
They moved about, pawing with their feet, seeking out the path over the mountain top. Their shadows were elongated in the moonlight, for them there were adventure and mystery in the bushes all about; scentsof spearmints and bay and the curious smell of rocky plants came to them.
One lad sniffed the air. "I smell chewing-gum," he announced.
"I smell home brew stills," shouted another youth, as he leaped up and grasped a branch like a young monkey. "Right-o, lead on to your treasure cave and your fair women slaves."
"We got the fair women slaves right here," insisted another cub person; "all we need now is a cave and the cavemen will proceed to register. Look your prettiest, maidens. Put on your skins, your other skins, and your necklaces."
The hilarity, rather artificial, was the organized hilarity of the "young" groups of the day; like the cheers of the colleges, the competitive "rah-rahs" of directed "sides," the "fun" was stimulated by rather jaded fun-leaders; so, as they entered the wooded plateau where the organ builder's house stood, they were fairly howling and bawling with self-conscious youth and the sense of "whooping it up."
"Oh, Watts Shipman," shouted a Yale sophomore. "Oh, Watts Shipman, put out your head."
"Oh, you criminal lawyer," howled another boy, "free the slaves, burn the Bastille, burn the pastilles—Rah—Rah—Rah! We want Terence, the great cut-throat of the Hudson," and so in the pale sanctity of the moonlight the group stumbled on, plunging, exhilarated, a little uncertain and undecided and becoming increasingly silly. At some not very emphatic shrieks, giggles and rather over-done kissing sounds,Sard turned sharply. The girl, hatless, a little glint in her eyes, faced them. "I don't like this; you know it's—it's not sensible."
"Ah," they said, "ah, the lady doesn't like it."
"I think we ought to take this thing more seriously," Sard continued with a little short breath of indignation, adding more gently, "We don't really know what we're up against. I've heard that Watts Shipman is terribly reserved. We don't want to antagonize him."
"I shan't antagonize him," came a fresh high voice. "I shall vamp him. I shall twine around him like the ivy in the snow."
They all chuckled. Minga, clad in scarlet sweater and skirt, with the orange silk handkerchief bound around her curls, suddenly slid into a bright patch of moonlight where the trees were thinnest, making a natural stage setting.
"I am terribly reserved," shrieked Minga in high falsetto. "I am the primmest little prune in the county. But I am some little dancer and don't you forget it, and I will dance his eyes out of his head. Ladies and gents," announced Minga, "the Pocahontas Pep. Watch me!"
They stood there watching her prowling paces and archly bold postures. The slender form bent almost backward, the eyes filled with imaginary passion and adventure and fear. When she ended with a lovely fantastic rush and stampede, it is quite certain that that grave Indian maiden, the estimable Pocahontas, would have been as much fascinated as anyone else.At the catcalls and whoops of applause, Sard again held up her hand.
"Minga," she pleaded, "Dunce, please, all of you." Sard was very positive.
The solemn lawyer youth in the background, silently adoring her, brightened as her voice took on asperity and decision.
"This is really silly," she scolded; "it's—it's not the way to do things. Didn't we come up here to try to save Terence O'Brien?" she demanded.
"Sure," soothed one of the boys. "Right-o!" added one or two more.
"Well then," said Sard, "if I know a thing of Watts Shipman from what I've heard Father say," she dropped her voice to persuasive entreaty. "No, really, Minga! Dunce! we won't get a thing out of that man if we act like this; he's very hard to deal with; he's cold and aloof and——"
"An altogether haughty and disagreeable person," said a deep voice.
The group turned quickly, and there in the moonlight, his hand on the suspicious Friar Tuck's collar, stood the lawyer.
There was a moment's silence; a sort of shiver ran through the young people. It was a sensation they quickly recognized, but to which they could give no name; the voice and presence of spiritual poise, the calm, inexorable deliberation of assured authority.
"How do you do, everybody?" said Watts quietly, as quietly as he stood there waiting.
That "everybody," grave as it was, contained aninformal welcome that Minga was quick to recognize. She, who took hurdles as soon as they were presented, now tried to jump the barrier of this stranger's powerful personality. She stepped forward, a funny little figure in scarlet, opposite to the tall khaki-clad repose of the man.
"How do you do, Mr. Shipman?" came the little voice in the moonlight.
Minga was glib at these numbers. "I've—we've heard so much about you, awfully glad to meet you; you know my cousin, Mrs. Ledyard, she's told me just lots about you."
Watts swept a swift glance at the girl.... "Yes," he took Minga in and smiled, not unsympathetically, "I know Mrs. Ledyard well; I am glad to meet a cousin of hers. It's Miss Gerould, isn't it? I am so glad to see you."
"Well," Minga, even before his indulgence, felt an unaccountable awkwardness; the erstwhile Pocahontas shifted from one foot to another while she dug both hands in the patch pockets of her tennis skirt. "I—we—er—just came up," she began; "we all sort of—thought we'd like to know you."
Now the owl-eyed youth stepped forward with the grand manner of the college debater.
"We come on behalf of Terence O'Brien," he began. At the superior manner and the name, the great lawyer stiffened ever so imperceptibly, but suddenly the owl-eyed also lost courage, so that it was Sard who was forced to lucidify things.
"We hope we aren't intruding." The girl's voicewas even and poised. Watts looked at her with interest.
"We are in great distress and trouble about something and we believed that you could—that you would help us."
"This is Judge Bogart's daughter," announced one of the boys with the society drawl of the "important" introduction.
The lawyer, standing there, bowed. The moonlight disguised the look of curiosity, of humor, in his eyes; he scanned this awed group in rather fantastic outdoor get-up.
"It's a little late for calling, isn't it?" he suggested; then, seeing a slight resentment on the part of the owl-eyed, whom he instantly recognized as a struggler along his own difficult path of the law, he relented.
"But delightful of you to climb way up here. Rather wicked roads, I'm afraid; some able driving." With a hospitable gesture he led the way to the clearing in front of his house. Few of the young people had been up here before; there were looks of frank curiosity and expressions of wonder that a modern clubman should choose to live in the organ builder's old rookery.
"Well, it has its charm," explained Watts, his grim mouth was humorous, "but I shan't ask you in; not while the moon's like this! Now, if you fellows will drag out rugs and some cushions for the girls——" He was busy receiving his midnight guests, as if all were quite usual.
And quite usual it seemed to the young night hawks.The boys, sitting on stumps, rolled cigarettes or filled pipes; Minga and Gertrude also lit cigarettes, but the former, at Sard's amused glance, tossed hers away; the thing, still smouldering, dropped on some dried pine needles. Shipman slowly turned from the owl-eyed and his look went directly to the little wisp of smoke.
"Your cigarette is still burning," he gestured toward it, then courteously, "I am fire warden here; won't you please put it out?"
It was as if he assumed that a modern girl would prefer to do this herself, but Minga wilfully misunderstood him. The little scarlet figure seated on the log resented the authority back of the deep kind gaze bent upon her. It was a stinging new experience for Minga to be reminded of a duty, an experience like a smart blow on the lithe little body, only it had none of the brutality a blow must have; perhaps that was why it stung. Minga hunched one shoulder; her eyes snapped as she turned away.
"You can put it out yourself," was her pert remark.
There was a nervous giggle, then a sudden silence. The scene in the moonlight was significant. The loafing, negligent forms of the smoking youths, Sard standing vibrant, clear, but irresolute and waiting. Dunstan, the charmed faun look in his eyes, prone at Minga's feet. The culprit flushed and annoyed, the girls frankly open-mouthed and uncomprehending. Again the owlish-eyed tried to take command.
"Allow me," with opera bouffe effect. He started toward the smoking cigarette, but, bowing very slightlywith an almost curt gesture of refusal, Watts prevented him.
"I am sorry, but in the capacity of fire warden, it is my duty to see that an ordinary camp regulation is obeyed." He turned to the provoked girl and, with very slight but intentional irony, asked, "Do you know the meaning of that word 'obey,' Miss Minga?"
Slowly the girl rose and stared into his face. Deciding to say nothing, she gradually stiffened and a hard look came into her eyes. "I—refuse—to—I," she tried for a lofty tone, but her voice was flat and childish, "I—I am not accustomed——"
"Exactly," said Watts quietly. "The Mede and the Persian haven't been successful with you in that, have they?—though they've let you become so charming. You see," he smiled, "I've heard of you, Miss Minga."
At this the group writhed; one or two giggled a little uncertainly.
"Insulting," breathed one lad dramatically. He put his hand first into one pocket and then the other; another cub person solemnly took out and considered a revolver but their host took little notice.
"You see," said Watts, with an air of imparting information, "I believe in obedience—of course, I shan't order you to put out the cigarette, Miss Gerould, but obliged as I am to you all for this—er—interest, yet after all you are my guest and, well, guests, even in America, still like to consider the preferences of the host and my preference is to observe forest laws."
There was an indeterminate silence. Loyalty to Minga, and their quick moving picture sense of outrage, made them wish to murder this man, who was so quiet and so direct. "Who," thought the owl-eyed, "was this stranger to command them all, order them around?" Yet the thought Watts had just expressed seemed to them rather obvious; they had come uninvited into this man's camp. It seemed only decency to observe the rules. As they stood uncomfortably irresolute, they saw with wide-open eyes a strange thing happen.
Watts Shipman stood in front of their little friend in scarlet, not touching her, only looking at her. Very slowly and calmly the man motioned toward the cigarette smouldering on the turf; very quietly, almost imperceptibly, he motioned the girl toward it. Minga rose like one in a trance, her eyes fixed unwillingly on those of the lawyer. Putting out one little canvas-shod foot, at first irresolutely, then with sudden vehemence she rubbed the burning cigarette into the ground till all saw that it was extinguished. The girl turned her face in the moonlight. It was broken with rage. "I hate you. I hate you," she breathed. Her teeth seemed to chatter with her sudden fury.
Watts held out both hands. "I'm sorry," he said simply, "but I think you know that I have done right."
The group of youngsters stood silent and amazed in the moonlight. They had beheld a thing as rare in America as lions and tigers; they had witnessed the power of just, quiet and inexorable spiritual authority, compelling obedience. Minga, looking around forsympathy, read no answering rebellion in their eyes. With a strange, an almost animal cry, the girl darted over to Dunstan Bogart. "Oh, Dunce," she choked, almost screaming, "get me away from here—get me away, I tell you!"
She turned and dashed out of the circle into the rough mountain road, where they saw her stumbling like a driven thing; Dunstan Bogart, without an instant's hesitation, following her. The boy's eyes were glittering, his head held high in a sort of pride of championship. In a moment their car, tightly braked, was edging cautiously down the rock-hewn road.
When at last they reached the levels, the boy suddenly reaching over, put his hand on his companion's, who sat rigid, immovable beside him. Minga looked at him fiercely a second time, with eyes that were hot with tears; she sobbed, "Oh, I'mwild." When they pulled up at the Bogarts' garage she drew a long, shuddering breath, and her champion, staring amazedly at her, saw her face drenched with angry crying.
"Pshaw!" said Dunstan. "What do you care—that old granny on the mountain top! Why should you care?"
"I wish I was home," said Minga, fiercely. "Oh, I wish I was home." The sheltering tenderness of the Mede and Persian would have been very grateful just then to their little daughter.
"Minga," said Dunce earnestly, "I could have brained that brute; so could the other chaps. What business had he to—- He'll get his yet."
"I hate him, I hate him," repeated the girl viciously.She twisted her handkerchief in her hands and her eyes grew wide with something now unaccountable. While she fought for self-possession, the boy beside her, with a tenderness he hardly understood, stroked the soft, curly head; he uttered clumsy words of comfort.
"Any man," said Dunstan, "any man who would do such a thing is a pretty low sort of cur."
"He isn't just a cur," objected Minga miserably; "a cur could—couldn't make me f-feel like this."
"Well, he's a comic supplement,"—Dunce snapped his teeth viciously, "he's a—an Egyptian obelisk," raged the boy, "and I'd like to cut some more hieroglyphics on him."
So the two sat in the little roadster, arrested in their impulsive pampered lives by one of the greatest laws that has ever been laid on humanity, the Law of Obedience, incoherent in their inner warrings of hurt pride, they tried to sustain each other. Dunstan's awkward arm went once around Minga's little red-clad figure; he strove in a callow way to be tender, but only for a moment.
For a tempestuous Minga stood up straight in the car.
"For Heaven's sa-sake," she demanded with a slight sob, "For Heaven's sake,"—gulp—"what do you think this is, Dunce Bogart, one of those petting parties? Do you think I'm a park lady or one of those Sunday-school picnic vamps?"
Dunce looked sheepishly determined. "You remember what I said that first night," he said solemnly,"that I'd kiss you again—and better—that's what you'll—you'll feel, some day."
To her disdainful silence he went on, "Well, I haven't yet, but I'm going to; you wait." He wagged his head.
But there was a little distressed quiver in her voice, and the essential manhood in Dunstan answered it with gentleness. He himself rose and the two climbed soberly down out of the car. Through the great trees they saw the cathedral moonlight still silvering all the world and the sleep and quiet, the majesty of the night, touched them. They saw depths of life that they had never fathomed; depths that saddened and frightened them. Together they softly closed the garage doors, together they entered the dark house and crept slowly up-stairs.
"Good-night, Minga," said Dunstan softly. "Do you care that—that I was there——" The boy looked solemnly at her.
The girl, pausing at the door of her room, lifted her head and looked at him. "You were the only decent person on the whole trip," she said softly. She put her hand in his; it was cold and little. Dunstan, wondering, felt it tremble.
When a boy goes to bed remembering a girl's trembling hand does he ever ask himself who made that hand tremble, or does he always feel sure that it was he who stirred the young life to quivering?