The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
filing-girls and telephone-girls followed with yearning eyes the
hero's straight back. The girl who discovered, in an old _New York
Chronicle_ lining 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 8.30 A.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 framed picture 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 the _Chronicle_. 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 to _New York_ to live!
Ray has such a good position with a big NY real estate co. & 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 so
_proud_ of you--if you will still remember simple people like us do
come _any 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.
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.
CHAPTER XXV
Before 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 crepe 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 than he 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