The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
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 Ben _did_ study 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 a _word_ of
it----"
Mrs. Cowles (interrupting): "Adelaide is a good girl....Ray! Don't
tilt your chair!"
Gertie: "Yes, _isn't_ she, 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't_ we!"
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, I _didn't_ mean----But we did have some good
times. Oh, Carl, will you _ever_ forget 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: "Ohhhhh _say_, whatever did become of----Oh, I can't think of
his name----Oh, _you_ know----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 there so 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't _know_ it, 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't_ put 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 you please 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 there _have_ been worse
teachers than Prof Larsen----!"
When the rabbit lay pale in death, a saddening _debacle_ of hardened
cheese, and they sat with their elbows on the Modified Mission
dining-table, Gertie exclaimed:
"Oh, Ray, you _must_ do 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 an expression 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 big
The 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
with _joie 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, so _real_! 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