The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
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 the Swiss 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.
CHAPTER XXVII
Carl 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, undistinguished figure, 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 for _worlds_!"
"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, just _through_ with 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 had a 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 do _except_ developing 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."
"It _shouldn't_ have slipped, you know. I'm _afraid_ it can't be
passed over so _easily_." 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, I should 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 invaded New 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 the _Evening Telegram_ and 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