The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
"I always used to feel that a girl--you say you aren't in society, but
I mean a girl like you--I used to think it was impossible to play with
such a girl unless a man was rich, which I excessively am not, with my
little money tied up in the Touricar. Yet here we have an all-day
party, and it costs less than three really good seats at the theater."
"I know. Phil is always saying that he is too poor to have a good
time, and yet his grandmother left him fifteen thousand dollars
capital in his own right, besides his allowance from his father and
his salary from the law firm; and he infuriates me sometimes--aside
from the tactlessness of the thing--by quite plainly suggesting that
I'm so empty-headed that I won't enjoy going out with him unless he
spends a lot of money and makes waiters and ushers obsequious. There
are lots of my friends who think that way, both the girls and the men.
They never seem to realize that if they were just human beings, as you
and I have been to-day, and not hide-bound members of the
dance-and-tea league, they could beat that beastly artificial old
city.... Phil once told me that _no_ man--mind you, no one at
all--could possibly marry on less than fifteen thousand dollars a
year. Simply proved it beyond a question."
"That lets me out."
"Phil said that no one could possibly live on the West Side--of course
the fact that he and I are both living on the West Side doesn't
count--and the cheapest good apartments near Fifth Avenue cost four
thousand dollars a year. And then one can't possibly get along with
less than two cars and four maids and a chauffeur. Can't be done!"
"He's right. Fawncy! Only three maids. Might as well be dead."
The pack was ready, now; he was swinging it to his back and preparing
to stamp out the fire. But he dropped his burden and faced her in the
low firelight. "Ruth, you won't make up your mind to marry Phil till
you're _sure_, will you? You'll play with me awhile, won't you? Can't
we explore a few more----"
She laughed nervously, trying to look at him. "As I said, Phil won't
condescend to consider poor me till he has his fifteen thousand
dollars a year, and that won't be for some time, I think, considering
he is too well-bred to work hard."
"But seriously, you will----Oh, I don't know how to put it. You will
let me be your playmate, even as much as Phil is, while we're
still----"
"Carl, I've never played as much with any one as with you. You make
most of the men I know seem very unenterprising. It frightens me.
Perhaps I oughtn't to let you jump the fence so easily."
"You _won't_ let Phil lock you up for a while?"
"No.... Mustn't we be going?"
"Thank you for letting the outlaw come to your party. The fire's out.
Come."
With the quenching of the fire they were left in smothering darkness.
"Where do we go?" she worried. "I feel completely lost. I can't make
out a thing. I feel so lost and so blind, after looking at the fire."
Her voice betrayed that he was suddenly a stranger to her.
With hasty assurance he said: "Sit tight! See. We head for that tall
oak, up the slope, then through the clearing, keeping to the right.
You'll be able to see the oak as soon as you get the firelight out of
your eyes. Remember I used to hunt every fall, as a kid, and come back
through the dark. Don't worry."
"I can just make out the tree now."
"Right. Now for it."
"Let me carry my skees."
"No, you just watch your feet." His voice was pleasant, quiet, not too
intimate. "Don't try to guide yourself by your eyes. Let your feet
find the safe ground. Your eyes will fool you in the dark."
It was a hard pull, the way back. Encumbered with pack and two pairs
of skees, which they dared not use in the darkness, he could not give
her a helping hand. The snow was still falling, not very thick nor
savagely wind-borne, yet stinging their eyes as they crossed open
moors and the wind leaped at them. Once Ruth slipped, on a rock or a
chunk of ice, and came down with an infuriating jolt. Before he could
drop the skees she struggled up and said, dryly:
"Yes, it did hurt, and I know you're sorry, and there's nothing you
can do."
Carl grinned and kept silence, though with one hand, as soon as he
could get it free from the elusive skees, he lightly patted her
shoulder.
She was almost staggering, so cold was she and so tired, and so heavy
was the snow caked on her boots, when they came to a sharp rise, down
which shone the radiance of an incandescent light.
"Road's right up there, blessed," he cried, cheerily.
"Oh, I can't----Yes, I will----"
He dropped the skees, put one arm about her shoulders and one about
her knees, and almost before she had finished crying, "Oh no, _please_
don't carry me!" he was half-way up the slope. He set her down safe by
the road.
They caught the 8.09 train with two minutes to spare. Its warmth and
the dingy softness of the plush seats seemed palatial.
Ruth rubbed her cold hands with a smile deprecating, intimate; and her
shoulder drooped toward him. Her whole being seemed turned toward him.
He cuddled her right hand within his, murmuring: "See, my hand's a
house where yours can keep warm." Her fingers curled tight and rested
there contentedly. Like a drowsy kitten she looked down at their two
hands. "A little brown house!" she said.
CHAPTER XXXIV
While scientists seek germs that shall change the world, while war
comes or winter takes earth captive, even while love visibly flowers,
a power, mighty as any of these, lashes its human pack-train on the
dusty road to futility. The Day's Work is the name of that power.
All these days of first love Carl had the office for lowering
background. The warm trust of Ruth's hand on a Saturday did not make
plans for the Touricar any the less pressing on a Monday. The tyranny
of nine to five is stronger, more insistent, in every department of
life, than the most officious oligarchy. Inspectors can be bribed,
judges softened, and recruiting sergeants evaded, but only the grace
of God will turn 3.30 into 5.30. And Mr. Ericson of the Touricar
Company, a not vastly important employee of the mothering VanZile
Corporation, was not entitled to go home at 3.30, as a really rational
man would have done when the sun gold-misted the windows and suggested
skating.
No longer was business essentially an adventure to Carl. Doubtless he
would have given it up and have gone to Palm Beach to fly a hydro for
Bagby, Jr., had there been no Ruth. Bagby wrote that he was coming
North, to prepare for the spring's experiments; wouldn't Carl consider
joining him?
Carl was now, between his salary and his investment in the Touricar
Company, making about four thousand dollars a year, and saving nearly
half of it, against the inevitable next change in his life, whatever
that should be. He would probably climb to ten thousand dollars in
five years. The Touricar was promising success. Several had been
ordered at the Automobile Show; the Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia
agents of the company reported interest. For no particular reason,
apparently, Milwaukee had taken them up first; three Milwaukee people
had ordered cars.... An artist was making posters with beautiful
gipsies and a Touricar and tourists whose countenances showed lively
appreciation of the efforts of the kind Touricar manufacturers to
please and benefit them. But the head salesman of the company laughed
at Carl when he suggested that the Touricar might not only bring them
money, but really take people off to a larger freedom:
"I don't care a hang where they go with the thing as long as they pay
for it. You can't be an idealist and make money. You make the money
and then you can have all the ideals you want to, and give away some
hospitals and libraries."
* * * * *
They walked and talked, Ruth and Carl. They threaded the
Sunday-afternoon throng on upper Broadway, where on every clear Sunday
all the apartment-dwellers (if they have remembered to have their
trousers pressed or their gloves cleaned in preparation) promenade
like stupid black-and-white peacocks past uninteresting
apartment-houses and uninspiring upper Broadway shops, while two
blocks away glorious Riverside Drive, with its panorama of Hudson and
hills and billowing clouds, its trees and secret walks and the
Soldiers and Sailors Monument, is nearly deserted. Together they
scorned the glossy well-to-do merchant in his newly ironed top-hat,
and were thus drawn together. It is written that loving the same cause
makes honest friendship; but hating the same people makes alliances so
delightful that one can sit up late nights, talking.
At the opening of the flying season Carl took her to the Hempstead
Plains Aviation Field, and, hearing his explanations, she at last
comprehended emotionally that he really was an aviator.
They tramped through Staten Island; they had tea at the Manhattan.
Carl dined with Ruth and her father; once he took her brother, Mason,
to lunch at the Aero Club.
Ruth was ill in March; not with a mysterious and romantic malady, but
with grippe, which, she wrote Carl, made her hate the human race, New
York, charity, and Shakespeare. She could not decide whether to go to
Europe, or to die in a swoon and be buried under a mossy headstone.
He answered that he would go abroad for her; and every day she
received tokens bearing New York post-marks, yet obviously coming from
foreign parts: a souvenir card from the Piraeus, stating that Carl was
"visiting cousin T. Demetrieff Philopopudopulos, and we are enjoying
our drives so much. Dem. sends his love; wish you could be with us";
an absurd string of beads from Port Said and a box of Syrian sweets; a
Hindu puzzle guaranteed to amuse victims of the grippe, and
gold-fabric slippers of China; with long letters nonchalantly relating
encounters with outlaws and wrecks and new varieties of disease.
He called on her before her nose had quite lost the grippe or her
temper the badness.
Phil Dunleavy was there, lofty and cultured in evening clothes,
apparently not eager to go. He stayed till ten minutes to ten, and, by
his manner of cold surprise when Carl tried to influence the
conversation, was able to keep it to the Kreisler violin recitals, the
architecture of St. John the Divine's, and Whitney's polo, while Carl
tried not to look sulky, and manoeuvered to get out the excellent
things he was prepared to say on other topics; not unlike the small
boy who wants to interrupt whist-players and tell them about his new
skates. When Phil was gone Ruth sighed and said, belligerently:
"Poor Phil, he has to work so hard, and all the people at his office,
even the firm, are just as common as they can be; common as the
children at my beastly old settlement-house."
"What do you mean by 'common'?" bristled Carl.
"Not of our class."
"What do you mean by 'our class'?"
And the battle was set.
Ruth refused to withdraw "common." Carl recalled Abraham Lincoln and
Golden-Rule Jones and Walt Whitman on the subject of the Common
People, though as to what these sages had said he was vague. Ruth
burst out:
"Oh, you can talk all you like about theories, but just the same, in
real life most people are common as dirt. And just about as admissible
to Society. It's all very fine to be good to servants, but you would
be the first to complain if I invited the cook up here."
"Give her and her children education for three generations----"
She was perfectly unreasonable, and right in most of the things she
said. He was perfectly unreasonable, and right in all of the things he
said. Their argument was absurdly hot, and hurt them pathetically. It
was difficult, at first, for Carl to admit that he was at odds with