The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
He wanted to be good; not make a scene. He noticed with intense
indignation that Phil was grinning. He planned to get Phil off in a
corner, not necessarily a dark corner, and beat him. He wanted to
telegraph Ruth; dared not. He realized, in a quarter-second, that he
must have been discussed by the Family, and did not like it.
Every one seemed to be waiting for him to speak. Awkwardly he said,
wondering all the while if she meant what her tone said she meant, by
"bad influences":
"Yes, but----Just going to say----I believe settlement work is a good
influence----"
"Please don't discuss----" Ruth was groaning, when Aunt Emma sternly
interrupted:
"It is good of you to take up the cudgels, Mr. Ericson, and please
don't misjudge me--of course I realize that I am only a silly old
woman and that my passion to see the Winslows keep to their fine
standards is old-fashioned, but you see it is a hobby of mine that
I've devoted years to, and you who haven't known the Winslows so very
long----" Her manner was almost courteous.
"Yes, that's so," Carl mumbled, agreeably, just as she dropped the
courtesy and went on:
"----you can't judge--in fact (this is nothing personal, you know) I
don't suppose it's possible for Westerners to have any idea how
precious family ideals are to Easterners. Of course we're probably
silly about them, and it's splendid, your wheat-lands, and not caring
who your grandfather was; but to make up for those things we do have
to protect what we have gained through the generations."
Carl longed to stand up, to defy them all, to cry: "If you mean that
you think Ruth has to be protected against me, have the decency to say
so." Yet he kept his voice gentle:
"But why be narrowed to just a few families in one's interests? Now
this settlement----"
"One isn't narrowed. There are plenty of _good_ families for Ruth to
consider when it comes time for my little girl to consider alliances
at all!" Aunt Emma coldly stated.
"I _will_ shut up!" he told himself. "I will shut up. I'll see this
dinner through, and then never come near this house again." He tried
to look casual, as though the conversation was safely finished. But
Aunt Emma was waiting for him to go on. In the general stillness her
corsets creaked with belligerent attention. He played with his fork in
a "Well, if that's how you feel about it, perhaps it would be better
not to discuss it any further, my dear madam," manner, growing every
second more flushed, embarrassed, sick, angry; trying harder every
second to look unconcerned.
Aunt Emma hawked a delicate and ladylike hawk in her patrician throat,
prefatory to a new attack. Carl knew he would be tempted to retort
brutally.
Then from the door of the dining-room whimpered the high voice of an
excited child:
"Oh, mamma, oh, Cousin Ruthie, nurse says Hawk Ericson is here! I want
to see him!"
Every one turned toward a boy of five or six, round as a baby chicken,
in his fuzzy miniature pajamas, protectingly holding a cotton monkey
under his arm, sturdy and shy and defiant.
"Why, Arthur!" "Why, my son!" "Oh, the darling baby!" from the table.
"Come here, Arthur, and let's hear your troubles before nurse nabs
you, old son," said Phil, not at all condescendingly, rising from the
table, holding out his arms.
"No, no! You just let me go! I want to see Hawk Ericson. Is that Hawk
Ericson?" demanded the son of Aunt Emma, pointing at Carl.
"Yes, sweetheart," said Ruth, softly, proudly.
Running madly about the end of the table, Arthur jumped at Carl's lap.
Carl swung him up and inquired, "What is it, old man?"
"Are you Hawk Ericson?"
"At your commands, cap'n."
Aunt Emma rose and said, masterfully, "Come, little son, now you've
seen Mr. Ericson it's up to beddie again, up--to--beddie."
"No, no; please no, mamma! I've never seen a' aviator before, not in
all my life, and you promised me 'cross your heart, at Pasadena you
did, I could see one."
Arthur's face showed signs of imminent badness.
"Well, you may stay for a while, then," said Aunt Emma, weakly,
unconscious that her sway had departed from her, while the rest of the
table grinned, except Carl, who was absorbed in Arthur's ecstasy.
"I'm going to be a' aviator, too; I think a' aviator is braver than
anybody. I'd rather be a' aviator than a general or a policeman or
anybody. I got a picture of you in my scrap-book--you got a funny hat
like Cousin Bobby wears when he plays football in it. Shall I get you
the picture in my scrap-book?... Honest, will you give me another?"
Aunt Emma made one more attempt to coax Arthur up to bed, but his
Majesty refused, and she compromised by scolding his nurse and sending
up for his dressing-gown, a small, blue dressing-gown on which yellow
ducks and white bunny-rabbits paraded proudly.
"Like our blue bowl!" Carl remarked to Ruth.
Not till after coffee in the drawing-room would Arthur consent to go
to bed. This real head of the Emma Winslow family was far too much
absorbed in making Carl tell of his long races, and "Why does a
flying-machine fly? What's a wind pressure? Why does the wind shove
up? Why is the wings curved? Why does it want to catch the wind?" The
others listened, including even Aunt Emma.
Carl went home early. Ruth had the opportunity to confide:
"Hawk dear, I can't tell you how ashamed I am of my family for
enduring anybody so rude and opinionated as Aunt Emma. But--it's all
right, now, isn't it?... No, no, don't kiss me, but--dear dreams,
Hawk."
Phil's voice, from behind, shouted: "Oh, Ericson! Just a second."
Carl was not at all pleased. He remembered that Phil had listened with
obvious amusement to his agonized attempt to turn Aunt Emma's attacks.
Said Phil, while Ruth disappeared: "Which way you going? Walk to the
subway with you. You win, old man. I admire your nerve for facing Aunt
Emma. What I wanted to say----I hope to thunder you don't think I was
in any way responsible for Mrs. Winslow's linking me and Ruth that way
and----Oh, you understand. I admire you like the devil for knowing
what you want and going after it. I suppose you'll have to convince
Ruth yet, but, by Jove! you've convinced me! Glad you had Arthur for
ally. They don't make kiddies any better. God! if I could have a son
like that----I turn off here. G-good luck, Ericson."
"Thanks a lot, Phil."
"Thanks. Good night, Carl."
CHAPTER XXXVII
Long Beach, on the first hot Sunday of May, when motorists come out
from New York, half-ready to open asphalt hearts to sea and sky.
Carl's first sight of it, save from an aeroplane, and he was mad-happy
to find real shore so near the city.
Ruth and he were picnicking, vulgar and unashamed, among the dunes at
the end of the long board-walk, like the beer-drinking, pickle-eating
parties of fishermen and the family groups with red table-cloths,
grape-basket lunches, and colored Sunday supplements. Ruth declared
that she preferred them to the elegant loungers who were showing off
new motor-coats on the board-walk. But Carl and she had withdrawn a
bit from the crowds, and in the dunes had made a nest, with a book and
a magazine and a box of chocolates and Carl's collapsible lunch-kit.
Not New York only, but all of Ruth's relatives were forgot. Aunt Emma
Truegate Winslow was a myth of the dragon-haunted past. Here all was
fresh color and free spaces looking to open sea. Behind the dunes,
with their traceries of pale grass, reveled the sharp, unshadowed
green of marshes, and an inland bay that was blue as bluing, a
startling blue, bordered by the emerald marshes. To one side--afar,
not troubling their peace--were the crimson roofs of fantastic houses,
like chalets and California missions and villas of the Riviera, with
gables and turrets of red tiles.
Before their feet was the cream-colored beach, marked by ridges of
driftwood mixed with small glistening shells, long ranks of
pale-yellow seaweed, and the delicate wrinkles in the sand that were
the tracks of receding waves. The breakers left the beach wet and
shining for a moment, like plates of raw-colored copper, making one
cry out with its flashing beauty. Then, at last, the eyes lifted to
unbroken bluewater--nothing between them and Europe save rolling waves
and wave-crests like white plumes. The sea was of a diaphanous blue
that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue enamel to a
rich ultramarine which absorbed and healed the office-worn mind. The
sails of tacking sloops were a-blossom; sea-gulls swooped; a tall
surf-fisherman in red flannel shirt and shiny black hip-boots strode
out into the water and cast with a long curve of his line; cumulus
clouds, whose pure white was shaded with a delicious golden tone, were
baronial above; and out on the sky-line the steamers raced by.
Round them was the warm intimacy of the dune sands; beyond was
infinite space calling to them to be big and unafraid.
Talking, falling into silences touched with the mystery of sun and
sea, they confessed youth's excited wonder about the world; Carl
sitting cross-legged, rubbing his ankles, a springy figure in blue
flannel and a daring tie; while Ruth, in deep-rose linen, her throat
bright and bare, lay with her chin in her hands, a flush beneath the
gentle brown of her cheeks, her white-clad ankles crossed under her
skirt, slender against the gray sand, thoughtful of eye, lost in
happiness.
"Some day," Carl was musing, "your children and mine will say, 'You
certainly lived in the most marvelous age in the world.' Think of it.
They talk about the romance of the Crusades and the Romans and all
that, but think of the miracles we've seen already, and we're only
kids. Aviation and the automobile and wireless and moving pictures
and electric locomotives and electric cooking and the use of radium
and the X-ray and the linotype and the submarine and the labor
movement--the I. W. W. and syndicalism and all that--not that I know
anything about the labor movement, but I suppose it's the most
important of all. And Metchnikoff and Ehrlich. Oh yes, and a good
share of the development of the electric light and telephone and the
phonograph.... Golly! In just a few years!"
"Yes," Ruth added, "and Montessori's system of education--that's what
I think is the most important.... See that sail-boat, Hawk! Like a
lily. And the late-afternoon gold on those marshes. I think this salt
breeze blows away all the bad Ruth.... Oh! Don't forget the attempts
to cure cancer and consumption. So many big things starting right now,
while we're sitting here."
"Lord! what an age! Romance--why, there's more romance in a wireless
spark--think of it, little lonely wallowing steamer, at night, out in
the dark, slamming out a radio like forty thousand tigers
spitting--and a man getting it here on Long Island. More romance than
in all the galleons that ever sailed the purple tropics, which they
mostly ain't purple, but dirty green. Anything 's possible now. World
cools off--a'right, we'll move on to some other planet. It gets me
going. Don't have to believe in fairies to give the imagination a job,
to-day. Glad I've been an aviator; gives me some place in it all,
anyway."
"I'm glad, too, Hawk, terribly glad."
The sun was crimsoning; the wind grew chilly. The beach was scattered
with camp-fires. Their own fire settled into compact live coals which,
in the dusk of the dune-hollow, spread over the million bits of quartz
a glow through which pirouetted the antic sand-fleas. Carl's cigarette
had the fragrance that comes only from being impregnated with the
smoke of an outdoor fire. The waves were lyric, and a group at the
next fire crooned "Old Black Joe." The two lovers curled in their
nest. Hand moved toward hand.
Ruth whispered: "It's sweet to be with all these people and their