The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life

they see what a big world there is to hike in, and I want to keep you from that. I'm not roasting lawyers----Yes, I am, too. They live in calf-bound books. Son, son, for God's sake live in life." "Yes, but look here, Bone; I was just thinking about it, that's all. You're always drumming it into me about not taking anything for granted. Anyway, by the time I go to Plato I'll know----" "D'you mean to say you're going to that back-creek nunnery? That Blackhaw University? Are you going to play checkers all through life?" "Oh, I don't know, now, Bone. Plato ain't so bad. A fellow's got to go some place so he can mix with people that know what's the proper thing to do. Refining influences and like that." "Proper! _Refining!_ Son, son, are you going to get Joralemonized? If you want what the French folks call the grand manner, if you're going to be a tip-top, A Number 1, genuwine grand senyor, or however they pronounce it, why, all right, go to it; that's one way of playing a big game. But when it comes down to a short-bit, fresh-water sewing-circle like Plato College, where an imitation scholar teaches you imitation translations of useless classics, and amble-footed girls teach you imitation party manners that 'd make you just as plumb ridic'lous in a real _salon_ as they would in a lumber-camp, why----Oh, sa-a-a-y! I've got it. Girls, eh? What girl 've you been falling in love with to get this Plato idea from, eh?" "Aw, I ain't in love, Bone." "No, I don't opine you are. At your age you got about as much chance of being in love as you have of being a grandfather. But somehow I seem to have a little old suspicion that you _think_ you're in love. But it's none of my business, and I ain't going to ask questions about it." He patted Carl on the shoulder, moving his arm with difficulty in their small, dark space. "Son, I've learned this in my life--and I've done quite some hiking at that, even if I didn't have the book-l'arnin' and the git-up-and-git to make anything out of my experience. It's a thing I ain't big enough to follow up, but I know it's there. Life is just a little old checker game played by the alfalfa contingent at the country store unless you've got an ambition that's too big to ever quite lasso it. You want to know that there's something ahead that's bigger and more beautiful than anything you've ever seen, and never stop till--well, till you can't follow the road any more. And anything or anybody that doesn't pack any surprises--get that?--_surprises_ for you, is dead, and you want to slough it like a snake does its skin. You want to keep on remembering that Chicago's beyond Joralemon, and Paris beyond Chicago, and beyond Paris--well, maybe there's some big peak of the Himalayas." For hours they talked, Bone desperately striving to make his dreams articulate to Carl--and to himself. They ate fish fried on the powder-can stove, with half-warm coffee. They walked a few steps outside the shack in the ringing cold, to stretch stiff legs. Carl saw a world of unuttered freedom and beauty forthshadowed in Bone's cloudy speech. But he was melancholy. For he was going to give up his citizenship in wonderland for Gertie Cowles. * * * * * Gertie continued to enjoy ill health for another week. Every evening Carl walked past her house, hoping that he might see her at a window, longing to dare to call. Each night he pictured rescuing her from things--rescuing her from fire, from drowning, from evil men. He felt himself the more bound to her by the social recognition of having his name in the _Joralemon Dynamite_, the following Thursday: One of the pleasantest affairs of the holiday season among the younger set was held last Friday evening, when Gertrude Cowles entertained a number of her young friends at a party at her mother's handsome residence on Maple Hill. Among those present were Mesdames Benner and Rusk, who came in for a brief time to assist in the jollities of the evening, Misses Benner, Carson, Wesselius, Madlund, Ripka, Smith, Lansing, and Brick; and Messrs. Ray Cowles, his classmate Howard Griffin, who is spending his vacation here from Plato College, Carl Ericson, Joseph Jordan, Irving Lamb, Benjamin Rusk, Nels Thorsten, Peter Schoenhof, and William T. Upham. After dancing and games, which were thoroughly enjoyed by all present, and a social hour spent in discussing the events of the season in J. H. S., a most delicious repast was served and the party adjourned, one and all voting that they had been royally entertained. The glory was the greater because at least seven names had been omitted from the list of guests. Such social recognition satisfied Carl--for half an hour. Possibly it nerved him finally to call on Gertie. Since for a week he had been dreading a chilly reception when he should call, he was immeasurably surprised when he did call and got what he expected. He had not expected the fates to be so treacherous as to treat him as he expected, after he had disarmed them by expecting it. When he rang the bell he was an immensely grown-up lawyer (though he couldn't get his worn, navy-blue tie to hang exactly right). He turned into a crestfallen youth as Mrs. Cowles opened the door and waited--waited!--for him to speak, after a crisp: "Well? What is it, Carl?" "Why, uh, I just thought I'd come and see how Gertie is." "Gertrude is much better, thank you. I presume she will return to school at the end of vacation." The hall behind Mrs. Cowles seemed very stately, very long. "I've heard a lot saying they hoped she was better." "You may tell them that she is better." Mrs. Cowles shivered. No one could possibly have looked more like a person closing a door without actually closing one. "Lena!" she shrieked, "close the kitchen door. There's a draught." She turned back to Carl. The shy lover vanished. An angry young man challenged, "If Gertie 's up I think I'll come in a few minutes and see her." "Why, uh----" hesitated Mrs. Cowles. He merely walked in past her. His anger kept its own council, for he could depend upon Gertie's warm greeting--lonely Gertie, he would bring her the cheer of the great open. The piano sounded in the library, and the voice of the one perfect girl mingled with a man's tenor in "Old Black Joe." Carl stalked into the library. Gertie was there, much corseted, well powdered, wearing a blue foulard frenziedly dotted with white, and being cultured in company with Dr. Doyle, the lively young dentist who had recently taken an office in the National Bank Block. He was a graduate of the University of Minnesota--dental department. He had oily black hair, and smiled with gold-filled teeth before one came to the real point of a joke. He sang in the Congregational church choir, and played tennis in a crimson-and-black blazer--the only one in Joralemon. To Carl Dr. Doyle was dismayingly mature and smart. He horribly feared him as a rival. For the second time that evening he did not balk fate by fearing it. The dentist was a rival. After fluttering about the mature charms of Miss Dietz, the school drawing-teacher, and taking a tentative buggy-ride or two with the miller's daughter, Dr. Doyle was bringing all the charm of his professional position and professional teeth and patent-leather shoes to bear upon Gertie. And Gertie was interested. Obviously. She was all of eighteen to-night. She frowned slightly as she turned on the piano-stool at Carl's entrance, and mechanically: "This is a pleasant surprise." Then, enthusiastically: "Isn't it too bad that Dr. Doyle was out of town, or I would have invited him to my party, and he would have given us some of his lovely songs.... Do try the second verse, doctor. The harmony is so lovely." Carl sat at the other end of the library from Gertie and the piano, while Mrs. Cowles entertained him. He obediently said "Yessum" and "No, 'm" to the observations which she offered from the fullness of her lack of experience of life. He sat straight and still. Behind his fixed smile he was simultaneously longing to break into the musical fiesta, and envying the dentist's ability to get married without having to wait to grow up, and trying to follow what Mrs. Cowles was saying. She droned, while crocheting with high-minded industry a useless piano-scarf, "Do you still go hunting, Carl?" "Yessum. Quite a little rabbit-hunting. Oh, not very much." (At the distant piano, across the shining acres of floor, the mystical woman and a dentist had ceased singing, and were examining a fresh sheet of music. The dentist coyly poked his finger at her coiffure, and she slapped the finger, gurgling.) "I hope you don't neglect your school work, though, Carl." Mrs. Cowles held the scarf nearer the lamp and squinted at it, deliberately and solemnly, through the eye-glasses that lorded it atop her severe nose. A headachy scent of moth-balls was in the dull air. She forbiddingly moved the shade of the lamp about a tenth of an inch. She removed some non-existent dust from the wrought-iron standard. Her gestures said that the lamp was decidedly more chic than the pink-shaded hanging lamps, raised and lowered on squeaking chains, which characterized most Joralemon living-rooms. She glanced at the red lambrequin over the nearest window. The moth-ball smell grew more stupifying. Carl felt stuffy in the top of his nose as he mumbled, "Oh, I work pretty hard at chemistry, but, gee! I can't see much to all this Latin." "When you're a little _older_, Carl, you'll _learn_ that the things you like now aren't necessarily the things that are _good_ for you. I used to say to Gertrude--of course she is older than you, but she hasn't been a young lady for so very long, even yet--and I used to say to her, 'Gertrude, you will do exactly what I _tell_ you to, and not what you _want_ to do, and we shall make--no--more--words--_about_ it!' And I think she _sees_ now that her mother was right about some things! Dr. Doyle said to me, and of course you know, Carl, that he's a very fine scholar--our pastor told me that the doctor reads French better than _he_ does, and the doctor's told me some things about modern French authors that I didn't know, and I used to read French almost as well as English, when I was a girl, my teachers all told me--and he says that he thinks that Gertrude has a very fine mind, and he was _so_ glad that she hasn't been taken in by all this wicked, hysterical way girls have to-day of thinking they know more than their mothers." "Yes, she is--Gertie is----I think she's got a very fine mind," Carl commented. (From the other end of the room Gertie could be overheard confiding to the dentist in tones of hushed and delicious adult scandal, "They say that when she was in St. Paul she----") "So," Mrs. Cowles serenely sniffed on, while the bridge of Carl's nose felt broader and broader, stretching wider and wider, as that stuffy feeling increased and the intensive heat stung his eyelids, "you see you mustn't think because you'd rather play around with the boys than study Latin, Carl, that it's the fault of your Latin-teacher." She nodded at him with a condescending smile that was infinitely insulting. He knew it and resented it, but he did not resent it actively, for he was busy marveling, "How the dickens is it I never heard Doc Doyle was stuck on Gertie? Everybody thought he was going with Bertha. Dang him, anyway! The way he snickers, you'd think she was his best girl." Mrs. Cowles was loftily pursuing her pillared way: "Latin was _known_ to be the best study for developing the mind a long, long time----" And her clicking crochet-needles impishly echoed, "A long, _long_