AT MADELINE'S
"Now," said Richard Percival, as he and Norris stowed themselves away in
his automobile, "we shall leave the city, in which are contained how
many loves and struggles and silk umbrellas at reasonable prices, and go
to the lake where there is no civilization to bother and distract. The
lake is 'The Lake' _par excellence_ to St. Etienne. It was created by
Providence for summer homes. Therefore it was placed only ten miles from
the Falls. Providence was a good business woman. Generations of savages
lived and died--chiefly died--here. They came where the Father of Waters
roared and tumbled and they made their prayers to the Great Spirit, but
the sight never suggested to them a great city. Then came the
Anglo-Saxon, whatever he is, and harnessed the power of the river, and
built ugly gray mills, dusty with flour, and turned his log huts into
houses of brick and stone, and erected saloons and department stores.
And when he had worked like Dædalus--and you've probably forgotten who
Dædalus was, now that you have been a few weeks out of college--when he
had worked like Dædalus, I say, and got the hardest of it done, he began
to look at something besides the Falls and to pine for means of
dalliance. Behold then at his hand, Lake Imnijaska! And now Madeline
Elton is the best thing on its shore. Gee up, old motor!"
They sped along and Dick took up the tale. He was used to talking while
Norris listened and appreciated.
"Evidently you don't know who Dædalus was or you would have answered
back. What kind of an omniscient editor are you going to make, think
you? Never mind, Dædalus is dead; and, anyway, Edison has beaten him by
six holes.
"The lake, as I was saying, twists and turns so that it gets in more
shore to the square inch than any other known sheet of water. Therefore
the real-estate dealer loves it. And if you elevate your longshore nose
and sniff at our lake because no salt codfish dry upon smelly wharves
and no sea anemones or crabs appear and disappear with the tides, then
will the entire population of St. Etienne rise and howl anathemas at
you. They will run you out of town on the Chicago Express, and as you
fly for your life they will shriek after you, 'Well, anyway, we feed the
world with flour!' Yes, sir, that is the way we Westerners argue."
Dick halted at the top of the hill up which the faithful motor had
coughed, and the two looked down on the shimmering blue that stretched
below them with arms of broken opals sprawling for miles, now here, now
there. Long tortuous passages opened out anew into ever more bays, as
though the water were greedy to explore. Around it rolled the woodland
in billows of intense green with sandy beaches in the troughs and
straight cliffs at the crests. The green islands were vivid in color. So
was the sky above, like the flash in a sapphire. A half-dozen sails
fluttered gull-like, and as many launches darted along, suggesting
living water creatures.
"By Jove!" Ellery exclaimed, moving uneasily. "When you sniff this air
it makes you want to stand on tiptoe on a hilltop and shout. And when
you look at these colors, they are too brilliant to be true."
"Even you, you old conservative slow-poking duffer!" cried Dick. "This
is the land to wake you up. It calls 'harder--harder!' every-day."
"It's a different kind of beauty from what I'm used to." Ellery sobered
down again. "I've been trying to analyze it ever since I came West. It
wouldn't appeal to the tired or the world-weary. Its charm is for the
vigorous and the confident and the hopeful--for the young."
"For us, my boy," Dick said.
"At Madeline's," as Dick called it, with that obliviousness of the older
generation shown by the younger, Norris felt as they entered, as he had
felt at Mrs. Percival's, that he was in a candid, human, refined home,
with a full appreciation of the finer sides of life. They passed through
the drawing-room and by long glass doors to the broad piazza, with every
invitation to laziness, easy chairs, cushions, magazines, all made
fragrant by a huge jar of roses and another of sweet peas. And there was
not too much. The veranda in turn gave upon a wide expanse of green that
stretched steeply down to that cool wet line where the lapping waters
met the lawn. The trees whispered softly around. Every prospect was
pleasing, and only man was vile; for there was another man, sitting in
the most comfortable of chairs and engaging Madeline all to himself, as
he contentedly sipped the cup of tea that he had taken from her hand.
This other man, whose name was Davison, was making himself agreeable
after the fashion of his kind, a fashion quite familiar to every girl
who has been so unfortunate as to get a reputation, however little
deserved, for superior brains.
"Afternoon," he said, "I didn't suppose any other fellows except myself
were brave enough, to call on Miss Elton. I hear she's so awfully
clever, you know. Taken degrees and all that sort of thing. Give you my
word it comes out in everything around her. Why, this very napkin she
gave me has a Greek border. Everything has to be classic now."
"Not everything, Mr. Davison," said Madeline indulgently. "You know I am
delighted to have you here." She turned abruptly to the new-comers as
though she had already had a surfeit of this subject. It is a pleasant
thing to have had a good education, but one does not care to spend one's
time thinking about it, any more than about how much money there is in
one's pocket.
"You had a fine ride out?" Madeline asked.
"Great!" answered Dick. "To be young, on a summer day, seated in a good
motor with a thoroughly tamed and domesticated gasoline engine, and to
be coming to see you--what more could we ask of the gods?"
"You see Percival feels that he must lard the gods into his intercourse
with you, Miss Elton," Mr. Davison interjected.
"That's because the gods have become nice homey things," retorted Dick.
"Even in the West we couldn't keep house without Dionysius assisted by
Hebe to superintend our afternoon teas, and Hercules as a patron of
baseball."
Madeline laughed and cast a grateful look in his direction.
"You see how pleasant it is to feel familiar with the gods so that you
can use them freely," she said.
"So you don't think it's necessary, in order to be clever, to despise
everything that's done nowadays, because the Greeks used up all the
ideas first?" asked Davison.
"Not at all. Nature conducts a vast renovating and cleaning
establishment, and whenever any old ideas look the least bit frayed or
soiled around the edges, pop, in they go, and come out French
dry-cleaned and as fresh as ever. They're sent home in a spick-span box
and you couldn't tell 'em from new."
"If we don't get anything new I hope that we, at least, get rid of some
of the old things--fears and superstitions," said Madeline. "Things that
are holy rites in one age are so apt to be holy frights in the next."
"Say, did you ever go down the streets of Boston and notice the number
of signs of palmists and astrologers and vacuum cures?" exclaimed
Davison. "But perhaps it ain't fair to take Boston for a standard."
Ellery, a true New Englander, stared at him in astonishment, as one who
heard sacred things lightly spoken of.
"Most of us can see how funny we are," Davison pursued.
"Can we?" murmured Dick.
"But Boston," he went on calmly, "has lost her sense of humor. She peers
down at everything she does and says, 'This is very serious.' That's why
she takes astrologers in earnest. They're in Boston. Anyway, I think you
were mighty sensible to come back to us, Miss Elton, rather than to stay
in the unmarried state, alias Massachusetts. A girl really has a much
better chance in the West."
"Yes, that's where Miss Elton showed a long head," said Dick with
evident glee.
"But really now, joking apart," Davison went on, having made his
opening, "don't you think it's unsettling to a girl to do too much
studying?"
"I hope you are not deeply agitated over the eradication of
womanliness," Madeline remonstrated. "Really, Mr. Davison, it isn't an
easy thing to stop being a woman--when you happen to be born one."
"But there are plenty of unwomanly women," he objected.
"That's true," she answered, "but I believe womanliness is killed--when
it is killed--not through the brain, but through the heart. It's not
knowledge, but hard-heartedness that makes the unwomanly woman."
She glanced up and met Norris' eyes. It was not easy for him to join in
the chatter of the others, but he was thinking how she illuminated her
own words. Manifestly she was not lacking in mind, and quite as
evidently her brain was only the antechamber of her nature. She gave him
the impression of "the heart at leisure from itself". There was the
unconsciousness of sheltered girlhood, but already, in bud, the
suggestion of that big type of woman who, as years mellow her, touches
with sympathy every life with which she comes in contact. What she now
was, promised more in the future, as though Fate said, "I'm not through
with her yet. I've plenty in reserve to go to her making."
"Intelligence," said Dick pompously, "is the tree of life in man, and
the flower in woman--and one does not presume to criticize flowers."
Mr. Davison changed his method of attack.
"Oh, of course I'm up against it," he said, "with you three fresh from
the academic halls. But I can tell you you'll feel pretty lonely out
here. The street-car conductors don't talk Sanskrit in the West. They
talk Swede."
"Oh, this,--this is home!" cried Madeline, springing up as if to shake
off the conversation. "You don't know how I love it! It's fresh and
vigorous and its face is forward." She flung out her arms and smiled
radiantly down on the three young men, as though she were an embodiment
of the ozone of the Northwest.
"Sing to us, please, Madeline," said Dick.
"Very well, I will," she said. "I'll sing you a song I made myself
yesterday, when I was happy because I was at home again. Perhaps it will
tell you how I feel, for it's a song of Minnesota." She turned and
nodded to Mr. Davison, and then slipped through the doors to the room
where the piano stood.
The long shadows of afternoon lay across the lawn, and the grass, more
green than ever in the level light, clasped the dazzling blue of the
quiet waters. The three men stretched themselves in their easy chairs,
as a stroked kitten stretches itself, with a lounging abandon which is
forbidden to their sisters, as Madeline's voice rose fresh and true and
touched with the joy of youth.
"Ho, west wind off the prairie;
Ho, north wind off the pine;
Ho, myriad azure lakes, hill-clasped,
Like cups of living wine;
Ho, mighty river rolling;
Ho, fallow, field and fen;
By a thousand voices nature calls,
To fire the hearts of men.
"Ho, fragrance of the wheat-fields;
Ho, garnered hoards of flax;
Ho, whirling millwheel, 'neath the falls;
Ho, woodman's ringing ax.
Man blends his voice with nature's,
And the great chorus swells.
He adds the notes of home and love
To the tale the forest tells.
"Oh, young blood of the nation;
Oh, hope in a world of need;
The traditions of the fathers
Still be our vital seed.
Thy newer daughters of the West,
Columbia, mother mine,
Still hold to the simple virtues
Of field and stream and pine."
The song stopped abruptly, and Dick sprang to his feet.
"Good, Madeline!" he exclaimed. "You make me feel how great it is to be
part of it."
"Do I?" she said. "I thought of you when I wrote it. Oh, here come
father and mother back from their drive."
Mr. Davison rose hastily.
"I'd no idea it was so late," he said. "I must be going. Miss Elton, I
didn't mean a word of all that about your being so clever. You're all
right."
"Thanks for the tribute," Madeline smiled as he disappeared down the
drive. "Dick, I wish you'd always be on hand when he comes. He makes my
brain feel like a woolly dog."
"Rummy chap," said Norris.
The older people came in to greet the boy they had known all his life,
to ask the innumerable usual questions, to say the inevitable things
through dinner.
Afterwards, when the last fragments of sunset burned through and across
the water, they gathered on the piazza. It was that dreamy hour when
women find it easy to be silent and men to talk. Madeline and her mother
sat close, with hands restfully clasped in their joy at being together.
Mr. Elton eyed the two young men from his vantage of years of shrewd
wisdom. Both the boys were clean-shaven, after the manner of the day, a
fashion that seems to become clean manliness, vigorous and
self-controlled. Both were good to look at; but here the resemblance
ended, for Dick's long slender face and body lithe with its athletic
training, was alive and restless, as though he found it difficult to
keep back his passion for activity; Ellery, big but loosely joined, had
the dogged look of one that held some of his energy in reserve. A good
pair, Mr. Elton concluded, and felt a sudden spasm of longing for a
son--not that he would have exchanged Madeline for any trousered biped
that walked, but it would be a great thing to own one such well of young
masculine vigor as these.
"It's going to be great fun for us old fellows to sit back and watch you
young ones," the elder man ejaculated. "There are several good-sized
jobs waiting for you."
"That's a good thing," said Dick. "When there's nothing to do, nobody'll
do it."
"And it will be a tame sort of a world, eh? Well, thank the Lord, it's
none of our responsibility any longer. You've got to tackle it. The new
phases of things are too much for me, with a brain solidified by years."
"You might at least help us by stating the problem," said Norris.
"You see, it's like this. Until a few years ago every census map of the
United States was seamed by a long line marked 'frontier.' That line is
gone. That's the situation in a nutshell. Our work, the subjugation of
the land, is about done, and the question is now up to you; what are you
going to do with it? You know the old story of the man who said he had a
horse who could run a mile in two-forty. And the other fellow asked,
'What are you going to do when you get there?' We've done the running
and our children are there. Now what? You must develop a whole set of
new talents--not trotting talents, but staying talents."
"I suppose," said Norris slowly, for Dick was silent, "circumstances
bring out abilities. That's the law that operated in the case of the
older generation, and we'll have to trust to it in ours."
"That's true. But I sometimes wonder if, after all, we are helping you
to the best preparation. We send you back to get the old education. The
tendency of old communities is to rehash the traditions until they
become authority. New communities have to face problems for themselves
and solve them by new ways. The first kind of training makes scholars.
The second brings out genius. The old makes men think over the thoughts
of others. Heaven knows we need men who will think for themselves!"
"Well, 'old and young are fellows'," said Dick. "To-day grows out of
yesterday."
"Yes, if it grows. The growing is the point. It mustn't molder on
yesterday. You must have enough books to get your thinkers going, but
not more. You must not feast on libraries until you get intellectual
gout and have to tickle your palate with dainties. A good deal of stuff
that's written nowadays seems to me like literary cocktails,--something
to stir a jaded appetite. That's my friend Early's specialty--to serve
literary cocktails. But the appetite you bolster up isn't the equivalent
of a good healthy hunger after a day out-of-doors."
"When nature wants a genius, I suppose she has to use fresh seed," said
Dick.
"And genius is creative," Mr. Elton went on. "So far, the genius this
country has developed is that which takes the raw material of forest and
river and creates civilization. And let me tell you that's a very
different job from heaping up population."
Silence fell on the little group and they became suddenly aware of
lapping waters and the sleepy twitter of birds, and even of a long
slender thread of pale light that struck across the lake from a
low-lying star. Madeline gave a little sigh and pressed her mother's
hand.
Dick flushed and hesitated in the darkness, with youth's confidence in
its own great purposes and youth's craving for sympathy in its
ambitions. Mr. Elton's combination of kindness and shrewdness seemed to
draw him out.
"It sounds impertinent and conceited for a young fellow like me to talk
about what he means to do."
"Fire away. I knew your father, Dick."
"Then you'll know what I mean when I say that it has always been my
ambition to live up to his traditions--his ideal of a man's public
duties."
Mr. Elton nodded and Dick went on, while Ellery eyed him with some of
the old college respect, and Madeline leaned eagerly forward.
"I don't mean any splurge, you understand, but the same quiet service he
gave. Father left his affairs in such good order that there isn't any
real necessity for me to try to add to my income. Of course, it isn't a
great fortune, but it's more than enough; and my ambitions don't lie
that way. There's a certain amount of business in taking care of it as
it stands. Mother is glad to turn the burden of it over to me. She's
done nobly--dear little woman--but--"
"I understand. It's a man's business."
"Yes," said Dick, with the simple masculine superiority of four and
twenty. "That's enough of a background for life, you see; but I long
since made up my mind that public affairs--affairs that concern the
whole community--are to be my real interest."
"So you're going into politics, Dick?" said the older man slowly.
"Well, not to scramble for office," Percival answered with a flush. "We
fellows have been well-enough taught, haven't we, Ellery? to know that
it is rather an ugly mess--I mean municipal affairs in this country. The
local situation, here in St. Etienne, I have yet to study; and I don't
mean to lose any time in beginning."
Mr. Elton made no reply for a moment, and when he spoke there was an
unpleasant cynicism in his voice that galled Dick's pride.
"The young reformer! Well, I suppose a decent man with a little ability
could do something here, if he knew what he was going to do. It's a good
thing to get on your sea-legs before you try to command a ship."
"Father!" Madeline cried out, unable to contain herself. "Don't you be a
horrid wet blanket!"
The three looked at her to see her face aglow with the lovely feminine
belief in masculinity that also belongs to the early twenties.
"That's all right," said the elder Elton unemotionally. "I wasn't
wet-blanketing--I know things are needed. There's plenty of corruption
wanting to be buried, and most of us are content to hold our noses and
let it lie. Or perhaps we give an exclamation of disgust when it is
served up in the newspapers. Reform if you must, but don't reform all
day and Sundays too; and build your cellars before you begin your
attics."
Then he went on a shade more heartily: "It's a mighty good thing for
some of you young fellows to be going into politics; perhaps that's the
chief work for the next generation. And Norris--what of you?"
Ellery started. It had been a silent evening for him, but his silence
had glowed with interest, not so much in the conversation as in his own
thoughts. Two things had forced themselves home,--the first when he
looked down on that expanse of vivid water, vivid sky, vivid green. Here
a man, even a young man, might waken to all his faculties and make
something of life. He need not plod dully through years, to reach
success only when he is old and tired. The landscape poured like wine
into Ellery Norris' veins.
And now here was the other side. He had watched with fascination the
restfulness of Miss Elton's hands, the one that held her mother's, the
one that lay quietly in her lap. He watched her steady eyes that kept
upon her father and Dick as they talked. He saw her face glow with
sympathy and interest and yet remain calm, as if secure in the goodness
of the world; and he told himself that he was glad this wonderful thing
belonged to Dick. Dick's restlessness would be held in leash, as it
were, by this steadfastness.
Once she half turned as though she felt his scrutiny, and queer pains
darted through his body when her eyes met his.
Now when Mr. Elton attacked him, he came back from his far-away
excursion with a sense of surprise that there was a present, but he
smiled cheerfully.
"Oh, I'm not a very important person. I'm just beginning to learn the
trade of a newspaper man, and I'm afraid I shan't be able to think about
much but city news and bread and butter for the next few years."
"No telling what may happen, with his Honor, the mayor here, backed up
by the power of the press. We'll make St. Etienne a model city in the
sight of gods and men, eh, boys?" said Mr. Elton good-humoredly, but
rising as if to cut short the conversation.
"Can't we take a walk before Ellery and I go back to town?" asked Dick.
"Go, you kid things. I haven't seen the evening paper yet, and that's
more to my old brain than moonlight strolls." Mr. Elton dismissed them.
The three young people set out upon a path that twisted by the lake
shore, bordered on its inner side by trees that had become in the
darkness mere shapeless masses out of which an occasional mysterious
thread of light brought into sight some uncanny shape. The purple of the
evening zenith had sunk into deeper and deeper blue, pricked here and
there with stars. Bats were wheeling in mysterious circles among the
tree-tops, and the air was full of sounds that seem to come only at
twilight.
"Isn't it strange that though every one of those trees is an old friend,
I should be frightened at the very idea of being alone among them at
night? And yet there's nothing in the dark that isn't in the day," said
Madeline.
"Oh, yes, there is," Dick rejoined. "There's more being afraid in the
dark."
She laughed and they went on in silence.
"Who's been building a new house, just on the very spot I always meant
to own some day--right here next to your father?" Dick demanded,
stopping abruptly.
"Oh, you haven't seen that, have you?" said Madeline. "Let's sit down on
this log and look at the stars. That's Mr. Lenox's new house; and I'm so
sorry for them!"
"Why grieve for the prosperous? Reserve your tears for the suffering."
"Why, you know, in town, they live with Mr. Windsor, who is Mrs. Lenox's
father, and he's a multimillionaire; and it's a great establishment; and
the world is necessarily very much with them. So when Mr. Lenox proposed
that they should build a country house of their own and spend their
summers here, I think he wanted to get out to some primitive simplicity,
where the children could go barefoot if they wanted to. But as soon as
it was suggested, Mr. Windsor presented his daughter with a big tract,
and insisted on building this great palace, and they have to keep so
many servants that Mr. Lenox says it is a regular Swedish
boarding-house. And there are so many guest-rooms that it would be a
shame not to have them occupied; and extra people run out in their
motors every day; and the children have to be kept immaculate all the
time. So they've brought the world out with them. Mr. Lenox has to dress
for dinner, instead of putting on old slippers and going out to weed the
strawberry-bed, which is what he would like to do when he gets out on
the evening train."
"Poor things, in bondage to their house!" said Norris, and they all
looked solemnly at the multitude of lights shining through the trees.
"There are ever so many disadvantages about being among the few very
rich people in a western town, where most of your friends aren't
opulent," Madeline went on. "When Mrs. Lenox makes a call, she has to
wait while the woman changes her dress. And nobody says to her, 'Oh, do
stay to lunch,' when they've nothing but oysters or beefsteak, but they
wait till they get in an extra chef and then send her a formal
invitation. I believe ours is one of the half-dozen houses where people
don't pretend to be something quite different from what they are when
Mrs. Lenox appears. And yet she's the most simple-minded and genuine
person, and would rather have beefsteak and friendship than _paté de
fois gras_ and good gowns any day."
"Poor things!" said Dick again.
"I think they are out on the terrace now. Would you like to go over and
see them?" Madeline asked.
"No, thank you," said Dick politely. "We won't make their life any more
complicated. Besides, I prefer the society of you and the stars to that
of the miserable too-rich. And they are not alone."
"Of course not. They never are. But Mrs. Lenox said yesterday that late
this fall, when every one else has gone into winter quarters, she is
going to ask you and me and perhaps one or two others to visit her; and
we'll have a serene and lovely time."
"Do you think that there is any hope that they will have lost part of
their money by that time?" asked Dick.
"Father says Mr. Windsor has forgotten how to lose money, and of course
Mr. Windsor and Mr. Lenox are all one."
"I must see to it that I don't marry a millionaire's daughter," said
Dick.