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Transcriber's Note.
The Table of Contents is not part of the original book.
In page 212 there is an incomplete sentence "Poor Tad was". This
sentence is incomplete in this book as well as the many editions
verified.
[Illustration: [See page 290
THE COLD BREEZE ENLIVENED THEM, THE STERNNESS OF THE SWIFT, CRUEL
RIVER AND MILES OF BROWN SHORE MADE THEM GRAVELY HAPPY.]
THE TRAIL OF
THE HAWK
A COMEDY
OF THE SERIOUSNESS
OF LIFE
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
AUTHOR OF
OUR MR. WRENN
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK
Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Part I 1
CHAPTER I 3
CHAPTER II 16
CHAPTER III 26
CHAPTER IV 35
CHAPTER V 46
CHAPTER VI 58
CHAPTER VII 71
CHAPTER VIII 78
CHAPTER IX 86
CHAPTER X 100
CHAPTER XI 106
CHAPTER XII 115
Part II 125
CHAPTER XIII 127
CHAPTER XIV 135
CHAPTER XV 146
CHAPTER XVI 156
CHAPTER XVII 162
CHAPTER XVIII 167
CHAPTER XIX 174
CHAPTER XX 179
CHAPTER XXI 187
CHAPTER XXII 202
CHAPTER XXIII 210
Part III 223
CHAPTER XXIV 225
CHAPTER XXV 231
CHAPTER XXVI 242
CHAPTER XXVII 248
CHAPTER XXVIII 261
CHAPTER XXIX 270
CHAPTER XXX 282
CHAPTER XXXI 290
CHAPTER XXXII 300
CHAPTER XXXIII 310
CHAPTER XXXIV 324
CHAPTER XXXV 333
CHAPTER XXXVI 342
CHAPTER XXXVII 352
CHAPTER XXXVIII 362
CHAPTER XXXIX 368
CHAPTER XL 379
CHAPTER XLI 387
CHAPTER XLII 400
* * * * *
TO THE OPTIMISTIC REBELS THROUGH
WHOSE TALK AT LUNCHEON THE AUTHOR
WATCHES THE MANY-COLORED SPECTACLE
OF LIFE--GEORGE SOULE, HARRISON
SMITH, ALLAN UPDEGRAFF, F. K. NOYES,
ALFRED HARCOURT, B. W. HUEBSCH.
* * * * *
Part I
THE ADVENTURE OF YOUTH
THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK
CHAPTER I
Carl Ericson was being naughty. Probably no boy in Joralemon was being
naughtier that October Saturday afternoon. He had not half finished
the wood-piling which was his punishment for having chased the family
rooster thirteen times squawking around the chicken-yard, while
playing soldiers with Bennie Rusk.
He stood in the middle of the musty woodshed, pessimistically kicking
at the scattered wood. His face was stern, as became a man of eight
who was a soldier of fortune famed from the front gate to the
chicken-yard. An unromantic film of dirt hid the fact that his
Scandinavian cheeks were like cream-colored silk stained with
rose-petals. A baby Norseman, with only an average boy's prettiness,
yet with the whiteness and slenderness of a girl's little finger. A
back-yard boy, in baggy jacket and pants, gingham blouse, and cap
whose lining oozed back over his ash-blond hair, which was tangled now
like trampled grass, with a tiny chip riding grotesquely on one flossy
lock.
The darkness of the shed displeased Carl. The whole basic conception
of work bored him. The sticks of wood were personal enemies to which
he gave insulting names. He had always admired the hard bark and
metallic resonance of the ironwood, but he hated the poplar--"popple"
it is called in Joralemon, Minnesota. Poplar becomes dry and dusty,
and the bark turns to a monstrously mottled and evil greenish-white.
Carl announced to one poplar stick, "I could lick you! I'm a gen'ral,
I am." The stick made no reply whatever, and he contemptuously shied
it out into the chickweed which matted the grubby back yard. This
necessitated his sneaking out and capturing it by stalking it from the
rear, lest it rouse the Popple Army.
He loitered outside the shed, sniffing at the smoke from burning
leaves--the scent of autumn and migration and wanderlust. He glanced
down between houses to the reedy shore of Joralemon Lake. The surface
of the water was smooth, and tinted like a bluebell, save for one
patch in the current where wavelets leaped with October madness in
sparkles of diamond fire. Across the lake, woods sprinkled with
gold-dust and paprika broke the sweep of sparse yellow stubble, and a
red barn was softly brilliant in the caressing sunlight and lively air
of the Minnesota prairie. Over there was the field of valor, where
grown-up men with shiny shotguns went hunting prairie-chickens; the
Great World, leading clear to the Red River Valley and Canada.
Three mallard-ducks, with necks far out and wings beating hurriedly,
shot over Carl's head. From far off a gun-shot floated echoing through
forest hollows; in the waiting stillness sounded a rooster's crow,
distant, magical.
"I want to go hunting!" mourned Carl, as he trailed back into the
woodshed. It seemed darker than ever and smelled of moldy chips. He
bounced like an enraged chipmunk. His phlegmatic china-blue eyes
filmed with tears. "Won't pile no more wood!" he declared.
Naughty he undoubtedly was. But since he knew that his father, Oscar
Ericson, the carpenter, all knuckles and patched overalls and bad
temper, would probably whip him for rebellion, he may have acquired
merit. He did not even look toward the house to see whether his mother
was watching him--his farm-bred, worried, kindly, small, flat-chested,
pinch-nosed, bleached, twangy-voiced, plucky Norwegian mother. He
marched to the workshop and brought a collection of miscellaneous
nails and screws out to a bare patch of earth in front of the
chicken-yard. They were the Nail People, the most reckless band of
mercenaries the world has ever known, led by old General Door-Hinge,
who was somewhat inclined to collapse in the middle, but possessed of
the unusual virtue of eyes in both ends of him. He had explored the
deepest canyons of the woodshed, and victoriously led his ten-penny
warriors against the sumacs in the vacant lot beyond Irving Lamb's
house.
Carl marshaled the Nail People, sticking them upright in the ground.
After reasoning sternly with an intruding sparrow, thus did the
dauntless General Door-Hinge address them:
"Men, there's a nawful big army against us, but le's die like men, my
men. Forwards!"
As the veteran finished, a devastating fire of stones enfiladed the
company, and one by one they fell, save for the commander himself, who
bowed his grizzled wrought-steel head and sobbed, "The brave boys done
their duty."
From across the lake rolled another gun-shot.
Carl dug his grimy fingers into the earth. "Jiminy! I wisht I was out
hunting. Why can't I never go? I guess I'll pile the wood, but I'm
gonna go seek-my-fortune after that."
* * * * *
Since Carl Ericson (some day to be known as "Hawk" Ericson) was the
divinely restless seeker of the romance that must--or we die!--lie
beyond the hills, you first see him in action; find him in the year
1893, aged eight, leading revolutions in the back yard. But equally,
since this is a serious study of an average young American, there
should be an indication of his soil-nourished ancestry.
Carl was second-generation Norwegian; American-born, American in
speech, American in appearance, save for his flaxen hair and
china-blue eyes; and, thanks to the flag-decked public school,
overwhelmingly American in tradition. When he was born the "typical
Americans" of earlier stocks had moved to city palaces or were
marooned on run-down farms. It was Carl Ericson, not a Trowbridge or a
Stuyvesant or a Lee or a Grant, who was the "typical American" of his
period. It was for him to carry on the American destiny of extending
the Western horizon; his to restore the wintry Pilgrim virtues and the
exuberant, October, partridge-drumming days of Daniel Boone; then to
add, in his own or another generation, new American aspirations for
beauty.
They are the New Yankees, these Scandinavians of Wisconsin and
Minnesota and the Dakotas, with a human breed that can grow, and a
thousand miles to grow in. The foreign-born parents, when they first
come to the Northern Middlewest, huddle in unpainted farm-houses with
grassless dooryards and fly-zizzing kitchens and smelly dairies, set
on treeless, shadeless, unsoftened leagues of prairie or bunched in
new clearings ragged with small stumps. The first generation are alien
and forlorn. The echoing fjords of Trondhjem and the moors of Finmark
have clipped their imaginations, silenced their laughter, hidden with
ice their real tenderness. In America they go sedulously to the bare
Lutheran church and frequently drink ninety-per-cent. alcohol. They
are also heroes, and have been the makers of a new land, from the days
of Indian raids and ox-teams and hillside dug-outs to now, repeating
in their patient hewing the history of the Western Reserve.... In one
generation or even in one decade they emerge from the desolation of
being foreigners. They, and the Germans, pay Yankee mortgages with
blood and sweat. They swiftly master politics, voting for honesty
rather than for hand-shakes; they make keen, scrupulously honest
business deals; send their children to school; accumulate land--one
section, two sections--or move to town to keep shop and ply skilled
tools; become Methodists and Congregationalists; are neighborly with
Yankee manufacturers and doctors and teachers; and in one generation,
or less, are completely American.
So was it with Carl Ericson. His carpenter father had come from
Norway, by way of steerage and a farm in Wisconsin, changing his name
from Ericsen. Ericson senior owned his cottage and, though he still
said, "Aye ban going," he talked as naturally of his own American
tariff and his own Norwegian-American Governor as though he had five
generations of Connecticut or Virginia ancestry.
Now, it was Carl's to go on, to seek the flowering.
* * * * *
Unconscious that he was the heir-apparent of the age, but decidedly
conscious that the woodshed was dark, Carl finished the pile.
From the step of the woodshed he regarded the world with plaintive
boredom.
"Ir-r-r-r-rving!" he called.
No answer from Irving, the next-door boy.
The village was rustlingly quiet. Carl skipped slowly and unhappily to
the group of box-elders beside the workshop and stuck his finger-nails
into the cobwebby crevices of the black bark. He made overtures for
company on any terms to a hop-robin, a woolly worm, and a large blue
fly, but they all scorned his advances, and when he yelled an
ingratiating invitation to a passing dog it seemed to swallow its tail
and ears as it galloped off. No one else appeared.
Before the kitchen window he quavered:
"Ma-ma!"
In the kitchen, the muffled pounding of a sad-iron upon the padded
ironing-board.
"Ma!"
Mrs. Ericson's whitey-yellow hair, pale eyes, and small nervous
features were shadowed behind the cotton fly-screen.
"Vell?" she said.
"I haven't got noth-ing to do-o."
"Go pile the vood."
"I piled piles of it."
"Then you can go and play."
"I _been_ playing."
"Then play some more."
"I ain't got nobody to play with."
"Then find somebody. But don't you step vun step out of this yard."
"I don't see _why_ I can't go outa the yard!"
"Because I said so."
Again the sound of the sad-iron.
Carl invented a game in which he was to run in circles, but not step
on the grass; he made the tenth inspection that day of the drying
hazelnuts whose husks were turning to seal-brown on the woodshed roof;
he hunted for a good new bottle to throw at Irving Lamb's barn; he
mended his sling-shot; he perched on a sawbuck and watched the street.
Nothing passed, nothing made an interesting rattling, except one
democrat wagon.
From over the water another gun-shot murmured of distant hazards.
Carl jumped down from the sawbuck and marched deliberately out of the
yard, along Oak Street toward The Hill, the smart section of
Joralemon, where live in exclusive state five large houses that get
painted nearly every year.
"I'm gonna seek-my-fortune. I'm gonna find Bennie and go swimming," he
vowed. Calmly as Napoleon defying his marshals, General Carl
disregarded the sordid facts that it was too late in the year to go
swimming, and that Benjamin Franklin Rusk couldn't swim, anyway. He
clumped along, planting his feet with spats of dust, very dignified
and melancholy but, like all small boys, occasionally going mad and
running in chase of nothing at all till he found it.
He stopped before the House with Mysterious Shutters.
Carl had never made b'lieve fairies or princes; rather, he was in the
secret world of boyhood a soldier, a trapper, or a swing-brakeman on
the M. & D. R.R. But he was bespelled by the suggestion of grandeur in
the iron fence and gracious trees and dark carriage-shed of the House
with Shutters. It was a large, square, solid brick structure, set
among oaks and sinister pines, once the home, or perhaps the mansion,
of Banker Whiteley, but unoccupied for years. Leaves rotted before the
deserted carriage-shed. The disregarded steps in front were seamed
with shallow pools of water for days after a rain. The windows had
always been darkened, but not by broad-slatted outside shutters,
smeared with house-paint to which stuck tiny black hairs from the
paint-brush, like the ordinary frame houses of Joralemon. Instead,
these windows were masked with inside shutters haughtily varnished to
a hard refined brown.
To-day the windows were open, the shutters folded; furniture was being
moved in; and just inside the iron gate a frilly little girl was
playing with a whitewashed conch-shell.
She must have been about ten at that time, since Carl was eight. She
was a very dressy and complacent child, possessed not only of a clean
white muslin with three rows of tucks, immaculate bronze boots, and a
green tam-o'-shanter, but also of a large hair-ribbon, a ribbon sash,
and a silver chain with a large, gold-washed, heart-shaped locket. She
was softly plump, softly gentle of face, softly brown of hair, and
softly pleasant of speech.
"Hello!" said she.
"H'lo!"
"What's your name, little boy?"
"Ain't a little boy. I'm Carl Ericson."
"Oh, are you? I'm----"
"I'm gonna have a shotgun when I'm fifteen." He shyly hurled a stone
at a telegraph-pole to prove that he was not shy.
"My name is Gertie Cowles. I came from Minneapolis. My mamma owns part
of the Joralemon Flour Mill.... Are you a nice boy? We just moved here
and I don't know anybody. Maybe my mamma will let me play with you if
you are a nice boy."
"I jus' soon come play with you. If you play soldiers.... My pa 's the
smartest man in Joralemon. He builded Alex Johnson's house. He's got a
ten-gauge gun."
"Oh.... My mamma 's a widow."
Carl hung by his arms from the gate-pickets while she breathed,
"M-m-m-m-m-m-y!" in admiration at the feat.
"That ain't nothing. I can hang by my knees on a trapeze.... What did
you come from Minneapolis for?"
"We're going to live here," she said.
"Oh."
"I went to the Chicago World's Fair with my mamma this summer."
"Aw, you didn't!"
"I did so. And I saw a teeny engine so small it was in a walnut-shell
and you had to look at it through a magnifying-glass and it kept on
running like anything."
"Huh! that's nothing! Ben Rusk, he went to the World's Fair, too, and
he saw a statchue that was bigger 'n our house and all pure gold. You
didn't see that."
"I did so! And we got cousins in Chicago and we stayed with them, and
Cousin Edgar is a very _prominent_ doctor for eyenear and stummick."
"Aw, Ben Rusk's pa is a doctor, too. And he's got a brother what's
going to be a sturgeon."
"I got a brother. He's a year older than me. His name is Ray....
There's lots more people in Minneapolis than there is in Joralemon.
There's a hundred thousand people in Minneapolis."
"That ain't nothing. My pa was born in Christiania, in the Old
Country, and they's a million million people there."
"Oh, there is not!"
"Honest there is."
"Is there, honest?" Gertie was admiring now.
He looked patronizingly at the red-plush furniture which was being
splendidly carried into the great house from Jordan's dray--an old
friend of Carl's, which had often carried him banging through town. He
condescended:
"Jiminy! You don't know Bennie Rusk nor nobody, do you! I'll bring him
and we can play soldiers. And we can make tents out of carpets. Did
you ever run through carpets on the line?"
He pointed to the row of rugs and carpets airing beside the
carriage-shed.
"No. Is it fun?"
"It's awful scary. But I ain't afraid."
He dashed at the carpets and entered their long narrow tent. To tell
the truth, when he stepped from the sunshine into the intense darkness
he was slightly afraid. The Ericsons' one carpet made a short passage,
but to pass on and on and on through this succession of heavy rug
mats, where snakes and poisonous bugs might hide, and where the
rough-threaded, gritty under-surface scratched his pushing hands, was
fearsome. He emerged with a whoop and encouraged her to try the feat.
She peeped inside the first carpet, but withdrew her head, giving
homage:
"Oh, it's so _dark_ in there where you went!"
He promptly performed the feat again.
As they wandered back to the gate to watch the furniture-man Gertie
tried to regain the superiority due her years by remarking, of a large
escritoire which was being juggled into the front door, "My papa
bought that desk in Chicago----"
Carl broke in, "I'll bring Bennie Rusk, and me and him 'll teach you
to play soldiers."
"My mamma don't think I ought to play games. I've got a lot of dolls,
but I'm too old for dolls. I play Authors with mamma, sometimes. And
dominoes. Authors is a very nice game."
"But maybe your ma will let you play Indian squaw, and me and Bennie
'll tie you to a stake and scalp you. That won't be rough like
soldiers. But I'm going to be a really-truly soldier. I'm going to be
a norficer in the army."
"I got a cousin that's an officer in the army," Gertie said grandly,
bringing her yellow-ribboned braid round over her shoulder and gently
brushing her lips with the end.
"Cross-your-heart?"
"Um-huh."
"Cross-your-heart, hope-t'-die if you ain't?"
"Honest he's an officer."
"Jiminy crickets! Say, Gertie, could he make me a norficer? Let's go
find him. Does he live near here?"
"Oh my, no! He's 'way off in San Francisco."
"Come on. Let's go there. You and me. Gee! I like you! You got a'
awful pertty dress."
"'Tain't polite to compliment me to my face. Mamma says----"
"Come on! Let's go! We're going!"
"Oh no. I'd like to," she faltered, "but my mamma wouldn't let me. She
don't let me play around with boys, anyway. She's in the house now.
And besides, it's 'way far off across the sea, to San Francisco; it's
beyond the salt sea where the Mormons live, and they all got seven
wives."
"Beyond the sea like Christiania? Ah, 'tain't! It's in America,
because Mr. Lamb went there last winter. 'Sides, even if it was across
the sea, couldn't we go an' be stow'ways, like the Younger Brothers
and all them? And Little Lord Fauntleroy. He went and was a lord, and
he wasn't nothing but a' orphing. My ma read me about him, only she
don't talk English very good, but we'll go stow'ways," he wound up,
triumphantly.
"Gerrrrrrtrrrrrude!" A high-pitched voice from the stoop.
Gertie glowered at a tall, meager woman with a long green-and-white
apron over a most respectable black alpaca gown. Her nose was large,
her complexion dull, but she carried herself so commandingly as to be
almost handsome and very formidable.
"Oh, dear!" Gertie stamped her foot. "Now I got to go in. I never can
have any fun. Good-by, Carl----"
He urgently interrupted her tragic farewell. "Say! Gee whillikins! I
know what we'll do. You sneak out the back door and I'll meet you, and
we'll run away and go seek-our-fortunes and we'll find your
cousin----"
"Gerrrtrrrude!" from the stoop.
"Yes, mamma, I'm just coming." To Carl: "'Sides, I'm older 'n you and
I'm 'most grown-up, and I don't believe in Santy Claus, and onc't I
taught the infant class at St. Chrysostom's Sunday-school when the
teacher wasn't there; anyway, I and Miss Bessie did, and I asked them
'most all the questions about the trumpets and pitchers. So I couldn't
run away. I'm too old."
"Gerrrtrrrude, come here this _instant_!"
"Come on. I'll be waiting," Carl demanded.
She was gone. She was being ushered into the House of Mysterious
Shutters by Mrs. Cowles. Carl prowled down the street, a fine, new,
long stick at his side, like a saber. He rounded the block, and waited
back of the Cowles carriage-shed, doing sentry-go and planning the
number of parrots and pieces of eight he would bring back from San
Francisco. _Then_ his father and mother would be sorry they'd talked
about him in their Norwegian!
"Carl!" Gertie was running around the corner of the carriage-shed.
"Oh, Carl, I had to come out and see you again, but I can't go
seek-our-fortunes with you, 'cause they've got the piano moved in now
and I got to practise, else I'll grow up just an ignorant common
person, and, besides, there's going to be tea-biscuits and honey for
supper. I saw the honey."
He smartly swung his saber to his shoulder, ordering, "Come on!"
Gertie edged forward, perplexedly sucking a finger-joint, and followed
him along Lake Street toward open country. They took to the Minnesota
& Dakota railroad track, a natural footpath in a land where the trains
were few and not fast, as was the condition of the single-tracked M. &
D. of 1893. In a worried manner Carl inquired whether San Francisco
was northwest or southeast--the directions in which ran all
self-respecting railroads. Gertie blandly declared that it lay to the
northwest; and northwest they started--toward the swamps and the first
forests of the Big Woods.
He had wonderlands to show her along the track. To him every detail
was of scientific importance. He knew intimately the topography of the
fields beside the track; in which corner of Tubbs's pasture, between
the track and the lake, the scraggly wild clover grew, and down what
part of the gravel-bank it was most exciting to roll. As far along the
track as the Arch, each railroad tie (or sleeper) had for him a
personality: the fat, white tie, which oozed at the end into an
awkward knob, he had always hated because it resembled a flattened
grub; a new tamarack tie with a sliver of fresh bark still on it,
recently put in by the section gang, was an entertaining stranger; and
he particularly introduced Gertie to his favorite, a wine-colored tie
which always smiled.
Gertie, though _noblesse oblige_ compelled her to be gracious to the
imprisoned ties writhing under the steel rails, did not really show
much enthusiasm till he led her to the justly celebrated Arch. Even
then she boasted of Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling and Lake
Calhoun; but, upon his grieved solicitation, declared that, after all,
the Twin Cities had nothing to compare with the Arch--a sandstone
tunnel full twenty feet high, miraculously boring through the railroad
embankment, and faced with great stones which you could descend by
lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the Arch ran the creek,
with rare minnows in its pools, while important paths led from the
creek to a wilderness of hazelnut-bushes. He taught her to tear the
drying husks from the nuts and crack the nuts with stones. At his
request Gertie produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small
frilly dress. He found a piece of string, and they fished for perch in
the creek. As they had no bait whatever, their success was not large.
A flock of ducks flew low above them, seeking a pond for the night.
"Jiminy!" Carl cried, "it's getting late. We got to hurry. It's awful
far to San Francisco and--I don't know--gee! where'll we sleep
to-night?"
"We hadn't ought to go on, had we?"
"Yes! Come on!"
CHAPTER II
From the creek they tramped nearly two miles, through the dark
gravel-banks of the railroad cut, across the high trestle over
Joralemon River where Gertie had to be coaxed from stringer to
stringer. They stopped only when a gopher in a clearing demanded
attention. Gertie finally forgot the superiority of age when she saw
Carl whistle the quivering gopher-cry, while the gopher sat as though
hypnotized on his pile of fresh black earth. Carl stalked him. As
always happened, the gopher popped into his hole just before Carl
reached him; but it certainly did seem that he had nearly been caught;
and Gertie was jumping with excitement when Carl returned, strutting,
cocking his saber-stick over his shoulder.
Gertie was tired. She, the Minneapolis girl, had not been much awed by
the railroad ties nor the Arch, but now she tramped proudly beside the
man who could catch gophers, till Carl inquired:
"Are you gettin' awful hungry? It's a'most supper-time."
"Yes, I _am_ hungry," trustingly.
"I'm going to go and swipe some 'taters. I guess maybe there's a
farm-house over there. I see a chimbly beyond the slough. You stay
here."
"I dassn't stay alone. Oh, I better go home. I'm scared."
"Come on. I won't let nothing hurt you."
They circled a swamp surrounded by woods, Carl's left arm about her,
his right clutching the saber. Though the sunset was magnificent and a
gay company of blackbirds swayed on the reeds of the slough, dusk was
sneaking out from the underbrush that blurred the forest floor, and
Gertie caught the panic fear. She wished to go home at once. She saw
darkness reaching for them. Her mother would unquestionably whip her
for staying out so late. She discovered a mud-smear on the side of her
skirt, and a shoe-button was gone. She was cold. Finally, if she
missed supper at home she would get no tea-biscuits and honey.
Gertie's polite little stomach knew its rights and insisted upon them.
"I wish I hadn't come!" she lamented. "I wish I hadn't. Do you s'pose
mamma will be dreadfully angry? Won't you 'splain to her? You will,
won't you?"
It was Carl's duty, as officer commanding, to watch the blackened
stumps that sprang from the underbrush. And there was Something, 'way
over in the woods, beyond the trees horribly gashed to whiteness by
lightning. Perhaps the Something hadn't moved; perhaps it _was_ a
stump----
But he answered her loudly, so that lurking robbers might overhear: "I
know a great big man over there, and he's a friend of mine; he's a
brakie on the M. & D., and he lets me ride in the caboose any time I
want to, and he's right behind us. (I was just making b'lieve, Gertie;
I'll 'splain everything to your mother.) He's bigger 'n anybody!" More
conversationally: "Aw, Jiminy! Gertie, don't cry! Please don't. I'll
take care of you. And if you ain't going to have any supper we'll
swipe some 'taters and roast 'em." He gulped. He hated to give up, to
return to woodshed and chicken-yard, but he conceded: "I guess maybe
we hadn't better go seek-our-fortunes no more to----"
A long wail tore through the air. The children shrieked together and
fled, stumbling in dry bog, weeping in terror. Carl's backbone was all
one prickling bar of ice. But he waved his stick fiercely, and,
because he had to care for her, was calm enough to realize that the
wail must have been the cry of the bittern.
"It wasn't nothing but a bird, Gertie; it can't hurt us. Heard 'em
lots of times."
Nevertheless, he was still trembling when they reached the edge of a
farm-yard clearing beyond the swamp. It was gray-dark. They could see
only the mass of a barn and a farmer's cabin, both new to Carl.
Holding her hand, he whispered:
"They must be some 'taters or 'beggies in the barn. I'll sneak in and
see. You stand here by the corn-crib and work out some ears between
the bars. See--like this."
He left her. The sound of her frightened snivel aged him. He tiptoed
to the barn door, eying a light in the farm-house. He reached far up
to the latch of the broad door and pulled out the wooden pin. The
latch slipped noisily from its staple. The door opened with a groaning
creek and banged against the barn.
Paralyzed, hearing all the silence of the wild clearing, he waited.
There was a step in the house. The door opened. A huge farmer,
tousle-haired, black-bearded, held up a lamp and peered out. It was
the Black Dutchman.
The Black Dutchman was a living legend. He often got drunk and rode
past Carl's home at night, lashing his horses and cursing in German.
He had once thrashed the school-teacher for whipping his son. He had
no friends.
"Oh dear, oh dear, I wisht I was home!" sobbed Carl; but he started to
run to Gertie's protection.
The Black Dutchman set down the lamp. "_Wer ist da?_ I see you!
Damnation!" he roared, and lumbered out, seizing a pitchfork from the
manure-pile.
Carl galloped up to Gertie, panting, "He's after us!" and dragged her
into the hazel-bushes beyond the corn-crib. As his country-bred feet
found and followed a path toward deeper woods, he heard the Black
Dutchman beating the bushes with his pitchfork, shouting:
"Hiding! I know vere you are! _Hah!_"
Carl jerked his companion forward till he lost the path. There was no
light. They could only crawl on through the bushes, whose malicious
fingers stung Gertie's face and plucked at her proud frills. He lifted
her over fallen trees, freed her from branches, and all the time,
between his own sobs, he encouraged her and tried to pretend that
their incredible plight was not the end of the world, whimpering:
"We're a'most on the road now, Gertie; honest we are. I can't hear him
now. I ain't afraid of him--he wouldn't dast hurt us or my pa would
fix him."
"Oh! I hear him! He's coming! Oh, please save me, Carl!"
"Gee! run fast!... Aw, I don't hear him. I ain't afraid of him!"
They burst out on a grassy woodland road and lay down, panting. They
could see a strip of stars overhead; and the world was dark, silent,
in the inscrutable night of autumn. Carl said nothing. He tried to
make out where they were--where this road would take them. It might
run deeper into the woods, which he did not know as he did the Arch
environs; and he had so twisted through the brush that he could not
tell in what direction lay either the main wagon-road or the M. & D.
track.
He lifted her up, and they plodded hand in hand till she said:
"I'm awful tired. It's awful cold. My feet hurt awfully. Carl dear,
oh, pleassssse take me home now. I want my mamma. Maybe she won't whip
me now. It's so dark and--ohhhhhh----" She muttered, incoherently:
"There! By the road! He's waiting for us!" She sank down, her arm over
her face, groaning, "Don't hurt me!"
Carl straddled before her, on guard. There was a distorted mass
crouched by the road just ahead. He tingled with the chill of fear,
down through his thighs. He had lost his stick-saber, but he bent,
felt for, and found another stick, and piped to the shadowy watcher:
"I ain't af-f-fraid of you! You gwan away from here!"
The watcher did not answer.
"I know who you are!" Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward, furiously
waving his stick and clamoring: "You better not touch me!" The stick
came down with a silly, flat clack upon the watcher--a roadside
boulder. "It's just a rock, Gertie! Jiminy, I'm glad! It's just a
rock!... Aw, I knew it was a rock all the time! Ben Rusk gets scared
every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always thinks it's a
robber."
Chattily, Carl went back, lifted her again, endured her kissing his
cheek, and they started on.
"I'm so cold," Gertie moaned from time to time, till he offered:
"I'll try and build a fire. Maybe we better camp. I got a match what I
swiped from the kitchen. Maybe I can make a fire, so we better camp."
"I don't want to camp. I want to go home."
"I don't know where we are, I told you."
"Can you make a regular camp-fire? Like Indians?"
"Um-huh."
"Let's.... But I rather go home."
"_You_ ain't scared now. _Are_ you, Gertie? Gee! you're a' awful brave
girl!"
"No, but I'm cold and I wisht we had some tea-biscuits----"
Ever too complacent was Miss Gertrude Cowles, the Good Girl in
whatever group she joined; but she seemed to trust in Carl's heroism,
and as she murmured of a certain chilliness she seemed to take it for
granted that he would immediately bring her some warmth. Carl had
never heard of the romantic males who, in fiction, so frequently offer
their coats to ladies fair but chill; yet he stripped off his jacket
and wrapped it about her, while his gingham-clad shoulders twitched
with cold.
"I can hear a crick, 'way, 'way over there. Le's camp by it," he
decided.
They scrambled through the brush, Carl leading her and feeling the
way. He found a patch of long grass beside the creek; with only his
tremulous hands for eyes he gathered leaves, twigs, and dead branches,
and piled them together in a pyramid, as he had been taught to do by
the older woods-faring boys.
It was still; no wind; but Carl, who had gobbled up every word he had
heard about deer-hunting in the north woods, got a great deal of
interesting fear out of dreading what might happen if his one match
did not light. He made Gertie kneel beside him with the jacket
outspread, and he hesitated several times before he scratched the
match. It flared up; the leaves caught; the pile of twigs was
instantly aflame.
He wept, "Jiminy, if it hadn't lighted!..." By and by he announced,
loudly, "I wasn't afraid," to convince himself, and sat up, throwing
twigs on the fire grandly.
Gertie, who didn't really appreciate heroism, sighed, "I'm hungry
and----"
"My second-grade teacher told us a story how they was a' arctic
explorer and he was out in a blizzard----"
"----and I wish we had some tea-biscuits," concluded Gertie,
companionably but firmly.
"I'll go pick some hazelnuts."
He left her feeding the flame. As he crept away, the fire behind him,
he was dreadfully frightened, now that he had no one to protect. A few
yards from the fire he stopped in terror. He clutched a branch so
tightly that it creased his palm. Two hundred yards away, across the
creek, was the small square of a lighted window hovering detached in
the darkness.
For a panic-filled second Carl was sure that it must be the Black
Dutchman's window. His tired child-mind whined. But there was no creek
near the Black Dutchman's. Though he did not want to venture up to
the unknown light, he growled, "I will if I want to!" and limped
forward.
He had to cross the creek, the strange creek whose stepping-stones he
did not know. Shivering, hesitant, he stripped off his shoes and
stockings and dabbled the edge of the water with reluctant toes, to
see if it was cold. It was.
"Dog-gone!" he swore, mightily. He plunged in, waded across.
He found a rock and held it ready to throw at the dog that was certain
to come snapping at him as he tiptoed through the clearing. His wet
legs smarted with cold. The fact that he was trespassing made him feel
more forlornly lost than ever. But he stumbled up to the one-room
shack that was now shaping itself against the sky. It was a house
that, he believed, he had never seen before. When he reached it he
stood for fully a minute, afraid to move. But from across the creek
whimpered Gertie's call:
"Carl, oh, _Carl_, where are you?"
He had to hurry. He crept along the side of the shack to the window.
It was too high in the wall for him to peer through. He felt for
something to stand upon, and found a short board, which he wedged
against the side of the shack.
He looked through the dusty window for a second. He sprang from the
board.
Alone in the shack was the one person about Joralemon more feared,
more fabulous than the Black Dutchman--"Bone" Stillman, the man who
didn't believe in God.
Bone Stillman read Robert G. Ingersoll, and said what he thought.
Otherwise he was not dangerous to the public peace; a lone old
bachelor farmer. It was said that he had been a sailor or a policeman,
a college professor or a priest, a forger or an embezzler. Nothing
positive was known except that three years ago he had appeared and
bought this farm. He was a grizzled man of fifty-five, with a long,
tobacco-stained, gray mustache and an open-necked blue-flannel shirt.
To Carl, beside the shack, Bone Stillman was all that was demoniac.
Gertie was calling again. Carl climbed upon his board and resumed his
inspection, seeking a course of action.
The one-room shack was lined with tar-paper, on which were pinned
lithographs of Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx, and Napoleon. Under a
gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy
books, shotgun shells, and fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine
table still littered with supper-dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed
English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was absolute
stillness and loneliness intimidating.
While Carl watched, Bone dropped his book and said, "Here, Bob, what
d'you think of single-tax, heh?"
Carl gazed apprehensively.... No one but Bone was in the shack.... It
was said that the devil himself sometimes visited here.... On Carl was
the chill of a nightmare.
The dog raised his head, stirred, blinked, pounded his tail on the
floor, and rose, a gentlemanly, affable chap, to lay his muzzle on
Bone's knee while the solitary droned:
"This fellow says in this book here that the city 's the natural place
to live--aboriginal tribes prove man 's naturally gregarious. What
d'you think about it, heh, Bob?... Bum country, this is. No thinking.
What in the name of the seven saintly sisters did I ever want to be a
farmer for, heh?
"Let's skedaddle, Bob.
"I ain't an atheist. I'm an agnostic.
"Lonely, Bob? Go over and talk to his whiskers, Karl Marx. He's
liberal. He don't care what you say. He---- Oh, shut up! You're damn
poor company. Say something!"
Carl, still motionless, was the more agonized because there was no
sound from Gertie, not even a sobbing call. Anything might have
happened to her. While he was coaxing himself to knock on the pane,
Stillman puttered about the shack, petting the dog, filling his pipe.
He passed out of Carl's range of vision toward the side of the room in
which was the window.
A huge hand jerked the window open and caught Carl by the hair. Two
wild faces stared at each other, six inches apart.
"I saw you. Came here to plague me!" roared Bone Stillman.
"Oh, mister, oh please, mister, I wasn't. Me and Gertie is lost in the
woods--we----Ouch! Oh, _please_ lemme go!"
"Why, you're just a brat! Come here."
The lean arm of Bone Stillman dragged Carl through the window by the
slack of his gingham waist.
"Lost, heh? Where's t'other one--Gertie, was it?"
"She's over in the woods."
"Poor little tyke! Wait 'll I light my lantern."
The swinging lantern made friendly ever-changing circles of light, and
Carl no longer feared the dangerous territory of the yard. Riding
pick-a-back on Bone Stillman, he looked down contentedly on the dog's
deferential tail beside them. They found Gertie asleep by the fire.
She scarcely awoke as Stillman picked her up and carried her back to
his shack. She nestled her downy hair beneath his chin and closed her
eyes.
Stillman said, cheerily, as he ushered them into his mansion: "I'll
hitch up and take you back to town. You young tropical tramps! First
you better have a bite to eat, though. What do kids eat, bub?"
The dog was nuzzling Carl's hand, and Carl had almost forgotten his
fear that the devil might appear. He was flatteringly friendly in his
answer: "Porritch and meat and potatoes--only I don't like potatoes,
and--_pie!_"
"'Fraid I haven't any pie, but how'd some bacon and eggs go?" As he
stoked up his cannon-ball stove and sliced the bacon, Stillman
continued to the children, who were shyly perched on the buffalo-robe
cover of his bed, "Were you scared in the woods?"
"Yes, sir."
"Don't ever for----Da----Blast that egg! Don't forget this, son:
nothing outside of you can ever hurt you. It can chew up your toes,
but it can't reach you. Nobody but you can hurt you. Let me try to
make that clear, old man, if I can....
"There's your fodder. Draw up and set to. Pretty sleepy, are you? I'll
tell you a story. J' like to hear about how Napoleon smashed the
theory of divine rule, or about how me and Charlie Weems explored
Tiburon? Well----"
Though Carl afterward remembered not one word of what Bone Stillman
said, it is possible that the outcast's treatment of him as a grown-up
friend was one of the most powerful of the intangible influences which
were to push him toward the great world outside of Joralemon. The
school-bound child--taught by young ladies that the worst immorality
was whispering in school; the chief virtue, a dull quietude--was here
first given a reasonable basis for supposing that he was not always to
be a back-yard boy.
The man in the flannel shirt, who chewed tobacco, who wrenched
infinitives apart and thrust profane words between, was for fifteen
minutes Carl's Froebel and Montessori.
Carl's recollection of listening to Bone blurs into one of being
somewhere in the back of a wagon beside Gertie, wrapped in buffalo
robes, and of being awakened by the stopping of the wagon when Bone
called to a band of men with lanterns who were searching for the
missing Gertie. Apparently the next second he was being lifted out
before his home, and his aproned mother was kissing him and sobbing,
"Oh, my boy!" He snuggled his head on her shoulder and said:
"I'm cold. But I'm going to San Francisco."
CHAPTER III
Carl Ericson, grown to sixteen and long trousers, trimmed the
arc-lights for the Joralemon Power and Lighting Company, after school;
then at Eddie Klemm's billiard-parlor he won two games of Kelly pool,
smoked a cigarette of flake tobacco and wheat-straw paper, and
"chipped in" five cents toward a can of beer.
A slender Carl, hesitating in speech, but with plenty to say; rangy as
a setter pup, silken-haired; his Scandinavian cheeks like petals at an
age when his companions' faces were like maps of the moon; stubborn
and healthy; wearing a celluloid collar and a plain black
four-in-hand; a blue-eyed, undistinguished, awkward, busy proletarian
of sixteen, to whom evening clothes and poetry did not exist, but who
quivered with inarticulate determinations to see Minneapolis, or even
Chicago. To him it was sheer romance to parade through town with a tin
haversack of carbons for the arc-lights, familiarly lowering the
high-hung mysterious lamps, while his plodding acquaintances "clerked"
in stores on Saturdays, or tended furnaces. Sometimes he donned the
virile--and noisy--uniform of an electrician: army gauntlets, a coil
of wire, pole-climbers strapped to his legs. Crunching his steel spurs
into the crisp pine wood of the lighting-poles, he carelessly ascended
to the place of humming wires and red cross-bars and green-glass
insulators, while crowds of two and three small boys stared in awe
from below. At such moments Carl did not envy the aristocratic leisure
of his high-school classmate, Fatty Ben Rusk, who, as son of the
leading doctor, did not work, but stayed home and read library books.
Carl's own home was not adapted to the enchantments of a boy's
reading. Perfectly comfortable it was, and clean with the hard
cleanness that keeps oilcloth looking perpetually unused, but it was
so airlessly respectable that it doubled Carl's natural restlessness.
It had been old Oscar Ericson's labor of love, but the carpenter loved
shininess more than space and leisure. His model for a house would
have been a pine dry-goods box grained in imitation of oak. Oscar
Ericson radiated intolerance and a belief in unimaginative, unresting
labor. Every evening, collarless and carpet-slippered, ruffling his
broom-colored hair or stroking his large, long chin, while his
shirt-tab moved ceaselessly in time to his breathing, he read a
Norwegian paper. Carl's mother darned woolen socks and thought about
milk-pans and the neighbors and breakfast. The creak of rockers filled
the unventilated, oilcloth-floored sitting-room. The sound was as
unchanging as the sacred positions of the crayon enlargement of Mrs.
Ericson's father, the green-glass top-hat for matches, or the violent
ingrain rug with its dog's-head pattern.
Carl's own room contained only plaster walls, a narrow wooden bed, a
bureau, a kitchen chair. Fifteen minutes in this irreproachable home
sent Carl off to Eddie Klemm's billiard-parlor, which was not
irreproachable.
He rather disliked the bitterness of beer and the acrid specks of
cigarette tobacco that stuck to his lips, but the "bunch at Eddie's"
were among the few people in Joralemon who were conscious of life.
Eddie's establishment was a long, white-plastered room with a
pressed-steel ceiling and an unswept floor. On the walls were
billiard-table-makers' calendars and a collection of cigarette-premium
chromos portraying bathing girls. The girls were of lithographic
complexions, almost too perfect of feature, and their lips were more
than ruby. Carl admired them.
* * * * *
A September afternoon. The sixteen-year-old Carl was tipped back in a
chair at Eddie Klemm's, one foot on a rung, while he discussed village
scandals and told outrageous stories with Eddie Klemm, a brisk
money-maker and vulgarian aged twenty-three, who wore a "fancy vest"
and celluloid buttons on his lapels. Ben Rusk hesitatingly poked his
head through the door.
Eddie Klemm called, with business-like cordiality: "H'lo, Fatty! Come
in. How's your good health? Haven't reformed, have you? Going to join
us rough-necks? Come on; I'll teach you to play pool. Won't cost you a
cent."
"No, I guess I hadn't better. I was just looking for Carl."
"Well, well, Fatty, ain't we ree-fined! Why do we guess we hadn't to
probably maybe oughtn't to had better?"
"Oh, I don't know. Some day I'll learn, I guess," sighed Fatty Ben
Rusk, who knew perfectly that with a doctor father, a religious
mother, and an effeminate taste for reading he could never be a town
sport.
"Hey! watch out!" shrieked Eddie.
"Wh-what's the matter?" gasped Fatty.
"The floor 's falling on you!"
"Th--th----Aw, say, you're kidding me," said Fatty, weakly, with a
propitiating smile.
"Don't worry, son; you're the third guy to-day that I've caught on
that! Stick around, son, and sit in any time, and I'll learn you some
pool. You got just the right build for a champ player. Have a
cigarette?"
The social amenities whereby Joralemon prepares her youth for the
graces of life having been recognized, Fatty Rusk hitched a chair
beside Carl, and muttered:
"Say, Carl, here's what I wanted to tell you: I was just up to the
Cowleses' to take back a French grammar I borrowed to look at----Maybe
that ain't a hard-looking language! What d'you think? Mrs. Cowles told
me Gertie is expected back to-morrow."
"Gee whiz! I thought she was going to stay in New York for two years!
And she's only been gone six months."
"I guess Mrs. Cowles is kind of lonely without her," Ben mooned.
"So now you'll be all nice and in love with Gertie again, heh? It
certainly gets me why you want to fall in love, Fatty, when you could
go hunting."
"If you'd read about King Arthur and Galahad and all them instead of
reading the _Scientific American_, and about these fool horseless
carriages and stuff----There never will be any practical use for
horseless carriages, anyway."
"There will----" growled Carl.
"My mother says she don't believe the Lord ever intended us to ride
without horses, or what did He give us horses for? And the things
always get stuck in the mud and you have to walk home--mother was
reading that in a newspaper, just the other day."
"Son, let me tell you, I'll own a horseless carriage some day, and I
bet I go an average of twenty miles an hour with it, maybe forty."
"Oh, rats! But I was saying, if you'd read some library books you'd
know about love. Why, what 'd God put love in the world for----"
"Say, will you quit explaining to me about what God did things for?"
"Ouch! Quit! Awwww, quit, Carl.... Say, listen; here's what I wanted
to tell you: How if you and me and Adelaide Benner and some of us went
down to the depot to meet Gertie, to-morrow? She comes in on the
twelve-forty-seven."
"Well, all right. Say, Bennie, you don't want to be worried when I kid
you about being in love with Gertie. I don't think I'll ever get
married. But it's all right for you."
* * * * *
Saturday morning was so cool, so radiant, that Carl awakened early to
a conviction that, no matter how important meeting Gertie might be in
the cosmic scheme, he was going hunting. He was down-stairs by five.
He fried two eggs, called Dollar Ingersoll, his dog--son of Robert
Ingersoll Stillman, gentleman dog--then, in canvas hunting-coat and
slouch-hat, tramped out of town southward, where the woods ended in
prairie. Gertie's arrival was forgotten.
It was a gipsy day. The sun rolled splendidly through the dry air,
over miles of wheat stubble, whose gray-yellow prickles were
transmuted by distance into tawny velvet, seeming only the more
spacious because of the straight, thin lines of barbed-wire fences
lined with goldenrod, and solitary houses in willow groves. The dips
and curves of the rolling plain drew him on; the distances satisfied
his eyes. A pleasant hum of insects filled the land's wide serenity
with hidden life.
Carl left a trail of happy, monotonous whistling behind him all day,
as his dog followed the winding trail of prairie-chickens, as a covey
of chickens rose with booming wings and he swung his shotgun for a
bead. He stopped by prairie-sloughs or bright-green bogs to watch for
a duck. He hailed as equals the occasional groups of hunters in
two-seated buggies, quartering the fields after circling dogs. He
lunched contentedly on sandwiches of cold lamb, and lay with his arms
under his head, gazing at a steeple fully ten miles away.
By six of the afternoon he had seven prairie-chickens tucked inside
the long pocket that lined the tail of his coat, and he headed for
home, superior to miles, his quiet eyes missing none of the purple
asters and goldenrod.
As he began to think he felt a bit guilty. The flowers suggested
Gertie. He gathered a large bunch, poking stalks of aster among the
goldenrod, examining the result at arm's-length. Yet when he stopped
at the Rusks' in town, to bid Bennie take the rustic bouquet to
Gertie, he replied to reproaches:
"What you making all the fuss about my not being there to meet her
for? She got here all right, didn't she? What j' expect me to do? Kiss
her? You ought to known it was too good a day for hunting to miss....
How's Gert? Have a good time in New York?"
Carl himself took the flowers to her, however, and was so shyly
attentive to her account of New York that he scarcely stopped to speak
to the Cowleses' "hired girl," who was his second cousin.... Mrs.
Cowles overheard him shout, "Hello, Lena! How's it going?" to the
hired girl with cousinly ease. Mrs. Cowles seemed chilly. Carl
wondered why.
* * * * *
From month to month of his junior year in high school Carl grew more
discontented. He let the lines of his Cicero fade into a gray blur
that confounded Cicero's blatant virtue and Cataline's treachery,
while he pictured himself tramping with snow-shoes and a mackinaw coat
into the snowy solemnities of the northern Minnesota tamarack swamps.
Much of his discontent was caused by his learned preceptors. The
teachers for this year were almost perfectly calculated to make any
lad of the slightest independence hate culture for the rest of his
life. With the earnestness and industry usually ascribed to the devil,
"Prof" Sybrant E. Larsen (B. A. Platonis), Miss McDonald, and Miss
Muzzy kept up ninety-five per cent. discipline, and seven per cent.
instruction in anything in the least worth while.
Miss Muzzy was sarcastic, and proud of it. She was sarcastic to Carl
when he gruffly asked why he couldn't study French instead of "all
this Latin stuff." If there be any virtue in the study of Latin (and
we have all forgotten all our Latin except the fact that "suburb"
means "under the city"--_i. e._, a subway), Carl was blinded to it for
ever. Miss Muzzy wore eye-glasses and had no bosom. Carl's father used
to say approvingly, "Dat Miss Muzzy don't stand for no nonsense," and
Mrs. Dr. Rusk often had her for dinner.... Miss McDonald, fat and
slow-spoken and kind, prone to use the word "dearie," to read
Longfellow, and to have buttons off her shirt-waists, used on Carl a
feminine weapon more unfair than the robust sarcasm of Miss Muzzy. For
after irritating a self-respecting boy into rudeness by pawing his
soul with damp, puffy hands, she would weep. She was a kind, honest,
and reverent bovine. Carl sat under her supervision in the junior
room, with its hardwood and blackboards and plaster, high windows and
portraits of Washington and a President who was either Madison or
Monroe (no one ever remembered which). He hated the eternal school
smell of drinking-water pails and chalk and slates and varnish; he
loathed the blackboard erasers, white with crayon-dust; he found
inspiration only in the laboratory where "Prof" Larsen mistaught
physics and rebuked questions about the useless part of
chemistry--that is, the part that wasn't in their text-books.
As for literature, Ben Rusk persuaded him to try Captain Marryat and
Conan Doyle. Carl met Sherlock Holmes in a paper-bound book, during a
wait for flocks of mallards on the duck-pass, which was a little
temple of silver birches bare with November. He crouched down in his
canvas coat and rubber boots, gun across knees, and read for an hour
without moving. As he tramped home, into a vast Minnesota sunset like
a furnace of fantastic coals, past the garnet-tinged ice of lakes, he
kept his gun cocked and under his elbow, ready for the royal robber
who was dogging the personage of Baker Street.
He hunted much; distinguished himself in geometry and chemistry;
nearly flunked in Cicero and English; learned to play an
extraordinarily steady game of bottle pool at Eddie Klemm's.
And always Gertie Cowles, gently hesitant toward Ben Rusk's affection,
kept asking Carl why he didn't come to see her oftener, and play
tiddledywinks.
On the Friday morning before Christmas vacation, Carl and Ben Rusk
were cleaning up the chemical laboratory, its pine experiment-bench
and iron sink and rough floor. Bennie worried a rag in the sink with
the resigned manner of a man who, having sailed with purple banners
the sunset sea of tragedy, goes bravely on with a life gray and weary.
The town was excited. Gertie Cowles was giving a party, and she had
withdrawn her invitation to Eddie Klemm. Gertie was staying away from
high school, gracefully recovering from a cold. For two weeks the
junior and senior classes had been furtively exhibiting her
holly-decked cards of invitation. Eddie had been included, but after
his quarrel with Howard Griffin, a Plato College freshman who was
spending the vacation with Ray Cowles, it had been explained to Eddie
that perhaps he would be more comfortable not to come to the party.
Gertie's brother, Murray, or "Ray," was the town hero. He had
captained the high-school football team. He was tall and very
black-haired, and he "jollied" the girls. It was said that twenty
girls in Joralemon and Wakamin, and a "grass widow" in St. Hilary,
wrote to him. He was now a freshman in Plato College, Plato,
Minnesota. He had brought home with him his classmate, Howard Griffin,
whose people lived in South Dakota and were said to be wealthy.
Griffin had been very haughty to Eddie Klemm, when introduced to that
brisk young man at the billiard-parlor, and now, the town eagerly
learned, Eddie had been rejected of society.
In the laboratory Carl was growling: "Well, say, Fatty, if it was
right for them to throw Eddie out, where do I come in? His dad 's a
barber, and mine 's a carpenter, and that's just as bad. Or how about
you? I was reading that docs used to be just barbers."
"Aw, thunder!" said Ben Rusk, the doctor's scion, uncomfortably,
"you're just arguing. I don't believe that about doctors being
barbers. Don't it tell about doctors 'way back in the Bible? Why, of
course! Luke was a physician! 'Sides, it ain't a question of Eddie's
being a barber's son. I sh'd think you'd realize that Gertie isn't
well. She wouldn't want to have to entertain both Eddie and Griffin,
and Griffin 's her guest; and besides----"
"You're getting all tangled up. If I was to let you go on you'd trip
over a long word and bust your dome. Come on. We've done enough
cleaning. Le's hike. Come on up to the house and help me on my bobs. I
got a new scheme for pivoting the back sled.... You just wait till
to-night. I'm going to tell Gertie and Mister Howard Griffin just what
I think of them for being such two-bit snobs. And your future
ma-in-law. Gee! I'm glad I don't have to be in love with anybody, and
become a snob! Come on."
Out of this wholesome, democratic, and stuffy village life Carl
suddenly stepped into the great world. A motor-car, the first he had
ever seen, was drawn up before the Hennepin House.
He stopped. His china-blue eyes widened. His shoulders shot forward to
a rigid stoop of astonishment. His mouth opened. He gasped as they ran
to join the gathering crowd.
"A horseless carriage! Do you get that? There's one _here_!" He
touched the bonnet of the two-cylinder 1901 car, and worshiped. "Under
there--the engine! And there's where you steer.... I _will_ own
one!... Gee! you're right, Fatty; I believe I will go to college. And
then I'll study mechanical engineering."
"Thought you said you were going to try and go to Annapolis and be a
sailor."
"No. Rats! I'm going to own a horseless carriage, and I'm going to
tour every state in the Union.... Think of seeing mountains! And the
ocean! And going twenty miles an hour, like a train!"
CHAPTER IV
While Carl prepared for Gertie Cowles's party by pressing his trousers
with his mother's flat-iron, while he blacked his shoes and took his
weekly sponge-bath, he was perturbed by partisanship with Eddie Klemm,
and a longing for the world of motors, and some anxiety as to how he
could dance at the party when he could not dance.
He clumped up the new stone steps of the Cowles house carelessly, not
unusually shy, ready to tell Gertie what he thought of her treatment
of Eddie. Then the front door opened and an agonized Carl was
smothered in politeness. His second cousin, Lena, the Cowleses' "hired
girl," was opening the door, stiff and uncomfortable in a cap, a black
dress, and a small frilly apron that dangled on her boniness like a
lace kerchief pinned on a broom-handle. Murray Cowles rushed up. He
was in evening clothes!
Behind Murray, Mrs. Cowles greeted Carl with thawed majesty: "We are
so glad to have you, Carl. Won't you take your things off in the room
at the head of the stairs?"
An affable introduction to Howard Griffin (also in evening clothes)
was poured on Carl like soothing balm. Said Griffin: "Mighty glad to
meet you, Ericson. Ray told me you'd make a ripping sprinter. The
captain of the track team 'll be on the lookout for you when you get
to Plato. Course you're going to go there. The U. of Minn. is too
big.... You'll _do_ something for old Plato. Wish I could. But all I
can do is warble like a darn' dicky-bird. Have a cigarette?... They're
just starting to dance. Come on, old man. Come on, Ray."
Carl was drawn down-stairs and instantly precipitated into a dance
regarding which he was sure only that it was either a waltz, a
two-step, or something else. It filled with glamour the Cowles
library--the only parlor in Joralemon that was called a library, and
the only one with a fireplace or a polished hardwood floor. Grandeur
was in the red lambrequins over the doors and windows; the bead
portiere; a hand-painted coal-scuttle; small, round paintings of
flowers set in black velvet; an enormous black-walnut bookcase with
fully a hundred volumes; and the two lamps of green-mottled shades and
wrought-iron frames, set on pyrographed leather skins brought from New
York by Gertie. The light was courtly on the polished floor. Adelaide
Benner--a new Adelaide, in chiffon over yellow satin, and
patent-leather slippers--grinned at him and ruthlessly towed him into
the tide of dancers. In the spell of society no one seemed to remember
Eddie Klemm. Adelaide did not mention the incident.
Carl found himself bumping into others, continually apologizing to
Adelaide and the rest--and not caring. For he saw a vision! Each time
he turned toward the south end of the room he beheld Gertie Cowles
glorified.
She was out of ankle-length dresses! She looked her impressive
eighteen, in a foaming long white mull that showed her soft throat. A
red rose was in her brown hair. She reclined in a big chair of leather
and oak and smiled her gentlest, especially when Carl bobbed his head
to her.
He had always taken her as a matter of course; she had no age, no sex,
no wonder. That afternoon she had been a negligible bit of Joralemon,
to be accused of snobbery toward Eddie Klemm, and always to be watched
suspiciously lest she "spring some New York airs on us."... Gertie had
craftily seemed unchanged after her New York enlightenment till
now--here she was, suddenly grown-up and beautiful, haloed with a
peculiar magic, which distinguished her from all the rest of the
world.
"She's the one that would ride in that horseless carriage when I got
it!" Carl exulted. "That must be a train, that thing she's got on."
After the dance he disposed of Adelaide Benner as though she were only
a sister. He hung over the back of Gertie's chair and urged: "I was
awful sorry to hear you were sick.... Say, you look wonderful,
to-night."
"I'm so glad you could come to my party. Oh, I must speak to you
about----Do you suppose you would ever get very, very angry at poor
me? Me so bad sometimes."
He cut an awkward little caper to show his aplomb, and assured her, "I
guess probably I'll kill you some time, all right."
"No, listen, Carl; I'm dreadfully serious. I hope you didn't go and
get dreadfully angry at me about Eddie Klemm. I know Eddie 's good
friends with you. And I did want to have him come to my party. But you
see it was this way: Mr. Griffin is our guest (he likes you a _lot_,
Carl. Isn't he a dandy fellow? I guess Adelaide and Hazel 're just
crazy about him. I think he's just as swell as the men in New York).
Eddie and he didn't get along very well together. It isn't anybody's
fault, I don't guess. I thought Eddie would be lots happier if he
didn't come, don't you see?"
"Oh no, of course; oh yes, I see. Sure. I can see how----Say, Gertie,
I never did know you could look so grown-up. I suppose now you'll
never play with me."
"I want you to be a good friend of mine always. We always have been
awfully good friends, haven't we?"
"Yes. Do you remember how we ran away?"
"And how the Black Dutchman chassssed us!" Her sweet and complacent
voice was so cheerful that he lost his awe of her new magic and
chortled:
"And how we used to play pum-pum-pull-away."
She delicately leaned her cheek on a finger-tip and sighed: "Yes, I
wonder if we shall ever be so happy as when we were young.... I don't
believe you care to play with me so much now."
"Oh, gee! Gertie! Like to----!" The shyness was on him again. "Say,
are you feeling better now? You're all over being sick?"
"Almost, now. I'll be back in school right after vacation."
"It's you that don't want to play, I guess.... I can't get over that
long white dress. It makes you look so--oh, you know, so, uh----"
"They're going to dance again. I wish I felt able to dance."
"Let me sit and talk to you, Gertie, instead of dancing."
"I suppose you're dreadfully bored, though, when you could be down at
the billiard-parlor?"
"Yes, I could! Not! Eddie Klemm and his fancy vest wouldn't have much
chance, alongside of Griffin in his dress-suit! Course I don't want to
knock Eddie. Him and me are pretty good side-kicks----"
"Oh no; I understand. It's just that people have to go with their own
class, don't you think?"
"Oh Yes. Sure. I do think so, myself." Carl said it with a spurious
society manner. In Gertie's aristocratic presence he desired to keep
aloof from all vulgar persons.
"Of course, I think we ought to make allowances for Eddie's father,
Carl, but then----"
She sighed with the responsibilities of _noblesse oblige_; and Carl
gravely sighed with her.
He brought a stool and sat at her feet. Immediately he was afraid that
every one was watching him. Ray Cowles bawled to them, as he passed in
the waltz, "Watch out for that Carl, Gert. He's a regular badix."
Carl's scalp tickled, but he tried to be very offhand in remarking:
"You must have gotten that dress in New York, didn't you? Why haven't
you ever told me about New York? You've hardly told me anything at
all."
"Well, I like that! And you never been near me to give me a chance!"
"I guess I was kind of scared you wouldn't care much for Joralemon,
after New York."
"Why, Carl, you mustn't say that to me!"
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Gertie, honestly I didn't. I was
just joking. I didn't think you'd take me seriously."
"As though I could forget my old friends, even in New York!"
"I didn't think that. Straight. Please tell me about New York. That's
the place, all right. Jiminy! wouldn't I like to go there!"
"I wish you could have been there, Carl. We had such fun in my school.
There weren't any boys in it, but we----"
"No boys in it? Why, how's that?"
"Why, it was just for girls."
"I see," he said, fatuously, completely satisfied.
"We did have the best times, Carl. I _must_ tell you about one awfully
naughty thing Carrie--she was my chum in school--and I did. There was
a stock company on Twenty-third Street, and we were all crazy about
the actors, especially Clements Devereaux, and one afternoon Carrie
told the principal she had a headache, and I asked if I could go home
with her and read her the assignments for next day (they called the
lessons 'assignments' there), and they thought I was such a meek
little country mouse that I wouldn't ever fib, and so they let us go,
and what do you think we did? She had tickets for 'The Two Orphans' at
the stock company. (You've never seen 'The Two Orphans,' have you?
It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it.) And
afterward we went and waited outside, right near the stage entrance,
and what do you think? The leading man, Clements Devereaux, went
right by us as near as I am to you. Oh, _Carl_, I wish you could have
seen him! Maybe he wasn't the handsomest thing! He had the blackest,
curliest hair, and he wore a thumb ring."
"I don't think much of all these hamfatters," growled Carl. "Actors
always go broke and have to walk back to Chicago. Don't you think it
'd be better to be a civil engineer or something like that, instead of
having to slick up your hair and carry a cane? They're just dudes."
"Why! of course, Carl, you silly boy! You don't suppose I'd take
Clements seriously, do you? You silly boy!"
"I'm not a boy."
"I don't mean it that way." She sat up, touched his shoulder, and sank
back. He blushed with bliss, and the fear that some one had seen, as
she continued: "I always think of you as just as old as I am. We
always will be, won't we?"
"Yes!"
"Now you must go and talk to Doris Carson. Poor thing, she always is a
wall-flower."
However much he thought of common things as he left her, beyond those
common things was the miracle that Gertie had grown into the one
perfect, divinely ordained woman, and that he would talk to her again.
He danced the Virginia reel. Instead of clumping sulkily through the
steps, as at other parties, he heeded Adelaide Benner's lessons, and
watched Gertie in the hope that she would see how well he was dancing.
He shouted a demand that they play "Skip to Maloo," and cried down the
shy girls who giggled that they were too old for the childish
party-game. He howled, without prejudice in favor of any particular
key, the ancient words:
"Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two,
Bats in the belfry, two by two,
Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two,
Skip to Maloo, my darling."
In the nonchalant company of the smarter young bachelors up-stairs he
smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the
stairs. Below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to
go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to
be able to swagger down like an Eddie Klemm. For the Carl Ericson who
sailed his ice-boat over inch-thick ice was timid now. He poked into
the library, and in a nausea of discomfort he conversed with Mrs.
Cowles, Mrs. Cowles doing the conversing.
"Are you going to be a Republican or a Democrat, Carl?" asked the
forbidding lady.
"Yessum," mumbled Carl, peering over at Gertie's throne, where Ben
Rusk was being cultured.
"I hope you are having a good time. We always wish our young friends
to have an especially good time at Gertrude's parties," Mrs. Cowles
sniffed, and bowed away.
Carl sat beside Adelaide Benner in the decorous and giggling circle
that ringed the room, waiting for the "refreshments." He was healthily
interested in devouring maple ice-cream and chocolate layer-cake. But
all the while he was spying on the group gathering about Gertie--Ben
Rusk, Howard Griffin, and Joe Jordan. He took the most strategic
precautions lest some one think that he wanted to look at Gertie; made
such ponderous efforts to prove he was care-free that every one knew
something was the matter.
Ben Rusk was taking no part in the gaiety of Howard and Joe. The
serious man of letters was not easily led into paths of frivolity.
Carl swore to himself: "Ben 's the only guy I know that's got any
delicate feelings. He appreciates how Gertie feels when she's sick,
poor girl. He don't make a goat of himself, like Joe.... Or maybe he's
got a stomach-ache."
"Post-office!" cried Howard Griffin to the room at large. "Come on!
We're all of us going to be kids again, and play post-office. Who's
the first girl wants to be kissed?"
"The idea!" giggled Adelaide Benner.
"Me for Adelaide!" bawled Joe Jordan.
"Oh, Jo-oe, bet I kiss Gertie!" from Irving Lamb.
"The idea!"
"Just as if we were children----"
"He must think we're kids again----"
"Shamey! Winnie wants to be kissed, and Carl won't----"
"I don't, either, so there----"
"I think it's awful."
"Bet I kiss Gertie----"
Carl was furious at all of them as they strained their shoulders
forward from their chairs and laughed. He asked himself, "Haven't
these galoots got any sense?"
To speak so lightly of kissing Gertie! He stared at the smooth
rounding of her left cheek below the cheek-bone till it took a
separate identity, and its white softness filled the room.
Ten minutes afterward, playing "post-office," he was facing Gertie in
the semi-darkness of the sitting-room, authorized by the game to kiss
her; shut in with his divinity.
She took his hand. Her voice was crooning, "Are you going to kiss me
terribly hard?"
He tried to be gracefully mocking: "Oh yes! Sure! I'm going to eat you
alive."
She was waiting.
He wished that she would not hold his hand. Within he groaned, "Gee
whiz! I feel foolish!" He croaked: "Do you feel better, now? You'll
catch more cold in here, won't you? There's kind of a draught. Lemme
look at this window."
Crossing to the obviously tight window, he ran his finger along the
edge of the sash with infinite care. He trembled. In a second, _now_,
he had to turn and make light of the lips which he would fain have
approached with ceremony pompous and lingering.
Gertie flopped into a chair, laughing: "I believe you're afraid to
kiss me! 'Fraid cat! You'll never be a squire of dames, like those
actors are! All right for you!"
"I am not afraid!" he piped.... Even his prized semi-bass voice had
deserted him.... He rushed to the back of her chair and leaned over,
confused, determined. Hastily he kissed her. The kiss landed on the
tip of her cold nose.
And the whole party was tumbling in, crying:
"Time 's up! You can't hug her all evening!"
"Did you see? He kissed her on the nose!"
"Did he? Ohhhhh!"
"Time 's up. Can't try it again."
Joe Jordan, in the van, was dancing fantastically, scraping his
forefinger at Carl, in token of disgrace.
The riotous crowd, Gertie and Carl among them, flooded out again. To
show that he had not minded the incident of the misplaced kiss, Carl
had to be very loud and merry in the library for a few minutes; but
when the game of "post-office" was over and Mrs. Cowles asked Ray to
turn down the lamp in the sitting-room, Carl insisted:
"I'll do it, Mrs. Cowles; I'm nearer 'n Ray," and bolted.
He knew that he was wicked in not staying in the library and
continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all
his agonizing and be back at once.
It was beautiful in the stilly sitting-room, away from the noisy
crowd, to hear love's heart beating. He darted to the chair where
Gertie had sat and guiltily kissed its arm. He tiptoed to the table,
blew out the lamp, remembered that he should only have turned down the
wick, tried to raise the chimney, burnt his fingers, snatched his
handkerchief, dropped it, groaned, picked up the handkerchief, raised
the chimney, put it on the table, searched his pockets for a match,
found it, dropped it, picked it up from the floor, dropped his knife
from his pocket as he stooped, felt itchy about the scalp, picked up
the knife, relighted the lamp, exquisitely adjusted the chimney--and
again blew out the flame. And swore.
As darkness whirled into the room again the vision of Gertie came
nearer. Then he understood his illness, and gasped: "Great jumping
Jupiter on a high mountain! I guess--I'm--in--love! _Me!_"
The party was breaking up. Each boy, as he accompanied a girl from the
yellow lamplight into the below-zero cold, shouted and scuffled the
snow, to indicate that there was nothing serious in his attentions,
and immediately tried to manoeuver his girl away from the others.
Mrs. Cowles was standing in the hall--not hurrying the guests away,
you understand, but perfectly resigned to accepting any
farewells--when Gertie, moving gently among them with little sounds of
pleasure, penned Carl in a corner and demanded:
"Are you going to see some one home? I suppose you'll forget poor me
completely, now!"
"I will not!"
"I wanted to tell you what Ray and Mr. Griffin said about Plato and
about being lawyers. Isn't it nice you'll know them when you go to
Plato?"
"Yes, it 'll be great."
"Mr. Griffin 's going to be a lawyer and maybe Ray will, too, and why don't
you think about being one? You can get to be a judge and know all the best
people. It would be lovely.... Refining influences--they--that's----"
"I couldn't ever be a high-class lawyer like Griffin will," said Carl,
his head on one side, much pleased.
"You silly boy, of course you could. I think you've got just as much
brains as he has, and Ray says they all look up to him even in Plato.
And I don't see why Plato isn't just as good--of course it isn't as
large, but it's so select and the faculty can give you so much more
individual attention, and I don't see why it isn't every bit as good
as Yale and Michigan and all those Eastern colleges.... Howard--Mr.
Griffin--he says that he wouldn't ever have thought of being a lawyer
only a girl was such a good influence with him, and if you get to be a
famous man, too, maybe I'll have been just a teeny-weeny bit of an
influence, too, won't I?"
"Oh _yes_!"
"I must get back now and say good-by to my guests. Good night, Carl."
"I am going to study--you just watch me; and if I do get to go to
Plato----Oh, gee! you always have been a good influence----" He
noticed that Doris Carson was watching them. "Well, I gotta be going.
I've had a peach of a time. Good night."
Doris Carson was expectantly waiting for one of the boys to "see her
home," but Carl guiltily stole up to Ben Rusk and commanded:
"Le's hike, Fatty. Le's take a walk. Something big to tell you."
CHAPTER V
Carl kicked up the snow in moon-shot veils. The lake boomed. For all
their woolen mittens, ribbed red-cotton wristlets, and plush caps with
ear-laps, the cold seared them. Carl encouraged Ben to discourse of
Gertie and the delights of a long and hopeless love. He discovered
that, actually, Ben had suddenly fallen in love with Adelaide Benner.
"Gee!" he exulted. "Maybe that gives me a chance with Gertie, then.
But I won't let her know Ben ain't in love with her any more. Jiminy!
ain't it lucky Gertie liked me just when Ben fell in love with
somebody else! Funny the way things go; and her never knowing about
Ben." He laid down his cards. While they plowed through the hard
snow-drifts, swinging their arms against their chests like milkmen, he
blurted out all his secret: that Gertie was the "slickest girl in
town"; that no one appreciated her.
"Ho, ho!" jeered Ben.
"I thought you were crazy about her, and then you start kidding about
her! A swell bunch of chivalry you got, you and your Galahad! You----"
"Don't you go jumping on Galahad, or I'll fight!"
"He was all right, but you ain't," said Carl. "You hadn't ought to
ever sneer at love."
"Why, you said, just this afternoon----"
"You poor yahoo, I was only teasing you. No; about Gertie. It's like
this: she was telling me a lot about how Griffin 's going to be a
lawyer, about how much they make in cities, and I've about decided
I'll be a lawyer."
"Thought you were going to be a mechanical engineer?"
"Well, can't a fellow change his mind? When you're an engineer you're
always running around the country, and you never get shaved or
anything, and there ain't any refining influences----"
The absorbing game of "what we're going to be" made them forget snow
and cold-squeezed fingers. Ben, it was decided, was to own a newspaper
and support C. Ericson, Attorney-at-Law, in his dramatic run for state
senator.
Carl did not mention Gertie again. But it all meant Gertie.
* * * * *
Carl made his round trimming the arc-lights next day, apparently a
rudely healthy young person, but really a dreamer love-lorn and
misunderstood. He had found a good excuse for calling on Gertie, at
noon, and had been informed that Miss Gertrude was taking a nap. He
determined to go up the lake for rabbits. He doubted if he would ever
return, and wondered if he would be missed. Who would care if he froze
to death? He wouldn't! (Though he did seem to be taking certain
precautions, by donning a mackinaw coat, two pairs of trousers, two
pairs of woolen socks, and shoe-packs.)
He was graceful as an Indian when he swept, on skees he had made
himself, across miles of snow covering the lake and dazzling in the
diffused light of an even gray sky. The reeds by the marshy shore were
frost-glittering and clattered faintly. Marshy islands were lost in
snow. Hummocks and ice-jams and the weaving patterns of mink tracks
were blended in one white immensity, on which Carl was like a fly on a
plaster ceiling. The world was deserted. But Carl was not lonely. He
forgot all about Gertie as he cached his skees by the shore and
prowled through the woods, leaping on brush-piles and shooting quickly
when a rabbit ran out.
When he had bagged three rabbits he was besieged by the melancholy of
loneliness, the perfection of the silver-gowned Gertie. He wanted to
talk. He thought of Bone Stillman.
It was very likely that Bone was, as usual in winter, up beyond Big
Bend, fishing for pickerel with tip-ups. A never-stopping dot in the
dusk, Carl headed for Big Bend, three miles away.
The tip-up fisher watches a dozen tip-ups--short, automatic
fishing-rods, with lines running through the ice, the pivoted arm
signaling the presence of a fish at the bait. Sometimes, for warmth,
he has a tiny shanty, perhaps five feet by six in ground area, heated
by a powder-can stove. Bone Stillman often spent the night in his
movable shanty on the lake, which added to his reputation as village
eccentric. But he was more popular, now, with the local sporting
gentlemen, who found that he played a divine game of poker.
"Hello, son!" he greeted Carl. "Come in. Leave them long legs of yours
up on shore if there ain't room."
"Say, Bone, do you think a fellow ever ought to join a church?"
"Depends. Why?"
"Well, suppose he was going to be a lawyer and go in for politics?"
"Look here. What 're you thinking of becoming a lawyer for?"
"Didn't say I was."
"Of course you're thinking of it. Look here. Don't you know you've got a
chance of seeing the world? You're one of the lucky people that can have a
touch of the wanderlust without being made useless by it--as I have. You
may, you _may_ wander in thought as well as on freight-trains, and discover
something for the world. Whereas a lawyer----They're priests. They decide
what's holy and punish you if you don't guess right. They set up codes that
it takes lawyers to interpret, and so they perpetuate themselves. I don't
mean to say you're extraordinary in having a chance to wander. Don't get
the big-head over it. You're a pretty average young American. There's
plenty of the same kind. Only, mostly they get tied up to something before
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_
time," and the odor of moth-balls got down into Carl's throat, while
in the golden Olympian atmosphere at the other end of the room Gertie
coyly pretended to slap the dentist's hand with a series of tittering
taps. "A long, _long_ time before either you or I were born, Carl, and
we can't very well set ourselves up to be wiser than the wisest men
that ever lived, now _can_ we?" Again the patronizing smile. "That
would scarcely----"
Carl resolved: "This 's got to stop. I got to do something." He felt
her monologue as a blank steel wall which he could not pierce. Aloud:
"Yes, that's so, I guess. Say, that's a fine dress Gertie 's got on
to-night, ain't it.... Say, I been learning to play crokinole at Ben
Rusk's. You got a board, haven't you? Would you like to play? Does the
doctor play?"
"Indeed, I haven't the slightest idea, but I have very little doubt
that he does--he plays tennis so beautifully. He is going to teach
Gertrude, in the spring." She stopped, and again held the scarf up to
the light. "I am so glad that my girly, that was so naughty once and
ran away with you--I don't think I shall _ever_ get over the awful
fright I had that night!--I am so glad that, now she is growing up,
clever people like Dr. Doyle appreciate her so much, so very much."
She dropped her crochet to her lap and stared squarely at Carl. Her
warning that he would do exceedingly well to go home was more than
plain. He stared back, agitated but not surrendering. Deliberately,
almost suavely, with ten years of experience added to the sixteen
years that he had brought into the room, he said:
"I'll see if they'd like to play." He sauntered to the other end of
the room, abashed before the mystic woman, and ventured: "I saw Ray,
to-day.... I got to be going, pretty quick, but I was wondering if you
two felt like playing some crokinole?"
Gertie said, slowly: "I'd like to, Carl, but----Unless you'd like to
play, doctor?"
"Why of course it's _comme il faut_ to play, Miss Cowles, but I was
just hoping to have the pleasure of hearing you make some more of your
delectable music," bowed the dentist, and Gertie bowed back; and their
smiles joined in a glittery bridge of social aplomb.
"Oh yes," from Carl, "that--yes, do----But you hadn't ought to play
too much if you haven't been well."
"Oh, Carl!" shrieked Gertie. "'Ought not to,' not 'hadn't ought to'!"
"'Ought not to,'" repeated Mrs. Cowles, icily, while the dentist waved
his hand in an amused manner and contributed:
"Ought not to say 'hadn't ought to,' as my preceptor used to tell
me.... I'd like to hear you sing Longfellow's 'Psalm of Life,' Miss
Cowles."
"Don't you think Longfellow's a bum poet?" growled Carl. "Bone
Stillman says Longfellow's the grind-organ of poetry. Like this: 'Life
is re-al, life is ear-nest, tum te diddle dydle dum!'"
"Carl," ordered Mrs. Cowles, "you will please to never mention that
Stillman person in my house!"
"Oh, Carl!" rebuked Gertie. She rose from the piano-stool. Her essence
of virginal femininity, its pure and cloistered and white-camisoled
odor, bespelled Carl to fainting timidity. And while he was thus
defenseless the dentist thrust:
"Why, they tell me Stillman doesn't even believe the Bible!"
Carl was not to retrieve his credit with Gertie, but he couldn't
betray Bone Stillman. Hastily: "Yes, maybe, that way----Oh, say,
doctor, Pete Jordan was telling me" (liar!) "that you were one of the
best tennis-players at the U."
Gertie sat down again.
The dentist coyly fluffed his hair and deprecated, "Oh no, I wouldn't
say that!"
Carl had won. Instantly they three became a country club of urban
aristocrats, who laughed at the poor rustics of Joralemon for knowing
nothing of golf and polo. Carl was winning their tolerance--though not
their close attention--by relating certain interesting facts from the
inside pages of the local paper as to how far the tennis-rackets sold
in one year would extend, if laid end to end, when he saw Gertie and
her mother glance at the hall. Gertie giggled. Mrs. Cowles frowned. He
followed their glance.
Clumping through the hall was his second cousin, Lena, the Cowleses'
"hired girl." Lena nodded and said, "Hallo, Carl!"
Gertie and the dentist raised their eyebrows at each other.
Carl talked for two minutes about something, he did not know what, and
took his leave. In the intensity of his effort to be resentfully
dignified he stumbled over the hall hat-rack. He heard Gertie yelp
with laughter.
"I _got_ to go to college--be worthy of her!" he groaned, all the way
home. "And I can't afford to go to the U. of M. I'd like to be free,
like Bone says, but I've got to go to Plato."
CHAPTER VI
Plato College, Minnesota, is as earnest and undistinguished, as
provincially dull and pathetically human, as a spinster missionary.
Its two hundred or two hundred and fifty students come from the
furrows, asking for spiritual bread, and are given a Greek root.
Red-brick buildings, designed by the architect of county jails, are
grouped about that high, bare, cupola-crowned gray-stone barracks, the
Academic Building, like red and faded blossoms about a tombstone. In
the air is the scent of crab-apples and meadowy prairies, for a time,
but soon settles down a winter bitter as the learning of the Rev. S.
Alcott Wood, D.D., the president. The town and college of Plato
disturb the expanse of prairie scarce more than a group of haystacks.
In winter the walks blur into the general whiteness, and the trees
shrink to chilly skeletons, and the college is like five blocks set on
a frozen bed-sheet--no shelter for the warm and timid soul, yet no
windy peak for the bold. The snow wipes out all the summer-time
individuality of place, and the halls are lonelier at dusk than the
prairie itself--far lonelier than the yellow-lighted jerry-built shops
in the town. The students never lose, for good or bad, their touch
with the fields. From droning class-rooms the victims of education see
the rippling wheat in summer; and in winter the impenetrable wall of
sky. Footsteps and quick laughter of men and girls, furtively flirting
along the brick walls under the beautiful maples, do make Plato dear
to remember. They do not make it brilliant. They do not explain the
advantages of leaving the farm for another farm.
To the freshman, Carl Ericson, descending from the dusty smoking-car
of the M. & D., in company with tumultuous youths in pin-head caps and
enormous sweaters, the town of Plato was metropolitan. As he walked
humbly up Main Street and beheld two four-story buildings and a marble
bank and an interurban trolley-car, he had, at last, an idea of what
Minneapolis and Chicago must be. Two men in sweaters adorned with a
large "P," athletes, generals, heroes, walked the streets in the
flesh, and he saw--it really was there, for him!--the "College Book
Store," whose windows were filled with leather-backed treatises on
Greek, logic, and trigonometry; and, finally, he was gaping through a
sandstone gateway at four buildings, each of them nearly as big as the
Joralemon High School, surrounding a vast stone castle.
He entered the campus. He passed an old man with white side-whiskers
and a cord on his gold-rimmed eye-glasses; an aged old man who might
easily be a professor. A blithe student with "Y. M. C. A. Receptn.
Com." large on his hat-band, rushed up to Carl, shook his hand busily,
and inquired:
"Freshman, old man? Got your room yet? There's a list of
rooming-houses over at the Y. M. Come on, I'll show you the way."
He was received in Academe, in Arcadia, in Elysium; in fact, in Plato
College.
He was directed to a large but decomposing house conducted by the
widow of a college janitor, and advised to take a room at $1.75 a week
for his share of the rent. That implied taking with the room a large,
solemn room-mate, fresh from teaching country school, a heavy,
slow-spoken, serious man of thirty-one, named Albert Smith, registered
as A. Smith, and usually known as "Plain Smith." Plain Smith sat
studying in his cotton socks, and never emptied the wash-basin. He
remarked, during the first hour of their discourse in the groves of
Academe: "I hope you ain't going to bother me by singing and
skylarking around. I'm here to work, bub." Smith then returned to the
large books which he was diligently scanning that he might find
wisdom, while Carl sniffed at the brown-blotched wall-paper, the faded
grass matting, the shallow, standing wardrobe.... He liked the house,
however. It had a real bath-room! He could, for the first time in his
life, splash in a tub. Perhaps it would not be regarded as modern
to-day; perhaps effete souls would disdain its honest tin tub, smeared
with a paint that peeled instantly; but it was elegance and the
Hesperides compared with the sponge and two lard-pails of hot water
from the Ericson kitchen reservoir, which had for years been his
conception of luxurious means of bathing.
Also, there were choicer spirits in the house. One man, who pressed
clothes for a living and carried a large line of cigarettes in his
room, was second vice-president of the sophomore class. As smoking was
dourly forbidden to all Platonians, the sophomore's room was a refuge.
The sophomore encouraged Carl in his natural talent for cheerful
noises, while Plain Smith objected even to singing while one dressed.
Like four of his classmates, Carl became a waiter at Mrs. Henkel's
student boarding-house, for his board and two dollars a week. The two
dollars constituted his pin-money--a really considerable sum for
Plato, where the young men were pure and smoked not, neither did they
drink; where evening clothes were snobbish and sweaters thought rather
well of; where the only theatrical attractions were week-stand
melodramas playing such attractions as "Poor but True," or the Rev.
Sam J. Pitkins's celebrated lecture on "The Father of Lies," annually
delivered at the I.O.O.F. Hall.
Carl's father assured him in every letter that he was extravagant. He
ran through the two dollars in practically no time at all. He was a
member in good and regular standing of the informal club that hung
about the Corner Drug Store, to drink coffee soda and discuss
athletics and stare at the passing girls. He loved to set off his
clear skin and shining pale hair with linen collars, though soft
roll-collar shirts were in vogue. And he was ready for any wild
expedition, though it should cost fifty or sixty cents. With the
sophomore second vice-president and John Terry of the freshman class
(usually known as "the Turk") he often tramped to the large
neighboring town of Jamaica Mills to play pool, smoke Turkish
cigarettes, and drink beer. They always chorused Plato songs, in
long-drawn close harmony. Once they had imported English ale, out of
bottles, and carried the bottles back to decorate and distinguish
their rooms.
Carl's work at the boarding-house introduced him to pretty girl
students, and cost him no social discredit whatever. The little
college had the virtue of genuine democracy so completely that it
never prided itself on being democratic. Mrs. Henkel, proprietor of
the boarding-house, occasionally grew sarcastic to her student waiters
as she stooped, red-faced and loosened of hair, over the range; she
did suggest that they "kindly wash up a few of the dishes now and then
before they went gallivantin' off." But songs arose from the freshmen
washing and wiping dishes; they chucklingly rehashed jokes; they
discussed the value of the "classical course" _versus_ the "scientific
course." While they waited on table they shared the laughter and
arguments that ran from student to student through Mrs. Henkel's
dining-room--a sunny room bedecked with a canary, a pussy-cat, a
gilded rope portiere, a comfortable rocker with a Plato cushion, a
Garland stove with nickel ornaments, two geraniums, and an oak-framed
photograph of the champion Plato football team of 1899.
Carl was readily accepted by the men and girls who gathered about the
piano in the evening. His graceful-seeming body, his puppyish
awkwardness, his quietly belligerent dignity, his eternal quest of
new things, won him respect; though he was too boyish to rouse
admiration, except in the breast of fat, pretty, cheerful,
fuzzy-haired, candy-eating Mae Thurston. Mae so influenced Carl that
he learned to jest casually; and he practised a new dance, called the
"Boston," which Mae had brought from Minneapolis, though as a rival to
the waltz and two-step the new dance was ridiculed by every one. He
mastered all the _savoir faire_ of the boarding-house. But he was
always hurrying away from it to practise football, to prowl about the
Plato power-house, to skim through magazines in the Y. M. C. A.
reading-room, even to study.
Beyond the dish-washing and furnace-tending set he had no probable
social future, though everybody knew everybody at Plato. Those
immaculate upper-classmen, Murray Cowles and Howard Griffin, never
invited him to their room (in a house on Elm Street with a screened
porch and piano sounds). He missed Ben Rusk, who had gone to Oberlin
College, and Joe Jordan, who had gone to work for the Joralemon
Specialty Manufacturing Company.
Life at Plato was suspicious, prejudiced, provincial, as it affected
the ambitious students; and for the weaker brethren it was
philandering and vague. The class work was largely pure rot--arbitrary
mathematics, antiquated botany, hesitating German, and a veritable
military drill in the conjunction of Greek verbs conducted by a man
with a non-com. soul, a pompous, sandy-whiskered manikin with cold
eyes and a perpetual cold in the nose, who had inflicted upon a
patient world the four-millionth commentary on Xenophon. Few of the
students realized the futility of it all; certainly not Carl, who
slept well and believed in football.
The life habit justifies itself. One comes to take anything as a
matter of course; to take one's neighbors seriously, whether one lives
in Plato or Persia, in Mrs. Henkel's kitchen or a fo'c's'le. The
Platonians raced toward their various goals of high-school teaching,
or law, or marriage, or permanently escaping their parents; they made
love, and were lazy, and ate, and swore off bad habits, and had
religious emotions, all quite naturally; they were not much bored,
rarely exhilarated, always ready to gossip about their acquaintances;
precisely like a duke or a delicatessen-keeper. They played out their
game. But it was so tiny a game, so played to the exclusion of all
other games, that it tended to dwarf its victims--and the restless
children, such as Carl, instinctively resent this dwarfing. They seek
to associate themselves with other rebels. Carl's unconscious rebel
band was the group of rowdyish freshmen who called themselves "the
Gang," and loafed about the room of their unofficial captain, John
Terry, nicknamed "the Turk," a swarthy, large-featured youth with a
loud laugh, a habit of slapping people upon the shoulder, an ingenious
mind for deviltry, and considerable promise as a football end.
Most small local colleges, and many good ones, have their "gangs" of
boys, who presumably become honorable men and fathers, yet who in
college days regard it as heroic to sneak out and break things, and as
humorous to lead countryside girls astray in sordid amours. The more
cloistered the seat of learning, the more vicious are the active boys,
to keep up with the swiftness of life forces. The Turk's gang painted
the statues of the Memorial Arch; they stole signs; they were the
creators of noises unexpected and intolerable, during small, quiet
hours of moonlight.
As the silkworm draws its exquisite stuff from dowdy leaves, so youth
finds beauty and mystery in stupid days. Carl went out unreservedly to
practise with the football squad; he had a joy of martyrdom in
tackling the dummy and peeling his nose on the frozen ground. He knew
a sacred aspiration when Mr. Bjorken, the coach, a former University
of Minnesota star, told him that he might actually "make" the team in
a year or two; that he had twice as much chance as Ray Cowles,
who--while Carl was thinking only of helping the scrub team to
win--was too engrossed in his own dignity as a high-school notable to
get into the scrimmage.
At the games, among the Gang on the bleachers, Carl went mad with
fervor. He kept shooting to his feet, and believed that he was saving
his country every time he yelled in obedience to the St. Vitus
gestures of the cheer-leader, or sang "On the Goal-line of Plato" to
the tune of "On the Sidewalks of New York." Tears of a real patriotism
came when, at the critical moment of a losing game against the
Minnesota Military Institute, with sunset forlorn behind bare trees,
the veteran cheer-leader flung the hoarse Plato rooters into another
defiant yell. It was the never-say-die of men who rose, with clenched
hands and arms outstretched, to the despairing need of their college,
and then--Lord! They hurled up to their feet in frenzy as Pete Madlund
got away with the ball for a long run and victory.... The next week,
when the University of Keokuk whipped them, 40 to 10, Carl stood
weeping and cheering the defeated Plato team till his throat burned.
He loved the laughter of the Turk, Mae Thurston's welcome, experiments
in the physics laboratory. And he was sure that he was progressing
toward the state of grace in which he might aspire to marry Gertie
Cowles.
He did not think of her every day, but she was always somewhere in his
thoughts, and the heroines of magazine stories recalled some of her
virtues to his mind, invariably. The dentist who had loved her had
moved away. She was bored. She occasionally wrote to Carl. But she was
still superior--tried to "influence him for good" and advised him to
"cultivate nice people."
He was convinced that he was going to become a lawyer, for her sake,
but he knew that some day he would be tempted by the desire to become
a civil or a mechanical engineer.
* * * * *
A January thaw. Carl was tramping miles out into the hilly country
north of Plato. He hadn't been able to persuade any of the Gang to
leave their smoky loafing-place in the Turk's room, but his own lungs
demanded the open. With his heavy boots swashing through icy pools,
calling to an imaginary dog and victoriously running Olympic races
before millions of spectators, he defied the chill of the day and
reached Hiawatha Mound, a hill eight miles north of Plato.
Toward the top a man was to be seen crouched in a pebbly, sunny
arroyo, peering across the bleak prairie, a lone watcher. Ascending,
Carl saw that it was Eugene Field Linderbeck, a Plato freshman. That
amused him. He grinningly planned a conversation. Every one said that
"Genie Linderbeck was queer." A precocious boy of fifteen, yet the
head of his class in scholarship; reported to be interested in Greek
books quite outside of the course, fond of drinking tea, and devoid of
merit in the three manly arts--athletics, flirting, and breaking rules
by smoking. Genie was small, anemic, and too well dressed. He
stuttered slightly and was always peering doubtfully at you with large
and childish eyes that were made more eerie by his pale, bulbous
forehead and the penthouse of tangled mouse-brown hair over it.... The
Gang often stopped him on the campus to ask mock-polite questions
about his ambition, which was to be a teacher of English at Harvard or
Yale. Not very consistently, but without ever wearying of the jest,
they shadowed him to find out if he did not write poetry; and while no
one had actually caught him, he was still suspect.
Genie said nothing when Carl called, "H'lo, son!" and sat on a
neighboring rock.
"What's trouble, Genie? You look worried."
"Why don't any of you fellows like me?"
Carl felt like a bug inspected by a German professor. "W-why, how
d'you mean, Genie?"
"None of you take me seriously. You simply let me hang around. And you
think I'm a grind. I'm not. I like to read, that's all. Perhaps you
think I shouldn't like to go out for athletics if I could! I wish I
could run the way you can, Ericson. Darn it! I was happy out here by
myself on the Mound, where every prospect pleases, and--'n' now here I
am again, envying you."
"Why, son, I--I guess--I guess we admire you a whole lot more than we
let on to. Cheer up, old man! When you're valedictorian and on the
debating team and wallop Hamlin you'll laugh at the Gang, and we'll be
proud to write home we know you." Carl was hating himself for ever
having teased Genie Linderbeck. "You've helped me a thundering lot
whenever I've asked you about that blame Greek syntax. I guess we're
jealous of you. You--uh--you don't want to _let_ 'em kid you----"
Carl was embarrassed before Genie's steady, youthful, trusting gaze.
He stooped for a handful of pebbles, with which he pelted the
landscape, maundering, "Say, why don't you come around to the Turk's
room and get better acquainted with the Gang?"
"When shall I come?"
"When? Oh, why, thunder!--you know, Genie--just drop in any time."
"I'll be glad to."
Carl was perspiring at the thought of what the Gang would do to him
when they discovered that he had invited Genie. But he was game. "Come
up to my room whenever you can, and help me with my boning," he added.
"You mustn't ever get the idea that we're conferring any blooming
favor by having you around. It's you that help us. Our necks are
pretty well sandpapered, I'm afraid.... Come up to my room any
time.... I'll have to be hiking on if I'm going to get much of a walk.
Come over and see me to-night."
"I wish you'd come up to Mr. Frazer's with me some Sunday afternoon
for tea, Ericson."
Henry Frazer, M.A. (Yale), associate professor of English literature,
was a college mystery. He was a thin-haired young man, with a
consuming love of his work, which was the saving of souls by teaching
Lycidas and Comus. This was his first year out of graduate school, his
first year at Plato--and possibly his last. It was whispered about
that he believed in socialism, and the president, the Rev. Dr. S.
Alcott Wood, had no patience with such silly fads.
Carl marveled, "Do you go to Frazer's?"
"Why, yes!"
"Thought everybody was down on him. They say he's an anarchist, and I
know he gives fierce assignments in English lit.; that's what all the
fellows in his classes say."
"All the fools are down on him. That's why I go to his house."
"Don't the fellows--uh--kind of----"
"Yes," piped Genie in his most childish tone of anger, his tendency to
stammer betraying him, "they k-kid me for liking Frazer. He's--he's
the only t-teacher here that isn't p-p-p----"
"Spit!"
"----provincial!"
"What d'you mean by 'provincial'?"
"Narrow. Villagey. Do you know what Bernard Shaw says----?"
"Never read a word of him, my son. And let me tell you that my idea of
no kind of conversation is to have a guy spring 'Have you read?' on me
every few seconds, and me coming back with: 'No, I haven't. Ain't it
interesting!' If that's the brand of converse at Prof Frazer's you can
count me out."
Genie laughed. "Think how much more novelty you get out of roasting me
like that than telling Terry he's got 'bats in his belfry' ten or
twelve times a day."
"All right, my son; you win. Maybe I'll go to Frazer's with you.
Sometime."
The Sunday following Carl went to tea at Professor Henry Frazer's.
The house was Platonian without, plain and dumpy, with gingerbread
Gothic on the porch, blistered paint, and the general lines of a
prairie barn, but the living-room was more nearly beautiful than any
room Carl had seen. In accordance with the ideal of that era it had
Mission furniture with large leather cushions, brown wood-work, and
tan oatmeal paper scattered with German color prints, instead of the
patent rockers and carbon prints of Roman monuments which adorned the
houses of the other professors. While waiting with Genie Linderbeck
for the Frazers to come down, Carl found in a rack on the oak table
such books as he had never seen: exquisite books from England, bound
in terra-cotta and olive-green cloth with intricate gold designs,
heavy-looking, but astonishingly light to the hand; books about Celtic
legends and Provencal jongleurs, and Japanese prints and other matters
of which he had never heard; so different from the stained text-books
and the shallow novels by brisk ladies which had constituted his
experiences of literature that he suddenly believed in culture.
Professor Frazer appeared, walking into the room _after_ his fragile
wife and gracious sister-in-law, and Carl drank tea (with lemon
instead of milk in it!) and listened to bewildering talk and to a few
stanzas, heroic or hauntingly musical, by a new poet, W. B. Yeats, an
Irishman associated with a thing called the Gaelic Movement. Professor
Frazer had a funny, easy friendliness; his sister-in-law, a Diana in
brown, respectfully asked Carl about the practicability of motor-cars,
and all of them, including two newly come "high-brow" seniors,
listened with nodding interest while Carl bashfully analyzed each of
the nine cars owned in Plato and Jamaica Mills. At dusk the Diana in
brown played MacDowell, and the light of the silken-shaded lamp was
on a print of a fairy Swiss village.
That evening Carl wrestled with the Turk for one hour,
catch-as-catch-can, on the Turk's bed and under it and nearly out of
the window, to prove the value of Professor Frazer and culture. Next
morning Carl and the Turk enrolled in Frazer's optional course in
modern poetry, a desultory series of lectures which did not attempt
Tennyson and Browning. So Carl discovered Shelley and Keats and Walt
Whitman, Swinburne and Rossetti and Morris. He had to read by crawling
from word to word as though they were ice-cakes in a cataract of
emotion. The allusiveness was agonizing. But he pulled off his shoes,
rested his feet on the foot-board of his bed, drummed with a pair of
scissors on his knee, and persisted in his violent pursuit of the
beautiful. Meanwhile his room-mate, Plain Smith, flapped the pages of
a Latin lexicon or took a little recreation by reading the Rev. Mr.
Todd's _Students' Manual_, that gem of the alarm-clock and
water-bucket epoch in American colleges.
Carl never understood Genie Linderbeck's conviction that words are
living things that dream and sing and battle. But he did learn that
there was speech transcending the barking of the Gang.
In the spring of his freshman year Carl gave up waiting on table and
drove a motor-car for a town banker. He learned every screw and spring
in the car. He also made Genie go out with him for track athletics.
Carl won his place on the college team as a half-miler, and viciously
assaulted two freshmen and a junior for laughing at Genie's legs,
which stuck out of his large running-pants like straws out of a
lemonade-glass.
In the great meet with Hamlin University, though Plato lost most of
the events, Carl won the half-mile race. He was elected to the
exclusive fraternity of Ray Cowles and Howard Griffin, Omega Chi
Delta, just before Commencement. That excited him less than the fact
that the Turk and he were to spend the summer up north, in the
hard-wheat country, stringing wire for the telephone company with a
gang of Minneapolis wiremen.
Oh yes. And he would see Gertie in Joralemon.... She had written to
him with so much enthusiasm when he had won the half-mile.
CHAPTER VII
He saw Gertie two hours after he had reached Joralemon for a week's
stay before going north. They sat in rockers on the grass beside her
stoop. They were embarrassed, and rocked profusely and chattily. Mrs.
Cowles was surprised and not much pleased to find him, but Gertie
murmured that she had been lonely, and Carl felt that he must be nobly
patient under Mrs. Cowles's slight. He got so far as to sigh, "O
Gertie!" but grew frightened, as though he were binding himself for
life. He wished that Gertie were not wearing so many combs stuck all
over her pompadoured hair. He noted that his rocker creaked at the
joints, and thought out a method of strengthening it by braces. She
bubbled that he was going to be the Big Man in his class. He said,
"Aw, rats!" and felt that his collar was too tight.... He went home.
His father remarked that Carl was late for supper, that he had been
extravagant in Plato, and that he was unlikely to make money out of
"all this runnin' races." But his mother stroked his hair and called
him her big boy.... He tramped out to Bone Stillman's shack, impatient
for the hand-clasp of the pioneer, and grew eloquent, for the first
time since his home-coming, as he described Professor Frazer and the
delights of poesy. A busy week Carl had in Joralemon. Adelaide Benner
gave a porch-supper for him. They sat under the trees, laughing, while
in the dimly lighted street bicycles whirred, and box-elders he had
always known whispered that this guest of honor was Carl Ericson, come
home a hero.
The cycling craze still existed in Joralemon. Carl rented a wheel for
a week from the Blue Front Hardware Store. Once he rode with a party
of boys and girls to Tamarack Lake. Once he rode to Wakamin with Ben
Rusk, home from Oberlin College. The ride was not entirely enjoyable,
because Oberlin had nearly two thousand students and Ben was amusedly
superior about Plato. They did, however, enjoy the stylishness of
buying bottles of strawberry pop at Wakamin.
Twice Carl rode to Tamarack Lake with Gertie. They sat on the shore,
and while he shied flat skipping-stones across the water and flapped
his old cap at the hovering horse-flies he babbled of the Turk's
"stunts," and the banker's car, and the misty hinterlands of Professor
Frazer's lectures. Gertie appeared interested, and smiled at regular
intervals, but so soon as Carl fumbled at one of Frazer's abstract
theories she interrupted him with highly concrete Joralemon gossip....
He suspected that she had not kept up with the times. True, she
referred to New York, but as the reference was one she had been using
these two years he still identified her with Joralemon.... He did not
even hold her hand, though he wondered if it might not be possible;
her hand lay so listlessly by her skirt, on the sand.... They rode
back in twilight of early June. Carl was cheerful as their wheels
crunched the dirt roads in a long, crisp hum. The stilly rhythm of
frogs drowned the clank of their pedals, and the sky was vast and pale
and wistful.
Gertie, however, seemed less cheerful.
On the last evening of his stay in Joralemon Gertie gave him a
hay-ride party. They sang "Seeing Nelly Home," and "Merrily We Roll
Along," and "Suwanee River," and "My Old Kentucky Home," and "My
Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and "In the Good Old Summertime," under a
delicate new moon in a sky of apple-green. Carl pressed Gertie's hand;
she returned the pressure so quickly that he was embarrassed. He
withdrew his hand as quickly as possible, ostensibly to help in the
unpacking of the basket of ginger-ale and chicken sandwiches and three
cakes (white-frosted, chocolate layer, and banana cake).
The same group said good-by to Carl at the M. & D. station. As the
train started, Carl saw Gertie turn away disconsolately, her shoulders
so drooping that her blouse was baggy in the back. He mourned that he
had not been more tender with her that week. He pictured himself
kissing Gertie on the shore of Tamarack Lake, enfolded by afternoon
and the mystery of sex and a protecting reverence for Gertie's
loneliness. He wanted to go back--back for one more day, one more ride
with Gertie. But he picked up a mechanics magazine, glanced at an
article on gliders, read in the first paragraph a prophecy about
aviation, slid down in his seat with his head bent over the
magazine--and the idyl of Gertie and afternoon was gone.
He was reading the article on gliders in June, 1905, so early in the
history of air conquest that its suggestions were miraculous to him;
for it was three years before Wilbur Wright was to startle the world
by his flights at Le Mans; four years before Bleriot was to cross the
Channel--though, indeed, it was a year and a half after the Wrights'
first secret ascent in a motor-driven aeroplane at Kittyhawk, and
fourteen years after Lilienthal had begun that epochal series of
glider-flights which was followed by the experiments of Pilcher and
Chanute, Langley and Montgomery.
The article declared that if gasoline or alcohol engines could be made
light enough we should all be aviating to the office in ten years;
that now was the time for youngsters to practise gliding, as pioneers
of the new age. Carl "guessed" that flying would be even better than
automobiling. He made designs for three revolutionary new aeroplanes,
drawing on the margins of the magazine with a tooth-mark-pitted pencil
stub.
Gertie was miles back, concealed behind piles of triplanes and
helicopters and following-surface monoplanes which the wizard
inventor, C. Ericson, was creating and ruthlessly destroying.... A
small boy was squalling in the seat opposite, and Carl took him from
his tired mother and lured him into a game of tit-tat-toe.
He joined the Turk and the wire-stringers at a prairie
hamlet--straggly rows of unpainted frame shanties, the stores with
tin-corniced false fronts that pretended to be two stories high. There
were pig-pens in the dooryards, and the single church had a square,
low, white steeple like the paper cap which Labor wears in the
posters. Farm-wagons were hitched before a gloomy saloon. Carl was
exceeding glum. But the Turk introduced him to a University of
Minnesota Pharmacy School student who was with the crew during
vacation, and the three went tramping across breezy, flowered
prairies. So began for Carl a galloping summer.
The crew strung telephone wire from pole to pole all day, playing the
jokes of hardy men, and on Sunday loafed in haystacks, recalling
experiences from Winnipeg to El Paso. Carl resolved to come back to
this life of the open, with Gertie, after graduation. He would buy a
ranch "on time." Or the Turk and Carl would go exploring in Alaska or
the Orient. "Law?" he would ask himself in monologues, "law? Me in a
stuffy office? Not a chance!"
The crew stayed for four weeks in a boom town of nine thousand,
installing a complete telephone system. South-east of the town lay
rolling hills. As Carl talked with the Turk and the Pharmacy School
man on a hilltop, the first evening of their arrival, he told them the
scientific magazine's prophecies about aviation, and noted that these
hills were of the sort Lilienthal would probably have chosen for his
glider-flights.
"Say! by the great Jim Hill, let's make us a glider!" he exulted,
sitting up, his eyelids flipping rapidly.
"Sure!" said the Pharmacy man. "How would you make one?"
"Why--uh--I guess you could make a frame out of willow--have to; the
willows along the creeks are the only kind of trees near here. You'd
cover it with varnished cotton--that's what Lilienthal did, anyway.
But darned if I know how you'd make the planes curved--cambered--like
he did. You got to have it that way. I suppose you'd use curved stays.
Like a quarter barrel-hoop.... I guess it would be better to try to
make a Chanute glider--just a plain pair of sup'rimposed planes,
instead of one all combobulated like a bat's wings, like Lilienthal's
glider was.... Or we could try some experiments with paper
models----Oh no! Thunder! Let's make a glider."
They did.
They studied with aching heads the dry-looking tables of lift and
resistance for which Carl telegraphed to Chicago. Stripped to their
undershirts, they worked all through the hot prairie evenings in the
oil-smelling, greasy engine-room of the local power-house, in front of
the dynamos, which kept evilly throwing out green sparks and rumbling
the mystic syllable "Om-m-m-m," to greet their modern magic.
They hunted for three-quarter-inch willow rods, but discarded them for
seasoned ash from the lumber-yard. They coated cotton with thin
varnish. They stopped to dispute furiously over angles of incidence,
bellowing, "Well, look here then, you mutton-head; I'll draw it for
you."
On their last Sunday in the town they assembled the glider,
single-surfaced, like a monoplane, twenty-two feet in span, with a
tail, and with a double bar beneath the plane, by which the pilot was
to hang, his hands holding cords attached to the entering edge of the
plane, balancing the glider by movements of his body.
At dawn on Monday they loaded the glider upon a wagon and galloped
with it out to a forty-foot hill. They stared down the easy slope,
which grew in steepness and length every second, and thought about
Lilienthal's death.
"W-w-well," shivered the Turk, "who tries it first?"
All three pretended to be adjusting the lashings, waiting for one
another, till Carl snarled, "Oh, all _right_! I'll do it if I got to."
"Course it breaks my heart to see you swipe the honor," the Turk said,
"but I'm unselfish. I'll let you do it. Brrrr! It's as bad as the
first jump into the swimming-hole in spring."
Carl was smiling at the comparison as they lifted the glider, with him
holding the bars beneath. The plane was instantly buoyed up like a
cork on water as the fifteen-mile head-wind poured under it. He
stopped smiling. This was a dangerous living thing he was going to
guide. It jerked at him as he slipped his arms over the suspended
bars. He wanted to stop and think this all over. "Get it done!" he
snapped at himself, and began to run down-hill, against the wind.
The wind lifted the plane again. With a shock Carl knew that his feet
had left the ground. He was actually flying! He kicked wildly in air.
All his body strained to get balance in the air, to control itself, to
keep from falling, of which he now felt the world-old instinctive
horror.
The plane began to tip to one side, apparently irresistibly, like a
sheet of paper turning over in the wind. Carl was sick with fear for a
tenth of a second. Every cell in his body shrank before coming
disaster. He flung his legs in the direction opposite to the tipping
of the plane. With this counter-balancing weight, the glider righted.
It was running on an even keel, twenty-five feet above the sloping
ground, while Carl hung easily by the double bar beneath, like a
circus performer with a trapeze under each arm. He ventured to glance
down. The turf was flowing beneath him, a green and sunny blur. He
exulted. Flying!
The glider dipped forward. Carl leaned back, his arms wide-spread. A
gust struck the plane, head on. Overloaded at the back, it tilted
back, then soared up to thirty-five or forty feet. Slow-seeming,
inevitable, the whole structure turned vertically upward.
Carl dangled there against a flimsy sheet of wood and cotton, which
for part of a second stuck straight up against the wind, like a paper
on a screen-door.
The plane turned turtle, slithered sidewise through the air, and
dropped, horizontal now, but upside down, Carl on top.
Thirty-five, forty feet down.
"I'm up against it," was his only thought while he was falling.
The left tip of the plane smashed against the ground, crashing,
horribly jarring. But it broke the fall. Carl shot forward and landed
on his shoulder.
He got up, rubbing his shoulder, wondering at the suspended life in
the faces of the other two as they ran down-hill toward him.
"Jiminy," he said. "Glad the glider broke the fall. Wish we had time
to make a new glider, with wing-warp. Say, we'll be late on the job.
Better beat it P. D. Q."
The others stood gaping.
CHAPTER VIII
A pile of shoes and nose-guards and bicycle-pumps and broken
hockey-sticks; a wall covered with such stolen signs as "East College
Avenue," and "Pants Presser Ladys Garments Carefully Done," and "Dr.
Sloats Liniment for Young and Old"; a broken-backed couch with a
red-and-green afghan of mangy tassels; an ink-spattered wooden table,
burnt in small black spots along the edges; a plaster bust of Martha
Washington with a mustache added in ink; a few books; an inundation of
sweaters and old hats; and a large, expensive mouth-organ--such were a
few of the interesting characteristics of the room which Carl and the
Turk were occupying as room-mates for sophomore year at Plato.
Most objectionable sounds came from the room constantly: the Gang's
songs, suggestive laughter, imitations of cats and fowls and
fog-horns. These noises were less ingenious, however, than the devices
of the Gang for getting rid of tobacco-smoke, such as blowing the
smoke up the stove.
Carl was happy. In this room he encouraged stammering Genie Linderbeck
to become adaptable. Here he scribbled to Gertie and Ben Rusk little
notes decorated with badly drawn caricatures of himself loafing. Here,
with the Turk, he talked out half the night, planning future glory in
engineering. Carl adored the Turk for his frankness, his lively
speech, his interest in mechanics--and in Carl.
Carl was still out for football, but he was rather light for a team
largely composed of one-hundred-and-eighty-pound Norwegians. He had a
chance, however. He drove the banker's car two or three evenings a
week and cared for the banker's lawn and furnace and cow. He still
boarded at Mrs. Henkel's, as did jolly Mae Thurston, whom he took for
surreptitious rides in the banker's car, after which he wrote
extra-long and pleasant letters to Gertie. It was becoming harder and
harder to write to Gertie, because he had, in freshman year, exhausted
all the things one can say about the weather without being profane.
When, in October, a new bank clerk stormed, meteor-like, the Joralemon
social horizon, and became devoted to Gertie, as faithfully reported
in letters from Joe Jordan, Carl was melancholy over the loss of a
comrade. But he strictly confined his mourning to leisure hours--and
with books, football, and chores for the banker, he was a busy young
man.... After about ten days it was a relief not to have to plan
letters to Gertie. The emotions that should have gone to her Carl
devoted to Professor Frazer's new course in modern drama.
This course was officially announced as a study of Bernard Shaw,
Ibsen, Strindberg, Pinero, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Maeterlinck,
D'Annunzio, and Rostand; but unofficially announced by Professor
Frazer as an attempt to follow the spirit of to-day wherever it should
be found in contemporary literature. Carl and the Turk were bewildered
but staunchly enthusiastic disciples of the course. They made every
member of the Gang enroll in it, and discouraged inattention in the
lecture-room by dexterous side-kicks.
Even to his ex-room-mate, Plain Smith, the grim and slovenly
school-teacher who had called him "bub" and discouraged his
confidences, Carl presented the attractions of Professor Frazer's
lectures when he met him on the campus. Smith looked quizzical and
"guessed" that plays and play-actin' were useless, if not actually
immoral.
"Yes, but this isn't just plays, my young friend," said Carl, with a
hauteur new but not exceedingly impressive to Plain Smith. "He takes
up all these new stunts, all this new philosophy and stuff they have
in London and Paris. There's something besides Shakespeare and the
Bible!" he added, intending to be spiteful. It may be stated that he
did not like Plain Smith.
"What new philosophy?"
"The spirit of brotherhood. I suppose you're too orthodox for that!"
"Oh no, sonny, not for that, not for that. And it ain't so _very_ new.
That's what Christ taught! No, sonny, I ain't so orthodox but what I'm
willing to have 'em show me anything that tries to advance
brotherhood. Not that I think it's very likely to be found in a lot of
Noo York plays. But I'll look in at one lesson, anyway," and Plain
Smith clumped away, humming "Greenland's Icy Mountains."
Professor Frazer's modern drama course began with Ibsen. The first
five lectures were almost conventional; they were an attempt to place
contemporary dramatists, with reflections on the box-office
standpoint. But his sixth lecture began rather unusually.
There was an audience of sixty-four in Lecture-room A--earnest girl
students bringing out note-books and spectacle-cases, frivolous girls
feeling their back hair, and the men settling down with a "Come, let's
get it over!" air, or glowing up worshipingly, like Eugene Field
Linderbeck, or determined not to miss anything, like Carl--the
captious college audience, credulous as to statements of fact and
heavily unresponsive to the spirit. Professor Frazer, younger than
half a dozen of the plow-trained undergraduates, thin of hair and
sensitive of face, sitting before them, with one hand in his pocket
and the other nervously tapping the small reading-table, spoke
quietly:
"I'm not going to be a lecturer to-day. I'm not going to analyze the
plays of Shaw which I assigned to you. You're supposed to have read
them yourselves. I am going to imagine that I am at tea in New Haven,
or down in New York, at dinner in the basement of the old Brevoort,
talking with a bunch of men who are trying to find out where the world
is going, and why and when and how, and asking who are the prophets
who are going to show it the way. We'd be getting excited over Shaw
and Wells. There's something really worth getting excited over.
"These men have perceived that this world is not a crazy-quilt of
unrelated races, but a collection of human beings completely related,
with all our interests--food and ambitions and the desire to
play--absolutely in common; so that if we would take thought all
together, and work together, as a football team does, we would start
making a perfect world.
"That's what socialism--of which you're beginning to hear so much, and
of which you're going to hear so much more--means. If you feel
genuinely impelled to vote the Republican ticket, that's not my
affair, of course. Indeed, the Socialist party of this country
constitutes only one branch of international socialism. But I do
demand of you that you try to think for yourselves, if you are going
to have the nerve to vote at all--think of it--to vote how this whole
nation is to be conducted! Doesn't that tremendous responsibility
demand that you do something more than inherit your way of voting?
that you really think, think hard, why you vote as you do?... Pardon
me for getting away from the subject proper--yet am I, actually? For
just what I have been saying is one of the messages of Shaw and Wells.
"The great vision of the glory that shall be, not in one sudden
millennium, but slowly advancing toward joys of life which we can no
more prevision than the aboriginal medicine-man could imagine the
X-ray! I wish that this were the time and the place to rhapsodize
about that vision, as William Morris has done, in _News from Nowhere_.
You tell me that the various brands of socialists differ so much in
their beliefs about this future that the bewildered layman can make
nothing at all of their theories. Very well. They differ so much
because there are so many different things we _can_ do with this human
race.... The defeat of death; the life period advancing to ten-score
years all crowded with happy activity. The solution of labor's
problem; increasing safety and decreasing hours of toil, and a way out
for the unhappy consumer who is ground between labor and capital. A
real democracy and the love of work that shall come when work is not
relegated to wage-slaves, but joyously shared in a community inclusive
of the living beings of all nations. France and Germany uniting
precisely as Saxony and Prussia and Bavaria have united. And, most of
all, a general realization that the fact that we cannot accomplish all
these things at once does not indicate that they are hopeless; an
understanding that one of the wonders of the future is the fact that
we shall _always_, in all ages, have improvements to look forward to.
"Fellow-students, object as strongly as you wish to the petty
narrowness and vituperation of certain street-corner ranters, but do
not be petty and narrow and vituperative in doing it!
"Now, to relate all this to the plays of Bernard Shaw. When he
says----"
* * * * *
Professor Frazer's utterances seem tamely conservative nowadays; but
this was in 1905, in a small, intensely religious college among the
furrows. Imagine a devout pastor when his son kicks the family Bible
and you have the mental state of half the students of Plato upon
hearing a defense of socialism. Carl, catching echoes of his own talks
with Bone Stillman in the lecture, exultantly glanced about, and found
the class staring at one another with frightened anxiety. He saw the
grim Plain Smith, not so much angry as ill. He saw two class clowns
snickering at the ecstasy in the eyes of Genie Linderbeck.
* * * * *
In the corner drug-store, popularly known as "The Club," where all
the college bloods gather to drink lemon phosphate, an excited old
man, whose tieless collar was almost concealed by his tobacco-stained
beard, pushed back his black slouch-hat with the G. A. R. cord, and
banged his fist on the prescription-counter, shouting, half at the
clerk and half at the students matching pennies on the soda-counter,
"I've lived in Plato, man and boy, for forty-seven years--ever since
it wa'n't nothing but a frontier trading-post. I packed logs on my
back and I tramped fifty-three miles to get me a yoke of oxen. I
remember when the Indians went raiding during the war and the cavalry
rode here from St. Paul. And this town has always stood for decency
and law and order. But when things come to such a pass that this
fellow Frazer or any of the rest of these infidels from one of these
here Eastern colleges is allowed to stand up on his hind legs in a
college building and bray about anarchism and tell us to trample on
the old flag that we fought for, and none of these professors that
call themselves 'reverends' step in and stop him, then let me tell you
I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's
patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these
foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow
Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no
right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't
satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching
anarchism, and never knew any decent place that would, never since I
was a baby in Canada. Yes, sir, I mean it; I'm an old man, but I'd
pull up stakes and go plugging down the Santa Fe trail first, and I
mean it."
"Here's your Bog Bitters, Mr. Goff," said the clerk, hastily, as a
passer-by was drawn into the store by the old man's tirade.
Mr. Goff stalked out, muttering, and the college sports at the
soda-counter grinned at one another. But Gus Osberg, of the junior
class, remarked to Carl Ericson: "At that, though, there's a good
deal to what old Goff says. Bet a hat Prexy won't stand for Prof
Frazer's talking anarchy. Fellow in the class told me it was fierce
stuff he was talking. Reg'lar anarchy."
"Rats! It wasn't anything of the kind," protested Carl. "I was there
and I heard the whole thing. He just explained what this Bernard Shaw
that writes plays meant by socialism."
"Well, even so, don't you think it's kind of unnecessary to talk
publicly, right out in a college lecture-room, about socialism?"
inquired a senior who was high up in the debating society.
"Well, thunder----!" was all Carl said, as the whole group stared at
him. He felt ridiculous; he was afraid of seeming to be a "crank." He
escaped from the drug-store.
When he arrived at Mrs. Henkel's boarding-house for supper the next
evening he found the students passing from hand to hand a copy of the
town paper, the _Plato Weekly Times_, which bore on the front page
what the town regarded as a red-hot news story:
PLATO PROFESSOR
TALKS SEDITIOUSLY
As we go to press we learn that rumors are flying about the
campus that the "powers that be" are highly incensed by the
remarks of a well-known member of the local faculty praising
Socialism and other form of anarchy. It is said that one of
the older members of the faculty will demand from the erring
teacher an explanation of his remarks which are alleged to
have taken the form of a defense of the English anarchist
Bernhard Shaw. Those on the que vive are expecting
sensational developments and campus talk is so extensively
occupied with discussions of the affair that the important
coming game with St. John's college is almost forgotten.
While the TIMES has always supported Plato College as one of
the chief glories in the proud crown of Minnesota learning,
we can but illy stomach such news. It goes without saying
that we cannot too strongly disapprove express our
disapproval of such incendiary utterances and we shall
fearlessly report the whole of this fair let the chips fall
where they may.
"There, Mr. Ericson," said Mrs. Henkel, a plump, decent, disapproving
person, who had known too many generations of great Platonians to be
impressed by anything, "you see what the public thinks of your
Professor Frazer. I told you people wouldn't stomach such news, and I
wouldn't wonder if they strongly disapproved."
"This ain't anything but gossip," said Carl, feebly; but as he read
the account in the _Weekly Times_ he was sick and frightened, such was
his youthful awe of print. He wanted to beat the mossy-whiskered
editor of the _Times_, who always had white food-stains on his lapels.
When he raised his eyes the coquette Mae Thurston tried to cheer him:
"It 'll all come out in the wash, Eric; don't worry. These editors
have to have something to write about or they couldn't fill up the
paper."
He pressed her foot under the table. He was chatty, and helped to keep
the general conversation away from the Frazer affair; but he was
growing more and more angry, with a desire for effective action which
expressed itself within him only by, "I'll show 'em! Makes me so
_sore_!"
* * * * *
Everywhere they discussed and rediscussed Professor Frazer: in the
dressing-room of the gymnasium, where the football squad dressed in
the sweat-reeking air and shouted at one another, balancing each on
one leg before small lockers, and rubbing themselves with brown,
unclean Turkish towels; in the neat rooms of girl co-eds with their
banners and cushions and pink comforters and chafing-dishes of nut
fudge and photographic postal-cards showing the folks at home; in the
close, horse-smelling, lap-robe and whip scattered office of the town
livery-stable, where Mr. Goff droned with the editor of the _Times_.
Everywhere Carl heard the echoes, and resolved, "I've got to _do_
something!"
CHAPTER IX
The day of Professor Frazer's next lecture, a rain-sodden day at the
end of October, with the stubble-fields bleakly shelterless beyond the
campus. The rain splashed up from pools on the worn brick walks and
dripped from trees and whipped about buildings, soaking the legs and
leaving them itchingly wet and the feet sloshily uncomfortable. Carl
returned to his room at one; talked to the Turk, his feet thrust
against the side of their rusty stove. He wanted to keep three
o'clock, the hour of Frazer's lecture, from coming. "I feel as if I
was in for a fight and scared to death about it. Listen to that rain
outside. Gee! but the old dame keeps these windows dirty. I hope
Frazer will give it to them good and hard. I wish we could applaud
him. I do feel funny, like something tragic was going to happen."
"Oh, tie that dog outside," yawned the Turk, stanch adherent of Carl,
and therefore of Professor Frazer, but not imaginative. "Come on,
young Kerl; I'll play you a slick little piece on the mouth-organ.
Heh?"
"Oh, thunder! I'm too restless to listen to anything except a cannon."
Carl stumped to the window and pondered on the pool of water flooding
the graying grass stems in the shabby yard.
When it was time to start for Professor Frazer's lecture the Turk
blurted: "Why don't we stay away and forget about it? Get her off your
nerves. Let's go down to the bowling-alley and work up a sweat."
"Not a chance, Turk. He'll want all the supporters he's got. And you'd
hate to stay away as much as I would. I feel cheered up now; all
ready for the scrap. Yip! Come on!"
"All right, governor. I like the scrap, all right, but I don't want to
see you get all worked up."
Through the rain, across the campus, an unusual number of students in
shining, cheap, black raincoats were hastening to the three o'clock
classes, clattering up the stone steps of the Academic Building,
talking excitedly, glancing up at the arched door as though they
expected to see something startling. Dozens stared at Carl. He felt
rather important. It was plain that he was known as a belligerent, a
supporter of Professor Frazer. As he came to the door of Lecture-room
A he found that many of the crowd were deserting their proper classes
to attend the Frazer event. He bumped down into his own seat, gazing
back superciliously at the outsiders who were edging into unclaimed
seats at the back of the room or standing about the door--students
from other classes, town girls, the young instructor in French,
German, and music; a couple of town club-women in glasses and galoshes
and woolen stockings bunchy at the ankles. Every one was rapidly
whispering, watching every one else, peeping often at the platform and
the small door beside it through which Professor Frazer would enter.
Carl had a smile ready for him. But there was no chance that the smile
would be seen. There must have been a hundred and fifty in the room,
seated and standing, though there were but seventy in the course, and
but two hundred and fifty-six students in the whole college that year.
Carl looked back. He clenched his fist and pounded the soft side of it
on his thigh, drawing in his breath, puffing it out with a long
exasperated "Hellll!" For the Greek professor, the comma-sized,
sandy-whiskered martinet, to whom nothing that was new was moral and
nothing that was old was to be questioned by any undergraduate,
stalked into the room like indignant Napoleon posing before two guards
and a penguin at St. Helena. A student in the back row thriftily gave
the Greek god his seat. The god sat down, with a precise nod.
Instantly a straggly man with a celluloid collar left the group by the
door, whisked over to the Greek professor, and fawned upon him. It was
the fearless editor and owner (also part-time type-setter) of the
_Plato Weekly Times_, who dated back to the days of Washington
flat-bed hand-presses and pure Jeffersonian politics, and feared
neither man nor devil, though he was uneasy in the presence of his
landlady. He ostentatiously flapped a wad of copy-paper in his left
hand, and shook a spatter of ink-drops from a fountain-pen as he
interviewed the Greek professor, who could be seen answering
pompously. Carl was hating them both, fearing the Greek as a faculty
spy on Frazer, picturing himself kicking the editor, when he was aware
of a rustling all over the room, of a general turning of heads toward
the platform.
He turned. He was smiling like a shy child in his hero-worship.
Professor Frazer was inconspicuously walking through the low door
beside the platform. Frazer's lips were together. He was obviously
self-conscious. His motions were jerky. He elaborately did not look at
the audience. He nearly stumbled on the steps up to the platform. His
hand shook as he drew papers from a leather portfolio and arranged
them on the small reading-table. One of the papers escaped and sailed
off the platform, nearly to the front row. Nearly every one in the
room snickered. Frazer flushed. A girl student in the front row
nervously bounded out of her seat, picked up the paper, and handed it
up to Frazer. They both fumbled it, and their heads nearly touched.
Most of the crowd laughed audibly.
Professor Frazer sat down in his low chair, took out his watch with a
twitching hand, and compared his time with the clock at the back of
the room--and so closely were the amateur executioners observing their
victim that every eye went back to the clock as well. Even Carl was
guilty of that imitation. Consequently he saw the editor, standing at
the back, make notes on his copy-paper and smirk like an ill-bred
hound stealing a bone. And the Greek professor stared at Frazer's
gauche movements with a grim smugness that indicated, "Quite the sort
of thing I expected." The Greek's elbows were on the arm of the seat,
and he held up before his breast a small red-leather-covered note-book
which he superciliously tapped with a thin pencil. He was waiting.
Like a judge of the Inquisition....
"Old Greek 's going to take notes and make a report to the faculty
about what Frazer says," reflected Carl. "If I could only get hold of
his notes and destroy them!"
Carl turned again. It was just three. Professor Frazer had risen.
Usually he sat while lecturing. Fifty whispers commented on that fact;
fifty regular members of the course became self-important through
knowing it. Frazer was leaning slightly against the table. It moved an
inch or two with his weight, but by this time every one was too
high-strung to laugh. He was pale. He re-arranged his papers. He had
to clear his throat twice before he could speak, in the now silent,
vulturishly attentive room, smelling of wet second-rate clothes.
The gusty rain could be heard. They all hitched in their seats.
"Oh, Frazer _can't_ be going to retract," groaned Carl; "but he's
scared."
Carl suddenly wished himself away from all this useless conflict; out
tramping the wet roads with the Turk, or slashing through the puddles
at thirty-five miles an hour in the banker's car. He noted stupidly
that Genie Linderbeck's hair was scarcely combed. He found he was
saying, "Frazer 'll flunk, flunk, flunk; he's going to flunk, flunk,
flunk."
Then Frazer spoke. His voice sounded harsh and un-rhythmical, but soon
swung into the natural periods of a public speaker as he got into his
lecture:
"My friends," said he, "a part of you have come here legitimately, to hear
a lecture; a part to satisfy the curiosity aroused by rumors to the effect
that I am likely to make indecorous and indecent remarks, which your
decorum and decency make you wish to hear, and of which you will carry away
evil and twisted reports, to gain the reputation of being fearless
defenders of the truth. It is a temptation to gratify your desire and shock
you--a far greater temptation than to be repentant and reactionary. Only,
it occurs to me that this place and time are supposed to be devoted to a
lecture by Henry Frazer on his opinions about contemporary drama. It is in
no sense to be given to the puling defense of a martyr, nor to the
sensational self-advertisement of either myself or any of you. I have no
intention of devoting any part of my lecture, aside from these introductory
adumbrations, to the astonishing number of new friends whose bright and
morning faces I see before me. I shall neither be so insincerely tactful as
to welcome you, nor so frightened as to ignore you. Nor shall I invite you
to come to me with any complaints you have about me. I am far too busy with
my real work!
"I am not speaking patiently. I am not patient with you! I am not
speaking politely. Truly, I do not think that I shall much longer be
polite!
"Wait. That sounds now in my ears as rhetorical! Forgive me, and
translate my indiscretions into more colloquial language.
"Though from rumors I have overheard, I fancy some of you will do
that, anyway.... And now, I think, you see where I stand.
"Now then. For such of you as have a genuine interest in the brilliant
work of Bernard Shaw I shall first continue the animadversions on the
importance of his social thought, endeavor to link it with the great
and growing vision of H. G. Wells (novelist and not dramatist though
he is, because of the significance of his new books, _Kips_ and
_Mankind in the Making_), and point out the serious purpose that seems
to me to underlie Shaw's sarcastic pictures of life's shams.
"In my last lecture I endeavored to present the destructive side of
present social theories as little as possible; to dwell more on the
keen desire of the modern thinkers for constructive imagination. But I
judge that I was regarded as too destructive, which amuses me, and to
which I shall apply the antidote of showing how destructive modern
thought is and must be--whether running with sootily smoking torch of
individuality in Bakunin, or hissing in Nietzsche, or laughing at
Olympus in Bernard Shaw. My 'radicalism' has been spoken of. Radical!
Do you realize that I am not suggesting that there might possibly some
day be a revolution in America, but rather that now I am stating that
there is, this minute, and for some years has been, an actual state of
warfare between capital and labor? Do you know that daily more people
are saying openly and violently that we starve our poor, we stuff our
own children with useless bookishness, and work the children of others
in mills and let them sell papers on the streets in red-light
districts at night, and thereby prove our state nothing short of
insane? If you tell me that there is no revolution because there are
no barricades, I point to actual battles at Homestead, Pullman, and
the rest. If you say that there has been no declaration of war, open
war, I shall read you editorials from _The Appeal to Reason_.
"Mind you, I shall not say whether I am enlisted for or against the
revolutionary army. But I demand that you look about you and
understand the significance of the industrial disturbances and
religious unrest of the time. Never till then will you understand
anything--certainly not that Shaw is something more than an _enfant
terrible_; Ibsen something more than an ill-natured old man with
dyspepsia and a silly lack of interest in skating. Then you will
realize that in the most extravagant utterances of a red-shirted
strike-leader there may be more fervent faith and honor, oftentimes,
than in the virgin prayers of a girl who devoutly attends Christian
Endeavor, but presumes to call Emma Goldman 'that dreadful woman.'
Follow the labor-leader. Or fight him, good and hard. But do not
overlook him.
"But I must be more systematic. When John Tanner's independent
chauffeur, of whom you have--I hope you have--read in _Man and
Superman_----"
* * * * *
Carl looked about. Many were frowning; a few leaning sidewise to
whisper to neighbors, with a perplexed head-shake that plainly meant,
"I don't quite get that." Wet feet were shifted carefully; breaths
caught quickly; hands nervously played with lower lips. The Greek
professor was writing something. Carl's ex-room-mate, Plain Smith, was
rigid, staring unyieldingly at the platform. Carl hated Smith's
sinister stillness.
* * * * *
Professor Frazer was finishing his lecture:
"If it please you, flunk this course, don't read a single play I
assign to you, be disrespectful, disbelieve all my contentions. And I
shall still be content. But do not, as you are living souls, blind
yourself to the fact that there is a world-wide movement to build a
wider new world--and that the world needs it--and that in Jamaica
Mills, on land owned by a director of Plato College, there are two
particularly vile saloons which you must wipe out before you disprove
me!" Silence for ten seconds. Then, "That is all."
The crowd began to move hesitatingly, while Professor Frazer hastily
picked up his papers and raincoat and hurried out through the door
beside the platform. Voices immediately rose in a web of talk,
many-colored, hot-colored.
Carl babbled to the man next him, "He sure is broad. He doesn't care
whether they're conservative or not. And some sensation at the end!"
"Heh? What? Him?" The sophomore was staring.
"Yes. Why, sure! Whadya mean?" demanded Carl.
"Well, and wha' do _you_ mean by 'broad'? Sure! He's broad just like a
razor edge."
"Heh?" echoed the next man down the row, a Y. M. C. A. senior. "Do you
mean to say you liked it?"
"Why, sure! Why not? Didn't you?"
"Oh yes. Yes indeed! All he said was that scarlet women like Emma
Goldman were better than a C. E. girl, and that he hoped his students
would bluff the course and flunk it, and that we could find booze at
Jamaica Mills, and a few little things like that. That's all. Sure!
That's the sort of thing we came here to study." The senior was
buttoning his raincoat with angry fingers. "That's----Why, the man was
insane! And the way he denounced decency and----Oh, I can't talk about
it!"
"W-w-w-well by gosh, of all the--the----" spluttered Carl. "You and
your Y. M. C. A.--calling yourself religious, and misrepresenting like
that--you and your----Why, you ain't worth arguing with. I don't
believe you 'came to study' anything. You know it all already."
Passionate but bewildered, trying not to injure the cause of Frazer by
being nasty, he begged: "Straight, didn't you like his spiel? Didn't
it give you some new ideas?"
The senior vouchsafed: "No, 'me and my Y. M.' didn't like it. Now
don't let me keep you, Ericson. I suppose you'll be wanting to join
dear Mr. Frazer in a highball; you're such a pet of his. Did he teach
you to booze? I understand you're good at it."
"You apologize or I'll punch your face off," said Carl. "I don't
understand Professor Frazer's principles like I ought to. I'm not
fighting for them. Prob'ly would if I knew enough. But I don't like
your face. It's too long. It's like a horse's face. It's an insult to
Frazer to have a horse-faced guy listen to him. You apologize for
having a horse face, see?"
"You're bluffing. You wouldn't start anything here, anyway."
"Apologize!" Carl's fist was clenched. People were staring.
"Cut it out, will you! I didn't mean anything."
"You wouldn't," snapped Carl, and rammed his way out, making wistful
boyish plans to go to Frazer with devotion and offers of service in a
fight whose causes grew more confused to him every moment. Beside him,
as he hurried off to football practice, strode a big lineman of the
junior class, cajoling:
"Calm down, son. You can't lick the whole college."
"But it makes me so sore----"
"Oh, I know, but it strikes me that no matter how much you like
Frazer, he was going pretty far when he said that anarchists had more
sense than decent folks."
"He didn't! You didn't get him. He meant----O Lord, what's the use!"
He did not say another word as they hastened to the gymnasium for
indoor practice.
He was sure that they who knew of his partisanship would try to make
him lose his temper. "Dear Lord, please just let me take out just one
bonehead and beat him to a pulp, and then I'll be good and not open my
head again," was his perfectly reverent prayer as he stripped before
his locker.
Carl and most of the other substitutes had to wait, and most of them
gossiped of the lecture. They all greedily discussed Frazer's charge
that some member of the corporation owned saloon lots, and tried to
decide who it was, but not one of them gave Frazer credit. Twenty
times Carl wanted to deny; twenty times speech rose in him so hotly
that he drew a breath and opened his mouth; but each time he muttered
to himself: "Oh, shut up! You'll only make 'em worse." Students who
had attended the lecture declared that Professor Frazer had advocated
bomb-throwing and obscenity, and the others believed, marveling,
"Well, well, well, well!" with unctuous appreciation of the scandal.
Still Carl sat aloof on a pair of horizontal bars, swinging his legs
with agitated quickness, while the others covertly watched him--slim,
wire-drawn, his china-blue eyes blurred with fury, his fair Norse skin
glowing dull red, his chest strong under his tight football jersey; a
clean-carved boy.
The rubber band of his nose-guard snapped harshly as he plucked at it,
playing a song of hatred on that hard little harp.
An insignificant thing made him burst out. Tommy La Croix, the French
Canuck, a quick, grinning, evil-spoken, tobacco-chewing, rather
likeable young thug, stared directly at Carl and said, loudly:
"'Nother thing I noticed was that Frazer didn't have his pants
pressed. Funny, ain't it, that when even these dudes from Yale get to
be cranks they're short on baths and tailors?"
Carl slid from the parallel bars. He walked up to the line of
substitutes, glanced sneeringly along them, dramatized himself as a
fighting rebel, remarked, "Half of you are too dumm to get Frazer, and
the other half are old-woman gossips and ought to be drinking tea,"
and gloomed away to the dressing-room, while behind him the
substitutes laughed, and some one called: "Sorry you don't like us,
but we'll try to bear up. Going to lick the whole college, Ericson?"
His ears burned, in the dressing-room. He did not feel that they had
been much impressed.
* * * * *
To tell the next day or two in detail would be to make many books
about the mixed childishness and heroic fineness of Carl's
partisanship; to repeat a thousand rumors running about the campus to
the effect that the faculty would demand Frazer's resignation; to
explain the reason why Frazer's charge that a Plato director owned
land used by saloons was eagerly whispered for a little while, then
quite forgotten, while Frazer's reputation as a "crank" was never
forgotten, so much does muck resent the muck-raker; to describe Carl's
brief call on Frazer and his confusing discovery that he had nothing
to say; to repeat the local paper's courageous reports of the Frazer
affair, Turk's great oath to support Frazer "through hell and high
water," Turk's repeated defiance: "Well, by golly! we'll show the
mutts, but I wish we could _do_ something"; to chronicle dreary
classes whose dullness was evident to Carl, now, after his interest in
Frazer's lectures.
* * * * *
Returning from Genie Linderbeck's room, Carl found a letter from
Gertie Cowles on the black-walnut hat-rack. Without reading it, but
successfully befooling himself into the belief that he was glad to
have it, he went whistling up to his room.
Ray Cowles and Howard Griffin, those great seniors, sat tilted back in
wooden chairs, and between them was the lord of the world, Mr.
Bjorken, the football coach, a large, amiable, rather religious young
man, who believed in football, foreign missions, and the Democratic
party.
"Hello! Waiting for me or the Turk?" faltered Carl, gravely shaking
hands all round.
"Just dropped up to see you for a second," said Mr. Bjorken.
"Sorry the Turk wasn't here." Carl had an ill-defined feeling that he
wanted to keep them from becoming serious as long as he could.
Ray Cowles cleared his throat. Never again would the black-haired
Adonis, blossom of the flower of Joralemon, be so old and sadly sage
as then. "We want to talk to you seriously about something--for your
own sake. You know I've always been interested in you, and Howard, and
course we're interested in you as frat brothers, too. For old
Joralemon and Plato, eh? Mr. Bjorken believes--might as well tell him
now, don't you think, Mr. Bjorken?"
The coach gave a regally gracious nod. Hitching about on the wood-box,
Carl felt the bottom drop out of his anxious stomach.
"Well, Mr. Bjorken thinks you're practically certain to make the team
next year, and maybe you may even get put in the Hamlin game for a few
minutes this year, and get your P."
"Honest?"
"Yes, if you do something for old Plato, same 's you expect her to do
something for you." Ray was quite sincere. "But not if you put the
team discipline on the bum and disgrace Omega Chi. Of course I can't
speak as an actual member of the team, but still, as a senior, I hear
things----"
"How d'you mean 'disgrace'?"
"Don't you know that because you've been getting so savage about
Frazer the whole team 's getting mad?" said the coach. "Cowles and
Griffin and I have been talking over the whole proposition. Your
boosting Frazer----"
"Look here," from Carl, "I won't crawl down on my opinion about
Frazer. Folks haven't understood him."
"Lord love you, son," soothed Howard Griffin, "we aren't trying to
change your opinion of Frazer. We're, your friends, you know. We're
proud of you for standing up for him. Only thing is, now that he's
practically fired, just tell me how it's going to help him or you or
anybody else, now, to make everybody sore by roasting them because
they can't agree with you. Boost; don't knock! Don't make everybody
think you're a crank."
"To be frank," added Mr. Bjorken, "you're just as likely to hurt
Frazer as to help him by stirring up all this bad blood. Look here. I
suppose that if the faculty had already fired Frazer you'd still go
ahead trying to buck them."
"Hadn't thought about it, but suppose I would."
"Afraid it might be that way. But haven't you seen by this time about
how much good it does for one lone sophomore to try and run the
faculty?" It was the coach talking again, but the gravely nodding
mandarin-like heads of Howard and Ray accompanied him. "Mind you, I
don't mean to disparage you personally, but you must admit that you
can't hardly expect to boss everything. Just what good 'll it do to go
on shouting for Frazer? Quite aside from the question of whether he is
likely to get fired or not."
"Well," grunted Carl, nervously massaging his chin, "I don't know as
it will do any direct good--except maybe waking this darn conservative
college up a little; but it does make me so dog-gone sore----"
"Yes, yes, we understand, old man," the coach said, "but on the other
hand here's the direct good of sitting tight and playing the game.
I've heard you speak about Kipling. Well, you're like a young
officer--a subaltern they call it, don't they?--in a Kipling story, a
fellow that's under orders, and it's part of his game to play hard and
keep his mouth shut and to not criticize his superior officers, ain't
it?"
"Oh, I suppose so, but----"
"Well, it's just the same with you. Can't you see that? Think it over.
What would you think of a lieutenant that tried to boss all the
generals? Just same thing.... Besides, if you sit tight, you can make
the team this year, I can practically promise you that. Do understand
this now; it isn't a bribe; we want you to be able to play and _do_
something for old Plato in a _real_ way--in athletics. But you most
certainly can't make the team if you're going to be a disorganizer."
"All we want you to do," put in Ray Cowles, "is not to make a public
spectacle of yourself--as I'm afraid you've been doing. Admire Frazer
all you want to, and talk about him to your own bunch, and don't back
down on your own opinions, only don't think you've got to go round
yelling about him. People get a false idea of you. I hate to have to
tell you this, but several of the fellows, even in Omega Chi, have
spoken about you, and wondered if you really were a regular crank. 'Of
course he isn't, you poor cheese,' I tell 'em, but I can't be around
to answer every one all the time, and you can't lick the whole
college; that ain't the way the world does things. You don't know what
a bad impression you make when you're too brash. See how I mean?"
As the council of seers rose, Carl timidly said to Ray, "Straight,
now, have quite a lot of the fellows been saying I was a goat?"
"Good many, I'm afraid. All talking about you.... It's up to you. All
you got to do is not think you know it all, and keep still. Keep still
till you understand the faculty's difficulties just a little better.
Savvy? Don't that sound fairly reasonable?"
CHAPTER X
They were gone. Carl was full of the nauseating shame which a
matter-of-fact man, who supposes that he is never pilloried, knows
when a conscientious friend informs him that he has been observed,
criticized; that his enthusiasms have been regarded as eccentricities;
his affectionate approaches toward friendship as impertinence.
There seemed to be hundreds of people in the room, nudging one
another, waiting agape for him to do something idiotic; a
well-advertised fool on parade. He stalked about, now shamefaced, now
bursting out with a belligerent, "Aw, rats! I'll show 'em!" now
plaintively beseeching, "I don't suppose I am helping Frazer, but it
makes me so darn sore when nobody stands up for him--and he teaches
stuff they need so much here. Gee! I'm coming to think this is a
pretty rough-neck college. He's the first teacher I ever got anything
out of--and----Oh, hang it! what 'd I have to get mixed up in all this
for, when I was getting along so good? And if it isn't going to help
him----"
His right hand became conscious of Gertie's letter crumpled in his
pocket. As turning the letter over and over gave him surprisingly
small knowledge of its contents, he opened it:
DEAR CARL,--You are just _silly_ to tease me about any bank
clerk. I don't like him any more at all and he can go with
Linda all he likes, much I care!
We are enjoying good health, though it is getting quite cold
now and we have the furnace running now and it feels pretty
good to have it. We had _such_ a good time at Adelaide's
party she wore such a pretty dress. She flirted terribly
with Joe Jordan though of course you'll call me a cat for
telling you because you like her so much better than me &
all.
Oh I haven't told you the news yet Joe has accepted a
position at St. Hilary in the mill there.
I have some pretty new things for my room, a beautiful
hand-painted picture. Before Joe goes there is going to be a
party for him at Semina's. I wish you could come I suppose
you have learned to dance well, of course you go to lots of
parties at Plato with all the pretty girls & forget all
about _me_.
I wish I was in Minneapolis it is pretty dull here, & such
good talks you and me had _didn't_ we!
Oh Carl dear Ray writes us you are sticking up for that
crazy Professor Frazer. I know it must take lots of courage
& I admire you _lots_ for it even if Ray doesn't but oh Carl
dear if you can't do any _good_ by it I hope you won't get
everybody talking about you without its doing any good, will
you, Carl?
I do so expect you to succeed wonderfully & I hope you won't
blast your career even to stand up for folks when it's too
late & won't do any good.
We all expect so much of you--we are waiting! You are our
knight & you aren't going to forget to keep your armor
bright, nor forget,
Yours as ever,
GERTIE.
"Mmm!" remarked Carl. "Dun'no' about this knight-and-armor business.
I'd look swell, I would, with a wash-boiler and a few more tons of
junk on. Mmm! 'Expect you to succeed wonderfully----' Oh, I don't
suppose I had ought to disappoint 'em. Don't see where I can help
Frazer, anyway. Not a bit."
The Frazer affair seemed very far from him; very hysterical.
Two of the Gang ambled in with noisy proposals in regard to a game of
poker, penny ante, but the thought of cards bored him. Leaving them in
possession, one of them smoking the Turk's best pipe, which the Turk
had been so careless as to leave in sight, he strolled out on the
street and over to the campus.
There was a light in the faculty-room in the Academic Building, yet it
was not a "first and third Thursday," dates on which the faculty
regularly met. Therefore, it was a special meeting; therefore----
Promptly, without making any plans, Carl ran to the back of the
building, shinned up a water-spout (humming "Just Before the Battle,
Mother"), pried open a class-room window with his large jack-knife, of
the variety technically known as a "toad-stabber" (changing his tune
to "Onward, Christian Soldiers"), climbed in, tiptoed through the
room, stopping often to listen, felt along the plaster walls to find
the door, eased the door open, calmly sat down in the corridor, pulled
off his shoes, said, "Ouch, it's cold on the feets!" slipped into
another class-room in the front of the building, put on his shoes,
crawled out of the window, walked along a limestone ledge one foot
wide to a window of the faculty-room, and peeped in.
All of the eleven assistant professors and full professors, except
Frazer, were assembled, with President S. Alcott Wood in the chair,
and the Greek professor addressing them, referring often to a
red-leather-covered note-book.
"Um! Making a report on Frazer's lecture," said Carl, clinging
precariously to the rough faces of the stones. A gust swooped around
the corner of the building. He swayed, gripped the stones more
tightly, and looked down. He could not see the ground. It was
thirty-five or forty feet down. "Almost fell," he observed. "Gosh! my
hands are chilly!" As he peered in the window again he saw the Greek
professor point directly at the window, while the whole gathering
startled, turned, stared. A young assistant professor ran toward the
door of the room.
"Going to cut me off. Dog-gone it," said Carl. "They'll wait for me at
the math.-room window. Hooray! I've started something."
He carefully moved along the ledge to a point half-way between windows
and waited, flat against the wall.
Again he glanced down from the high, windy, narrow ledge. "It 'd be a
long drop.... My hands are cold.... I could slip. Funny, I ain't
really much scared, though.... Say! Where'd I do just this before? Oh
yes!" He saw himself as little Carl, lost with Gertie in the woods,
caught by Bone Stillman at the window. He laughed out as he compared
the bristly virile face of Bone with the pasty face of the young
professor. "Seems almost as though I was back there doing the same
thing right over. Funny. But I'm not quite as scared as I was then.
Guess I'm growing up. Hel-lo! here's our cunning Spanish Inquisition
rubbering out of the next window."
The window of the mathematics class-room, next to the faculty-room,
had opened. The young professor who was pursuing Carl peppered the
night with violent words delivered in a rather pedagogic voice. "Well,
sir! We have you! You might as well come and give yourself up."
Carl was silent.
The voice said, conversationally: "He's staying out there. I'll see
who it is." Carl half made out a head thrusting itself from the
window, then heard, in _sotto voce_, "I can't see him." Loudly again,
the pursuing professor yapped: "Ah, I see you. You're merely wasting
time, sir. You might just as well come here now. I shall let you stay
there till you do." Softly: "Hurry back into the faculty-room and see
if you can get him from that side. Bet it's one of the sneaking Frazer
faction."
Carl said nothing; did not budge. He peeped at the ledge above him. It
was too far for him to reach it. He tried to discern the mass of the
ground in the confusing darkness below. It seemed miles down. He did
not know what to do. He was lone as a mateless hawk, there on the
ledge, against the wall whose stones were pinchingly cold to the small
of his back and his spread-eagled arms. He swayed slightly; realized
with trembling nausea what would happen if he swayed too much.... He
remembered that there was pavement below him. But he did not think
about giving himself up.
From the mathematics-room window came: "Watch him. I'm going out after
him."
The young professor's shoulders slid out of the window. Carl carefully
turned his head and found that now a form was leaning from the
faculty-room window as well.
"Got me on both sides. Darn it! Well, when they haul me up on the
carpet I'll have the pleasure of telling them what I think of them."
The young professor had started to edge along the ledge. He was coming
very slowly. He stopped and complained to some one back in the
mathematics-room, "This beastly ledge is icy, I'm afraid."
Carl piped: "Look out! Y're slipping!"
In a panic the professor slid back into the window. As his heels
disappeared through it, Carl dashed by the window, running sidewise
along the ledge. While the professor was cautiously risking his head
in the night air outside the window again, gazing to the left, where,
he had reason to suppose, Carl would have the decency to remain, Carl
was rapidly worming to the right. He reached the corner of the
building, felt for the tin water-pipe, and slid down it, with his
coat-tail protecting his hands. Half-way down, the cloth slipped and
his hand was burnt against the corrugated tin. "Consid'able slide," he
murmured as he struck the ground and blew softly on his raw palm.
He walked away--not at all like a melodramatic hero of a
slide-by-night, but like a matter-of-fact young man going to see some
one about business of no great importance. He abstractedly brushed his
left sleeve or his waistcoat, now and then, as though he wanted to
appear neat.
He tramped into the telephone-booth of the corner drug-store, called
up Professor Frazer:
"Hello? Professor Frazer?... This is one of your students in modern
drama. I've just learned--I happened to be up in the Academic Building
and I happened to find out that Professor Drood is making a report to
the faculty--special meeting!--about your last lecture. I've got a
hunch he's going to slam you. I don't want to butt in, but I'm awfully
worried; I thought perhaps you ought to know.... Who? Oh, I'm just one
of your students.... You're welcome. Oh, say, Professor, g-good luck.
G'-by."
Immediately, without even the excuse that some evil mind in the Gang
had suggested it, he prowled out to the Greek professor's house and
tied both the front and back gates. Now the fence of that yard was
high and strong and provided with sharp pickets; and the professor was
short and dignified. Carl regretted that he could not wait for the
pleasure of seeing the professor fumble with the knots and climb the
fence. But he had another errand.
He walked to the house of Professor Frazer. He stood on the walk
before it. His shoulders straightened, his heels snapped together, and
he raised his arm in a formal salute.
He had saluted the gentleness of Henry Frazer. He had saluted his own
soul. He cried: "I will stick by him, as long as the Turk or any of
'em. I won't let Omega Chi and the coach scare me--not the whole
caboodle of them. I----Oh, I don't _think_ they can scare me...."
CHAPTER XI
The students of Plato were required to attend chapel every morning.
President S. Alcott Wood earnestly gave out two hymns, and between
them informed the Almighty of the more important news events of the
past twenty-four hours, with a worried advisory manner which indicated
that he felt something should be done about them at once.
President Wood was an honest, anxious body, something like a small,
learned, Scotch linen-draper. He was given to being worried and
advisory and to sitting up till midnight in his unventilated library,
grinding at the task of putting new wrong meanings into perfectly
obvious statements in the Bible. He was a series of circles--round
head with smooth gray hair that hung in a bang over his round
forehead; round face with round red cheeks; absurdly heavy gray
mustache that almost made a circle about his puerile mouth; round
button of a nose; round heavy shoulders; round little stomach in a
gray sack-suit; round dumplings of feet in congress shoes that were
never quite fresh-blacked or quite dusty. A harassed, honorable,
studious, ignorant, humorless, joke-popping, genuinely conscientious
thumb of a man. His prayers were long and intimate.
After the second hymn he would announce the coming social
events--class prayer-meetings and lantern-slide lectures by
missionaries. During the prayer and hymns most of the students hastily
prepared for first-hour classes, with lists of dates inside their
hymn-books; or they read tight-folded copies of the Minneapolis
_Journal_ or _Tribune_. But when the announcements began all Plato
College sat up to attention, for Prexy Wood was very likely to comment
with pedantic sarcasm on student peccadillos, on cards and V-neck
gowns and the unforgivable crime of smoking.
* * * * *
As he crawled to the bare, unsympathetic chapel, the morning after
spying on the faculty-room, Carl looked restlessly to the open fields,
sniffed at the scent of burning leaves, watched a thin stream of
blackbirds in the windy sky. He sat on the edge of a pew, nervously
jiggling his crossed legs.
During the prayer and hymns a spontaneously born rumor that there
would be something sensational in President Wood's announcements went
through the student body. The president, as he gave out the hymns, did
not look at the students, but sadly smoothed the neat green cloth on
the reading-stand. His prayer, timid, sincere, was for guidance to
comprehend the will of the Lord.
Carl felt sorry for him. "Poor man 's fussed. Ought to be! I'd be,
too, if I tried to stop a ten-inch gun like Frazer.... He's singing
hard.... Announcements, now.... What's he waiting for? Jiminy! I wish
he'd spring it and get it over.... Suppose he said something about
last night--me----"
President Wood stood silent. His glance drifted from row to row of
students. They moved uneasily. Then his dry, precise voice declaimed:
"My friends, I have an unpleasant duty to perform this morning, but I
have sought guidance in prayer, and I hope----"
Carl was agonizing: "He does know it's me! He'll ball me out and fire
me publicly!... Sit tight, Ericson; hold y' nerve; think of good old
Turk." Carl was not a hero. He was frightened. In a moment now all the
eyes in the room would be unwinkingly focused on him. He hated this
place of crowding, curious young people and drab text-hung walls. In
the last row he noted the pew in which Professor Frazer sat
(infrequently). He could fancy Frazer there, pale and stern. "I'm glad
I spied on 'em. Might have been able to put Frazer wise to something
definite if I could just have overheard 'em."
President Wood was mincing on:
"----and so, my friends, I hope that in devotion to the ideals of the
Baptist Church we shall strive ever onward and upward in even our
smallest daily concerns, _per aspera ad astra_, not in a spirit of
materialism and modern unrest, but in a spirit of duty.
"I need not tell you that there has been a great deal of rumor about
the so-called 'faculty dissensions.' But let me earnestly beseech you
to give me your closest attention when I assure you that there have
been _no_ faculty dissensions. It is true that we have found certain
teachings rather out of harmony with the ideals of Plato College. The
Word of God in the Bible was good enough for our fathers who fought to
defend this great land, and the Bible is still good enough for us, I
guess--and I cannot find anything in the Bible about such doctrines as
socialism and anarchism and evolution. Probably most of you have been
fortunate enough to not have wasted any time on this theory called
'evolution.' If you don't know anything about it you have not lost
anything. Absurd as it may seem, evolution says that we are all
descended from monkeys! In spite of the fact that the Bible teaches us
that we are the children of God. If you prefer to be the children of
monkeys rather than of God, well, all I can say is, I don't!
[Laughter.]
"But the old fellow Satan is always busy going to and fro even in
colleges, and in the unrestrained, overgrown, secularized colleges of
the East they have actually been teaching this doctrine openly for
many years. Indeed, I am told that right at the University of Chicago,
though it is a Baptist institution, they teach this same silly
twaddle of evolution, and I cannot advise any of you to go there for
graduate work. But these scientific fellows that are too wise for the
Bible fall into the pits they themselves have digged, sooner or later,
and they have been so smart in discovering new things about evolution
that they have contradicted almost everything that Darwin, who was the
high priest of this abominable cult, first taught, and they have
turned the whole theory into a hodge-podge of contradictions from
which even they themselves are now turning in disgust. Indeed, I am
told that Darwin's own son has come out and admitted that there is
nothing to this evolution. Well, we could have told him that all
along, and told his father, and saved all their time, for now they are
all coming right back to the Bible. We could have told them in the
first place that the Word of God definitely explains the origin of
man, and that anybody who tried to find out whether we were descended
from monkeys was just about as wise as the man who tried to make a
silk purse out of a sow's ear."
Carl was settled down in his pew, safe.
President Wood was in his stride. "All this evolutionary fad becomes
ridiculous, of course, when a mind that is properly trained in clear
thinking by the diligent perusal of the classics strips it of its
pseudo-scientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder, in
the fire of common sense and sound religion. And here is the point of
my disquisition:
"On this selfsame evolution, this bombast of the self-pushing
scientists, are founded _all_ such un-Christian and un-American
doctrines as socialism and anarchism and the lusts of feminism, with
all their followers, such as Shaw and the fellow who tried to shoot
Mr. Frick, and all the other atheists of the stripe that think so well
of themselves that they are quite willing to overthrow the grand old
institutions that our forefathers founded on the Constitution; and
they want to set up instead--oh, they're quite willing to tell us how
to run the government! They want to set up a state in which all of us
who are honest enough to do a day's work shall support the lazy
rascals who aren't. Yet they are very clever men. They can pull the
wool over your eyes and persuade you--if you let them--that a
universal willingness to let the other fellow do the work while you
paint pictures of flowers and write novels about the abominations of
Babylon is going to evolute a superior race! Well, when you think they
are clever, this Shaw and this fellow Wells and all of them that copy
Robert G. Ingersoll, just remember that the cleverest fellow of them
all is the old Satan, and that he's been advocating just such lazy
doctrines ever since he stirred up rebellion and discontent in the
Garden of Eden!
"If these things are so, then the teachings of Professor Henry Frazer,
however sincere he is, are not in accordance with the stand which we
have taken here at Plato. My friends, I want you all to understand me.
Certain young students of Plato appear to have felt that the faculty
have not appreciated Professor Frazer. One of these students, I
presume it was one of them, went so far as to attempt to spy on
faculty meeting last night. Who that man is I have means of finding
out at any time. But I do not wish to. For I cannot believe that he
realized how dishonest was such sneaking.
"I wish to assure the malcontents that I yield to no one in my
admiration of Professor Frazer's eloquence and learning in certain
subjects. Only, we have not found his doctrines quite consistent with
what we are trying to do. They may be a lot more smart and new-fangled
than what we have out here in Minnesota, and we may be a lot of old
fogies, but we are not narrow, and we wish to give him just as much
right of free speech--we wish--there is--uh--no slightest--uh--desire,
in fact, to impose any authority on any one. But against any
perversive doctrine we must in all honesty take a firm stand.
"We carefully explained this to Professor Frazer, and permit me to
inform those young men who have taken it upon themselves to be his
champions, that they would do well to follow his example! For he quite
agrees with us as to the need of keeping the Plato College doctrine
consistent. In fact, he offered his resignation, which we reluctantly
accepted, very, very reluctantly. It will take effect the first of the
month, and, owing to illness in his family, he will not be giving any
lectures before then. Students in his classes, by the way, are
requested to report to the dean for other assignments.... And so you
see how little there is to the cowardly rumors about 'faculty
dissensions'!"
"Liar, liar! Dear God, they've smothered that kind, straight Frazer,"
Carl was groaning.
"Now, my friends, I trust you understand our position, and--uh----"
President Wood drew a breath, slapped the reading-stand, and piped,
angrily:
"We have every desire to permit complete freedom of thought and speech
among the students of Plato, but on my _word_, when it comes to a pass
where a few students can cause this whole great institution to forget
its real tasks and devote all its time to quarreling about a fad like
socialism, then it's time to call a halt!
"If there are any students here who, now that I have explained that
Professor Frazer leaves us of his own free will, still persist in
their stubborn desire to create trouble, and still feel that the
faculty have not treated Professor Frazer properly, or that we have
endeavored to coerce him, then let them stand up, right here and now,
in chapel. I mean it! Let them stop this cowardly running to and fro
and secret gossip. Let them stand right up before us, in token of
protest, here--and--now! or otherwise hold their peace!"
So well trained to the authority of schoolmasters were the students of
Plato, including Carl Ericson, that they sat as uncomfortable as
though they were individually accused by the plump pedant who was
weakly glaring at them, his round, childish hand clutching the sloping
edge of the oak reading-stand, his sack-coat wrinkled at the shoulders
and sagging back from his low linen collar. Carl sighted back at
Frazer's pew, hoping that he would miraculously be there to confront
the dictator. The pew was empty as before. There was no one to protest
against the ousting of Frazer for saying what he believed true.
Then Carl was agitated to find that Carl Ericson, a back-yard boy, was
going to rise and disturb all these learned people. He was frightened
again. But he stood up, faced the president, affectedly folded his
arms, hastily unfolded them and put his hands in his pockets, one foot
before the other, one shoulder humped a little higher than the other.
The whole audience was staring at him. He did not dare peep at them,
but he could hear their murmur of amazement. Now that he was up he
rather enjoyed defying them.
"Well, young man, so you are going to let us know how to run Plato,"
teetered the president. "I'm sure everybody will feel much obliged to
you."
Carl did not move. He was aware of Genie Linderbeck rising, to his
left. No one else was up, but, with Genie's frail adherence, Carl
suddenly desired to rouse every one to stand for Frazer and freedom.
He glanced over at the one man whom he could always trust to follow
him--the Turk. A tiny movement of Carl's lips, a covert up-toss of his
head, warned the Turk to rise now.
The Turk moved, started to rise, slowly, as though under force. He
looked rather shamefaced. He uncrossed his legs and put his hands on
the pew, on either side of his legs.
"Shame!" trembled a girl's voice in the junior section.
"Sit down!" two or three voices of men softly snarled, with a rustle
of mob-muttering.
The Turk hastily crossed his legs and slumped down in his seat. Carl
frowned at him imploringly, then angrily. He felt spiritually naked to
ask support so publicly, but he _had_ to get the Turk up. The Turk
shook his head beseechingly. Carl could fancy him grunting, "Aw,
thunder! I'd like to stand up, but I don't want to be a goat."
Another man rose. "I'll be darned!" thought Carl. It was the one man
who would be expected not to support the heretic Frazer--it was Carl's
rustic ex-room-mate, Plain Smith. Genie was leaning against the pew in
front of him, but Plain Smith bulked more immovable than Carl.
No one joined the three. All through the chapel was an undertone of
amazed comment and a constant low hissing of, "Sssssit down!"
The president, facing them, looked strained. It occurred to Carl that
S. Alcott Wood had his side of the question. He argued about the
matter, feeling detached from his stolidly defiant body. Then he
cursed the president for keeping them there. He wanted to sit down. He
wanted to cry out....
President Wood was speaking. "Is there any one else? Stand up, if
there is. No one else? Very well, young men, I trust that you are now
satisfied with your heroism, which we have all greatly appreciated, I
am sure. [Laughter.] Chapel dismissed."
Instantly a swirl of men surrounded Carl, questioning: "What j' do it
for? Why didn't you keep still?"
He pushed out through them. He sat blind through the first-hour quiz
in physics, with the whole class watching him. The thought of the
Turk's failure to rise kept unhappy vigil in his mind. The same
sequence of reflections ran around like midnight mice in the wall:
"Just when I needed him.... After all his talk.... And us so chummy,
sitting up all hours last night. And then the Turk throws me down....
When he'd said so many times he just wanted the chance to show how
strong he was for Frazer.... Damn coward! I'll go room with Genie. By
gosh----Oh, I got to be fair to the Turk. I don't suppose he could
have done much real good standing up. Course it does make you feel
kind of a poor nut, doing it. Genie looked----Yes, by the Jim Hill!
there you are. Poor little scrawny Genie--oh yes, sure, it was up to
_him_ to stand up. He wasn't afraid. And the Turk, the big stiff, he
was afraid to.... Just when I needed him. After all our talk about
Frazer, sitting up all hours----"
Through the black whirlpool in his head pierced an irritated, "Mr.
Ericson, I said! Have you gone to sleep? I understood you were
excellent at standing up! What is your explanation of the phenomenon?"
The professor of physics and mathematics--the same who had pursued
Carl on the ledge--was speaking to him.
Carl mumbled, sullenly, "Not prepared." The class sniggered. He
devoted a moment to hating them, as pariahs hate, then through his
mind went whirling again, "Just wait till I see the Turk!"
CHAPTER XII
A notice from the president's office, commanding Carl's instant
presence, was in his post-office box. He slouched into the
waiting-room of the offices of the president and dean. He was an
incarnate desire to say exactly what he thought to the round, woolly
President Wood.
Plain Albert Smith was leaving the waiting-room. He seized Carl's hand
with his plowman's paw, and, "Good-by, boy," he growled. There was
nothing gallant about his appearance--his blue-flannel shirt dusty
with white fuzz, his wrinkled brick-red neck, the oyster-like ear at
which he kept fumbling with a seamy finger-nail of his left hand. But
Carl's salute was a salute to the new king.
"How d'you mean 'good-by,' Al?"
"I've just resigned from Plato, Carl."
"How'd you happen to do that? Did they summon you here?"
"No. Just resigned," said Plain Smith. "One time when I was
school-teaching I had a set-to with a school committee of farmers
about teaching the kids a little botany. They said the three R's were
enough. I won out, but I swore I'd stand up for any teacher that tried
to be honest the way he seen it. I don't agree with Frazer about these
socialists and all--fellow that's worked at the plow like I have knows
a man wants to get ahead for his woman and himself, first of all, and
let the walking-delegates go to work, too. But I think he's honest,
all right, and, well, I stood up, and that means losing my
scholarship. They won't try to fire me. Guess I'll mosey on to the U.
of M. Can't probably live there as cheap as here, but a cousin of mine
owns a big shoe-store and maybe I can get a job with him.... Boy, you
were plucky to get up.... Glad we've got each other, finally. I feel
as though you'd freed me from something. God bless you."
To the dean's assistant, in the waiting-room, Carl grandly stated:
"Ericson, 1908. I'm to see the president."
"It's been arranged you're to see the dean instead. Sit down. Dean's
engaged just now."
Carl was kept waiting for a half-hour. He did not like the
transference to the dean, who was no anxious old lamb like S. Alcott
Wood, but a young collegiate climber, with a clipped mustache, a gold
eye-glass chain over one ear, a curt voice, many facts, a spurious
appreciation of music, and no mellowness. He was a graduate of the
University of Chicago, and aggressively proud of it. He had "earned
his way through college," which all tradition and all fiction
pronounce the perfect manner of acquiring a noble independence and
financial ability. Indeed, the blessing of early poverty is in general
praised as the perfect training for acquiring enough wealth to save
one's own children from the curse of early poverty. It would be safer
to malign George Washington and the Boy Scouts, professional baseball
and the Y. M. C. A., than to suggest that working one's way through
college is not necessarily manlier than playing and dreaming and
reading one's way through.
Diffidently, without generalizing, the historian reports this fact
about the dean; he had lost the graciousness of his rustic clergyman
father and developed an itchingly bustling manner, a tremendous
readiness for taking charge of everything in sight, by acquiring
during his undergraduate days a mastery of all the petty ways of
earning money, such as charging meek and stupid wealthy students too
much for private tutoring, and bullying his classmates into
patronizing the laundry whose agent he was.... The dean stuck his
little finger far out into the air when drinking from a cup, and liked
to be taken for a well-dressed man of the world.
The half-hour of waiting gave Carl a feeling of the power of the
authorities. And he kept seeing Plain Smith in his cousin's
shoe-store, trying to "fit" women's shoes with his large red hands.
When he was ordered to "step into the dean's office, now," he stumbled
in, pulling at his soft felt hat.
With his back to Carl, the dean was writing at a roll-top desk. The
burnished top of his narrow, slightly bald head seemed efficient and
formidable. Not glancing up, the dean snapped, "Sit down, young man."
Carl sat down. He crumpled his hat again. He stared at a framed
photograph, and moved his feet about, trying to keep them quiet.
More waiting.
The dean inspected Carl, over his shoulder. He still held his pen. The
fingers of his left hand tapped his desk-tablet. He turned in his
swivel-chair deliberately, as though he was now ready to settle
everything permanently.
"Well, young man, are you prepared to apologize to the president and
faculty?"
"Apologize? What for? The president said those that wanted to
protest----"
"Now we won't have any blustering, if you please, Ericson. I haven't
the slightest doubt that you are prepared to give an exhibition of
martyrdom. That is why I asked the privilege of taking care of you,
instead of permitting you to distress President Wood any further. We
will drop all this posing, if you don't mind. I assure you that it
doesn't make----"
"I----"
"----the slightest impression on me, Ericson. Let's get right down to
business. You know perfectly well that you have stirred up all the
trouble you----"
"I----"
"----could in regard to Mr. Frazer. And I think, I really think, that
we shall either have to have your written apology and your promise to
think a little more before you talk, hereafter, or else we shall have
to request your resignation from college. I am sorry that we
apparently can't run this college to suit you, Ericson, but as we
can't, why, I'm afraid we shall have to ask you not to increase our
inefficiency by making all the trouble you can. Wait now; let's not
have any melodrama! You may as well pick up that hat again. It doesn't
seem to impress me much when you throw it down, though doubtless it
was ver-ee dramatically done, oh yes, indeed, ver-ee dramatic. See
here. I know you, and I know your type, my young friend, and I
haven't----"
"Look here. Why do I get picked out as the goat, the one to apologize?
Because I stood up first? When Prexy said to?"
"Oh, not at all. Say it's because you quite shamelessly made motions
at others while you stood there, and did your best to disaffect men
who hadn't the least desire to join in your trouble-making.... Now I'm
very busy, young man, and I think this is all the time I shall waste
on you. I shall expect to find your written----"
"Say, honest, dean," Carl suddenly laughed, "may I say just one thing
before I get thrown out?"
"Certainly. We have every desire to deal justly with you, and to
always give--always to give you every opportunity----"
"Well, I just wanted to say, in case I resign and don't see you again,
that I admire you for your nerve. I wish I could get over feeling like
a sophomore talking to a dean, and then I could tell you I hadn't
supposed there was anybody could talk to me the way you have and get
away with it. I'd always thought I'd punch their head off, and here
you've had me completely buffaloed. It's wonderful! Honestly, it never
struck me till just this second that there isn't any law that compels
me to sit here and take all this. You had me completely hypnotized."
"You know I might retort truthfully and say I am not accustomed to
have students address me in quite this manner. I'm glad, however, to
find that you are sensible enough not to make an amusing show of
yourself by imagining that you are making a noble fight for freedom.
By decision of the president and myself I am compelled to give you
this one chance only. Unless I find your apology in my letter-box here
by five this evening I shall have to suspend you or bring you up
before the faculty for dismissal. But, my boy, I feel that perhaps,
for all your mistaken notions, you do have a certain amount of
courage, and I want to say a word----"
The dean did say a word; in fact he said a large number of admirable
words, regarding the effect of Carl's possible dismissal on his
friends, his family, and, with an almost tearful climax, on his
mother.
"Now go and think it over; pray over it, unselfishly, my boy, and let
me hear from you before five."
Only----
The reason why Carl _did_ visualize his mother, the reason why the
Ericson kitchen became so clear to him that he saw his tired-faced
mother reaching up to wind the alarm-clock that stood beside the ball
of odd string on the shelf above the water-pail, the reason why he
felt caved-in at the stomach, was that he knew he was going to leave
Plato, and did not know where in the world he was going.
* * * * *
A time of quick action; of bursting the bonds even of friendship. He
walked quietly into Genie Linderbeck's neat room, with its rose-hued
comforter on a narrow brass bed, passe-partouted Copley prints, and a
small oak table with immaculate green desk-blotter, and said
good-by.... His hidden apprehension, the cold, empty feeling of his
stomach, the nervous intensity of his motions, told him that he was
already on the long trail that leads to fortune and Bowery
lodging-houses and death and happiness. Even while he was warning
himself that he must not go, that he owed it to his "folks" to
apologize and stay, he was stumbling into the bank and drawing out his
ninety-two dollars. It seemed a great sum. While waiting for it he did
sums on the back of a deposit-slip:
92.00 out of bank
2.27 in pocket
about .10 at room
-----------------------
tot. 94.37
Owe Tailor 1.45
" Turk .25
To Mpls. 3.05
To Chi. probably 15 to 18.00
To N. Y. 20 to 30.00
To Europe (steerage) 40.00
----------------------------
Total (about) 92.75----would take me to Europe!
"Golly! I could go to Europe, to Europe! now, if I wanted to, and have
maybe two plunks over, for grub on the railroad. But I'd have to allow
something for tips, I guess. Maybe it wouldn't be as much as forty
dollars for steerage. Ought to allow----Oh, thunder! I've got enough
to make a mighty good start seeing the world, anyway."
On the street a boy was selling extras of the _Plato Weekly Times_,
with the heading:
PRESIDENT CRUSHES STUDENT
REBELLION
Plato Demonstration for Anarchist Handled
Without Gloves
Carl read that he and two other students, "who are alleged to have
been concerned in several student pranks," had attempted to break up a
chapel meeting, but had been put to shame by the famous administrator,
S. Alcott Wood. He had never seen his name in the press, except some
three times in the local items of the _Joralemon Dynamite_. It looked
so intimidatingly public that he tried to forget it was there. He
chuckled when he thought of Plain Smith and Genie Linderbeck as
"concerned in student pranks." But he was growing angry. He considered
staying and fighting his opponents to the end. Then he told himself
that he must leave Plato, after having announced to Genie that he was
going.... He had made all of his decision except the actual deciding.
He omitted his noonday dinner and tramped into the country, trying to
plan how and where he would go. As evening came, cloudy and chill in a
low wooded tract miles north of Plato, with dead boughs keening and
the uneasy air threatening a rain that never quite came, the
loneliness of the land seemed to befog all the possibilities of the
future.... He wanted the lamp-lit security of his room, with the Turk
and the Gang in red sweaters, singing ragtime; with the Frazer affair
a bad dream that was forgotten. The world outside Plato would all be
like these lowering woods and dreary swamps.
He turned. He could find solace only in making his mind a blank.
Sullen, dull, he watched the sunset, watched the bellying cumulus
clouds mimic the Grand Canyon. He had to see the Grand Canyon! He
would!... He had turned the corner. His clammy heart was warming. He
was slowly coming to understand that he was actually free to take
youth's freedom.
He saw the vision of the America through which he might follow the
trail like the pioneers whose spiritual descendant he was. How noble
was the panorama that thrilled this one-generation American can be
understood only by those who have smelled our brown soil; not by the
condescending gods from abroad who come hither to gather money by
lecturing on our evil habit of money-gathering, and return to Europe
to report that America is a land of Irish politicians, Jewish
theatrical managers, and mining millionaires who invariably say, "I
swan to calculate"; all of them huddled in unfriendly hotels or in
hovels set on hopeless prairie. Not such the America that lifted
Carl's chin in wonder----
Cities of tall towers; tawny deserts of the Southwest and the flawless
sky of cornflower blue over sage-brush and painted butte; silent
forests of the Northwest; golden China dragons of San Francisco; old
orchards of New England; the oily Gulf of Mexico where tramp steamers
puff down to Rio; a snow-piled cabin among somber pines of northern
mountains. Elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere, beyond the sky-line, under
larger stars, where men ride jesting and women smile. Names alluring
to the American he repeated--Shenandoah, Santa Ynez, the Little Big
Horn, Baton Rouge, the Great Smokies, Rappahannock, Arizona, Cheyenne,
Monongahela, Androscoggin; canyon and bayou; sycamore and mesquite;
Broadway and El Camino Real....
He hurled along into Plato. He went to Mrs. Henkel's for supper. He
smiled at the questions dumped upon him, and evaded answering. He took
Mae Thurston aside and told her that he was leaving Plato. He wanted
to call on Professor Frazer. He did not dare. From a pleasant
gentleman drinking tea Frazer had changed to a prophet whom he
revered.
Carl darted into his room. The Turk was waiting for him. Carl cut
short the Turk's apologies for not having supported Frazer, with the
dreadful curt pleasantness of an alienated friend, and, as he began
packing his clothes in two old suit-cases, insisted, "It's all
right--was your biz whether you stood up in chapel or not." He hunted
diligently through the back of the closet for a non-existent shoe, in
order to get away from the shamefaced melancholy which covered the
Turk when Carl presented him with all his books, his skees, and his
pet hockey-stick. He prolonged the search because it had occurred to
him that, as it was now eleven o'clock, and the train north left at
midnight, the Minneapolis train at 2 A.M., it might be well to decide
where he was going when he went away. Well, Minneapolis and Chicago.
Beyond that--he'd wait and see. Anywhere--he could go anywhere in all
the world, now....
He popped out of the closet cheerfully.
While the Turk mooned, Carl wrote short honest notes to Gertie, to his
banker employer, to Bennie Rusk, whom he addressed as "Friend Ben." He
found himself writing a long and spirited letter to Bone Stillman, who
came out of the backwater of ineffectuality as a man who had dared.
Frankly he wrote to his mother--his mammy he wistfully called her. To
his father he could not write. With quick thumps of his fist he
stamped the letters, then glanced at the Turk. He was gay, mature,
business-like, ready for anything. "I'll pull out in half an hour
now," he chuckled.
"Gosh!" sighed the Turk. "I feel as if I was responsible for
everything. Oh, say, here's a letter I forgot to give you. Came this
afternoon."
The letter was from Gertie.
DEAR CARL,--I hear that you _are_ standing for that Frazer
just as much as ever and really Carl I think you might
consider other people's feelings a little and not be so selfish----
Without finishing it, Carl tore up the letter in a fury. Then, "Poor
kid; guess she means well," he thought, and made an imaginary bow to
her in farewell.
There was a certain amount of the milk of human-kindness in the frozen
husk he had for a time become. But he must be blamed for icily
rejecting the Turk's blundering attempts to make peace. He
courteously--courtesy, between these two!--declined the Turk's offer
to help him carry his suit-cases to the station. That was like a slap.
"Good-by. Hang on tight," he said, as he stooped to the heavy
suit-cases and marched out of the door without looking back.
By some providence he was saved from the crime of chilly
self-righteousness. On the darkness of the stairs he felt all at once
how responsive a chum the Turk had been. He dropped the suit-cases,
not caring how they fell, rushed back into the room, and found the
Turk still staring at the door. He cried:
"Old man, I was----Say, you yahoo, are you going to make me carry both
my valises to the depot?"
They rushed off together, laughing, promising to write to each other.
The Minneapolis train pulled out, with Carl trying to appear
commonplace. None of the sleepy passengers saw that the Golden Fleece
was draped about him or that under his arm he bore the harp of
Ulysses. He was merely a young man taking a train at a way-station.
Part II
THE ADVENTURE OF ADVENTURING
CHAPTER XIII
There are to-day in the mind of Carl Ericson many confused
recollections of the purposeless wanderings which followed his leaving
Plato College. For more than a year he went down, down in the social
scale, down to dirt and poverty and association with the utterly tough
and reckless. But day by day his young joy of wandering matured into
an ease in dealing with whatever man or situation he might meet. He
had missed the opportunity of becoming a respectable citizen which
Plato offered. Now he did all the grubby things which Plato obviated
that her sons might rise to a place in society, to eighteen hundred
dollars a year and the possession of evening clothes and a knowledge
of Greek. But the light danced more perversely in his eyes every day
of his roving.
The following are the several jobs for which Carl first applied in
Chicago, all the while frightened by the roar and creeping shadows of
the city:
Tutoring the children of a millionaire brewer; keeping time on the
Italian and Polack washers of a window-cleaning company; reporting on
an Evanston newspaper; driving a taxicab, a motor-truck; keeping books
for a suburban real-estate firm. He had it ground into him, as grit is
ground into your face when you fall from a bicycle, that every one in
a city of millions is too busy to talk to a stranger unless he sees a
sound reason for talking. He changed the _Joralemon Dynamite's_
phrase, "accept a position" to "get a job"--and he got a job, as
packer in a department store big as the whole of Joralemon. Since the
street throngs had already come to seem no more personal and
separable than the bricks in the buildings, he was not so much
impressed by the crowds in the store as by the number of things for
women to hang upon themselves. He would ramble in at lunch-time to
stare at them and marvel, "You can't beat it!"
From eight till twelve-thirty and from one till six or seven, during
nearly two months, Carl stood in a long, brick-walled, stuffy room,
inundated by floods of things to pack, wondering why he had ever left
Plato to become the slave of a Swede foreman. The Great World, as he
saw it through a tiny hole in one of the opaque wire-glass windows,
consisted of three bars of a rusty fire-escape-landing against a
yellow brick wall, with a smudge of black on the wall below the
landing.
Within two days he was calling the packing-room a prison. The
ceaseless rattle of speckled gray wrapping-paper, the stamp of feet on
the gray cement floor, the greasy gray hair of the packer next to him,
the yellow-stained, cracked, gray wash-bowl that served for thirty
men, such was his food for dreams.
Because his muscles were made of country earth and air he distanced
the packers from the slums, however. He became incredibly swift at
nailing boxes and crates and smashing the heavy wrapping-paper into
shape about odd bundles. The foreman promised to make Carl his
assistant. But on the cold December Saturday when his elevation was
due he glanced out of a window, and farewell all ambition as a packer.
The window belonged to the Florida Bakery and Lunch Room, where Carl
was chastely lunching. There was dirty sawdust on the floor, six pine
tables painted red and adorned with catsup-bottles whose mouths were
clotted with dried catsup, and a long counter scattered with bread and
white cakes and petrified rolls. Behind the counter a snuffling,
ill-natured fat woman in slippers handed bags of crullers to
shrill-voiced children who came in with pennies. The tables were
packed with over-worked and underpaid men, to whom lunch was merely a
means of keeping themselves from feeling inconveniently empty--a state
to which the leadlike viands of the Florida Lunch Room were a certain
prevention.
Carl was gulping down salty beef stew and bitter coffee served in
handleless cups half an inch thick. Beside him, elbow jogging elbow,
was a surly-faced man in overalls. The old German waiters shuffled
about and bawled, "_Zwei_ bif stew, _ein_ cheese-cake." Dishes
clattered incessantly. The sicky-sweet scent of old pastry, of
coffee-rings with stony raisins and buns smeared with dried cocoanut
fibers, seemed to permeate even the bitter coffee.
Carl got down most of his beef stew, attacked and gave up a chunk of
hard boiled potato, and lighted a cheap Virginia cigarette. He glanced
out of the dirty window. Before it, making inquiries of a big,
leisurely policeman, was a slim, exquisite girl of twenty,
rosy-cheeked, smart of hat, impeccable of gloves, with fluffy white
furs beneath her chin, which cuddled into the furs with a hint of a
life bright and spacious. She laughed as she talked to the policeman,
she shrugged her shoulders with the exhilaration of winter, and
skipped away.
"Bet she'd be a peach to know.... Fat chance I'd have to meet her,
wrapping up baby-carriages for the North Shore commuters all day! All
day!... Well, guess I'm going to honorably discharge myself!"
He left the job that afternoon.
His satiny Norse cheeks shone as he raced home through a rising
blizzard, after dinner at the Florida Lunch Room, where he had allowed
himself a ten-cent dessert for celebration.
But when he lolled in his hall bedroom, with his eyes attracted, as
usual, to the three cracks in the blue-painted ceiling which made a
rough map of Africa, when he visioned lands where there were lions and
desert instead of department-store packages, his happiness wilted in
face of the fact that he had only $10.42, with $8.00 due him from the
store the following Tuesday. Several times he subtracted the $3.00 he
owed the landlady from $18.42, but the result persisted in being only
$15.42. He could not make $15.42 appear a reasonable sum with which to
start life anew.
He had to search for a new job that evening. Only--he was so tired; it
was so pleasant to lie there with his sore feet cooling against the
wall, picturing a hunt in Africa, with native servants bringing him
things to eat: juicy steaks and French-fried potatoes and gallons of
ale (a repast which he may have been ignorant in assigning to the
African jungles, but which seemed peculiarly well chosen, after a
lunch-room dinner of watery corned-beef hash, burnt German-fried
potatoes, and indigestible hot mince-pie). His thoughts drifted off to
Plato. But Carl had a certain resoluteness even in these loose days.
He considered the manoeuvers for a new job. He desired one which
would permit him to go to theaters with the girl in white furs whom he
had seen that noon--the unknown fairy of his discontent.
It may be noted that he took this life quite seriously. Though he did
not suppose that he was going to continue dwelling in a hall bedroom,
yet never did he regard himself as a collegian Haroun-al-Raschid on an
amusing masquerade, pretending to be no better than the men with whom
he worked. Carl was no romantic hero incog. He was a workman, and he
knew it. Was not his father a carpenter? his father's best friend a
tailor? Had he not been a waiter at Plato?
But not always a workman. Carl had no conception of world-wide
class-consciousness; he had no pride in being a proletarian. Though
from Bone's musings and Frazer's lectures he had drawn a vague
optimism about a world-syndicate of nations, he took it for granted
that he was going to be rich as soon as he could.
Job. He had to have a job. He got stiffly up from the iron bed,
painfully drew on his shoes, after inspecting the hole in the sole of
the left shoe and the ripped seam at the back of the right. He pulled
tight the paper-thin overcoat which he had bought at a second-hand
dealer's shop, and dared a Chicago blizzard, with needles of snow
thundering by on a sixty-mile gale. Through a street of unutterably
drab stores and saloons he plowed to the Unallied Taxicab Company's
garage. He felt lonely, cold, but he observed with ceaseless interest
the new people, different people, who sloped by him in the dun web of
the blizzard. The American marveled at a recently immigrated Slav's
astrachan cap.
He had hung about the Unallied garage on evenings when he was too poor
to go to vaudeville. He had become decidedly friendly with the night
washer, a youngster from Minneapolis. Trotting up to the washer, who
was digging caked snow from the shoes of a car, he blurted:
"Say, Coogan, I've beat my job at ----'s. How's chances for getting a
taxi to drive? You know I know the game."
"You? Driving a taxi?" stammered the washer. "Why, say, there was a
guy that was a road-tester for the Blix Company and he's got a cousin
that knows Bathhouse John, and that guy with all his pull has been
trying to get on drivin' here for the last six months and ain't landed
it, so you see about how much chance you got!"
"Gosh! it don't look much like I had much chance, for a fact."
"Tell you what I'll do, though. Why don't you get on at some
automobile factory, and then you could ring in as a chauffeur, soon 's
you got some recommends you could take to the Y. M. C. A. employment
bureau." The washer gouged at a clot of ice with his heel, swore
profusely, and went on: "Here. You go over to the Lodestar Motor
Company's office, over on La Salle, Monday, and ask for Bill Coogan,
on the sales end. He's me cousin, and you tell him to give you a card
to the foreman out at the works, and I guess maybe you'll get a job,
all right."
Tuesday morning, after a severe questioning by the foreman, Carl was
given a week's try-out without pay at the Lodestar factory. He proved
to be one of those much-sought freaks in the world of mechanics, a
natural filer. The uninspired filer, unaware of the niceties of the
art, saws up and down, whereas the instinctive filer, like Carl, draws
his file evenly across the metal, and the result fits its socket
truly. So he was given welcome, paid twenty-five cents an hour, and
made full member of exactly such a gang as he had known at Plato,
after he had laughed away the straw boss who tried to make him go ask
for a left-handed monkey-wrench. He roomed at a machinists'
boarding-house, and enjoyed the furious discussions over religion and
the question of air _versus_ water cooling far more than he had ever
enjoyed the polite jesting at Mrs. Henkel's.
He became friendly with the foreman of the repair-shop, and was
promised a "chance." While the driver who made the road-tests of the
cars was ill Carl was called on as a substitute. The older workmen
warned him that no one could begin road-testing so early and hold the
job. But Carl happened to drive the vice-president of the firm. He
discussed bass-fishing in Minnesota with the vice-president, and he
was retained as road-tester, getting his chauffeur's license. Two
months later, when he was helping in the overhauling of a car in the
repair-shop, he heard a full-bodied man with a smart English overcoat
and a supercilious red face ask curtly of the shop foreman where he
could get a "crack shuffer, right away, one that can give the traffic
cops something to do for their money."
The foreman always stopped to scratch his chin when he had to think.
This process gave Carl time to look up from his repairs and blandly
remark: "That's me. Want to try me?"
Half an hour later Carl was engaged at twenty-five dollars a week as
the Ruddy One's driver. Before Monday noon he had convinced the Ruddy
One that he was no servant, but a mechanical expert. He drove the
Ruddy One to his Investments and Securities office in the morning, and
back at five; to restaurants in the evening. Not infrequently, with
the wind whooping about corners, he slept peacefully in the car till
two in the morning, outside a cafe. And he was perfectly happy. He was
at last seeing the Great World. As he manoeuvered along State Street
he rejoiced in the complications of the traffic and tooted his horn
unnecessarily. As he waited before tall buildings, at noon, he gazed
up at them with a superior air of boredom--because he was so boyishly
proud of being a part of all this titanic life that he was afraid he
might show it. He gloried in every new road, in driving along the Lake
Shore, where the horizon was bounded not by unimaginative land, but by
restless water.
Then the Ruddy One's favorite roads began to be familiar to Carl, too
familiar, and he so hated his sot of an employer that he caught
himself muttering, while driving, "Thank the Lord I sit in front and
don't have to see that chunk of raw beefsteak he calls a neck."
While he waited for the fifth time before a certain expensive but not
exclusive roadhouse, with the bouncing giggles of girls inside
spoiling the spring night, he studied the background as once he had
studied his father's woodshed. He was not, unfortunately, shocked by
wine and women. But he was bored by box-trees. There was a smugly
clipped box-tree on either side of the carriage entrance, the leaves
like cheap green lacquer in the glare of the arc-light, which brought
out all the artificiality of the gray-and-black cinder drive. He felt
that five pilgrimages to even the best of box-trees were enough. It
would be perfectly unreasonable for a free man to come here to stare
at box-trees a sixth time. "All right," he growled. "I guess
my-wandering-boy-to-night is going to beat it again."
While he drove to the garage he pondered: "Is it worth twenty-five
plunks to me to be able to beat it to-night instead of waiting four
days till pay-day? Nope. I'm a poor man."
But at 5 A.M. he was hanging about the railroad-yards at Hammond,
recalling the lessons of youth in "flipping trains"; and at seven he
was standing on the bumpers between two freight-cars, clinging to the
brake-rod, looking out to the open meadows of Indiana, laughing to see
farm-houses ringed with apple-blossoms and sweet with April morning.
The cinders stormed by him. As he swung with the cars, on curves, he
saw the treacherous wheels grinding beneath him. But to the
chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck of the trucks he hummed,
"Never turn back, never tur' back, never tur' back."
CHAPTER XIV
A young hobo named Carl Ericson crawled from the rods of an N. & W.
freight-car at Roanoke, Virginia, on a May day, with spring at full
tide and the Judas-trees a singing pink on the slopes of the Blue
Ridge.
"Hm!" grunted the young hobo. "I like these mountains. Guess I'll stay
here awhile.... Virginia! Plantations and Civil War history and
Richmond and everything, and me here!"
A frowzy old hobo poked a somnolent head up from a pile of lumber near
the tracks and yawned welcome to the recruit. "Hello, Slim. How's
tricks?"
"Pretty good. What's the best section to batter for a poke-out,
Billy?"
"To the right, over that way, and straight out."
"Much 'bliged," said Slim--erstwhile Ericson. "Say, j' know of any
jobs in this----"
"Any _whats_?"
"Jobs."
"Jobs? You looking for----Say, you beat it. Gwan. Chase yourself. Gwan
now; don't stand there. You ain't no decent 'bo. You're another of
those Unfortunate Workmen that's spoiling the profesh." The veteran
stared at Carl reprovingly, yet with a little sadness, too, at the
thought of how bitterly he had been deceived in this young comrade,
and his uncombed head slowly vanished amid the lumber.
Carl grinned and started up-town. He walked into four restaurants. At
noon, in white jacket, he was bustling about as waiter in the
dining-room of the Waskahominie Hotel, which had "white service" as a
feature.
Within two days he was boon companion of a guest of the
Waskahominie--Parker Heye, an actor famous from Cape Charles to
Shockeysville, now playing heavies at Roanoke in the Great Riley Tent
Show, Presenting a Popular Repertoire of Famous Melodramas under
Canvas, Rain or Shine, Admittance Twenty-five Cents, Section Reserved
for Colored People, the Best Show under Canvas, This Week Only.
When Parker Heye returned from the theater Carl sat with him in a room
which had calico-like wall-paper, a sunken bed with a comforter out of
which oozed a bit of its soiled cotton entrails, a cracked
water-pitcher on a staggering wash-stand, and a beautiful new cuspidor
of white china hand-painted with pink moss-roses tied with narrow blue
ribbon.
Carl listened credulously to Heye's confidences as to how jealous was
Riley, the actor-manager, of Heye's art, how Heye had "knocked them
all down" in a stock company at Newport News, and what E. H. Sothern
had said to him when they met in Richmond as guests of the Seven Pines
Club.
"Say," rasped Heye, "you're a smart young fellow, good-looking,
ejucated. Why don't you try to get an engagement? I'll knock you down
to Riley. The second juvenile 's going to leave on Saturday, and there
ain't hardly time to get anybody from Norfolk."
"Golly! that 'd be great!" cried Carl, who, like every human being
since Eden, with the possible exceptions of Calvin and Richard
Mansfield, had a secret belief that he could be a powerful actor.
"Well, I'll see what I can do for you," said Heye, at parting,
alternately snapping his suspenders and scratching his head. Though he
was in his stocking-feet and coat-less, though the back of his neck
was a scraggle of hair, Parker Heye was preferable to the three Swiss
waiters snoring in the hot room under the eaves, with its door half
open, opposite the half-open door of the room where negro chambermaids
tumbled and snorted in uncouth slumber. Carl's nose wrinkled with
bitter fastidiousness as he pulled off his clothes, sticky with heat,
and glared at the swathed forms of the waiters. He was the aristocrat
among proletarians, going back to His Own People--of the Great Riley
Tent Show.
* * * * *
As second juvenile of the Tent Show, Carl received only twelve dollars
a week, but Mr. Riley made him promises rich as the Orient beryl, and
permitted him to follow the example of two of the bandsmen and pitch a
cot on the trampled hay flooring of the dressing-room tent, behind the
stage. There also Carl prepared breakfast on an alcohol-stove. The
canvas creaked all night; negroes and small boys stuck inquisitive
heads under the edge of the canvas. But it was worth it--to travel on
again; to have his mornings free except for an hour's rehearsal; to
climb to upland meadows of Virginia and Kentucky, among the pines and
laurel and rhododendron; tramping up past the log cabins plastered
with mud, where pickaninnies stared shyly, past glens shining with
dogwood, and friendly streams. Once he sat for an hour on Easter Knob,
gazing through a distant pass whose misty blue he pretended was the
ocean. Once he heard there were moonshiners back in the hills. He
talked to bearded Dunkards and their sunbonneted wives; and when he
found a Confederate veteran he listened to the tale of the defense of
Richmond, delighted to find that the Boys in Gray were not merely
names in the history-books.
Of all these discoveries he wrote to his mother, wishing that her
weary snow-bleached life might know the Southern sun. And the first
five dollars he saved he sent to her.
But as soon as Carl became an actor Parker Heye grew jealous of him,
and was gratingly contemptuous when he showed him how to make up,
among the cheap actors jammed in the men's dressing-room, before a
pine board set on two saw-horses, under the light of a flaring
kerosene-torch. Carl came to hate Heye and his splotched face, his
pale, large eyes and yellow teeth and the bang on his forehead, his
black string tie that was invariably askew, his slovenly blue suit,
his foppishly shaped tan button shoes with "bulldog" toes. Heye
invariably jeered: "Don't make up so heavy.... Well, put a _little_
rouge on your lips. What d'you think you are? A blooming red-lipped
Venus?... Try to learn to walk across the stage as if you had _one_
leg that wasn't wood, anyway.... It's customary to go to sleep when
you're playing a listening role, but don't snore!... Oh, you're a
swell actor! Think of me swallering your story about having been t'
college!... Don't make up your eyebrows so heavy, you fool.... Why you
ever wanted to be an actor----!"
The Great Riley agreed with all that Heye said, and marveled with Heye
that he had ever tried an amateur. Carl found the dressing-room a
hay-dusty hell. But he enjoyed acting in "The Widow's Penny," "Alabama
Nell," "The Moonshiner's Daughter," and "The Crook's Revenge" far more
than he had enjoyed picking phrases out of Shakespeare at a vaguely
remembered Plato. Since, in Joralemon and Plato, he had been brought
up on melodrama, he believed as much as did the audience in the plays.
It was a real mountain cabin from which he fired wonderfully loud guns
in "The Moonshiner's Daughter"; and when the old mountaineer cried,
"They ain't going to steal mah gal!" Carl was damp at the eyes, and
swore with real fervor the oath to protect the girl, sure that in the
ravine behind the back-drop his bearded foe-men were lurking.
"The Crook's Revenge" was his favorite, for he was cast as a young
millionaire and wore evening clothes (second-hand). He held off a mob
of shrieking gangsters, crouched behind an overturned table in a
gambling-den. He coolly stroked the lovely hair of the ingenue, Miss
Evelyn L'Ewysse, with one hand, leveled a revolver with the other, and
made fearless jests the while, to the infinite excitement of the
audience, especially of the hyah-hyah-hyahing negroes, whose faces,
under the flicker of lowered calcium-carbide lights, made a segregated
strip of yellow-black polka-dotted with white eye-balls.
When the people were before him, respectful to art under canvas, Carl
could love them; but even the tiniest ragged-breeched darky was bold
in his curiosity about the strolling players when they appeared
outside, and Carl was self-conscious about the giggles and stares that
surrounded him when he stopped on the street or went into a drug-store
for the comfortable solace of a banana split. He was in a rage
whenever a well-dressed girl peeped at him amusedly from a one-lunged
runabout. The staring so flustered him that even the pride of coming
from Chicago and knowing about motors did not prevent his feeling
feeble at the knees as he tried to stalk by the grinning motored
aristocracy. He would return to the show-tent, to hate the few tawdry
drops and flats--the patch of green spattered with dirty white which
variously simulated a daisy-field, a mountainside, and that part of
Central Park directly opposite the Fifth Avenue residence of the
millionaire counterfeiter, who, you remember, always comes out into
the street to plot with his confederates. Carl hated with peculiar
heartiness the anemic, palely varnished, folding garden bench, which
figured now as a seat in the moonshiner's den, and now, with a cotton
leopard-skin draped over it, as a fauteuil in the luxurious
drawing-room of Mrs. Van Antwerp. The garden bench was, however,
associated with his learning to make stage love to Miss Evelyn
L'Ewysse.
It was difficult to appear unconscious of fifty small boys all
smacking their lips in unison, while he kissed the air one centimeter
in front of Miss L'Ewysse's lips. But he learned the art. Indeed, he
began to lessen that centimeter of safety.
Miss Evelyn L'Ewysse (christened Lena Ludwig, and heir presumptive to
one of the best delicatessens in Newport News) reveled in love-making
on and off. Carl was attracted by her constantly, uncomfortably. She
smiled at him in the wings, smoothed her fluffy blond hair at him, and
told him in confidence that she was a high-school graduate, that she
was used to much, oh, _much_ better companies, and was playing under
canvas for a lark. She bubbled: "_Ach_, Louie, say, ain't it hot!
Honest, Mr. Ericson, I don't see how you stand it like you do.... Say,
honest, that was swell business you pulled in the third act last
night.... Say, I know what let's do--let's get up a swell act and get
on the Peanut Circuit. We'd hit Broadway with a noise like seventeen
marine bands.... Say, honest, Mr. Ericson, you do awful well for----I
bet you ain't no amachoor. I bet you been on before."
He devoured it.
One night, finding that Miss Evelyn made no comment on his holding her
hand, he lured her out of the tent during a long wait, trembled, and
kissed her. Her fingers gripped his shoulders agitatedly, plucked at
his sleeve as she kissed him back. She murmured, "Oh, you hadn't ought
to do that." But afterward she would kiss him every time they were
alone, and she told him with confidential giggles of Parker Heye's
awkward attempts to win her. Heye's most secret notes she read, till
Carl seriously informed her that she was violating a trust. Miss
Evelyn immediately saw the light and promised she would "never, never,
never do anythin' like that again, and, honest, she hadn't realized
she was doing anythin' dishon'able, but Heye is such an old pest";
which was an excuse for her weeping on his shoulder and his kissing
the tears away.
All day he looked forward to their meetings. Yet constantly the law of
the adventurer, which means the instinct of practical decency, warned
him that this was no amour for him; that he must not make love where
he did not love; that this good-hearted vulgarian was too kindly to
tamper with and too absurd to love. Only----And again his breath would
draw in with swift exultation as he recalled how elastic were her
shoulders to stroke.
It was summer now, and they were back in Virginia, touring the Eastern
Shore. Carl, the prairie-born, had been within five miles of the open
Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat
potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro
cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was
always filled with a stale scent of people.
At the town of Nankiwoc the hotel was not all it might have been.
Evelyn L'Ewysse announced that she was "good and sick of eating a
vaudeville dinner with the grub acts stuck around your plate in a lot
of birds' bath-tubs--little mess of turnips and a dab of spinach and a
fried cockroach. And when it comes to sleeping another night on a bed
like a gridiron, no--thank--_you_! And believe me, if I see that old
rube hotel-keeper comb his whiskers at the hall hat-rack again--he
keeps a baby comb in his vest pocket with a lead-pencil and a cigar
some drummer gave him--if I have to watch him comb that alfalfa again
I'll bite his ears off and get pinched by the S. P. C. A.!"
With Mrs. Lubley, the old lady and complacent unofficial chaperon of
the show, Eve was going to imitate Carl and the two bandsmen, and
sleep in the dressing-room tent, over half of which was devoted to the
women of the company.
Every day Carl warned himself that he must go no farther, but every
night as Eve and he parted, to sleep with only a canvas partition
between them, he cursed the presence of the show chaperon, and of the
two bandsmen, always distressingly awake and talking till after
midnight.
A hot June night. The whole company had been invited to a dance at the
U. C. V. Hall; the two bandsmen were going; the chaperon--lively old
lady with experience on the burlesque circuit--was gaily going. Carl
and Eve were not. It had taken but one glance between them to decide
that.
They sat outside the silent tent, on a wardrobe trunk. What manner of
night it was, whether starlit or sullen, Carl did not know; he was
aware only that it was oppressive, and that Eve was in his arms in the
darkness. He kissed her moist, hot neck. He babbled incoherently of
the show people, but every word he said meant that he was palpitating
because her soft body was against his. He knew--and he was sure that
she knew--that when they discussed Heye's string tie and pretended to
laugh, they were agitatedly voicing their intoxication.
His voice unsteady, Carl said: "Jiminy! it's so hot, Eve! I'm going to
take off this darn shirt and collar and put on a soft shirt. S-say,
w-why don't you put on a kimono or something? Be so much cooler."
"Oh, I don't know as I ought to----" She was frightened, awed at
Bacchic madness. "D-do you think it would be all right?"
"Why not? Guess anybody's got a right to get cool--night like this.
Besides, they won't be back till 4 P.M. And you got to get cool. Come
on."
And he knew--and he was sure that she knew--that all he said was
pretense. But she rose and said, nebulously, as she stood before him,
ruffling his hair: "Well, I would like to get cool. If you think it's
all right----I'll put on something cooler, anyway."
She went. Carl could hear a rustling in the women's end of the
dressing-room tent. Fevered, he listened to it. Fevered, he changed to
an outing-shirt, open at the throat. He ran out, not to miss a moment
with her.... She had not yet come. He was too overwrought to heed a
small voice in him, a voice born of snow-fields colored with sunset
and trained in the quietudes of Henry Frazer's house, which insisted:
"Go slow! Stop!" A louder voice throbbed like the pulsing of the
artery in his neck, "She's coming!"
Through the darkness her light garment swished against the long grass.
He sprang up. Then he was holding her, bending her head back. He
exulted to find that his gripping hand was barred from the smoothness
of her side only by thin silk that glided and warmed under his
fingers. She sat on his knees and snuggled her loosened hair
tinglingly against his bare chest. He felt that she was waiting for
him to go on.
Suddenly he could not, would not, go on.
"Dearest, we mustn't!" he mourned.
"O Carl!" she sobbed, and stopped his words with clinging lips.
He found himself waiting till she should finish the kiss that he might
put an end to this.
Perhaps he was checked by provincial prejudices about chivalry. But
perhaps he had learned a little self-control. In any case, he had
stopped for a second to think, and the wine of love was gone flat. He
wished she would release him. Also, her hair was tickling his ear. He
waited, patiently, till she should finish the kiss.
Her lips drew violently from his, and she accused, "You don't want to
kiss me!"
"Look here; I want to kiss you, all right--Lord----" For a second his
arms tightened; then he went on, cold: "But we'll both be good and
sorry if we go too far. It isn't just a cowardly caution. It's----Oh,
you know."
"Oh yes, yes, yes, we mustn't go too far, Carl. But can't we just sit
like this? O sweetheart, I am so tired! I want somebody to care for me
a little. That isn't wicked, is it? I want you to take me in your arms
and hold me close, close, and comfort me. I want so much to be
comforted. We needn't go any further, need we?"
"Oh now, good Lord! Eve, look here: don't you know we can't go on and
not go farther? I'm having a hard enough time----" He sprang up,
shakily lighting a cigarette. He stroked her hair and begged: "Please
go, Eve. I guess I haven't got very good control over myself. Please.
You make me----"
"Oh yes, yes, sure! Blame it on me! Sure! I made you let me put on a
kimono! I'm leading your pure white shriveled peanut of a soul into
temptation!... Don't you ever dare speak to me again! Oh,
you--you----"
She flounced away.
Carl caught her, in two steps. "See here, child," he said, gravely,
"if you go off like this we'll both be miserable.... You remember how
happy we were driving out to the old plantation at Powhasset?"
"O Gawd! won't you men never say anything original? Remember it? Of
course I remember it! What do you suppose I wore that little branch of
laurel you picked for me, wore it here, here, at my breast, and I
thought you'd _care_ if I hid it here where there wasn't any grease
paint, and you don't--you don't care--and we picnicked, and I sang all
the time I put up those sandwiches and hid the grape-fruit in the
basket to surprise you----"
"O darling Eve, I don't know how to say how sorry I am, so terribly
sorry I've started things going! It is my fault. But can't you see
I've got to stop it before it's too late, just for that reason? Let's
be chums again."
She shook her head. Her hand crept to his, slid over it, drew it up to
her breast. She was swaying nearer to him. He pulled his hand free and
fled to his tent.
Perhaps his fiercest gibe at himself was that he had had to play the
role of virgin Galahad rejecting love, which is praised in books and
ridiculed in clubs. He mocked at his sincere desire to be fair to Eve.
And between mockeries he strained to hear her moving beyond the
canvas partition. He was glad when the bandsmen came larruping home
from the dance.
Next day she went out of her way to be chilly to him. He did not woo
her friendship. He had resigned from the Great Riley Show, and he was
going--going anywhere, so long as he kept going.
CHAPTER XV
He had been a jolly mechanic again, in denim overalls and jumper and a
defiant black skull-cap with long, shiny vizor; the tender of the
motor-boat fleet at an Ontario summer hotel. One day he had looked up,
sweating and greasy, to see Howard Griffin, of Plato, parading past in
white flannels. He had muttered: "I don't want Them to know I've just
been bumming around. I'll go some place else. And I'll do something
worth while." Now he was on the train for New York, meditating
impersonally on his uselessness, considering how free of moss his
rolling had kept him. He could think of no particularly masterful plan
for accumulating moss. If he had not bought a ticket through to New
York he would have turned back, to seek a position in one of the great
automobile factories that now, this early autumn of 1906, were
beginning to distinguish Detroit. Well, he had enough money to last
for one week in New York. He would work in an automobile agency there;
later he would go to Detroit, and within a few years be president of a
motor company, rich enough to experiment with motor-boats and to laugh
at Howard Griffin or any other Platonian.
So he sketched his conquering entrance into New York. Unfortunately it
was in the evening, and, having fallen asleep at Poughkeepsie, he did
not awake till a brakeman shook his shoulder at the Grand Central
Station. He had heard of the old Grand Union Hotel, and drowsily, with
the stuffy nose and sandy eyes and unclean feeling about the teeth
that overpower one who sleeps in a smoking-car, he staggered across
to the hotel and spent his first conquering night in filling a dollar
room with vulgar sounds of over-weary slumber.
But in the morning, when he stared along Forty-second Street; when he
breakfasted at a Childs' restaurant, like a gigantic tiled bath-room,
and realized that the buckwheat cakes were New York buckwheats; when
he sighted the noble _Times_ Building and struck out for Broadway (the
magic name that promised marble palaces, even if it provided two-story
shacks); when he bustled into a carburetor agency and demanded a
job--then he found the gateway of wonder.
But he did not find a job.
Eight nights after his arrival he quietly paid his bill at the hotel;
tipped a curly-headed bell-boy; checked his baggage, which consisted
of a shirt, a razor, and an illustrated catalogue of automobile
accessories; put his tooth-brush in his pocket; bought an evening
paper in order to feel luxurious; and walked down to the Charity
Organization Society, with ten cents in his pocket.
In the Joint Application Bureau, filled with desks and
filing-cabinets, where poor men cease to be men and become Cases, Carl
waited on a long bench till it was his turn to tell his troubles to a
keen, kindly, gray-bearded man behind a roll-top desk. He asked for
work. Work was, it seemed, the one thing the society could not give.
He received a ticket to the Municipal Lodging House.
This was not the hygienic hostelry of to-day, but a barracks on First
Avenue. Carl had a chunk of bread with too much soda in it, and coffee
with too little coffee in it, from a contemptuous personage in a white
jacket, who, though his cuffs were grimy, showed plainly that he was
too good to wait on bums. Carl leaned his elbows on the long scrubbed
table and chewed the bread of charity sullenly, resolving to catch a
freight next day and get out of town.
He slept in a narrow bunk near a man with consumption. The room reeked
of disinfectants and charity.
* * * * *
The East Side of New York. A whirlwind of noise and smell and hovering
shadows. The jargon of Jewish matrons in brown shawls and orthodox
wigs, chaffering for cabbages and black cotton stockings and gray
woolen undershirts with excitable push-cart proprietors who had beards
so prophetic that it was startling to see a frivolous cigarette amid
the reverend mane. The scent of fried fish and decaying bits of kosher
meat, and hallways as damnably rotten of floor as they were profitable
to New York's nicest circles. The tall gloom of six-story tenements
that made a prison wall of dulled yellow, bristling with bedding-piled
fire-escapes and the curious heads of frowzy women. A potpourri of
Russian signs, Yiddish newspapers, synagogues with six-pointed gilt
stars, bakeries with piles of rye bread crawling with caraway-seeds,
shops for renting wedding finery that looked as if it could never fit
any one, second-hand furniture-shops with folding iron beds, a filthy
baby holding a baby slightly younger and filthier, mangy cats slinking
from pile to pile of rubbish, and a withered geranium in a tin can
whose label was hanging loose and showed rust-stains amid the dry
paste on its back. Everywhere crowds of voluble Jews in dark clothes,
and noisily playing children that catapulted into your legs. The
lunger-blocks in which we train the victims of Russian tyranny to
appreciate our freedom. A whirlwind of alien ugliness and foul smells
and incessant roar and the deathless ambition of young Jews to know
Ibsen and syndicalism. It swamped the courage of hungry Carl as he
roamed through Rivington Street and Essex and Hester, vainly seeking
jobs from shopkeepers too poor to be able to bathe.
He felt that he, not these matter-of-fact crowds, was alien. He was
hungry and tired. There was nothing heroic to do--just go hungry.
There was no place where he could sit down. The benches of the tiny
hard-trodden parks were full.... If he could sit down, if he could
rest one little hour, he would be able to go and find freight-yards,
where there would be the clean clang of bells and rattle of trucks
instead of gabbled Yiddish. Then he would ride out into the country,
away from the brooding shadows of this town, where there were no
separable faces, but only a fog of ceaselessly moving crowds....
Late that night he stood aimlessly talking to a hobo on a dirty corner
of the Bowery, where the early September rain drizzled through the
gaunt structure of the Elevated. He did not feel the hunger so much
now, but he was meekly glad to learn from his new friend, the hobo,
that in one more hour he could get food in the bread-line. He felt
very boyish, and would have confided the fact that he was starving to
any woman, to any one but this transcontinental hobo, the tramp royal,
trained to scorn hunger. Because he was one of them he watched
incuriously the procession of vagrants, in coats whose collars were
turned up and fastened with safety-pins against the rain. The vagrants
shuffled rapidly by, their shoulders hunched, their hands always in
their trousers pockets, their shoe-heels always ground down and muddy.
And incuriously he watched a saloon-keeper, whose face was plastered
over with a huge mustache, come out and hang a sign, "Porter wanted in
A.M.," on the saloon door.
As he slouched away to join the bread-line, a black deuce in the
world's discard, Carl was wondering how he could get that imperial
appointment as porter in a Bowery saloon. He almost forgot it while
waiting in the bread-line, so occupied was he in hating two collegians
who watched the line with that open curiosity which nice, clean,
respectable young men suppose the poor never notice. He restrained his
desire to go over and quote Greek at them, because they were ignorant
and not to blame for being sure that they were of clay superior to
any one in a bread-line. And partly because he had forgotten his
Greek.
He came back to the Bowery briskly, alone, with the manhood of a loaf
of bread in him. He was going to get that job as porter. He planned
his campaign as a politician plans to become a statesman. He slipped
the sign, "Porter wanted in A.M.," from its nail and hid it beneath
his coat. He tramped the block all night and, as suspicious characters
always do to avoid seeming suspicious, he begged a match from a
policeman who was keeping an eye on him. The policeman chatted with
him about baseball and advised him to keep away from liquor and
missions.
At 5 A.M. Carl was standing at the saloon door. When the bartender
opened it Carl bounced in, slightly dizzy, conscious of the slime of
mud on his fraying trouser-ends.
The saloon had an air of cheap crime and a floor covered with clotted
sawdust. The bar was a slab of dark-brown wood, so worn that
semicircles of slivers were showing. The nasty gutter was still filled
with cigar-ends and puddles of beer and bits of free-lunch cheese.
"I want that job as porter," said Carl.
"Oh, you do, do you? Well, you wait and see who else comes to get it."
"Nobody else is going to come."
"How do you know they ain't?"
Carl drew the sign from beneath his coat and carefully laid it on the
bar. "That's why."
"Well, you got nerve. You got the nerve of a Republican on Fourteenth
Street, like the fellow says. You must want it. Well, all right, I
guess you can have it if the boss don't kick."
Carl was accepted by the "boss," who gave him a quarter and told him
to go out and get a "regular feed." He hummed over breakfast. He had
been accepted again by all men when he had been accepted by the
proprietor of a Bowery saloon. He was going to hold this job, no
matter what happened. The rolling stone was going to gather moss.
For three months Carl took seriously the dirtiest things in the world.
He worked sixteen hours a day for eight dollars a week, cleaning
cuspidors, scrubbing the floor, scattering clean sawdust, cutting the
more rotten portions off the free-lunch meat. As he slopped about with
half-frozen, brittle rags, hoboes pushed him aside and spat on the
floor he had just cleaned.
Of his eight dollars a week he saved four. He rented an airshaft
bedroom in the flat of a Jewish sweatshop worker for one dollar and
seventy-five cents a week. It was occupied daytimes by a cook in an
all-night restaurant, who had taken a bath in 1900 when at Coney
Island on an excursion of the Pip O'Gilligan Association. The room was
unheated, and every night during January Carl debated whether to go to
bed with his shoes on or off.
The sub-landlord's daughter was a dwarfish, blotched-faced, passionate
child of fifteen, with moist eyes and very low-cut waists of coarse
voile (which she pronounced "voyle"). She would stop Carl in the dark
"railroad" hallway and, chewing gum rapidly, chatter about the
aisleman at Wanamacy's, and what a swell time there would be at the
coming ball of the Thomas J. Monahan Literary and Social Club, tickets
twenty-five cents for lady and gent, including hat-check. She let Carl
know that she considered him close-fisted for never taking her to the
movies on Sunday afternoons, but he patted her head and talked to her
like a big brother and kept himself from noticing that she had
clinging hands and would be rather pretty, and he bought her a
wholesome woman's magazine to read--not an entirely complete solution
to the problem of what to do with the girl whom organized society is
too busy to nourish, but the best he could contrive just then.
Sundays, when he was free for part of the day, he took his book of
recipes for mixed drinks to the reading-room of the Tompkins Square
library and gravely studied them, for he was going to be a bartender.
Every night when he staggered from the comparatively clean air of the
street into the fetid chill of his room he asked himself why he--son
of Northern tamaracks and quiet books--went on with this horrible
imitation of living; and each time answered himself that, whether
there was any real reason or not, he was going to make good on one job
at least, and that the one he held. And admonished himself that he was
very well paid for a saloon porter.
If Carl had never stood in the bread-line, if he had never been
compelled to clean a saloon gutter artistically, in order to keep from
standing in that bread-line, he would surely have gone back to the
commonplaceness for which every one except Bone Stillman and Henry
Frazer had been assiduously training him all his life. They who know
how naturally life runs on in any sphere will understand that Carl did
not at the time feel that he was debased. He lived twenty-four hours a
day and kept busy, with no more wonder at himself than is displayed by
the professional burglar or the man who devotes all his youth to
learning Greek or soldiering. Nevertheless, the work itself was so
much less desirable than driving a car or wandering through the
moonlight with Eve L'Ewysse in days wonderful and lost that, to endure
it, to conquer it, he had to develop a control over temper and speech
and body which was to stay with him in windy mornings of daring.
Within three months Carl had become assistant bar-keeper, and now he
could save eight dollars a week. He bought a couple of motor magazines
and went to one vaudeville show and kept his sub-landlord's daughter
from running off with a cadet, wondering how soon she would do it in
any case, and receiving a depressing insight into the efficiency of
society for keeping in the mire most of the people born there.
Three months later, at the end of winter, he was ready to start for
Panama.
He was going to Panama because he had read in a Sunday newspaper of
the Canal's marvels of engineering and jungle.
He had avoided making friends. There was no one to give him farewell
when he emerged from the muck. But he had one task to perform--to
settle with the Saloon Snob.
Petey McGuff was the name of this creature. He was an oldish and
wicked man, born on the Bowery. He had been a heavy-weight
prize-fighter in the days of John L. Sullivan; then he had met John,
and been, ever since, an honest crook who made an excellent living by
conducting a boxing-school in which the real work was done by
assistants. He resembled a hound with a neat black bow tie, and he
drooled tobacco-juice down his big, raw-looking, moist, bristly,
too-masculine chin. Every evening from eleven to midnight Petey McGuff
sat at the round table in the mildewed corner at the end of the bar,
drinking old-fashioned whisky cocktails made with Bourbon, playing
Canfield, staring at the nude models pasted on the milky surface of an
old mirror, and teasing Carl.
"Here, boy, come 'ere an' wipe off de whisky you spilled.... Come on,
you tissy-cat. Get on de job.... You look like Sunday-school Harry.
Mamma's little rosy-cheeked boy.... Some day I'm going to bust your
beezer. Gawd! it makes me sick to sit here and look at dose
goily-goily cheeks.... Come 'ere, Lizzie, an' wipe dis table again. On
de jump, daughter."
Carl held himself in. Hundreds of times he snarled to himself: "I
_won't_ hit him! I will make good on _this_ job, anyway." He created a
grin which he could affix easily.
Now he was leaving. He had proven that he could hold a job; had
answered the unspoken criticisms from Plato, from Chicago garages,
from the Great Riley Show. For the first time since he had deserted
college he had been able to write to his father, to answer the grim
carpenter's unspoken criticisms of the son who had given up his chance
for an "education." And proudly he had sent to his father a little
check. He had a beautiful new fifteen-dollar suit of blue serge at
home. In his pocket was his ticket--steerage by the P. R. R. line to
Colon--and he would be off for bluewater next noon. His feet danced
behind the bar as he filled schooners of beer and scraped off their
foam with a celluloid ruler. He saw himself in Panama, with a clean
man's job, talking to cosmopolitan engineers against a background of
green-and-scarlet jungle. And, oh yes, he was going to beat Petey
McGuff that evening, and get back much of the belligerent self-respect
which he had been drawing off into schooners with the beer.
Old Petey rolled in at two minutes past eleven, warmed his hands at
the gas-stove, poked disapprovingly at the pretzels on the free-lunch
counter, and bawled at Carl: "Hey, keep away from dat cash-register!
Wipe dem goilish tears away, will yuh, Agnes, and bring us a little
health-destroyer and a couple matches."
Carl brought a whisky cocktail.
"Where's de matches, you tissy-cat?"
Carl wiped his hands on his apron and beamed: "Well, so the old soak
is getting too fat and lazy to reach over on the bar and get his own!
You'll last quick now!"
"Aw, is dat so!... For de love of Mike, d'yuh mean to tell me Lizzie
is talking back? Whadda yuh know about dat! Whadda yuh know about dat!
You'll get sick on us here, foist t'ing we know. Where was yuh
hoited?"
Petey McGuff's smile was absolutely friendly. It made Carl hesitate,
but it had become one of the principles of cosmic ethics that he had
to thump Petey, and he growled: "I'll give you all the talking back
you want, you big stiff. I'm getting through to-night. I'm going to
Panama."
"No, straight, is dat straight?"
"That's what I said."
"Well, dat's fine, boy. I been watching yuh, and I sees y' wasn't cut
out to be no saloon porter. I made a little bet with meself you was
ejucated. Why, y'r cuffs ain't even doity--not very doity. Course you
kinda need a shave, but dem little blond hairs don't show much. I seen
you was a gentleman, even if de bums didn't. You're too good t' be a
rum-peddler. Glad y're going, boy, mighty glad. Sit down. Tell us
about it. We'll miss yuh here. I was just saying th' other night to
Mike here dere ain't one feller in a hundred could 'a' stood de
kiddin' from an old he-one like me and kep' his mout' shut and grinned
and said nawthin' to nobody. Dat's w'at wins fights. But, say, boy,
I'll miss yuh, I sure will. I get to be kind of lonely as de boys drop
off--like boozers always does. Oh, hell, I won't spill me troubles
like an old tissy-cat.... So you're going to Panama? I want yuh to sit
down and tell me about it. Whachu taking, boy?"
"Just a cigar.... I'll miss you, too, Petey. Tell you what I'll do.
I'll send you some post-cards from Panama."
Next noon as the S.S. _Panama_ pulled out of her ice-lined dock Carl
saw an old man shivering on the wharf and frantically waving
good-by--Petey McGuff.
CHAPTER XVI
The S.S. _Panama_ had passed Watling's Island and steamed into
story-land. On the white-scrubbed deck aft of the wheel-house Carl sat
with his friends of the steerage--sturdy men all, used to open places;
old Ed, the rock-driller, long, Irish, huge-handed, irate, kindly;
Harry, the young mechanic from Cleveland. Ed and an oiler were
furiously debating about the food aboard:
"Aw, it's rotten, all of it."
"Look here, Ed, how about the chicken they give the steerage on
Sunday?"
"Chicken? I didn't see no chicken. I see some sea-gull, though. No
wonder they ain't no more sea-gulls following us. They shot 'em and
cooked 'em on us."
"Say," mused Harry, "makes me think of when I was ship-building in
Philly--no, it was when I was broke in K. C.--and a guy----"
Carl smiled in content, exulting in the talk of the men of the road,
exulting in his new blue serge suit, his new silver-gray tie with no
smell of the saloon about it, finger-nails that were growing pink
again--and the sunset that made glorious his petty prides. A vast
plane of unrippling plum-colored sea was set with mirror-like pools
where floated tree-branches so suffused with light that the glad heart
blessed them. His first flying-fish leaped silvery from silver sea,
and Carl cried, almost aloud, "This is what I've been wanting all my
life!"
Aloud, to Harry: "Say, what's it like in Kansas? I'm going down
through there some day." He spoke harshly. But the real Carl was
robed in light and the murmurous wake of evening, with the tropics
down the sky-line.
* * * * *
Lying in his hot steerage bunk, stripped to his under-shirt, Carl
peered through the "state-room" window to the swishing night sea,
conscious of the rolling of the boat, of the engines shaking her, of
bolts studding the white iron wall, of life-preservers over his head,
of stokers singing in the gangway as they dumped the clinkers
overboard. The _Panama_ was pounding on, on, on, and he rejoiced,
"This is just what I've wanted, always."
* * * * *
They are creeping in toward the wharf at Colon. He is seeing Panama!
First a point of palms, then the hospital, the red roofs of the I. C.
C. quarters at Cristobal, and negroes on the sun-blistered wharf.
At last he is free to go ashore in wonderland--a medley of Colon and
Cristobal, Panama and the Canal Zone of 1907; Spiggoty policemen like
monkeys chattering bad Spanish, and big, smiling Canal Zone policemen
in khaki, with the air of soldiers; Jamaica negroes with conical heads
and brown Barbados negroes with Cockney accents; English engineers in
lordly pugrees, and tourists from New England who seem servants of
their own tortoise-shell spectacles; comfortable ebon mammies with
silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet, dressed in starched
pink-and-blue gingham, vending guavas and green Toboga Island
pineapples. Carl gapes at Panamanian nuns and Chilean consuls, French
peasant laborers and indignant Irish foremen and German
concessionaries with dueling scars and high collars. Gold Spanish
signs and Spiggoty money and hotels with American cuspidors and
job-hunters; tin roofs and arcades; shops open to the street in front,
but mysterious within, giving glimpses of the canny Chinese
proprietors smoking tiny pipes. Trains from towns along the Canal, and
sometimes the black funeral-car, bound for Monkey Hill Cemetery.
Gambling-houses where it is considered humorous to play "Where Is My
Wandering Boy To-night?" on the phonograph while wandering boys sit at
poker; and less cleanly places, named after the various states. Negro
wenches in yellow calico dancing to fiddled tunes older than voodoo;
Indian planters coming sullenly in with pale-green bananas; memories
of the Spanish Main and Morgan's raid, of pieces of eight and
cutlasses ho! Capes of cocoanut palms running into a welter of surf;
huts on piles streaked with moss, round whose bases land-crabs scuttle
with a dry rattling that carries far in the hot, moist, still air, and
suggests the corpses of disappeared men found half devoured.
Then, for contrast, the transplanted North, with its seriousness about
the Service; the American avenues and cool breezes of Cristobal, where
fat, bald chiefs of the I. C. C. drive pompously with political guests
who, in 1907, are still incredulous about the success of the military
socialism of the Canal, and where wives from Oklahoma or Boston,
seated in Grand Rapids golden-oak rockers on the screened porches of
bungalows, talk of hats, and children, and mail-orders, and cards, and
The Colonel, and malarial fever, and Chautauqua, and the Culebra
slide.
Colon! A kaleidoscope of crimson and green and dazzling white,
warm-hued peoples and sizzling roofs, with echoes from the high
endeavor of the Canal and whispers from the unknown Bush; drenched
with sudden rain like escaping steam, or languid under the desert
glare of the sky, where hangs a gyre of buzzards whose slow circles
are stiller than death and calmer than wisdom.
"Lord!" sighs Carl Ericson from Joralemon, "this is what I've wanted
ever since I was a kid."
* * * * *
At Pedro Miguel, which the Canal employees always called "Peter
McGill," he found work, first as an unofficial time-keeper; presently,
after examinations, as a stationery engineer on the roll of the I. C.
C. Within a month he showed no signs of his Bowery experiences beyond
a shallow hollow in his smooth cheeks. He lived in quarters like a
college dormitory, communistic and jolly, littered with shoes and
cube-cut tobacco and college banners; clean youngsters dropping in for
an easy chat--and behind it all, the mystery of the Bush. His
room-mate, a conductor on the P. R. R., was a globe-trotter, and
through him Carl met the Adventurers, whom he had been questing ever
since he had run away from Oscar Ericson's woodshed. There was a young
engineer from Boston Tech., who swore every morning at 7.07 (when it
rained boiling water as enthusiastically as though it had never done
such a thing before) that he was going to Chihuahua, mining. There was
Cock-eye Corbett, an ex-sailor, who was immoral and a Lancashireman,
and knew more about blackbirding and copra and Kanakas, and the
rum-holes from Nagasaki to Mombasa, than it is healthy for a civil
servant to know.
Every Sunday a sad-faced man with ash-colored hair and bony fingers,
who had been a lieutenant in the Peruvian navy, a teacher in St.
John's College, China, and a sub-contractor for railroad construction
in Montana, and who was now a minor clerk in the cool, lofty offices
of the Materials and Supplies Department, came over from Colon,
relaxed in a tilted-back chair, and fingered the Masonic charm on his
horsehair watch-guard, while he talked with the P. R. R. conductor and
the others about ruby-hunting and the Relief of Peking, and Where is
Hector Macdonald? and Is John Orth dead? and Shall we try to climb
Chimborazo? and Creussot guns and pig-sticking and Swahili tribal
lore. These were a few of the topics regarding which he had inside
information. The others drawled about various strange things which
make a man discontented and bring him no good.
Carl was full member of the circle because of his tales of the Bowery
and the Great Riley Show, and because he pretended to be rather an
authority on motors for dirigibles, about which he read in
_Aeronautics_ at the Y. M. C. A. reading-room. It is true that at this
time, early 1907, the Wrights were still working in obscurity, unknown
even in their own Dayton, though they had a completely successful
machine stowed away; and as yet Glenn Curtiss had merely developed a
motor for Captain Baldwin's military dirigible. But Langley and Maxim
had endeavored to launch power-driven, heavier-than-air machines;
lively Santos Dumont had flipped about the Eiffel Tower in his
dirigible, and actually raised himself from the ground in a ponderous
aeroplane; and in May, 1907, a sculptor named Delagrange flew over six
hundred feet in France. Various crank inventors were "solving the
problem of flight" every day. Man was fluttering on the edge of his
earthy nest, ready to plunge into the air. Carl was able to make
technical-sounding predictions which caught the imaginations of the
restless children.
* * * * *
The adventurers kept moving. The beach-combing ex-sailor said that he
was starting for Valparaiso, started for San Domingo, and landed in
Tahiti, whence he sent Carl one post-card, worded, "What price T. T.?"
The engineer from Boston Tech. kept his oath about mining in
Chihuahua. He got the appointment as assistant superintendent of the
Tres Reyes mine--and he took Carl with him.
Carl reached Mexico and breathed the air of high-lying desert and
hill. He found rare days, purposeless and wonderful as the voyages of
ancient Norse Ericsens; days of learning Spanish and sitting quietly
balancing a .32-20 Marlin, waiting for bandits to attack; the joy of
repairing machinery and helping to erect a new crusher, nursing peons
with broken legs, and riding cow-ponies down black mountain trails at
night under an exhilarating splendor of stars. It never seemed to him
that the machinery desecrated the mountains' stern grandeur.
Stolen hours he gave to the building of box-kites with cambered
wings, after rapturously learning, in the autumn of 1908, that in
August a lanky American mechanic named Wilbur Wright had startled the
world by flying an aeroplane many miles publicly in France; that
before this, on July 4, 1908, another Yankee mechanic, Glenn Curtiss,
had covered nearly a mile, for the _Scientific American_ trophy, after
a series of trials made in company with Alexander Graham Bell, J. A.
D. McCurdy, "Casey" Baldwin, and Augustus Post.
He might have gone on until death, dealing with excitable greasers and
hysterical machinery, but for the coming of a new mine superintendent--one
of those Englishmen, stolid, red-mustached, pipe-smoking, eye-brow-lifting,
who at first seem beefily dull, but prove to have known every one from
George Moore to Marconi. He inspected Carl hundreds of times, then told him
that the period had come when he ought to attack a city, conquer it, build
up a reputation cumulatively; that he needed a contrast to Platonians and
Bowery bums and tropical tramps, and even to his beloved engineers.
"You can do everything but order a _petit diner a deux_, but you must
learn to do that, too. Go make ten thousand pounds and study Pall Mall
and the boulevards, and then come back to us in Mexico. I'll be sorry
to have you go--with your damned old silky hair like a woman's and
your wink when Guittrez comes up here to threaten us--but don't let
the hinterland enslave you too early."
A month later, in January, 1909, aged twenty-three and a half, Carl
was steaming out of El Paso for California, with one thousand dollars
in savings, a beautiful new Stetson hat, and an ambition to build up a
motor business in San Francisco. As the desert sky swam with orange
light and a white-browed woman in the seat behind him hummed Musetta's
song from "La Boheme" he was homesick for the outlanders, whom he was
deserting that he might stick for twenty years in one street and grub
out a hundred thousand dollars.
CHAPTER XVII
On a grassy side-street of Oakland, California, was "Jones & Ericson's
Garage: Gasoline and Repairs: Motor Cycles and Bicycles for Rent:
Oakland Agents for Bristow Magnetos."
It was perhaps the cleverest garage in Oakland and Berkeley for the
quick repairing of motor-cycles; and newly wed owners of family
runabouts swore that Carl Ericson could make a carburetor out of a
tomato-can, and even be agreeable when called on for repairs at 2 A.M.
He had doubled old Jones's business during the nine months--February
to November, 1909--that they had been associated.
Carl believed that he thought of nothing but work and the restaurants
and theaters of civilization. No more rolling for him until he had
gathered moss! He played that he was a confirmed business man. The
game had hypnotized him for nearly a year. He whistled as he cleaned
plugs, and glanced out at the eucalyptus-trees and the sunny road,
without wanting to run away. But just to-day, just this glorious
rain-cleansed November day, with high blue skies and sunlight on the
feathery pepper-trees, he was going to sneak away from work and have a
celebration all by himself.
He was going down to San Mateo to see his first flying-machine!
November, 1909. Bleriot had crossed the English Channel; McCurdy had,
in March, 1909, calmly pegged off sixteen miles in the "Silver Dart"
biplane; Paulhan had gone eighty-one miles, and had risen to the
incredible height of five hundred feet, to be overshadowed by Orville
Wright's sixteen hundred feet; Glenn Curtiss had won the Gordon
Bennett cup at Rheims.
California was promising to be in the van of aviation. She was
remembering that her own Montgomery had been one of the pioneers. Los
Angeles was planning a giant meet for January. A dozen cow-pasture
aviators were taking credulous young reporters aside and confiding
that next day, or next week, or at latest next month, they would
startle the world by ascending in machines "on entirely new and
revolutionary principles, on which they had been working for ten
years." Sometimes it was for eight years they had been working. But
always they remarked that "the model from which the machine will be
built has flown perfectly in the presence of some of the most
prominent men in the locality." These machines had a great deal to do
with the mysterious qualities of gyroscopes and helicopters.
Now, Dr. Josiah Bagby, the San Francisco physician and
oil-burning-marine-engine magnate, had really brought three genuine
Bleriot monoplanes from France, with Carmeau, graduate of the Bleriot
school and licensed French aviator, for working pilot; and was
experimenting with them at San Mateo, near San Francisco, where the
grandsons of the Forty-niners play polo. It had been rumored that he
would open a school for pilots and build Bleriot-type monoplanes for
the American market.
Carl had lain awake for an hour the night before, picturing the wonder
of flight that he hoped to see. He rose early, put on his politest
garments, and informed grumpy old Jones that he was off for a
frolic--he wasn't sure, he said, whether he would get drunk or get
married. He crossed the bay, glad of the sea-gulls, the glory of Mt.
Tamalpais, and San Francisco's hill behind fairy hill. He consumed a
Pacific sundae, with a feeling of holiday, and hummed "Mandalay." On
the trolley to San Mateo he read over and over the newspaper accounts
of Bagby's monoplanes.
Walking through San Mateo, Carl swung his cocky green hat and scanned
the sky for aircraft. He saw none. But as he tramped out on the
flying-field he began to run at the sight of two wide, cambered wings,
rounded at the ends like the end of one's thumb, attached to a fragile
long body of open framework. Men were gathered about it. A man with a
short, crisp beard and a tight woolen toboggan-cap was seated in the
body, the wings stretching on either side of him. He scratched his
beard and gesticulated. A mechanic revolved the propeller, and the
unmuffled motor burst out with a trrrrrrrr whose music rocked Carl's
heart. Black smoke hurled back along the machine. The draught tore at
the hair of two men crouched on the ground holding the tail. They let
go. The monoplane ran forward along the ground, and suddenly was off
it, a foot up, ten feet up--really flying. Carl could see the aviator
calmly staring ahead, working his arms, as the machine turned and
slipped away over distant trees.
His first impression of an aeroplane in the air had nothing to do with
birds or dragon-flies or the miracle of it, because he was completely
absorbed in an impression of Carl Ericson, which he expressed after
this wise:
"I--am--going--to--be--an--aviator!"
And later, "Yes, _that's_ what I've always wanted."
He joined the group in front of the hangar-tent. Workmen were
hammering on wooden sheds back of it. He recognized the owner, Dr.
Bagby, from his pictures: a lean man of sixty with a sallow
complexion, a gray mustache like a rat-tail, a broad, black
countrified slouch-hat on the back of his head, a gray sack-suit which
would have been respectable but unfashionable at any period
whatsoever. He looked like a country lawyer who had served two terms
in the state legislature. His shoes were black, but not blackened, and
had no toe-caps--the comfortable shoes of an oldish man. He was
tapping his teeth with a thin corded forefinger and remarking in a
monotonous voice to a Mexican youth plump and polite and well dressed,
"Wel-l-l-l, Tony, I guess those plugs were better; I guess those plugs
were better. Heh?" Bagby turned to the others, marveled at them as if
trying to remember who they were, and said, slowly, "I guess those
plugs were all right. Heh?"
The monoplane was returning, for a time apparently not moving, like a
black mark painted on the great blue sky; then soaring overhead, the
sharply cut outlines clear as a pen-and-ink drawing; then landing,
bouncing on the slightly uneven ground.
As the French aviator climbed out, Dr. Bagby's sad face brightened and
he suggested: "Those plugs went better, Munseer. Heh? I've been
thinking. Maybe you been giving her too rich a mixture."
While they were wiping the Gnome engine Carl shyly approached Dr.
Bagby. He felt frightfully an outsider; wondered if he could ever be
intimate with the magician as was the plump Mexican youth they called
"Tony." He said "Uh" once or twice, and blurted, "I want to be an
aviator."
"Yes, yes," said Dr. Bagby, gently, glancing away from Carl to the machine.
He went over, twanged a supporting-wire, and seemed to remember that some
one had spoken to him. He returned to the fevered Carl, walking sidewise,
staring all the while at the resting monoplane, so efficient, yet so quiet
now and slender and feminine. "Yes, yes. So you'd like to be an aviator. So
you'd like--like----(Hey, boy, don't touch that!)----to be an aviator. Yes,
yes. They all would, m' boy. They all would. Well, maybe you can be, some
day. Maybe you can be.... Some day."
"I mean now. Right away. Heard you were going t' start a school. Want
to join."
"Hm, hm," sighed Dr. Bagby, tapping his teeth, jingling his heavy
gold watch-chain, brushing a trail of cigar-ashes from a lapel, then
staring abstractedly at Carl, who was turning his hat swiftly round
and round, so flushed of cheek, so excited of eye, that he seemed
twenty instead of twenty-four. "Yes, yes, so you'd like to join. Tst.
But that would cost you five hundred dollars, you know."
"Right!"
"Well, you go talk to Munseer about it; Munseer Carmeau. He is a very
good aviator. He is a licensed aviator. He knows Henry Farman. He
studied under Bleriot. He is the boss here. I'm just the poor old
fellow that stands around. Sometimes Munseer takes me up for a little
ride in our machine; sometimes he takes me up; but he is the boss. He
is the boss, my friend; you'll have to see him." And Dr. Bagby walked
away, apparently much discouraged about life.
Carl was not discouraged about life. He swore that now he would be an
aviator even if he had to go to Dayton or Hammondsport or France.
He returned to Oakland. He sold his share in the garage for $1,150.
Before the end of January he was enrolled as a student in the Bagby
School of Aviation and Monoplane Building.
On an impulse he wrote of his wondrous happiness to Gertie Cowles, but
he tore up the letter. Then proudly he wrote to his father that the
lost boy had found himself. For the first time in all his desultory
writing of home-letters he did not feel impelled to defend himself.
CHAPTER XVIII
Crude were the surroundings where Carmeau turned out some of the best
monoplane pilots America will ever see. There were two rude shed-hangars in
which they kept the three imported Bleriots--a single-seat racer of the
latest type, a Bleriot XII. passenger-carrying machine with the seat under
the plane, and "P'tite Marie," the school machine, which they usually kept
throttled down to four hundred or five hundred, but in which Carmeau made
such spirited flights as the one Carl had first witnessed. Back of the
hangars was the workshop, which had little architecture, but much
machinery. Here the pupils were building two Bleriot-type machines, and
trying to build an eight-cylinder V motor. All these things had Bagby given
for the good of the game, expecting no profit in return. He was one of the
real martyrs of aviation, this sapless, oldish man, never knowing the joy
of the air, yet devoting a lifetime of ability to helping man sprout wings
and become superman.
His generosity did not extend to living-quarters. Most of the students
lived at the hangars and dined on Hamburg sandwiches, fried eggs, and
Mexican _enchiladas_, served at a lunch-wagon anchored near the field.
That lunch-wagon was their club. Here, squatted on high stools,
treating one another to ginger-ale, they argued over torque and angles
of incidence and monoplanes _vs._ biplanes. Except for two unpopular
aristocrats who found boarding-houses in San Mateo, they slept in the
hangars, in their overalls, sprawled on mattresses covered with
horse-blankets. It was bed at eight-thirty. At four or five Carmeau
would crawl out, scratch his beard, start a motor, and set every
neighborhood dog howling. The students would gloomily clump over to
the lunch-wagon for a ham-and-egg breakfast. The first flights began
at dawn, if the day was clear. At eight, when the wind was coming up,
they would be heard in the workshop, adjusting and readjusting,
machining down bearings, testing wing strength, humming and laughing
and busy; a life of gasoline and hammers and straining attempts to get
balance exactly right; a happy life of good fellows and the
achievements of machinery and preparation for daring the upper air; a
life of very ordinary mechanics and of sheer romance!
It is a grievous heresy that aviation is most romantic when the
aviator is portrayed as a young god of noble rank and a collar high
and spotless, carelessly driving a transatlantic machine of perfect
efficiency. The real romance is that a perfectly ordinary young man,
the sort of young man who cleans your car at the garage, a prosaically
real young man wearing overalls faded to a thin blue, splitting his
infinitives, and frequently having for idol a bouncing ingenue,
should, in a rickety structure of wood and percale, be able to soar
miles in the air and fulfil the dream of all the creeping ages.
In English and American fiction there are now nearly as many
aeroplanes as rapiers or roses. The fictional aviators are society
amateurs, wearers of evening clothes, frequenters of The Club,
journalists and civil engineers and lordlings and international agents
and gentlemen detectives, who drawl, "Oh yes, I fly a bit--new
sensation, y' know--tired of polo"; and immediately thereafter use the
aeroplane to raid arsenals, rescue a maiden from robbers or a large
ruby from its lawful but heathenish possessors, or prevent a Zeppelin
from raiding the coast. But they never by any chance fly these
machines before gum-chewing thousands for hire. In England they
absolutely must motor from The Club to the flying-field in a "powerful
Rolls-Royce car." The British aviators of fiction are usually from
Oxford and Eton. They are splendidly languid and modest and smartly
dressed in society, but when they condescend to an adventure or to a
coincidence, they are very devils, six feet of steel and sinew, boys
of the bulldog breed with a strong trace of humming-bird. Like their
English kindred, the Americans take up aviation only for gentlemanly
sport. And they do go about rescuing things. Nothing is safe from
their rescuing. But they do not have Rolls-Royce cars.
Carl and his class at Bagby's were not of this gilded race. Carl's
flying was as sordidly real as laying brick for a one-story laundry in
a mill-town. Therefore, being real, it was romantic and miraculous.
Among Carl's class was Hank Odell, the senior student, tall, thin,
hopelessly plain of face; a drawling, rough-haired, eagle-nosed
Yankee, who grinned shyly and whose Adam's apple worked slowly up and
down when you spoke to him; an unimaginative lover of dogs and
machinery; the descendant of Lexington and Gettysburg and a flinty
Vermont farm; an ex-fireman, ex-sergeant of the army, and ex-teamster.
He always wore a khaki shirt--the wrinkles of which caught the grease
in black lines, like veins--with black trousers, blunt-toed shoes, and
a pipe, the most important part of his costume.
There was the round, anxious, polite Mexican, Tony Beanno, called
"Tony Bean"--wealthy, simple, fond of the violin and of fast motoring.
There was the "school grouch," surly Jack Ryan, the chunky
ex-chauffeur. There were seven nondescripts--a clever Jew from
Seattle, two college youngsters, an apricot-rancher's son, a circus
acrobat who wanted a new line of tricks, a dull ensign detailed by the
navy, and an earnest student of aerodynamics, aged forty, who had
written marvelously dull books on air-currents and had shrinkingly
made himself a fair balloon pilot. The navy ensign and the student
were the snobs who lived away from the hangars, in boarding-houses.
There was Lieutenant Forrest Haviland, detailed by the army--Haviland
the perfect gentle knight, the well-beloved, the nearest approach to
the gracious fiction aviator of them all, yet never drawling in
affected modesty, never afraid of grease; smiling and industrious and
reticent; smooth of hair and cameo of face; wearing khaki
riding-breeches and tan puttees instead of overalls; always a
gentleman, even when he tried to appear a workman. He pretended to be
enthusiastic about the lunch-wagon, and never referred to his three
generations of army officers. But most of the others were shy of him,
and Jack Ryan, the "school grouch," was always trying to get him into
a fight.
Finally, there was Carl Ericson, who slowly emerged as star of them
all. He knew less of aerodynamics than the timid specialist, less of
practical mechanics than Hank Odell; but he loved the fun of daring
more. He was less ferocious in competition than was Jack Ryan, but he
wasted less of his nerve. He was less agile than the circus acrobat,
but knew more of motors. He was less compactly easy than Lieutenant
Haviland, but he took better to overalls and sleeping in hangars and
mucking in grease--he whistled ragtime while Forrest Haviland hummed
MacDowell.
* * * * *
Carl's earliest flights were in the school machine, "P'tite Marie,"
behind Carmeau, the instructor. Reporters were always about, talking
of "impressions," and Carl felt that he ought to note his impressions
on his first ascent, but all that he actually did notice was that it
was hard to tell at what instant they left the ground; that when they
were up, the wind threatened to crush his ribs and burst his nostrils;
that there must be something perilously wrong, because the machine
climbed so swiftly; and, when they were down, that it had been worth
waiting a whole lifetime for the flight.
For days he merely flew with the instructor, till he was himself
managing the controls. At last, his first flight by himself.
He had been ordered to try a flight three times about the aerodrome at
a height of sixty feet, and to land carefully, without pancaking--"and
be sure, Monsieur, be veree sure you do not cut off too high from the
ground," said Carmeau.
It was a day when five reporters had gathered, and Carl felt very much
in the limelight, waiting in the nacelle of the machine for the time
to start. The propeller was revolved, Carl drew a long breath and
stuck up his hand--and the engine stopped. He was relieved. It had
seemed a terrific responsibility to go up alone. He wouldn't, now, not
for a minute or two. He knew that he had been afraid. The engine was
turned over once more--and once more stopped. Carl raged, and never
again, in all his flying, did real fear return to him. "What the deuce
is the matter?" he snarled. Again the propeller was revolved, and this
time the engine hummed sweet. The monoplane ran along the ground, its
tail lifting in the blast, till the whole machine seemed delicately
poised on its tiptoes. He was off the ground, his rage leaving him as
his fear had left him.
He exulted at the swiftness with which a distant group of trees shot
at him, under him. He turned, and the machine mounted a little on the
turn, which was against the rules. But he brought her to even keel so
easily that he felt all the mastery of the man who has finally learned
to be natural on a bicycle. He tilted up the elevator slightly and
shot across a series of fields, climbing. It was perfectly easy. He
would go up--up. It was all automatic now--cloche toward him for
climbing; away from him for descent; toward the wing that tipped up,
in order to bring it down to level. The machine obeyed perfectly. And
the foot-bar, for steering to right and left, responded to such light
motions of his foot. He grinned exultantly. He wanted to shout.
He glanced at the barometer and discovered that he was up to two
hundred feet. Why not go on?
He sailed out across San Mateo, and the sense of people below, running
and waving their hands, increased his exultation. He curved about at
the end, somewhat afraid of his ability to turn, but having all the
air there was to make the turn in, and headed back toward the
aerodrome. Already he had flown five miles.
Half a mile from the aerodrome he realized that his motor was
slackening, missing fire; that he did not know what was the matter;
that his knowledge had left him stranded there, two hundred feet above
ground; that he had to come down at once, with no chance to choose a
landing-place and no experience in gliding. The motor stopped
altogether.
The ground was coming up at him too quickly.
He tilted the elevator, and rose. But, as he was volplaning, this cut
down the speed, and from a height of ten feet above a field the
machine dropped to the ground with a flat plop. Something gave
way--but Carl sat safe, with the machine canted to one side.
He climbed out, cold about the spine, and discovered that he had
broken one wheel of the landing-chassis.
All the crowd from the flying-field were running toward him, yelling.
He grinned at the foolish sight they made with their legs and arms
strewn about in the air as they galloped over the rough ground.
Lieutenant Haviland came up, panting: "All right, o' man? Good!" He
seized Carl's hand and wrung it. Carl knew that he had a new friend.
Three reporters poured questions on him. How far had he flown? Was
this really his first ascent by himself? What were his sensations? How
had his motor stopped? Was it true he was a mining engineer, a wealthy
motorist?
Hank Odell, the shy, eagle-nosed Yankee, running up as jerkily as a
cow in a plowed field, silently patted Carl on the shoulder and began
to examine the fractured landing-wheel. At last the instructor, M.
Carmeau.
Carl had awaited M. Carmeau's praise as the crown of his long flight.
But Carmeau pulled his beard, opened his mouth once or twice, then
shrieked: "What the davil you t'ink you are? A millionaire that we
build machines for you to smash them? I tole you to fly t'ree time
around--you fly to Algiers an' back--you t'ink you are another Farman
brother--you are a damn fool! Suppose your motor he stop while you fly
over San Mateo? Where you land? In a well? In a chimney? _Hein?_ You
know naut'ing yet. Next time you do what I tal' you. _Zut!_ That was a
flight, a flight, you make a flight, that was fine, fine, you make the
heart to swell. But nex' time you break the chassis and keel yourself,
_nom d'un tonnerre_, I scol' you!"
Carl was humble. But the _Courier_ reporter spread upon the front page
the story of "Marvelous first flight by Bagby student," and predicted
that a new Curtiss was coming out of California. Under a half-tone ran
the caption, "Ericson, the New Hawk of the Birdmen."
The camp promptly nicknamed him "Hawk." They used it for plaguing him
at first, but it survived as an expression of fondness--Hawk Ericson,
the cheeriest man in the school, and the coolest flier.
CHAPTER XIX
Not all their days were spent in work. There were mornings when the
wind would not permit an ascent and when there was nothing to do in
the workshop. They sat about the lunch-wagon wrangling endlessly, or,
like Carl and Forrest Haviland, wandered through fields which were all
one flame with poppies.
Lieutenant Haviland had given up trying to feel comfortable with the
naval ensign student, who was one of the solemn worthies who clear
their throats before speaking, and then speak in measured terms of
brands of cigars and weather. Gradually, working side by side with
Carl, Haviland seemed to find him a friend in whom to confide. Once or
twice they went by trolley to San Francisco, to explore Chinatown or
drop in on soldier friends of Haviland at the Presidio.
* * * * *
From the porch of a studio on Telegraph Hill, in San Francisco, they
were looking down on the islands of the bay, waiting for the return of
an artist whom Haviland knew. Inarticulate dreamers both, they
expressed in monosyllables the glory of bluewater before them, the
tradition of R. L. S. and Frank Norris, the future of aviation. They
gave up the attempt to explain the magic of San Francisco--that
city-personality which transcends the opal hills and rare amber
sunlight, festivals, and the transplanted Italian hill-town of
Telegraph Hill, liners sailing out for Japan, and memories of the
Forty-niners. It was too subtle a spirit, too much of it lay in human
life with the passion of the Riviera linked to the strength of the
North, for them to be able to comprehend its spell.... But regarding
their own ambitions to do, they became eloquent.
"I say," hesitated Haviland, "why is it I can't get in with most of
the fellows at the camp the way you can? I've always been chummy
enough with the fellows at the Point and at posts."
"Because you've been brought up to be afraid to be anything but a
gentleman."
"Oh, I don't think it's that. I can get fond as the deuce of some of
the commonest common soldiers--and, Lord! some of them come from the
Bowery and all sorts of impossible places."
"Yes, but you always think of them as 'common.' They don't think of
each other that way. Suppose I'd worked----Well, just suppose I'd been
a Bowery bartender. Could you be loafing around here with me? Could
you go off on a bat with Jack Ryan?"
"Well, maybe not. Maybe working with Jack Ryan is a good thing for me.
I'm getting now so I can almost stand his stories! I envy you,
knocking around with all sorts of people. Oh, I _wish_ I could call
Ryan 'Jack' and feel easy about it. I can't. Perhaps I've got a little
of the subaltern snob some place in me."
"You? You're a prince."
"If you've elevated me to a princedom, the least I can do is to invite
you down home for a week-end--down to the San Spirito Presidio. My
father's commandant there."
"Oh, I'd like to, but----I haven't got a dress-suit."
"Buy one."
"Yes, I could do that, but----Oh, rats! Forrest, I've been knocking
around so long I feel shy about my table manners and everything. I'd
probably eat pie with my fingers."
"You make me so darn tired, Hawk. You talk about my having to learn to
chum with people in overalls. You've got to learn not to let people in
evening clothes put anything over on you. That's your difficulty from
having lived in the back-country these last two or three years. You
have an instinct for manners. But I did notice that as soon as you
found out I was in the army you spent half the time disliking me as a
militarist, and the other half expecting me to be haughty--Lord knows
what over. It took you two weeks to think of me as Forrest Haviland.
I'm ashamed of you! If you're a socialist you ought to think that
anything you like belongs to you."
"That's a new kind of socialism."
"So much the better. Me and Karl Marx, the economic inventors.... But
I was saying: if you act as though things belong to you people will
apologize to you for having borrowed them from you. And you've _got_
to do that, Hawk. You're going to be one of the best-known fliers in
the country, and you'll have to meet all sorts of big guns--generals
and Senators and female climbers that work the peace societies for
social position, and so on, and you've got to know how to meet
them.... Anyway, I want you to come to San Spirito."
To San Spirito they went. During the three days preceding, Carl was
agonized at the thought of having to be polite in the presence of
ladies. No matter how brusquely he told himself, "I'm as good as
anybody," he was uneasy about forks and slang and finger-nails, and
looked forward to the ordeal with as much pleasure as a man about to
be hanged, hanged in a good cause, but thoroughly.
Yet when Colonel Haviland met them at San Spirito station, and Carl
heard the kindly salutation of the gracious, fat, old Indian-fighter,
he knew that he had at last come home to his own people--an impression
that was the stronger because the house of Oscar Ericson had been so
much house and so little home. The colonel was a widower, and for his
only son he showed a proud affection which included Carl. The three of
them sat in state, after dinner, on the porch of Quarters No. 1,
smoking cigars and looking down to a spur of the Santa Lucia
Mountains, where it plunged into the foam of the Pacific. They talked
of aviation and eugenics and the Benet-Mercier gun, of the post
doctor's sister who had come from the East on a visit, and of a
riding-test, but their hearts spoke of affection.... Usually it is a
man and a woman that make home; but three men, a stranger one of them,
talking of motors on a porch in the enveloping dusk, made for one
another a home to remember always.
They stayed over Monday night, for a hop, and Carl found that the
officers and their wives were as approachable as Hank Odell. They did
not seem to be waiting for young Ericson to make social errors. When
he confessed that he had forgotten what little dancing he knew, the
sister of the post doctor took him in hand, retaught him the waltz,
and asked with patent admiration: "How does it feel to fly? Don't you
get frightened? I'm terribly in awe of you and Mr. Haviland. I know I
should be frightened to death, because it always makes me dizzy just
to look down from a high building."
Carl slipped away, to be happy by himself, and hid in the shadow of
palms on the porch, lapped in the flutter of pepper-trees. The
orchestra began a waltz that set his heart singing. He heard a girl
cry: "Oh, goody! the 'Blue Danube'! We must go in and dance that."
"The Blue Danube." The name brought back the novels of General Charles
King, as he had read them in high-school days; flashed the picture of
a lonely post, yellow-lighted, like a topaz on the night-swathed
desert; a rude ball-room, a young officer dancing to the "Blue
Danube's" intoxication; a hot-riding, dusty courier, hurling in with
news of an Apache outbreak; a few minutes later a troop of cavalry
slanting out through the gate on horseback, with a farewell burning
the young officer's lips.... He was in just such an army story, now!
The scent of royal climbing-roses enveloped Carl as that picture
changed into others. San Spirito Presidio became a vast military
encampment over which Hawk Ericson was flying.... From his monoplane
he saw a fairy town, with red roofs rising to a tower of fantastic
turrets. (That was doubtless the memory of a magazine-cover painted by
Maxfield Parrish.)... He was wandering through a poppy-field with a
girl dusky of eyes, soft black of hair, ready for any jaunt....
Pictures bright and various as tropic shells, born of music and peace
and his affection for the Havilands; pictures which promised him the
world. For the first time Hawk Ericson realized that he might be a
Personage instead of a back-yard boy.... The girl with twilight eyes
was smiling.
* * * * *
The Bagby camp broke up on the first of May, with all of them, except
one of the nondescript collegians and the air-current student, more or
less trained aviators. Carl was going out to tour small cities, for
the George Flying Corporation. Lieutenant Haviland was detailed to the
army flying-camp.
Parting with Haviland and kindly Hank Odell, with Carmeau and
anxiously polite Tony Bean, was as wistful as the last night of senior
year. Till the old moon rose, sad behind tulip-trees, they sat on
packing-boxes by the larger hangar, singing in close harmony "Sweet
Adeline," "Teasing," "I've Been Working on the Railroad."... "Hay-ride
classics, with barber-shop chords," the songs are called, but tears
were in Carl's eyes as the minors sobbed from the group of comrades
who made fun of one another and were prosaic and pounded their heels
on the packing-boxes--and knew that they were parting to face death.
Carl felt Forrest Haviland's hand on one shoulder, then an awkward pat
from tough Jack Ryan's paw, as Tony Bean's violin turned the plaintive
half-light into music, and broke its heart in the "Moonlight Sonata."
CHAPTER XX
"Yuh, piston-ring burnt off and put the exhaust-valve on the blink.
That means one cylinder out of business," growled Hawk Ericson. "I
could fly, maybe, but I don't like to risk it in this wind. It was bad
enough this morning when I tried it."
"Oh, this hick town 's going to be the death of us, all right--and
Riverport to-morrow, with a contract nice as pie, if we can only get
there," groaned his manager, Dick George, a fat man with much muscle
and more diamonds. "Listen to that crowd. Yelling for blood. Sounds
like a bunch of lumber-jacks with the circus slow in starting."
The head-line feature of the Onamwaska County spring fair was "Hawk
Ericson, showing the most marvelous aerial feats of the ages with the
scientific marvels of aviation, in his famous French Bleriot
flying-machine, the first flying-machine ever seen in this state, no
balloon or fake, come to Onamwaska by the St. L. & N." The spring fair
was usually a small gathering of farmers to witness races and new
agricultural implements, but this time every road for thirty-five
miles was dust-fogged with buggies and democrat wagons and small
motor-cars. Ten thousand people were packed about the race-track.
It was Carl's third aviation event. A neat, though not imposing
figure, in a snug blue flannel suit, with his cap turned round on his
head, he went to the flap of the rickety tent which served as his
hangar. A fierce cry of "Fly! Fly! Why don't he fly?" was coming from
the long black lines edging the track, and from the mound of people on
the small grand stand; the pink blur of their faces turned toward
him--him, Carl Ericson; all of them demanding _him_! The five meek
police of Onamwaska were trotting back and forth, keeping them behind
the barriers. Carl was apprehensive lest this ten-thousandfold demand
drag him out, make him fly, despite a wind that was blowing the flags
out straight, and whisking up the litter of newspapers and
cracker-jack boxes and pink programs. While he stared out, an official
crossing the track fairly leaned up against the wind, which seized his
hat and sailed it to the end of the track.
"Some wind!" Carl grunted, stolidly, and went to the back of the
silent tent, to reread the local papers' accounts of his arrival at
Onamwaska. It was a picturesque narrative of the cheering mob
following him down the street ("Gee! that was _me_ they followed!"),
crowding into the office of the Astor House and making him autograph
hundreds of cards; of girls throwing roses ("Humph! geraniums is more
like it!") from the windows.
"A young man," wrote an enthusiastic female reporter, "handsome as a
Greek god, but honestly I believe he is still in his twenties; and he
is as slim and straight as a soldier, flaxen-haired and
rosy-cheeked--the birdman, the god of the air."
"Handsome as a Greek----" Carl commented. "I look like a Minnesota
Norwegian, and that ain't so bad, but handsome----Urrrrrg!... Sure
they love me, all right. Hear 'em yell. Oh, they love me like a dog
does a bone.... Saint Jemima! talk about football rooting.... Come on,
Greek god, buck up."
He glanced wearily about the tent, its flooring of long, dry grass
stained with ugly dark-blue lubricating-oil, under the tan light
coming through the canvas. His manager was sitting on a suit-case,
pretending to read a newspaper, but pinching his lower lip and
consulting his watch, jogging his foot ceaselessly. Their temporary
mechanic, who had given up trying to repair the lame valve, squatted
with bent head, biting his lip, harkening to the blood-hungry mob.
Carl's own nerves grew tauter and tauter as he saw the manager's
restless foot and the mechanic's tension. He strolled to the
monoplane, his back to the tent-opening.
He started as the manager exclaimed: "Here they come! After us!"
Outside the tent a sound of running.
The secretary of the fair, a German hardware-dealer with an
automobile-cap like a yachting-cap, panted in, gasping: "Come quick!
They won't wait any longer! I been trying to calm 'em down, but they
say you got to fly. They're breaking over the barriers into the track.
The p'lice can't keep 'em back."
Behind the secretary came the chairman of the entertainment committee,
a popular dairyman, who was pale as he demanded: "You got to play
ball, Mr. Ericson. I won't guarantee what 'll happen if you don't play
ball, Mr. Ericson. You got to make him fly, Mr. George. The crowd 's
breaking----"
Behind him charged a black press of people. They packed before the
tent, trying to peer in through the half-closed tent-opening, like a
crowd about a house where a policeman is making an arrest. Furiously:
"Where's the coward? Fake! Bring 'im out! Why don't he fly? He's a
fake! His flying-machine's never been off the ground! He's a
four-flusher! Run 'im out of town! Fake! Fake! Fake!"
The secretary and chairman stuck out deprecatory heads and coaxed the
mob. Carl's manager was an old circus-man. He had removed his collar,
tie, and flashy diamond pin, and was diligently wrapping the thong of
a black-jack about his wrist. Their mechanic was crawling under the
side of the tent. Carl caught him by the seat of his overalls and
jerked him back.
As Carl turned to face the tent door again the manager ranged up
beside him, trying to conceal the black-jack in his hand, and casually
murmuring, "Scared, Hawk?"
"Nope. Too mad to be scared."
The tent-flap was pulled back. Tossing hands came through. The
secretary and chairman were brushed aside. The mob-leader, a
red-faced, loud-voiced town sport, very drunk, shouted, "Come out and
fly or we'll tar and feather you!"
"Yuh, come on, you fake, you four-flusher!" echoed the voices.
The secretary and chairman were edging back into the tent, beside
Carl's cowering mechanic.
Something broke in Carl's hold on himself. With his arm drawn back,
his fist aimed at the point of the mob-leader's jaw, he snarled: "You
can't make me fly. You stick that ugly mug of yours any farther in and
I'll bust it. I'll fly when the wind goes down----You would, would
you?"
As the mob-leader started to advance, Carl jabbed at him. It was not a
very good jab. But the leader stopped. The manager, black-jack in
hand, caught Carl's arm, and ordered: "Don't start anything! They can
lick us. Just look ready. Don't say anything. We'll hold 'em till the
cops come. But nix on the punch."
"Right, Cap'n," said Carl.
It was a strain to stand motionless, facing the crowd, not answering
their taunts, but he held himself in, and in two minutes the yell
came: "Cheese it! The cops!" The mob unwillingly swayed back as
Onamwaska's heroic little band of five policemen wriggled through it,
requesting their neighbors to desist.... They entered the tent and,
after accepting cigars from Carl's manager, coldly told him that Carl
was a fake, and lucky to escape; that Carl would better "jump right
out and fly if he knew what was good for him." Also, they nearly
arrested the manager for possessing a black-jack, and warned him that
he'd better not assault any of the peaceable citizens of beautiful
Onamwaska....
When they had coaxed the mob behind the barriers, by announcing that
Ericson would now go up, Carl swore: "I won't move! They can't make
me!"
The secretary of the fair, who had regained most of his courage, spoke
up, pertly, "Then you better return the five hundred advance, pretty
quick sudden, or I'll get an attachment on your fake flying-machine!"
"You go----Nix, nix, Hawk, don't hit him; he ain't worth it. You go to
hell, brother," said the manager, mechanically. But he took Carl
aside, and groaned: "Gosh! we got to do something! It's worth two
thousand dollars to us, you know. Besides, we haven't got enough cash
in our jeans to get out of town, and we'll miss the big Riverport
purse.... Still, suit yourself, old man. Maybe I can get some money by
wiring to Chicago."
"Oh, let's get it over!" Carl sighed. "I'd love to disappoint
Onamwaska. We'll make fifteen thousand dollars this month and next,
anyway, and we can afford to spit 'em in the eye. But I don't want to
leave you in a hole.... Here you, mechanic, open up that tent-flap.
All the way across.... No, not like _that_, you boob!... So.... Come
on, now, help me push out the machine. Here you, Mr. Secretary, hustle
me a couple of men to hold her tail."
The crowd rose, the fickle crowd, scenting the promised blood, and
applauded as the monoplane was wheeled upon the track and turned to
face the wind. The mechanic and two assistants had to hold it as a
dust-filled gust caught it beneath the wings. As Carl climbed into the
seat and the mechanic went forward to start the engine, another squall
hit the machine and she almost turned over sidewise.
As the machine righted, the manager ran up and begged: "You never in
the world can make it in this wind, Hawk. Better not try it. I'll wire
for some money to get out of town with, and Onamwaska can go soak its
head."
"Nope. I'm gettin' sore now, Dick.... Hey you, mechanic: hurt that
wing when she tipped?... All right. Start her. Quick. While it's
calm."
The engine whirred. The assistants let go the tail. The machine
labored forward, but once it left the ground it shot up quickly. The
head-wind came in a terrific gust. The machine hung poised in air for
a moment, driven back by the gale nearly as fast as it was urged
forward by its frantically revolving propeller.
Carl was as yet too doubtful of his skill to try to climb above the
worst of the wind. If he could only keep a level course----
He fought his way up one side of the race-track. He crouched in his
seat, meeting the sandy blast with bent head. The parted lips which
permitted him to catch his breath were stubborn and hard about his
teeth. His hands played swiftly, incessantly, over the control as he
brought her back to even keel. He warped the wings so quickly that he
balanced like an acrobat sitting rockingly on a tight-wire. He was too
busy to be afraid or to remember that there was a throng of people
below him. But he was conscious that the grand stand, at the side of
the track, half-way down, was creeping toward him.
More every instant did he hate the clamor of the gale and the stream
of minute drops of oil, blown back from the engine, that spattered his
face. His ears strained for misfire of the engine, if it stopped he
would be hurled to earth. And one cylinder was not working. He forgot
that; kept the cloche moving; fought the wind with his will as with
his body.
Now, he was aware of the grand stand below him. Now, of the people at
the end of the track. He flew beyond the track, and turned. The whole
force of the gale was thrown behind him, and he shot back along the
other side of the race-track at eighty or ninety miles an hour.
Instantly he was at the end; then a quarter of a mile beyond the
track, over plowed fields, where upward currents of warm air
increased the pitching of the machine as he struggled to turn her
again and face the wind.
The following breeze was suddenly retarded and he dropped forty feet,
tail down.
He was only forty feet from the ground, falling straight, when he got
back to even keel and shot ahead. How safe the nest of the nacelle
where he sat seemed then! Almost gaily he swung her in a great
wavering circle--and the wind was again in his face, hating him,
pounding him, trying to get under the wings and turn the machine
turtle.
Twice more he worked his way about the track. The conscience of the
beginner made him perform a diffident Dutch roll before the grand
stand, but he was growling, "And that's all they're going to get.
See?"
As he soared to earth he looked at the crowd for the first time. His
vision was so blurred with oil and wind-soreness that he saw the
people only as a mass and he fancied that the stretch of slouch-hats
and derbies was a field of mushrooms swaying and tilted back. He was
curiously unconscious of the presence of women; he felt all the
spectators as men who had bawled for his death and whom he wanted to
hammer as he had hammered the wind.
He was almost down. He cut off his motor, glided horizontally three
feet above the ground, and landed, while the cheers cloaked even the
honking of the parked automobiles.
Carl's manager, fatly galloping up, shrilled, "How was it, old man?"
"Oh, it was pretty windy," said Carl, crawling down and rubbing the
kinks out of his arms. "But I think the wind 's going down. Tell the
announcer to tell our dear neighbors that I'll fly again at five."
"But weren't you scared when she dropped? You went down so far that
the fence plumb hid you. Couldn't see you at all. Ugh! Sure thought
the wind had you. Weren't you scared then? You don't look it."
"Then? Oh! Then. Oh yes, sure, I guess I was scared, all right!...
Say, we got that seat padded so she's darn comfortable now."
The crowd was collecting. Carl's manager chuckled to the president of
the fair association, "Well, that was some flight, eh?"
"Oh, he went down the opposite side of the track pretty fast, but why
the dickens was he so slow going up my side? My eyes ain't so good now
that it does me any good if a fellow speeds up when he's a thousand
miles away. And where's all these tricks in the air----"
"That," murmured Carl to his manager, "is the i-den-ti-cal man that
stole the blind cripple's crutch to make himself a toothpick."
CHAPTER XXI
The great Belmont Park Aero Meet, which woke New York to aviation, in
October, 1910, was coming to an end. That clever new American flier,
Hawk Ericson, had won only sixth place in speed, but he had won first
prize in duration, by a flight of nearly six hours, driving round and
round and round the pylons, hour on hour, safe and steady as a train,
never taking the risk of sensational banking, nor spiraling like
Johnstone, but amusing himself and breaking the tedium by keeping an
eye out on each circuit for a fat woman in a bright lavender top-coat,
who stood out in the dark line of people that flowed beneath. When he
had descended--acclaimed the winner--thousands of heads turned his way
as though on one lever; the pink faces flashing in such October
sunshine as had filled the back yard of Oscar Ericson, in Joralemon,
when a lonely Carl had performed duration feats for a sparrow. That
same shy Carl wanted to escape from the newspaper-men who came running
toward him. He hated their incessant questions--always the same: "Were
you cold? Could you have stayed up longer?"
Yet he had seen all New York go mad over aviation--rather, over news
about aviation. The newspapers had spread over front pages his name
and the names of the other fliers. Carl chuckled to himself, with
bashful awe, "Gee! can you beat it?--that's _me_!" when he beheld
himself referred to in editorial and interview and picture-caption as
a superman, a god. He heard crowds rustle, "Look, there's Hawk
Ericson!" as he walked along the barriers. He heard cautious
predictions from fellow-fliers, and loud declarations from outsiders,
that he was the coming cross-country champion. He was introduced to
the mayor of New York, two Cabinet members, an assortment of Senators,
authors, bank presidents, generals, and society rail-birds. He
regularly escaped from them--and their questions--to help the
brick-necked Hank Odell, from the Bagby School, who had entered for
the meet, but smashed up on the first day, and ever since had been
whistling and working over his machine and encouraging Carl, "Good
work, bud; you've got 'em all going."
With vast secrecy and a perception that this was twice as stirring as
steadily buzzing about in his Bleriot, he went down to the Bowery and,
in front of the saloon where he had worked as a porter four years
before, he bought a copy of the _Evening World_ because he knew that
on the third page of it was a large picture of him and a signed
interview by a special-writer. He peered into the saloon windows to
see if Petey McGuff was there, but did not find him. He went to the
street on which he had boarded in the hope that he might do something
for the girl who had been going wrong. The tenement had been torn
down, with blocks of others, to make way for a bridge-terminal, and he
saw the vision of the city's pitiless progress. This quest of old
acquaintances made him think of Joralemon. He informed Gertie Cowles
that he was now "in the aviation game, and everything is going very
well." He sent his mother a check for five hundred dollars, with
awkward words of affection.
A greater spiritual adventure was talking for hours, over a small
table in the basement of the Brevoort, to Lieutenant Forrest Haviland,
who was attending the Belmont Park Meet as spectator. Theirs was the
talk of tried friends; droning on for a time in amused comment, rising
to sudden table-pounding enthusiasms over aviators or explorers, with
exclamations of, "Is that the way it struck you, too? I'm awfully glad
to hear you say that, because that's just the way I felt about it."
They leaned back in their chairs and played with spoons and
reflectively broke up matches and volubly sketched plans of controls,
drawing on the table-cloth.
Carl took the sophisticated atmosphere of the Brevoort quite for
granted. Why _shouldn't_ he be there! And after the interest in him at
the meet it did not hugely abash him to hear a group at a table behind
him ejaculate: "I think that's Hawk Ericson, the aviator! Yes, sir,
that's--who--it--is!"
Finally the gods gave to Carl a new mechanic, a prince of mechanics,
Martin Dockerill. Martin was a tall, thin, hatchet-faced,
tousle-headed, slow-spoken, irreverent Irish-Yankee from Fall River;
the perfect type of American aviators; for while England sends out its
stately soldiers of the air, and France its short, excitable geniuses,
practically all American aviators and aviation mechanics are either
long-faced and lanky, like Martin Dockerill and Hank Odell, or slim,
good-looking youngsters of the college track-team type, like Carl and
Forrest Haviland.
Martin Dockerill ate pun'kin pie with his fingers, played "Marching
through Georgia" on the mouth-organ, admired burlesque-show women in
sausage-shaped pink tights, and wore balbriggan socks that always
reposed in wrinkles over the tops of his black shoes with frayed
laces. But he probably could build a very decent motor in the dark,
out of four tin cans and a crowbar. In A.D. 1910 he still believed in
hell and plush albums. But he dreamed of wireless power-transmission.
He was a Free and Independent American Citizen who called the Count de
Lesseps, "Hey, Lessup." But he would have gone with Carl aeroplaning
to the South Pole upon five minutes' notice--four minutes to devote to
the motor, and one minute to write, with purple indelible pencil, a
post-card to his aunt in Fall River. He was precise about only two
things--motor-timing and calling himself a "mechanician," not a
"mechanic." He became very friendly with Hank Odell; helped him
repair his broken machine, went with him to vaudeville, or stood with
him before the hangar, watching the automobile parties of pretty girls
with lordly chaperons that came to call on Grahame-White and Drexel.
"Some heart-winners, them guys, but I back my boss against them and
ev'body else, Hank," Martin would say.
* * * * *
The meet was over; the aviators were leaving. Carl had said farewell
to his new and well-loved friends, the pioneers of aviation--Latham,
Moisant, Leblanc, McCurdy, Ely, de Lesseps, Mars, Willard, Drexel,
Grahame-White, Hoxsey, and the rest. He was in the afterglow of the
meet, for with Titherington, the Englishman, and Tad Warren, the
Wright flier, he was going to race from Belmont Park to New Haven for
a ten-thousand-dollar prize jointly offered by a New Haven millionaire
and a New York newspaper. At New Haven the three competitors were to
join with Tony Bean (of the Bagby School) and Walter MacMonnies
(flying a Curtiss) in an exhibition meet.
Enveloped in baggy overalls over the blue flannel suit which he still
wore when flying, Carl was directing Martin Dockerill in changing his
spark-plugs, which were fouled. About him, the aviators were having
their machines packed, laughing, playing tricks on one another--boys
who were virile men; mechanics in denim who stammered to the
reporters, "Oh, well, I don't know----" yet who were for the time more
celebrated than Roosevelt or Harry Thaw or Bernard Shaw or Champion
Jack Johnson.
Before 9.45 A.M., when the race to New Haven was scheduled to start,
the newspaper-men gathered; but there were not many outsiders. Carl
felt the lack of the stimulus of thronging devotees. He worked
silently and sullenly. It was "the morning after." He missed Forrest
Haviland.
He began to be anxious. Could he get off on time?
Exactly at 9.45 Titherington made a magnificent start in his Henry
Farman biplane. Carl stared till the machine was a dot in the clouds,
then worked feverishly. Tad Warren, the second contestant, was testing
out his motor, ready to go. At that moment Martin Dockerill suggested
that the carburetor was dirty.
"I'll fly with her the way she is," Carl snapped, shivering with the
race-fever.
A cub reporter from the City News Association piped, like a
fox-terrier, "What time 'll you get off, Hawk?"
"Ten sharp."
"No, I mean what time will you really get off!"
Carl did not answer. He understood that the reporters were doubtful
about him, the youngster from the West who had been flying for only
six months. At last came the inevitable pest, the familiarly
suggestive outsider. A well-dressed, well-meaning old bore he was; a
complete stranger. He put his podgy hand on Carl's arm and puffed:
"Well, Hawk, my boy, give us a good flight to-day; not but what you're
going to have trouble. There's something I want to suggest to you. If
you'd use a gyroscope----"
"Oh, beat it!" snarled Carl. He was ashamed of himself--but more angry
than ashamed. He demanded of Martin, aside: "All right, heh? Can I fly
with the carburetor as she is? Heh?"
"All right, boss. Calm down, boss, calm down."
"What do you mean?"
"Look here, Hawk, I don't want to butt in. You can have old Martin for
a chopping-block any time you want to cut wood. But if you don't calm
down you'll get so screwed up mit nerves that you won't have any
control. Aw, come on, boss, speak pretty! Just keep your shirt on and
I'll hustle like a steam-engine."
"Well, maybe you're right. But these assistant aviators in the crowd
get me wild.... All right? Hoorray. Here goes.... Say, don't stop for
anything after I get off. Leave the boys to pack up, and you hustle
over to Sea Cliff for the speed-boat. You ought to be in New Haven
almost as soon as I am."
Calmer now, he peeled off his overalls, drew a wool-lined leather
jacket over his coat, climbed into the cockpit, and inspected the
indicators. As he was testing the spark Tad Warren got away.
Third and last was Carl. The race-fever shook him.
He would try to save time. Like the others, he had planned to fly from
Belmont Park across Long Island to Great Neck, and cross Long Island
Sound where it was very narrow. He studied his map. By flying across
to the vicinity of Hempstead Harbor and making a long diagonal flight
over water, straight over to Stamford, he would increase the factor of
danger, but save many miles; and the specifications of the race
permitted him to choose any course to New Haven. Thinking only of the
new route, taking time only to nod good-by to Martin Dockerill and
Hank Odell, he was off, into the air.
As the ground dropped beneath him and the green clean spaces and
innumerous towns of Long Island spread themselves out he listened to
the motor. Its music was clear and strong. Here, at least, the wind
was light.
He would risk the long over-water flight--very long they thought it in
1910.
In a few minutes he sighted the hills about Roslyn and began to climb,
up to three thousand feet. It was very cold. His hands were almost
numb on the control. He descended to a thousand feet, but the machine
jerked like a canoe shooting rapids, in the gust that swept up from
among the hills. The landscape rose swiftly at him over the ends of
the wings, now on one side, now on the other, as the machine rolled.
His arms were tired with the quick, incessant wing-warping. He rose
again. Then he looked at the Sound, and came down to three hundred
feet, lest he lose his way. For the Sound was white with fog.... No
wind out there!... Water and cloud blurred together, and the sky-line
was lost in a mass of somber mist, which ranged from filmy white to
the cold dead gray of old cigar-ashes. He wanted to hold back, not
dash out into that danger-filled twilight. But already he was roaring
over gray-green marshes, then was above fishing-boats that were slowly
rocking in water dully opaque as a dim old mirror. He noted two men on
a sloop, staring up at him with foolish, gaping, mist-wet faces.
Instantly they were left behind him. He rose, to get above the fog.
Even the milky, sulky water was lost to sight.
He was horribly lonely, abominably lonely.
At five hundred feet altitude he was not yet entirely above the fog.
Land was blotted out. Above him, gray sky and thin writhing filaments
of vapor. Beneath him, only the fog-bank, erupting here and there like
the unfolding of great white flowers as warm currents of air burst up
through the mist-blanket.
Completely solitary. All his friends were somewhere far distant, in a
place of solid earth and sun-warmed hangars. The whole knowable earth
had ceased to exist. There was only slatey void, through which he was
going on for ever. Or perhaps he was not moving. Always the same coil
of mist about him. He was horribly lonely.
He feared that the fog was growing thicker. He studied his compass
with straining eyes. He was startled by a gull's plunging up through
the mist ahead of him, and disappearing. He was the more lonely when
it was gone. His eyebrows and cheeks were wet with the steam. Drops of
moisture shone desolately on the planes. It was an unhealthy shine. He
was horribly lonely.
He pictured what would happen if the motor should stop and he should
plunge down through that flimsy vapor. His pontoonless frail monoplane
would sink almost at once.... It would be cold, swimming. How long
could he keep up? What chance of being found? He didn't want to fall.
The cockpit seemed so safe, with its familiar watch and map-stand and
supporting-wires. It was home. The wings stretching out on either side
of him seemed comfortingly solid, adequate to hold him up. But the
body of the machine behind him was only a framework, not even
inclosed. And cut in the bottom of the cockpit was a small hole for
observing the earth. He could see fog through it, in unpleasant
contrast to the dull yellow of the cloth sides and bottom. Not before
had it daunted him to look down through that hole. Now, however, he
kept his eyes away from it, and, while he watched the compass and
oil-gauge, and kept a straight course, he was thinking of how nasty it
would be to drop, drop down _there_, and have to swim. It would be
horribly lonely, swimming about a wrecked monoplane, hearing steamers'
fog-horns, hopeless and afar.
As he thought that, he actually did hear a steamer hoarsely whistling,
and swept above it, irresistibly. He started; his shoulders drooped.
More than once he wished that he could have seen Forrest Haviland
again before he started. He wished with all the poignancy of man's
affection for a real man that he had told Forrest, when they were
dining at the Brevoort, how happy he was to be with him. He was
horribly lonely.
He cursed himself for letting his thoughts become thin and damp as the
vapor about him. He shrugged his shoulders. He listened thankfully to
the steady purr of the engine and the whir of the propeller. He
_would_ get across! He ascended, hoping for a glimpse of the shore.
The fog-smothered horizon stretched farther and farther away. He was
unspeakably lonely.
Through a tear in the mist he saw sunshine reflected from houses on a
hill, directly before him, perhaps one mile distant. He shouted. He
was nearly across. Safe. And the sun was coming out.
Two minutes later he was turning north, between the water and a town
which his map indicated as Stamford. The houses beneath him seemed
companionable; friendly were the hand-waving crowds, and
factory-whistles gave him raucous greeting.
Instantly, now that he knew where he was, the race-fever caught him
again. Despite the strain of crossing the Sound, he would not for
anything have come down to rest. He began to wonder how afar ahead of
him were Titherington and Tad Warren.
He spied a train running north out of Stamford, swung over above it,
and raced with it. The passengers leaned out of the windows, trainmen
hung perilously from the opened doors of vestibuled platforms, the
engineer tooted his frantic greetings to a fellow-mechanic who, above
him in the glorious bird, sent telepathic greetings which the engineer
probably never got. The engineer speeded up; the engine puffed out
vast feathery plumes of dull black smoke. But he drew away from the
train as he neared South Norwalk.
He was ascending again when he noted something that seemed to be a
biplane standing in a field a mile away. He came down and circled the
field. It was Titherington's Farman biplane. He hoped that the kindly
Englishman had not been injured. He made out Titherington, talking to
a group about the machine. Relieved, he rose again, amused by the
ant-hill appearance as hundreds of people, like black bugs, ran toward
the stalled biplane, from neighboring farms and from a trolley-car
standing in the road.
He should not have been amused just then. He was too low. Directly
before him was a hillside crowned with trees. He shot above the trees,
cold in the stomach, muttering, "Gee! that was careless!"
He sped forward. The race-fever again. Could he pass Tad Warren as he
had passed Titherington? He whirled over the towns, shivering but
happy in the mellow, cool October air, far enough from the water to be
out of what fog the brightening sun had left. The fields rolled
beneath him, so far down that they were turned into continuous and
wonderful masses of brown and gold. He sang to himself. He liked
Titherington; he was glad that the Englishman had not been injured;
but it was good to be second in the race; to have a chance to win a
contest which the whole country was watching; to be dashing into a
rosy dawn of fame. But while he sang he was keeping a tense lookout
for Tad Warren. He had to pass him!
With the caution of the Scotchlike Norwegian, he had the cloche
constantly on the jiggle, with ceaseless adjustments to the wind,
which varied constantly as he passed over different sorts of terrain.
Once the breeze dropped him sidewise. He shot down to gain momentum,
brought her to even keel, and, as he set her nose up again, laughed
boisterously.
Never again would he be so splendidly young, never again so splendidly
sure of himself and of his medium of expression. He was to gain
wisdom, but never to have more joy of the race.
He was sure now that he was destined to pass Tad Warren.
The sun was ever brighter; the horizon ever wider, rimming the
saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the Sound he saw that the fog
had almost passed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl,
lapping the sands, smoking toward the radiant sky. He passed over
summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of
red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the
opal sea. Even for the racer there was peace.
He made out a mass of rock covered with autumn-hued trees to the left,
then a like rock to the right. "West and East Rock--New Haven!" he
cried.
The city mapped itself before him like square building-blocks on a
dark carpet, with railroad and trolley tracks like flashing
spider-webs under the October noon.
So he had arrived, then--and he had not caught Tad Warren. He was
furious.
He circled the city, looking for the Green, where (in this day before
the Aero Club of America battled against over-city flying) he was to
land. He saw the Yale campus, lazy beneath its elms, its towers and
turrets dreaming of Oxford. His anger left him.
He plunged down toward the Green--and his heart nearly stopped. The
spectators were scattered everywhere. How could he land without
crushing some one? With trees to each side and a church in front, he
was too far down to rise again. His back pressed against the back of
the little seat, and seemed automatically to be trying to restrain him
from this tragic landing.
The people were fleeing. In front there was a tiny space. But there
was no room to sail horizontally and come down lightly. He shut off
his motor and turned the monoplane's nose directly at the earth. She
struck hard, bounced a second. Her tail rose, and she started, with
dreadful deliberateness, to turn turtle. With a vault Carl was out of
the cockpit and clear of the machine as she turned over.
Oblivious of the clamorous crowd which was pressing in about him,
cutting off the light, replacing the clean smell of gasoline and the
upper air by the hot odor of many bodies, he examined the monoplane
and found that she had merely fractured the propeller and smashed the
rudder.
Some one was fighting through the crowd to his side--Tony Bean--Tony
the round, polite Mexican from the Bagby School. He was crying:
"_Hombre_, what a landing! You have saved lives.... Get out of the
way, all you people!"
Carl grinned and said: "Good to see you, Tony. What time did Tad
Warren get here? Where's----"
"He ees not here yet."
"What? Huh? How's that? Do I win? That----Say, gosh! I hope he hasn't
been hurt."
"Yes, you win."
A newspaper-man standing beside Tony said: "Warren had to come down at
Great Neck. He sprained his shoulder, but that's all."
"That's good."
"But you," insisted Tony, "aren't you badly jarred, Hawk?"
"Not a bit."
The gaping crowd, hanging its large collective ear toward the two
aviators, was shouting: "Hoorray! He's all right!"--As their voices
rose Carl became aware that all over the city hundreds of
factory-whistles and bells were howling their welcome to him--the
victor.
The police were clearing a way for him. As a police captain touched a
gold-flashing cap to him, Carl remembered how afraid of the police
that hobo Slim Ericson had been.
Tony and he completed examination of the machine, with Tony's
mechanician, and sent it off to a shop, to await Martin Dockerill's
arrival by speed-boat and racing-automobile. Carl went to receive
congratulations--and a check--from the prize-giver, and a reception by
Yale officials on the campus. Before him, along his lane of passage,
was a kaleidoscope of hands sticking out from the wall of
people--hands that reached out and shook his own till they were sore,
hands that held out pencil and paper to beg for an autograph, hands of
girls with golden flowers of autumn, hands of dirty, eager, small
boys--weaving, interminable hands. Dizzy with a world peopled only by
writhing hands, yet moved by their greeting, he made his way across
the Green, through Phelps Gateway, and upon the campus. Twisting his
cap and wishing that he had taken off his leather flying-coat, he
stood upon a platform and heard officials congratulating him.
The reception was over. But the people did not move. And he was very
tired. He whispered to a professor: "Is that a dormitory, there
behind us? Can I get into it and get away?"
The professor beckoned to one of the collegians, and replied, "I
think, Mr. Ericson, if you will step down they will pass you into
Vanderbilt Courtyard--by the gate back of us--and you will be able to
escape."
Carl trusted himself to the bunch of boys forming behind him, and
found himself rushed into the comparative quiet of a Tudor courtyard.
A charming youngster, hatless and sleek of hair, cried, "Right this
way, Mr. Ericson--up this staircase in the tower--and we'll give 'em
the slip."
From the roar of voices to the dusky quietude of the hallway was a
joyous escape. Suddenly Carl was a youngster, permitted to see Yale, a
university so great that, from Plato College, it had seemed an
imperial myth. He stared at the list of room-occupants framed and hung
on the first floor. He peeped reverently through an open door at a
suite of rooms.
He was taken to a room with a large collection of pillows, fire-irons,
Morris chairs, sets of books in crushed levant, tobacco-jars and
pipes--a restless and boyish room, but a real haven. He stared out
upon the campus, and saw the crowd stolidly waiting for him. He
glanced round at his host and waved his hand deprecatingly, then tried
to seem really grown up, really like the famous Hawk Ericson. But he
wished that Forrest Haviland were there so that he might marvel: "Look
at 'em, will you! Waiting for _me!_ Can you beat it? Some start for my
Yale course!"
In a big chair, with a pipe supplied by the youngster, he shyly tried
to talk to a senior in the great world of Yale (he himself had not
been able to climb to seniorhood even in Plato), while the awed
youngster shyly tried to talk to the great aviator.
He had picked up a Yale catalogue and he vaguely ruffled its pages,
thinking of the difference between its range of courses and the petty
inflexible curriculum of Plato. Out of the pages leaped the name
"Frazer." He hastily turned back. There it was: "Henry Frazer, A.M.,
Ph.D., Assistant Professor in English Literature."
Carl rejoiced boyishly that, after his defeat at Plato, Professor
Frazer had won to victory. He forgot his own triumph. For a second he
longed to call on Frazer and pay his respects. "No," he growled to
himself, "I've been so busy hiking that I've forgotten what little
book-learnin' I ever had. I'd like to see him, but----By gum! I'm
going to begin studying again."
Hidden away in the youngster's bedroom for a nap, he dreamed
uncomfortably of Frazer and books. That did not keep him from making a
good altitude flight at the New Haven Meet that afternoon, with his
hastily repaired machine and a new propeller. But he thought of new
roads for wandering in the land of books, as he sat, tired and sleepy,
but trying to appear bright and appreciative, at the big dinner in his
honor--the first sacrificial banquet to which he had been
subjected--with earnest gentlemen in evening clothes, glad for an
excuse to drink just a little too much champagne; with mayors and
councilmen and bankers; with the inevitable stories about the man who
was accused of stealing umbrellas and about the two skunks on a fence
enviously watching a motor-car.
Equally inevitable were the speeches praising Carl's flight as a
"remarkable achievement, destined to live forever in the annals of
sport and heroism, and to bring one more glory to the name of our fair
city."
Carl tried to appear honored, but he was thinking: "Rats! I'll live in
the annals of nothin'! Curtiss and Brookins and Hoxsey have all made
longer flights than mine, in this country alone, and they're aviators
I'm not worthy to fill the gas-tanks of.... Gee! I'm sleepy! Got to
look polite, but I wish I could beat it.... Let's see. Now look here,
young Carl; starting in to-morrow, you begin to read oodles of books.
Let's see. I'll start out with Forrest's favorites. There's _David
Copperfield_, and that book by Wells, _Tono-Bungay_, that's got aerial
experiments in it, and _Jude the Ob--, Obscure_, I guess it is, and
_The Damnation of Theron Ware_ (wonder what he damned), and
_McTeague_, and _Walden_, and _War and Peace_, and _Madame Bovary_,
and some Turgenev and some Balzac. And something more serious. Guess
I'll try William James's book on psychology."
He bought them all next morning. His other belongings had been suited
to rapid transportation, and Martin Dockerill grumbled, "That's a
swell line of baggage, all right--one tooth-brush, a change of socks,
and ninety-seven thousand books."
Two nights later, in a hotel at Portland, Maine, Carl was plowing
through the Psychology. He hated study. He flipped the pages angrily,
and ran his fingers through his corn-colored hair. But he sped on,
concentrated, stopping only to picture a day when the people who
honored him publicly would also know him in private. Somewhere among
them, he believed, was the girl with whom he could play. He would meet
her at some aero race, and she would welcome him as eagerly as he
welcomed her.... Had he, perhaps, already met her? He walked over to
the writing-table and scrawled a note to Gertie Cowles--regarding the
beauty of the Yale campus.
CHAPTER XXII
(_Editor's Note_: The following pages are extracts from a diary kept
by Mr. C. O. Ericson in a desultory fashion from January, 1911, to the
end of April, 1912. They are reprinted quite literally. Apparently Mr.
Ericson had no very precise purpose in keeping his journal. At times
it seems intended as _materia_ for future literary use; at others, as
comments for his own future amusement; at still others, as a sort of
long letter to be later sent to his friend, Lieut. Forrest Haviland,
U.S.A. I have already referred to them in my _Psycho-Analysis of the
Subconscious with Reference to Active Temperaments_, but here reprint
them less for their appeal to us as a scientific study of reactions
than as possessing, doubtless, for those interested in pure narrative,
a certain curt expression of somewhat unusual exploits, however
inferior is their style to a more critical thesis on the adventurous.)
_May 9_, (_1911_). Arrived at Mineola flying field, N. Y. to try out
new Bagby monoplane I have bought. Not much accomodation here yet.
Many of us housed in tents. Not enough hangars. We sit around and tell
lies in the long grass at night, like a bunch of kids out camping.
Went over and had a beer at Peter McLoughlin's today, that's where
Glenn Curtiss started out from to make his first flight for Sci. Amer.
cup.
Like my new Bagby machine better than Bleriot in many respects, has
non-lifting tail, as should all modern machines. Rudder and elevator a
good deal like the Nieuport. One passenger. Roomy cockpit and enclosed
fuselage. Bleriot control. Nearer streamline than any American plane
yet. Span, 33.6 ft., length 24, chord of wing at fuselage 6' 5''.
Chauviere propeller, 6' 6'', pitch 4' 5''. Dandy new Gnome engine, 70
h.p., should develop 60 to 80 m.p.h.
Martin Dockerill my mechanician is pretty cute. He said to me to-day
when we were getting work-bench up, "I bet a hat the spectators all
flock here, now. Not that you're any better flier than some of the
other boys, but you got the newest plane for them to write their names
on."
Certainly a scad of people butting in. Come in autos and motor cycles
and on foot, and stand around watching everything you do till you want
to fire a monkey wrench at them.
Hank Odell has joined the Associated Order of the Pyramid and just now
he is sitting out in front of his tent talking to some of the Grand
Worthy High Mighties of it I guess--fat old boy with a yachting cap
and a big brass watch chain and an Order of Pyramid charm big as your
thumb, and a tough young fellow with a black sateen shirt and his hat
on sideways with a cigarette hanging out of one corner of his mouth.
Since I wrote the above a party of sports, the women in fade-away
gowns made to show their streamline forms came butting in, poking
their fingers at everything, while the slob that owned their car
explained everything wrong. "This is a biplane," he says, "you can see
there's a plane sticking out on each side of the place where the
aviator sits, it's a new areoplane (that's the way he pronounced it),
and that dingus in front is a whirling motor." I was sitting here at
the work-bench, writing, hot as hell and sweaty and in khaki pants and
soft shirt and black sneakers, and the Big Boss comes over to me and
says, "Where is Hawk Ericson, my man." "How do I know," I says. "When
will he be back," says he, as though he was thinking of getting me
fired p. d. q. for being fresh. "Next week. He ain't come yet."
He gets sore and says, "See here, my man, I read in the papers to-day
that he has just joined the flying colony. Permit me to inform you
that he is a very good friend of mine. If you will ask him, I am quite
sure that he will remember Mr. Porter Carruthers, who was introduced
to him at the Belmont Park Meet. Now if you will be so good as to show
the ladies and myself about----" Well, I asked Hawk, and Hawk seemed
to be unable to remember his friend Mr. Carruthers, who was one of the
thousand or so people recently introduced to him, but he told me to
show them about, which I did, and told them the Gnome was built radial
to save room, and the wires overhead were a frame for a little roof
for bad weather, and they gasped and nodded to every fool thing I
said, swallowed it hook line and sinker till one of the females showed
her interest by saying "How fascinating, let's go over to the Garden
City Hotel, Porter, I'm dying for a drink." I hope she died for it.
_May 10_: Up at three, trying out machine. Smashed landing chassis in
coming down, shook me up a little. Interesting how when I rose it was
dark on the ground but once up was a little red in the east like smoke
from a regular fairy city.
Another author out to-day bothering me for what he called "copy."
Must say I've met some darn decent people in this game though. To-day
there was a girl came out with Billy Morrison of the N. Y. Courier,
she is an artist but crazy about outdoor life, etc. Named Istra Nash,
a red haired girl, slim as a match but the strangest face, pale but it
lights up when she's talking to you. Took her up and she was not
scared, most are.
_May 11_: Miss Istra Nash came out by herself. She's thinking quite
seriously about learning to fly. She sat around and watched me work,
and when nobody was looking smoked a cigarette. Has recently been in
Europe, Paris, London, etc.
Somehow when I'm talking to a woman like her I realize how little I
see of women with whom I can be really chummy, tho I meet so many
people at receptions etc. sometimes just after I have been flying
before thousands of people I beat it to my hotel and would be glad for
a good chat with the night clerk, of course I can bank on Martin
Dockerill to the limit but when I talk to a person like Miss Nash I
realize I need some one who knows good art from bad. Though Miss Nash
doesn't insist on talking like a high-brow, indeed is picking up
aviation technologies very quickly. She talks German like a native.
Think Miss Nash is perhaps older than I am, perhaps couple of years,
but doesn't make any difference.
Reading a little German to-night, almost forgot what I learned of it
in Plato.
_May 14, Sunday_: Went into town this afternoon and went with Istra to
dinner at the Lafayette. She told me all about her experiences in
Paris and studying art. She is quite discontented here in N. Y. I
don't blame her much, it must have been bully over in Paree. We sat
talking till ten. Like to see Vedrines fly, and the Louvre and the gay
grisettes too by heck! Istra ought not to drink so many cordials, nix
on the booze you learn when you try to keep in shape for flying,
though Tad Warren doesn't seem to learn it. After ten we went to
studio where Istra is staying on Washington Sq. several of her friends
there and usual excitement and fool questions about being an aviator,
it always makes me feel like a boob. But they saw Istra and I wanted
to be alone and they beat it.
This is really dawn but I'll date it May 14, which is yesterday. No
sleep for me to-night, I'm afraid. Going to fly around NY in aerial
derby this afternoon. Must get plenty sleep now.
_May 15_: Won derby, not much of an event though. Struck rotten
currents over Harlem River, machine rolled like a whale-back.
Istra out here to-morrow. Glad. But after last night afraid I'll get
so I depend on her, and the aviator that keeps his nerve has to be
sort of a friendless cuss some ways.
_May 16_: Istra came out here. Seems very discontented. I'm afraid
she's the kind to want novelty and attention incessantly, she seems to
forget that I'm pretty busy.
_May 17_: Saw Istra in town, she forgot all her discontent and her
everlasting dignity and danced for me then came over and kissed me,
she is truly a wonder, can hum a French song so you think you're among
the peasants, but she expects absolute devotion and constant amusing
and I must stick to my last if a mechanic like me is to amount to
anything.
_May 18_: Istra out here, she sat around and looked bored, wanted to
make me sore, I think. When I told her I had to leave to-morrow
morning for Rochester and couldn't come to town for dinner etc. she
flounced home. I'm sorry, I'm mighty sorry; poor kid she's always
going to be discontented wherever she is, and always getting some one
and herself all wrought up. She always wants new sensations yet
doesn't want to work, and the combination isn't very good. It'd be
great if she really worked at her painting, but she usually stops her
art just this side of the handle of a paint-brush.
Curious thing is that when she'd gone and I sat thinking about her I
didn't miss her so much as Gertie Cowles. I hope I see Gertie again
some day, she is a good pal.
Istra wanted me to name my new monoplane Babette, because she says it
looks "cunning" which the Lord knows it don't, it may look efficient
but not cunning. But I don't think I'll name it anything, tho she says
that shows lack of imagination.
People especially reporters are always asking me this question, do
aviators have imagination? I'm not sure I know what imagination is.
It's like this stuff about "sense of humor." Both phrases are pretty
bankrupt now. A few years ago when I was running a car I would make
believe I was different people, like a king driving through his
kingdom, but when I'm warping and banking I don't have time to think
about making believe. Of course I do notice sunsets and so on a good
deal but that is not imagination. And I do like to go different
places; possibly I take the imagination out that way--I guess
imagination is partly wanting to be places where you aren't--well, I
go when I want to, and I like that better.
Anyway darned if I'll give my monoplane a name. Tad Warren has been
married to a musical comedy soubrette with ringlets of red-brown hair
(Istra's hair is quite bright red, but this woman has dark red hair,
like the color of California redwood chips, no maybe darker) and she
wears a slimpsy bright blue dress with the waist-line nearly down to
her knees, and skirt pretty short, showing a lot of ankle, and a kind
of hat I never noticed before, must be getting stylish now I guess,
flops down so it almost hides her face like a basket. She's a typical
wife for a 10 h.p. aviator with exhibition fever. She and Tad go joy
riding almost every night with a bunch of gasoline and alcohol sports
and all have about five cocktails and dance a new Calif. dance called
the Turkey Trot. This bunch have named Tad's new Wright "Sammy," and
they think it's quite funny to yell "Hello Sammy, how are you, come
have a drink."
I guess I'll call mine a monoplane and let it go at that.
* * * * *
_July 14_: Quebec. Lost race Toronto to Quebec. Had fair chance to win
but motor kept misfiring, couldn't seem to get plugs that would work,
and smashed hell out of elevator coming down on tail when landing
here. Glad Hank Odell won, since I lost. Hank has designed new
rocker-arm for Severn motor valves. All of us invited to usual big
dinner, never did see so many uniforms, also members of Canadian
parliament. I don't like to lose a race, but thunder it doesn't bother
me long. Good filet of sole at dinner. Sat near a young lieutenant,
leftenant I suppose it is, who made me think of Forrest Haviland. I
miss Forrest a lot. He's doing some good flying for the army, flying
Curtiss hydro now, and trying out muffler for military scouting. What
I like as much as anything about him is his ease, I hope I'm learning
a little of it anyway. This stuff is all confused but must hustle off
to reception at summer school of Royal College for Females. Must send
all this to old Forrest to read some day--if you ever see this,
Forrest, hello, dear old man, I thought about you when I flew over
military post.
_Later_: Big reception, felt like an awful nut, so shy I didn't hardly
dare look up off the ground. After the formal reception I was taken
around the campus by the Lady President, nice old lady with white hair
and diamond combs in it. What seemed more than a million pretty girls
kept dodging out of doorways and making snapshots of me. Good thing
I've been reading quite a little lately, as the Lady Principal (that
was it, not Lady President) talked very high brow. She asked me what I
thought of this "terrible lower class unrest." Told her I was a
socialist and she never batted an eye--of course an aviator is
permitted to be a nut. Wonder if I am a good socialist as a matter of
fact, I do know that most governments, maybe all, permit most children
to never have a chance, start them out by choking them with dirt and
T.B. germs, but how can we make international solidarity seem
practical to the dub average voters, _how_!
Letter from Gertie to-night, forwarded here. She seems sort of bored
in Joralemon, but is working hard with Village Improvement Committee
of woman's club for rest room for farmers' wives, also getting up P.E.
Sunday school picnic. Be good for Istra if she did common nice things
like that, since she won't really get busy with her painting, but how
she'd hate me for suggesting that she be what she calls "burjoice."
Guess Gertie is finding herself. Hope yours truly but sleepy is
finding himself too. How I love my little bed!
CHAPTER XXIII
(THE DIARY OF MR. ERICSON, CONTINUED.--EDITOR)
_AUGUST 20_, (_1911, as before_): Big Chicago meet over. They sure did
show us a good time. Never saw better meet. Won finals in duration
to-day. Also am second in altitude, but nix on the altitude again, I'm
pretty poor at it. I'm no Lincoln Beachey! Don't see how he breathes.
His 11,578 ft. was _some_ climb.
Tomorrow starts my biggest attempt, by far; biggest distance flight
ever tried in America, and rather niftier than even the European
Circuit and British Circuit that Beaumont has won.
To fly as follows: Chicago to St. Louis to Indianapolis to Columbus to
Washington to Baltimore to Philadelphia to Atlantic City to New York.
The New York Chronicle in company with papers along line gives prize
of $40,000. Ought to help bank account if win, in spite of big
expenses to undergo. Now have $30,000 stowed away, and have sent
mother $3,000.
To fly against my good old teacher M. Carmeau, and Tony Bean, Walter
MacMonnies, M. Beaufort the Frenchman, Tad Warren, Billy Witzer, Chick
Bannard, Aaron Solomons and other good men. Special NY Chronicle
reporter, fellow named Forbes, assigned to me, and he hangs around all
the time, sort of embarrassing (hurray, spelled it right, I guess) but
I'm getting used to the reporters.
Martin Dockerill has an ambition! He said to me to-day, "Say, Hawk, if
you win the big race you got to give me five plunks for my share and
then by gum I'm going to buy two razor-strops." "What for?" I said.
"Oh I bet there ain't anybody else in the world that owns _two_
razor-strops!"
Not much to say about banquet, lots of speeches, good grub.
What tickles me more than anything is my new flying garments--not
clothes but _garments_, by heck! I'm going to be a regular little old
aviator in a melodrama. I've been wearing plain suits and a cap, same
good old cap, always squeegee on my head. But for the big race I've
got riding breeches and puttees and a silk shirt and a tweed Norfolk
jacket and new leather coat and French helmet with both felt and
springs inside the leather--this last really valuable. The real stage
aviator, that's me. Watch the photographers fall for it. I bet Tad
Warren's Norfolk jacket is worth $10,000 a year to him!
I pretended to Martin that I was quite serious about the clothes, the
garments I mean. I dolled myself all up last night and went swelling
into my hangar and anxiously asked Martin if he didn't like the
get-up, and he nearly threw a fit. "Good Lord," he groans, "you look
like an aviator on a Ladies Home Journal cover, guaranteed not to
curse, swear or chaw tobacco. What's become of that girl you was
kissing, last time I seen you on the cover?"
_August 25_: Not much time to write diary on race like this, it's just
saw wood all the time or lose.
Bad wind to-day. Sometimes the wind don't bother me when I am flying,
and sometimes, like to-day, it seems as though the one thing in the
whole confounded world is the confounded wind that roars in your ears
and makes your eyes water and sneaks down your collar to chill your
spine and goes scooting up your sleeves, unless you have gauntlets,
and makes your ears sting. Roar, roar, roar, the wind's worse than the
noisiest old cast-iron tin-can Vrenskoy motor. You want to duck your
head and get down out of it, and Lord it tires you so--aviation isn't
all "brilliant risks" and "daring dives" and that kind of
blankety-blank circus business, not by a long shot it ain't, lots of
it is just sticking there and bucking the wind like a taxi driver
speeding for a train in a storm. Tired to-night and mad.
_September 5_: New York! I win! Plenty smashes but only got jarred. I
beat out Beaufort by eight hours, and Aaron Solomons by nearly a day.
Carmeau's machine hopelessly smashed in Columbus, but he was not hurt,
but poor Tad Warren _killed_ crossing Illinois.
_September 8_: Had no time to write about my reception here in New
York till now.
I've been worrying about poor Tad Warren's wife, bunch of us got
together and made up a purse for her. Nothing more pathetic than these
poor little women that poke down the cocktails to keep excited and
then go to pieces.
I don't believe I was very decent to Tad. Sitting here alone in a
hotel room, it seems twice as lonely after the fuss and feathers these
last few days, a fellow thinks of all the rotten things he ever did.
Poor old Tad. Too late now to cheer him up. Too late. Wonder if they
shouldn't have called off race when he was killed.
Wish Istra wouldn't keep calling me up. Have I _got_ to be rude to
her? I'd like to be decent to her, but I can't stand the cocktail
life. Lord, that time she danced, though.
Poor Tad was [See Transcriber's note.]
Oh hell, to get back to the reception. It was pretty big. Parade of
the Aero Club and Squadron A, me in an open-face hack, feeling like a
boob while sixty leven billion people cheered. Then reception by
mayor, me delivering letter from mayor of Chicago which I had cutely
sneaked out in Chicago and mailed to myself here, N. Y. general
delivery, so I wouldn't lose it on the way. Then biggest dinner I've
ever seen, must have been a thousand there, at the Astor, me very
natty in a new dress suit (hey bo, I fooled them, it was ready-made
and cost me just $37.50 and fitted like my skin.)
Mayor, presidents of boroughs of NY, district attorney, vice president
of U.S., lieut. governor of NY, five or six senators, chief of
ordnance, U.S.A., arctic explorers and hundreds like that, but most of
all Forrest Haviland whom I got them to stick right up near me.
Speeches mostly about me, I nearly rubbed the silver off my flossy new
cigarette case keeping from looking foolish while they were telling
about me and the future of aviation and all them interesting subjects.
Forrest and I sneaked off from the reporters next afternoon, had quiet
dinner down in Chinatown.
We have a bully plan. If we can make it and if he can get leave we
will explore the headwaters of the Amazon with a two-passenger Curtiss
flying boat, maybe next year.
Now the reception fans have done their darndest and all the excitement
is over including the shouting and I'm starting for Newport to hold a
little private meet of my own, backed by Thomas J. Watersell, the
steel magnate, and by to-morrow night NY will forget me. I realized
that after the big dinner. I got on the subway at Times Square, jumped
quick into the car just as the doors were closing, and the guard
yapped at me, "What are you trying to do, Billy, kill yourself?" He
wasn't spending much time thinking about famous Hawk Ericson, and I
got to thinking how comfortable NY will manage to go on being when
they no longer read in the morning paper whether I dined with the
governor, or with Martin Dockerill at Bazoo Junction Depot Lunch
Counter.
They forget us quick. And already there's a new generation of
aviators. Some of the old giants are gone, poor Moisant and Hoxsey and
Johnstone and the rest killed, and there's coming along a bunch of
youngsters that can fly enough to grab the glory, and they spread out
the glory pretty thin. They go us old fellows except Beachey a few
better on aerial acrobatics, and that's what the dear pee-pul like.
(For a socialist I certainly do despise the pee-pul's _taste_!) I
won't do any flipflops in the air no matter what the county fair
managers write me. Somehow I'd just as soon be alive and exploring the
Amazon with old Forrest as dead after "brilliant feats of fearless
daring." Go to it, kids, good luck, only test your supporting wires,
and don't try to rival Lincoln Beachey, he's a genius.
Glad got a secretary for a couple days to handle all this mail.
Hundreds of begging letters and mash notes from girls since I won the
big prize. Makes me feel funny! One nice thing out of the mail--letter
from the Turk, Jack Terry, that I haven't seen since Plato. He didn't
graduate, his old man died and he is assistant manager of quite a good
sized fisheries out in Oregon, glad to hear from him again. Funny, I
haven't thought of him for a year.
I feel lonely and melancholy to-night in spite of all I do to cheer
up. Let up after reception etc. I suppose. I feel like calling up
Istra, after all, but mustn't. I ought to hit the hay, but I couldn't
sleep. Poor Tad Warren.
(_The following words appear at the bottom of a page, in a faint, fine
handwriting unlike Mr. Ericson's usual scrawl.--The Editor_):
Whatever spirits there be, of the present world or the future, take
this prayer from a plain man who knows little of monism or trinity or
logos, and give to Tad another chance, as a child who never grew up.
* * * * *
_September 11_: Off to Kokomo, to fly for Farmers' Alliance.
Easy meet here (Newport, R.I.) yesterday, just straight flying and
passenger carrying. Dandy party given for me after it, by Thomas J.
Watersell, the steel man. Have read of such parties. Bird party, in a
garden, Watersell has many acres in his place and big house with a
wonderful brick terrace and more darn convenient things than I ever
saw before, breakfast room out on the terrace and swimming pool and
little gardens one outside of each guest room, rooms all have private
doors, house is mission style built around patio. All the Newport
swells came to party dressed as birds, and I had to dress as a hawk,
they had the costume all ready, wonder how they got my measurements.
Girls in the dance of the birds. Much silk stockings, very pretty. At
end of dance they were all surrounding me in semi-circle I stood out
on lawn beside Mrs. Watersell, and they bowed low to me, fluttering
their silk wings and flashing out many colored electric globes
concealed in wings and looked like hundreds of rainbow colored
fireflies in the darkness. Just then the big lights were turned on
again and they let loose hundreds of all kinds of birds, and they flew
up all around me, surprised me to death. Then for grub, best
sandwiches I ever ate.
Felt much flattered by it all, somehow did not feel so foolish as at
banquets with speeches.
After the party was all over, quite late, I went with Watersell for a
swim in his private pool. Most remarkable thing I ever saw. He said
everybody has Roman baths and Pompei baths and he was going to go them
one better, so he has an Egyptian bath, the pool itself like the
inside of an ancient temple, long vista of great big green columns and
a big idol at the end, and the pool all in green marble with lights
underneath the water and among the columns, and the water itself just
heat of air, so you can't tell where the water leaves off and the air
above it begins, hardly, and feel as though you were swimming in air
through a green twilight. Darndest sensation I ever felt, and the idol
and columns sort of awe you.
I enjoyed the swim and the room they gave me, but I had lost my
tooth-brush and that kind of spoiled the end of the party.
I noticed Watersell only half introduced his pretty daughter to me,
they like me as a lion but----And yet they seem to like me personally
well enough, too. If I didn't have old Martin trailing along, smoking
his corn-cob pipe and saying what he thinks, I'd die of loneliness
sometimes on the hike from meet to meet. Other times have jolly
parties, but I'd like to sit down with the Cowleses and play poker and
not have to explain who I am.
Funny--never used to feel lonely when I was bumming around on freights
and so on, not paying any special attention to anybody.
_October 23_: I wonder how far I'll ever get as an aviator? The
newspapers all praise me as a hero. Hero, hell! I'm a pretty steady
flier but so would plenty of chauffeurs be. This hero business is
mostly bunk, it was mostly chance my starting to fly at all. Don't
suppose it is all accident to become as great a flier as Garros or
Vedrines or Beachey, but I'm never going to be a Garros, I guess. Like
the man that can jump twelve feet but never can get himself to go any
farther.
_December 1_: Carmeau killed yesterday, flying at San Antone. Motor
backfire, machine caught fire, burned him to death in the air. He was
the best teacher I could have had, patient and wise. I can't write
about him. And I can't get this insane question out of my mind: Was
his beard burned? I remember just how it looked, and think of that
when all the time I ought to remember how clever and darn decent he
was. Carmeau will never show me new stunts again.
And Ely killed in October, Cromwell Dixon gone--the plucky youngster,
Professor Montgomery, Nieuport, Todd Shriver whom Martin Dockerill and
Hank Odell liked so much, and many others, all dead, like Moisant. I
don't think I take any undue risks, but it makes me stop and think.
And Hank Odell with a busted shoulder. Captain Paul Beck once told me
he believed it was mostly carelessness, these accidents, and he
certainly is a good observer, but when I think of a careful
constructor like Nieuport----
Punk money I'm making. Thank heaven there will be one more good year
of the game, 1912, but I don't know about 1913. Looks like the
exhibition game would blow up then--nearly everybody that wants to has
seen an aeroplane fly once, now, and that's about all they want, so
good bye aviation, except for military use and flying boats for
sportsmen. At least good bye during a slump of several years.
Hope to thunder Forrest and I will be able to make our South American
hike, even if it costs every cent I have. That will be something like
it, seeing new country instead of scrapping with fair managers about
money.
_December 22_: Hoorray! Christmas time at sea! Quite excite to smell
the ocean again and go rolling down the narrow gangways between the
white state-room doors. Off for a month's flying in Brazil and
Argentine, with Tony Bean. Will look up data for coming exploration of
Amazon headwaters. Martin Dockerill like a regular Beau Brummel in new
white flannels, parading the deck, making eyes at pretty Greaser
girls. It's good to be _going_.
* * * * *
_Feb. 22, 1912_: Geo. W's birthday. He'd have busted that no-lie
proviso if he'd ever advertised an aero meet.
Start of flight New Orleans to St. Louis. Looks like really big times,
old fashioned jubilee all along the road and lots of prizes, though
take a chance. Only measly little $2,500 prize guaranteed, but vague
promises of winnings at towns all along, where stop for short
exhibitions. Each of contestants has to fly at scheduled towns for
percentage of gate receipts.
_Feb. 23_: What a rotten flight to-day. Small crowd out to see me off.
No sooner up than trouble with plugs. Wanted to land, but nothing but
bayous, rice fields, cane breaks, and marshes. Farmer shot at my
machine. Soon motor stopped on me and had to come down awhooping on a
small plowed field. Smashed landing gear and got an awful jar. Nothing
serious though. It was two hours before a local blacksmith and I
repaired chassis and cleaned plugs. I started off after coaching three
scared darkies to hold the tail, while the blacksmith spun the
propeller. He would give it a couple of bats, then dodge out of the
way too soon, while I sat there and tried not to look mad, which by
gum I was plenty mad. Landed in this bum town, called ----, fourth in
the race, and found sweet (?) refuge in this chills and fever hotel.
Wish I was back in New Orleans. Cheer up, having others ahead of me in
the race just adds a little zip to it. Watch me to-morrow. And I'm not
the only hard luck artist. Aaron Solomons busted propeller and nearly
got killed.
_Later._ Cable. Tony Bean is dead. Killed flying. My god, Tony,
impossible to think of him as dead, just a few days ago we were flying
together and calling on senoritas and he playing the fiddle and
laughing, always so polite, like he used to fiddle us into good nature
when we got discouraged at Bagby's school. Seems like it was just
couple minutes ago we drove in his big car through Avenida de Mayo and
everybody cheered him, he was hero of Buenos Aires, yet he treated me
as the Big Chief. Cablegram forwarded from New Orleans, dated
yesterday, "Beanno killed fell 200 feet."
And to-morrow I'll have to be out and jolly the rustic meet managers
again. Want to go off some place and be quiet and think. Wish I could
get away, be off to South America with Forrest.
_February 24_: Rotten luck continues. Back in same town again! Got up
yesterday and motor misfired, had to make quick landing in a bayou and
haul out machine myself aided by scared kids. Got back here and found
gasoline pipe fouled, small piece of tin stuck in it.
Martin feels as bad as I do at Tony's death, tho he doesn't say much
of anything. "Gosh, and Tony such a nice little cuss," was about all
he said, but he looked white around the gills.
_Feb. 25_: Another man has dropped out, I am third but still last in
the race. Race fever got me to-day, didn't care for anything but
winning, got off to a good start, then took chances, machine wobbled
like a board in the surf. Am having some funny kind of chicken creole
I guess it is for lunch, writing this in hotel dining room.
_Later_: Passed Aaron Solomons, am now second in the race, landed here
just three hours behind Walter MacMonnies. Three letters forwarded
here, from Forrest, he is flying daily at army aviation camp, also
from Gertie Cowles, she and her mother are in Minneapolis, attending a
week of grand opera, also to my surprise short note from Jack Ryan,
the grouch, saying he has given up flying and gone back into motor
business.
There won't be much more than money to pay expenses on this trip.
Tomorrow I'll show them some real flying.
_Later_: Telegram from a St. L. newspaper. Sweet business. Says that
promoters of race have not kept promise to remove time limit as they
promised. Doubt if either Walter MacMonnies or I can finish in time
set.
_Feb. 26_: Bad luck continues but made fast flight after two forced
descents, one of them had to make difficult landing, plane down on
railroad track, avoiding telegraph wires, and get machine off track as
could hear train coming, awful job. Nerves not very good. Once when up
at 200 ft. heighth from which Tony Bean fell, I saw his face right in
air in front of me and jumped so I jerked the stuffings out of control
wires.
* * * * *
_March 15_: Just out of hospital, after three weeks there, broken leg
still in splints. Glad Walter MacM got thru in time limit, got prize.
Too week and shaky write much, shoulder still hurts.
_March 18_: How I came to fall (fall that broke my leg, three weeks
ago) Was flying over rough country when bad gust came thru hill
defile. Wing crumpled. Up at 400 ft. Machine plunged forward then
sideways. Gosh, I thought, I'm gone, but will live as long as I can,
even a few seconds more, and kept working with elevator, trying to
right her even a little. Ground coming up fast. Must have jumped, I
think. Landed in marsh, that saved my life, but woke up at doctor's
house, leg busted and shoulder bad, etc. Machine shot to pieces, but
Martin Dockerill has it pretty well repaired. He and the doc and I
play poker every day, Martin always wins with his dog-gone funeral
face no matter tho he has an ace full.
_March 24_: Leg all right, pretty nearly. Rigged up steering bar so I
can work it with one foot. Flew a mile to-day, went not badly. Hope to
fly at Springfield, Ill. meet next week. Will be able to make Brazil
trip with Forrest Haviland all right. The dear old boy has been
writing to me every day while I've been on the bum. Newspapers have
made a lot of my flying so soon again, several engagements and now
things look bright again. Reading lots and chipper as can be.
_March 25_: Forrest Haviland is dead He was killed to-day.
_March 27_: Disposed of monoplane by telegraph. Got Martin job with
Sunset Aviation Company.
_March 28_: Started for Europe.
* * * * *
_May 8, Paris_: Forrest and I would have met to-day in New York to
perfect plans for Brazil trip.
_May 10_: Am still trying to answer letter from Forrest's father.
Can't seem to make it go right. If I could have seen Forrest again.
But maybe they were right, holding funeral before I could get there.
Captain Faber says Forrest was terribly crushed, falling from 1700 ft.
I wish I didn't keep on thinking of plans for our Brazil trip, then
remembering we won't make it after all. I don't think I will fly till
fall, anyway, though I feel stronger now after rest in England,
Titherington has beautiful place in Devonshire. England seems to stick
to biplane, can't make them see monoplane. Don't think I shall fly
before fall. To-day I would have been with Forrest Haviland in New
York, I think he could have got leave for Brazil trip. We would taken
Martin. Tony promised to meet us in Rio. I like France but can't get
used to language, keep starting to speak Spanish. Maybe I'll fly here
in France but certainly not for some time, though massage has fixed me
all O.K. Am studying French. Maybe shall bicycle thru France. Mem.:
Write to Colonel Haviland when I can.
_Must_ when I can.
Part III
THE ADVENTURE OF LOVE