In October, 1912, a young man came with an enthusiastic letter from
the president of the Aero Club to old Stephen VanZile, vice-president
and general manager of the VanZile Motor Corporation of New York. The
young man was quiet, self-possessed, an expert in regard to motors,
used to meeting prominent men. He was immediately set to work at a
tentative salary of $2,500 a year, to develop the plans of what he
called the "Touricar"--an automobile with all camping accessories,
which should enable motorists to travel independent of inns, add the
joy of camping to the joy of touring, and--a feature of nearly all
inventions--add money to the purse of the inventor.
The young man was Carl Ericson, whom Mr. VanZile had seen fly at New
Orleans during the preceding February. Carl had got the idea of the
Touricar while wandering by motor-cycle through Scandinavia and
Russia.
He was, at this time, twenty-seven years old; not at all remarkable in
appearance nor to be considered handsome, but so clean, so well
bathed, so well set-up and evenly tanned, that one thought of the
swimming, dancing, tennis-playing city men of good summer resorts, an
impression enhanced by his sleek corn-silk hair and small, pale
mustache. His clothes came from London, his watch-chain was a thin
line of platinum and gold, his cigarette-case of silver engraved in
inconspicuous bands--a modest and sophisticated cigarette-case, which
he had possessed long enough to forget that he had it. He was
apparently too much the easy, well-bred, rather inexperienced Yale or
Princeton man (not Harvard; there was a tiny twang in his voice, and
he sometimes murmured "Gee!") to know much about life or work, as
yet, and his smooth, rosy cheeks made it absurdly evident that he had
not been away from the college insulation for more than two years.
But when he got to work with draftsman and stenographers, when a curt
kindliness filled his voice, he proved to be concentrated, unafraid of
responsibility, able to keep many people busy; trained to something
besides family tradition and the collegians' naive belief that it
matters who wins the Next Game.
His hands would have given away the fact that he had done things. They
were large, broad; the knuckles heavy; the palms calloused by
something rougher than oar and tennis-racket. The microscopic traces
of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his
skin. And two of his well-kept but thick nails had obviously been
smashed.
The men of the same rank as himself in the office, captains and first
lieutenants of business, said that he "simply ate up work." They
fancied, with the eager old-womanishness of office gossip, that he had
a "secret sorrow," for, though he was pleasant enough, he kept very
much to himself. The cause of his retirement from aviation was the
theme of many romantic legends. They did not know precisely what it
was he had done in the pre-historic period of a year before, but they
treated him with reverence instead of the amused aloofness with which
an office usually waits to see whether a new man will prove to be a
fool or a "grouch," a clown or a good fellow. The stenographers and
filing-girls and telephone-girls followed with yearning eyes the
hero's straight back. The girl who discovered, in an old _New York
Chronicle_ lining a bureau drawer, an interview with Carl, became very
haughty over its possession and lent it only to her best lady friends.
The older women, who knew that Carl had had a serious accident,
whispered in cloak-room confidences, "Poor fellow, and so brave about
it."
Yet all the while Carl's china-blue eyes showed no trace of pain nor
sorrow nor that detestable appeal for sympathy called "being brave
about his troubles."
* * * * *
There were many thoughtful features which fitted the Touricar for use
in camping--extra-sized baggage-box whose triangular shape made the
car more nearly streamline, special folding silk tents, folding
aluminum cooking-utensils, electric stove run by current from the car,
electric-battery light attached to a curtain-rod. But the distinctive
feature, the one which Carl could patent, was the means by which a bed
was made up inside the car as Pullman seats are turned into berths.
The back of the front seat was hinged, and dropped back to horizontal.
The upholstery back of the back seat could be taken out and also
placed on the horizontal. With blankets spread on the level space thus
provided, with the extra-heavy top and side curtains in place, and the
electric light switched on, tourists had a refuge cleaner than a
country hotel and safer than a tent....
The first Touricar was being built. Carl was circularizing a list of
possible purchasers, and corresponding with makers of camping goods.
Because he was not office-broken he did not worry about the risks of
the new enterprise. The stupid details of affairs had, for him, a
soul--the Adventure of Business.
To be consulted by draftsmen and shop foremen; to feel that if he
should not arrive at 8.30 A.M. to the second the most important part
of all the world's business would be halted and stenographers loll in
expensive idleness; to have the chief, old VanZile, politely anxious
as to how things were going; to plan ways of making a million dollars
and not have the plans seem fantastic--all these made it interesting
to overwork, and hypnotized Carl into a feeling of responsibility
which was less spectacular than flying before thousands, but more in
accordance with the spirit of the time and place.
Inside the office--busy and reaching for success. Outside the
office--frankly bored.
Carl was a dethroned prince. He had been accustomed to a more than
royal court of admirers. Now he was a nobody the moment he went twenty
feet from his desk. He was forgotten. He did not seek out the many
people he had met when he was an aviator and a somebody. He believed,
perhaps foolishly, that they liked him only as a personage, not as a
person. He sat lonely at dinner, in cheap restaurants with stains on
the table-cloths, for he had put much of his capital into the new
Touricar Company, mothered by the VanZile Corporation; and aeroplanes,
accessories, traveling-expenses, and the like had devoured much of his
large earnings at aviation before he had left the game.
In his large, shabby, fairly expensive furnished room on Seventy-fifth
Street he spent unwilling evenings, working on Touricar plans, or
reading French--French technical motor literature, light novels,
Balzac, anything.
He tried to keep in physical form, and, much though the routine and
silly gestures of gymnasium exercises bored him, he took them three
times a week. He could not explain the reason, but he kept his
identity concealed at the gymnasium, giving his name as "O. Ericson."
Even at the Aero Club, where scores knew him by sight, he was a
nobody. Aviation, like all pioneer arts, must look to the men who are
doing new things or planning new things, not to heroes past. Carl was
often alone at lunch at the club. Any group would have welcomed him,
but he did not seek them out. For the first time he really saw the
interior decorations of the club. In the old days he had been much too
busy talking with active comrades to gaze about. But now he stared for
five minutes together at the stamped-leather wall-covering of the
dining-room. He noted, much too carefully for a happy man, the
trophies of the lounging-room. But at one corner he never glanced. For
here was a framed picture of the forgotten Hawk Ericson, landing on
Governor's Island, winner of the flight from Chicago to New York....
Such a beautiful swoop!...
There is no doubt of the fact that he disliked the successful new
aviators, and did so because he was jealous of them. He admitted the
fact, but he could not put into his desire to be a good boy
one-quarter of the force that inspired his resentment at being a
lonely man and a nobody. But, since he knew he was envious, he was
careful not to show it, not to inflict it upon others. He was gracious
and added a wrinkle between his brows, and said "Gosh!" and "ain't"
much less often.
He had few friends these days. Death had taken many; and he was wary
of lion-hunters, who in dull seasons condescend to ex-lions and
dethroned princes. But he was fond of a couple of Aero Club men, an
automobile ex-racer who was a selling-agent for the VanZile
Corporation, and Charley Forbes, the bright-eyed, curly-headed, busy,
dissipated little reporter who had followed him from Chicago to New
York for the _Chronicle_. Occasionally one of the men with whom he had
flown--Hank Odell or Walter MacMonnies or Lieutenant Rutledge of the
navy--came to town, and Carl felt natural again. As for women, the
only girl whom he had known well in years, Istra Nash, the painter,
had gone to California to keep house for her father till she should
have an excuse to escape to New York or Europe again.
Inside the office--a hustling, optimistic young business man. For the
rest of the time--a dethroned prince. Such was Carl Ericson in
November, 1912, when a letter from Gertrude Cowles, which had pursued
him all over America and Europe, finally caught him:
---- West 157th St.
NEW YORK.
CARL DEAR,--Oh such excitement, we have come to _New York_ to live!
Ray has such a good position with a big NY real estate co. & Mama & I
are going to make a home for him even if it's only just a flat (but
it's quite a big one & looks out on the duckiest old house that must
have been adorning Harlem for heaven knows how long,) & our house has
all modern conveniences, elevator & all.
Think, Carl, I'm going to study dancing at Madame Vashkowska's
school--she was with the Russian ballet & really is almost as
wonderful a dancer as Isadora Duncan or Pavlova. Perhaps I'll teach
all these ducky new dances to children some day. I'm just terribly
excited to be here, like the silliest gushiest little girl in the
world. And I do hope so much you will be able to come to NY & honor us
with your presence at dinner, famous aviator--our Carl & we are so
_proud_ of you--if you will still remember simple people like us do
come _any time_. Wonder where you will be when this reaches you.
I read in the papers that your accident isn't serious but I am
worried, oh Carl you must take care of yourself.
Yours as ever,
GERTIE.
P.S. Mama sends her best regards, so does Ray, he has a black mustache
now, we tease him about it dreadfully.
G.
One minute after reading the letter, in his room, Carl was standing on
the chaste black-and-white tiles of the highly respectable
white-arched hall down-stairs asking Information for the telephone
number of ---- West 157th Street, while his landlord, a dry-bearded
goat of a physician who had failed in the practise of medicine and was
now failing in the practise of rooming-houses, listened from the front
of the hall.
Glad to escape from the funereally genteel house, Carl hastily changed
his collar and tie and, like the little boy Carl whom Gertie had
known, dog-trotted to the subway, which was going to take him Home.