Dizzy with all the problems of life, he did not notice where he went.
He walked blocks; took a trolley-car; got off to buy a strong cigar;
took the next trolley that came along; was carried across the
Fifty-ninth Street bridge to Long Island. At the eighth or tenth stop
he hurried out of the car just as it was starting again. He wondered
why he had been such a fool as to leave it in a dark street of
flat-faced wooden houses with dooryards of trampled earth and a
general air of poverty, goats, and lunch-pails. He tramped on, a
sullen and youthless man. Presently he was in shaggy, open country.
He was frightened by his desertion of Ruth, but he did not want to go
back, nor even telephone to her. He had to diagram where and what and
why he was; determine what he was to do.
He disregarded the war as a cause of trouble. Had there been no extra
business-pressure caused by the war, there would have been some other
focus for their misunderstandings. They would have quarreled over
clothes and aviation, Aunt Emma and Martin Dockerill, poverty and
dancing, quite the same.
Walking steadily, with long periods when he did not think, but stared
at the dusty stars or the shaky, ill-lighted old houses, he alined her
every fault, unhappily rehearsed every quarrel in which she had been
to blame, his lips moving as he emphasized the righteous retorts he
was almost certain he had made. It was not hard to find faults in her.
Any two people who have spent more than two days together already have
the material for a life-long feud, in traits which at first were
amusing or admirable. Ruth's pretty manners, of which Carl had been
proud, he now cited as snobbish affectation. He did not spare his
reverence, his passion, his fondness. He mutilated his soul like a
hermit. He recalled her pleasure in giving him jolly surprises, in
writing unexpected notes addressed to him at the office, as fussy
discontent with a quiet, normal life; he regarded her excitement over
dances as evidence that she was so dependent on country-club society
that he would have to spend the rest of his life drudging for her.
He wanted to flee. He saw the whole world as a conspiracy of secret,
sinister powers that are concealed from the child, but to the man are
gradually revealed by a pitiless and never-ending succession of
misfortunes. He would never be foot-loose again. His land of heart's
desire would be the office.
But the ache of disappointment grew dull. He was stunned. He did not
know what had happened; did not even know precisely how he came to be
walking here. Now and then he remembered anew that he had sharply left
Ruth--Ruth, his dear girl!--remembered that she was not at hand, ready
to explain with love's lips the somber puzzles of life. He was
frightened again, and beginning to be angry with himself for having
been angry with Ruth.
He had walked many miles. Brown fields came up at him through the
paling darkness. A sign-board showed that he was a few miles from
Mineola. Letting the coming dawn uplift him, he tramped into Mineola,
with a half-plan of going on to the near-by Hempstead Plains Aviation
Field, to see if there was any early-morning flying. It would be bully
to see a machine again!
At a lunch-wagon he ordered buckwheat-cakes and coffee. Sitting on a
high stool before a seven-inch shelf attached to the wall, facing an
array of salt-castors and catsup-bottles and one of those colored
glass windows with a portrait of Washington which give to all
lunch-wagons their air of sober refinement, Carl ate solemnly,
meditatively.... It did not seem to him an ignoble setting for his
grief; but he was depressed when he came out to a drab first light of
day that made the street seem hopeless and unrested after the night.
The shops were becoming visible, gray and chilly, like a just-awakened
janitor in slippers, suspenders, and tousled hair. The pavement was
wet. Carl crossed the street, stared at the fly-specked cover of a
magazine six months old that lay in a shop window lighted by one
incandescent. He gloomily planned to go back and have another cup of
coffee on the shelf before Washington's glassy but benign face.
But he looked down the street, and all the sky was becoming a delicate
and luminous blue.
He trotted off toward Hempstead Plains.
The Aviation Field was almost abandoned. Most of the ambitious line of
hangars were empty, now, with faded grass thick before the great doors
that no one ever opened. A recent fire had destroyed a group of five
hangars.
He found one door open, and three sleepy youngsters in sweaters and
khaki trousers bringing out a monoplane.
Carl watched them start, bobbed his chin to the music of the motor,
saw the machine canter down the field and ascend from dawn to the
glory of day. The rising sun picked out the lines of the uninclosed
framework and hovered on the silvery wing-surface. The machine circled
the field at two hundred feet elevation, smoothly, peacefully. And
peace beyond understanding came to Carl.
He studied the flight. "Mm. Good and steady. Banks a little sharp, but
very thorough. Firs' rate. I believe I could get more speed out of her
if I were flying. Like to try."
Wonderingly he realized that he did not want to fly; that only his
lips said, "Like to try." He was almost as much an outsider to
aviation as though he had never flown. He discovered that he was
telling Ruth this fact, in an imaginary conversation; was commenting
for her on dawn-sky and the plains before him and his alienation from
exploits in which she could not share.
The monoplane landed with a clean volplane. The aviator and his
mechanicians were wheeling it toward the hangar. They glanced at him
uninterestedly. Carl understood that, to them, he was a Typical
Bystander, here where he had once starred.
The aviator stared again, let go the machine, walked over, exclaiming:
"Say, aren't you Hawk Ericson? This is an honor. I heard you were
somewhere in New York. Just missed you at the Aero Club one night.
Wanted to ask you about the Bagby hydro. Won't you come in and have
some coffee and sinkers with us? Proud to have you. My name 's Berry."
"Thanks. Be glad to."
While the youngsters were admiring him, hearing of the giants of
earlier days, while they were drinking inspiration from this veteran
of twenty-nine, they were in turn inspiring Carl by their faith in
him. He had been humble. They made him trust himself, not
egotistically, but with a feeling that he did matter, that it was
worth while to be in tune with life.
Yet all the while he knew that he wanted to be by himself, because he
could thus be with the spirit of Ruth. And he knew, subconsciously,
that he was going to hurry back to Mineola and telephone to her.
As he dog-trotted down the road, he noted the old Dutch houses for
her; picked out the spot where he had once had a canvas hangar, and
fancied himself telling her of those days. He did not remember that at
this hangar he had known Istra, Istra Nash, the artist, whose name he
scarce recalled. Istra was an incident; Ruth was the meaning of his
life.
And the solution of his problem came, all at once, when suddenly it
was given to him to understand what that problem was.
Ruth and he had to be up and away, immediately; go any place, do
anything, so long as they followed new trails, and followed them
together. He knew positively, after his lonely night, that he could
not be happy without her as comrade in the freedom he craved. And he
also knew that they had not done the one thing for which their
marriage existed. They were not just a man and a woman. They were a
man and a woman who had promised to find new horizons for each other.
However much he believed in the sanctity of love's children, Carl also
believed that merely to be married and breed casual children and die
is a sort of suspended energy which has no conceivable place in this
over-complex and unwieldy world. He had no clear nor ringing message,
but he did have, just then, an overpowering conviction that Ruth and
he--not every one, but Ruth and he, at least--had a vocation in
keeping clear of vocations, and that they must fulfil it.
Over the telephone he said: "Ruth dear, I'll be right there. Walked
all night. Got straightened out now. I'm out at Mineola. It's all
right with me now, blessed. I want so frightfully much to make it all
right with you. I'll be there in about an hour."
She answered "Yes" so non-committally that he was smitten by the fact
that he had yet to win forgiveness for his frenzy in leaving her; that
he must break the shell of resentment which would incase her after a
whole night's brooding between sullen walls.
On the train, unconscious of its uproar, he was bespelled by his new
love. During a few moments of their lives, ordinary real people,
people real as a tooth-brush, do actually transcend the coarsely
physical aspects of sex and feeding, and do approximate to the
unwavering glow of romantic heroes. Carl was no more a romantic
hero-lover than, as a celebrated aviator, he had been a
hero-adventurer. He was a human being. He was not even admirable,
except as all people are admirable, from the ash-man to the king.
There had been nothing exemplary in his struggle to find adjustment
with his wife; he had been bad in his impatience just as he had been
good in his boyish affection; in both he had been human. Even now,
when without reserve he gave himself up to love, he was aware that he
would ascend, not on godlike pinions, but by a jerky old
apartment-house elevator, to make peace with a vexed girl who was also
a human being, with a digestive system and prejudices. Yet with a joy
that encompassed all the beauty of banners and saluting swords,
romantic towers and a fugitive queen, a joy transcending trains and
elevators and prejudices, Carl knew that human girl as the symbol of
man's yearning for union with the divine; he desired happiness for her
with a devotion great as the passion in Galahad's heart when all night
he knelt before the high altar.
He came slowly up to their apartment-house. If it were only possible
for Ruth to trust him, now----
Mingled with his painfully clear remembrance of all the sweet things
Ruth was and had done was a tragic astonishment that he--this same he
who was all hers now--could possibly have turned impatiently from her
sobs. Yet it would have been for good, if only she would trust him.
Not till he left the elevator, on their floor, did he comprehend that
Ruth might not be awaiting him; might have gone. He looked
irresolutely at the grill of the elevator door, shut on the black
shaft.
"She was here when I telephoned----"
He waited. Perhaps she would peep out to see if it was he who had come
up in the elevator.
She did not appear.
He walked the endless distance of ten feet to their door, unlocked it,
labored across the tiny hall into the living-room. She was there. She
stood supporting herself by the back of the davenport, her eyes
red-edged and doubtful, her face tightened, expressing enmity or dread
or shy longing. He held out his hands, like a prisoner beseeching
royal mercy. She in turn threw out her arms. He could not say one
word. The clumsy signs called "words" could not tell his emotion. He
ran to her, and she welcomed his arms. He held her, abandoned himself
utterly to her kiss. His hard-driving mind relaxed; relaxed was her
body in his arms. He knew, not merely with his mind, but with the
vaster powers that drive mind and emotion and body, that Ruth, in her
disheveled dressing-gown, was the glorious lover to whom he had been
hastening this hour past. All the love which civilization had tried to
turn into Normal Married Life had escaped Efficiency's pruning-hook,
and had flowered.
"It's all right with me, now," she said; "so wonderfully all right."
"I want to explain. Had to be by myself; find out. Must have seemed so
unspeakably r----"
"Oh, don't, don't explain! Our kiss explained."
* * * * *
While they talked on the davenport together, reaching out again and
again for the hands that now really were there, Ruth agreed with Carl
that they must be up and away, not wait till it should be too late.
She, too, saw how many lovers plan under the June honeymoon to sail
away after a year or two and see the great world, and, when they
wearily die, know that it will still be a year or two before they can
flee to the halcyon isles.
But she did insist that they plan practically; and it was she who
wondered: "But what would happen if everybody went skipping off like
us? Who'd bear the children and keep the fields plowed to feed the
ones that ran away?"
"Golly!" cried Carl, "wish that were the worst problem we had! Maybe a
thousand years from now, when every one is so artistic that they want
to write books, it will be hard to get enough drudges. But now----
Look at any office, with the clerks toiling day after day, even the
unmarried ones. Look at all the young fathers of families, giving up
everything they want to do, to support children who'll do the same
thing right over again with _their_ children. Always handing on the
torch of life, but never getting any light from it. People don't run
away from slavery often enough. And so they don't ever get to do real
work, either!"
"But, sweetheart, what if we should have children some day? You
know---- Of course, we haven't been ready for them yet, but some day
they might come, anyhow, and how could we wander round----"
"Oh, probably they will come some day, and then we'll take our dose of
drudgery like the rest. There's nothing that our dear civilization
punishes as it does begetting children. For poisoning food by
adulterating it you may get fined fifty dollars, but if you have
children they call it a miracle--as it is--and then they get busy and
condemn you to a lifetime of being scared by the boss."
"Well, darling, please don't blame it on me."
"I didn't mean to get so oratorical, blessed. But it does make me mad
the way the state punishes one for being willing to work and have
children. Perhaps if enough of us run away from nice normal grinding,
we'll start people wondering just why they should go on toiling to
produce a lot of booze and clothes and things that nobody needs."
"Perhaps, my Hawk.... Don't you think, though, that we might be bored
in your Rocky Mountain cabin, if we were there for months and months?"
"Yes, I suppose so," Carl mused. "The rebellion against stuffy
marriage has to be a whole lot wider than some little detail like
changing from city to country. Probably for some people the happiest
thing 'd be to live in a hobohemian flat and have parties, and for
some to live in the suburbs and get the missus elected president of
the Village Improvement Society. For us, I believe, it's change and
_keep going_."
"Yes, I do think so. Hawk, my Hawk, I lay awake nearly all night last
night, realizing that we _are_ one, not because of a wedding ceremony,
but because we can understand each other's make-b'lieves and
seriousnesses. I knew that no matter what happened, we had to try
again.... I saw last night, by myself, that it was not a question of
finding out whose fault a quarrel was; that it wasn't anybody's
'fault,' but just conditions.... And we'll change them.... We won't be
afraid to be free."
"We won't! Lord! life's wonderful!"
"Yes! When I think of how sweet life can be--so wonderfully sweet--I
know that all the prophets must love human beings, oh, so terribly, no
matter how sad they are about the petty things that lives are wasted
over.... But I'm not a prophet. I'm a girl that's awfully much in
love, and, darling, I want you to hold me close."
* * * * *
Three months later, in February, 1915, Ruth and Carl sailed for Buenos
Ayres, America's new export-market. Carl was the Argentine Republic
manager for the VanZile Motor Corporation, possessed of an unimportant
salary, a possibility of large commissions, and hopes like comets.
Their happiness seemed a thing enchanted. They had not quarreled
again.
* * * * *
The S.S. _Sangrael_, for Buenos Ayres and Rio, had sailed from snow
into summer. Ruth and Carl watched isles of palms turn to fantasies
carved of ebony, in the rose and garnet sunset waters, and the vast
sky laugh out in stars. Carl was quoting Kipling:
"The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And the deuce knows what we may do--
But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the
out trail,
We're down, hull down on the Old Trail--the trail that is always new."
"Anyway," he commented, "deuce only knows what we'll do after
Argentine, and I don't care. Do you?"
Her clasping hand answered, as he went on:
"Oh, say, bles-sed! I forgot to look in the directory before we left
New York to see if there wasn't a Society for the Spread of Madness
among the Respectable. It might have sent us out as missionaries....
There's a flying-fish; and to-morrow I won't have to watch clerks
punch a time-clock; and you can hear a sailor shifting the
ventilators; and there's a little star perched on the fore-mast;
singing; but the big thing is that you're here beside me, and we're
_going_. How bully it is to be living, if you don't have to give up
living in order to make a living."
THE END