A MEETING BY THE WAY
But he found it did make a difference, a profoundly disturbing
difference. He had grown insulated against the memory of Sophie Carr
tugging at his heartstrings as the magnetic north pulls on the compass
needle. He had grown free of both thought and hope of her. There had
been too many other vital things pressing upon him these months of
adventure in toil, too many undeniable, everyday factors of living
present at every turn, hourly insistent upon being coped with, for him
to nurse old sad dreams and longings. So he had come at last to think of
that passionate yearning as a disease which had run its course.
Now, to his dismay, it recurred in all its old virulence, at a mere
glimpse of Sophie. The floodgates of memory loosed bitter waters upon
him, to make his heart heavy and spoil his days of passive content. It
angered him to be so hopelessly troubled. But he could not gainsay the
fact.
It made San Francisco a dreary waste. Try as he would he could not keep
Sophie Carr from being the sun around which the lesser nebulæ of his
thought continually revolved. He could no more help a wistful lookout
for her upon San Francisco's streets than he could help breathing. Upon
the rolling phalanxes of motor cars his gaze would turn with watchful
expectation, and he took to scanning the faces of the passing thousands,
a lonely, shy man with a queer glow in his eyes. That, of course, was
only in moments of forgetfulness. Then he would pull himself together
with a resentful irritation and tax himself with being a weak fool and
stalk along about his business.
But his business had lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its
slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself.
It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye
cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and
failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make
the most of his enforced idleness.
And now the magic of the colorful city had departed along with the magic
of the books. The downtown streets ceased to be a wonderful human
panorama which he loved to watch. The hushed reading room where he had
passed so many contented hours was haunted by a presence that obscured
the printed page. He would find himself staring absently at an open
book, the words blurred and overlaid with mental pictures of Lone Moose,
of Sophie sitting on the creek bank, of his unfinished church, forlorn
and gaunt in the winter snows and the summer silences, of Tommy Ashe
trudging across the meadow, gun in hand, of old Sam Carr in his
moosehide chair, of the Indians, the forest, of all that goes to make
the northern wilderness--and of himself moving through it all, an
unheroic figure, a man who had failed in his work, in his love, in
everything.
That, chiefly, was what stirred him anew to action, a suddenly acute
sense of failure, of a consciousness that he was drifting instead of
doing. He found himself jarred out of the even tenor of his way. San
Francisco filled him with dissatisfaction now, knowing that she was
there. If the mere knowledge that Sophie Carr dwelt somewhere within the
city boundaries had power to make a mooning idiot of him, he said to
himself testily, then he had better get out, go somewhere, get down to
work, be at his fixed purpose of proving his mettle upon an obdurate
world, and get her out of his mind in the process. He couldn't tune his
whole existence to a sentimental craving for any woman--even such a
woman as Sophie. He would, in the moment of such emotional genuflexions,
have dissented with cynical bitterness from the poetic dictum that it
was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Spurred by this mood he acted instinctively rather than with reasoned
purpose. He gave up his room, packed his clothes and betook himself upon
a work-seeking pilgrimage among the small, interior towns.
He left San Francisco in March. By May he had circulated all through the
lower San Joaquin and farther abroad to the San Juan, and had turned his
face again toward San Francisco Bay. At various jobs he had tried his
hand, making a living such as it was, acquiring in addition thereto a
store of first-hand experience in the social and monetary values of
itinerant labor. He conceded that such experience might somehow be of
use to a man. But he had had enough of it. He had a feeling of having
tested California for his purposes--and of finding it wanting.
He had made up his mind to double on his tracks, to go north again,
specifically to British Columbia, partly because Tommy was there,
chiefly because Vancouver was a growing place on the edge of a vast,
newly opened interior. He knew that if no greater thing offered, from
that center there was always the avenue of the woods. He could qualify
in that line. And in the woods even a common axeman exacted and received
more democratic treatment than in this older region where industry ran
in fixed channels, where class lines were more rigidly drawn, where
common labor was cheap and unprivileged.
He hadn't been getting on in those three months. He had less money than
when he started out--about enough now to get him up North and leave a
hundred dollars or so for emergencies. No, decidedly he wasn't getting
on--he was going down, he told himself. It dismayed him a little. It
wasn't enough to be big and strong and willing. A mule could be that.
The race was not to the swift or the strong. Not in modern industry,
with its bewildering complexities. No, it fell to the trained, the
specialist in knowledge, the man who could do something more
efficiently, with greater precision than his fellows.
He could not do that--not yet. And so there was nothing in California
for him, he decided. A man could no longer go West and grow up with the
country--but he could go North.
Thompson was sitting on the border of a road that runs between San
Mateo and the city when he definitely committed himself to doubling on
his tracks, to counteracting the trick of fate which had sent him to a
place where he did not wish to go. He was looking between the trees and
out over an undulating valley floored with emerald fields, studded with
oaks, backed by the bare Hamiltons to the east, and westward by the
redwood-clad ruggedness of the Santa Cruz range. And he was not seeing
this loveliness of landscape at all. He was looking far beyond and his
eyes were full of miles upon miles of untrodden forest, the sanctuary of
silence and furtive living things, of mountains that lifted snowy spires
to heaven high over the glaciers that scarred their sides. And the
smells that for a moment rose strongly in his nostrils were not the
smells of palm and gum and poppy-dotted fields, but odors of pine and
spruce and the smell of birchwood burning in campfires. He came out of
that queer projection of mind into great distance with a slight shake of
his head and a feeling of wonder. It had been very vivid. And it dawned
upon him that for a minute he had grown sentimentally lonely for that
grim, unconquered region where he had first learned the pangs of
loneliness, where he had suffered in body and spirit until he had
learned a lesson he would never forget while he lived.
The road itself, abutting upon stately homes and modest bungalows behind
a leafy screen of Australian gums, ran straight as an arrow down the
peninsula toward the city and the bay, a broad, smoothly asphalted
highway upon that road where the feet of the Franciscan priests had
traced the _Camino Real_. And down this highway both north and south
there passed many motor cars swiftly and silently or with less speed and
more noise, according to their quality and each driver's mood.
Thompson rested, watching them from the grassy level beneath a tree. He
rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and
blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He
had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a
leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was
saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many
dollars' worth of energy--to say nothing of shoe leather. The pleasure
of walking, paradoxically, was best achieved by sitting still in the
shade. A midday sun was softening the asphalt with its fierce blaze. He
looked idly at passing machines and wondered what the occupants thereof
would say if he halted one and demanded a ride. He smiled.
He stared after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one
half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half
of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent
bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the
circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a
six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down
the road in the heat and the dust, another machine came humming up from
the south.
It was a red car, crowding the state limit for speed, and it swept down
on Thompson with a subdued purr like a great cat before a fire. When it
was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of
a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot
pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the
road fifty yards along--a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a
slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with
heavy braids of corn-yellow hair.
Thompson half rose--then sank back in momentary indecision. Perhaps it
were wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he smiled at the incongruity
of that proverb applied to Sophie Carr.
He sat watching the machine for a minute. The halting of its burst of
speed was no mystery to Thompson. Miss Carr proceeded with calm
deliberation. She first resurrected a Panama hat from somewhere in the
seat beside her and pinned it atop of her head. Then she got out, walked
around to the front wheel, poked it tentatively once or twice, and
proceeded about the business of getting out a jack and a toolkit.
By the time Thompson decided that in common decency he should offer to
lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she
had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the
rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not
designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest
tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He knew
by the impersonal glance she gave him that he was to her merely a casual
stranger.
"May I help you?" he said politely. "A big tire is rather hard to
handle."
Sophie bestowed another level look upon him as she straightened up from
her task. A puzzled expression showed briefly in her gray eyes. But she
handed him the wrench without parley.
"Thanks, if you will," she said. "These rim bolts are fearfully stiff. I
daresay I could manage it though. I've done it on a lighter car. But
it's a man's job, really."
Thompson laid off his coat and set to work silently, withholding speech
for a double reason. He could not trust his tongue, and he was not given
to inconsequential chatter. If she did not recognize him--well, there
was no good reason why she should remember, if she chose not to
remember. He could lend a hand and go his way, just as he would have
been moved to lend a hand to any one in like difficulty.
He twisted out the bolt-heads, turned the lugs, pulled the rim clear of
the wheel. He stood up to get the spare tire from its place behind. And
he caught Sophie staring at him, astonishment, surprise, inquiry all
blended in one frank stare. But still she did not speak.
He trundled the blow-out casing to the rear, took off the one ready
inflated, and speedily had it fast in its appointed position on the
wheel.
And still Sophie Carr did not speak. She leaned against the car body. He
felt her eyes upon him, questioning, appraising, critical, while he
released the jack, gathered up the tools, and tied them up in the roll
on the running board.
"There you are," he found himself facing her, his tongue giving off
commonplace statements, while his heart thumped heavily in his breast.
"Ready for the road again."
"Do you remember what Donald Lachlan used to say?" Sophie answered
irrelevantly. "Long time I see you no. Eh, Mr. Thompson?"
She held out one gloved hand with just the faintest suggestion of a
smile hovering about her mouth. Thompson's work-roughened fingers closed
over her small soft hand. He towered over her, looking down wistfully.
"I didn't think you knew me," he muttered.
Sophie laughed. The smile expanded roguishly. The old, quizzical twinkle
flickered in her eyes.
"You must think my memory poor," she replied. "You're not one of the
peas in a pod, you know. I knew you, and still I wasn't sure. It seemed
scarcely possible. It's a long, long way from the Santa Clara Valley to
Lone Moose."
"Yes," he answered calmly. "A long way--the way I came."
"In a purely geographical sense?"
Her voice was tinged with gentle raillery.
"Perhaps," he answered noncommittally.
It dawned upon him that for all his gladness to see her--and he was
glad--he nursed a tiny flame of resentment. He had come a long way
measured on the map, and a far greater distance measured in human
experience, in spiritual reckoning. If the old narrow faith had failed
him he felt that slowly and surely he was acquiring a faith that would
not fail him, because it was based on a common need of mankind. But he
was still sure there must be a wide divergence in their outlook. He was
getting his worldly experience, his knowledge of material factors, of
men's souls and faiths and follies and ideals and weaknesses in a rude
school at first hand--and Sophie had got hers out of books and logical
deductions from critically assembled fact. There was a difference in the
two processes. He knew, because he had tried both. And where the world
at large faced him, and must continue to face him, like an enemy
position, something to be stormed, very likely with fierce fighting, for
Sophie Carr it had all been made easy.
So he did not follow up that conversational lead. He was not going to
bare his soul offhand to gratify any woman's curiosity. It would be very
easy to make a blithering ass of himself again--with her--because of
her. Already he was on his guard against that. His pride was alert.
Sophie stowed the canvas tool roll under the seat cushion. She climbed
to her seat behind the steering column and turned to Thompson.
"Which way are you bound?" she asked. "I'll give you a lift, and we can
talk."
"I'm on my way to San Francisco," he said. "But time is no object in my
young life right now, or I'd take the Interurban instead of walking. It
would be demoralizing to me, I'm afraid, to whiz down these roads in a
machine like this."
Sophie shoved the opposite door open.
"Get in," she let a flavor of reproof creep into her tone. "Don't talk
that sort of nonsense."
Thompson hesitated. He was suddenly uncomfortable, conscious of his
dusty clothes somewhat the worse for wear, his shoes from which the
pristine freshness had long vanished, the day-old stubble on his chin.
There was a depressing contrast between his outward condition and that
of the smartly dressed girl whose gray eyes were resting curiously on
him now.
"Do you make a practice of picking up tramps along the road?" he parried
with an effort at lightness. He wanted to refuse outright, yet could not
utter the words. "I'm not very presentable."
"Get in. Don't be silly," she said impatiently. "You don't think I've
become a snob just because chance has pitchforked me into the ranks of
the idle rich, do you?"
Thompson laughed awkwardly. There was real feeling in her tone, as if
she had read correctly his hesitation and resented it. After all, why
not? It would merely be an incident to Sophie Carr, and it would save
him some hot and dusty miles. He got in.
"I'm quite curious to know where you've been and what you've been doing
for the last year," she said, when the red car was once more rolling
toward the city at a sedate pace. "And by the way, where did you learn
to change a tire so smartly?"
"My last job," Thompson told her truthfully, "was washing cars,
greasing up, and changing tires in a country garage down in the San
Juan." He paused for a moment. "Before that I was chaperon to a stable
full of horses on a Salinas ranch. I've tried being a carpenter's
helper, an assistant gardener, understudy to a suburban plumber--and
other things too numerous to mention--in the last three months. I think
the most satisfactory thing I've tackled was the woods up north, last
fall."
"You must have acquired experience, at least, even if none of those
things proved an efficient method of making money," she returned
lightly.
"A man like me," he remarked, "has first to learn how to make a living
before he can set about making money."
"Making money is relative. Quite often it merely means making a living
with an extended horizon," she observed. "I know a man with a
ten-thousand-dollar salary who finds it a living, no more."
"Poor devil," he drawled sardonically. "When I get into the
ten-thousand-a-year class I rather think it will afford me a few trifles
beyond bare subsistence."
She smiled.
"Have you set that for a mark to shoot at?"
"I haven't set any limit," he replied. "I haven't got my sights adjusted
yet."
"I can scarcely assure myself that you are really you," she said after a
momentary silence. "I can't seem to disassociate you with Lone Moose and
a blundering optimism, a mystical faith that the Lord would make things
come out right if you only leaned on Him hard enough. Now your talk is
flavored with both egotism and the bitterness of the cynic."
"How should a man talk?" he demanded. "Like a worm if he chance to be
trodden on a few times? Does a man necessarily become cynical when he
realizes that plugging from the bottom up is no child's play? As for
egotism--Heaven knows you knocked that out of me pretty effectually when
you left Lone Moose. You made me feel like a whipped puppy for months. I
chucked myself out of the church because of that--that abased,
disheartened feeling. For a year and a half I've been learning and
discovering that life isn't a parlor game. Do you remember that letter
you left with Cloudy Moon for me? I need only to recall a phrase here
and there in that as a cure for incipient egotism. What do you think I
should have become?" he flung at her, unconscious of the passion in his
voice, "A poor thing glad of a ride in your car? Or a confirmed optimist
in overalls?"
Sophie gave him a queer sidelong glance.
"Can't you let the dead past bury its dead?" she asked quietly.
Thompson kept his eyes on the smooth, green-bordered road for a minute.
The quick wave of feeling passed. He stifled it--indeed, felt ashamed
for letting it briefly master him.
"Of course," he answered at last, and turned to her with a friendly
quirk of his lips. "It is buried pretty deep one way and another, isn't
it? And it would hardly be decent to exhume the remains. Shall we talk
about the weather?"
"Don't be sarcastic," she reproved gently. "Save that to cope with dad.
He'll relish it coming from you."
"I don't know," Thompson said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't mind a chat with
your father. We wouldn't agree on many things, by a good way, although
I've discovered that some of his philosophy is sound enough. But I've
got to make a move, and I'm so situated that I must make it quickly or
not at all. I'm going to take the first north-bound steamer out of San
Francisco. So I don't imagine Mr. Carr will have a chance at me soon."
"Oh, yes, he will," Sophie asserted confidently. "In about twenty
minutes."
Thompson looked at her, startled a little by this bland assertion.
"We'll be home in about twenty minutes," she explained.
"But I'm--why take the trouble?" he asked bluntly. "I'm out of your
orbit entirely. Or do you want to exhibit me as a horrible example?"
"You're downright rude," she laughed. "Or you would be if you were
serious. Do you mind coming to see dad? And I'd like to hear more about
your trip across the mountains with Tommy Ashe."
Thompson pricked up his ears.
"Oh, you know about that, eh?" he remarked. "How--"
"Not as much as I'd like to," she interrupted. "Will you come?"
"Yes," he agreed. "But give a fellow a chance. Don't drag me into your
home looking like this. I'm not vain, but I'd feel more comfortable in
clean clothes. I shipped all my things into town. They should be in the
express office now. I'll come this afternoon or this evening, whichever
you say. Drop me off at the first carline."
"I'll do better than that," she declared. "I'll drive you downtown
myself."
"But it isn't necessary," he persisted. "I don't want to take up all
your time, and--"
"For the rest of this day," Sophie murmured, "I have absolutely nothing
to do but kill time. I get restless, and being out in the car cures that
feeling. Do you mind if I chauff you a few miles more or less? Don't be
ungallant. I love to drive."
"Oh, well."
Thompson mentally threw up his hands. In that gracious mood Sophie was
irresistible. He sank back in the thick, resilient upholstery and
resolved to take what the gods provided--to dance as it were, and reckon
with the piper when he presented his bill.