To the surprise of his friends, Alan Wayne gave up debauch and found
himself employment by the time the spring that saw his dismissal from
Maple House had ripened into summer. He was full of preparation for his
departure for Africa when a summons from old Captain Wayne reached him.
With equal horror of putting up at hotels or relatives’ houses, the
captain, upon his arrival in town, had gone straight to his club, and
forthwith become the sensation of the club’s windows. Old members
felt young when they caught sight of him, as though they had come
suddenly on a vanished landmark restored. Passing gamins gazed on his
short-cropped gray hair, staring eyes, flaring collar, black string
tie, and flowing broadcloth, and remarked:
“Gee! look at de old spoit in de winder!”
Alan heard the remark as he entered the club, and smiled.
“How do you do, sir?”
“Huh!” grunted the captain. “Sit down.” He ordered a drink for his
guest and another for himself. He glared at the waiter. He glared at a
callow youth who had come up and was looking with speculative eye at a
neighboring chair. The waiter retired almost precipitously. The youth
followed.
“In my time,” remarked the captain, “a club was for privacy. Now it’s a
haven for bell-boys and a playground for whipper-snappers.”
“They’ve made me a member, sir.”
“Have, eh!” growled the captain, and glared at his nephew. Alan took
inspection coolly, a faint smile on his thin face. The captain turned
away his bulging eyes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, and finally
spoke. “I was just going to say when you interrupted,” he began, “that
engineering is a dirty job. Not, however,” he continued after a pause,
“dirtier than most. It’s a profession, but not a career.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Alan. “They’ve got a few in the army, and they
seem to be doing pretty well.”
“Huh, the army!” said the captain. He subsided, and made a new start.
“What’s your appointment?”
“It doesn’t amount to an appointment. Just a job as assistant to
Walton, the engineer the contractors are sending out. We’re going to
put up a bridge somewhere in Africa.”
“That’s it. I knew it,” said the captain. “Going away. Want any money?”
The question came like solid shot out of a four-pounder. Alan started,
colored, and smiled all at the same time.
“No, thanks, sir,” he replied; “I’ve got all I need.”
The captain hitched his chair forward, and glared out on the avenue.
“The Lansings,” he began, like a boy reciting a piece, “are devils for
drink, the Waynes for women. Don’t you ever let ’em worry you about
drink. Nowadays the doctors call us non-alcoholic. In my time it was
just plain strong heads for wine. I say, don’t worry about drink.
There’s a safety-valve in every Wayne’s gullet. But women, Alan!”
The captain slued around his bulging eyes. “You look out for them.
As your great-grandfather used to say, ‘To women, only perishable
goods--sweets, flowers, and kisses.’ And you take it from me, kisses
aren’t always the cheapest. They say God made everything down to little
apples and Jersey lightning, but when He made women the devil helped.”
The captain’s nervousness dropped from him as he deliberately drew out
his watch and fob. “Good thing he did, too,” he added as a pleasing
afterthought. He leaned back in his chair. A complacent look came over
his face.
Alan got up to say good-by. The captain rose, too, and clasped the hand
Alan held out.
“One more thing,” he said. “Don’t forget there’s always a Wayne to back
a Wayne for good or bad.” There was a suspicion of moisture in his eye
as he hurried his guest off.
Back in his rooms, Alan found letters awaiting him. He read them, and
tore all up except one. It was from Clem. She wrote:
Dear Alan: Nance says you are going very far away. I am sorry. It
has been raining here very much. In the hollows all the bridges are
under water. I have invented a new game. It is called “steamboat.”
I play it on old Dubbs. We go down into the valley, and I make
him go through the water around the bridges. He puffs just like a
steamboat, and when he gets out, he smokes all over. He is _too_
fat. I hope you will come back very soon.
~Clem.~
That evening Clem was thrown into a transport by receiving her first
telegram. It read:
You must not play steamboat again; it is dangerous.
~Alan.~
She tucked it in her bosom and rushed over to the Firs to show it to
Gerry.
Gerry and Alix were spending the summer at the Firs, where Mrs.
Lansing, Gerry’s widowed mother, was still nominally the hostess. They
had been married two years, but people still spoke of Alix as Gerry’s
bride, and, in so doing, stamped her with her own seal. To strangers
they carried the air of a couple about to be married at the rational
close of a long engagement. No children or thought of children had
come to turn the channel of life for Alix. On Gerry, marriage sat as
an added habit. It was beginning to look as though he and Alix drifted
together not because they were carried by the same currents, but
because they were tied.
Where duller minds would have dubbed Gerry the Ox, Alan had named him
the Rock, and Alan was right. Gerry had a dignity beyond mere bulk.
He had all the powers of resistance, none of articulation. Where a
pin-prick would start an ox, it took an upheaval to move Gerry. An
upheaval was on the way, but Gerry did not know it. It was yet afar off.
To the Lansings marriage had always been one of the regular functions
of a regulated life, part of the general scheme of things. Gerry was
slowly realizing that his marriage with Alix was far from a mere
function, had little to do with a regular life, and was foreign to
what he had always considered the general scheme of things. Alix had
developed quite naturally into a social butterfly. Gerry did not
picture her as chain-lightning playing on a rock, as Alan would have
done; but he did in a vague way feel that bits of his impassive self
were being chipped away.
Red Hill bored Alix, and she showed it. The first summer after the
marriage they had spent abroad. Now Alix’s thoughts and talk turned
constantly toward Europe. She even suggested a flying trip for the
autumn, but Gerry refused to be dragged so far from golf and his club.
He stuck doggedly to Red Hill till the leaves began to turn, and then
consented to move back to town.
On their last night at the Firs, Mrs. Lansing, who was complimentary
Aunt Jane to Waynes and Eltons, entertained Red Hill as a whole to
dinner. With the arrival of dessert, to Alix’s surprise, Nance said,
“Port all around, please, Aunt Jane.”
Lansings, Waynes, and Eltons were heavy drinkers in town, but it was a
tradition, as Alix knew, that on Red Hill they dropped it--all but the
old captain. It was as though, amid the scenes of their childhood, they
became children, and just as a Frenchman of the old school will not
light a cigarette in the presence of his father, so they would not take
a drink for drink’s sake on Red Hill.
So Alix looked on interestedly as the old butler set glasses and
started the port. When it had gone the round, Nance stood up, and with
her hands on the table’s edge leaned toward them all. For a Wayne, she
was very fair. As they looked at her, the color swept up over her bare
neck. Its wave reached her temples, and seemed to stir the clustering
tendrils of her hair. Her eyes were grave and bright with moisture. Her
lips were tremulous.
“We drink to Alan,” she said; “to-day is Alan’s birthday.”
She sat down. They all raised their glasses. Little Clem had no wine.
She put a thin hand on Gerry’s arm.
“Please, Gerry! Please!”
Gerry held down his glass. Clematis dipped in the tip of her little
finger, and, as they all drank, gravely carried the drop of wine to her
lips.