"Very well, then. I'll do it all by myself. I see you've got it, Jack.
Congratulations!"
At that Olivia looked up. "Got what? Oh, a new uniform. Captain Ogilvie,
I suppose."
But Elizabeth had slid into the water, and Olivia slid in from the other
side of the launch, and Ogilvie waited, but the launch did not.
Elizabeth was swimming under water, as seemed to be her habit, and the
launch had quite a little way on before the red cap emerged. She had
heard it, of course, and had calculated very nicely, and came to the
surface just as the aquaplane was going by; and she seized it and swung
herself upon it, and landed standing on her feet. It was like the centre
ring in a circus; and it made me think more and more of that centre
ring, and of great white horses cantering around it, as Elizabeth went
through the most extraordinary feats of agility and skill, diving off
and jumping on again as it seemed with but a quirk of her wrist, making
the aquaplane do the work for her. And to end the exhibition the launch,
which had been doing a modest ten miles an hour, went up to twenty-five,
and the aquaplane stood nearly straight, and bounced around, with sudden
sidewise jumps and swerves and jerks. It was no longer the great white
horse cantering around the ring, but a balky, bucking horse that gave
Elizabeth some trouble. I could see how carefully she was balancing with
bent knees that gave to every jump, and brought it back again. But when
the launch began to twist and turn and loop she could not keep her
balance for very long. She knew she could not, and before she had more
than begun to lose it she laughed aloud, and she gave a spring straight
up, and turned backward in the air, and entered the water behind the
aquaplane, straight and true. As a backward dive it surpassed Olivia's
as you would expect the finished performance of a professional acrobat
to surpass the best attempts of an amateur.
In watching Elizabeth's performance I had entirely forgotten Olivia, and
so had all the others, unless Ogilvie had not. I cannot speak for him.
If he had forgotten he was quickly to be reminded, for suddenly about
half a bucket of water shot up and drenched his cap and his new uniform.
He smiled quietly, and bent forward and looked into the mocking eyes of
Olivia.
"Thank you, Olivia," he said, the water dripping from his cap and his
coat. "Was that intended as a christening?"
Olivia made no reply, but turned and swam to the launch. Elizabeth was
climbing aboard, and sat in her old place on the deck, her feet
dangling.
"Was it a good show, Jack?"
"It was worthy of you, Elizabeth. I can't give any higher praise. Thank
you very much. You have given me a great deal of pleasure. You are
always giving other people pleasure. Good-bye."
And he waved his hand to the launch and then to us, and his motor-boat
went on her business up the harbor, whatever that business was.
Captain Fergus looked after him thoughtfully.
"Now, I wonder," he remarked, "why he didn't come aboard. He ought to
want to see me."
I had got up with him, and we were standing at the gangway. The launch
came nosing around, with the two girls enveloped in raincoats. Olivia
had recovered her spirits. She stood up, and saluted with a stiff
finger.
"Here's a load of lumber for you, Captain Fergus," she said. "Will you
have it aboard? Where will you have it stowed?"
Captain Fergus looked grimly at her, and shook his head slowly, but his
eyes, looking out from the shadow of the shiny visor of his old blue
cap, were pleasant and smiling and humorous. The little wrinkles about
them deepened.
"Don't you know better," he growled sternly, "than to bring me wet
lumber? I can't take it. You'll have to take it ashore and dry it."
"Aye, aye, sir," said Olivia; and she sat down, and I regret to say that
she giggled.
I had gone down the steps, and I was regarding a red rubber cap and a
dun-colored raincoat. The red cap was pulled well down over the ears,
concealing entirely the colors of Eve's great beaver muff. I spoke.
"Miss Radnor," I said, "what have you done with Bobby?"
She looked up quickly, and her eyes met mine frankly. They--hers, not
mine, my eyes being nothing to look at, only to see with; but
hers--they were hazel, I should guess, and they were veiled mischief as
they looked into mine.
"Bobby?" she asked. "Mr. Leverett? Oh, we transferred him yesterday. We
took him down in the Arcadia. We'll take you some day soon."
I have no wish to be transferred. But I do not wonder that Bobby is much
taken with Elizabeth Radnor.
V
Tilling the soil, if the man who tills be working alone, tends to
reflection,--provided that man possesseth wherewith to reflect,--and it
promotes straight and simple thinking, thoughts which may be straight
and true or they may not; but the thoughts of the tiller of the soil are
more likely to be straight and true than the thoughts of the same man
riding in a motor-car or working on the twenty-fifth floor of an office
building. If such a man be the president of the company it is one thing;
he may be puffed up with the pride of a little brief authority or he may
be the simple, true man that Old Goodwin is. His sense of the values of
things must be warped and distorted unless he tills the soil at times or
does something that is equivalent, like sailing the deep blue oceans,
where there is so very little between him and the workings of nature;
and I do not mean sailing as a passenger in an ocean steamer or a yacht,
in which he will have as little to do with the workings of nature as he
would in a great hotel.
In such a man the sense of values must be distorted nearly as much,
though in a different way, as that of a man who sits at one of an
interminable row of desks, on another floor of the same office building,
from eight-thirty in the morning until five in the afternoon, with an
hour for luncheon; and knows himself to be but a cog in a huge machine,
a cog which can and will be replaced as soon as it gives a sign of
running unsmoothly. What a dreadful thought that you are but a cog in a
machine! How very dreadful it must be to realize that you are growing
old and are still nothing but a cog! How pregnant of rebellions, little
futile rebellions! And how it must tear the very soul of that man to
know beforehand that his rebellions must be little and futile! I can
understand that a man in that state would welcome death; that he would
be stood up against a wall and shot rather than go back to that desk of
the interminable row--number thirteen, it might be. But there is nobody
to stand him up against a wall. They will have none of him. He is too
old. Too old to be shot, although he may have fighting instincts
stirring fiercely within him. So they take his son, it may be, and he
goes back to his desk. There is no escape for him. They will not even
let him die as a man should in these times. Life is a series of
disappointments, and the last is the most bitter. Hope takes herself
away until he can hardly see her through the fog.
I was thinking such thoughts as these, leaning on my hoe. I had come out
early to work in my garden, and I would start the planting of a row, and
the next thing I knew I would find myself standing--or squatting, in
accordance with my most recent activity--and gazing out over the waters
of the bay, dreaming and musing of the bitterness of disappointment, or
of little souls clothed with authority, or of Old Goodwin, and of men
like him--if there are such. Old Goodwin's is not a little soul. The
first time that I thought on such things and lost myself in thinking, I
was using my wheel hoe on the ground between the rows of corn and peas
and beans. A wheel hoe is not a thing to lean on, but it fails you when
you most need its support, and gives way under you and brings your
thoughts to earth with a thump--and you as well, if you are not used to
its vagaries and careful. So I took my hand hoe. It is friendly and will
bear me up.
It was the twenty-sixth of May, and I had much planting to do, but I did
not do it. I thought upon what had happened in the past few days, and I
worked my wheel hoe. Wheel-hoeing does not interfere with my thinking.
I believe I could do it in my sleep. I have only to walk along slowly,
and to work my arms back and forth at every step, and unless the ground
is very hard I can think perfectly. My corn showed as little
yellowish-green tubes about an inch and a half long, just poked through
a couple of days before, it was so cold early in the month; and it has
not come up well. As I ran the hoe along beside the row, it was a rank
of soldiers--soldiers of the first line. There were great gaps in the
line. There have been many gaps, and there will be many more. It has not
chanced to hit any friends of mine yet, but it will.
Then I thought upon the report of ten days before, that seven German
submarines had been destroyed at sea on their way over here. It was
gratifying to know that they had been destroyed, but the report was
strangely disquieting to me. If they had sent a fleet of seven, they
might send as many more. There was food for thought in that. I had seen
no further mention of the matter in the papers, and most probably the
report was untrue, but it set me thinking, and I wondered whether the
information would not be considered of value to the enemy. If no report
of their destruction had been published, Germany might not have known of
it for weeks. Weeks of freedom for us knocked in the head by the
newspapers.
And I was through with the corn, and had come to the beans, strange
grotesque, misshapen things, pushing out of the ground like toads. Some
of them were not through yet, but were raising great clods of earth,
leaving holes which looked for all the world like toad-holes. There were
two that looked like sinking ships. And I thought upon the report of a
great naval battle, with many of our ships sunk. I do not believe it. In
fact, I have heard vaguely of a denial by our Navy Department. And my
eye was caught by a flash of scarlet near some trees by my wall, and
there was a tanager. I stopped my hoeing and stood still and watched. It
is some years since I have seen a tanager. He flew about in little short
flights, aimlessly it seemed, from one low branch to another, then upon
the ground, then back to a tree again, paying no attention to me
standing like a scarecrow in my garden. Then he perched high and sang
his cheerful song, very like a robin's. If I were not noticing nor
thinking about it, I might think it a robin's--if I gave it a thought. I
have heard that tanagers have been seen this spring in places where they
have never been seen before. I have never seen one here, and I hoped
this one would stay.
And then that talking machine of my neighbor's began reciting something
in a loud voice--"Cohen at the telephone" or some such thing--and my
tanager flew away, and I went savagely to my hoeing again. And I thought
again of that obsolescent man who is too old to be shot, but not too old
to be condemned to a ball and chain; and whose son they have taken while
they have scornfully rejected him. And he would fight if they would let
him. How he would fight! For there is nothing left for him but to choose
the best death he can get. He may not be free even to do that. The
father of Jack Ogilvie may be just such a man. I stopped again, and
stood holding the handles of my hoe and looking off to sea, and thought
of Ogilvie and Bobby and Jimmy Wales going to and fro upon the waters
seeking that which is not.
I grasped my hoe handles more tightly, and turned my head, and looked at
the dirt before me, and pushed my hoe savagely. What care I how they go
to and fro upon the waters? I wander the shores, and I dig my clams, and
I am content. But am I? And as I had got to this point in my
meditations, from my neighbor's window came the rich voice of Harry
Lauder singing "Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning." I smiled to
myself--there was nobody to see me if I chose to smile at an
absurdity--and my hoe went more and more slowly, for there was no power
behind it. And I listened shamelessly to Harry Lauder's last whisper and
his last mellow laugh, so that I did not hear the light steps behind me;
but I heard the voice that I loved.
"Adam! Adam!" said the voice, chiding. "Listening to Harry Lauder--and
enjoying it! Take shame to yourself."
And I turned, and saw Eve, and Tidda with her. Eve was smiling, and I
smiled back at her.
"Surely, Eve," I said, "a man may rest when he is weary. And if my
neighbor choose to have a talking machine spouting out of his window, I
cannot stop him. I wish I could. Imagine Judson with a talking machine!"
"I can imagine it very easily. The dear old man would have enjoyed it, I
am sure. And if it gives them pleasure, Adam--why, some of the things
give you pleasure. You needn't try to deny it."
"I don't, Eve. I deny nothing. But some of the things are--"
Eve nodded. "Yes," she said, "some of them certainly are. But they
needn't bother you much."
At that moment we heard a giggle from somewhere on the other side of the
wall, and something came whizzing. It was nothing but an old rotten
piece of wood, and it fell short, but it stirred Tidda.
"I'm going after that Sands girl," she cried. "She shan't fire old
pieces of wood at us." And she set off at top speed straight for the
wall. Tidda is not becoming obsolescent.