SOPHISTICATION
Telling Shipman "all about Colter" was, Sard found, not so easy. To
eyes fixed upon hers with inscrutable powers of judgment, it was
difficult to find words for the story. Yet, as the girl, her forehead
slightly knotted, described the half-bent figure of the vagabond,
surrounded by a curious little ring of village loafers, half prodded,
half jeered into mumbled answers to questions as to what he was doing
there, Shipman responded easily to the passion for decency and justice
that had swept over her who had driven her car close up to the group.
The picture of Sard dominating the half respectful, half resentful
loafers, getting them to lift the dazed man into the car, was vivid.
Shipman could see the calm young ascendency, the smiling way of giving
directions, ignoring comments. The lawyer could visualize the whole
thing, country smirks and all, as she related how she and Lowden had
driven Colter to the little boarding-house, arranged for a room and the
attendance of a physician and finally left her own visiting card and
address and the sentence scribbled, "Come to this address when you are
able to work."
There was something so divine in this unconscious recital of pure
humanity that the man, sitting there, had no droll look of question,
nor raised eyebrow of inexpediency. The fresh eyes of the girl sought
his for comment.
"I don't approve," he said slowly, "but I admire."
"But why don't you approve?"
Shipman looked into the young eyes, wondering at their brown brook-like
centers, slightly tremulous with tiny shifting lights of gold. As the
girl laughed, they deepened into a curious maternal gleam, a hint of
motherliness. Fascinated by the clear purity of her, realizing how
little she could grasp of the hundred cheap misinterpretations of her
acts, he kept silent.
"Wouldn't you have 'approved' if you had been in Colter's place?"
The lawyer straightened. After all, he was years older than she, even
winged victories could come to grief; there were draggled wings and
things that could not be victories. He saw the saucy inference and
became somber, so somber that he had no answer to match his mood. Sard
chose to be glibly interrogative.
"You must have seen that he is not a common man?" determinedly.
"You couldn't have known that when you picked him up," was the slightly
testy reply. "People can't do these things; the world is slimy, putrid,
about all such things. The only thing that keeps the Augean stables
livable is people like you that don't know the slimy things exist. I'm
not at all sure," said the lawyer, with a big brotherly air, "that
you had any right to carry the thing so far without your father's
knowledge. Suppose this man had been a stool-pigeon, one of the bands
that tour the country with plans for house-breaking." As Shipman said
the words he was tearing stray leaves in his hands, watching the
drooping face, hating himself for casting a shadow on it.
"You have seen that he is a gentleman," returned Sard steadily. If she
had been an older woman she would have played lightly with the thing,
half caressing the man in his chivalrous disapproval of her. But the
lovely thing about Sard was that she took no such ways. While youth is
youth it plays the game squarely, directly, standing outside of its own
little fortress of personality, demanding, "Who goes there--friend or
foe?" and unhesitatingly letting down the portcullis for those who show
the right colors even though they keep their visors down.
"I don't like to butt in," said Shipman, "but--but I'd rather have you
think a little more, yet. I don't know; if you did think you wouldn't
be you and you are----" The man muttered the end of the sentence; he
suddenly recollected himself, rose restlessly and walked over toward
the line of swamp maples walling the inner woods back of the stream. He
peered a little anxiously into the rapidly glooming vistas. "I think,
Miss Girl, that you had better go a little slow," was all he said.
Shipman, himself, had been making a surreptitious study of Colter, and
had to admit that the man, though apparently aged through some kind of
exposure and deathless sorrow, had every evidence of good breeding and
clean life. There had been a curious muscular thinness to the long
body that had spelled fundamental good health, though his cheeks were
sunken and his hands nervous. Shipman had seen from the very beginning
that Judge Bogart's man of all work at one time had physical training:
riding, perhaps, cross-country walking; very much of a man, yet
undoubtedly some ne'er do well who for reasons best known to himself
had been willing to put himself under a girl's protection and affect
so silly a disease as amnesia. Shipman balked at the amnesia theory.
The lawyer half grimaced at the possibilities of Sard's awakening and
disappointment. He cast about for some way in which he could warn the
impulsive girl at his side yet help her in what she believed.
"People talk about training girls for the home," said Sard. She was
standing close by him now. "Why don't they see that the World is our
home? All our own separate little homes are just so many leaves and
petals on the great World-Flower. It isn't enough to know how to run a
little house with two floors and a bathroom and a kitchen," said the
girl. "We must train our minds and our muscles to be ready to help
anywhere; in foreign countries--to make homes in Hell, if need be."
It was said not recklessly or rantingly, but with a New Conviction,
the conviction of clean, honest youth awake to the larger demand of
the future and anxious not to be surprised or appalled, but to meet
those demands. Shipman, something young and aching in his own breast,
something that had not been touched for years, looked down upon the
tawny head so close to his shoulder; he caught his breath, "Winged
Victory," he murmured.
"What?" asked practical Sard.
For answer the lawyer growled, "Nothing." He wandered restlessly
about pulling back the low screening maple branches, peering into the
depths of the woods where low sunset bird notes sounded over the wild
geraniums and the ferns sent out strange bracken scents.
"Miss Bogart, do you know the character of the swamps through this
section? Are there quick-sands?"
The girl stared. "I don't know," then suddenly startled, "Why?"
"Just because,"--the man was listening intently--"H'm! Yes, that's your
man Colter's voice. I thought I heard it once before. Do you suppose
he needs us?" He looked smilingly at her, anxious not too greatly to
disturb her. "Would Miss Minga take chances with a bog or whatever?
She'd do almost any fool thing, wouldn't she?"
"Chances--Minga!" Sard laughed while she frowned. "That's all Minga
ever takes--chances; her life is like a little patchwork quilt, full
of queer little bright pieces that don't match." Now the girl herself
listened, staring into her companion's face, noting its strength and
grimness. "I--I like him, sort of," admitted Sard to herself. Aloud
she said, "Why, that's funny; just now I thought I heard someone too,
but it was down there," indicating the direction of the canoes that
could be heard farther down the creek. The sound of the mandolins and
ukuleles had stopped, but wrangling voices sounded from time to time
and once more came the raucous screams that Shipman had noted earlier
in the afternoon.
"That's Cinny," said Sard, frowning in good earnest. "Ugh!" said the
girl irritatedly, "I wish she wouldn't be so queer. I wish----"
"What do you wish?" asked Shipman quietly. He had the quality of the
man whom she had seen that first night at the organ builder's house,
a quality of control and strength that a woman might lean on. Half
unconsciously Sard did lean on it; a worried look had come over her
face. "I feel responsible for Minga," she admitted, "for all of them;
they're so queer, so almost horrid sometimes. I get fussed wondering
how they'll turn out--they--they seem to have no Law."
"They have the Law-of-the-Pack, apparently," said Shipman, laughing.
He, too, remembered that night at the organ builder's house. He
recalled the defiant young faces fixed upon him as he had disciplined
one of their number. Shipman recalled the incident with some
satisfaction. He thought particularly of Minga. "Little fiend, I'd like
to--but that was just it--what did one do to little fiends like Minga?"
His own frown was puzzled as he realized that it was getting late and
that Minga and Colter were missing, yet what to do? Wait for the young
lady to conclude her vagaries, or go forth after her and so pander to
the vain little thing who had hidden herself in order to force him
to search for her. Shipman half laughed at the unaccountable thoughts
that had stolen into his mind; all Minga needed was to be well kissed,
kissed very hard indeed. The lawyer, standing straight, drew a short
breath. "H'm, perhaps it was time to get back to the mountain top, to
Friar Tuck, to a plaster cast and a few old books and a pipe and some
memories. By Jove, it was time to get back!"
Suddenly Sard reached out and grasped the lawyer's arm. "Listen," she
said eagerly. "There!"
The touch, vigorous and arresting, sobered while it thrilled him; he
flushed like a guilty boy. The lawyer, lost in cases and evidence and
books, had not had companionship with a woman like this for years; it
was like being with a young wind-blown tree or a sun-spangled fountain.
It was so fresh and spontaneous and unconscious that it made him feel
clumsy, lost, like some uncouth being that must find a new soul or else
miss out on this companionship. The touch brought back things, college
day things that were vital, almost Pagan in their care-free élan, so
that his eyes deepened, almost snapped as he, in his turn, grasped the
girl's hand. "There!" He mocked her. His hand closed on her fingers.
But Sard seemed not to notice; she was listening intently; suddenly her
eyes widened and she turned toward him. "That was Colter," she said
decisively. "Hark! Yes--he needs help--he is calling; we must go."
Pausing, her face flushed and earnestly fixed upon him, the famous
lawyer suddenly realized untrammeled girlhood in all its essence of
fineness and freedom; what he did not notice was that at the sound
of the far-off voice of the man in the forest, her whole being had
expanded like a light and that she stood for a moment like a young
mother whose child cries.
"Coming!" she called.
Turning, they plunged through the green walls of the swamp. Sard put
her brown hands to her mouth.
"Coming!" she called.
Meanwhile two canoes rounded the little green promontory that walled
in the "race" and floated in toward the small beach where Sard's party
were encamped. One of these, propelled by Dunstan Bogart, moved slowly,
halted now and then by the movements of a girl leaning in the stern.
This girl's idea of humor seemed to be to lean forward and grasp the
paddle as it went in the water. From side to side the two leaned,
Dunstan trying to evade the paddle-grasper amid the snorts and chuckles
of them both. Suddenly the paddle was arrested in mid-air.
"Pshaw! somebody has been here ahead of us! Look at those traps on the
bank there."
Dunstan, his face unlike its usual merry self, a somewhat sodden look
to his faun eyes, looked about for the advance pearl hunters. Jumping
out, he kicked the empty mussel shells about, he reached forward and
inspected the picnic trappings and thermos bottles. "Sandwiches!" he
called out to the others. "They haven't had supper, whoever they are;
look, there's a pile of driftwood for their fire," then with a whistle,
"Holy Cat--I say, Gert, here's my sister's thermos bottle; look at the
monogram, S. B. And that's Minga's plaid steamer rug. I know, because
I got her a pillow to match. Say, for heaven's sake! Let's get out of
here; we don't want to piggy-mix in their party. Pshaw! they've beat us
to it, pearls and all!"
Gertrude, lying back in the canoe, smoking, raised her head. There
was a gold serpent bracelet around one of her brown arms, and around
the waist of her thin green jersey another huge gold serpent twined.
She made a strange exotic picture in the leafy dimness of the late
afternoon. Her dark hair, brilliant cheeks and lips suggested Eastern
things; one instinctively put her against some background of pyramids
and sphinxes. When she spoke, however, the illusion vanished;
Gertrude employed the "chewing gum" accent in all its undiscipline of
inflections and jawful mouthings. She had only to open her mouth and
one knew that however subtle and old the soul that lay within her, the
brain that controlled that soul had only one idea, to get things, and
to get them quickly.
"Why get out?" she asked indolently. "I thought we were booked till
midnight." Gertrude had prepared her golden snakes for a forest
moonlight.
"Well, if you think it's fair to Cinny." At this the girl in the second
boat sat up staring about her. Her fair hair was tousled, her eyes were
dull, and her mouth hung loosely.
"What's the matter with Cinny?" she demanded. "I'm all right--I'm a
li'l' slipp--sleepy, that's all. Dunce, who's got the chawclets? I want
some more." With a burst of silly laughter the girl lay down again,
her eyelids drooping heavily, the young, full lips pushed out in a
coarse way, hateful to see.
The other youth brought his boat with this burden alongside the bank
where the first campers had piled their belongings. "Wouldn't it be
more fun to hang around?" this youth asked. "The fair lady can sleep
there and we can just say she's tired out, sunburn and all--y' know.
Whassay we sort of stay and watch the fun?" this fellow asked. The
speaker, resplendent in a white college sweater, with its ostentatious
chest letter, had a curious old man's look of importance and prestige.
On his hands were two extremely ornate rings of cabalistic designs
drawn by himself. His tie was prodded with a gold nugget, his
wrist-watch was a sort of disease of jewels, he had in every motion he
made the self-conscious assurance of the fop, the sort of man who is
trained in boyhood by silly women to "appear well" in hotels. "I don't
care when I meet my fiancée," he winked at Gertrude.
Tawny Troop, Minga's betrothed, well up in the essential attitudes of
good sportsmanship, yet now by his very way of handling his paddle,
showed the Miss Nancy, the jeunesse dorée spirit that one felt would
take him a certain successful distance and then with some untimely
revelation utterly betray him.
"I think we should remain here." Tawny spoke as one accustomed to being
obeyed; his voice was soft and his inflection pampered, but his tones
had all the assurance that is given by a large bank account.
Dunce looked at the man irritably. "All right," he growled, "remain
then." Dunstan was thinking of the general mess of things should Minga
return. Instinctively downright himself, the lad could not bear the
suggestion of intrigue that he knew Gertrude gloried in. There was
something so worried and resentful in the deep brown eyes that the
girl still in the boat beckoned to him. Gertrude reached up a long,
well-shaped arm, sleeve rolled to the elbow. She plucked at Dunstan,
trying to pull him down to her. "Poor little boy, come and be petted,"
she laughed. It was the laugh of an old soul in a young body. All the
manner and experience of the woman of the low lights and intimate
perfumes was in Gertrude's gesture. For answer the boy, standing on
shore, kicked the bow of the boat away from him; he sent it slanting
into the center of the "race," where it wobbled about; the girl,
eyebrows raised, took up the paddle and lazily shoved it back.
"You beast! Why did you do that?" Gertrude's mouth was large and apt to
be a little over-delicious in some of her planned scenes; but now it
was hard bitted, twitching, like the mouth of a wicked horse; her eyes,
long and liquid, were artificially enhanced with violet shadows and her
face set between great rolls of lacquered hair, had moments of extreme
craft seen under a curious mask of self-indulgent ease and gluttony.
She reached over and, taking a chocolate, bit into it with white teeth
that seemed to have a meaning of their own, her mocking eyes fixed on
the sulky boy on the bank.
"Have some delirium tremens?" Gertrude waved the box of chocolates.
It was a gift from Tawny and contained three pounds of candy filled
with varying liquors, French and Greek condensations that were rather
intense for the American head.
Dunstan glowered scornfully down on the girl. "Ah! Why don't you stop
eating that rat poison?" he demanded fretfully. He turned to Tawny
Troop, now tickling Cinny's sleepy face with a grass blade. "You thing
in the bath-towel sweater, you thought it was funny to bring doped
candy, I suppose. They like that at the Chinamen's balls and the other
festivities you frequent, hey? Aw, old stuff, old stuff!"
The tones were purposely insulting, but at first the Troop merely
chuckled for answer. Then he leaned forward and kissed Cinny lightly.
At this, something latent in Dunstan seemed to take fire--he turned and
muttered things uncomplimentary. "Aw," he snarled, "aw, cut it out."
"Now, Dunce, now, Tiger!" this from Gertrude. But the boy turned to her
with an ugly look in his eyes. "Well, Gertrude Farum," said Dunstan
slowly and impressively, "now that we're here where decent girls are,
don't you think you'd better take a day off, clean up, burn up the
trash--y' know?"
Disgust was quivering all over the boy's face, but his own accent was
also thick, his eyes heavy; he had had his share of the doped candy
and something else from the absurd gold flask that Tawny sported.
Dunstan, to his shame, had also had his share of such diversion as this
frivolous society afforded. Suddenly at sight of the things belonging
to his sister and the girl staying with her, all the clean gentleman in
him rose up and accused him, and he suddenly found himself entangled
with things which he did not know how to unravel.
But Troop, the exquisite, now spoke up. He appealed to the girls.
"By heck! the darned lobster. Say, I think he ought to apologize.
Gert--Cin--don't yew? Yep, by heck, I do. Say, man, you're, by heck,
you're rotten insulting. I'll tell the world you ought to be crowned.
You're rotten insulting, I'll tell the little old world!"
Dunstan heard the squeaking voice in silence. The afternoon had been
long and hot. Things had risen in him that made his veins seem full of
fire. He looked this way and that, like a trapped creature that smells
clean water and wants to get to it. His ears were singing, his eyes
burning, and he dreaded both the return of the two decent girls whom he
loved and a possible evening spent with the two girls before him. He
tried to speak but he knew that his own accent was thick and uncertain,
and he could have burst into tears. There was Cinny lying abandoned,
disheveled, her small beautiful form too well revealed by the large
meshed transparent jersey she wore, her white face soggy and debauched,
her corn-silk hair dampened and matted. A sense of degradation came to
Dunstan. The fact that the other two could not and would not feel this
obsessed him. Cinny was such a little fool. He stood on the bank and
raged childishly.
"We couldn't be commoner if we were wharf rats! I've seen Chinatown
people behaving better than--than we have. We're a lot of vile pigs."
It was characteristic of Dunstan that he included himself in the
indictment. He turned toward the snake-wreathed Gertrude.
"You knew that stuff was drugged, and you fed it to us all," the boy,
staring disgustedly on the three, half sobbed in his frenzy. He went to
the bank's edge nervously, gesticulating. "It was a rotten trick, and
I--well, I know that we've behaved like swine, and I'll say so. Yes,
I don't care, I'll bawl us out. I'll bawl myself out--I'll----" Poor
Dunstan flung out his arms in a passionate gesture.
"Aw!" they jeered. "Aw, say!" But the beringed Tawny also rose. He
stood wobbling his canoe, stabbing at the water aimlessly, and the
oratorical manner he maintained would have been funny, had not his very
words revealed his befuddled condition.
"Well, I can tell you," he swore solemnly, "that you insult these
ladies. Yes, sir! That's it, you insult 'em. If I had a gun I'd crown
you--yes. That's it, you insult these ladies." Tawny's tongue seemed to
cleave to the roof of his mouth; he wet his lips. With a surly squint
of the eyes, he faced the youth on the bank.
"These ladies" did not seem particularly resentful on their own
account. But the squalidness of it all, the silly and disgusting
company in which he found himself, burned up into Dunstan's head. The
boy almost hopped as he strode toward Tawny.
"Why, you hound!" he shrieked. "Who are you to say that, you
moving-picture Polly. I insult 'em, do I? What did you do, you rotter?
You brought that infernal gold tank of yours and this sick stuff; you
knew those girls couldn't--couldn't--" Suddenly Dunstan, with long arm,
reached forward to the seat by Gertrude. Snatching the candy box he
tossed it into the creek, all its remaining chocolate-covered contents
avalanching forth. He turned on the aghast Troop. "Aw," he breathed,
"aw, you worsted monkey, you'll not bring candy like that again to nice
girls. When you come here again leave your cute candy with the Chinks
where it belongs."
But Tawny was now aroused. This was an attack on a sensitive point.
Getting all his jewelry straight, pulling down his monogrammed white
sweater, he rose, as one towering on the rostrum and stood feet planted
wide apart in the wobbling craft. He met Dunstan's scorn with answering
derision. "Yah--nice girls?" he queried in his turn. "Nice, what?
Oh, come on! Nice girls, I'll say!" mimicked the sarcastic Tawny. He
regarded his suave finger-nails and over them cast one eye on the
recumbent Cinny, the other on the snake-wreathed Gertrude. He sneered
back at his antagonist. "Nice girls; root for 'em by your lonesome.
Nobody else'll help you. Nice girls, nothing!"
This was too much for Dunstan. The trip for him had been miserable
anyway. He had found the party which he had entered with a slight
measure of distrust to be entirely dominated by the Exquisite, and
the subsequent unwholesome revelations of Cinny the lackadaisical,
and Gertrude the importunate, had beguiled him into that dubious
activity known as "being a good sport." Dunstan, out of a very
clean straightforward heritage, felt somehow vulgarized, degraded.
Perspiring, he waited like a crouching panther for the other man to
meet him on shore.
"Cinny!" shrieked Gertrude, with her hard laugh. "Wake up, Honey,
here's something worth while! Dunstan, the great chewing-gum champion,
is going to meet Tawny Troop, the cutest little evader in the
Hackensack Backwaters. Who holds the odds?" Cinny put up an indifferent
hand to her fair hair, one of the cushions fell overboard, also a
ukulele. Gertrude, with an exclamation, paddled over and rescued these;
she leaned over to Cinny, saying sharply:
"What's the matter with you? Why can't you sit up and behave? Don't you
realize that Sard and Minga are around here somewhere?" Gertrude leaned
close over to the other girl, whispering very distinctly. "Cinny, we'll
have to see that we are not any sportier than they are. Of course, no
one knows what they've been doing. Dunce is really mad, and if he gets
talking--you know that Minga is engaged to Tawny." But she spoke to
deaf ears.
"Leave me alone," murmured Cinny.
Dunstan, seeing the whole squalid meaning of his party, burst into
flames. He strode to the other boy now getting out and meeting him on
the shore. With a grip like that of a young gorilla, Dunstan seized the
Exquisite Troop by his silken shirt collar. "Come out, you sissy," he
snarled, "come out here, you piece of pallid pie-crust. You feed girls
drugged candy, do you? Well, you'll get fed, fed up nicely."
But Tawny Troop was not the son of a moving-picture producer for
nothing. After all there was a grand stand with two ladies in it. The
Troop gesture meant something; with a sound as much like an answering
snarl as he could make it, Tawny drew up in magnificent hauteur. This
attitude greatly irritated the other. "Ah! Come on, you marionette,"
he muttered. Dunstan cast about for something that should rouse the
other. "You paid escort, you Messenger Boy." It was cub rage, but it
was adolescent cub, and it was somehow significant.
The girl Cinny rose slowly on her elbow staring at them with heavy
eyes. Gertrude clapped her hand over her mouth to keep back a howl. The
two boys clinched, and it was an ugly clinch.
Dunstan's hand went straight to the throat of the other. Here they
met and the lad seemed to forget all fair rules of fighting. A look
of crazy joy came into the hot brown eyes. Oh, this was a man's size
job! a good thing to do. Then Dunce saw the horrible look of Tawny's
face changing under his hands; yes, but was this the way? Suddenly
by some strange underground channel of thought awakened by emotion,
Dunstan remembered the morning in the dining-room his own jeering
aside under his father's sternness and "be hanged by the neck till
you are dead"--that was what his father had said when--men--when men
were sentenced for murder. Terence O'Brien, poor Terry, young, young!
Dunstan looked again at the face under his hands; it was colored dark;
this was the right way!--to throttle like this!
Then the boy looked about at the trees, at the white faces of the
girls, voiceless, and his hands, flaccid, suddenly fell away. "We'll
stop," he said thickly, "we'll stop. I don't want to fight. Oh! I don't
want to, don't want to fight!"
Tawny, a look of relief hiding some other look, staggered against a
tree, where he gasped wretchedly. "You, you coward!" he shrieked,
choking. Something like a frightened sob gulped out of him; then
there was a sound of footsteps in the thicket behind them. Four forms
emerged. Sard first, alert and making straight for the ready built
fire, which she quickly and deftly lighted; Shipman next, and after
them Colter with a small form held in his arms, covered with mud and
soaked in black ooze, Minga with face and hair a mass of slime.
There was very little explanation. The fire blazed up and the little
figure wrapped in rugs given something hot to drink. The others stood
around and watched her. Gertrude, with a hard stare, turned in the
firelight to Tawny. The girl was one cold glitter of gold snakes and
swamp dark eyes. "Your fiancée?" she questioned, smiling. She was
ironical. While the other party waited for Minga's resuscitation, the
quartette started to get under way. But on the down-creek trip it was
Tawny who paddled Gertrude's boat, and they soon outstripped Dunstan,
who came more slowly with Cinny asleep at his feet.
The moon spotted the black of the forest and spread silver on the
waterways. All around the slow-moving canoes were the waiting ones,
the little wood creatures who come out innocently for their pure trysts
and unwitting obediences to the great laws they honestly serve. These
stayed cleanly apart from the canoes with their human freight, the
strange mystical human beings who are torn between their two great
allegiances, the animal and the spiritual. But only Dunstan saw these
things, and paddled solemnly and felt like crying and wondered what
serene wisdom the summer night withheld.