She had only known him for about twenty days--"The man who mends the
boats"--but she had fallen into the way of referring all interesting
questions to him. That was perhaps the more remarkable as her eyes had
never rested upon him.
One morning Worth had looked up from some comparative measurements of the
tails of Pourquoi and N'est-ce-pas to demand: "Why, Aunt Kate, what do
you think?"
"There are times," replied Aunt Kate, looking over at the girl swaying
in the hammock, humming gently to herself, "when I don't know just what
to think."
"Well sir, what do you think? The man that mends the boats knows more
'an Watts!"
"Worthie," she admonished, "it's bad business for an army man to
turn traitor."
"But yes, he does. 'Cause I asked Watts why Pourquoi had more yellow than
white, and why N'est-ce-pas was more white 'an yellow, and he said I sure
had him there. He'd be blowed if he knew, and he guessed nobody did,
'less maybe the Almighty had some ideas about it; but yesterday I asked
the man that mends the boats, and he explained it--oh a whole lot of long
words, Aunt Kate. More long words 'an I ever heard before."
"And the explanation? I trust it was satisfactory?"
"I guess it was," replied Worth uncertainly. "'Twas an awful lot of
long words."
"My experience, too," laughed Aunt Kate.
"With the man that mends the boats?"
"No, with other sages. You see when they're afraid to stay down here on
the ground with us any longer, afraid they'll be hit with a question that
will knock them over, they get into little air-ships they have and hurl
the long words down at our heads until we're too stunned to ask any more
questions, and in such wise is learning disseminated."
"I'll ask the man that mends the boats if he's got any air-ships. He's
got most everything up there."
"Up where?"
"Oh, up there,"--with vague nod toward the head of the Island.
"He says he'd like to get acquainted with you, Aunt Kate. He says he
really believes you might be worth knowing."
Thereupon Aunt Kate's book fell to the floor with a thud of amazement
that reverberated indignation. "Well upon my word!" gasped she. Then,
recovering her book--and more--"Why what a kindly gentleman he must be,"
she drawled.
"Oh yes, he's kind. He's awful kind, I guess. He'll talk to you any time
you want him to, Aunt Kate. He'll tell you just anything you want to
know. He said you must be a--I forgot the word."
"Oh no, you haven't," wheedled Aunt Kate. "Try to think of it, dearie."
"Can't think of it now. Shall I ask him again?"
"Certainly not! How preposterous! As if it made the slightest difference
in the world!"
But it made difference enough for Aunt Kate to ask a moment later: "And
how did it happen, Worthie, that this kindly philosopher should have
deemed me worth knowing?"
"Oh, I don't know. 'Cause he liked the puppies' names, I guess. I told
him how their mother was just Queen, but how they was Pourquoi and
N'est-ce-pas--a 'quirer and 'versalist and so then he said: 'And which is
Aunt Kate?'"
"Which is Aunt _Kate? What_ did he mean?"
"'Is she content to be just Queen,' he said, 'or is she'--there was a lot
of long words, you wouldn't understand them, Aunt Kate--I didn't
either--'does she show a puppyish tendon'--tendon something--'to butt
into the universe?'"
Suddenly Aunt Kate's face grew pink and she sat straight. "Worth, was
this one of the men?"
"Oh no, Aunt Kate. He's not one of the men. He's just a man. He's the man
that mends the boats."
"'The man that mends the boats!' He sounds like a creature in flowing
robes out of a mythology book, or the being expressing the high and noble
sentiments calling everybody down in a new-thoughtish play."
From time to time Worth would bring word of him. What boats does he mend,
Aunt Kate wanted to know, and what business has he landing them on our
Island? To which came the answer that he mended boats sick unto death
with speed mania and other social disease, and that he didn't land them
on the Island, but on an island off the tip of the Island, a tiny island
which the Lord had thoughtlessly left lying disrespectfully close to the
Isle of Dignity. Katie was too true a romancer to inquire closely about
the man who mended the boats, for she liked to think of him as an unreal
being who only touched the earth off the tip of the Island, and only
touched humanity through Worth. That wove something alluringly
mysterious--and mysteriously alluring--about the man who made sick boats
well, whereas had she given rein to the possibility of his belonging to
the motorboat factory across the river, and scientifically testing
gasoline engines it would be neither proper nor interesting that her
young nephew should run back and forth with pearls of wit and wisdom. It
developed that Worth visited this tip of the Island with the ever
faithful Watts, and that one day the boat mender and Watts had--oh just
the awfulest fight with words Worth had ever heard. It was about the
Government, which the man who mended the boats said was running on one
cylinder, drawing from patriotic Watts the profane defense that it had
all the power it needed for blowing up just such fools as that! He
further held that soldiers were first-class dishwashers and should be
brave enough to demand first-class dishwashing pay. Katie had chuckled
over that. But she had puzzled rather than chuckled over the statement
that the first war the saddles manufactured on that Island would see
would be the war over the manufacturing of them. Now what in the world
had he meant by that? She had asked Wayne, but Wayne had seemed so
seriously interested in the remark, and asked such direct questions as to
who made it, that she had tried to cover her tracks, thinking perhaps the
man who mended the boats could be thrown into the guard-house for saying
such dark things about army saddles.
On the way home from that talk Watts had branded the man who mended the
boats as one of them low-down anarchists that ought to be shot at
sunrise. Things was as they _was_, held Watts, and how could anybody but
a fool expect them to be any way but the way they _was_? It showed what
_he_ was--and after that Worth had had no more fireworks of thought for a
week, Watts standing guard over the world as it was.
But he slipped into an odd place in Katie's life of wonderings and
fancyings, and that life of musing and questioning was so big and so real
a life in those days. He was something to shoot things out at, to hang
things to. She held imaginary conversations with him, demolished him in
imaginary arguments only to stand him up and demolish him again.
Sometimes she quite winked with him at the world as it was, and at other
times she withdrew to lofty heights and said cutting things. In more
friendly mood she asked him questions, sometimes questions he could not
answer, and she could not answer them either, and then their thoughts
would hover around together, brooding over a world of unanswerable
things. All her life she had held those imaginary conversations, but
heretofore it had been with her horse, her dog, the trees, a white cloud
against the blue, something somewhere. None of the hundreds of nice
people she knew had ever moved her to imaginary conversations. And so now
it was stimulating--energizing--not to have to diffuse her thought into
the unknown, but to direct it at, and through, the man who mended the
boats and said strange things to Worth up at the tip of the Island.
And he came at a time when she had great need of him. Never before
had there been so many things to start one on imaginary conversations,
conversations which ended usually in a limitless wondering. Since Ann had
come the simplest thought had a way of opening a door into a vast
country.
Too many doors were opening that afternoon. She was making no headway
with the letters she had told herself she would dispose of while Ann and
Captain Prescott were out on the links.
The letter from Harry Prescott's mother was the most imperative. She was
returning from California and sent some inquiries as to the habitability
of her son's house.
Katie was thinking, as she re-read it, that it was a letter with a
background. It expressed one whom dead days loved well. The writer of
the letter seemed to be holding in life all those gentlewomen who had
formed her.
In a short time Mrs. Prescott would be at the Arsenal. That meant a more
difficult game. Did it also mean an impossible one?
Yet Katie would prefer showing her Ann to Mrs. Prescott than to Zelda
Fraser. Zelda, the fashionable young woman, would pounce upon the absence
of certain little tricks and get no glimmer of what Katie vaguely called
the essence. Might not Mrs. Prescott find the reality in the
possibilities? "It comes to this," Katie suddenly saw, "I'm not shamming,
I'm revealing. I'm not vulgarly imitating; I'm restoring. The connoisseur
should be the first to appreciate that."
It turned her off into one of those long paths of wondering, paths which
sometimes seemed to circle the whole of the globe. It was on those paths
she frequently found the man who mended the boats waiting for her.
Sometimes he was irritating, turning off into little by-paths, by-paths
leading off to the dim source of things. Katie could not follow him
there; she did not know her way; and often, as to-day, he turned off
there just when she was most eager to ask him something. She would ask
him what he thought about backgrounds. How much there was in that thing
of having the background all prepared for one, in simply fitting into the
place one was expected to fit into. How many people would create for
themselves the background it was assumed they belonged in just because
they had been put in it? Suddenly she laughed. She had a most absurd
vision of Jove--Katie believed it would be Jove--standing over humanity
with some kind of heroic feather duster and mightily calling
"Shoo!--Shoo!--Move on!--Every fellow find his place for himself!"
Such a scampering as there would be! And how many would be let stay in
the places where they had been put? Who would get the nice corners it had
been taken for granted certain people should have just because they had
been fixed up for them in advance? How about the case of Miss Katherine
Wayneworth Jones? Would she be ranked out of quarters?
Certain it was that a very choice corner had been fitted up for said
Katherine Wayneworth Jones. People said that she belonged in her corner;
that no one else could fit it, that she could not as well fit anywhere
else. But she was not at all sure that under the feather duster act that
would give her the right of possession. People were so stupid. Just
because they saw a person sitting in a place they held that was the place
for that person to be sitting. Katie almost wished that mighty "Shoo!"
would indeed reverberate 'round the world. It would be such fun to see
them scamper and squirm. And would there not be the keenest of
satisfaction in finding out what sort of place one would fit up for one's
self if none had been fitted up for one in advance?
Few people were called upon to prove themselves. Most people judged
people as they judged pictures at an exhibition. They went around with a
catalogue and when they saw a good name they held that they saw a good
picture. And when they did not know the name, even though the picture
pleased them, they waited around until they heard someone else saying
good things, then they stood before it murmuring, "How lovely."
She had put Ann in the catalogue; she had seen to it that she was
properly hung, and she herself had stood before her proclaiming something
rare and fine. That meant that Ann was taken for granted. And being taken
for granted meant nine-tenths the battle.
It would be fun to fool the catalogue folks. And she need have no
compunctions about lowering the standard of art because the picture she
had found out in the back room and surreptitiously hung in the night
belonged in the gallery a great deal more than some of the pictures which
had been solemnly carried in the front way. It was the catalogue folks,
rather than the lovers of art, were being imposed upon.
And Mrs. Prescott, though to be sure a maker of catalogues, was also a
lover of art. There lay Katie's hope for her, and apology to her.
Though she was apprehensive, a stronger light was to be turned on--that
was indisputable. "You and I know, dear Queen," Katie confided to the
member of her sex lying at her feet, "that men are not at all difficult.
You can get them to swallow most anything--if the girl in the case is
beautiful enough. And feminine enough! Masculine dotes on discovering
feminine--but have you ever noticed what the rest of the feminine dote on
doing to that discovery? Women can even look at wondrous soft brown eyes
and lovely tender mouths through those 'Who was your father?' 'specs'
they keep so well dusted. The manner of holding a teacup is more
important than the heart's deep dreams. When it comes to passing
inspection, the soul's not in it with the fork. We know 'em--don't we,
old Queen?"
Queen wagged concurrence, and Katie pulled herself sternly back to
her letters.
Mrs. Prescott spoke of the chance of her son's being ordered away. "I
hope not," she wrote, "for I want the quiet summer for him. And for
myself, too. The great trees and the river, and you there, dear Katie, it
seems the thing I most desire. But we of the army learn often to
relinquish the things we most desire. We, the homeless, for in the
abiding sense we are homeless, make homes possible. Think of it with
pride sometimes, Katie. Our girls think of it all too little now. I
sometimes wonder how they can forego that just pride in their traditions.
During this spring in the West my thoughts have many times turned to
those other days, days when men like your father and my husband performed
the frontier service which made the West of to-day possible. Recently at
a dinner I heard a young woman, one of the 'advanced' type, and I am
sorry to say of army people, speak laughingly to one of our men of the
uselessness of the army. She was worthy nothing but scorn, or I might
have spoken of some of the things your mother and I endured in those days
of frontier posts. And now we have a California--serene--fruitful--and
can speak of the uselessness of the army! Does the absurdity of it never
strike them?"
Katie pondered that; wondered if Mrs. Prescott's attitude and spirit were
not passing with the frontier. Few of the army girls she knew thought of
themselves as homeless, or gave much consideration to that thing of
making other homes possible, save, to be sure, the homes they were
hoping--and plotting--to make for themselves. And she could not see that
the "young woman" was answered. The young woman had not been talking
about traditions. Probably the young woman would say that yesterday
having made to-day possible it was quite time to be quit of yesterday.
"Though to be sure," Katie now answered her, "while we may not seem to be
doing anything, we're keeping something from being done, and that perhaps
is the greatest service of all. Were it not for us and our dear navy we
should be sailed on from East and West, marched on from North and South.
At least that's what we're told by our superiors, and are you the kind of
young woman to question what you're told by your superiors? Because if
you are!--I'd like to meet you."
Her letter continued: "Harry writes glowingly of your charming friend.
Strange that I am not able to recall her, though to be sure I knew little
of you in those years abroad. Was she a school friend? I presume so.
Harry speaks of her as 'the dear sort of girl,' not leaving a clear image
in my mind. But soon my vision will be cleared."
"Oh, will it?" mumbled Kate. "I don't know whether it will or not. 'The
dear sort of girl!' And I presume the young goose thought he had given a
vivid picture."
She turned to Major Darrett's note: a charming note it was to turn to. He
had the gift of making himself very real--and correspondingly
attractive--in those notes.
A few days before she had been telling Ann about Major Darrett. "He's a
bachelor," she had said, "and a joy." Ann had looked vague, and Katie
laughed now in seeing that her characterization was broad as "the dear
sort of girl."
It was probable Major Darrett would relieve one of the officers at the
Arsenal. He touched it lightly. "Should fate--that part of it dwelling in
Washington--waft me to your Island, Katie Jones, I foresee a summer to
compensate me for all the hard, cruel, lonely years."
Kate smiled knowingly; not that she actually knew much to be
knowing about.
She wondered why she did not disapprove of Major Darrett. Certain she was
that some of the things which had kept his years from being hard, cruel,
and lonely were in the category for disapproval. But he managed them so
well; one could not but admire his deftness, and admiration was weakening
to disapproval. One disapproved of things which offended one, and in this
instance the results of the things one knew one should disapprove were so
far from offensive that one let it go at smiling knowingly, mildly
disapproving of one's self for not disapproving.
Ann had not responded enthusiastically to Katie's drawing of Major
Darrett. She had not seemed to grasp the idea that much was forgiven the
very charming; that ordinary standards were not rigidly applied to the
extraordinarily fascinating. When Katie was laughingly telling of one of
the Major's most interesting flirtations Ann's eyes had seemed to crouch
back in that queer way they had. Katie had had an odd sense of Ann's
disapproving of her--disapproving of her for her not disapproving of him.
More than once Ann had given her that sense of being disapproved of.
As with all things in the universe just then, he was a new angle back to
Ann. If he were to come there--? For Major Darrett would not at all
disapprove of those eyes of Ann's. And yet his own eyes would see more
than Wayne and Harry Prescott had seen. Major Darrett had been little on
the frontier, but much in the drawing-room; he had never led up San Juan
hill, but he had led many a cotillion. He had had that form of military
training which makes society favorites. As to Ann, he would have the
feminine "specs" and the masculine delight at one and the same time. What
of that union?
Katie's eyes began to dance. She hoped he would come. He would be a foe
worthy her steel. She would have to fix up all her fortifications--look
well to her ammunition. Whatever might be held against Major Darrett it
could not be said he was not worthy one's cleverest fabrications. But the
triumph of holding one's own with a veteran!
Then of a sudden she wondered what the man who mended the boats would
think of the Major.