POET
WITHIN a dozen yards of the shore Jerry stopped paddling and held
up her right hand, two fingers extended like a papal benediction.
Anyone brought up in the country knows that silent code. It suggests
willows and spring-boards and “sandy bottoms”; and translated into the
vernacular it means, “Let’s go swimmin’!”
But Richard Richard had never had a boyhood. Perhaps one of the things
that made him so eager to look the world in the face was the fact
that nurses and governesses and private tutors had been his portion,
and what summers his sickly life had permitted were spent with other
sheltered youth in the south of France or in the Swiss Alps.
“Are you giving me a Tshoti-non-da-waga blessing?” he asked when she
stepped on the shore.
“Don’t you know the sign?” she asked incredulously.
“No; what does it mean?”
“Really?” She stood before him looking at him curiously. “Where have
you been brung up! It means, ‘Let’s go swimmin’.’ Every country boy
knows that.”
“I wish I had been a country boy.” He spoke with a touch of regret.
“Don’t tell me you spent your summers in New York City.”
“Even that would have been something,” said he ruefully. “Those kids
over on the West Side have lots of fun.”
“Well,” she smiled, “if you were neither a country boy nor a city boy,
what were you?”
Phœbe joined them. The Wheelen boy had made his farewells and had
piloted his canoe around the bend.
“I’ll tell you,” said Phœbe. “He was sent up to the Reform School at an
early age and then transferred to Matteawan. He’s just out of the crazy
house. I know; I’m an expert. Besides, he’s just been tellin’ me all
about it.”
“That’s just about the size of it,” Richard admitted. “I was
be-governessed and be-tutored all my young days. I was a frail lad,
you know. You wouldn’t believe it to see me now. I’m like Theodore
Roosevelt in that respect. You know he was a discard in his young days,
but he built himself into the prize-fighter class. That’s what they did
with me.... I got so used to being out of things which other boys were
doing that, somehow, I didn’t miss them. I was almost seventeen before
I began to put on weight.”
“Didn’t you ever go swimming and orchard robbing and nutting with the
‘gang’?” Jerry asked.
“Never.”
“You poor boy!”
“Poor!” ejaculated Phœbe, then slapped a hand over her mouth and
retreated into the house. “How ever am I going to keep my mouth shut?”
she asked herself. “The only thing for me to do is to go out and dig
garden until they go away.”
The signal to go swimming was given again.
“Sure!” Richard assented with alacrity. “What’s the way to answer
that?”
“Two fingers of the left hand for ‘All right,’ and one finger for
‘Can’t.’”
He waved his two fingers and darted into the house.
When he came out he found her in the water at the head of the dock.
Certainly as she moved about with exquisite grace in the transparent
water she looked like some lithe aquatic animal.
“I don’t like to be watched,” she spoke quietly. “Come in.”
He understood, and plunged immediately.
“That brown costume matches you so well,” he explained, “you looked
like a sleek otter, or like young Mowgli out of the _Jungle Book_, only
you don’t kick your legs like a frog.”
“Of course not.” They were moving very, very leisurely out into the
Lake. “You would soon tire with that frog kick.”
The day he had looked out of the window in Phœbe’s house and had
seen her swim by he had noticed--Keuka water is as clear as an
aquarium--that she “walked” as she swam, one leg drawn after the other,
the sign of the long-distance swimmer.
“Where shall we go?” he asked after a few moments of silent swimming.
“I like to have something to aim at.”
“Let’s cross.”
“Very well.”
“That bushy clump of trees which come down to the water’s edge;
straight ahead now.”
“I see them.”
It was a diagonal cut, probably a mile and a half across, but the
water was delicious, and they were in no haste. At times they spoke
a sentence or two, but for the most part they moved on rhythmically
without a word. Each seemed to know instinctively when to stop and
“tread” or when to float and rest. It was the essence of tranquillity
which speech would have spoiled.
Several times they faced each other for long, steady minutes. He could
observe the easy swing of the arm, the coiled brown hair, the wet
eyelashes and the silk insignia of the French swimming club on the edge
of her garment; and she could note his natural ease in the water, but
particularly his face of many lines. She would have liked to examine
it furrow by furrow, but his scrutinizing blue eye kept too watchful a
guard. And she was not quite certain if he had not begun to “make eyes
at her”; so she would turn away and use a stroke that left him to study
the coil on coil of braided hair. And then, safely turned away, she
would permit her face to smile in quiet enjoyment of the catastrophe
that would occur--panic, indeed!--if he could know what racing thoughts
were hers!
And all the while he was thinking of the phenomena of communication:
how each mind was busy on its own affairs with only a yard or two of
space between, yet neither able to enter the privacy of the other. He
conjectured that the documents which Mrs. Wells had given her to study
had not yet told their story of disaster. Or else she was an incredible
actor. And while he planned carefully how to settle the difficulties of
the estate without giving her pride a chance to object, he was thankful
for the miracle that separated their minds so absolutely.
He was thankful for other reasons. While he watched her face he
wondered why she had told Walter that Richard and she had “fixed it
up.” Walter had been explicit; he insisted that Jerry had owned that
she and Richard were agreed on marriage. Walter may have been mistaken,
but Richard could not shake off the air of probability about Walter’s
assertion. If she had made such a statement--nothing in the calm face
beside him remotely suggested such a thing--there was some good reason
back of it. So much he assured himself, but, puzzle as he could, he
found no satisfying explanation.
The swim was not fatiguing because they were experienced swimmers and
knew how to make journeys of that sort; but, nevertheless, on reaching
the other side, they lay down on the grass and took the precaution of a
good rest.
“How goes the bookkeeping, Lady Manager?” he asked.
She did not reply at first.
“Not at all,” she admitted at length. “But I fear I have not been
putting my mind to it the way I should.”
“Let me help.”
She thought about that for several seconds before replying.
“I am not sure whether I want you to know,” she spoke finally. “There
are more entries about mortgages and notes than I care to expose....
Mother seems to have been borrowing like sixty for a great many years,
and I haven’t been able to discover yet what she has done with the
proceeds.... I am beginning to fear that we are not so well off as I
always believed.”
“Would you care much?”
“I don’t know,” she reflected. “I’ve never had to think about money
matters. It’s like gravity or the weight of the atmosphere; I don’t
suppose we’d miss either unless they should suddenly leave us.... That
swim was mighty close to it, though; wasn’t it?” She had shifted the
subject adroitly.
“Great!” he lolled at length. “It’s a species of gravity-less universe
we were floating in.... Great!”
She had not discovered the state of affairs yet, he thought, although
she was “getting warm.” So both were willing to drop the subject, but
neither was inclined to bring up another. A minute or two slipped by,
then five minutes, then twenty-five. Crickets droned lazily; near by
a catbird called, and far off a pack of noisy crows quarrelled and
fluttered about the top of a dead tree.
Speech would have kept these two young persons politely apart, but the
silence was quivering with intimacies. And so, when Jerry sat up and
raised two fingers mischievously, he flashed back the response and
walked with her to the water without the necessity of a disturbing word.
Not until they reached the home shore did they speak. Then he said:
“You will let me help you on the books, won’t you? I know a lot about
such things”--in reality he knew nothing--“and I know a pack of big
finance fellows in New York who will patch up anything in the shape of
a note or mortgage or interest due. Do let me help?”
“You really want to?”
“Really.”
“All right,” she agreed. “If you are not too tired we can work over a
few hard places before dinner. We have an hour.”
This eager, plausible young man had better know exactly what he might
expect out of “Red Jacket,” and the earlier the better. The documents
were not such an enigma to her as she had pretended, and she was not so
young as not to be aware that men--and mothers--had often speculated on
her desirability as a moneyed “catch.” Not that she believed Walter’s
theory about Richard. He was no “bad man.” Her half-suspicions of
Richard had faded almost as quickly as they had come. The night’s sleep
had banished them. One might as well not have eyes and a mind if the
guileless man before her were ever guilty of anything except kindness
and improvidence. But improvidence he could be guilty of, and on a
colossal scale. Besides, he was so different from other men that it
would be just like him to rest satisfied at “Red Jacket.” He would take
it with no more shame than those sparrows were taking Phœbe’s oats. So
she would lead him straight to the documents and exhibit the accounts.
When Phœbe heard their voices at the dock she fled to the garden
and seized a hoe. Reticence was not one of her virtues, and she had
the sense to know it. “It’s awful to have the gift of oratory,” she
chuckled as she dived in back of the corn. “An’ it’s never myself
that thought I would be runnin’ away from a chance to show it off!”
Nevertheless she stayed out of sight until they dressed and had left
the cottage.
They took the steep hill leisurely, stopping occasionally to rest and
look back on the view; but they found speech as unessential here as on
the long swim together. And, besides, the delicious fatigue had left
little inclination for conversation.
They crossed the single trolley track that led from Penn Yan to
Branchport and walked slowly up the lawn.
“Is there any better sensation than honest weariness?” he asked.
“None in the world,” she agreed, although she mentally made note of
several better ones.
“Do you really feel like figures?” he asked temptingly.
“Not in the least,” she laughed, and noted his eager look towards the
little open summer-house before them.
“Let’s!” he suggested.
“All right,” she agreed.
There they lounged and looked down upon the Lake.
“Whose boat is that?” He pointed towards a “Class A” yacht tacking
across the Lake, evidently aiming for Phœbe’s dock. “I believe it is
Walter’s boat with the new sails!”
They watched it for some time. As it drew nearer they could make out
two figures, evidently Walter and Jawn. No doubt they had sailed up to
Penn Yan to get the new canvas. The _Sago-ye-wat-ha_ looked splendid in
her new suit and seemed almost self-conscious. The races would begin
next week, Jerry told him. They speculated on the chances of success,
and grew loyally confident of “their” boat.
Neither of them wished to talk about Walter. The subject brought up
uncomfortable memories. Several times she nerved herself to the point
of telling him the ruse she had employed to check Walter’s dangerous
suspicions, but each time she swerved off. Throbbing blood-vessels
warned her that she would not perform with her accustomed calm. She was
too tired, she told herself. After she had fully recovered from the
long swim, she assured herself, she would make the matter clear.
And several times he was on the point of letting her know that
he knew. She must be told soon; one could never be sure of Jawn’s
indelicate humour. But his old shyness would seize him at the critical
moment. So unwillingly their talk drifted to Mrs. Wells and the
accounts.
“Have you still your five dollars?” she asked.
“Yes,” he laughed and produced his wallet. “This is a fine place to
live; there’s no way to spend money. I think I’ll frame this bill as a
souvenir.”
“You had better let me give you enough to pay for a ticket to New
York----”
“Oh, I have no intention of going yet!” said he.
“We may all have to go sooner than any of us suspect,” she met his
gaiety with calm seriousness.
He waited for her to explain.
“If mother’s accounts are half-way right, I couldn’t stay in Yates
county,” she explained.
“Oh, they’re not so bad as you think,” he encouraged. “You just let me
get at them. I’m a crackerjack on accounts.”
She smiled. “I should think you would be!”
Her smile reassured him. If she knew the truth, he argued, she would
not be able to maintain that calm assurance, showing once more that
he did not know the Virginia strain. So he found speech to prove
what a financial wonder he was. “There are friends of mine in New
York,” he said, “who could make any account come out straight. There
are thousands of ways of fixing up money troubles. My friends are
past-masters in the art They have to be--that’s their business.”
“Can you stand a shock?” she asked quietly.
“If it is an interesting shock,” he answered.
“It is far from interesting,” she went on.... “We owe nearly eighty
thousand dollars. We haven’t even been paying the interest on our
loans, and it is more than our income; and our yearly expenses are
enormous. It looks to me as if the Wells family would have to quit.”
It was indeed a shock. And she had known this for days! That accounted
for her preoccupied air and the abrupt leaving of the luncheon table!
But what could account for her serene spirit? He asked her bluntly.
She replied with a question. “Isn’t it your own philosophy,” she asked,
“to take events as you find them?”
“Jerry,” he turned to her abruptly, “will you marry me?”
She moved her head away. Even the Virginia strain is susceptible to
some shocks!
“What a poet you are, Richard,” she said.
“This is business,” he pursued the subject vehemently. “Will you?”
“What a business man you are not!”
“Will you?”
He caught her shoulder and tried to turn her about so that she would
face him.
She remained rigid, remarking, “That’s my most sunburned shoulder, if
you don’t mind.”
“Look at me!” he commanded.
She moved about slowly and faced him. The smile on her face was almost
mournful. “It is still my most sunburned shoulder,” she repeated, but
did not flinch at his heavy grasp.
“Will you?”
“You are a funny boy,” she remarked quietly. It was less trouble to
look into his earnest face than she had thought. For a moment or two
she forgot his question and busied herself with exploring the lines
and furrows and wondering how this young man ever got so gnarled. Then
she remembered and answered him.
“I like your poetry very much,” she said. “Very much indeed. It is
so like you.... It almost makes me want to cry.... That’s because
I’m tired.... But, Richard dear, it is also very, very comic.” He
was staring at her with the fiercest of frowns. “Especially when you
wrinkle your forehead like that.... You are the most chivalrous man I
know. The Wells family are about to go into the mire, and you rush to
the rescue with,” the smile on her face grew tender, “with your little
Sir Walter Raleigh coat of a five-dollar bill. It is beautiful, Richard
dear, and poetic, and just like your generous self, but, alas, it would
not work.”
The summer-house was a most public affair. Either from the porch
of “Red Jacket” or from the road anyone could have observed every
movement. The publicity had its effect, no doubt, but that was not
his reason for inaction. The poise of the woman shook his resolution.
He did not know that inwardly she was shaken with agitation. In this
stage every inexperienced man is deceived. If he had taken her in his
arms boldly she would have gone without resistance, even the passing of
the Branchport trolley car might not have interfered; but, instead, he
talked earnestly of his turbulent desire; and she met him with the sex
defence of beautiful calmness.
Then instead of taking him seriously, she twitted him about his
individualism and about his philosophy of egoism.
“I’ve thrown that all overboard,” he insisted. “I’ve been waiting for
this moment all my life,” he cried enthusiastically. “You don’t know
how I have looked curiously at this woman and at that woman wondering
if I were normal like other men, and if here or there was the one who
would stir the fires in me. I see now what the trouble was; I was too
self-conscious. ‘Happiness to be got must be forgot,’ George Palmer
used to tell us. And it has come on when I wasn’t looking for it. But
I played the game square. I drifted on and had faith that this life is
planned by Intelligence. It’s no hit or miss. It’s as mapped out as a
liner’s chart.”
She was stirred by his vehemence and by the sudden note of seriousness
which she caught in his speech. If he had chivalrously offered to marry
her when she seemed helpless and dependent she would have had none of
it. But chivalry does not make a man’s voice shake or cause the tips of
his fingers to burn like hot coals as they touch one’s shoulder. She
turned eagerly to ask him--for she would make sure.
“When did you know this?”
“To-day at luncheon,” he drove on, “after you left. Walter said that
you had told him last night----”
“What!” She almost rose from her place beside him. “Did he----”
“Yes,” he went on clumsily, “he said that you had told him that you and
I had fixed things up and that----”
“Before the whole table?” she asked with deceiving coolness.
“Yes,” he said. “That is, to Jawn and me. Your mother----”
“Oh!” she interrupted quietly, but with no concealment of her
irony, “just to you and Jawn! That is some comfort. Jawn is such an
uncommunicative soul!”
“Oh, but don’t you see,” he tried to make it clear, “that’s how I found
out? I----”
“I presume he has written a limerick on the subject by this time,” she
laughed, but without mirth. “That’s how you found out? Found out what,
pray?”
She had moved several inches away deliberately and settled herself
against one of the corners. She seemed very self-possessed.
“Then I found out why I came here,” he persisted. “If Walter had not
spoken I might not have known. But that minute I knew. You seemed to be
talking to me through him. I was never so stirred in my life; the thing
shot through me like a galvanic shock. I went out into the gardens to
try and get rid of the thought. But it clung to me, followed me about,
danced in my brain and before my eyes all afternoon. And when I saw you
step out of that canoe--I knew.”
She lowered her head slightly and studied him for several uncomfortable
minutes. As the seconds ticked by and her comic smile did not disappear
his hopes oozed, and left him face to face with harsh reality.
“And so I made eyes at you, after all,” she remarked bitterly, although
the set smile did not leave her. She moved back further, threw her
feet up on the bench, clasped her knees and looked at him through
half-closed lids, as one might gaze at a likeable bad boy. “I made eyes
at you via Walter, did I? And you did not run away as you promised.”
He protested as a man might in such circumstances, but she continued to
gaze at him satirically until he was compelled to halt.
“I suppose my younger brother’s statements are all to be taken as
gospel,” she said.
“Well, of course----” he began.
She went on firmly. “He was so exquisitely truthful about the trunks at
Naples, and we’ve told you of other instances. Naturally he is to be
believed.”
“Then you didn’t say----”
“_Absolutely not!_” she cried.
After all, she was in a way telling the truth. She had not made an
intentional sentimental confession to Walter. She had told him what she
had believed to be a necessary invention, and learned only later that
it was in reality the truth.
Everything she had said to Walter had been done with the lightest of
motives; and this clumsy man before her was making her action shameful.
The thing he suggested, _that_ she had not said--absolutely not!
Tears glistened in her eyes, tears of vexation and anger. She rose and
started to go.
“Stop!” he cried and detained her by force. He would not have her go
that way. When she would not sit down he in turn grew angry. His eyes
shot fire and his speech was most unnaturally rough. If she could not
stand misunderstanding, neither could he! She had not heard his whole
story, but by the lord Harry, she should! And this time he made himself
clear.
“I believe you had told Walter exactly what he repeated to us, and when
you consider that the boy is a half-idiot----”
“Thank you,” she said, but he heeded her interruption not at all.
“--I could easily understand that you had some good reason for telling
him that or any other story that would come into your head. I did
not say I believed you meant it. Woman, do you think I’m a complete
fool? I thought perhaps you had lied to him, as I would do if it
were necessary; maybe he was violent, I thought, and you had to say
something to keep him quiet! The point is--this much I thought you
would have the wit to understand--the point is that the suggestion
overpowered me, made me conscious of what had been true from the
moment I followed you here, but what I did not know until that moment,
that--oh, well,” he tried to calm his violence, “what’s the use? You
either feel the same as I do, or you don’t; and nothing can force
you.... Only I’m sorry.... Sorry.”
“I really believe you were angry.”
“I still am.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“Good Lord!”
“It is so interesting to discover that you can be insulted after all,
you who were so insult-proof.”
“I was never so hurt in my life.”
“Well,” she was very deliberate, “it is a good lesson for you. You’ll
have much more sympathy for sensitive folks hereafter.”
The turbulence subsided. It had been rather noisy for a moment or
two--both voices had risen--all of which made the ensuing silence
rather awkward. Jerry seemingly had remained serene throughout; but
the man was naturally shaken--he had exhibited quite a new variety of
Richard. But even he gradually got control of himself.
“Suppose,” he began the conversation. “Suppose I am able to fix up the
accounts,” he ventured; “will you let me have a try at it?”
“What would you do?” she asked. But before he could answer she said,
“I don’t want you to think that I am not terribly concerned about ‘Red
Jacket.’ I may not show it, but I feel those debts, especially the
money we owe to the----” she could not tell him that disgrace, but
he knew she was about to say “to the negroes”--“especially some of
the debts,” she corrected herself; “I feel the whole thing so keenly
that nothing else matters.... I am not likely to show a thing like
that.... There are many things I am not likely to show.... It’s pride,
I suppose; but we Virginians--oh, I’m a Virginian!--are proud of our
pride; it is the one possession we have been taught to hold to.... When
we sell out or borrow on that! well, we’re done for!... It is a great
wrench to tell you even this much, but you have misunderstood me more
than once----”
“Forgive me, Jerry,” he asked so sincerely that for a moment she hardly
dared go on.
“Let’s go home,” she spoke abruptly and rose.
At the porch he asked her again to let him help with the finances.
“Someone must do it,” she said; “it might as well be you. It’s like the
business of hiring an undertaker,” she smiled squarely at him, gamely,
“and you might as well get the job. I’ll turn the papers over to you
to-night, and the quicker you get at it the better. No,” she changed
her mind. “Don’t do anything until after the races next week. And don’t
be surprised, Richard dear,” she reverted to the phrase she had used at
the top of the hill back of Naples, “if you find me quite careless and
birdlike for the next few days. We own ‘Red Jacket’ until it is sold
out from under us. I’ll not let that sale begin in my mind until it
begins in fact.”
“Ah!” he joked, “don’t you be too sure that it will be sold at all!
Remember that I’m the financial manager now! I’m on the job, and don’t
you forget it!”
“Poet!” she tapped him ever so gently on the arm, “dear, good, kind,
blue-eyed, impractical poet!”
He followed her to the stairs and watched her go slowly up to her
room. At the turn in the landing she stopped and looked down upon him.
If he had been a bolder man he would have known that now at last she
was deliberately “making eyes at him,” but when she shook her head
with comic dolefulness and murmured, “Poet!” he saw only a beautiful
sympathy for an unrequited affection!