unchaining of his native resonance, "that you are afraid of getting a
little too much of mine! I'm fond of novelty, and nobody can frighten
me."
"If that's the case, let's get away as early in the day as we can.
Breakfasts, of course, are late in every household on Sunday. So let's
meet at the Maroon-and-Purple Tavern at seven-thirty, and make a flying
start at eight."
Sunday morning came clear and calm and warm to the town,--a belated
September day, or possibly an early intimation of Indian summer,--and
it promised to be even more delightful in the favored region toward
which our friends were journeying. After they had cleared many miles of
foundries and railroad crossings, and had paralleled for a last
half-hour a distant succession of sandhills, wooded or glistening
white, they were set down at a small group of farmhouses, with a varied
walk of five miles before them. Half a mile through a shaded country
lane; another half-mile along a path that led across low, damp ground
through thickets of hazel and brier; a third half-mile over a light
soil, increasingly sandy, beneath oaks and lindens and pines which
cloaked the outlines of the slopes ahead; and finally a great mound of
pure sand that slanted up into a blue sky and made its own horizon.
"We've taken things easy," said Randolph, who had been that way before,
"and I hope we have enough breath left for our job. There it lies,
right in front of us."
"No favor asked here," declared Cope. He gave a sly, sidewise glance,
as if to ask how the other might stand as to leg-muscles and wind.
"Up we go," said Randolph.
9
_COPE ON THE EDGE OF THINGS_
The adventurer in Duneland hardly knows, as he works his way through
one of the infrequent "blow-outs," whether to thank Nature for her aid
or to tax her with her cruelty. She offers few other means of reaching
the water save for these nicks in the edges of the great cup; yet it is
possible enough to view her as a careless and reckless handmaiden
busily devastating the cosmical china-closet. The "blow-out" is a
tragedy, and the cause of further tragedy. The north winds, in the
impetus gathered through a long, unimpeded flight over three hundred
miles of water, ceaselessly try and test the sandy bulwarks for a
slightest opening. The flaw once found, the work of devastation and
desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues without cessation.
Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds
of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white shifting heaps
and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the green
hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to
die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of
trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has
done its work of ruin and passed on.
After some moments of scrambling and panting our two travelers gained
the divide. Below them sloped a great amphitheatre of sand, falling in
irregular gradations; and at the foot of all lay the lake, calmly
azure, with its horizon, whether near or far for it was almost
impossible to say--mystically vague. On either hand rose other hills of
sand, set with sparse pines and covered, in patches, with growths of
wild grape, the fruit half ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various
levels, rose grimly a few stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and
long indifferent to the future ravages of the enemy. The whole scene
was, to-day, plausibly gentle and inert. It was indeed a bridal of
earth and sky, with the self-contained approval of the blue deep and no
counter-assertion from any demon wind.
"So far, so good," said Randolph, taking off his hat, wiping his
forehead, and breathing just a little harder than he liked. "The rest
of our course is plain: down those slopes, and then a couple of miles
along the shore. Easy walking, that; a mere promenade on a boulevard."
Cope stood on the height, and tossed his bare head like a tireless
young colt. The sun fell bright on his mane of yellow hair. He took in
a deep breath. "It's good!" he declared. "It's great! And the water
looks better yet. Shall we make it in a rush?"
He began to plunge down the long, broken sand-slope. Each step was
worth ten. Randolph followed--with judgment. He would not seem young
enough to be a competitor, nor yet old enough to be a drag. On the
shore he wiped and panted a little more--but not to the point of
embarrassment, and still less to the point of mortification. After all,
he was keeping up pretty well.
At the bottom Cope, with his shoes full of sand, turned round and
looked up the slope down which his companion was coming. He waved his
arms. "It's almost as fine from here!" he cried.
The beach, once gained, was in sight both ways for miles. Not a human
habitation was visible, nor a human being. Two or three gulls flew a
little out from shore, and the tracks of a sandpiper led from the wet
shingle to the first fringe of sandgrass higher up.
"Where are the crowds?" asked Cope, with a sonorous shout.
"Miles behind," replied Randolph. "We haven't come this long distance
to meet them after all. Besides," he continued, looking at his watch,
"this is not the time of day for them. At twelve-fifteen people are not
strolling or tramping; they're thinking of their dinner. We have a full
hour or more for making less than two easy miles before we reach
_ours_."
"No need to hurry, then."
The beach, at its edge, was firm, and they strolled on for half a mile
and cooled off as they went. The air was mild; the noonday sun was
warm; both of them had taken off their coats.
They sat down under a clump of basswoods, the only trees beyond the
foot of the sand-slope, and looked at the water.
"It's like a big, useless bathtub," observed Randolph.
"Not so much useless as unused."
"Yes, I suppose the season _is_ as good as over,--though this end of
the lake stays warm longer than most other parts."
"It isn't so much the warmth of the water," remarked Cope
sententiously. "It's more the warmth of the air."
"Well, the air seems warm enough. After all, the air and the sun are
about the best part of a swim. Do you want to go in?"
Cope rose, walked to the edge of the water, and put in a finger or two.
"Well, it might be warmer; but, as I say...."
"We could try a ten-minute dip. That would get us to our dinner in good
time and in good trim."
"All right. Let's, then."
"Only, you'll have to do most of the swimming," said Randolph. "My few
small feats are all accomplished pretty close to shore."
"Never mind. Company's the thing. A fellow finds it rather slow, going
in alone."
Cope whisked off his clothes with incredible rapidity and piled
them--or flung them--under the basswoods: the suddenly resuscitated
technique of the small-town lad who could take avail of any pond or any
quiet stretch of river on the spur of the moment. He waded in quickly
up to his waist, and then took an intrepid header. His lithe young legs
and arms threw themselves about hither and yon. After a moment or two
he got on his feet and made his way back across a yard of fine shingle
to the sand itself. He was sputtering and gasping, and the long yellow
hair, which usually lay in a flat clean sweep from forehead to occiput,
now sprawled in a grotesque pattern round his temples.
"B-r-r! It _is_ cold, sure enough. But jump in. The air will be all
right. I'll be back with you in a moment."
Randolph advanced to the edge, and felt in turn. It _was_ cold. But he
meant to manage it here, just as he had managed with the sand-slopes.
Two heads bobbed on the water where but one had bobbed before.
Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete.
"It's never so cold the second time," declared Cope encouragingly. "One
dip doesn't make a swim, any more than one swallow--"
He flashed his soles in the sunlight and was once again immersed,
gulping, in a maelstrom of his own making.
"Twice, to oblige you," said Randolph. "But no more. I'll leave the
rest to the sun and the air."
Cope, out again, ran up and down the sands for a hundred feet or so. "I
know something better than this," he declared presently. He threw
himself down and rolled himself in the abundance of fine, dry, clean
sand.
"An arenaceous ulster--speaking etymologically," he said. He came back
to the clump of basswoods near which Randolph was sitting on a short
length of drift wood, with his back to the sun, and sat down beside him.
"You're welcome to it," said Randolph, laughing; "but how are you going
to get it off? By another dip? Certainly not by the slow process of
time. We have some moments to spare, but hardly enough for that.
Meanwhile...."
He picked up a handful of sand and applied it to a bare shoulder-blade
which somehow had failed to get its share of protection.
"Thanks," said Cope: "the right thing done for Polynices. Yes, I shall
take one final dip and dry myself on my handkerchief."
"I shall dry by the other process, and so shall be able to spare you
mine."
"How much time have we yet?"
Randolph reached for his trousers, as they hung on a lower branch of
one of the basswoods. "Oh, a good three-quarters of an hour."
"That's time enough, and to spare. I wonder whom we're going to meet."
"There's a 'usual crowd': the three young ladies, commonly; one or two
young men who understand how to tinker the oil-stove--which usually
needs it--and how to prime the pump. They once asked me to do these
things; but I've discovered that younger men enjoy it more than I do,
so I let them do it. Besides these, a number of miscellaneous people,
perhaps, who come out by trolley or in their own cars."
"The young ladies always come?" asked Cope, brushing the sand from his
chest.
"Usually. Together. The Graces. Otherwise, what becomes of the Group?"
"Well, I hope there'll be enough fellows to look after the stove and
the pump--and them. I'm not much good at that last."
"No?"
"There's a knack about it--a technique--that I don't seem to possess.
Nor do I seem greatly prompted to learn it."
"Of course, there is no more reason for assuming that every man will
make a good lover than that every woman will make a good mother or a
good housekeeper."
"Or that every adult male will make a good citizen, desiring the
general welfare and bestirring himself to contribute his own share to
it. I don't feel that I'm an especially creditable one."
"So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts
come up and slap us in the face." Randolph rose and relieved the
basswood of the first garments. "Are you about ready for that final
dip?"
Cope made his last plunge and returned red and shivering to use the two
handkerchiefs.
"Well, we have thirty minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their
march. On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping,
dense or slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled
expanse of blue, spreading toward a horizon even less determinate than
before.
"No, I'm not at all apt," said Cope, returning to his theme; "not even
for self-defense. I suppose I'm pretty sure to get caught some time or
other."
"Each woman according to her powers and gifts. Varying degrees of
desire, of determination, of dexterity. To be just, I might add a
fourth _d_--devotion."
"You've run the gauntlet," said Cope. "You seem to have come through
all right."
"Well," Randolph returned deprecatingly, "I can't really claim ever to
have enlisted any woman's best endeavors."
"I hope I shall have the same good luck. Of your four _d_'s, it's the
dexterity that gives me the most dread."
"Yes, the appeal (not always honest) to chivalry,--though devotion is
sometimes a close second. You're manoeuvred into a position where
you're made to think you 'must.' I've known chaps to marry on that
basis.... It's weary waiting until Madame dies and Madonna steps into
her place."
"Meanwhile, safety in numbers."
"Yes, even though you're in the very midst of wishing or of
wondering--or of a careful concern to cloak either."
"Don't dwell on it! You fill me with apprehensions."
Randolph put up his arm and pointed. A roof through a notch between two
sandhills beyond a long range of them, was seen, set high and half
hidden by the spreading limbs of pines. "There it is," he said.
"So close, already?" Such, indeed, it appeared.
"Not so close as it seems. We may just as well step lively."
Cope, with an abundance of free action, was treading along on the very
edge of things, careless of the rough shingle and indifferent to the
probability of wet feet, and swinging his hat as he went. In some such
spirit, perhaps, advanced young Stoutheart to the ogre's castle. He
even began to foot it a little faster.
"Well, I can keep up with you yet," thought Randolph. Aloud, he said:
"You've done very well with your hair. Quite an inspiration to have
carried a comb."
Cope grimaced.
"I trust I'm free to comb myself on Sunday. There are plenty of others
to do it for me through the week."
10
_COPE AT HIS HOUSE PARTY_
"You look as fit as two fiddles," said Medora Phillips, at the top of
her sandhill.
"We are," declared Randolph. "Have the rest of the orchestra arrived?"
"Most of us are here, and the rest will arrive presently. Listen. I
think I hear a honk somewhere back in the woods."
The big room of the house, made by knocking two small rooms together,
seemed fairly full already, and other guests were on the back porch.
The Graces were there, putting the finishing-touches to the
table--Helga had not come, after all, but had gone instead, with her
young man, to spend a few sunny afternoon hours among the films. And
one of the young business-men present at Mrs. Phillips' dinner was
present here; he seemed to know how to handle the oil-stove and the
pump (with the cooperation of the chauffeur), and how to aid the three
handmaidens in putting on the knives, forks, plates and napkins that
Helga had decided to ignore. The people in the distant motor-car became
less distant; soon they stopped in a clearing at the foot of the hill,
and before long they appeared at the top with a small hamper of
provisions.
"Oh, why didn't you ask _us_ to bring something!" cried Cope. Randolph
shrugged his shoulders: he saw himself lugging a basket of eatables
through five miles of sand and thicket.
"You've brought yourself," declared Mrs. Phillips genially. "That's
enough."
There was room for the whole dozen on the dining-porch. The favored few
in one corner of it could glimpse the blue plane of the lake, or at
least catch the horizon; the rest could look over the treetops toward
the changing colors of the wide marshes inland. And when the feast was
over, the chauffeur took his refreshment off to one side, and then
amiably lent a hand with the dishes.
"Let me help wipe," cried Cope impulsively.
"There are plenty of hands to help," returned his hostess. She seemed
to be putting him on a higher plane and saving him for better things.
One of the better things was a stroll over her tumultuous domain: the
five miles he had already covered were not enough.
"I'll stay where I am," declared Randolph, who had taken this
regulation jaunt before. He followed Cope to the hook from which he was
taking down his hat. "Admire everything," he counselled in a whisper.
"Eh?"
"Adjust yourself to our dominant mood without delay or reluctance.
Praise promptly and fully everything that is ours."
The party consisted of four or five of the younger people and two or
three of the older. Most of them had taken the walk before; Cope, as a
novice, became the especial care of Mrs. Phillips herself. The way led
sandily along the crest of a wooded amphitheatre, with less stress on
the prospect waterward than might have been expected. Cope was not
allowed, indeed, to overlook the vague horizon where, through the pine
groves, the blue of sky and of sea blended into one; but, under Medora
Phillips' guidance, his eyes were mostly turned inland.
"People think," she said, "that 'the Dunes' means nothing beyond a
regular row of sandhills following the edge of the water; yet half the
interest and three-quarters of the variety are to be found in behind
them. See my wide marsh, off to the southeast, with those islands of
tamarack here and there, and imagine how beautiful the shadows are
toward sunset. Look at that thick wood at the foot of the slope: do you
think it is flat? No, it's as humpy and hilly as anything ever
traversed. Only this spring a fascinating murderer hid there for weeks,
and last January we could hear the howls of timber-wolves driven down
from Michigan by the cold. And see those tall dead pines rising above
it all. I call them the Three Witches. You'll get them better just a
few paces to the left. This way." She even placed her hand on his elbow
to make sure that her tragic group should appear to highest advantage.
Yes, he was an admirable young man, giving admirable attention;
thrusting out his hat toward prospects of exceptional account and
casting his frank blue eyes into her face between-times. Charmingly
perfect teeth and a wonderful sweep of yellow hair. A highly civilized
faun for her highly sylvan setting. Indifferent, perhaps, to her
precious Trio; but there were other young fellows to look after _them_.
Cope praised loudly and readily. The region was unique and every view
had its charm--every view save one. Beyond the woods and the hills and
the distant marshes which spread behind all these, there rose on the
bluish horizon a sole tall chimney, with its long black streak of
smoke. Below it and about it spread a vast rectangular structure with
watch-towers at its corners. The chimney bespoke light and heat and
power furnished in quantities--power for many shops, manned by
compulsory workers: a prison, in short.
"Why, what's that?" asked Cope tactlessly.
Medora Phillips withheld her eyes and sent out a guiding finger in the
opposite direction. "Only see the red of those maples!" she said; "and
that other red just to the left--the tree with the small, fine leaves
all aflame. Do you know what it is?"
"I'm afraid not."
"It's a tupelo. And this shrub, right here?" She took between her
fingers one large, bland indented leaf on a small tree close to the
path.
Cope shook his head.
"Why, it's a sassafras. And this?"--she thrust her toe into a thick,
lustrous bed of tiny leaves that hugged the ground. "No, again? That's
kinnikinnick. Oh, my poor boy, you have everything to learn. Brought up
in the country, too!"
"But, really," said Cope in defense, "Freeford isn't so small as
_that_. And even in the country one may turn by preference to books.
Try me on primroses and date-palms and pomegranates!"
Medora broke off a branch of sassafras and swished it to and fro as she
walked. "See," she said; "three kinds of leaves on the same tree: one
without lobes, one with a single lobe, and one with two."
"Isn't Nature wonderful," replied Cope easily.
Meanwhile the young ladies sauntered along--before or behind, as the
case might be--in the company of the young business-man and that of
another youth who had come out independently on the trolley. They
appeared to be suitably accompanied and entertained. But shiftings and
readjustments ensued, as they are sure to do with a walking-party. Cope
presently found himself scuffling through the thin grass and the briery
thickets alongside the young business-man. He was a clever,
companionable chap, but he declared himself all too soon, even in this
remote Arcadia, as utterly true to type. Cope was not long in feeling
him as operating on the unconscious assumption--unconscious, and
therefore all the more damnable--that the young man in business
constituted, ipso facto, a kind of norm by which other young men in
other fields of endeavor were to be gauged: the farther they deviated
from the standard he automatically set up, the more lamentable their
deficiencies. A few condescending inquiries as to the academic life,
that strange aberration from the normality of the practical and
profitable course which made the ordinary life of the day, and the
separation came. "Enough of _him_!" muttered Cope to himself presently,
and began to cast about for other company. Amy Leffingwell was
strolling along alone: he caught a branch of haw from before her
meditative face and proffered a general remark about the beauty of the
day and the interest in the changing prospect.
Amy's pretty pink face brightened. "It _is_ a lovely day," she said.
"And the more of this lovely weather we have in October--and especially
in November--the more trouble it makes."
"Surely you don't want rain or frost?"
"No; but it becomes harder to shut the house up for good and all. Last
fall we opened and closed two or three times. We even tried coming out
in December."
"In mackintoshes and rubber boots?"
"Almost. But the boots are better for February. At least, they would
have been last February."
"It seems hard to imagine such a future for a place like this,--or such
a past."
"Things can be pretty rough, I assure you. And the roads are not always
as good as they are to-day." And when the pump froze, she went on, they
had to depend upon the lake; and when the lake froze they had to fall
back on melted snow and ice. And even when the lake didn't freeze, the
blowing waters and the flying sands often heaped up big ridges that
quite cut them off from the open sea. Then they had to prospect along
those tawny hummocks for some small inlet that would yield a few
buckets of frozen spray, keeping on the right side of the deep fissures
that held the threat of icebergs to be cast loose at any moment; "and
sometimes," she added, in search of a little thrill, "we would get back
toward shore to find deep openings with clear water dashing beneath--we
had been walking on a mere snow-crust half the time."
"Most interesting," said Cope accommodatingly. He saw no winter shore.
"Yes, February was bad, but Mrs. Phillips wanted to make sure, toward
the end of the winter, that the house hadn't blown away,--nor the
contents; for we have housebreakers every so often. And Hortense wanted
to make some 'color-notes.' I believe she's going to try for some more
to-day."
"To-day is a good day--unless the October tints are too obvious."
"She says they are not subtle, but that she can use them."
Well, here he was, talking along handily enough. But he had no notion
of talking for long about Hortense. He preferred returning to the
weather.
"And what does such a day do for you?" he asked.
"Oh, I suppose it helps me in a general way. But _my_ notes, of course,
are on paper already."
Yes, he was walking alongside her and holding his own--thus far. She
seemed a pretty enough, graceful enough little thing; not so tall by an
inch or so as she appeared when seated behind that samovar. On that day
she had been reasonably sprightly--toward others, even if not toward
him. To-day she seemed meditative, rather; even elegiac--unless there
was a possible sub-acid tang in her reference to Hortense's
color-notes. Aside from that possibility, there was little indication
of the "dexterity" which Randolph had asked him to beware.
"On paper already?" he repeated. "But not all of them? I know you
compose. You are not saying that you are about to give composition up?"
A forced and awkward "slur," perhaps; but it served.
She gave a little sigh. "Pupils don't want _my_ pieces," she said.
"Scales; exercises..."
"I know," he returned. "Themes,--clearness, mass, unity.... It's the
same."
They looked at each other and smiled. "We ought not to think of such
things to-day," she said.
Mrs. Phillips came along, shepherding her little flock for the return.
"But before we _do_ turn back," she adjured them, "just look at those
two lovely spreading pines standing together alone on that far hill."
The small group gazed obediently--though to many of them the prospect
was a familiar one. Yes, there stood two pines, one just a little
taller than the other, and just a little inclined across the other's
top. "A girl out here in August called them Paolo and Francesca. Do you
think," she asked Cope, "that those names are suitable?"