Following an old and rutted woodland road to the Glade, they pa.s.sed a Berkshire abandoned farm--a solid house of stone and red timbers, softened by the long gra.s.ses that made the orchard a pleasant place.
They pa.s.sed berry-bushes--raspberry and blackberry and currant, now turned wild; green-gold bushes that were a net for sunbeams. They saw yellow warblers flicker away, a king-bird swoop, a scarlet tanager glisten in flight.
"Wonder what that red bird is?" He admiringly looked to her to know.
"Why, I think that"s a cardinal."
"Golly! I wish I knew about nature."
"So do I! I don"t really know a thing--"
"Huh! I bet you do!"
"--though I ought to, living in a small town so long. I"d planned to buy me a bird-book," she rambled on, giddy with sunshine, "and a flower-book and bring them along, but I was so busy getting away from the office that I came off without them. Don"t you just love to know about birds and things?"
"Yuh, I cer"nly do; I cer"nly do. Say, this beats New York, eh? I don"t care if I never see another show or a c.o.c.ktail. Cer"nly do beat New York. Cer"nly does! I was saying to Sam Cannon, "Lord," I says, "I wonder what a fellow ever stays in the city for; never catch me there if I could rake in the coin out in the country, no, _sir_!" And he laughed and said he guessed it was the same way with him. No, sir; my idea of perfect happiness is to be hiking along here with you, Miss Golden."
He gazed down upon her with a mixture of amorousness and awe. The leaves of scrub-oaks along the road crinkled and shone in the sun. She was lulled to slumberous content. She lazily beamed her pleasure back at him, though a tiny hope that he would be circ.u.mspect, not be too ardent, stirred in her. He was touching in his desire to express his interest without ruffling her. He began to talk about Miss Vincent"s affair with Mr. Starr, the wealthy old boarder at the farm. In that topic they pa.s.sed safely through the torrid wilderness of summer shine and tangled blooms.
The thwarted boyish soul that persisted in Mr. Schwirtz"s barbered, unexercised, coffee-soaked, tobacco-filled, whisky-rotted, fattily degenerated city body shone through his red-veined eyes. He was having a _fete champetre_. He gathered berries and sang all that he remembered of "Nut Brown Ale," and chased a cow and pantingly stopped under a tree and smoked a cigar as though he enjoyed it. In his simple pleasure Una was glad. She admired him when he showed his trained, professional side and explained (with rather confusing details) why the aetna Automobile Varnish Company was a success. But she fluttered up to her feet, became the wilful debutante again, and commanded, "Come _on_, Mr. Slow! We"ll never reach the Glade." He promptly struggled up to his feet. There was lordly devotion in the way he threw away his half-smoked cigar. It indicated perfect chivalry.... Even though he did light another in about three minutes.
The Glade was filled with a pale-green light; arching trees shut off the heat of the summer afternoon, and the leaves shone translucent.
Ferns were in wild abundance. They sat on a fallen tree, thick upholstered with moss, and listened to the trickle of a brook. Una was utterly happy. In her very weariness there was a voluptuous feeling that the air was dissolving the stains of the office.
He urged a compliment upon her only once more that day; but she gratefully took it to bed with her: "You"re just like this glade--make a fellow feel kinda calm and want to be good," he said. "I"m going to cut out--all this boozing and stuff-- Course you understand I never make a _habit_ of them things, but still a fellow on the road--"
"Yes," said Una.
All evening they discussed croquet, Lenox, Florida, Miss Vincent and Mr.
Starr, the presidential campaign, and the food at the farm-house.
Boarders from the next farm-house came a-calling, and the enlarged company discussed the food at both of the farm-houses, the presidential campaign, Florida, and Lenox. The men and women gradually separated; relieved of the strain of general and polite conversation, the men gratefully talked about business conditions and the presidential campaign and food and motoring, and told sly stories about Mike and Pat, or about Ikey and Jakey; while the women listened to Mrs. Cannon"s stories about her youngest son, and compared notes on cooking, village improvement societies, and what Mrs. Taft would do in Washington society if Judge Taft was elected President. Miss Vincent had once shaken hands with Judge Taft, and she occasionally referred to the incident. Mrs.
Cannon took Una aside and told her that she thought Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent must have walked down to the village together that afternoon, as she had distinctly seen them coming back up the road.
Yet Una did not feel Panama-ized.
She was a grown-up person, accepted as one, not as Mrs. Golden"s daughter; and her own gossip now pa.s.sed at par.
And all evening she was certain that Mr. Schwirtz was watching her.
- 4
The boarders from the two farm-houses organized a tremendous picnic on Bald k.n.o.b, with sandwiches and chicken salad and cake and thermos bottles of coffee and a whole pail of beans and a phonograph with seven records; with recitations and pastoral merriment and kodaks snapping every two or three minutes; with groups sitting about on blankets, and once in a while some one explaining why the scenery was so scenic. Una had been anxious lest Mr. Schwirtz "pay her too marked attentions; make them as conspicuous as Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent"; for in the morning he had hung about, waiting for a game of croquet with her. But Mr.
Schwirtz was equally pleasant to her, to Miss Vincent, and to Mrs.
Cannon; and he was attractively ardent regarding the scenery. "This cer"nly beats New York, eh? Especially you being here," he said to her, aside.
They sang ballads about the fire at dusk, and trailed home along dark paths that smelled of pungent leaf-mold. Mr. Schwirtz lumbered beside her, heaped with blankets and pails and baskets till he resembled a camel in a caravan, and encouraged her to tell how stupid and unenterprising Mr. Troy Wilkins was. When they reached the farm-house the young moon and the great evening star were low in a wash of turquoise above misty meadows; frogs sang; Una promised herself a long and unworried sleep; and the night tingled with an indefinable magic.
She was absolutely, immaculately happy, for the first time since she had been ordered to take Walter Babson"s dictation.
- 5
Mr. Schwirtz was generous; he invited all the boarders to a hay-ride picnic at Hawkins"s Pond, followed by a barn dance. He took Una and the Cannons for a motor ride, and insisted on buying--not giving, but buying--dinner for them, at the Lesterhampton Inn.
When the debutante Una bounced and said she _did_ wish she had some candy, he trudged down to the village and bought for her a two-pound box of exciting chocolates. And when she longed to know how to play tennis, he rented b.a.l.l.s and two rackets, tried to remember what he had learned in two or three games of ten years before, and gave her elaborate explanations. Lest the farm-house experts (Mr. Cannon was said by Mrs.
Cannon to be one of the very best players at the Winnetka Country Club) see them, Una and Mr. Schwirtz sneaked out before breakfast. Their tennis costumes consisted of new canvas shoes. They galloped through the dew and swatted at b.a.l.l.s ferociously--two happy dubs who proudly used all the tennis terms they knew.
- 6
Mr. Schwirtz was always there when she wanted him, but he never intruded, he never was urgent. She kept him away for a week; but in their second week Mr. and Mrs. Cannon, Mr. Starr, Miss Vincent, and the pleasant couple from Gloversville all went away, and Una and Mr.
Schwirtz became the elder generation, the seniors, of the boarders. They rather looked down upon the new boarders who came in--tenderfeet, people who didn"t know about Bald k.n.o.b or the Glade or Hawkins"s Pond, people who weren"t half so witty or comfy as the giants of those golden, olden days when Mr. Cannon had ruled. Una and Mr. Schwirtz deigned to accompany them on picnics, even grew interested in their new conceptions of the presidential campaign and croquet and food, yet held rather aloof, as became the _ancien regime_; took confidential walks together, and in secret laughed enormously when the green generation gossiped about them as though they were "interested in each other," as Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent had been in the far-forgotten time. Una blushed a little when she discovered that every one thought they were engaged, but she laughed at the rumor, and she laughed again, a nervous young laugh, as she repeated it to Mr. Schwirtz.
"Isn"t it a shame the way people gossip! Silly billies," she said. "We never talked that way about Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent--though in their case we would have been justified."
"Yes, bet they _were_ engaged. Oh, say, did I tell you about the first day I came here, and Starr took me aside, and says he--"
In their hour-long talks Mr. Schwirtz had not told much about himself, though of his business he had talked often. But on an afternoon when they took a book and a lunch and tramped off to a round-topped, gra.s.sy hill, he finally confided in her, and her mild interest in him as an amiable companion deepened to sympathy.
The book was The _People of the Abyss_, by Jack London, which Mamie Magen had given to Una as an introduction to a knowledge of social conditions. Una had planned to absorb it; to learn how the shockingly poor live. Now she read the first four pages to Mr. Schwirtz. After each page he said that he was interested. At the end of the fourth page, when Una stopped for breath, he commented: "Fine writer, that fella London. And they say he"s quite a fella; been a sailor and a miner and all kinds of things; ver" intimate friend of mine knows him quite well--met him in "Frisco--and he says he"s been a sailor and all kinds of things. But he"s a socialist. Tell you, I ain"t got much time for these socialists. Course I"m kind of a socialist myself lots-a ways, but these here fellas that go around making folks discontented--!
Agitators--! Don"t suppose it"s that way with this London--he must be pretty well fixed, and so of course he"s prob"ly growing conservative and sensible. But _most_ of these socialists are just a lazy bunch of b.u.ms that try and see how much trouble they can stir up. They think that just because they"re too lazy to find an opening, that they got the right to take the money away from the fellas that hustle around and make good. Trouble with all these socialist guys is that they don"t stop to realize that you can"t change human nature. They want to take away all the rewards for initiative and enterprise, just as Sam Cannon was saying. Do you s"pose I"d work my head off putting a proposition through if there wasn"t anything in it for me? Then, "nother thing, about all this submerged tenth--these "People of the Abyss," and all the rest: I don"t feel a darn bit sorry for them. They stick in London or New York or wherever they are, and live on charity, and if you offered "em a good job they wouldn"t take it. Why, look here! all through the Middle West the farmers are just looking for men at three dollars a day, and for hired girls, they"d give hired girls three and four dollars a week and a good home. But do all these people go out and get the jobs? Not a bit of it! They"d rather stay home and yelp about socialism and anarchism and Lord knows what-all. "Nother thing: I never could figger out what all these socialists and I. W. W."s, these "I Won"t Work"s," would do if we _did_ divide up and hand all the industries over to them. I bet they"d be the very first ones to kick for a return to the old conditions! I tell you, it surprises me when a good, bright man like Jack London or this fella, Upton Sinclair--they say he"s a well-educated fella, too--don"t stop and realize these things."
"But--" said Una.
Then she stopped.
Her entire knowledge of socialism was comprised in the fact that Mamie Magen believed in it, and that Walter Babson alternated between socialism, anarchism, and a desire to own a large house in Westchester and write poetry and be superior to the illiterate ma.s.s. So to the economic spokesman for the Great American Business Man her answer was:
"But--"
"Then look here," said Mr. Schwirtz. "Take yourself. S"pose you like to work eight hours a day? Course you don"t. Neither do I. I always thought I"d like to be a gentleman farmer and take it easy. But the good Lord saw fit to stick us into these jobs, that"s all we know about it; and we do our work and don"t howl about it like all these socialists and radicals and other windjammers that know more than the Const.i.tution and Congress and a convention of Philadelphia lawyers put together. You don"t want to work as hard as you do and then have to divide up every Sat.u.r.day with some lazy b.u.m of a socialist that"s too lazy to support himself--yes, or to take a bath!--now do you?"
"Well, no," Una admitted, in face of this triumphant exposure of liberal fallacies.
The book slipped into her lap.
"How wonderful that line of big woolly clouds is, there between the two mountains!" she said. "I"d just like to fly through them.... I _am_ tired. The clouds rest me so."
"Course you"re tired, little sister. You just forget about all those guys in the abyss. Tell you a person on the job"s got enough to do looking out for himself."
"Well--" said Una.
Suddenly she lay back, her hands behind her head, her fingers outstretched among the long, cool gra.s.ses. A hum of insects surrounded her. The gra.s.ses towering above her eyes were a forest. She turned her head to watch a lady-bug industriously ascend one side of a blade of gra.s.s, and with equal enterprise immediately descend the other side.
With the office always in her mind as material for metaphors, Una compared the lady-bug"s method to Troy Wilkins"s habit of having his correspondence filed and immediately calling for it again. She turned her face to the sky. She was uplifted by the bold contrast of c.u.mulus clouds and the radiant blue sky.
Here she could give herself up to rest; she was so secure now, with the affable Mr. Schwirtz to guard her against outsiders--more secure and satisfied, she reflected, than she could ever have been with Walter Babson.... A hawk soared above her, a perfect thing of sun-brightened grace, the gra.s.ses smelled warm and pleasant, and under her beat the happy heart of the summer land.
"I"m a poor old rough-neck," said Mr. Schwirtz, "but to-day, up here with you, I feel so darn good that I almost think I"m a decent citizen.
Honest, little sister, I haven"t felt so bully for a blue moon."