The monoplane landed with a clean volplane. The aviator and his mechanicians were wheeling it toward the hangar. They glanced at him uninterestedly. Carl understood that, to them, he was a Typical Bystander, here where he had once starred.
The aviator stared again, let go the machine, walked over, exclaiming: "Say, aren"t you Hawk Ericson? This is an honor. I heard you were somewhere in New York. Just missed you at the Aero Club one night.
Wanted to ask you about the Bagby hydro. Won"t you come in and have some coffee and sinkers with us? Proud to have you. My name "s Berry."
"Thanks. Be glad to."
While the youngsters were admiring him, hearing of the giants of earlier days, while they were drinking inspiration from this veteran of twenty-nine, they were in turn inspiring Carl by their faith in him. He had been humble. They made him trust himself, not egotistically, but with a feeling that he did matter, that it was worth while to be in tune with life.
Yet all the while he knew that he wanted to be by himself, because he could thus be with the spirit of Ruth. And he knew, subconsciously, that he was going to hurry back to Mineola and telephone to her.
As he dog-trotted down the road, he noted the old Dutch houses for her; picked out the spot where he had once had a canvas hangar, and fancied himself telling her of those days. He did not remember that at this hangar he had known Istra, Istra Nash, the artist, whose name he scarce recalled. Istra was an incident; Ruth was the meaning of his life.
And the solution of his problem came, all at once, when suddenly it was given to him to understand what that problem was.
Ruth and he had to be up and away, immediately; go any place, do anything, so long as they followed new trails, and followed them together. He knew positively, after his lonely night, that he could not be happy without her as comrade in the freedom he craved. And he also knew that they had not done the one thing for which their marriage existed. They were not just a man and a woman. They were a man and a woman who had promised to find new horizons for each other.
However much he believed in the sanct.i.ty of love"s children, Carl also believed that merely to be married and breed casual children and die is a sort of suspended energy which has no conceivable place in this over-complex and unwieldy world. He had no clear nor ringing message, but he did have, just then, an overpowering conviction that Ruth and he--not every one, but Ruth and he, at least--had a vocation in keeping clear of vocations, and that they must fulfil it.
Over the telephone he said: "Ruth dear, I"ll be right there. Walked all night. Got straightened out now. I"m out at Mineola. It"s all right with me now, blessed. I want so frightfully much to make it all right with you. I"ll be there in about an hour."
She answered "Yes" so non-committally that he was smitten by the fact that he had yet to win forgiveness for his frenzy in leaving her; that he must break the sh.e.l.l of resentment which would incase her after a whole night"s brooding between sullen walls.
On the train, unconscious of its uproar, he was bespelled by his new love. During a few moments of their lives, ordinary real people, people real as a tooth-brush, do actually transcend the coa.r.s.ely physical aspects of s.e.x and feeding, and do approximate to the unwavering glow of romantic heroes. Carl was no more a romantic hero-lover than, as a celebrated aviator, he had been a hero-adventurer. He was a human being. He was not even admirable, except as all people are admirable, from the ash-man to the king.
There had been nothing exemplary in his struggle to find adjustment with his wife; he had been bad in his impatience just as he had been good in his boyish affection; in both he had been human. Even now, when without reserve he gave himself up to love, he was aware that he would ascend, not on G.o.dlike pinions, but by a jerky old apartment-house elevator, to make peace with a vexed girl who was also a human being, with a digestive system and prejudices. Yet with a joy that encompa.s.sed all the beauty of banners and saluting swords, romantic towers and a fugitive queen, a joy transcending trains and elevators and prejudices, Carl knew that human girl as the symbol of man"s yearning for union with the divine; he desired happiness for her with a devotion great as the pa.s.sion in Galahad"s heart when all night he knelt before the high altar.
He came slowly up to their apartment-house. If it were only possible for Ruth to trust him, now----
Mingled with his painfully clear remembrance of all the sweet things Ruth was and had done was a tragic astonishment that he--this same he who was all hers now--could possibly have turned impatiently from her sobs. Yet it would have been for good, if only she would trust him.
Not till he left the elevator, on their floor, did he comprehend that Ruth might not be awaiting him; might have gone. He looked irresolutely at the grill of the elevator door, shut on the black shaft.
"She was here when I telephoned----"
He waited. Perhaps she would peep out to see if it was he who had come up in the elevator.
She did not appear.
He walked the endless distance of ten feet to their door, unlocked it, labored across the tiny hall into the living-room. She was there. She stood supporting herself by the back of the davenport, her eyes red-edged and doubtful, her face tightened, expressing enmity or dread or shy longing. He held out his hands, like a prisoner beseeching royal mercy. She in turn threw out her arms. He could not say one word. The clumsy signs called "words" could not tell his emotion. He ran to her, and she welcomed his arms. He held her, abandoned himself utterly to her kiss. His hard-driving mind relaxed; relaxed was her body in his arms. He knew, not merely with his mind, but with the vaster powers that drive mind and emotion and body, that Ruth, in her disheveled dressing-gown, was the glorious lover to whom he had been hastening this hour past. All the love which civilization had tried to turn into Normal Married Life had escaped Efficiency"s pruning-hook, and had flowered.
"It"s all right with me, now," she said; "so wonderfully all right."
"I want to explain. Had to be by myself; find out. Must have seemed so unspeakably r----"
"Oh, don"t, don"t explain! Our kiss explained."
While they talked on the davenport together, reaching out again and again for the hands that now really were there, Ruth agreed with Carl that they must be up and away, not wait till it should be too late.
She, too, saw how many lovers plan under the June honeymoon to sail away after a year or two and see the great world, and, when they wearily die, know that it will still be a year or two before they can flee to the halcyon isles.
But she did insist that they plan practically; and it was she who wondered: "But what would happen if everybody went skipping off like us? Who"d bear the children and keep the fields plowed to feed the ones that ran away?"
"Golly!" cried Carl, "wish that were the worst problem we had! Maybe a thousand years from now, when every one is so artistic that they want to write books, it will be hard to get enough drudges. But now---- Look at any office, with the clerks toiling day after day, even the unmarried ones. Look at all the young fathers of families, giving up everything they want to do, to support children who"ll do the same thing right over again with _their_ children. Always handing on the torch of life, but never getting any light from it. People don"t run away from slavery often enough. And so they don"t ever get to do real work, either!"
"But, sweetheart, what if we should have children some day? You know---- Of course, we haven"t been ready for them yet, but some day they might come, anyhow, and how could we wander round----"
"Oh, probably they will come some day, and then we"ll take our dose of drudgery like the rest. There"s nothing that our dear civilization punishes as it does begetting children. For poisoning food by adulterating it you may get fined fifty dollars, but if you have children they call it a miracle--as it is--and then they get busy and condemn you to a lifetime of being scared by the boss."
"Well, darling, please don"t blame it on me."
"I didn"t mean to get so oratorical, blessed. But it does make me mad the way the state punishes one for being willing to work and have children. Perhaps if enough of us run away from nice normal grinding, we"ll start people wondering just why they should go on toiling to produce a lot of booze and clothes and things that n.o.body needs."
"Perhaps, my Hawk.... Don"t you think, though, that we might be bored in your Rocky Mountain cabin, if we were there for months and months?"
"Yes, I suppose so," Carl mused. "The rebellion against stuffy marriage has to be a whole lot wider than some little detail like changing from city to country. Probably for some people the happiest thing "d be to live in a hobohemian flat and have parties, and for some to live in the suburbs and get the missus elected president of the Village Improvement Society. For us, I believe, it"s change and _keep going_."
"Yes, I do think so. Hawk, my Hawk, I lay awake nearly all night last night, realizing that we _are_ one, not because of a wedding ceremony, but because we can understand each other"s make-b"lieves and seriousnesses. I knew that no matter what happened, we had to try again.... I saw last night, by myself, that it was not a question of finding out whose fault a quarrel was; that it wasn"t anybody"s "fault," but just conditions.... And we"ll change them.... We won"t be afraid to be free."
"We won"t! Lord! life"s wonderful!"
"Yes! When I think of how sweet life can be--so wonderfully sweet--I know that all the prophets must love human beings, oh, so terribly, no matter how sad they are about the petty things that lives are wasted over.... But I"m not a prophet. I"m a girl that"s awfully much in love, and, darling, I want you to hold me close."
Three months later, in February, 1915, Ruth and Carl sailed for Buenos Ayres, America"s new export-market. Carl was the Argentine Republic manager for the VanZile Motor Corporation, possessed of an unimportant salary, a possibility of large commissions, and hopes like comets.
Their happiness seemed a thing enchanted. They had not quarreled again.
The S.S. _Sangrael_, for Buenos Ayres and Rio, had sailed from snow into summer. Ruth and Carl watched isles of palms turn to fantasies carved of ebony, in the rose and garnet sunset waters, and the vast sky laugh out in stars. Carl was quoting Kipling:
"The Lord knows what we may find, dear la.s.s, And the deuce knows what we may do-- But we"re back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We"re down, hull down on the Old Trail--the trail that is always new."
"Anyway," he commented, "deuce only knows what we"ll do after Argentine, and I don"t care. Do you?"
Her clasping hand answered, as he went on:
"Oh, say, bles-sed! I forgot to look in the directory before we left New York to see if there wasn"t a Society for the Spread of Madness among the Respectable. It might have sent us out as missionaries....
There"s a flying-fish; and to-morrow I won"t have to watch clerks punch a time-clock; and you can hear a sailor shifting the ventilators; and there"s a little star perched on the fore-mast; singing; but the big thing is that you"re here beside me, and we"re _going_. How bully it is to be living, if you don"t have to give up living in order to make a living."
THE END