Part 36 (2/2)
”Yes, but then how can you belong to the Blue Bowl Sodality?”
”Um, Yes----I've got it. You must have read novels in which the stern, silent man of granite has a secret tenderness in his heart, and he keeps the band of the first cigar he ever smoked in a little safe in the wall, and the first dollar he ever made in a frame--that's me.”
”Of course! The cigar was given him by his flaxen-haired sweetheart back in Jenkins Corners, and in the last chapter he goes back and marries her.”
”Not always, I hope!” Of what Carl was thinking is not recorded.
”Well, as a matter of fact, I've been a fairly industrious young man of granite the last few months, getting out the Touricar.”
”What is a Touricar? It sounds like an island inhabited by cannibals, exports hemp and cocoanut, see pink dot on the map, nor' by nor'east of Mogador.”
Carl explained.
”I'm terribly interested,” said Ruth. (But she made it sound as though she really was.) ”I think it's so wonderful.... I want to go off tramping through the Berks.h.i.+res. I'm so tired of going to the same old places.”
”Some time, when you're quite sure I'm an estimable young Y. M. C. A.
man, I'm going to try to persuade you to come out for a real tramp.”
She seemed to be considering the idea, not seriously, but----
Philip Dunleavy eventuated.
For some time Philip had been showing signs of interest in Ruth and Carl. Now he sauntered to the table, begged for another cup of tea, said agreeable things in regard to putting orange marmalade in tea, and calmly established himself. Ruth turned toward him.
Carl had fancied that there was, for himself, in Ruth's voice, something more friendly, in her infectious smile something more intimate than she had given the others, but when she turned precisely the same cheery expression upon Philip, Carl seemed to have lost something which he had trustingly treasured for years. He was the more forlorn as Olive Dunleavy joined them, and Ruth, Philip, and Olive discussed the engagement of one Mary Meldon. Olive recalled Miss Meldon as she had been in school days at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Philip told of her flirtations at the old Long Beach Hotel.
The names of New York people whom they had always known; the names of country clubs--Baltusrol and Meadow Brook and Peace Waters; the names of streets, with a sharp differentiation between Seventy-fourth Street and Seventy-fifth Street; Durland's Riding Academy, the Rink of a Monday morning, and other souvenirs of a New York childhood; the score of the last American polo team and the coming dances--these things shut Carl out as definitely as though he were a foreigner. He was lonely. He disliked Phil Dunleavy's sarcastic references. He wanted to run away.
Ruth seemed to realize that Carl was shut out. Said she to Phil Dunleavy: ”I wish you could have seen Mr. Ericson save my life last Sunday. I had an experience.”
”What was that?” asked the man whom Olive called ”Georgie,” joining the tea-table set.
The whole room listened as Ruth recounted the trip to Chinatown, Mrs.
Salisbury's party, and the hero who had once been a pa.s.senger in an aeroplane.
Throughout she kept turning toward Carl. It seemed to reunite him to the company. As she closed, he said:
”The thing that amused me about the parlor aviator was his laying down the law that the Atlantic will be crossed before the end of 1913, and his a.s.sumption that we'll all have aeroplanes in five years. I know from my own business, the automobile business, about how much such prophecies are worth.”
”Don't you think the Atlantic will be crossed soon?” asked the keen-looking man with the tortoise-sh.e.l.l spectacles.
Phil Dunleavy broke in with an air of amused sophistication: ”I think the parlor aviator was right. Really, you know, aviation is too difficult a subject for the layman to make any predictions about--either what it can or can't do.”
”Oh yes,” admitted Carl; and the whole room breathed. ”Oh yes.”
Dunleavy went on in his thin, overbred, insolent voice, ”Now I have it on good authority, from a man who's a member of the Aero Club, that next year will be the greatest year aviation has ever known, and that the Wrights have an aeroplane up their sleeve with which they'll cross the Atlantic without a stop, during the spring of 1914 at the very latest.”
”That's unfortunate, because the aviation game has gone up completely in this country, except for hydro-aeroplaning and military aviation, and possibly it never will come back,” said Carl, a hint of pique in his voice.
”What is your authority for that?” Phil turned a large, bizarre ring round on his slender left little finger and the whole room waited, testing this positive-spoken outsider.
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