Then, after you've said that----Let's see. You're a church member, aren't you? Well then, next you'd say, 'Just how does it feel to be up in an aeroplane?' or if you don't say that then you've simply got to say, 'Just how does it feel to fly, anyway?' But if you're just _terribly_ interested, Dorothy, you might ask about biplanes _versus_ monoplanes, and 'Do I think there'll ever be a flight across the Atlantic?' But whatever you do, Dorothy, don't fail to ask me if I'll give you a free ride when I start flying again. And we'll fly and fly----Like birds. You know. Or like the Dancing Bacchante.... That's the way to talk about aviation.... And now you tell me _all_ about babies!"

"Really, I'm afraid babies is rather a big subject to tell all about!

At a party! Really, you _know_----"

That was the only time Carl was not bored at the party. And even then he had spiritual indigestion from having been rude.

For the rest of the time:

Every one knew everybody else, and took Carl aside to tell him that everybody was "the most conscientious man in our office, Ericson; why, the Boss would trust him with anything." It saddened Carl to hear the insurance adjuster boom, "Oh you Tottykins!" across the room, at ten-minute intervals, like a human fog-horn on the sea of ennui.

They were all so uniformly polite, so neat-minded and church-going and dull. Nearly all the girls did their hair and coquetries one exactly like another. Carl is not to be pitied. He had the pleasure of martyrdom when he heard the younger Johnson tell of Martinhurst, the Suburb Beautiful. He believed that he had reached the nadir of boredom. But he was mistaken.

After simple and pleasing refreshments of the wooden-plate and paper-napkin school, Gertie announced: "Now we're going to have some stunts, and you're each to give one. I know you all can, and if anybody tries to beg off--my, what will happen----! My brother has a new one----"

For the third time that month, Carl saw Ray turn his collar round and become clerical, while every one rustled with delight, including the jolly bantling clergyman.

And for the fourth time he saw Gertie dance "Gather the Golden Sheaves." She appeared, shy and serious, in bloomers and flat dancing-shoes, which made her ample calves bulge the more; she started at sight of the harvest moon (and well she may have been astonished, if she did, indeed, see a harvest moon there, above the gilded buffalo horns on the unit bookcase), rose to her toes, flapped her arms, and began to gather the sheaves to her breast, with enough plump and panting energy to enable her to gather at least a quarter-section of them before the whistle blew.

It was not only esthetic, but Close to the Soil.

Then, to banjo accompaniment, the insurance adjuster sighed for his old Kentucky home, which Carl judged to have been located in Brooklyn.

The whole crowd joined in the chorus and----

Suddenly, with a shock that made him despise himself for the cynical superiority which he had been enjoying, Carl remembered that Forrest Haviland, Tony Bean, Hank Odell, even surly Jack Ryan and the alien Carmeau, had sung "My Old Kentucky Home" on their last night at the Bagby School. He felt their beloved presences in the room. He had to fight against tears as he too joined in the chorus.... "Then weep no more, my lady."... He was beside a California poppy-field. The blossoms slumbered beneath the moon, and on his shoulder was the hand of Forrest Haviland....

He had repented. He became part of the group. He spoke kindly to Tottykins. But presently Tottykins postponed her well-advertised return to her husband and baby, and gave a ten-minute dramatic recital from Byron; and the younger Johnson sang a Swiss mountaineer song with yodels.

Gertie looked speculatively at Carl twice during this offering. He knew that the G.o.ds were plotting an abominable thing. She was going to call upon him for the "stunt" which had been inescapably identified with him, the song, "I went up in a balloon so big." He met the crisis heroically. He said loudly, as the shaky strains of the Swiss ballad died on the midnight mountain air of 157th Street (while the older men concealed yawns and applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat rapped on the radiator): "I'm sorry my throat 's so sore to-night. Otherwise I'd sing a song I learned from a fellow in California--balloon s' big."

Gertie stared at him doubtfully, but pa.s.sed to a kitten-faced girl from Minnesota, who was quite ready to give an imitation of a child whose doll has been broken. Her "stunt" was greeted with, "Oh, how cun-ning! Please do it again!"

She prepared to do it again. Carl made hasty motions of departure, pathetically holding his throat.

He did not begin to get restless till he had reached Ninety-sixth Street and had given up his seat in the subway to a woman who resembled Tottykins. He wondered if he had not been at the Old Home long enough. At Seventy-second Street, on an inspiration that came as the train was entering the station, he changed to a local and went down to Fifty-ninth Street. He found an all-night garage, hired a racing-car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island, a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery with falling snow.

CHAPTER XXVII

Carl wished that Adelaide Benner had never come from Joralemon to study domestic science. He felt that he was a sullen brute, but he could not master his helpless irritation as he walked with Adelaide and Gertie Cowles through Central Park, on a snowy Sunday afternoon of December. Adelaide a.s.sumed that one remained in the state of mind called Joralemon all one's life; that, however famous he might be, the son of Oscar Ericson was not sufficiently refined for Miss Cowles of the Big House on the Hill, though he might improve under Cowles influences. He was still a person who had run away from Plato! But that a.s.sumption was far less irritating than one into which Adelaide threw all of her faded yearning--that Gertie and he were in love.

Adelaide kept repeating, with coy slyness: "Isn't it too bad you two have me in the way!" and: "Don't mind poor me. Auntie will turn her back any time you want her to."

And Gertie merely blushed, murmuring, "Don't be a silly."

At Eightieth Street Adelaide announced: "Now I must leave you children. I'm going over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I do love to see art pictures. I've always wanted to. Now be as good as you can, you two."

Gertie was mechanical about replying. "Oh, don't run away, Addy dear."

"Oh yes, you two will miss an old maid like me terribly!" And Adelaide was off, a small, st.u.r.dy, undistinguished figure, with an unyielding loyalty to Gertie and to the idea of marriage.

Carl looked at her bobbing back (with wrinkles in her cloth jacket over the shoulders) as she melted into the crowd of glossy fur-trimmed New-Yorkers. He comprehended her goodness, her devotion. He sighed, "If she'd only stop this hinting about Gertie and me----" He was repentant of his irritation, and said to Gertie, who was intimately cuddling her arm into his: "Adelaide's an awfully good kid. Sorry she had to go."

Gertie jerked her arm away, averted her profile, grated: "If you miss her so much, perhaps you'd better run after her. Really, I wouldn't interfere, not for _worlds_!"

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Gertie! What seems to be the matter? Don't I detect a chill in the atmosphere? So sorry you've gone and gotten refined on me. I was just going to suggest some low-brow amus.e.m.e.nt like tea at the Casino."

"Well, you ought to know a lady doesn't----"

"Oh, now, Gertie dear, not 'lady.'"

"I don't think you're a bit nice, Carl Ericson, I don't, to be making fun of me when I'm serious. And why haven't you been up to see us?

Mamma and Ray have spoken of it, and you've only been up once since my party, and then you were----"

"Oh, please let's not start anything. Sorry I haven't been able to get up oftener, but I've been taking work home. You know how it is--you know when you get busy with your dancing-school----"

"Oh, I meant to tell you. I'm through, just _through_ with Vashkowska and her horrid old school. She's a cat and I don't believe she ever had anything to do with the Russian ballet, either. What do you think she had the effrontery to tell me? She said that I wasn't practising and really trying to learn anything. And I've been working myself into----Really, my nerves were in such a shape, I would have been in danger of a nervous breakdown if I had kept on. Tottykins told me how she had a nervous breakdown, and had me see her doctor, such a dear, Dr. St. Claire, so refined and sympathetic, and he told me I was right in suspecting that n.o.body takes Vashkowska seriously any more, and, besides, I don't think much of all this symbolistic dancing, anyway, and at last I've found out what I really want to do. Oh, Carl, it's so wonderful! I'm studying ceramics with Miss Deitz, she's so wonderful and temperamental and she has the dearest studio on Gramercy Park. Of course I haven't made anything yet, but I know I'm going to like it so much, and Miss Deitz says I have a natural taste for vahzes and----"

"Huh? Oh yes, vases. I get you."

"(Don't be vulgar.)----I'm going to go down to her studio and work every other day, and she doesn't think you have to work like a scrubwoman to succeed, like that horrid Vashkowska did. Miss Deitz has a temperament herself. And, oh, Carl, she says that 'Gertrude' isn't suited to me (and 'Gertie' certainly isn't!) and she calls me 'Eltruda.' Don't you think that's a sweet name? Would you like to call me 'Eltruda,' sometimes?"

"Look here, Gertie, I don't want to b.u.t.t in, and I'm guessing at it, but looks to me as though one of these artistic grafters was working you. What do you know about this Deitz person? Has she done anything worth while? And honestly, Gertie----By the way, I don't want to be brutal, but I don't think I could stand 'Eltruda.' It sounds like 'Tottykins.'"

"Now really, Carl----"

"Wait a second. How do you know you've got what you call a temperament? Go to it, and good luck, if you can get away with it. But how do you know it isn't simply living in a flat and not having any work to do _except_ developing a temperament? Why don't you try working with Ray in his office? He's a mighty good business man. This is just a sugges----"

"Now really, this is----"

"Look here, Gertie, the thing I've always admired about you is your wholesomeness and----"

"'Wholesome!' Oh, that word! As Miss Deitz was saying just the other day, it's as bad----"

"But you are wholesome, Gertie. That is, if you don't let New York turn your head; and if you'd use your ability on a real job, like helping Ray, or teaching--yes, or really sticking to your ceramics or dancing, and leave the temperament business to those who can get away with it. No, wait. I know I'm b.u.t.ting in; I know that people won't go and change their natures because I ask them to; but you see you--and Ray and Adelaide--you are the friends I depend on, and so I hate to see----"

"Now, Carl dear, you might let me talk," said Gertie, in tones of maddening sweetness. "As I think it over, I don't seem to recall that you've been an authority on temperament for so very long. I seem to remember that you weren't so terribly wonderful in Joralemon! I'm glad to be the first to honor what you've done in aviation, but I don't know that that gives you the right to----"

"Never said it did!" Carl insisted, with fict.i.tious good humor.

"----a.s.sume that you are an authority on temperament and art. I'm afraid that your head has been just a little turned by----"

"Oh, h.e.l.l.... Oh, I'm sorry. That just slipped."

"It _shouldn't_ have slipped, you know. I'm _afraid_ it can't be pa.s.sed over so _easily_." Gertie might have been a bustling Joralemon school-teacher pleasantly bidding the dirty Ericson boy, "Now go and wash the little hands."

Carl said nothing. He was bored. He wished that he had not become entangled in their vague discussion of "temperament."