"It is good of you to take up the cudgels, Mr. Ericson, and please don't misjudge me--of course I realize that I am only a silly old woman and that my pa.s.sion to see the Winslows keep to their fine standards is old-fashioned, but you see it is a hobby of mine that I've devoted years to, and you who haven't known the Winslows so very long----" Her manner was almost courteous.

"Yes, that's so," Carl mumbled, agreeably, just as she dropped the courtesy and went on:

"----you can't judge--in fact (this is nothing personal, you know) I don't suppose it's possible for Westerners to have any idea how precious family ideals are to Easterners. Of course we're probably silly about them, and it's splendid, your wheat-lands, and not caring who your grandfather was; but to make up for those things we do have to protect what we have gained through the generations."

Carl longed to stand up, to defy them all, to cry: "If you mean that you think Ruth has to be protected against me, have the decency to say so." Yet he kept his voice gentle:

"But why be narrowed to just a few families in one's interests? Now this settlement----"

"One isn't narrowed. There are plenty of _good_ families for Ruth to consider when it comes time for my little girl to consider alliances at all!" Aunt Emma coldly stated.

"I _will_ shut up!" he told himself. "I will shut up. I'll see this dinner through, and then never come near this house again." He tried to look casual, as though the conversation was safely finished. But Aunt Emma was waiting for him to go on. In the general stillness her corsets creaked with belligerent attention. He played with his fork in a "Well, if that's how you feel about it, perhaps it would be better not to discuss it any further, my dear madam," manner, growing every second more flushed, embarra.s.sed, sick, angry; trying harder every second to look unconcerned.

Aunt Emma hawked a delicate and ladylike hawk in her patrician throat, prefatory to a new attack. Carl knew he would be tempted to retort brutally.

Then from the door of the dining-room whimpered the high voice of an excited child:

"Oh, mamma, oh, Cousin Ruthie, nurse says Hawk Ericson is here! I want to see him!"

Every one turned toward a boy of five or six, round as a baby chicken, in his fuzzy miniature pajamas, protectingly holding a cotton monkey under his arm, st.u.r.dy and shy and defiant.

"Why, Arthur!" "Why, my son!" "Oh, the darling baby!" from the table.

"Come here, Arthur, and let's hear your troubles before nurse nabs you, old son," said Phil, not at all condescendingly, rising from the table, holding out his arms.

"No, no! You just let me go! I want to see Hawk Ericson. Is that Hawk Ericson?" demanded the son of Aunt Emma, pointing at Carl.

"Yes, sweetheart," said Ruth, softly, proudly.

Running madly about the end of the table, Arthur jumped at Carl's lap.

Carl swung him up and inquired, "What is it, old man?"

"Are you Hawk Ericson?"

"At your commands, cap'n."

Aunt Emma rose and said, masterfully, "Come, little son, now you've seen Mr. Ericson it's up to beddie again, up--to--beddie."

"No, no; please no, mamma! I've never seen a' aviator before, not in all my life, and you promised me 'cross your heart, at Pasadena you did, I could see one."

Arthur's face showed signs of imminent badness.

"Well, you may stay for a while, then," said Aunt Emma, weakly, unconscious that her sway had departed from her, while the rest of the table grinned, except Carl, who was absorbed in Arthur's ecstasy.

"I'm going to be a' aviator, too; I think a' aviator is braver than anybody. I'd rather be a' aviator than a general or a policeman or anybody. I got a picture of you in my sc.r.a.p-book--you got a funny hat like Cousin Bobby wears when he plays football in it. Shall I get you the picture in my sc.r.a.p-book?... Honest, will you give me another?"

Aunt Emma made one more attempt to coax Arthur up to bed, but his Majesty refused, and she compromised by scolding his nurse and sending up for his dressing-gown, a small, blue dressing-gown on which yellow ducks and white bunny-rabbits paraded proudly.

"Like our blue bowl!" Carl remarked to Ruth.

Not till after coffee in the drawing-room would Arthur consent to go to bed. This real head of the Emma Winslow family was far too much absorbed in making Carl tell of his long races, and "Why does a flying-machine fly? What's a wind pressure? Why does the wind shove up? Why is the wings curved? Why does it want to catch the wind?" The others listened, including even Aunt Emma.

Carl went home early. Ruth had the opportunity to confide:

"Hawk dear, I can't tell you how ashamed I am of my family for enduring anybody so rude and opinionated as Aunt Emma. But--it's all right, now, isn't it?... No, no, don't kiss me, but--dear dreams, Hawk."

Phil's voice, from behind, shouted: "Oh, Ericson! Just a second."

Carl was not at all pleased. He remembered that Phil had listened with obvious amus.e.m.e.nt to his agonized attempt to turn Aunt Emma's attacks.

Said Phil, while Ruth disappeared: "Which way you going? Walk to the subway with you. You win, old man. I admire your nerve for facing Aunt Emma. What I wanted to say----I hope to thunder you don't think I was in any way responsible for Mrs. Winslow's linking me and Ruth that way and----Oh, you understand. I admire you like the devil for knowing what you want and going after it. I suppose you'll have to convince Ruth yet, but, by Jove! you've convinced me! Glad you had Arthur for ally. They don't make kiddies any better. G.o.d! if I could have a son like that----I turn off here. G-good luck, Ericson."

"Thanks a lot, Phil."

"Thanks. Good night, Carl."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

Long Beach, on the first hot Sunday of May, when motorists come out from New York, half-ready to open asphalt hearts to sea and sky.

Carl's first sight of it, save from an aeroplane, and he was mad-happy to find real sh.o.r.e so near the city.

Ruth and he were picnicking, vulgar and unashamed, among the dunes at the end of the long board-walk, like the beer-drinking, pickle-eating parties of fishermen and the family groups with red table-cloths, grape-basket lunches, and colored Sunday supplements. Ruth declared that she preferred them to the elegant loungers who were showing off new motor-coats on the board-walk. But Carl and she had withdrawn a bit from the crowds, and in the dunes had made a nest, with a book and a magazine and a box of chocolates and Carl's collapsible lunch-kit.

Not New York only, but all of Ruth's relatives were forgot. Aunt Emma Truegate Winslow was a myth of the dragon-haunted past. Here all was fresh color and free s.p.a.ces looking to open sea. Behind the dunes, with their traceries of pale gra.s.s, reveled the sharp, unshadowed green of marshes, and an inland bay that was blue as bluing, a startling blue, bordered by the emerald marshes. To one side--afar, not troubling their peace--were the crimson roofs of fantastic houses, like chalets and California missions and villas of the Riviera, with gables and turrets of red tiles.

Before their feet was the cream-colored beach, marked by ridges of driftwood mixed with small glistening sh.e.l.ls, long ranks of pale-yellow seaweed, and the delicate wrinkles in the sand that were the tracks of receding waves. The breakers left the beach wet and shining for a moment, like plates of raw-colored copper, making one cry out with its flashing beauty. Then, at last, the eyes lifted to unbroken bluewater--nothing between them and Europe save rolling waves and wave-crests like white plumes. The sea was of a diaphanous blue that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue enamel to a rich ultramarine which absorbed and healed the office-worn mind. The sails of tacking sloops were a-blossom; sea-gulls swooped; a tall surf-fisherman in red flannel shirt and shiny black hip-boots strode out into the water and cast with a long curve of his line; c.u.mulus clouds, whose pure white was shaded with a delicious golden tone, were baronial above; and out on the sky-line the steamers raced by.

Round them was the warm intimacy of the dune sands; beyond was infinite s.p.a.ce calling to them to be big and unafraid.

Talking, falling into silences touched with the mystery of sun and sea, they confessed youth's excited wonder about the world; Carl sitting cross-legged, rubbing his ankles, a springy figure in blue flannel and a daring tie; while Ruth, in deep-rose linen, her throat bright and bare, lay with her chin in her hands, a flush beneath the gentle brown of her cheeks, her white-clad ankles crossed under her skirt, slender against the gray sand, thoughtful of eye, lost in happiness.

"Some day," Carl was musing, "your children and mine will say, 'You certainly lived in the most marvelous age in the world.' Think of it.

They talk about the romance of the Crusades and the Romans and all that, but think of the miracles we've seen already, and we're only kids. Aviation and the automobile and wireless and moving pictures and electric locomotives and electric cooking and the use of radium and the X-ray and the linotype and the submarine and the labor movement--the I. W. W. and syndicalism and all that--not that I know anything about the labor movement, but I suppose it's the most important of all. And Metchnikoff and Ehrlich. Oh yes, and a good share of the development of the electric light and telephone and the phonograph.... Golly! In just a few years!"

"Yes," Ruth added, "and Montessori's system of education--that's what I think is the most important.... See that sail-boat, Hawk! Like a lily. And the late-afternoon gold on those marshes. I think this salt breeze blows away all the bad Ruth.... Oh! Don't forget the attempts to cure cancer and consumption. So many big things starting right now, while we're sitting here."

"Lord! what an age! Romance--why, there's more romance in a wireless spark--think of it, little lonely wallowing steamer, at night, out in the dark, slamming out a radio like forty thousand tigers spitting--and a man getting it here on Long Island. More romance than in all the galleons that ever sailed the purple tropics, which they mostly ain't purple, but dirty green. Anything 's possible now. World cools off--a'right, we'll move on to some other planet. It gets me going. Don't have to believe in fairies to give the imagination a job, to-day. Glad I've been an aviator; gives me some place in it all, anyway."

"I'm glad, too, Hawk, terribly glad."

The sun was crimsoning; the wind grew chilly. The beach was scattered with camp-fires. Their own fire settled into compact live coals which, in the dusk of the dune-hollow, spread over the million bits of quartz a glow through which pirouetted the antic sand-fleas. Carl's cigarette had the fragrance that comes only from being impregnated with the smoke of an outdoor fire. The waves were lyric, and a group at the next fire crooned "Old Black Joe." The two lovers curled in their nest. Hand moved toward hand.

Ruth whispered: "It's sweet to be with all these people and their fires.... Will I really learn not to be supercilious?"