Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

‘Nothing at all’, Will said. ‘Your mother and I aren’t envy-shouters, Irvie. We’re not accusing anybody of wickedness and corruption. It’s only the rubbing-in of riches that makes us join revolutionaries that deplore vulgarity.’

  ‘Speech!’ Edgar Semple looked up from his plate. ‘That was a good beginning, Uncle Will. You said it! Speech!’

  ‘You eat your lobster’, Will said crossly, and an amiable buzz of family laughter seemed to end our discussion of the Stellings; but I renewed it.

  ‘You used the word “suppressed” about the daughter’, I said to Evelyn. ‘With such limitless resources at hand what suppresses Sylvia?’

  ‘Her mother’, Evelyn replied. ‘Her obnoxious mother. Look at the woman’s husband — all he dares is to walk in his sleep whispering about his old stamp collection. She couldn’t endure having a daughter grow up to take part of the show away from her. She never allows Sylvia an hour’s freedom. She’d keep her still in the nursery if she could; she’s even stingy with her. Nobody ever hears Sylvia’s voice when her mother’s around. I don’t mean I like the girl. That brooding makes her most unattractive; but anybody could see where it comes from. What a family! I’m certainly not prejudiced but I — —’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Irvie gave his mother a pat on the back. ‘Not a bit prejudiced. Not an iota!’ Evelyn was delighted to have him mock her, and this time the family laughter did end our table-talk about the Stellings.

  Irvie paired with me in our little procession from the dining-room to the lounge. ‘Want to be a hospitable old Sea Cap’n?’ he said. ‘Mary Reame’s been here over a week and in the sea plenty but not once on it. She’d like to get out in a boat but not in that tippy dory of Emma’s — she says she’s sure Emma’ll be drowned in it some day — and the Stellings keep their yacht in Florida. If you’re going out again in the “One o’Clock” any time before Mary leaves—’

  ‘Why, of course, Irving. Tomorrow afternoon if you like. Edgar’s going with me again; he’s still my engineer. We’ll leave just after lunch.’

  ‘Good enough!’ Irvie said. ‘Emma’ll come, too, of course. Mother said for me to ask Mary to dine with us here at the Inn tomorrow evening, so both invitations’ll have to include Sylvia. I’m lunching at the Stellings’ tomorrow and I’ll have the pair of ’em at your little old pier by two o’clock. Kindly arrange sweet weather.’

  Chapter Eleven

  EMMA and Edgar were already aboard the ‘One o’Clock’, and, as I rowed Irvie and his smiling, delicate Mary out in the dinghy, he explained why Sylvia Stelling hadn’t come.

  ‘Her mamma wouldn’t let her. Maybe she would have; but at lunch she heard me prattling and asked what on earth was the “One o’Clock”. When I told her it was a fishing-boat you hired she screeched. Said anybody that went out in such craft always smelled of fish for hours, especially in hot weather. If Sylvia went she mightn’t get back in time to be de-fished and dressed for the five-o’clock party at the Blues’ cottage; it wouldn’t do at all. Mrs. Stelling said she had no authority over a “house-guest” — yes, that’s what she called Mary, a “house-guest”; it’s Mrs. Stelling’s style — so Mary could go and smell herself up if she wanted to.’

  Mary laughed. ‘Tell him the rest of it, Irving.’

  He complied. ‘Mrs. Stelling didn’t worry over whether I’m sensitive or not about being a mere worm of a hotel guest. She said Sylvia couldn’t come to dinner with us, either. She’d allowed her to join my tea-party yesterday, me being such a nice persuasive feller, but no — not for dining. Said she’d always thought it “rather cheapening” for a girl “in Sylvia’s position” to be seen too often around summer hotels. Whoops, what a tactful old gal, and whoof, where’d all this heat come from? I’m sizzling in all my seams. Do hurry and get us out of the harbour and upon the rolling blue.’

  This was indeed the hottest day in many Stonehaven seasons. Outside the harbour we were not upon a ‘rolling blue’ but upon a dulled glassy surface lazily humped by the subsided chop of the previous afternoon and without horizons. A yellowish haze, thinner than fog but almost as palpable, removed all blues and greens from sky and sea, and before we’d made a full sea-mile from the harbour we were out of sight of land. Our only breeze, the slight one afforded by our eight-miles-an-hour, wasn’t cooling. Our faces and hands seemed the hotter for it, and I didn’t ask if anybody’d care to make the exertion of fishing.

  Mary Reame, often called a ‘sweet girl’, was really so. She said she was enchanted to be on the sea and thought the effect of the haze, with the sun so faint one could stare at it, beautifully Turneresque. ‘I’m not used to the water, like the rest of you’, she added. ‘I’m much more entirely a mid-west inlander because I’ve never spent a whole season by the ocean and the only time I ever really saw anything of it at all was going to Europe and coming back, that summer the family took me over. I don’t mind it’s being so hot; I feel exhilarated to be out here on this boundlessness. Don’t you see how like a Turner it is, Irving?’

  ‘Oh, I do!’ he responded in a lover’s huskily softened voice; but I heard him. ‘It’s beautiful to see it as you do, Mary — ah, and for us to feel it together!’

  Emma, too, heard this, since she was standing beside me near the wheel; but, if she flinched, the emotional jerk wasn’t perceptible. Mary Reame and Irvie didn’t care who saw that they were in love and Emma had made up her mind and her heart to show them and everybody else never anything but brightest approval. At this very moment, when the romantic condition of her two dearest friends became most apparent, she was probably imagining herself as a bridesmaid parading a stout smile down the length of a church aisle at the end of which, before a flowered altar, Irvie awaited his lovely slender bride.

  .. I’d run the ‘One o’Clock’ on a slanting southeasterly course out from shore for about an hour and a half; then I called Emma to the wheel — she’d gone aft to chat with Edgar by the engine — and, when she’d relieved me of steering, I went down into the little box of a cabin and brought forth some sandwiches and a couple of thermos bottles of iced tea.

  Mary Reame made the correct chirpings over this hospitality, asked what could be more divine, a question Irvie no doubt rightly interpreted as meaning what could be more divine than to sit beside him enjoying common refreshment on the boundless deep. Then she pointed to the west. ‘It’s getting more and more Turneresque over in that direction. These sulphurous tones that tint the air seem to be deeper in colour yonder. What’s there, Irving?’

  ‘Nothing except Porpoise Cove, Bristol Beach, Miller’s Neck, a string of summer hotels, summer shacks and a couple of lighthouses’, he told her. ‘That’s the land, Mary, about seven miles off our starboard quarter — only you can’t see it. You could if this hot haze’d clear up; but it isn’t going to, so you’ll have to be content with the Atlantic Ocean and present company — which strikingly includes me. Can you stand it?’

  Mary gave him a look that openly proved to us all how happily she could stand it.

  Edgar accepted a glass of iced tea and showed me his watch. ‘Twenty after three’, he said. ‘About twelve miles out, aren’t we? Emma and Mary and Irvie and I are supposed to be at the Blues’ cottage by five — announcement party for Janey and George Prettiman. I’d rather stay out in the boat, myself; but the others—’

  ‘All right, Edgar. I’ll head for home.’

  When I’d taken the wheel from Emma, I put about, watched the compass, and for a little less than an hour held a straight course for Stonehaven’s harbour mouth. Then, from foot to head, I had a too-familiar sensation — that of losing personal momentum. For some moments the ‘One o’Clock’ continued to move spinelessly and without propulsion; then lay lazily aflop: once again that senile engine had broken down. Emma, beside me, looked round at Edgar.

  ‘Hi there, Engineer! Get out your monkey-wrench and see how long you’re going to hold us up.’

  Edgar didn’t respond. He was down on his hands and knees, absorbedly busy, and a
suggestive smell of petrol unpleasantly drifted forward to us.

  ‘Get going, Edgar’, Irvie said. ‘We’ll be due at the Blues’ pretty soon. It’s after four. How could there be any announcement party without Janey’s school roommate? Mary’s got to get there. Hurry it up!’.

  Edgar still didn’t answer. He’d opened a hatch in the floor-boarding and was working with his head and an arm beneath the aperture. Irvie didn’t ask if he needed help, possibly because he knew Edgar’s competence, but became more urgent. ‘Hi, get a move on, feller! I want to be at that party, myself.’

  Edgar rose, wiping his monkey-wrench with a clump of cotton waste, which he tossed overboard. ‘Take it easy’, he said, and called to me. ‘Feed pipe from the petrol tank to the engine, sir. I was afraid the vibration’d crack that old pipe some day.’

  ‘Crack it?’ Irvie spoke imperiously. ‘Bandage it up with something, then, and let’s get going.’

  ‘It isn’t cracked’, Edgar said. ‘It’s broken right in two. I’ve got the petrol turned off all right; but until we get a new feed pipe from Clafley’s shop the “One o’Clock” is out of commission. Weil have to get a tow.’

  Mary Reame murmured, ‘Oh, dear!’ and Irvie exclaimed, ‘A tow, the devil!’ He jumped up from his chair beside Mary’s. ‘Who’s going to see us in this haze?’

  I brought a megaphone and a pair of binoculars from the cabin; all of us searched the thin yellow-filtered sunshine for a chance Samaritan. The binoculars didn’t help us much, the air was too thick, and of course the megaphone was only a hopeful gesture until a friendly boat should appear. Mary Reame tried to hide her anxiety not to miss the announcement party; Irvie fretted, and the misconduct of the ‘One o’Clock’ seemed to put upon the poor old boat, and me too, an air of stubborn but conscious guilt.

  We’d lain helpless for perhaps twenty minutes when an encouraging sound became faintly audible — the throbbing of a marine engine. Irvie mounted the cabin-roof and began to bellow through the megaphone, ‘Ahoy there, you! Boat ahoy! Give us a tow, will you?’ and presently a whitish streak appeared on the water half a mile or more to the eastward — recognizably a motor boat cruising along the coast.

  Emma had the binoculars. ‘No use shouting, Irvie’, she said. ‘They couldn’t possibly hear you. They ought to notice we’re not making headway; but they’re not stopping yet. Keep waving, Edgar.’

  In token of distress Edgar was widely waving the small flag we carried on the ‘One o’clock’s’ stern, and for a moment the white streak to the east seemed to become clearer. Irvie jumped down from the cabin. ‘Joy, oh, joy! They’re turning toward us and’ll give us our tow. Cheer up, Mary, we’re practically at Janey Blue’s right now.’

  ‘No, we aren’t’, Edgar said. ‘They aren’t heading for us. If they saw us at all they probably thought we’re just lying here fishing. They’re moving right along, cruising down east.’

  ‘Oh, no! They couldn’t!’ Mary cried; but Edgar was right, and with a general groan we saw the white streak fade into complete invisibility.

  Chapter Twelve

  MARY REAME, AS if she’d missed a train, turned anxiously to Edgar. ‘How long,’ she asked, ‘do we have to wait for another?’

  He only looked astonished, but Emma reminded me of an occasion when Orion Clafley and I had broken down and weren’t brought in until midnight. ‘We just thought you were writing in your room, so we didn’t miss you until after dinner. On top of that the boat Uncle Will sent out to look for you was hours and hours finding you in the dark. We’d better decide not to mind missing the party, Mary.’

  ‘Get practical’, Irvie said. ‘We’re not going to miss it. We covered a lot of distance running for home before we broke down; we can’t be more than three or four miles out. There’s the dinghy. What’s the matter with rowing in?’

  ‘A four to five sea-mile row in that dinghy?’ Edgar shook his head. ‘She’d be overloaded, and with one pair of oars it’d take forever.’

  ‘The dinghy’s got rowlocks for two pairs’, Irvie said. ‘Aren’t there a couple more oars stowed away somewhere?’

  I apologized. ‘No, I’m sorry; but Orion needed ’em for another boat and—’

  Edgar renewed his objection. ‘What’s the difference?

  Five people in that boat—’

  ‘I didn’t say five people!’ Irvie protested. ‘The dinghy’s light as a feather, the tide’s running in, I’ll row the girls ashore and we’ll be at that party before it’s half over!’

  T wouldn’t count on it.’ Edgar, always cautious, looked serious. ‘I doubt if you could make it under an hour and a half at the best. I doubt if—’

  ‘Doubt, doubt, doubt! Doubt nothing!’ Irvie laughed and unfastened the dinghy’s painter from the ‘One o’clock’s’ stern. ‘I’ll telephone the village from the Blues’ and have a motor boat sent out for you two; they’ll easily tow you home in time for dinner. How’s that for an executive brain? Always trust the seafaring Old Maestro. Come on, ladies mine!’ As he spoke, he pulled the dinghy alongside, stepped lightly into it and seated himself amid-ship at the oars. ‘Forward the Light Brigade!’ he cried. ‘Mary, sit in the stern; it’s more comfortable and my weight throws aft when I row. Emma in the bow seat’ll trim the boat just right. On with the dance!’

  Mary smiled upon him but was timid. ‘Such a little boat. Is it safe?’

  ‘As a church, my child!’

  Irvie gave her his hand as she stepped over the ‘One o’clock’s’ side and let herself down upon the dinghy’s stem seat. Emma, following Irvie instantly, was already sitting in the bow between the unused oar-locks. With a strong stroke he began to pull away from the ‘One o’Clock’.

  ‘“Pull for the shore, sailor!”’he blithely sang. ‘“Pull for the—”’

  ‘Wait a second!’ Edgar had groped in a locker and brought forth a tin can in which he’d kept screws, nuts and bolts. He emptied these out and tossed the can to Emma. ‘Catch! You might ship a little water before you get in and need something to bail with.’

  Emma laughed as she caught the can, and Irvie mockingly called as he bent to his oars, ‘Man the pumps, men! A leak, a leak, a leak! “We are lost”, the Captain shouted as he staggered down the stair.” ‘Then he began to sing again, ‘“Pull for the shore, sailor! Pull for the shore—”’

  Already a decisive space of satiny water showed between the ‘One o’Clock’ and the dinghy, and Emma, in the little boat’s bow and facing us, was waving her handkerchief in jaunty farewell. I realized that I’d had not a word to say during the swift operation that was separating her from me. Young people often make their decisions, and act upon them, too, so quickly that an unconsulted older person scarce knows what is happening; then stands baffled by the accomplished fact. Irvie’d swept things along almost instantaneously and it was not until after he’d had his way that I became reluctant to let him have it. I could foresee no danger at all — a child’s toy sloop would have been safe upon that breezeless surface — yet, as the watery space between the ‘One o’Clock’ and those three figures in the dinghy became irrevocable, the rowboat seemed pathetically and even ominously little in a vastness of vaporous sea and tinted air.

  .. The burlesque singing of Irvie Pease grew fainter and fainter till it came no more to our ears. The haze dimmed the boat; the three figures merged until there was only a lonely pale dot visible’ — then it vanished, too.

  Edgar had been staring at it with me, silent; but now he coughed, lighted a cigarette and settled himself into one of the small wicker chairs we sported. ‘Of course they’ll be all right, sir; but I think Irvie’ll feel pretty tired before he gets there. Emma can spell him at the oars, though, and she probably will. She rows quite as well as he does, maybe better, though Irvie wouldn’t think so. I suppose we’d better keep our ears open for a putt-putt if another boat happens along; but that probably won’t be until Irvie stirs one up to come out for us. I don’t see much for us to be doing except sit and wait, do
you?’

  I laughed, said I didn’t; and sat down beside him. The water made not even a gurgle against the ‘One o’clock’s’ bow, stem or sides, though at times the hull beneath us heaved a little or sank a little or seemed to sidle gently, as if we rested upon some sluggish great being not wholly pleased to have us there. My eyes were hot. I closed them, felt my head nodding and before long was drowsing in my chair.

  Edgar roused me by heaving the anchor overboard. ‘Thought I might just as well’, he explained, returning from the bow. ‘Irvie’ll give our location as well as he can to whatever boat comes out for us and we seemed to be drifting some. It could be almost dark by that time and there might be a shower by then, too. I think they’re going to get one ashore before so very long. Wouldn’t you say so?’

  I looked to the westward where lay the haze-hidden land and saw a darkening of the sulphurous tint prevailing there all day. ‘Thunder shower’, I said. ‘It may hold off, though, and not come on till nine or ten o’clock. I’ve seen it behave that way after one of these yellowish days. About how long has the dinghy been gone, Edgar?’

  ‘They ought to be fairly near Stonehaven Harbour by this time’, he said. ‘Of course they’ll make it easily before that shower comes across the bay.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course’, I said. ‘I’m not worrying about them at all.’ Then, staring westward and seeing how swiftly the darkness there Was gathering and spreading, I spoke with a sharper gravity than I intended. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I?’ Out of the side of his eye Edgar gave me a glance of startled reproach, as if he thought I wished to alarm him. ‘Worrying about them? Not in the least. They’re a long way north of us by now and the shower’s coming up straight out of the west. It wouldn’t reach them — at least not until they’re well ashore — but I begin to think we might get it out here, sir. In fact, I’m sure we shall — before long, too. The whole look of things is changing pretty fast.’