II
One evening, a week after Stimson had indulged in the proud reflection
that people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in
quick and abject submission, a young feminine friend of the girl behind
the silvered netting came to her there and asked her to walk on the
beach after "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round" was closed for the night.
The girl assented with a nod.
The young man upon the perch holding the rings saw this nod and judged
its meaning. Into his mind came an idea of defeating the watchfulness of
the redoubtable Stimson. When the Merry-Go-Round was closed and the two
girls started for the beach, he wandered off aimlessly in another
direction, but he kept them in view, and as soon as he was assured that
he had escaped the vigilance of Stimson, he followed them.
The electric lights on the beach made a broad band of tremoring light,
extending parallel to the sea, and upon the wide walk there slowly
paraded a great crowd, intermingling, intertwining, sometimes colliding.
In the darkness stretched the vast purple expanse of the ocean, and the
deep indigo sky above was peopled with yellow stars. Occasionally out
upon the water a whirling mass of froth suddenly flashed into view, like
a great ghostly robe appearing, and then vanished, leaving the sea in
its darkness, whence came those bass tones of the water's unknown
emotion. A wind, cool, reminiscent of the wave wastes, made the women
hold their wraps about their throats, and caused the men to grip the
rims of their straw hats. It carried the noise of the band in the
pavilion in gusts. Sometimes people unable to hear the music glanced up
at the pavilion and were reassured upon beholding the distant leader
still gesticulating and bobbing, and the other members of the band with
their lips glued to their instruments. High in the sky soared an
unassuming moon, faintly silver.
For a time the young man was afraid to approach the two girls; he
followed them at a distance and called himself a coward. At last,
however, he saw them stop on the outer edge of the crowd and stand
silently listening to the voices of the sea. When he came to where they
stood, he was trembling in his agitation. They had not seen him.
"Lizzie," he began. "I----"
The girl wheeled instantly and put her hand to her throat.
"Oh, Frank, how you frightened me," she said--inevitably.
"Well, you know, I--I----" he stuttered.
But the other girl was one of those beings who are born to attend at
tragedies. She had for love a reverence, an admiration that was greater
the more that she contemplated the fact that she knew nothing of it.
This couple, with their emotions, awed her and made her humbly wish that
she might be destined to be of some service to them. She was very
homely.
When the young man faltered before them, she, in her sympathy, actually
over-estimated the crisis, and felt that he might fall dying at their
feet. Shyly, but with courage, she marched to the rescue.
"Won't you come and walk on the beach with us?" she said.
The young man gave her a glance of deep gratitude which was not without
the patronage which a man in his condition naturally feels for one who
pities it. The three walked on.
Finally, the being who was born to attend at this tragedy said that she
wished to sit down and gaze at the sea, alone.
They politely urged her to walk on with them, but she was obstinate. She
wished to gaze at the sea, alone. The young man swore to himself that he
would be her friend until he died.
And so the two young lovers went on without her. They turned once to
look at her.
"Jennie's awful nice," said the girl.
"You bet she is," replied the young man, ardently.
They were silent for a little time.
At last the girl said--
"You were angry at me yesterday."
"No, I wasn't."
"Yes, you were, too. You wouldn't look at me once all day."
"No, I wasn't angry. I was only putting on."
Though she had, of course, known it, this confession seemed to make her
very indignant. She flashed a resentful glance at him.
"Oh, you were, indeed?" she said with a great air.
For a few minutes she was so haughty with him that he loved her to
madness. And directly this poem, which stuck at his lips, came forth
lamely in fragments.
When they walked back toward the other girl and saw the patience of her
attitude, their hearts swelled in a patronizing and secondary tenderness
for her.
They were very happy. If they had been miserable they would have charged
this fairy scene of the night with a criminal heartlessness; but as they
were joyous, they vaguely wondered how the purple sea, the yellow stars,
the changing crowds under the electric lights could be so phlegmatic and
stolid.
They walked home by the lakeside way, and out upon the water those gay
paper lanterns, flashing, fleeting, and careering, sang to them, sang a
chorus of red and violet, and green and gold; a song of mystic bands of
the future.
One day, when business paused during a dull sultry afternoon, Stimson
went up town. Upon his return, he found that the popcorn man, from his
stand over in a corner, was keeping an eye upon the cashier's cage, and
that nobody at all was attending to the wooden arm and the iron rings.
He strode forward like a sergeant of grenadiers.
"Where in thunder is Lizzie?" he demanded, a cloud of rage in his eyes.
The popcorn man, although associated long with Stimson, had never got
over being dazed.
"They've--they've--gone round to th'--th'--house," he said with
difficulty, as if he had just been stunned.
"Whose house?" snapped Stimson.
"Your--your house, I s'pose," said the popcorn man.
Stimson marched round to his home. Kingly denunciations surged, already
formulated, to the tip of his tongue, and he bided the moment when his
anger could fall upon the heads of that pair of children. He found his
wife convulsive and in tears.
"Where's Lizzie?"
And then she burst forth--"Oh--John--John--they've run away, I know they
have. They drove by here not three minutes ago. They must have done it
on purpose to bid me good-bye, for Lizzie waved her hand sadlike; and
then, before I could get out to ask where they were going or what, Frank
whipped up the horse."
Stimson gave vent to a dreadful roar.
"Get my revolver--get a hack--get my revolver, do you hear--what the
devil--" His voice became incoherent.
He had always ordered his wife about as if she were a battalion of
infantry, and despite her misery, the training of years forced her to
spring mechanically to obey; but suddenly she turned to him with a
shrill appeal.
"Oh, John--not--the--revolver."
"Confound it, let go of me!" he roared again, and shook her from him.
He ran hatless upon the street. There were a multitude of hacks at the
summer resort, but it was ages to him before he could find one. Then he
charged it like a bull.
"Uptown!" he yelled, as he tumbled into the rear seat.
The hackman thought of severed arteries. His galloping horse distanced a
large number of citizens who had been running to find what caused such
contortions by the little hatless man.
It chanced as the bouncing hack went along near the lake, Stimson gazed
across the calm grey expanse and recognized a color in a bonnet and a
pose of a head. A buggy was traveling along a highway that led to
Sorington. Stimson bellowed--"There--there--there they are--in that
buggy."
The hackman became inspired with the full knowledge of the situation. He
struck a delirious blow with the whip. His mouth expanded in a grin of
excitement and joy. It came to pass that this old vehicle, with its
drowsy horse and its dusty-eyed and tranquil driver, seemed suddenly to
awaken, to become animated and fleet. The horse ceased to ruminate on
his state, his air of reflection vanished. He became intent upon his
aged legs and spread them in quaint and ridiculous devices for speed.
The driver, his eyes shining, sat critically in his seat. He watched
each motion of this rattling machine down before him. He resembled an
engineer. He used the whip with judgment and deliberation as the
engineer would have used coal or oil. The horse clacked swiftly upon the
macadam, the wheels hummed, the body of the vehicle wheezed and groaned.
Stimson, in the rear seat, was erect in that impassive attitude that
comes sometimes to the furious man when he is obliged to leave the
battle to others. Frequently, however, the tempest in his breast came to
his face and he howled--
"Go it--go it--you're gaining; pound 'im! Thump the life out of 'im; hit
'im hard, you fool!" His hand grasped the rod that supported the
carriage top, and it was clenched so that the nails were faintly blue.
Ahead, that other carriage had been flying with speed, as from
realization of the menace in the rear. It bowled away rapidly, drawn by
the eager spirit of a young and modern horse. Stimson could see the
buggy-top bobbing, bobbing. That little pane, like an eye, was a
derision to him. Once he leaned forward and bawled angry sentences. He
began to feel impotent; his whole expedition was a tottering of an old
man upon a trail of birds. A sense of age made him choke again with
wrath. That other vehicle, that was youth, with youth's pace; it was
swift-flying with the hope of dreams. He began to comprehend those two
children ahead of him, and he knew a sudden and strange awe, because he
understood the power of their young blood, the power to fly strongly
into the future and feel and hope again, even at that time when his
bones must be laid in the earth. The dust rose easily from the hot road
and stifled the nostrils of Stimson.
The highway vanished far away in a point with a suggestion of
intolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that Stimson
could no longer see the derisive eye.
At last the hackman drew rein to his horse and turned to look at
Stimson.
"No use, I guess," he said.
Stimson made a gesture of acquiescence, rage, despair. As the hackman
turned his dripping horse about, Stimson sank back with the astonishment
and grief of a man who has been defied by the universe. He had been in a
great perspiration, and now his bald head felt cool and uncomfortable.
He put up his hand with a sudden recollection that he had forgotten his
hat.
At last he made a gesture. It meant that at any rate he was not
responsible.
