# First-Hand

Extracted from Everybody's magazine, Sept 1916, pp. 336-351. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
FIRST- HAND
BY
HOLWORTHY HALL
HIS friends held that Cunningham was at least fifty years old when he was born. According to that very plausible theory he was now about eighty-five; good looking, with that sort of impersonal attractiveness which inspires respect long before it arouses admiration; and possessed of enough intelligence to make him feared not only in courts of law and equity, but also at the modest club where his chief delight lay in spoiling, by utter and relentless logic, the other fellow's epigram.
He had an astonishingly large income; he lived in a couple of barren rooms near Gramercy Park; his daily routine was as measured and monotonous and dignified as that of an interned animal in the cages of the menagerie.
Those who thought of him as an intellectual machine, efficient, colorless, built solely for automatic precision, didn't realize that he hadn't kissed a woman since his ninth birthday, that he had been orphaned at fourteen, and that in the seclusion of his penal-appearing quarters he divided his time, after dinner, between the Institutes of Justinian and the fairy-stories of Andrew Lang. They didn't know that his austerity was concentrated shyness. They didn't remotely suspect that when Cunningham's brain was apparently occupied by the inconsistencies of the Federal reports, his heart was secretly a-maying over in the License Bureau. They never once surmised this; and if they had, Cunningham would naturally have denied it—while his soul continued to atrophy in loneliness—and buried his embarrassment under an avalanche of pure reason. Somewhat as follows:
Promptly at half past noon, Cunningham's unswerving custom brought him to the dingy but distinctive club where he lunched regularly at the same hour, at the same table, every week-day of the year. First, he unlocked the only letter-box which ever required a key; next he read carefully each typewritten notice on the bulletin-board; after that he inspected with conscientious gravity the candidates' book; then, in the familiar attitude of Lee Shubert counting the house, he stood for a moment at the entrance to the dining-room, bowing to all the members he recognized; finally, having accomplished those formalities, without which the best of food would have proved tasteless, he went over to the round table in the window, and took his usual seat.
The men who had preceded him were already deep in conversation; they acknowledged his arrival by sundry inclinations of the head, and resumed.
“I don't admit that it's a question of personality,” said Stephenson, who described himself to strangers as an inferior decorator. “I don't think it's even a question of compatibility. My point is that after a man's lived around places like this for a few years, associating with a lot of ribald loafers—present company especially—the change is bound to benefit him.”
“Meaning, of course,” said Currier, “that no matter which way you figure it, Rayburn's in luck.”
“Exactly,” agreed Stephenson, acquiring the last of the horseshoe rolls, and buttering it unctuously. “I mean that a man who's free-lanced around lower New York for eight or ten years is going to be uplifted and improved by any woman. And if it happens to be the sort of partner Ned Rayburn's managed to find—that's velvet!”
Cunningham turned abruptly to his neighbor, a handsome youth who played pool much better than he acted. “Jimmy!” he said, in characteristically repressed amazement. “Jimmy! Ned Rayburn isn't being married, is he? Married?”
The young actor nodded vigorously. “Says he is, anyway. Don't see why he'd want to lie about it.”
“Rayburn married!” said Cunningham, staring across the table. He exhaled gently, and summoned a mental picture of Rayburn—a middle-aged editor with no hair to mention, and mighty little romance in his cosmos. “Poor … old … Rayburn,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Well, I certainly am astounded. I shouldn't have dreamed of it. I certainly never thought he'd desert us. And while we're enjoying ourselves in what's left of Bohemia, poor old Ned Rayburn—of all men in the world—has got the sun in his eyes, and he's going off to live in Arcady!”
“Tuckahoe,” corrected Currier. “They're taking a furnished bungalow.” He helped himself plenteously to the strawberry-jam long since charged on another check.
“A FURNISHED bungalow,” repeated Cunningham softly, as he polished his glasses. “A man with the artistic sense of Ned Rayburn living in a furnished bungle-house! It's inconceivable! Leather pillows with Indian heads on 'em … domestic steins on the mantel-piece … and a den—Oh, by all means a den! With papier-mâche armor on the wall, and a cozy corner, and tabourets with leather fringe, and framed Gibson girls!” He paused, failing to observe that the others were regarding him with premonitory symptoms of opposition. “A fish-net full of photographs over the divan,” said Cunningham, looking sorrowfully out at the slashes of blue sky which showed over the roof-tops. “And … and knickknacks … souvenir spoons, and a cherry-wood hatchet from Mount Vernon, and something from Niagara Falls. And 'The End of a Perfect Day' always open on the piano. There's probably a China-silk piano scarf on it, with cut-glass vases, and a majolica rose-jar. And the whole place smells of cabbage——”
“We were just saying,” interrupted Stephenson, bending toward him, “that this is about the best thing that could possibly happen to Rayburn. You don't subscribe to that?”
Cunningham's smile was deprecatory. “I'm not altogether convinced,” he said, “that it's a good thing for him, or for any one else. Consider the proposition in general—go to all four corners of it. When a man's married, he's got to give up nine-tenths of his income, most of his time, practically all of his bachelor friends, absolutely all of his woman friends. And yet you speak of the partnership of marriage! It isn't a partnership—it's a stock corporation, with the woman preferred, and the husband common. It's the man who makes all the sacrifices. He's the one who mortgages his future. He begins by discounting the remainder of his existence at about ninety per cent., and in return he gets a permanent trespasser on his individuality. Why, I've heard you arguing suffrage—the very last refuge of the American male citizen! That's all the individuality a married man has! Granted that it's a special privilege—a man has to have some compensation, hasn't he? And the woman isn't doing anything more than to shift the responsibility of her support from one house to another. I can't see how Ned Rayburn's lucky—on the contrary!”
The young actor touched his arm. “Aren't you forgetting,” he asked, “that occasionally—just once in a while, you know—people have a sort of what you might call a—an attachment for each other? Don't you count that in? Ned said——”
“That isn't why people marry!”
There was a little stir of interest around the table.
“You've never been married yourself,” said Stephenson. “So you ought to be quite impartial.”
“I am. Why, some people marry for the same reason that some people fight. On impulse. The consequents are overshadowed by the antecedents. Now, the men who marry earliest all have nervous temperaments. That's demonstrated by statistics. They see a pretty face, or a good figure, or they go to a dance, or to a week-end party and get home-cooking—I'll venture to say that those are the proximate causes of nine marriages out of ten. I'm willing to wager that the last one hits close to Ned Rayburn.”
He glanced across at Stephenson, whose expression was wooden. He looked at Currier, who had compressed his lips thinly, and was battering a tea-biscuit with a spoon. He sought approval from the young actor, whom he had set down as an iconoclast, and was genuinely astonished at the optical reception he got for his pains.
“Well, in my opinion,” said the actor presently, “you're either jaundiced or jealous——”
“Jealous!” The stroke was so nearly true that Cunningham winced.
“You don't seem to be awfully well posted on this line,” said Stephenson. “Besides, we're all friends of Ned——”
“So am I! What difference does that make?”
“Counselor,” said Currier blandly, “I am about to make an examination which is both material and relevant. Of course, you're not obliged to incriminate yourself, but I rather wish you would. It might help me to get your angles. Have you ever been in love?”
Cunningham reddened, and the consciousness of it made him redden still more. It occurred to him that his motives wouldn't stand scrutiny, and that humor might save him.
“Not recently,” he conceded.
“Well, until that time,” said the young actor at his side, “perhaps you'd better stick to facts, and not theories. Because afterward you can't.”
“In other words,” added Stephenson, “this sounds like too much of a reflection on Ned. So please don't make a silly donkey of yourself, old man—and let's talk about something else.”
Cunningham drew his chair back sharply. “What was that?”
“When you don't know the first thing about a topic,” advised Stephenson, “you might as well keep away from it. When you're legitimately entitled to the floor, you can have it—but not until then.” He laughed, but his intentions were unmistakably serious.
Cunningham rose stiffly. “If that's the way you feel about it, I'm sorry to have annoyed you. I was under the impression that you could discuss an abstraction without dragging ourselves into it. You're practically telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about.”
“Oh, hold on——”
“Not practically—actually,” said the young actor. “Don't be an idiot! Sit down.”
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Cunningham with great politeness; and he moved away toward the big doors, and disappeared into the adjacent living-room. The trio at the table looked at each other guiltily.
“WHAT'S the matter with him to-day?” inquired Currier. “I never saw him act like that before. Must be indigestion, or something.”
“I don't know why he should take it so hard——”
“Shouldn't be so dogmatic, then,” said the actor. “What's he know about it?”
“Nothing,” said Stephenson, starting up. “But I don't want him to think we've sandbagged him. We must have hit a sore spot. He likes Ned as much as we do. You stay here a minute—I'll fetch him back, and we'll straighten it out. And then, for Heaven's sake, talk about the war——”
The doorman, however, declared that Mr. Cunningham had gone.
WHEN Cunningham emerged from the door of the club, and strode wrathfully along Twentieth Street to Fourth Avenue, the disorganization of his own thoughts appalled him. “Damned hypocrites!” he said, referring to his friends; and then, “Damned hypocrite!”—referring to himself. Poor old Ned Rayburn was in his mind; the early spring was in it, too, and his friends' comments, which rankled. They needn't have been so arbitrary about it—it wasn't at all necessary. This is a country of free speech; every man has a right to his opinion.
But to Cunningham's clotted imagination his whole life was like a seething, giant wave which had just broken magnificently against a wall of solid realism, and was suddenly worth nothing. His world had gone unstable under his feet. Even poor old Ned Rayburn, whose baldness was beyond euphemism, was going to be married! Illogically, he loathed Ned Rayburn; loathed him west to Fifth Avenue, where he halted, irresolute. The need for action was compellingly urgent in him; he wanted to walk vast distances, and think, and think. He wanted to settle the eternal problems of things and people and marriages and life; he wanted to find some weight of philosophy to balance his own doubtfulness. The sap of spring was in his veins, and he felt it.
“One afternoon,” he said, frowning at his watch. “One afternoon out of a lifetime. In the office they'll think I've had an accident—or a client. Never did such a thing before. But—poor old Ned!”
He set out briskly northward. Resolution was taking form. “Hypocrite!” he said to himself, savagely. “That's what I am. Yes, sir! I want to get out in the country, and mull it all over. Of course, they didn't need to jump on me quite so hard.…”
Eventually, when he came to the Grand Central Terminal, his plan was definite. One of the men at his office had some time mentioned Crestwood, twenty miles out, where woods and fields were in abundance, and the air was pure, and the silence gratifying.
“There's no use—you've got to get a perspective,” he said in the smoking-car. “You can't make comparisons if all you've got is a horizon—no foreground.” The train started. “Good old Ned,” said Cunningham reflectively. “I wonder if he'll get his money's worth.” …
FROM the Crestwood station, a sorry enough building on the flank of an abortive real-estate development, he had gone on to the woods; not the free, brush-choked woods of a wilderness, to be sure, but still a province of trees and wild flowers which, under the circumstances, was satisfactory. He had done a little fence-climbing and a little ditch jumping; he had dodged a dog, and he had torn his coat on a barbed-wire fence; all in all, the pilgrimage was technically successful. He hadn't yet solved the personal equation—but he hadn't tried. The exercise, and the novelty of his surroundings, had kept his mind too busy for idle speculation.
But on the shore of a tiny stream he sat down at last to meditate; he was sitting there very comfortably, and wishing that he had remembered to buy more cigars, when the nose of a canoe poked its way around a bank a few yards distant, and caught his attention. He watched, curiously, waiting for the residue of the craft to come within his range of vision. Instead, it remained where it was, wobbled perilously, and came to rest when its motive power was still hidden from sight by the projection of earth and moss and cliff.
“Stuck!” said Cunningham. “Fool! A canoe in a gutter like this!”
He watched amusedly; from behind the bank sped a stertorous exclamation, followed by prodigious splashing. The canoe rocked and swayed, advancing not so much as a millimeter. Indeed, it seemed gradually to settle and embrace the mud of the river-bed. Then immobility—and silence.
It was increasingly apparent to Cunningham that, having nothing imperative to do at the time, he might offer, without seriously inconveniencing himself, to lend a hand or a foot to the stranded voyager. Altruistically, he scrambled to his feet and went forward. He gained the miniature promontory and looked down—and stayed rooted, speechless. Ankle-deep in the stream was a girl, brown, hatless, flushed; her linen skirts held daintily in one hand, and certain footwear in the other. She gazed up at Cunningham, and Cunningham gazed down at her, and gasped, and stammered, and stayed rooted. Helplessness was in his attitude; the girl, however, was competent in the emergency.
“Please,” she said, “if you'll look the other way for a minute——”
“I—I thought—I might——”
“Thank you,” she said crisply. “You can help a whole lot—in just a minute.”
Behind him he heard quick rustlings in the leaves of the bank.
“Now!” she told him.
It was a glowing face that he saw; glowing not only from the shock of astonishment—there was a quality which confessed good health. It was the face of an impulsive, ingenuous character; the eyes were brown and frank and friendly; the mouth was lined boyishly; the chin was boyish also. Cunningham's intuition announced, very accurately, that she was about nineteen. He rather liked her, although he didn't approve of her—she was too old, in his estimation, to wear short skirts out-of-doors, to allow her hair to fall tossing loose, and to wade in puny rivers. He didn't bother to determine how else she could have retrieved her canoe.
“You—you're stuck, aren't you?” he queried brilliantly.
“Yes,” she said, “unless they rented me a submarine. It's been doing this every few yards right along. Could you drag it out for me, do you think?”
“It really isn't a proper place to canoe,” said Cunningham. “It's too shallow, I think I can dislodge it.”
“Oh, I hope you can! But you'll have to be careful——”
“I am always careful,” said Cunningham, standing at the water's edge, and reaching toward the gunwale. “I evidently need a stick seven feet long——”
“Look out! Oh, that's too bad! Oh, I'm so sorry!”
CUNNINGHAM, glaring at her from the mud-hole into which he had inevitably slipped, said nothing. The murky water reached nearly to his knees; the mud itself covered his insteps; he shrugged his shoulders, and turned, and waded warily out from shore.
“Oh, that's so unfortunate! Please don't!”
“I might as well make a complete job of it,” said Cunningham resignedly. “It wouldn't be efficient to stop now.” He tugged viciously at the stern; the light canoe responded with surprising alacrity. Cunningham, fighting for his balance, almost sat down, recovered, and fled to safety, leaving the canoe to float aimlessly upon the surface of the Bronx. From the waist down he dripped silt and water; he came to dry land, shook himself doggedly, and glared again at the girl. “There's your canoe,” he said shortly.
“I'm so sorry—I tried to tell you it was deep out there. I'd just found it out myself.” Her tone was tragic, but her expression showed conflict.
“Laugh, if you want to,” said Cunningham. “I can imagine that I appear ridiculous to you.”
“That doesn't mean that I'm not sorry—and it was awfully nice of you——”
“That's all right,” said Cunningham, lifting one leg, and surveying it ruefully. “I'll bring it to shore now.”
“But you can't! You can't reach it.”
“I'll wade, then. The damage has been done.”
“But in some places the water's five or six feet deep. It'll float in.”
“In that case,” said Cunningham, “I'll stand in the sun, if you don't mind.”
He stood in the sun, and exercised solemnly; the girl, after a second's inspection, turned away her face.
“You have a very lively sense of humor,” said Cunningham, changing to the fourth section of the setting-up drill.
“I suppose it is—ungrateful of me,” she acknowledged under her breath. “If you hadn't fallen in there—I might have——”
“But I consider myself compensated.”
She appraised him soberly. “Really?”
“By your thanks.”
“You're a professor of something, aren't you?”
“Heavens, no! I'm a lawyer. Why?”
“Only by the way you spoke.”
“Induction, or deduction?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind,” said Cunningham. “Oh, by the way—can you tell me where I can get a train to New York?”
“The nearest station isn't more than half a mile—only you must be perfectly dry first——”
“It won't take long now.” He kicked actively. “You must live in this neighborhood.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Do much canoeing?”
“Not a great deal. The river's nearly all like this—but it's a companionable little river, isn't it?”
“It's the worst I ever tasted,” said Cunningham, smiling feebly. “But even so, it has attractions for an escaped convict.”
“An—what was that you said?”
“Merely figurative. I refer to my own habits.”
“Oh! I see.”
“Life in a city,” said Cunningham, “is like looking eternally out through a barred window. The question is whether it would be wiser not to look out at all. I came out this afternoon to try the experiment.”
She was frankly puzzled. “But—if you call it imprisonment—it's entirely voluntary, isn't it?”
“All voluntary habits tend to become fixed and involuntary,” said Cunningham, measuring the distance to the canoe. “If we're going to wait for the tide, or the wind, is there any reason why we shouldn't sit down?”
She smiled, and found a convenient tree-trunk. Cunningham dropped to the moss, and fumbled for his absent cigars.
“I really don't understand what you mean,” she prompted him.
“I can explain in a very few words, but—” He hesitated. “It may be that you'd prefer I shouldn't.”
“Why should I?”
“If I'm intruding,” said Cunningham, “or if I'm making myself objectionable, you're welcome to say so. Otherwise, I intended to wait a reasonable time for that canoe to come in, and then get it for you as best I could. I don't want you to assume that I'm taking advantage of a flimsy pretext to—to—” He hesitated again, for the girl was again smiling, in an amused, tolerant way which disturbed him. Instinctively he glanced down at his clothes, and made an attempt to brush some of the mud away.
“I DON'T know why you shouldn't explain,” said the girl. “At least—while we're waiting for the tide.”
“How do you spend your time?” he demanded abruptly.
“How do I spend my time? Why——”
“I'll put it differently: what would you do if you could?”
“But that's so vague——”
“It isn't vague—it's merely comprehensive. Would you travel, or study, or stay at home and read, or be a social kangaroo—or what?”
She made sure that he was serious, and said: “Travel.”
“And where?”
“Why—various places.”
“Then why don't you?”
“Why—I can't simply start, and go alone——”
“So it isn't solely the traveling you want—you also want human companionship?”
“Surely, but——”
“Very well. Sometime you expect to travel?”
“I think so.”
“Then there's a pleasant prospect. Immediately, however, you're contented?”
“Yes.”
“Partly because you're independent? You can do what you want to?”
“Oh, not always!”
“But in respect to your pleasures? If you want to go canoeing, you can! If you want to spend a morning with a foolish book, you can! If you want to go off for a day in the woods, you can! You can order your diversions as you like?”
“Yes—in general.”
“So that you have a cheerful independence now, and a few big ambitions which you're likely to realize in the future?”
“Yes.”
“That's all,” said Cunningham. “This is the first instance of its sort in fifteen years. I have no outlook like that. The voluntary habits I mentioned aren't so any longer—each one is a stripe of the convict's uniform. I'm chained to the city, to an office, to a court, to a club, to a room. When I get back to town to-night I'll feel like a sneak-thief—or like a man who's broken his parole. I shouldn't have come out here. I don't know why I shouldn't have, but the routine has a summons that's as dictatorial as a keeper's forefinger. That's what I meant.”
“But surely,” she said, a little troubled, “there must be plenty of recreations. The theatres——”
“I haven't been inside of a theatre for several years.”
“Don't you care for it?”
“Yes, I do. But at nights I'm working—studying.”
“You play golf, or tennis, don't you?”
“The last time I played a game of any kind was in 1902. That was on my class baseball team in law school.”
“But in the city you must know people——”
“With the exception of clients,” said Cunningham, “you're the first woman I've talked with for more than three minutes since the President's reception in my senior year.”
“Don't you—like them?”
During the subsequent moment, she felt that he was accurately dissecting her face; as a matter of fact, he was becoming aware of its heretofore indefinite appeal to him.
“How should I know?”
“I can't comprehend it—somehow. You don't look like a—a recluse.”
“Perhaps your acquaintance with recluses isn't wide.”
“You're not—this is terribly impertinent of me—I can't phrase it as I want to——”
“Phrase it briefly, then,” he suggested. “My business is analyzing evidence.”
“Why, I don't see how you can live like that! I should think you'd have to be married. Have I offended you? You asked for it.”
“No, you haven't offended me,” said Cunningham dully. “But—why should a man give up nine-tenths of his income, and practically all of his time, and most of his bachelor friends, and——”
She stopped him with an imperious gesture. “That's silly! Why should a girl give up the certainty of her own home for the uncertainty of an other, and give up all her leisure, and all her men friends, and any little private ideas of a career of her own? Why, from choice! Because she wants to! Because she'd rather do that than keep on as she had been! And the same rule applies in the other case, too! The only reason a man ought to give up that catalogue of yours is because he wants to! Because it's worth while!”
“It always has seemed to me,” said Cunningham, “that it's impossible to judge whether it's worth while or not. Now, I'm a lawyer, so that I see these things from a legal view-point. Marriage is a species of contract. I fail to see why it shouldn't be in the form of other contracts. Then it wouldn't be dangerous. Suppose two people drew up a formal agreement, and specified exactly what they would do, and what they wouldn't do. Suppose they covered, in that agreement, all possible differences. Suppose they provided for money, time, everything. The wife's allowance is fixed and invariable. The husband is freely granted a definite amount of time to spend with his bachelor friends. He has definite evenings on which he's to be away. If people went about it on a reasonable basis——”
“I believe you now,” she said gently.
“What?”
“That you don't know many people.”
“WITHOUT intending any personal aggrandizement,” he said, “but merely as evidence, let me say that my friends are among the most distinguished men in their respective professions, and furthermore——”
“But men aren't educational!”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense of their relation toward other men—you, for example. You've proved that. You're not natural! You don't live, or act, or eat, or play like natural people. All you know about is one tiny niche. And what you ought to do is to—to frivol! It would be awfully good for you! Why, from what you've told me I doubt if you've ever even heard of a grand slam, or a cortez, or a full mashie, or—or anything! And that's just exactly what you need most!”
“And—and you understand all those things?”
“Yes. And you don't?”
“No. What else do you understand?”
“Why, not many things.”
“All the outdoor games, perhaps?”
“Not quite all—but golf, and tennis, and riding, and swimming—the usual assortment.”
“And you play some musical instrument?”
“I can make a pretty noise on most of them. I play the piano pretty well, and the violin very well.”
“And—languages?”
“French and German and Italian.”
“And you've traveled some already?”
“Not a great deal.”
“Any other accomplishments?”
“Only—domestic.”
“I see,” he said gravely. “You must be very unusual in your community.”
“Unusual? For what reason?”
“Your catholic experience.”
“Oh!” she said thoughtfully. “I forgot. Why—the truth is—I'm about the average.”
“Average! That's impossible!”
She regarded him diligently. “Am I complimented—or what?”
“Complimented,” he said, as the color came into his face. “In that I don't believe you.”
“But that's because you lack experience.”
“No,” said Cunningham, discovering an alarming tendency to stammer. “I—I doubt that. You're—you're exceptionally interesting.”
She smiled with unaffected pleasure. “That's really nice of you,” she said. “After hearing all kinds of flowery speeches at dances and things, it's wonderfully refreshing to have you say exactly what you think. I'm crediting you with sincerity, you observe.”
“I couldn't be insincere—with you,” he said, faltering. “You're—more than interesting.”
“But if you'd ever known metropolitans——”
“That wouldn't affect my judgment. The trouble is that I can't seem to—find words——”
“You've found some that pleased me beautifully!”
“No—I want them to please me! I want to convey to you some impression of what this hour has been worth——”
“But you are conveying it.”
“Not adequately. I mean so much more than you—you would——”
“See!” she said. “It's come ashore!”
“If I could only say what I mean——”
“Please say it,” she said gently. “And then I shall have to hurry. It's ever so much later——”
“But I'm apprehensive——”
“For fear you won't say it nicely?”
“No—for fear you'll be—alarmed.”
“Why should I be alarmed to know that I've interested you? Truly, no one ever said that to me before. I've been told that men like me, but——”
“After the other things I've said, you'd think me unsound——”
She laughed gaily. “Please don't take anything away from my compliment! I don't want to seem interesting to an unsound man!”
“It isn't only that …” His voice shook, and failed.
“What is it, then?”
“If—if you would realize that it isn't simply on account of lack of experience—that it's an isolated circumstance——”
The girl was on her feet; all her composure had quitted her in an instant; she leaned against a supporting tree, and stared incredulously at him, her breath coming more and more rapidly, her hands unsteady.
“You're not—spoiling it now—are you? After I thought——”
Cunningham struggled upright, and faced her. “I knew it,” he said bitterly. “It's what I always imagined. I knew that if I ever did want to say something like this—it would turn sour. Can't you see? You're expecting to be insulted, perhaps—and I'm simply doing my best to thank you——”
“It didn't sound like thanks.”
“It was my kind—not yours! And it won't hurt you to hear the rest of it. I wanted you to know that you interested me more than any one I'd ever met. I wanted you to know that you really helped me—in the way I wanted help when I came out here. I'd thought for a long time that we weren't created to live in cities—that it was all wrong,all distorted. And just a few sentences of yours made me wonder if out here, where there are people like you, who do the things you do, and live the life you do, I couldn't find what I've never been able to find in the city—because it isn't there! That was the abstract—and then came the concrete! I wanted to tell you all about myself—and to ask how I could see you again—because you didn't interest me casually; you interested me vitally——”
“And you would have—said only that?”
“Unless you had been willing to hear more. If you had, I should have told you that while I sat and looked at you, I liked you more and more—that I liked your voice—that I liked your manner—that I liked your ambitions—that you can do, and have done, and seen, and felt all that I've wanted for myself—that every moment we sat there I found more delight——”
“And after that,” she said almost inaudibly, “if I had told you that it wouldn't do at all—that I can't have the most superficial acquaintances, except under—recognized conditions——”
“Then,” said Cunningham, stooping for his soaked and draggled hat, “I should have made the inquiry I am making now: Which is the nearest path to the nearest station?”
“Across this field,” she said steadily, “there's a road. If you follow it for a quarter-mile, you'll come to the station.”
“Thank you,” said Cunningham. “And—I hope you find a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. And I'm sorry I spoiled anything.” He turned, and struck off across the field.
Screened by a great clump of alders, the girl stood to watch him as he tramped along, with never a passing glance behind. He was lonely; he had no friends. He was going to the city he hated, and leaving a girl in whom he had professed interest. He hadn't told his name, nor had he asked for hers. He had accepted his interpretation of her hypothetical rejoinder—and he was tramping stolidly across the field, with never so much as a single regretful look thrown over his shoulder. Then suddenly he halted.
Still, his eyes were on the sunset. The outline she saw was that of a man who, with very little training, would be both powerful and graceful; it wasn't the outline of a weakling. She drew slightly back into the protection of the alders, and waited. And the man squared his shoulders doggedly, and walked toward the sunset, but his head had sunk low, and now and then he stumbled over small obstructions. The girl went out into the open, watching. The man reached the limit of the field, and put his hand upon the upper rail of the boundary fence. In climbing over, he ventured one hasty photographic glimpse.
It was an incredibly short space of time before he was opposite her, panting. His garments were muddy, his coat was torn, his hat was drooping pathetically about his head, but the girl saw none of these details. She saw his eyes.
“Why,” he said shakily, “did you call me back?”
She retreated, striving to curve her lips into a smile. “I—I didn't …”
“Yes, you did! I heard you—all the way—I don't mean with your voice——”
“Perhaps it was … your conscience … calling you.”
“My conscience!”
“You … you didn't even say … good-by.”
“I couldn't—I knew what you considered me——”
“Don't you ever admit that—you're mistaken?”
Cunningham drew a long breath. “Often. I'll admit it now. All that I told you—was wrong. About almost everything we mentioned. I've learned something. It is impulse—but that's what makes everything else worth while. I didn't comprehend that before. I thought it was something that could be governed. If you want me to go again, I will …” He broke, off; and his eyes clung to hers. “No,” said Cunningham, “I'll be hanged if I will! Not until you've told me when I can see you again … please don't remember what I said about sacrifices … I'd do anything in the world to have you think well of me …1 didn't know it was as overpowering as this … my name is Wilbur Cunningham … I'm sure I've fallen in love with you … I've been waiting for you for years and years.…”
“Wilbur Cunningham!” she echoed, wide-eyed. "Are you—have you a friend named Rayburn?”
“Ned Rayburn? Yes. Why?”
“Why, he's spoken of you. You see …”
Cunningham grasped her by the arm. “Don't tell me,” he said, “that you're, the girl up here! You're not engaged to Ned Rayburn!”
“Please! You're hurting me!”
“Are you?”
“No—but it's my—my sister!”
“Your sister! Where do you live?”
“V-very near here.”
“Not in Tuckahoe?”
“No—that's where they're going to live.”
“Can't I take you home now?”
“Oh, no! Please!”
“But I want to. I want it to be formal, and proper——”
“Don't you see? It—it can't be this way! You must have Ned bring you to call.”
“When?”
“Whenever you l-like.”
“To-morrow?”
“Y-yes.”
“I'll be there. And your name?”
“Margaret—Margaret Taylor.”
“And you really, truly don't think it would be wise for me to take you home now? Remember, I want to.”
“N-no—it wouldn't be wise. But come out with Ned.”
“To-morrow—sure?”
“Very s-sure.”
“All right.” With a violent moral effort he stepped away from her. “When I come, you know what I'll say.”
Her reply was so incoherent that it didn't enlighten him.
“Do you?” he persisted.
Affrightedly, she looked at him under her eyebrows; and suddenly, before he could intervene, she slipped away, down to the infinitesimal beach and into the canoe. One dig of the paddle sent her to mid-stream; from this zone of safety she regarded Cunningham, on the bank, with more assurance.
“You must hurry now,” she said breathlessly. “You'll miss your train.”
“Do you know what I'm going to say to-morrow night?”
“Please hurry—please!”
“I can wade out there perfectly well—and if I can't wade, I can swim. Do you?”
“If I tell you, will you go? Quickly?”
“I promise.”
“Then … yes!”
“I'm coming!” said Cunningham, and he took a great stride ahead; but the canoe leaped forward at the same moment, and he perceived that pursuit was useless. “You—you evidently do want me to go now.”
“Yes. It's better this way.”
“I came back to say good-by. Aren't you even going to shake hands?”
“N-not this time. To-morrow.”
“All right,” said Cunningham. “I'll be there. Good night—Margaret.”
Nearly concealed from him around the next bend of the river, she waved her hands in parting. It was a pretty gesture with both hands, with the palms inward. One might have fancied that the tips of the fingers touched her lips.
At HALF past seven, considerably later than usual, Cunningham swirled joyously into the club on West Twentieth Street. Contemptuous of letter-box, bulletin-board, and candidates' register, he dropped his hat at the coat-room, and went up-stairs three at a time. In the dining-room Currier, Stephenson, and the young actor sat at the round table; at sight of him they rose simultaneously.
“Hello, old top! Come in and join us!”
“Where'd you go this noon? We looked for you.”
“If I hurt your feelings, old man, I want to apologize.”
Cunningham, grinning broadly, took his accustomed seat. “To go ahead where we left off—" he began.
“Don't!” said Stephenson. “That's past.”
“Not entirely,” said Cunningham. He cleared his throat, and squeezed his friend's arm affectionately. “By your own method of qualification,” said Cunningham, “I am now—er—in a position to continue—er—the discussion!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1936, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 87 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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