Copper Streak Trail Part 14

"Laziness!" repeated Ferdie sternly. "'Tis a vice that I abhor. Slip me a smoke."

Francis Charles fumbled in the cypress humidor at Ferdie's elbow; he leaned over the table and gently closed Ferdie's finger and thumb upon a cigarette.

"Match," sighed Ferdie.

Boland struck a match; he held the flame to the cigarette's end. Ferdie puffed. Then he eyed his friend with judicial severity.

"Abominably lazy! Every opportunity--family, education--brains, perhaps.

Why don't you go to work?"

"My few and simple wants--" Boland waved his hand airily. "Besides, who am I that I should crowd to the wall some worthy and industrious person?--practically taking the bread from the chappie's mouth, you might say. No, no!" said Mr. Boland with emotion; "I may have my faults, but--"

"Why don't you go in for politics?"

"Ferdinand, little as you may deem it, there are limits."

"You have no ambition whatever?"

"By that sin fell the angels--and look at them now!"

"Why not take a whirl at law?"

Boland sat up stiffly. "Mr. Sedgwick," he observed with exceeding bitterness, "you go too far. Take back your ring! Henceforth we meet as str-r-r-rangers!"

"Ever think of writing? You do enough reading, Heaven knows."

Mr. Boland relapsed to a sagging sprawl; he adjusted his finger tips to touch with delicate nicety.

"Modesty," he said with mincing primness, "is the brightest jewel in my crown. Litter and literature are not identical, really, though the superficial observer might be misled to think so. And yet, in a higher sense, perhaps, it may almost be said, with careful limitations, that, considering certain delicate _nuances_ of filtered thought, as it were, and making meticulous allowance for the personal equation--"

"Grisly a.s.s! Well, then, what's the matter with the army?"

"My prudence is such," responded Mr. Boland dreamily--"in fact, my prudence is so very such, indeed--one may almost say so extremely such--not to mention the pertinent and trenchant question so well formulated by the little Peterkin--"

"Why don't you marry?"

"Ha!" said Francis Charles.

"Whachamean--'Ha'?"

"I mean what the poet meant when he spoke so feelingly of the

"------eager boys Who might have tasted girl's love and been stung."

"Didn't say it. Who?"

"Did, too! William Vaughn Moody. So I say 'Ha!' in the deepest and fullest meaning of the word; and I will so defend it with my life."

"If you were good and married once, you might not be such a fool," said Sedgwick hopefully.

"Take any form but this"--Mr. Boland inflated his chest and held himself oratorically erect--"and my firm nerves shall never tremble! I have tracked the tufted pocolunas to his lair; I have slain the eight-legged galliwampus; I have bearded the wallipaloova in his noisome den, and gazed into the glaring eyeb.a.l.l.s of the fierce Numidian liar; and I'll try everything once--except this. But I have known too many too-charming girls too well. To love them," said Francis Charles sadly, "was a business education."

He lit a cigar, clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his chair precariously, and turned a blissful gaze to the little rift of sky beyond the crowding maples.

Mr. Boland was neither tall nor short; neither broad nor slender; neither old nor young. He wore a thick mop of brown hair, tinged with chestnut in the sun. His forehead was broad and high and white and shapely. His eyes were deep-set and wide apart, very innocent, very large, and very brown, fringed with long lashes that any girl might envy. There the fine chiseling ceased. Ensued a nose bold and broad, freckled and inclined to puggishness; a wide and generous mouth, quirky as to the corners of it; high cheek bones; and a square, freckled jaw--all these ill-a.s.sorted features poised on a strong and muscular neck.

Sedgwick, himself small and dark and wiry, regarded Mr. Boland with a scorning and deprecatory--but with private approval.

"You're getting on, you know. You're thirty--past. I warn you."

"Ha!" said Francis Charles again.

Sedgwick raised his voice appealingly.

"Hi, Thompson! Here a minute! Shouldn't Francis Charles marry?"

"Ab-so-lute-ly!" boomed a voice within.

The two young men, it should be said, sat on the broad porch of Mitch.e.l.l House. The booming voice came from the library.

"Mustn't Francis Charles go to work?"

In the library a chair overturned with a crash. A startled silence; then the sound of swift feet. Thompson came through the open French window; a short man, with a long shrewd face and a frosted poll. Feigned anxiety sat on his brow; he planted his feet firmly and wide apart, and twinkled down at his young guests.

"Pardon me, Mr. Sedgwick--I fear I did not catch your words correctly.

You were saying--?"

Francis Charles brought his chair to level and spoke with great feeling:

"As our host, to whom our bright young lives have been entrusted for a time--standing to us, as you do, almost as a locoed parent--I put it to you--"

"Shut up!" roared Ferdie. "Thompson, you see this--this object? You hear it? Mustn't it go to work?"

"Ab-so-lutissimusly!"

"I protest against this outrage," said Francis Charles. "Thompson, you're beastly sober. I appeal to your better self. I am a philosopher. Sitting under your hospitable rooftree, I render you a greater service by my calm and dispa.s.sionate insight than I could possibly do by any ill-judged activity. Undisturbed and undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the world's turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies. Such is the priceless service of the philosopher."

"Philosopher, my foot!" jeered Ferdie. "You're a brow! A solemn and sanctimonious brow is bad enough, but a sprightly and G.o.dless brow is positive-itutely the limit!"

"That's absurd, you know," objected Francis Charles. "No man is really irreligious. Whether we make broad the phylactery or merely our minds, we are all alike at heart. The first waking thought is invariably, What of the day? It is a prayer--unconscious, unspoken, and sincere. We are all sun worshipers; and when we meet we invoke the sky--a good day to you; a good night to you. It is a highly significant fact that all conversation begins with the weather. The weather is the most important fact in any one day, and, therefore, the most important fact in the sum of our days.

We recognize this truth in our greetings; we propitiate the dim and nameless G.o.ds of storm and sky; we reverence their might, their paths above our knowing. Nor is this all. A fine day; a bad day--with the careless phrases we a.s.sent to such tremendous and inevitable implications: the helplessness of humanity, the brotherhood of man, equality, democracy. For what king or kaiser, against the implacable wind--"

Ferdie rose and pawed at his ears with both hands.

"For the love of the merciful angels! Can the drivel and cut the drool!"

"Those are very good words, Sedgwick," said Mr. Thompson approvingly.

"The word I had on my tongue was--balderdash. But your thought was happier. Balderdash is a vague and shapeless term. It conjures up no definite vision. But drivel and drool--very excellent words."