Jewel Weed Part 6

"Rummy chap," said Norris.

The older people came in to greet the boy they had known all his life, to ask the innumerable usual questions, to say the inevitable things through dinner.

Afterwards, when the last fragments of sunset burned through and across the water, they gathered on the piazza. It was that dreamy hour when women find it easy to be silent and men to talk. Madeline and her mother sat close, with hands restfully clasped in their joy at being together.

Mr. Elton eyed the two young men from his vantage of years of shrewd wisdom. Both the boys were clean-shaven, after the manner of the day, a fashion that seems to become clean manliness, vigorous and self-controlled. Both were good to look at; but here the resemblance ended, for d.i.c.k's long slender face and body lithe with its athletic training, was alive and restless, as though he found it difficult to keep back his pa.s.sion for activity; Ellery, big but loosely joined, had the dogged look of one that held some of his energy in reserve. A good pair, Mr. Elton concluded, and felt a sudden spasm of longing for a son--not that he would have exchanged Madeline for any trousered biped that walked, but it would be a great thing to own one such well of young masculine vigor as these.

"It's going to be great fun for us old fellows to sit back and watch you young ones," the elder man e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "There are several good-sized jobs waiting for you."

"That's a good thing," said d.i.c.k. "When there's nothing to do, n.o.body'll do it."

"And it will be a tame sort of a world, eh? Well, thank the Lord, it's none of our responsibility any longer. You've got to tackle it. The new phases of things are too much for me, with a brain solidified by years."

"You might at least help us by stating the problem," said Norris.

"You see, it's like this. Until a few years ago every census map of the United States was seamed by a long line marked 'frontier.' That line is gone. That's the situation in a nutsh.e.l.l. Our work, the subjugation of the land, is about done, and the question is now up to you; what are you going to do with it? You know the old story of the man who said he had a horse who could run a mile in two-forty. And the other fellow asked, 'What are you going to do when you get there?' We've done the running and our children are there. Now what? You must develop a whole set of new talents--not trotting talents, but staying talents."

"I suppose," said Norris slowly, for d.i.c.k was silent, "circ.u.mstances bring out abilities. That's the law that operated in the case of the older generation, and we'll have to trust to it in ours."

"That's true. But I sometimes wonder if, after all, we are helping you to the best preparation. We send you back to get the old education. The tendency of old communities is to rehash the traditions until they become authority. New communities have to face problems for themselves and solve them by new ways. The first kind of training makes scholars.

The second brings out genius. The old makes men think over the thoughts of others. Heaven knows we need men who will think for themselves!"

"Well, 'old and young are fellows'," said d.i.c.k. "To-day grows out of yesterday."

"Yes, if it grows. The growing is the point. It mustn't molder on yesterday. You must have enough books to get your thinkers going, but not more. You must not feast on libraries until you get intellectual gout and have to tickle your palate with dainties. A good deal of stuff that's written nowadays seems to me like literary c.o.c.ktails,--something to stir a jaded appet.i.te. That's my friend Early's specialty--to serve literary c.o.c.ktails. But the appet.i.te you bolster up isn't the equivalent of a good healthy hunger after a day out-of-doors."

"When nature wants a genius, I suppose she has to use fresh seed," said d.i.c.k.

"And genius is creative," Mr. Elton went on. "So far, the genius this country has developed is that which takes the raw material of forest and river and creates civilization. And let me tell you that's a very different job from heaping up population."

Silence fell on the little group and they became suddenly aware of lapping waters and the sleepy twitter of birds, and even of a long slender thread of pale light that struck across the lake from a low-lying star. Madeline gave a little sigh and pressed her mother's hand.

d.i.c.k flushed and hesitated in the darkness, with youth's confidence in its own great purposes and youth's craving for sympathy in its ambitions. Mr. Elton's combination of kindness and shrewdness seemed to draw him out.

"It sounds impertinent and conceited for a young fellow like me to talk about what he means to do."

"Fire away. I knew your father, d.i.c.k."

"Then you'll know what I mean when I say that it has always been my ambition to live up to his traditions--his ideal of a man's public duties."

Mr. Elton nodded and d.i.c.k went on, while Ellery eyed him with some of the old college respect, and Madeline leaned eagerly forward.

"I don't mean any splurge, you understand, but the same quiet service he gave. Father left his affairs in such good order that there isn't any real necessity for me to try to add to my income. Of course, it isn't a great fortune, but it's more than enough; and my ambitions don't lie that way. There's a certain amount of business in taking care of it as it stands. Mother is glad to turn the burden of it over to me. She's done n.o.bly--dear little woman--but--"

"I understand. It's a man's business."

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, with the simple masculine superiority of four and twenty. "That's enough of a background for life, you see; but I long since made up my mind that public affairs--affairs that concern the whole community--are to be my real interest."

"So you're going into politics, d.i.c.k?" said the older man slowly.

"Well, not to scramble for office," Percival answered with a flush. "We fellows have been well-enough taught, haven't we, Ellery? to know that it is rather an ugly mess--I mean munic.i.p.al affairs in this country. The local situation, here in St. Etienne, I have yet to study; and I don't mean to lose any time in beginning."

Mr. Elton made no reply for a moment, and when he spoke there was an unpleasant cynicism in his voice that galled d.i.c.k's pride.

"The young reformer! Well, I suppose a decent man with a little ability could do something here, if he knew what he was going to do. It's a good thing to get on your sea-legs before you try to command a ship."

"Father!" Madeline cried out, unable to contain herself. "Don't you be a horrid wet blanket!"

The three looked at her to see her face aglow with the lovely feminine belief in masculinity that also belongs to the early twenties.

"That's all right," said the elder Elton unemotionally. "I wasn't wet-blanketing--I know things are needed. There's plenty of corruption wanting to be buried, and most of us are content to hold our noses and let it lie. Or perhaps we give an exclamation of disgust when it is served up in the newspapers. Reform if you must, but don't reform all day and Sundays too; and build your cellars before you begin your attics."

Then he went on a shade more heartily: "It's a mighty good thing for some of you young fellows to be going into politics; perhaps that's the chief work for the next generation. And Norris--what of you?"

Ellery started. It had been a silent evening for him, but his silence had glowed with interest, not so much in the conversation as in his own thoughts. Two things had forced themselves home,--the first when he looked down on that expanse of vivid water, vivid sky, vivid green. Here a man, even a young man, might waken to all his faculties and make something of life. He need not plod dully through years, to reach success only when he is old and tired. The landscape poured like wine into Ellery Norris' veins.

And now here was the other side. He had watched with fascination the restfulness of Miss Elton's hands, the one that held her mother's, the one that lay quietly in her lap. He watched her steady eyes that kept upon her father and d.i.c.k as they talked. He saw her face glow with sympathy and interest and yet remain calm, as if secure in the goodness of the world; and he told himself that he was glad this wonderful thing belonged to d.i.c.k. d.i.c.k's restlessness would be held in leash, as it were, by this steadfastness.

Once she half turned as though she felt his scrutiny, and queer pains darted through his body when her eyes met his.

Now when Mr. Elton attacked him, he came back from his far-away excursion with a sense of surprise that there was a present, but he smiled cheerfully.

"Oh, I'm not a very important person. I'm just beginning to learn the trade of a newspaper man, and I'm afraid I shan't be able to think about much but city news and bread and b.u.t.ter for the next few years."

"No telling what may happen, with his Honor, the mayor here, backed up by the power of the press. We'll make St. Etienne a model city in the sight of G.o.ds and men, eh, boys?" said Mr. Elton good-humoredly, but rising as if to cut short the conversation.

"Can't we take a walk before Ellery and I go back to town?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Go, you kid things. I haven't seen the evening paper yet, and that's more to my old brain than moonlight strolls." Mr. Elton dismissed them.

The three young people set out upon a path that twisted by the lake sh.o.r.e, bordered on its inner side by trees that had become in the darkness mere shapeless ma.s.ses out of which an occasional mysterious thread of light brought into sight some uncanny shape. The purple of the evening zenith had sunk into deeper and deeper blue, p.r.i.c.ked here and there with stars. Bats were wheeling in mysterious circles among the tree-tops, and the air was full of sounds that seem to come only at twilight.

"Isn't it strange that though every one of those trees is an old friend, I should be frightened at the very idea of being alone among them at night? And yet there's nothing in the dark that isn't in the day," said Madeline.

"Oh, yes, there is," d.i.c.k rejoined. "There's more being afraid in the dark."

She laughed and they went on in silence.

"Who's been building a new house, just on the very spot I always meant to own some day--right here next to your father?" d.i.c.k demanded, stopping abruptly.

"Oh, you haven't seen that, have you?" said Madeline. "Let's sit down on this log and look at the stars. That's Mr. Lenox's new house; and I'm so sorry for them!"

"Why grieve for the prosperous? Reserve your tears for the suffering."

"Why, you know, in town, they live with Mr. Windsor, who is Mrs. Lenox's father, and he's a multimillionaire; and it's a great establishment; and the world is necessarily very much with them. So when Mr. Lenox proposed that they should build a country house of their own and spend their summers here, I think he wanted to get out to some primitive simplicity, where the children could go barefoot if they wanted to. But as soon as it was suggested, Mr. Windsor presented his daughter with a big tract, and insisted on building this great palace, and they have to keep so many servants that Mr. Lenox says it is a regular Swedish boarding-house. And there are so many guest-rooms that it would be a shame not to have them occupied; and extra people run out in their motors every day; and the children have to be kept immaculate all the time. So they've brought the world out with them. Mr. Lenox has to dress for dinner, instead of putting on old slippers and going out to weed the strawberry-bed, which is what he would like to do when he gets out on the evening train."

"Poor things, in bondage to their house!" said Norris, and they all looked solemnly at the mult.i.tude of lights shining through the trees.

"There are ever so many disadvantages about being among the few very rich people in a western town, where most of your friends aren't opulent," Madeline went on. "When Mrs. Lenox makes a call, she has to wait while the woman changes her dress. And n.o.body says to her, 'Oh, do stay to lunch,' when they've nothing but oysters or beefsteak, but they wait till they get in an extra chef and then send her a formal invitation. I believe ours is one of the half-dozen houses where people don't pretend to be something quite different from what they are when Mrs. Lenox appears. And yet she's the most simple-minded and genuine person, and would rather have beefsteak and friendship than _pate de fois gras_ and good gowns any day."