Still Jim Part 8

Jim returned her look clearly. "You are to stay here, Pen," he repeated slowly.

"You've got your nerve, Still!" exclaimed Sara. "Pen's as much my company as she is yours. Quit trying to start something. Pen, come along."

Jim did not stir for a moment, then he jerked his head toward the bath house. "Go ahead and get into your suit, Sara. Penelope and I will wait here for you."

Sara had seen Jim in this guise before, on the football field. For a moment he scowled, then he shrugged his shoulders. "You old mule!" he grunted. "All right, Pen. You pacify the brute and I'll be back in a few minutes."

Pen did not yield so gracefully. She sat down in the sand with her back half turned to Jim and he, with his boyish jaw set, eyed her uncomfortably. She did not speak to him until Sara appeared and, with an airy wave of the hand, waded into the water.

"I think Sara looks like a Greek G.o.d in a bathing suit," she said.

"You'd know he was going to be a duke, just to look at him."

Jim gave a good imitation of one of Uncle Denny's grunts and said: "He isn't a duke--yet--and he's gone in too soon after eating."

"And he's got beautiful manners," Pen continued. "You treat me as if I were a child. He never forgets that I am a lady."

"Oh, slush!" drawled Jim.

Pen turned her back, squarely. Sara did not remain long in the water but came up dripping and shivering to burrow in the hot sand. Pen deliberately sifted sand over him, patting it down as she saw the others do, while she told Sara how wonderfully he swam.

Sara eyed Jim mischievously, while he answered: "Never mind, Pen. When I'm the duke, you shall be the d.u.c.h.ess and have a marble swimming pool all of your own. And old Prunes will be over here coaching Anthony Comstock while you and I are doing Europe--in our bathing suits."

Penelope flushed quickly and Sara's halo of romance shone brighter than ever.

"The d.u.c.h.ess Pen," he went on largely. "Not half bad. For my part, I can't see any objection to a girl as pretty as you are wearing a bathing suit anywhere, any time."

Pen looked at Sara adoringly. At sixteen one loves the G.o.ds easily. Jim, with averted face, watched the waves dumbly. It had been easy that morning to toss speech back and forth with the boat crowd. But now, as always, when he felt that his need for words was dire, speech deserted him. Suddenly he was realizing that Pen was no longer a little girl and that she admired Saradokis ardently. When the young Greek strolled away to dress, Jim looked at Pen intently. She was so lovely, so rosy, so mischievous, so light and sweet as only sixteen can be.

"Cross patch. Draw the latch! Sit by the sea and grouch," she sang.

Jim flushed. "I'm not grouchy," he protested.

"Oh, yes you are!" cried Pen. "And when Sara comes back, he and I are going up for some ice cream while you stay here and get over it. You can meet us for supper with Aunt Mary and Uncle Denny."

Jim, after the two had left, sat for a long time in the sand. He wished that he could have a look at the old swimming hole up at Exham. He wished that he and Uncle Denny and his mother and Pen were living at Exham. For the first time he felt a vague distrust of Sara. After a time he got into his bathing suit and spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of the water, dressing only in time to meet the rest for supper.

After supper the whole party went to one of the great dancing pavilions.

Uncle Denny and Jim's mother danced old-fashioned waltzes, while Sara and Jim took turn about whirling Penelope through two steps and galloping through modern waltz steps. The music and something in Jim's face touched Pen. As he piloted her silently over the great floor in their first waltz, she looked up into his face and said:

"I was horrid, Still Jim. You were so bossy. But you were right; it was no place for me."

Jim's arm tightened round her soft waist. "Pen," he said, "promise me you'll shake Sara and the rest and walk home from the boat with me tonight."

Pen hesitated. She would rather have walked home with Sara, but she was very contrite over Jim's lonely afternoon, so she promised. Sara left the boat at the Battery to get a subway train home. When the others reached 23rd street, it was not difficult for Jim and Pen to drop well behind Uncle Denny and Jim's mother. Jim drew Pen's arm firmly within his own. This seemed very funny to Penelope and yet she enjoyed it.

There had come a subtle but decided change in the boy's att.i.tude toward her that day, that she felt was a clear tribute to her newly acquired young ladyhood. So, while she giggled under her breath, she enjoyed Jim's sedulous a.s.sistance at the street crossings immensely.

But try as he would, Jim could say nothing until they reached the old brownstone front. He mounted the steps with her slowly. In the dimly lighted vestibule he took both her hands.

"Look up at me, Pen," he said.

The girl looked up into the tall boy's face. Jim looked down into her sweet eyes. His own grew wistful.

"I wish I were ten years older," he said. Then very firmly: "Penelope, you belong to _me_. Remember that, always. We belong to each other. When I have made a name for myself I'm coming back to marry you."

"But," protested Pen, "I'd much rather be a d.u.c.h.ess."

Jim held her hands firmly. "You belong to me. You shall never marry Saradokis."

Pen's soft gaze deepened as she looked into Jim's eyes. She saw a light there that stirred something within her that never before had been touched. And Jim, his face white, drew Penelope to him and laid his soft young lips to hers, holding her close with boyish arms that trembled at his own audacity, even while they were strong with a man's desire to hold.

Penelope gave a little sobbing breath as Jim released her.

"That's my sign and seal," he said slowly, "that kiss. That's to hold you until I'm a man."

The little look of tragedy that often lurked in Pen's eyes was very plain as she said: "It will be a long time before you have made a name for yourself, Still Jim. Lots of things will happen before then."

"I won't change," said Jim. "The Mannings don't." Then with a great sigh as of having definitely settled his life, he added: "Gee, I'm hungry! Me stomach is touching me backbone. Let's see if there isn't something in the pantry. Come on, Pen."

And Pen, with a sudden flash of dimples, followed him.

It was not long after Pen's birthday that the college year ended and Jim and Sara went to work. Jim had spent his previous vacations with the family at the sh.o.r.e. Saradokis was planning to become a construction engineer, with New York as his field. He wanted Jim to go into partnership with him when they were through college. So he persuaded Jim that it would be a good experience for them to put in their junior vacation at work on one of the mighty skysc.r.a.pers always in process of construction.

They got jobs as steam drillmen. Jim liked the work. He liked the mere sense of physical accomplishment in working the drill. He liked to be a part of the creative force that was producing the building. But to his surprise, his old sense of suffocation in being crowded in with the immigrant workman returned to him. There came back, too, some of the old melancholy questioning that he had known as a boy.

He said to Sara one day: "My father used to say that when he was a boy the phrase, 'American workman' stood for the highest efficiency in the world, but that even in his day the phrase had become a joke. How could you expect this rabble to know that there might be such a thing as an American standard of efficiency?"

Sara laughed. "Junior Economics stick out all over you, Still. This bunch does as good work as the American owners will pay for."

Jim was silent for a time, then he said: "I wonder what's the matter with us Americans? How did we come to give our country away to this horde?"

"'Us Americans!'" mimicked Saradokis. "What is an American, anyhow?"

"I'm an American," returned Jim, briefly.

"Sure," answered the Greek, "but so am I and so are most of these fellows. And none of us knows what an American is. I'll admit it was your type founded the government. But you are goners. There is no American type any more. And by and by we'll modify your old Anglo-Saxon inst.i.tutions so that G. Washington will simply revolve in his grave.

We'll add Greek ideas and Yiddish and Wop and Bohunk and Armenian and n.i.g.g.e.r and Chinese and Magyar. Gee! The world will forget there ever was one of you big-headed New Englanders in this country. Huh! What is an American? The American type will have a boarding house hash beaten for infinite variety in a generation or so."

The two young men were marching along 23rd street on their way to Jim's house for dinner. At Sara's words Jim stopped and stared at the young Greek. His gray eyes were black.

"So that's the way you feel about us, you foreigners!" exclaimed Jim.

"We blazed the trail for you fellows in this country and called you over here to use it. And you've suffocated us and you are glad of it. Good G.o.d! Dad and the Indians!"

"What did you call us over here for but to make us do your dirty work for you?" chuckled the Greek. "Serves you right. Piffle! What's an American want to talk about my race and thine for? There's room for all of us!"

Jim did not answer. All that evening he scarcely spoke. That night he dreamed again of his father's broken body and dying face against the golden August fields. All the next day as he sweated on the drill, the futile questionings of his childhood were with him.

At noon, Sara eyed him across the shining surface of a Child's restaurant table. Each noon they devoured a quarter of their day's wages in roast beef and baked apples.