Short Stories of Various Types

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He sat there, with the handle of the oar at his right hip, the rope in
his hand with one loop round the peg, and every time the gust struck
the sail he was lifted from his seat by the crowding of the oar and the
haul of the rope. His muscles swelled tense and rigid--the sweat poured
from his face; but he laughed when Lincoln, with reckless drollery,
began to shout a few nautical words.

"Luff,[111-1] you lubber--why don't you luff? Hard-a-port, there,
you'll have us playin' on the sand yet. That's right. All we got to do
is to hard-a-port when the wind blows."

The farther they went, the higher the waves rolled, till the boat
creaked and gaped under its strain, and the water began to come in
fast.

"Bail 'er out!" shouted the pilot. The thunder broke over their heads,
and far away to the left they could see rain and the water white with
foam, but they were nearing the beach at the foot of the street. A
crowd was watching them with motionless intensity.

They were now in the midst of a fleet of anchored boats. The blast
struck the sail, tearing it loose and filling the boat with water, but
Rance held to his rudder, and threading her way among the boats, the
little craft ran half her length upon the sand.

As Rance leaped ashore, he staggered with weakness. Both took shelter
in a near-by boathouse. The boat-keeper jeered at them: "Don't you know
any more'n to go out in such a _tub_ as that on a day like this? I
expected every minute to see you go over."

"We didn't," said Rance. "I guess we made pretty good time."

"Time! you'd better say time! If you'd been five minutes later, you'd
had _time_ enough."

It was a foolhardy thing--Rance could see it now as he looked out on
the mad water, and at the little flat, awkward boat on the sand.

An hour later, as they walked up the wood, they met the other boys
half-way on the road, badly scared.

"By golly! We thought you were goners," said Milton. "Why, we couldn't
see the boat after you got out a little ways. Looked like you were both
sittin' in the water."

They found the camp badly demoralized. Their blankets were wet and the
tent blown out of plumb, but they set to work clearing things up. The
rain passed and the sun came out again, and when they sat down to their
supper, the storm was far away.

It was glorious business to these prairie boys. Released from work in
the hot cornfields, in camp on a lovely lake, with nothing to do but
swim or doze when they pleased, they had the delicious feeling of being
travelers in a strange country--explorers of desert wilds, hunters and
fishers in the wildernesses of the mysterious West.

To Lincoln it was all so beautiful that it almost made him sad. When he
should have enjoyed every moment, he was saying to himself, "Day after
to-morrow we must start for home"--the happy days passed all too
swiftly.

Occasionally Milton said: "I wish I had one o' Mother's biscuits this
morning," or some such remark, but some one usually shied a potato at
him. Such remarks were heretical.

They explored the woods to the south, a wild jungle, which it was easy
to imagine quite unexplored. Some years before a gang of horse thieves
had lived there, and their grass-grown paths were of thrilling
interest, although the boys never quite cared to follow them to the
house where the shooting of the leader had taken place.

Altogether it was a wonderful week, and when they loaded up their boat
and piled their plunder in behind, it was with sad hearts. It was late
Saturday night when they drew up in Mr. Jennings's yard, but to show
that they were thoroughly hardened campers, they slept in the wagon
another night--at least three of them did. Milton shamelessly sneaked
away to his bed, and they did not miss him until morning.

Mrs. Jennings invited them all to breakfast and nobody refused. "Land
o' Goshen," said she, "you eat as if you were starved."

"We are," replied Bert.

"Oh, but it was fun, wasn't it, boys?" cried Lincoln.

"You bet it was. Let's go again next year."

"All right," said Milton; "raise your weapons and swear."

They all lifted their knives in solemn covenant to go again the
following year. But they never did. Of such changeful stuff are the
plans of youth!

DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

A Thread without a Knot

I

When the assistant in the history department announced to Professor
Endicott his intention of spending several months in Paris to complete
the research work necessary to his doctor's dissertation,[114-1] the
head of the department looked at him with an astonishment so
unflattering in its significance that the younger man laughed aloud.

"You didn't think I had it in me to take it so seriously, did you,
Prof?" he said, with his usual undisturbed and amused perception of the
other's estimate of him. "And you're dead right, too! I'm doing it
because I've got to, that's all. It's borne in on me that you can't
climb up very fast in modern American universities unless you've got a
doctor's degree, and you can't be a Ph.D. without having dug around
some in a European library. I've picked out a subject that needs just
as little of that as any--you know as well as I do that right here in
Illinois I can find out everything that's worth knowing about the early
French explorers of the Mississippi--but three months in the
Archives[114-2] in Paris ought to put a polish on my dissertation that
will make even Columbia and Harvard sit up and blink. Am I right in my
calculations?"

Professor Endicott's thin shoulders executed a resigned shrug. "You are
always right in your calculations, my dear Harrison," he said; adding,
with an ambiguous intonation, "And I suppose I am to salute in you the
American scholar of the future."

Harrison laughed again without resentment, and proceeded indulgently to
reassure his chief. "No, sir, you needn't be alarmed. There'll always
be enough American-born scholars to keep you from being lonesome, just
as there'll always be others like me, that don't pretend to have a
drop of real scholar's blood in them. I want to _teach!_--to teach
history!--American history!--teach it to fool young undergraduates who
don't know what kind of a country they've got, nor what they ought to
make out of it, now they've got it. And I'm going in to get a Ph. D.
the same way I wear a stiff shirt and collars and cuffs, not because I
was brought up to believe in them as necessary to salvation--because I
wasn't, Lord knows!--but because there's a prejudice in favor of them
among the people I've got to deal with." He drew a long breath and went
on, "Besides, Miss Warner and I have been engaged about long enough. I
want to earn enough to get married on, and Ph. D. means advancement."

Professor Endicott assented dryly: "That is undoubtedly just what it
means nowadays. But you will 'advance,' as you call it, under any
circumstances. You will not remain a professor of history. I give you
ten years to be president of one of our large Western universities."

His accent made the prophecy by no means a compliment, but Harrison
shook his hand with undiminished good-will. "Well, Prof, if I am, my
first appointment will be to make you head of the history department
with twice the usual salary, and only one lecture a week to deliver to
a class of four P.G's--post-graduates, you know. I know a scholar when
I see one, if I don't belong to the tribe myself, and I know how they
ought to be treated."

If, in his turn, he put into a neutral phrase an ironical significance,
it was hidden by the hearty and honest friendliness of his keen, dark
eyes as he delivered this farewell.

The older man's ascetic face relaxed a little. "You are a good fellow,
Harrison, and I'm sure I wish you any strange sort of success you
happen to desire."

"Same to you, Professor. If I thought it would do any good, I'd run
down from Paris to Munich[116-1] with a gun and try scaring the editor
of the _Central-Blatt_ into admitting that you're right about that
second clause in the treaty of Utrecht."[116-2]

Professor Endicott fell back into severity. "I'm afraid," he observed,
returning to the papers on his desk, "I'm afraid that would not be a
very efficacious method of determining a question of historical
accuracy."

Harrison settled his soft hat firmly on his head. "I suppose you're
right," he remarked, adding as he disappeared through the door, "But
more's the pity!"

II

He made short work of settling himself in Paris, taking a cheap
furnished room near the Bibliotheque Nationale,[117-1] discovering at
once the inexpensive and nourishing qualities of _cremeries_ and
the Duval restaurants, and adapting himself to the eccentricities of
Paris weather in March with flannel underwear and rubber overshoes. He
attacked the big folios in the library with ferocious energy, being the
first to arrive in the huge, quiet reading-room, and leaving it only at
the imperative summons of the authorities. He had barely enough money
to last through March, April, and May, and, as he wrote in his long
Sunday afternoon letters to Maggie Warner, he would rather work fifteen
hours a day now while he was fresh at it, than be forced to, later on,
when decent weather began, and when he hoped to go about a little and
make some of the interesting historical pilgrimages in the environs of
Paris.

He made a point of this writing his fiancee every detail of his plans,
as well as all the small happenings of his monotonous and laborious
life; and so, quite naturally, he described to her the beginning of his
acquaintance with Agatha Midland.

"I'd spotted her for English," he wrote, "long before I happened to
see her name on a notebook. Don't it sound like a made-up name out
of an English novel? And that is the way she looks, too. I
understand now why no American girl is ever called Agatha. To fit
it you have to look sort of droopy all over, as if things weren't
going to suit you, but you couldn't do anything to help it, and did
not, from sad experience, have any rosy hopes that somebody would
come along to fix things right. I'm not surprised that when English
women do get stirred up over anything--for instance, like voting,
nowadays--they fight like tiger-cats. If this Agatha-person is a
fair specimen, they don't look as though they were used to getting
what they want any other way. But here I go, like every other fool
traveler, making generalizations about a whole nation from seeing
one specimen. On the other side of me from Miss Midland usually
sits an old German, grubbing away at Sanskrit roots. The other day
we got into talk in the little lunchroom here in the same building
with the library, where all we readers go to feed, and he made me
so mad I couldn't digest my bread and milk. Once, just once, when
he was real young, he met an American woman student--a regular P.
G. freak, I gather--and nothing will convince him that all American
girls aren't like her. 'May God forgive Christopher Columbus!' he
groans whenever he thinks of her...."

There was no more in this letter about his English neighbor, but in the
next, written a week later, he said:

"We've struck up an acquaintance, the discouraged-looking English
girl and I, and she isn't so frozen-up as she seems. This is how it
happened. I told you about the little lunchroom where the readers
from the library get their noonday feed. Well, a day or so ago I
was sitting at the next table to her, and when she'd finished
eating and felt for her purse, I saw her get pale, and I knew right
off she'd lost her money. 'If you'll excuse me, Miss Midland,' I
said, 'I'll be glad to loan you a little. My name is Harrison,
Peter Harrison, and I usually sit next you in the reading-room.'
Say, Maggie, you don't know how queerly she looked at me. I can't
tell you what her expression was like, for I couldn't make head or
tail out of it. It was like looking at a Hebrew book that you don't
know whether to read backward or forward. She got whiter, and drew
away and said something about 'No! No! she couldn't think----' But
there stood the waiter with his hand out. I couldn't stop to figure
out if she was mad or scared. I said 'Look-y-here, Miss Midland,
I'm an American--here's my card--I just want to help you out,
that's all. You needn't be afraid I'll bother you any.' And with
that I asked the waiter how much it was, paid him, and went out for
my usual half-hour constitutional in the little park opposite the
library.

"When I went back to the reading-room, she was there in the seat
next me, all right, but my, wasn't she buried in a big folio! She's
studying in some kind of old music-books. You would have laughed to
see how she didn't know I existed. I forgot all about her till
closing-up time, but when I got out in the court a little ahead of
her, I found it was raining and blowing to beat the cars, and I
went back to hunt her up, I being the only person that knew she was
broke. There she was, moping around in the vestibule under one of
those awful pancake hats English women wear. I took out six
cents--it costs that to ride in the omnibuses here--and I marched
up to her. 'Miss Midland,' I said, 'excuse me again, but the
weather is something terrible. You can't refuse to let me loan you
enough to get home in a 'bus, for you would certainly catch your
death of cold, not to speak of spoiling your clothes, if you tried
to walk in this storm.'

"She looked at me queerly again, drew in her chin, and said very
fierce, 'No, certainly not! Some one always comes to fetch me
away.'

"Of course I didn't believe a word of _that_! It was just a bluff
to keep from seeming to need anything. So I smiled at her and said,
'That's all right, but suppose something happens this evening so he
doesn't get here. I guess you'd better take the six sous--they
won't hurt you any.' And I took hold of her hand, put the coppers
in it, shut her fingers, took off my hat, and skipped out before
she could get her breath. There are a _few_ times when women are so
contrary you can't do the right thing by them without bossing them
around a little.

"Well, I thought sure if she'd been mad at noon she'd just be
hopping mad over that last, but the next morning she came up to me
in the vestibule and smiled at me, the funniest little wavery
smile, as though she were trying on a brand-new expression. It made
her look almost pretty. 'Good morning, Mr. Harrison,' she said in
that soft, singsong tone English women have, 'here is your loan
back again. I hope I have the sum you paid for my lunch
correct--and thank you very much.'

"I hated to take her little money, for her clothes are awfully
plain and don't look as though she had any too much cash, but of
course I did, and even told her that I'd given the waiter a
three-cent tip she'd forgotten to figure in. When you _can_, I
think it's only the square thing to treat women like human beings
with sense, and I knew how I'd feel about being sure I'd returned
all of a loan from a stranger. 'Oh, thank you for telling me,' she
said, and took three more coppers out of her little purse; and by
gracious! we walked into the reading-room as friendly as could be.

"That was last Wednesday, and twice since then we've happened to
take lunch at the same table, and have had a regular visit. It
tickles me to see how scared she is yet of the idea that she's
actually talking to a real man that hasn't been introduced to her,
but I find her awfully interesting, she's so different."

III

During the week that followed this letter, matters progressed rapidly.
The two Anglo-Saxons took lunch together every day, and by Friday the
relations between them were such that, as they pushed back their
chairs, Harrison said: "Excuse me, Miss Midland, for seeming to dictate
to you _all_ the time, but why in the world don't you go out after
lunch and take a half-hour's walk as I do? It'd be a lot better for
your health."

The English girl looked at him with the expression for which he had as
yet found no word more adequately descriptive than his vague "queer."
"I haven't exactly the habit of walking about Paris streets alone, you
know," she said.

"Oh, yes, to be sure," returned the American. "I remember hearing that
young ladies can't do that here the way they do back home. But that's
easy fixed. You won't be out in the streets, and you won't be alone, if
you come out with me in the little park opposite. Come on! It's the
first spring day."

Miss Midland dropped her arms with a gesture of helpless wonder. "Well,
_really_!" she exclaimed. "_Do_ you think that so much better?" But
she rose and prepared to follow him, as if her protest could not stand
before the kindly earnestness of his manner. "There!" he said, after he
had guided her across the street into the tiny green square where in
the sudden spring warmth, the chestnut buds were already swollen and
showing lines of green. "To answer your question, I think it not only
better, but absolutely all right--O.K!"

They were sitting on a bench at one side of the fountain, whose
tinkling splash filled the momentary silence before she answered, "I
can't make it all out--" she smiled at him--"but I think you are right
in saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long
legs comfortably. "You've got the idea. That's the way to get the good
of traveling and seeing other kinds of folks. You learn my queer slang
words, and I'll learn yours."

Miss Midland stared again, and she cried out, "_My_ queer slang words!
What can you mean?"

He rattled off a glib list: "Why, 'just fancy now,' and 'only think of
that!' and 'I dare say, indeed,' and a lot more."

"But they are not queer!" she exclaimed.

"They sound just as queer to me as 'O.K.' and 'I guess' do to you!" he
said triumphantly.

She blinked her eyes rapidly, as though taking in an inconceivable
idea, while he held her fixed with a steady gaze which lost none of its
firmness by being both good-humored and highly amused. Finally,
reluctantly, she admitted, "Yes, I see. You mean I'm insular."

"Oh, as to that, I mean we both are--that is, we are as ignorant as
stotin'-bottles of each other's ways of doing things. Only I want to
find out about your ways, and you don't about----"

She broke in hastily, "Ah, but I do want to find out about yours!
You--you make me very curious indeed." As she said this, she looked
full at him with a grave simplicity which was instantly reflected on
his own face.

"Well, Miss Midland," he said slowly, "maybe now's a good time to say
it, and maybe it's a good thing to say, since you _don't_ know about
our ways--to give you a sort of declaration of principles. I wasn't
brought up in very polite society--my father and mother were Iowa
farmer-folks, and I lost them early, and I've had to look out for
myself ever since I was fourteen, so I'm not very long on _polish_; but
let me tell you, as they say about other awkward people, I _mean_ well.
We're both poor students working together in a foreign country, and
maybe I can do something to make it pleasanter for you, as I would for
a fellow-student woman in my country. If I can, I'd like to, fine! I
want to do what's square by everybody, and by women specially. I don't
think they get a fair deal mostly. I think they've got as much sense as
men, and lots of them more, and I like to treat them accordingly. So
don't you mind if I do some Rube things that seem queer to you, and do
remember that you can be dead sure that I _never_ mean any harm."

He finished this speech with an urgent sincerity in his voice, quite
different from his usual whimsical note, and for a moment they looked
at each other almost solemnly, the girl's lips parted, her blue eyes
wide and serious. She flushed a clear rose-pink. "Why!" she said, "Why,
I _believe_ you!" Harrison broke the tension with a laugh. "And what is
there so surprising if you do?"

"I don't think," she said slowly, "that I ever saw any one before whom
I would believe if he said that last."

"Dear me!" cried Harrison, gaily, getting to his feet. "You'll make me
think you are a hardened cynic. Well, if you believe me, _that's_ all
right! And now, come on, let's walk a little, and you tell me why
English people treat their girls so differently from their boys. You
are a perfect gold mine of information to me, do you know it?"

"But I've always taken for granted most of the things you find so queer
about our ways. I thought that was the way they were, don't you see, by
the nature of things."

"_Aha_!" he said triumphantly. "You see another good of traveling! It
stirs a person up. If you can give me a lot of new facts, maybe I can
pay you back by giving you some new ideas."

"I think," said Miss Midland, with a soft energy, "I think you can,
indeed."

IV

A week after this was the first of April, and when Harrison, as was his
wont, reached the reading-room a little before the opening hour, he
found a notice on the door to the effect that the fall of some
plastering from a ceiling necessitated the closing of the reading-room
for that day. A week of daily lunches and talks with Miss Midland had
given him the habit of communicating his ideas to her, and he waited
inside the vestibule for her to appear. He happened thus, as he had not
before, to see her arrival. Accompanied by an elderly person in black,
who looked, even to Harrison's inexperienced eyes, like a maid-servant,
she came rapidly in through the archway which led from the street to
the court. Here, halting a moment, she dismissed her attendant with a
gesture, and, quite unconscious of the young man's gaze upon her,
crossed the court diagonally with a free, graceful step. Observing her
thus at his leisure, Harrison was moved to the first and almost the
last personal comment upon his new friend. He did not as a rule notice
very keenly the outward aspect of his associates. "Well, by gracious,"
he said to himself, "if she's not quite a good-looker!--or would be if
she had money or gumption enough to put on a little more style!"

He took a sudden resolution and, meeting her at the foot of the steps,
laid his plan enthusiastically before her. It took her breath away.
"Oh, no, I _couldn't_," she exclaimed, looking about her helplessly as
if foreseeing already that she would yield. "What would people----?"

"Nobody would say a thing, because nobody would know about it. We could
go and get back here by the usual closing time, so that whoever comes
for you would never suspect--she's not very sharp, is she?"

"No, no. She's only what you would call my hired girl."

"Well, then, it's Versailles[125-1] for us. Here, give me your
portfolio to carry. Let's go by the tram line[125-2]--it's cheaper for
two poor folks."

On the way out he proposed, with the same thrifty motive, that they buy
provisions in the town, before they began their sight-seeing in the
chateau, and eat a picnic lunch somewhere in the park.

"Oh, anything you please now!" she answered with reckless
light-heartedness. "I'm quite lost already."

"There's nothing disreputable about eating sandwiches on the grass," he
assured her; and indeed, when they spread their simple provision out
under the great pines back of the Trianon, she seemed to agree with
him, eating with a hearty appetite, laughing at all his jokes, and,
with a fresh color and sparkling eyes, telling him that she had never
enjoyed a meal more.

"Good for you! That's because you work too hard at your old history of
music."--By this time each knew all the details of the other's
research--"You ought to have somebody right at hand to make you take
vacations and have a good time once in a while. You're too
conscientious."

Then, because he was quite frank and unconscious himself, he went on
with a simplicity which the most accomplished actor could not have
counterfeited, "That's what I'm always telling Maggie--Miss Warner.
She's the girl I'm engaged to."

He did not at the time remark, but afterward, in another land, he was
to recall with startling vividness the quick flash of her clear eyes
upon him and the fluttering droop of her eyelids. She finished her
eclair quietly, remarking, "So you are engaged?"

"Very much so," answered Harrison, leaning his back against the
pine-tree and closing his eyes, more completely to savor the faint
fragrance of new life which rose about them in the warm spring air,
like unseen incense.

Miss Midland stood up, shaking the crumbs from her skirt, and began
fitting her gloves delicately upon her slim and very white hands. After
a pause, "But how would she like _this_?" she asked.

Without opening his eyes, Harrison murmured, "She'd like it fine. She's
a great girl for outdoors."

His companion glanced down at him sharply, but in his tranquil and
half-somnolent face there was no trace of evasiveness. "I don't mean
the park, the spring weather," she went on, with a persistence which
evidently cost her an effort. "I mean your being here with another
girl. That would make an English woman jealous."

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