Bertram Cope's Year/Chapter 9
Chapter IX
COPE ON THE EDGE OF THINGS
The adventurer in Duneland hardly knows, as he works his way through one of the infrequent "blow-outs," whether to thank Nature for her aid or to tax her with her cruelty. She offers few other means of reaching the water save for these nicks in the edges of the great cup; yet it is possible enough to view her as a careless and reckless handmaiden busily devastating the cosmical china-closet. The "blow-out" is a tragedy, and the cause of further tragedy. The north winds, in the impetus gathered through a long, unimpeded flight over three hundred miles of water, ceaselessly try and test the sandy bulwarks for a slightest opening. The flaw once found, the work of devastation and desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues without cessation. Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has done its work of ruin and passed on.
After some moments of scrambling and panting our two travelers gained the divide. Below them sloped a great amphitheatre of sand, falling in irregular gradations; and at the foot of all lay the lake, calmly azure, with its horizon, whether near or far—for it was almost impossible to say—mystically vague. On either hand rose other hills of sand, set with sparse pines and covered, in patches, with growths of wild grape, the fruit half ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various levels, rose grimly a few stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and long indifferent to the future ravages of the enemy. The whole scene was, to-day, plausibly gentle and inert. It was indeed a bridal of earth and sky, with the self-contained approval of the blue deep and no counter-assertion from any demon wind.
"So far, so good," said Randolph, taking off his hat, wiping his forehead, and breathing just a little harder than he liked. "The rest of our course is plain: down these slopes, and then a couple of miles along the shore. Easy walking, that; a mere promenade on a boulevard."
Cope stood on the height, and tossed his bare head like a tireless young colt. The sun fell bright on his mane of yellow hair. He took in a deep breath. "It's good!" he declared. "It's great! And the water looks better yet. Shall we make it in a rush?" He began to plunge down the long, broken sand-slope. Each step was worth ten. Randolph followed—with judgment. He would not seem young enough to be a competitor, nor yet old enough to be a drag. On the shore he wiped and panted a little more—but not to the point of embarrassment, and still less to the point of mortification. After all, he was keeping up pretty well.
At the bottom Cope, with his shoes full of sand, turned round and looked up the slope down which his companion was coming. He waved his arms. "It's almost as fine from here!" he cried.
The beach, once gained, was in sight both ways for miles. Not a human habitation was visible, nor a human being. Two or three gulls flew a little out from shore, and the tracks of a sandpiper led from the wet shingle to the first fringe of sandgrass higher up.
"Where are the crowds?" asked Cope, with a sonorous shout.
"Miles behind," replied Randolph. "We haven't come this long distance to meet them after all. Besides," he continued, looking at his watch, "this is not the time of day for them. At twelve-fifteen people are тot strolling or tramping; they're thinking of their dinner. We have a full hour or more for making less than two easy miles before we reach ours."
"No need to hurry, then."
The beach, at its edge, was firm, and they strolled on for half a mile and cooled off as they went. The air was mild; the noonday sun was warm; both of them had taken off their coats.
They sat down under a clump of basswoods, the only trees beyond the foot of the sand-slope, and looked at the water.
"It's like a big, useless bathtub," observed Randolph.
"Not so much useless as unused."
"Yes, I suppose the season is as good as over,—though this end of the lake stays warm longer than most other parts."
"It isn't so much the warmth of the water," remarked Cope sententiously. "It's more the warmth of the air."
"Well, the air seems warm enough. After all, the air and the sun are about the best part of a swim. Do you want to go in?"
Cope rose, walked to the edge of the water, and put in a finger or two. "Well, it might be warmer; but, as I say . . ."
"We could try a ten-minute dip. That would get us to our dinner in good time and in good trim."
"All right. Let's, then."
"Only, you'll have to do most of the swimming," said Randolph. "My few small feats are all accomplished pretty close to shore."
"Never mind. Company's the thing. A fellow finds it rather slow, going in alone."
Cope whisked off his clothes with incredible rapidity and piled them—or flung them—under the basswoods: the suddenly resuscitated technique of the small-town lad who could take avail of any pond or any quiet stretch of river on the spur of the moment. He waded in quickly up to his waist, and then took an intrepid header. His lithe young legs and arms threw themselves about hither and yon. After a moment or two he got on his feet and made his way back across a yard of fine shingle to the sand itself. He was sputtering and gasping, and the long yellow hair, which usually lay in a flat clean sweep from forehead to occiput, now sprawled in a grotesque pattern round his temples.
“B-r-r! It is cold, sure enough. But jump in. The air will be all right. I’ll be back with you in a moment.”
Randolph advanced to the edge, and felt in turn. It was cold. But he meant to manage it here, just as he had managed with the sand-slopes.
Two heads bobbed on the water where but one had bobbed before. Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete.
“It’s never so cold the second time,” declared Cope encouragingly. “One dip doesn’t make a swim, any more than one swallow——”
He flashed his soles in the sunlight and was once again immersed, gulping, in a maelstrom of his own making.
“Twice, to oblige you,” said Randolph. “But no more. I’ll leave the rest to the sun and the air.” Cope, out again, ran up and down the sands for a hundred feet or so. “I know something better than this,” he declared presently. He threw himself down and rolled himself in the abundance of fine, dry, clean sand.
“An arenaceous ulster—speaking etymologically,” he said. He came back to the clump of basswoods near which Randolph was sitting on a short length of drift wood, with his back to the sun, and sat down beside him.
"You're welcome to it," said Randolph, laughing; "but how are you going to get it off? By another dip? Certainly not by the slow process of time. We have some moments to spare, but hardly enough for that. Meanwhile . . ."
He picked up a handful of sand and applied it to a bare shoulder-blade which somehow had failed to get its share of protection.
"Thanks," said Cope: "the right thing done for Polynices. Yes, I shall take one final dip and dry myself on my handkerchief."
"I shall dry by the other process, and so shall be able to spare you mine."
"How much time have we yet?"
Randolph reached for his trousers, as they hung on a lower branch of one of the basswoods. "Oh, a good three-quarters of an hour."
"That's time enough, and to spare. I wonder whom we're going to meet."
"There's a 'usual crowd': the three young ladies, commonly; one or two young men who understand how to tinker the oil-stove—which usually needs it—and how to prime the pump. They once asked me to do these things; but I've discovered that younger men enjoy it more than I do, so I let them do it. Besides these, a number of miscellaneous people, perhaps, who come out by trolley or in their own cars."
"The young ladies always come?" asked Cope, brushing the sand from his chest.
"Usually. Together. The Graces. Otherwise, what becomes of the Group?"
"Well, I hope there'll be enough fellows to look after the stove and the pump—and them. I'm not much good at that last."
"No?"
"There's a knack about it—a technique—that I don't seem to possess. Nor do I seem greatly prompted to learn it."
"Of course, there is no more reason for assuming that every man will make a good lover than that every woman will make a good mother or a good housekeeper."
"Or that every adult male will make a good citizen, desiring the general welfare and bestirring himself to contribute his own share to it. I don't feel that I'm an especially creditable one."
"So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts come up and slap us in the face." Randolph rose and relieved the basswood of the first garments. "Are you about ready for that final dip?"
Cope made his last plunge and returned red and shivering to use the two handkerchiefs.
"Well, we have thirty minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their march. On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping, dense or slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled expanse of blue, spreading toward a horizon even less determinate than before.
"No, I'm not at all apt," said Cope, returning to his theme; "not even for self-defense. I suppose I'm pretty sure to get caught some time or other."
"Each woman according to her powers and gifts. Varying degrees of desire, of determination, of dexterity. To be just, I might add a fourth d—devotion."
"You've run the gauntlet," said Cope. "You seem to have come through all right."
"Well," Randolph returned deprecatingly, "I can't really claim ever to have enlisted any woman's best endeavors."
"I hope I shall have the same good luck. Of your four d's, it's the dexterity that gives me the most dread."
"Yes, the appeal (not always honest) to chivalry,—though devotion is sometimes a close second. You're manoeuvred into a position where you're made to think you 'must.' I've known chaps to marry on that basis. . . . It's weary waiting until Madame dies and Madonna steps into her place."
"Meanwhile, safety in numbers."
"Yes, even though you're in the very midst of wishing or of wondering—or of a careful concern to cloak either."
"Don't dwell on it! You fill me with apprehensions."
Randolph put up his arm and pointed. A roof through a notch between two sandhills beyond a long range of them, was seen, set high and half hidden by the spreading limbs of pines. "There it is," he said.
"So close, already?" Such, indeed, it appeared.
"Not so close as it seems. We may just as well step lively."
Cope, with an abundance of free action, was treading along on the very edge of things, careless of the rough shingle and indifferent to the probability of wet feet, and swinging his hat as he went. In some such spirit, perhaps, advanced young Stoutheart to the ogre's castle. He even began to foot it a little faster.
"Well, I can keep up with you yet," thought Randolph. Aloud, he said: "You've done very well with your hair. Quite an inspiration to have carried a comb."
Cope grimaced.
"I trust I'm free to comb myself on Sunday. There are plenty of others to do it for me through the week."