Claire Ambler (1928, Doubleday)/Part 1/Chapter 2
NELSON'S father had failed to comprehend the interest of the group of young people in what he thought of as the girlish chatter from the sofa. It seemed to him that just as she looked like any other "summer flapper," so also did she chatter like any other little creature of her kind; and in this he had no perception of how "original" and special an individual his children and their friends were finding her. This was to be her first season here; but she had spent summers at other resorts, and was giving them a lively account of the important people of these places. She had intimately known several celebrities of the first water—one of them, indeed, was a captain at Nelson's university—and so, to these listeners, she spoke of grandees of their own world. If Mr. Smock and some of his contemporaries had occupied the living room and young Nelson had come in to find them listening to an elderly stranger gossiping briskly of important financiers, the boy would have thought the session as dismal as it was inexplicable, and perhaps might have wondered how old men all contrived to look so much alike. He had never in his life seen a girl in the least like Claire Ambler, he was sure; never had he heard a voice so golden; never had he met a woman with so large an experience of the world; never had he been dazzled by so much brilliancy of mind.
He tried to express his bedazzlement as he walked home with her to her cottage in the late afternoon sunshine. "You cert'n'y gave us all a good time," he said seriously. "I couldn't begin to tell you the kick I got out of it myself."
"How?" she asked.
"Well, I don't know; but anyhow I did. It's kind of like something new coming into our lives here, or something like that. I mean the way you talk; or what I mean, I mean the way you say things. You got a way of saying things that's kind of got a kick in it. Anyhow, for me it has, I mean."
She looked at him gravely, seeming much interested; but for a time made no response; and, at intervals bumping into each other slightly, they walked slowly on over the uneven country road.
"I mean it," he said. "Honest, I really do mean it. I mean there's lots of kick in what you say."
She pulled a leaf from a hedge, put the stem between her lips, frowned as in perplexity; then asked: "How do you mean?"
"Well," he said, "I mean there is. I don't mean it's only in the way you say what you say; there's more to it than that. F'r instance, when you say something, you say it in a way that's got a kick in it; but I mean what you got to say's got a kick in it too. You see what I mean?"
"I don't know," she said thoughtfully, and gave him a meek glance. "Do you mean you don't like the way I say things, Nelson?"
"No, no, no!" he protested, troubled to have given her this harsh impression. "I mean just the opposite. I mean I like it so much I get a big kick out of it. Honestly."
"Honestly?" she repeated; and the word seemed important to her. "Honestly, Nelson?"
He was distressed and also a little aggrieved by what might have implied a doubt of him. "I don't know what cause I've ever given you," he said, "not to believe in my sincerity."
"But I didn't mean that, Nelson. I was only trying to get at just what you meant."
"I see," he returned, mollified. "I wouldn't like to think you doubted my sincerity, because I think if you aren't sincere you just about as well mightn't be anything at all. Don't you believe in sincerity, Claire?"
"Indeed, I do. If one isn't genuine, then what is one?"
"There!" he exclaimed. "That's what I mean. I mean when you say things like that. I mean that's when I get a kick out of the way you say 'em and out of what you're saying too. Don't you understand what I mean, Claire?"
Strangely enough, she still seemed to be a little uncertain. "I didn't talk too much at your cottage, did I? Of course, as it was the first time I've been there, and just meeting your sisters, perhaps you think I"
"No, no!" Nelson interrupted earnestly. "They were nuts over you, absolutely nuts! I knew they would be. You're altogether differ'nt from the rest o' these girls around here, Claire, and that's why."
"That's why what, Nelson?"
"It's why they're so nuts over you," he explained. "What I mean, I mean, well, you've had so much more experience of life than they have. You've been around lots more places, and about all they ever been is just this one old place—and home, of course, and school, and maybe a trip abroad or somewheres. But what I mean about you, Claire, it wouldn't do 'em any good, prob'ly, if they had been around like you have. What I mean, they wouldn't know how to take in things the way you have. The trouble with them is they wouldn't know how to. You see what I mean, don't you, Claire?"
"I'm not exactly sure," she said. "But I suppose prob'ly that is the trouble with a certain amount of people. Do you know what I believe is the trouble with most people?"
"What is?" he asked solicitously, almost breathlessly; for her tone was deeply serious, and he felt that matters of grave import were before them. "I've often thought about it; but I never did get it worked out in my mind to suit me just right. You can see that most people have got something the matter with 'em; but you can't tell exactly what it is. What do you believe it is, Claire?"
"Well, I've thought about it a great deal, too," she said. "I used to feel it was a question there'd never be any answer to; and sometimes it would make me—oh, I used to get absolutely morbid about it!"
"Did you?" he said gently, touched by the depth of her conscientiousness. "I never got that way about it myself, prob'ly because I haven't got a deep enough nature. You don't any more, do you Claire?"
"No," she said. "Not about that, anyhow, because I'm older now and I think I've worked out the answer."
"Have you? How?"
"Well, princip'ly by observation."
"I think that's wonderful," he said. "What was the answer, Claire?"
"Well, it's this," she said, and they walked more slowly. "I believe the trouble with most people is, they never think."
"You mean"
"Yes," she said. "I just don't understand their not doing it; but if you turn over the people you know in your mind, how many of them can you find that ever really think?"
Nelson became emphatic, as in a great enlightenment. "By golly, I believe you're right! I believe you've got it worked out—that is the trouble with most people. They don't think."
"It's so strange," Claire murmured, a little sadly. "You'd think they would think"
"But they don't," Nelson said. "That's the trouble with 'em; they don't think."
At this she appealed to him, as to a superior wisdom. "Why is it, Nelson? I've wondered so much about that. You're a man, and you ought to be able to tell me. Why is it they don't think?"
"Well, I suppose it's prob'ly because they won't take the trouble to. Either that, or maybe because they simply don't know how."
"I believe you're right," she returned, and she gave him a quick little glance of deferential appreciation. "I think that's rather a wonderful idea, Nelson. Only a person that does think could work out an explanation like that."
Nelson's colour heightened, he was so pleased to believe her kind opinion of him warranted. It seemed to him that this was a beautiful walk he was taking in delicious air and sunshine with a companion who understood with him the deeper things of life, the things that he really cared for. "The way I look at it is simply this," he said. "The trouble with most people is they don't even realize there is such a thing as thinking. So—well, when you get with a person that does think, well, you get a kick out of it."
"Yes," she agreed thoughtfully. "I think that's true."
"Of course it's true," he said; and he went on: "That's what I meant about the way you were talking, up at the cottage. I knew you were a girl that does think, and you don't often meet with one that does, because what do the ordinary run of 'em care for? What do they talk about? Why, nothing but what they do talk about—just all this and that, till you get absolutely sick of listening to 'em. All in the world they got to go on is simply their sex appeal, and in the long run what does that amount to? All you got to do is analyze it to see it doesn't amount to anything more than just a part of their maternity instinct, and you get awful tired of it. What I mean, you take two people that got more than mere sex appeal, and suppose they meet in a place like this, the way I've met you here, Claire, well, I mean there ought to be a pretty good kick in it." He paused, and then, with increased earnestness, he added, "I don't care for anything that hasn't got a kick in it. Do you feel that way, too, Claire?"
She inclined her head gravely, assenting. "Yes; I think life isn't worth living, practic'ly, unless you get a kick out of it."
"I knew you'd feel that way," Nelson said in a low voice. "I knew you would." Then, emotional after the confirmation of this affinity between them, he walked on in silence, believing that she shared his feeling.
But here he pathetically failed in comprehension of his new friend. Claire was wondering which of two dresses she would wear that evening to a dance at the Beach Club; all the way from Nelson's cottage, she had been trying to decide between them; she was only secondarily aware of Nelson, though she had seemed to be giving him a stirred attention. Her share of the conversation had been not much more than the repetition of a familiar formula, yet he found it anything but mechanical. For in this she was exercising an art possessed and habitually practised by most of her sex. Nelson's own mother used a variation of it frequently, at breakfast, when she gave a perfect response to her husband's discourse without listening to it or disturbing in the least the housewifely planning that then always occupied her mind.
Without speaking again, the two young people reached the driveway gate of the house Claire's father had leased for the summer; and here they paused. "Well" Nelson said, a little huskily, for his emotion had not subsided but increased. "I suppose we couldn't go on a little way farther? Prob'ly you want to go in?"
"Want to?" she echoed, and, as she wished to look over the two dresses before making a choice between them, she decided against any prolongation of their walk. "I don't know why you should put it that way, Nelson," she said. "One doesn't always do what one wants to."
"But it isn't near dinnertime yet. If you do want to, I don't see why"
"Men never see why," she said gently. "Because they can do what they like with their own time, they always think a girl can."
He sighed. Her tone implied important duties that could not honourably be evaded, no matter what her desires might be; and he understood that her strong inclination was to extend their walk. "Well," he said, "I wish you could; but if you can't" He leaned against one of the pillars of rough stone that served as gate-posts. "Anyhow, I'm glad we've had this talk. There's not many girls I'd care to talk to the way I do to you, Claire, because they wouldn't understand. In the first place, what I mean, I wouldn't talk to 'em the way I been talking to you, and in the second place, if I did, they wouldn't understand what I mean."
"Oh, yes, they would," she said generously. "Plenty of them would, Nelson. You mustn't be so cynical."
"I'm not exactly cynical," he returned, much pleased. "But it's true. I don't know another girl here that I'd talk to like this or that'd understand what I mean if I did."
"Oh, Nelson! Not one?"
"Not a single one."
"Well, I do," she said. "Anyhow, if there aren't any around here I've known girls other places that would."
He conceded a little. "Well, maybe there are girls other places that would; but anyhow you're the only one here. That's the reason I wanted to say something about—about" He hesitated; then went on: "Well, what I mean: You take two people that are the only two people that understand each other in a place like this, and that really care about the same things that the others don't care about, well, what I mean, I think two people like that, if they were at a dance like to-night f'r instance—and knew they cared about the same things the way we do—well, we could walk down to the rocks and sit there most of the time, if you'd like to. I hope you'd like to as much as I would, Claire. Would you?"
His tone was wistful, yet not without confidence in a favourable reply, for Nelson felt that a definite and exquisite tie had been established between them. He was surprised and troubled, therefore, when she did not immediately reply to his question; and after a few moments he repeated it, a little huskily. "You would, wouldn't you, Claire?"
Still she hesitated. That evening was to mark her first appearance before a general collection of the younger summer inhabitants of the place, and her ambition was by no means limited to the capture of an individual. She wished Nelson to be an ardent suitor for her favour, and by his ardour an incitement to competition—in fact, a herald or advertiser for her; and she hoped to be kept too busy, even this first evening, to leave the dancing floor at all. But as the most useful diplomatic reply to his question was difficult, she fell back upon a repetition of something she had just used.
"Girls can't always do what they want to, Nelson."
"What?" He was puzzled. "Why, you could go down to the rocks with me if you wanted to, couldn't you?"
"Not to-night, I'm afraid."
"But you could!"
She shook her head sadly. "No—not if I'd promised my mother."
"But why should she"
"She's old-fashioned, Nelson."
"Oh, dear me!" he said, much depressed. "But anyhow"
"Anyhow we'll see a lot of each other," she interrupted cheeringly, and she gave him a swift, bright look that lifted him to a state of adequate consolation. "Gracious!" she cried. "If you knew all I have to do!" And with that, she said, "G'by!" and flitted lightly up the driveway, while he stood gazing after her in precisely the fond condition she wished. She would see him again, she knew, in about four hours; and she now economically put him out of her conscious thought just as a cook who has set a dish in the oven to bake for some similar length of time, puts it out of her mind and turns to other matters. She went briskly to the selection of her dress, while young Nelson, having watched her out of sight, reverently picked a leaf from the ivy that climbed one of the gateway pillars, and then walked slowly homeward, sighing dreamily. He had lived a long time, he felt, much of it occupied with dreary illusions; and at last he was not only in love, but had found a nature that corresponded to his own. The great harmony had been established between them: she cared for the same things that he did.