Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [191]
“Getting cold. Afraid we’ll have to go back,” she said.
“Let’s not go back to them yet. They’ll be cutting up. Let’s keep along the shore.”
“But you enjoy the ‘cutting up’! Maud and you had a beautiful time.”
“Why! We just walked on the shore and talked about fishing!”
She was relieved, and apologetic to her friend Maud. “Of course. I was joking.”
“I’ll tell you! Let’s land here and sit on the shore—that bunch of hazel-brush will shelter us from the wind—and watch the sunset. It’s like melted lead. Just a short while! We don’t want to go back and listen to them!”
“No, but—” She said nothing while he sped ashore. The keel clashed on the stones. He stood on the forward seat, holding out his hand. They were alone, in the ripple-lapping silence. She rose slowly, slowly stepped over the water in the bottom of the old boat. She took his hand confidently. Unspeaking they sat on a bleached log, in a russet twilight which hinted of autumn. Linden leaves fluttered about them.
“I wish—Are you cold now?” he whispered.
“A little.” She shivered. But it was not with cold.
“I wish we could curl up in the leaves there, covered all up, and lie looking out at the dark.”
“I wish we could.” As though it was comfortably understood that he did not mean to be taken seriously.
“Like what all the poets say—brown nymph and faun.”
“No. I can’t be a nymph any more. Too old—Erik, am I old? Am I faded and small-towny?”
“Why, you’re the youngest—Your eyes are like a girl’s. They’re so—well, I mean, like you believed everything. Even if you do teach me, I feel a thousand years older than you, instead of maybe a year younger.”
“Four or five years younger!”
“Anyway, your eyes are so innocent and your cheeks so soft— Damn it, it makes me want to cry, somehow, you’re so defenseless; and I want to protect you and—There’s nothing to protect you against!”
“Am I young? Am I? Honestly? Truly?” She betrayed for a moment the childish, mock-imploring tone that comes into the voice of the most serious woman when an agreeable man treats her as a girl; the childish tone and childish pursed-up lips and shy lift of the cheek.
“Yes, you are!”
“You’re dear to believe it, Will—Erik!”
“Will you play with me? A lot?”
“Perhaps.”
“Would you really like to curl in the leaves and watch the stars swing by overhead?”
“I think it’s rather better to be sitting here!” He twined his fingers with hers. And—Erik, we must go back.”
“Why?”
“It’s somewhat late to outline all the history of social custom!”
“I know. We must. Are you glad we ran away though?”
“Yes.” She was quiet, perfectly simple. But she rose. He circled her waist with a brusque arm. She did not resist. She did not care. He was neither a peasant tailor, a potential artist, a social complication, nor a peril. He was himself, and in him, in the personality flowing from him, she was unreasoningly content. In his nearness she caught a new view of his head; the last light brought out the planes of his neck, his flat ruddied cheeks, the side of his nose, the depression of his temples. Not as coy or uneasy lovers but as companions they walked to the boat, and he lifted her up on the prow.
She began to talk intently as he rowed: “Erik, you’ve got to work! You ought to be a personage. You’re robbed of your kingdom. Fight for it! Take one of these correspondence courses in drawing—they mayn’t be any good in themselves, but they’ll make you try to draw and—”
As they reached the picnic ground she perceived that it was dark, that they had been gone for a long time.
“What will they say?” she wondered.
The others greeted them with the inevitable storm of humor and slight vexation: