The Ultimate Egoist (29 page)

And then the wind’s howl in the rigging rose an octave. I saw that squall on the way. A vicious little slate gray williwaw bunching its
muscles for a rush at us. I edged toward Percy, screamed at him, “Squall coming up—we’ll have to shorten sail!” Topsails were tumbling down aboard most of the boats.

“If the Lord wants me to shorten sail,” Percy squealed, “He’ll blow some off!” He was quoting the great old clipper captains of the days when American ships were the finest on the seven seas. It was throwing the race and the craft into the laps of the gods; it was foolhardiness supreme; but it was more than a little magnificent.

I saw the
Black Flame
’s topsail sag and belly; Granger was frightened, for all his chrome and stainless steel. And then the sail lifted again and began to draw. He had seen that we were going to run with every stitch aloft; he was calling our bluff. I screamed to Percy, “The squall will yank the mast out of us! We’ll have to shorten!”

“Go ahead and shorten then,” said Percy.

I crawled over to the pinrail, tugged at the peak halyard (the line that holds the sail up). It was jammed—Percy had made it fast with a back hitch; the more the sail pulled, the tighter the line squeezed around the pin. I’d never be able to cast it off. The crazy fool! If he couldn’t have this regatta, he didn’t want his beloved sloop. It would be the end of the
Barnacle
if that blow struck us with our sail drawing.

Then everything happened at once. The halyard parted, and the mainsail came booming and flopping down. And as it struck the deck, the squall reached and blinded us. The
Barnacle
yawed violently, took the pull of the thrashing balloon jib, and steadied. A great green white-headed comber took the after end of the craft in its teeth, yanked the rudder out of her. And the wind shifted amazingly, so that it stood dead aft. The rain and fury of it passed, and there we were, rudderless, hauled by the jib as if we were hitched to Pegasus himself.

And the others? The sound was speckled with the flotsam that had been a regatta. Fourteen boats—fourteen, no less!—were dismasted or overturned, or both. Only the
Flame
was under weigh, crippled by a split topsail, but moving fast. There was nothing that Percy and I could do but throw ourselves on the billowing mass of canvas on the deck, to keep it from being carried away. No rudder, and one wild sail flying full and free, and—

And we won the regatta.

We won because the
Flame
, bless the mechanics that built her, couldn’t run dead before a wind. She had to tack a mere three points, just once, mind you, but it cost her the race. Our balloon jib brought us frothing in over the line, not two lengths ahead of Granger. And when we had cut the jib adrift and thrown a line to a power boat, Percy lay in the tumbled mainsail and rolled gleefully. “She knows her way,” he chortled. “Oh, the beauty of it! If she hadn’t broken that halyard and lowered her own sail, she’d have broken up. She has a brain. She even knows when to shorten sail!”

“She does,” I said. Why should I tell him that I had cut the halyard just before the squall struck us? Who am I to destroy a man’s faith in the thing he loves?

“V
ACATIONS,
”
SAID
P
EGGY
suddenly, “are dangerous.”

She was perched on the top step of the Lodge porch, and Rad Walsh had poured his lean body gracefully over the steps below her. He cocked a quizzical eyebrow in her direction. “Interestin’ ” he drawled. “May I ask what prompted the remark?”

“Oh, it’s just what we were talking about—this great country, and the freedom of thought and action it allows us …” She glanced across the compound at the men folding the great red, white and blue flag that had just been taken in for the night. “Those things depend on circumstances, Rad.”

“Little rebel,” he said gently, “what do you mean by that? A citizen is a citizen, and enjoys a citizen’s privileges.”

She laughed. “I’m being a little foggy, I know. I was thinking about freedom, and what a—a comparative thing it is. Down South, you know, I have my daily job. I have set ideas, routines, environments. I see people I know all the time. I have my little sets of defenses, my varied suits of armor for each of them. I can’t be hurt easily.”

He came up beside her. “What are you driving at, Peg o’ my heart?”

“Vacations … You see, Rad, when a person gets his vacation, he lets his hair down. He hasn’t time to learn about people he meets. He throws himself into a new world, very brief, very beautiful. Everything happens so fast that it’s distorted. He tries to dislike nothing, and when he likes something—or somebody—he does it violently, and with little regard for—for afterward.”

Rad clasped his knee in long brown hands, stared pensively off across the valley. It was getting late, and the distant stretch of North woods was darkening green, blue-shadowed. The moon, deep behind a far ridge, was attempting with faint promise to silhouette the hills.
Peggy, staring at his rugged profile, felt her heart dip and turn like a wheeling hawk. She saw the corner of his mouth twitch, but before she could beg him to be serious, he had started.

Peggy laughed in spite of herself. Oh, he was shrewd! And that trick of his, of bringing little gems of ad-libbed doggerel out of his hat—could she ever forget it? Could she ever forget
him?
She’d have to, after tomorrow.

“What you’re leading up to,” he said almost brutally, “is the fact that you’re leaving tomorrow, that you’ve had a wonderful time here, and that you hope we can keep up a pretense of—” here his voice was a little ironic, putting quotes on his words—“nothing more than friendship. You fear that the combined stimuli of Thanksgiving Day and your pending departure will lead you—us—to make certain admissions relative to the high mutual regard—”

“Stop talking like a text in rhetoric!” Peggy snapped, breathless and more than a little indignant. “Yes, that’s the general idea. Only you don’t have to—to revel in it.” She sniffed angrily, and Rad considerately handed her a clean handkerchief, over his shoulder, looking away. She snatched it, and when Rad looked at her again a moment later she was apparently trying to hide under it.

Because he was that kind of man, Rad knew just what to do. He slid an arm around her, let her bury her face in his shoulder. She cried unashamed, because he had forced her to tell him what was in her heart … she tried to be angry at him for it, but could not. Oh, why did this have to happen to her … now? Confound the man’s unerring perception … and yet, maybe it was better this way.

He began talking, his voice rough and tender. “Peg … Peg—little old mumbly-Peg—there’s nothing to cry about. Really. You’re going away tomorrow—don’t think about that, and the little seven hundred miles between us. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, Peg, and we
have lots to be thankful for. These ten days together—think of them often. Think of me, and of the fun we had, and of tonight, and be thankful—Peg! Please stop crying!” He tilted her chin up, took the handkerchief, dried her eyes. Through the mist that surrounded her she saw that telltale twitching of his mouth; and as ever, he was off before she could stop him:

“I think we’d better go,” finished Peggy hurriedly, quite eclipsing what might easily have been a brilliant gagline.

She tried to get up and move away, but couldn’t, partly because he would not let her go, and partly because she didn’t try very hard … and their kiss was long and very, very sweet.

“Rad!” she said when she could speak again, “That—that wasn’t fair.” She was so annoyed that she almost took her arms from around his neck. He kissed her again.

“You don’t have to go tomorrow,” he said softly. “You won’t ever have to go away from me.”

“Rad,” she said in a small, tight voice, “Please let me go.”

More than a little surprised, he did. “It might have been a little sudden,” he grinned, “But you’ve just been proposed to, my fran’.” He thought she didn’t understand.

“Yes—I know.” Her voice was still strained, frightened.

“Peg! I want to make you happy—I thought I could start that way. You—you are happy, aren’t you? And, oh darling, you will marry me?”

“No, Rad!”

“Is that an answer to the first question or the second?”

“The first … Rad, stop badgering me!”

He drew back, really perplexed; and it was a new experience for him. He took her by the shoulders, forced her to look at him. “Come on, child; give. What’s the trouble? I love you; you know that, don’t you? Don’t you?” There was something approaching desperation in his tone.

“Oh, yes, Rad—yes! But Rad, don’t ask me to marry you! How long have I known you? Nine, no, ten days. You don’t know me—you couldn’t; not in ten days; any more than I know you. Oh, Rad, I’m afraid! I have you here with me now; and when I go away tomorrow I’ll have you, the way you are now, forever. I’ll never forget you, and you’ll always be fine and strong and tender. And if I married you—” (she was actually trembling) “—and it didn’t work out, I couldn’t bear it!” Peggy would have cried, but she was past it now, too deeply moved for tears.

Rad started to speak, but she interrupted him. “No, Rad. Don’t try to persuade me. You might be able to; please don’t try. Rad, I knew two people like you and me. They met the way we did, and they got married. And it didn’t work. It was—awful. Neither of them are happy. They had known each other for two weeks before they married; it wasn’t enough.”

“It’s enough for me,” Rad said glumly. “Peg, there would be something in what you say if we could see each other constantly, every day. But not now—not with your leaving.” His voice was still tender and patient, but just a little angry. “Can’t you say yes or— or no?”

“I can’t— I can’t!” she said brokenly.

And Rad, a man in love and paradoxically still with his good sense, asked, “Just what can be done about this?”

Peggy, a girl in love, yet equally paradoxical, said, “We’ll have to wait until we know each other better.” And as she said it, she knew that it might mean losing him, that it was unfair, and perhaps foolish and—the right thing to do.

After a long silence Peggy said, “Rad, I’ll come back here next year …”

He laughed hollowly. “It’ll be Thanksgiving again.”

“Rad, will you write to me, every week? Will you write and tell me all the thousand and one little things that are
you?
The things that don’t matter, and the things that seem small and—”

“You mean, whether I always put the cap back on the toothpaste tube, and whether or not I insist on keeping pet snakes, and if I am picky about my food?” He looked at her. “Peg, that’s not going to be much fun, when all I can think of is you and the funny way your
hair streamlines your head, and the way your eyes twinkle when you’re trying so hard to be serious …”

“You can write about those things too, if you like,” she said; and the twinkle was there, all right.

He stared off into the twilight again, searching his mind for something to say, to make her stay. A whole year, and a letter each week … fifty-two letters, and then Thanksgiving again … suddenly he slapped his thigh, burst out laughing.

“It’s a bargain!” he said when he could catch his breath. “I’ll write you regularly; and when it’s Thanksgiving again, I’ll come to you—if you still want me. There’ll be no nonsense about it, now, will there?”

“Oh, Rad …”

And they spent the rest of that long, long evening in finding out more and more about each other … a year spent that way would be sure to teach two people all they would ever need to know about their “high mutual regard” … it would be hard to do on paper, though. One of the things that has plagued lovers since the dawn of time is that you can’t kiss by mail!

The next day was a bright, cool Monday. Early as it was when Peggy came out of the Lodge, Rad had been earlier. He was there on the steps to take her bag in one hand, her hand in the other. They both tried pitifully to be cheerful.

“Morning, early bird!” he said. She grinned.

“Consider yourself caught then,” she returned.

“
Touché!
I asked for that. I hope your taxi breaks down.”

“It won’t. Papa Guichet’s Model T is past that stage. The spirits of misfortune gave it up as a bad job, lo, these twenty years!”

They walked across the wide compound. Suddenly he stopped her, pointing to the newly risen flag.

“If,” he said, “You should ever forget about me—such impossible things do happen—and you see that flag, let it remind you, Peg. It stands for something great, something solid and mighty and invincible—something greater than my love for you. It is the only thing I can think of that is worthy of comparison, and worthy of being a reminder.”

She looked up at the floating tri-colored folds, and as she watched through stinging eyes, the colors misted out. “I’ll have to b-borrow your handkerchief again, Rad …”

Then she was in the asthmatic old pre-war relic, and had time for one brief blushing kiss before Papa Guichet frightened all the wild life within a square mile by the clanking cacophony of his starting. He was a wise and understanding old man, and he knew that it was best to do these things quickly. The prosaic racket of his engine had knifed through many such partings, making them mercifully swift, if not gentle.

Peggy sobbed openly, straining to get a last glimpse from the cracked rear window; and when, all too soon, she got it, she huddled in the corner, crushing Radcliffe Walsh’s last clean handkerchief to her face.

All her life she was to remember that seven-mile ride to the junction; the clatter of the ancient car, the smell of hot oil and raw gasoline mingled with the cool sweetness of the virgin forest; and over and through it all, Papa Guichet’s sweet old voice singing an old French song about a little shepherdess. It had a hauntingly sweet tune, light and cheerful, and a meaningless, recurrent chorus line,
Fait ron, fait ron, petit patapon
, which ran through her head for weeks and weeks afterward.