CHAPTER XXXIV
hile scientists seek germs that shall change the world, while war comes or winter takes earth captive, even while love visibly flowers, a power, mighty as any of these, lashes its human pack-train on the dusty road to futility. The Day's Work is the name of that power.
All these days of first love Carl had the office for lowering background. The warm trust of Ruth's hand on a Saturday did not make plans for the Touricar any the less pressing on a Monday. The tyranny of nine to five is stronger, more insistent, in every department of life, than the most officious oligarchy. Inspectors can be bribed, judges softened, and recruiting sergeants evaded, but only the grace of God will turn 3.30 into 5.30. And Mr. Ericson of the Touricar Company, a not vastly important employee of the mothering VanZile Corporation, was not entitled to go home at 3.30, as a really rational man would have done when the sun gold-misted the windows and suggested skating.
No longer was business essentially an adventure to Carl. Doubtless he would have given it up and have gone to Palm Beach to fly a hydro for Bagby, Jr., had there been no Ruth. Bagby wrote that he was coming North, to prepare for the spring's experiments; wouldn't Carl consider joining him?
Carl was now, between his salary and his investment in the Touricar Company, making about four thousand dollars a year, and saving nearly half of it, against the inevitable next change in his life, whatever that should be. He would probably climb to ten thousand dollars in five years. The Touricar was promising success. Several had been ordered at the Automobile Show; the Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia agents of the company reported interest. For no particular reason, apparently, Milwaukee had taken them up first; three Milwaukee people had ordered cars.... An artist was making posters with beautiful gipsies and a Touricar and tourists whose countenances showed lively appreciation of the efforts of the kind Touricar manufacturers to please and benefit them. But the head salesman of the company laughed at Carl when he suggested that the Touricar might not only bring them money, but really take people off to a larger freedom:
"I don't care a hang where they go with the thing as long as they pay for it. You can't be an idealist and make money. You make the money and then you can have all the ideals you want to, and give away some hospitals and libraries."
They walked and talked, Ruth and Carl. They threaded the Sunday-afternoon throng on upper Broadway, where on every clear Sunday all the apartment-dwellers (if they have remembered to have their trousers pressed or their gloves cleaned in preparation) promenade like stupid black-and-white peacocks past uninteresting apartment-houses and uninspiring upper Broadway shops, while two blocks away glorious Riverside Drive, with its panorama of Hudson and hills and billowing clouds, its trees and secret walks and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, is nearly deserted. Together they scorned the glossy well-to-do merchant in his newly ironed top-hat, and were thus drawn together. It is written that loving the same cause makes honest friendship; but hating the same people makes alliances so delightful that one can sit up late nights, talking.
At the opening of the flying season Carl took her to the Hempstead Plains Aviation Field, and, hearing his explanations, she at last comprehended emotionally that he really was an aviator.