“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
