He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, “Nonsense! Folks don’t run away from decent families and partners; just simply don’t do it, that’s all!” then Babbitt answered pleadingly, “Well, it wouldn’t take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and—Lord, how I’d’ * like to do it! Moccasins—six-gun—frontier town—gamblers—sleep under the stars—be a regular man, with he-men like Joe Paradise—gosh!”
So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel, again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a sliding circle. He hurried to the guides’ shack as to his real home, his real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would stand up and shout? “Why, here’s Mr. Babbitt! He ain’t one of these ordinary sports! He’s a real guy!”
In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded. Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, “How do. Back again?”
Silence, except for the clatter of chips.
Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of highly concentrated playing, “Guess I might take a hand, Joe.”
“Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let’s see; you were here with your wife, last year, wa’n’t you?” said Joe Paradise.
That was all of Babbitt’s welcome to the old home.
He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung at Joe:
“Working now?”
“Nope.”
“Like to guide me for a few days?”
“Well, jus’ soon. I ain’t engaged till next week.”
Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him. Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf, grunted, “I’ll come ’round t’morrow,” and dived down to his three aces.
Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of Ted’s presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka’s remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left forever.
Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he blundered down to the lakefront and found a canoe. There were no paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake. The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster of glowworms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued from prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, “I will go on! I’ll never go back! Now that Paul’s out of it, I don’t want to see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe Paradise didn’t jump up and hug me. He’s one of these woodsmen; too wise to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back in the mountains, out on the trail—! That’s real living!”
IV
Joe reported at Babbitt’s cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt greeted him as a fellow caveman:
“Well, Joe, how d’ you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?”
“All right, Mr. Babbitt.”
“What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond—they tell me the shack there isn’t being used—and camp out?”
“Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it’s nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you can get just about as good fishing there.”
“No, I want to get into the real wilds.”
“Well, all right.”
“We’ll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really hike.”
“I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue. We can go all the way by motor boat—flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude.”
“No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell ’em what you want for eats. I’ll be ready soon ’s you are.”
“Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?”
“Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven’t tramped that far for sixteen years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so—I guess.” Joe walked away in sadness.
Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories. But
