THE SIGN AND SEAL

“The river forever flows yet she sees no farther than I who
am forever silent, forever still.”

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

“Jim Manning, you’ve no right to speak to me that way,” said Penelope.

Jim returned her look clearly. “You are to stay here, Pen,” he repeated slowly.

“You’ve got your nerve, Still!” exclaimed Sara. “Pen’s as much my company as she is yours. Quit trying to start something. Pen, come along.”

Jim did not stir for a moment, then he jerked his head toward the bath house. “Go ahead and get into your suit, Sara. Penelope and I will wait here for you.”

Sara had seen Jim in this guise before, on the football field. For a moment he scowled, then he shrugged his shoulders. “You old mule!” he grunted. “All right, Pen. You pacify the brute and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Pen did not yield so gracefully. She sat down in the sand with her back half turned to Jim and he, with his boyish jaw set, eyed her uncomfortably. She did not speak to him until Sara appeared and, with an airy wave of the hand, waded into the water.

“I think Sara looks like a Greek god in a bathing suit,” she said. “You’d know he was going to be a duke, just to look at him.”

Jim gave a good imitation of one of Uncle Denny’s grunts and said: “He isn’t a duke yet and he’s gone in too soon after eating.”

“And he’s got beautiful manners,” Pen continued. “You treat me as if I were a child. He never forgets that I am a lady.”

“Oh, slush!” drawled Jim.

Pen turned her back, squarely. Sara did not remain long in the water but came up dripping and shivering to burrow in the hot sand. Pen deliberately sifted sand over him, patting it down as she saw the others do, while she told Sara how wonderfully he swam.

Sara eyed Jim mischievously, while he answered: “Never mind, Pen. When I’m the duke, you shall be the duchess and have a marble swimming pool all of your own. And old Prunes will be over here coaching Anthony Comstock while you and I are doing Europe in our bathing suits.”

Penelope flushed quickly and Sara’s halo of romance shone brighter than ever.

“The Duchess Pen,” he went on largely. “Not half bad. For my part, I can’t see any objection to a girl as pretty as you are wearing a bathing suit anywhere, any time.”

Pen looked at Sara adoringly. At sixteen one loves the gods easily. Jim, with averted face, watched the waves dumbly. It had been easy that morning to toss speech back and forth with the boat crowd. But now, as always, when he felt that his need for words was dire, speech deserted him. Suddenly he was realizing that Pen was no longer a little girl and that she admired Saradokis ardently. When the young Greek strolled away to dress, Jim looked at Pen intently. She was so lovely, so rosy, so mischievous, so light and sweet as only sixteen can be.

“Cross patch. Draw the latch! Sit by the sea and grouch,” she sang.

Jim flushed. “I’m not grouchy,” he protested.

“Oh, yes you are!” cried Pen. “And when Sara comes back, he and I are going up for some ice cream while you stay here and get over it. You can meet us for supper with Aunt Mary and Uncle Denny.”

Jim, after the two had left, sat for a long time in the sand. He wished that he could have a look at the old swimming hole up at Exham. He wished that he and Uncle Denny and his mother and Pen were living at Exham. For the first time he felt a vague distrust of Sara. After a time he got into his bathing suit and spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of the water, dressing only in time to meet the rest for supper.

After supper the whole party went to one of the great dancing pavilions. Uncle Denny and Jim’s mother danced old-fashioned waltzes, while Sara and Jim took turn about whirling Penelope through two steps and galloping through modern waltz steps. The music and something in Jim’s face touched Pen. As he piloted her silently over the great floor in their first waltz, she looked up into his face and said:

“I was horrid, Still Jim. You were so bossy. But you were right; it was no place for me.”

Jim’s arm tightened round her soft waist. “Pen,” he said, “promise me you’ll shake Sara and the rest and walk home from the boat with me tonight.”

Pen hesitated. She would rather have walked home with Sara, but she was very contrite over Jim’s lonely afternoon, so she promised. Sara left the boat at the Battery to get a subway train home. When the others reached 23rd street, it was not difficult for Jim and Pen to drop well behind Uncle Denny and Jim’s mother. Jim drew Pen’s arm firmly within his own. This seemed very funny to Penelope and yet she enjoyed it. There had come a subtle but decided change in the boy’s attitude toward her that day, that she felt was a clear tribute to her newly acquired young ladyhood. So, while she giggled under her breath, she enjoyed Jim’s sedulous assistance at the street crossings immensely.

But try as he would, Jim could say nothing until they reached the old brownstone front. He mounted the steps with her slowly. In the dimly lighted vestibule he took both her hands.

“Look up at me, Pen,” he said.

The girl looked up into the tall boy’s face. Jim looked down into her sweet eyes. His own grew wistful.

“I wish I were ten years older,” he said. Then very firmly: “Penelope, you belong to me. Remember that, always. We belong to each other. When I have made a name for myself I’m coming back to marry you.”

“But,” protested Pen, “I’d much rather be a duchess.”

Jim held her hands firmly. “You belong to me. You shall never marry Saradokis.”

Pen’s soft gaze deepened as she looked into Jim’s eyes. She saw a light there that stirred something within her that never before had been touched. And Jim, his face white, drew Penelope to him and laid his soft young lips to hers, holding her close with boyish arms that trembled at his own audacity, even while they were strong with a man’s desire to hold.

Penelope gave a little sobbing breath as Jim released her.

“That’s my sign and seal,” he said slowly, “that kiss. That’s to hold you until I’m a man.”

The little look of tragedy that often lurked in Pen’s eyes was very plain as she said: “It will be a long time before you have made a name for yourself, Still Jim. Lots of things will happen before then.”

“I won’t change,” said Jim. “The Mannings don’t.” Then with a great sigh as of having definitely settled his life, he added: “Gee, I’m hungry! Me stomach is touching me backbone. Let’s see if there isn’t something in the pantry. Come on, Pen.”

And Pen, with a sudden flash of dimples, followed him.

It was not long after Pen’s birthday that the college year ended and Jim and Sara went to work. Jim had spent his previous vacations with the family at the shore. Saradokis was planning to become a construction engineer, with New York as his field. He wanted Jim to go into partnership with him when they were through college. So he persuaded Jim that it would be a good experience for them to put in their junior vacation at work on one of the mighty skyscrapers always in process of construction.

They got jobs as steam drillmen. Jim liked the work. He liked the mere sense of physical accomplishment in working the drill. He liked to be a part of the creative force that was producing the building. But to his surprise, his old sense of suffocation in being crowded in with the immigrant workman returned to him. There came back, too, some of the old melancholy questioning that he had known as a boy.

He said to Sara one day: “My father used to say that when he was a boy the phrase, ‘American workman’ stood for the highest efficiency in the world, but that even in his day the phrase had become a joke. How could you expect this rabble to know that there might be such a thing as an American standard of efficiency?”

Sara laughed. “Junior Economics stick out all over you, Still. This bunch does as good work as the American owners will pay for.”

Jim was silent for a time, then he said: “I wonder what’s the matter with us Americans? How did we come to give our country away to this horde?”

“‘Us Americans!’” mimicked Saradokis. “What is an American, anyhow?”

“I’m an American,” returned Jim, briefly.

“Sure,” answered the Greek, “but so am I and so are most of these fellows. And none of us knows what an American is. I’ll admit it was your type founded the government. But you are goners. There is no American type any more. And by and by we’ll modify your old Anglo-Saxon institutions so that G. Washington will simply revolve in his grave. We’ll add Greek ideas and Yiddish and Wop and Bohunk and Armenian and Nigger and Chinese and Magyar. Gee! The world will forget there ever was one of you big-headed New Englanders in this country. Huh! What is an American? The American type will have a boarding house hash beaten for infinite variety in a generation or so.”

The two young men were marching along 23rd street on their way to Jim’s house for dinner. At Sara’s words Jim stopped and stared at the young Greek. His gray eyes were black.

“So that’s the way you feel about us, you foreigners!” exclaimed Jim. “We blazed the trail for you fellows in this country and called you over here to use it. And you’ve suffocated us and you are glad of it. Good God! Dad and the Indians!”

“What did you call us over here for but to make us do your dirty work for you?” chuckled the Greek. “Serves you right. Piffle! What’s an American want to talk about my race and thine for? There’s room for all of us!”

Jim did not answer. All that evening he scarcely spoke. That night he dreamed again of his father’s broken body and dying face against the golden August fields. All the next day as he sweated on the drill, the futile questionings of his childhood were with him.

At noon, Sara eyed him across the shining surface of a Child’s restaurant table. Each noon they devoured a quarter of their day’s wages in roast beef and baked apples.

“Are you sore at me, Still?” asked Sara. “I wasn’t roasting you, personally, last night.”

Jim shook his head. Sara waited for words but Jim ate on in silence.

“Oh, for the love of heaven, come out of it!” groaned Sara. “Tell me what ails you, then you can go back in and shut the door. What has got your goat? You can think we foreigners are all rotters if you want to.”

“You don’t get the point,” replied Jim. “I don’t think for a minute that you newcomers haven’t a perfect right to come over here. But I have race pride. You haven’t. I can’t see America turned from North European to South in type without feeling suffocated.”

The young Greek stared at Jim fixedly. Then he shook his head. “You are in a bad way, my child. I prescribe a course at vaudeville tonight. I see you can still eat, though.”

Jim stuck by his drill until fall. During these three months he pondered more over his father’s and Exham’s failure than he had for years. Yet he reached no conclusion save the blind one that he was going to fight against his own extinction, that he was going to found a family, that he was going to make the old Manning name once more known and respected.

It was after this summer that the presence of race barrier was felt by Jim and Sara. And somehow, too, after Pen’s birthday there was a new restraint between the two boys. Both of them realized then that Pen was more to them than the little playmate they had hitherto considered her. Jim believed that the kiss in the vestibule bound Pen to him irretrievably. But this did not prevent him from feeling uneasy and resentful over Sara’s devotion to her.

Nothing could have been more charming to a girl of Pen’s age than Sara’s way of showing his devotion. Flowers and candy, new books and music he showered on her endlessly, to Mrs. Manning’s great disapproval. But Uncle Denny shrugged his shoulders.

“Let it have its course, me dear. ’Tis the surest cure. And Jim must learn to speak for himself, poor boy.”

So the pretty game went on. Something in Sara’s heritage made him a finished man of the world, while Jim was still an awkward boy. While Jim’s affection manifested itself in silent watchfulness, in unobtrusive, secret little acts of thoughtfulness and care, Saradokis was announcing Pen as the Duchess to all their friends and openly singing his joy in her beauty and cleverness.

For even at sixteen Pen showed at times the clear minded thoughtfulness that later in life was to be her chief characteristic. This in spite of the fact that Uncle Denny insisted on her going to a fashionable private school. She read enormously, anything and everything that came to hand. Uncle Denny’s books on social and political economy were devoured quite as readily as Jim’s novels of adventure or her own Christina Rossetti. And Sara was to her all the heroes of all the tales she read, although after the episode of the Sign and Seal some of the heroes showed a surprising and uncontrollable likeness to Jim. Penelope never forgot the kiss in the vestibule. She never recalled it without a sense of loss that she was too young to understand and with a look in her eyes that did not belong to her youth but to her Celtic temperament.

She looked Jim over keenly when the family came up from the shore and Jim was ready for his senior year. “You never were cut out for city work, Jimmy,” she said.

“I’m as fit as I ever was in my life,” protested Jim.

“Physically, of course,” answered Pen. “But you hate New York and so it’s bad for you. Get out into the big country, Still Jim. I was brought up in Colorado, remember. I know the kind of men that belong there. I love that color of necktie on you.”

“Have you heard about the Reclamation Service?” asked Jim eagerly. Then he went on: “The government is building big dams to reclaim the arid west. It puts up the money and does the work and then the farmers on the Project that’s what they call the system and the land it waters have ten years or so to pay back what it cost and then the water system belongs to them. They are going to put up some of the biggest dams in the world. I’d like to try to get into that work. Somehow I like the idea of working for Uncle Sam. James Manning, U.S.R.S. how does that sound?”

“Too lovely for anything. I’m crazy about it. Sounds like Kipling and the pyramids and Sahara, somehow.”

“Will you come out there after I get a start, Pen?” asked Jim.

“Gee! I should say not! About the time you’re beginning your second dam, I’ll be overwhelming the courts of Europe,” Pen giggled. Then she added, serenely: “You don’t realize, Still, that I’m going to be a duchess.”

“Aw, Pen, cut out that silly talk. You belong to me and don’t you ever think your flirtation with Sara is serious for a minute. If I thought you really did, I’d give up the Reclamation idea and go into partnership with Sara so as to watch him and keep him from getting you.”

“You and Sara would never get along in business together,” said Pen, with one of her far-seeing looks. “Sara would tie you in a bowknot in business, and the older you two grow the more you are going to develop each other’s worst sides.”

“Nevertheless, Sara shall never get you,” said Jim grimly.

Penelope gave Jim an odd glance. “Sara is my fate, Still Jim,” she said soberly.

“Oh, pickles!” exclaimed Jim.

Pen tossed her head and left him.

It was in the spring of their senior year that Jim and Sara ran the Marathon. It was a great event in the world of college athletics. Men from every important college in the country competed in the tryout. For the final Marathon there were left twenty men, Sara and Jim among them.

The course was laid along Broadway from a point near Van Cortlandt Park to Columbus Circle, ten long, clean miles of asphalt. Early on the bright May morning of the race crowds began to gather along the course. At first, a thin line of enthusiasts, planting themselves on camp stools along the curb. Then at the beginning and end of the course the line, thickened to two or three deep until at last the police began to establish lines. Mounted police appeared at intervals to turn traffic. The crowd as it thickened grew more noisy. Strange college yells were emitted intermittently. Street fakirs traveled diligently up and down the lines selling college banners. At last, Broadway lay a shining black ribbon, bordered with every hue of the rainbow, awaiting the runners.

Uncle Denny had an elaborate plan for seeing the race. He and Jim’s mother and Penelope established themselves at 159th street, with a waiting automobile around the corner. After the runners had passed this point, the machine was to rush them to the grand stand at Columbus Circle for the finish.

The three stood on the curb at 159th street, waiting. It was mid-afternoon when to the north, above the noise of the city, an increasing roar told of the coming of the runners. Pen, standing between Uncle Denny and Jim’s mother, seized a hand of each. Far up the shining black asphalt ribbon appeared a group of white dots. The roar grew with their approach.

Suddenly Penelope leaned forward. “Sara! Sara! Jim! Jim!” she screamed.

Four men were leading the Marathon. A Californian, a Wisconsin man, Jim and Sara. Sara led, then Jim and the Californian, then the Wisconsin man with not a foot between any two of them.

Jim was running easier than Sara. He had the advantage of less weight with the same height. Sara’s running pants and jersey were drenched with sweat. He was running with his mouth dropped open, head back, every superb line of his body showing under his wet clothes. His tawny hair gleamed in the sun. No sculptured marble of a Greek runner was ever more beautiful than Sara as he ran the Marathon.

Jim was running “with his nerves,” head forward, teeth clenched, fists tight to his side, long, lean and lithe. His magnificent head outlined itself for an instant against the sky line of the Hudson, fine, tense, like the painting of a Saxon warrior. Pen carried this picture of him in her heart for years.

The moment the boys had passed, Uncle Denny made a run for the machine. The three entered the grand stand just as the white dots appeared under the elevated tracks at 66th street. There was a roar, a fluttering of banners, a crash of music from a band and a single runner broke from the group and staggered against the line. Saradokis had won the race.

Jim was not to be seen. Uncle Denny was frantic.

“Where’s me boy?” he shouted. “He was fit to finish at the Battery when he passed us. Give me deck room here. I’m going to find him!”