“Mae, I’ve been thinking about that boat,” he said desperately.
“What boat?”
“The steamboat on the Thames, Mae. I don’t think we should let ourselves get old. Get your hat, Mae. Let’s go for a boat ride tonight.”
“But I don’t see the point,” she protested. “Do you think just riding on a boat keeps people young? Maybe if it was salt water——”
“Don’t you remember that night on the boat?” he said, as if he were talking to a child. “That’s how we met. Two months later you threw me over and married Al Fitzpatrick.”
“But I didn’t marry Al then,” she said. “It wasn’t till two years later when he got a job as superintendent. There was a Harvard man I used to go around with that I almost married. He knew you. His name was Abbot—Ham Abbot.”
“Ham Abbot—you saw him again?”
“We went around for almost a year. I remember Al was wild. He said if I had any more Harvard men around he’d shoot them. But there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Ham was just cuckoo about me and I used to let him rave.”
Bill had read somewhere that every seven years a change is completed in the individual that makes him different from his self of seven years ago. He clung to the idea desperately. Dimly he saw this person pouring him an enormous glass of applejack, dimly he gulped it down and, through a description of the house, fought his way to the front door.
“Notice the original beams. The beams were what we liked best——” She broke off suddenly. “I remember now about the boat.
You were in a launch and you got on board with Ham Abbot that night.”
The applejack was strong. Evidently it was fragrant also, for as they started off, the taxi driver volunteered to show him where the gentleman could get some more. He would give him a personal introduction in a place down by the wharf.
Bill sat at a dingy table behind swinging doors and, while the sun went down behind the Thames, disposed of four more applejacks. Then he remembered that he was keeping the taxi waiting. Outside a boy told him that the driver had gone home to supper and would be back in half an hour.
He sauntered over to a bale of goods and sat down, watching the mild activity of the docks. It was dusk presently. Stevedores appeared momentarily against the lighted hold of a barge and jerked quickly out of sight down an invisible incline. Next to the barge lay a steamer and people were going aboard; first a few people and then an increasing crowd. There was a breeze in the air and the moon came up rosy gold with a haze around.
Someone ran into him precipitately in the darkness, tripped, swore and staggered to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” said Bill cheerfully. “Hurt yourself?”
“Pardon me,” stuttered the young man. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not at all. Here, have a light.”
They touched cigarettes.
“Where’s the boat going?”
“Just down the river. It’s the high-school picnic tonight.”
“What?”
“The Wheatly High School picnic. The boat goes down to Groton, then it turns around and comes back.”
Bill thought quickly. “Who’s the principal of the high school?”
“Mr. McVitty.” The young man fidgeted impatiently. “So long, bud. I got to go aboard.”
“Me too,” whispered Bill to himself. “Me too.”
Still he sat there lazily for a moment, listening to the sounds clear and distinct now from the open deck: the high echolalia of the girls, the boys calling significant but obscure jokes to one another across the night. He was feeling fine. The air seemed to have distributed the applejack to all the rusty and unused corners of his body. He bought another pint, stowed it in his hip pocket and walked on board with all the satisfaction, the insouciance of a trans-atlantic traveler.
A girl standing in a group near the gangplank raised her eyes to him as he went past. She was slight and fair. Her mouth curved down and then broke upward as she smiled, half at him, half at the man beside her. Someone made a remark and the group laughed. Once again her glance slipped sideways and met his for an instant as he passed by.
Mr. McVitty was on the top deck with half a dozen other teachers, who moved aside at Bill’s breezy approach.
“Good evening, Mr. McVitty. You don’t remember me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, sir.” The principal regarded him with tentative noncommittal eyes.
“Yet I took a trip with you on this same boat, exactly eleven years ago tonight.”
“This boat, sir, was only built last year.”
“Well, a boat like it,” said Bill. “I wouldn’t have known the difference myself.”
Mr. McVitty made no reply. After a moment Bill continued confidently, “We found that night that we were both sons of John Harvard.”
“Yes?”
“In fact on that very day I had been pulling an oar against what I might refer to as dear old Yale.”
Mr. McVitty’s eyes narrowed. He came closer to Bill and his nose wrinkled slightly.
“Old Eli,” said Bill; “in fact, Eli Yale.”
“I see,” said Mr. McVitty dryly. “And what can I do for you tonight?”
Someone came up with a question and in the enforced silence it occurred to Bill that he was present on the slightest of all pretexts—a previous and unacknowledged acquaintance. He was relieved when a dull rumble and a quiver of the deck indicated that they had left the shore.
Mr. McVitty, disengaged, turned toward him with a slight frown. “I seem to remember you now,” he said. “We took three of you aboard from a motor boat and we let you dance. Unfortunately the evening ended in a fight.”
Bill hesitated. In eleven years his relation to Mr. McVitty had somehow changed. He recalled Mr. McVitty as a more negligible, more easily dealt with person. There had been no such painful difficulties before.
“Perhaps you wonder how I happen to be here?” he suggested mildly.
“To be frank, I do, Mr——-”
“Frothington,” supplied Bill, and he added brazenly, “It’s rather a sentimental excursion for me. My greatest romance began on the evening you speak of. That was when I first met—my wife.”
Mr. McVitty’s attention was caught at last. “You married one of our girls?”
Bill nodded. “That’s why I wanted to take this trip tonight.”
“Your wife’s with you?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand——-” He broke off, and suggested gently,
“Or maybe I do. Your wife is dead?”
After a moment Bill nodded. Somewhat to his surprise two great tears rolled suddenly down his face.
Mr. McVitty put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I understand your feeling, Mr. Frothington, and I respect it. Please make yourself at home.”
After a nibble at his bottle Bill stood in the door of the salon watching the dance. It might have been eleven years ago. There were the high-school characters that he and Ham and Ellie had laughed at afterward—the fat boy who surely played center on the football team and the adolescent hero with the pompadour and the blatant good manners, president of his class. The pretty girl who had looked at him by the gangplank danced past him, and with a quick lift of his heart he placed her, too; her confidence and the wide but careful distribution of her favors—she was the popular girl, as Mae had been eleven years before.
Next time she went past he touched the shoulder of the boy she was dancing with. “May I have some of this?” he said.
“What?” her partner gasped.
“May I have some of this dance?”
The boy stared at him without relinquishing his hold.
“Oh, it’s all right, Red,” she said impatiently. “That’s the way they do now.”
Red stepped sulkily aside. Bill bent his arm as nearly as he could into the tortuous clasp that they were all using, and started.
“I saw you talking to Mr. McVitty,” said the girl, looking up into his face with a bright smile. “I don’t know you, but I guess it’s all right.”
“I saw you before that.”
“When?”
“Getting on the boat.”
“I don’t remember.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“May Schaffer. What’s the matter?”
“Do you spell it with an e?”
“No; why?”
A quartet of boys had edged toward them. One of its members suddenly shot out as if propelled from inside the group and bumped awkwardly against Bill.
“Can I have part of this dance?” asked the boy with a sort of giggle.
Without enthusiasm Bill let go. When the next dance began he cut in again. She was lovely. Her happiness in herself, in the evening would have transfigured a less pretty girl. He wanted to talk to her alone and was about to suggest that they go outside when there was a repetition of what had happened before—a young man was apparently shot by force from a group to Bill’s side.
“Can I have part of this dance?”
Bill joined Mr. McVitty by the rail. “Pleasant evening,” he remarked. “Don’t you dance?”
“I enjoy dancing,” said Mr. McVitty; and he added pointedly, “In my position it doesn’t seem quite the thing to dance with young girls.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Bill pleasantly. “Have a drink?”
Mr. McVitty walked suddenly away.
When he danced with May again he was cut in on almost immediately. People were cutting in all over the floor now— evidently he had started something. He cut back, and again he started to suggest that they go outside, but he saw that her attention was held by some horseplay going on across the room.
“I got a swell love nest up in the Bronx,” somebody was saying.
“Won’t you come outside?” said Bill. “There’s the most wonderful moon.”
“I’d rather dance.”
“We could dance out there.”
She leaned away from him and looked up with innocent scorn into his
