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Title: Tramping on Life
An Autobiographical Narrative
Author: Harry Kemp
Release Date: March 19, 2005 [EBook #15415]
Language: English
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[Illustration: THE AUTHOR OF _Tramping on Life_]
TRAMPING ON LIFE
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE
HARRY KEMP
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, Inc.
_Copyright, 1922, by_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
First Printing, September, 1922
Second Printing, November, 1922
Third Printing, January, 1923
Fourth Printing, April, 1923
Fifth Printing, July, 1923
Sixth Printing, September, 1923
Seventh Printing, November, 1923
Eighth Printing, May, 1924
Ninth Printing, November, 1924
Tenth Printing, July, 1925
Eleventh Printing, March, 1926
Twelfth Printing, February, 1927
_Printed in the United States of America_
All in this book that is good and enduring
and worth while for humanity, I
dedicate to the memory of my wife,
MARY PYNE
_Waterbury, Connecticut,
May 20, 1922._
TRAMPING ON LIFE
Now I am writing these things just as I was told them by my grandmother.
For I have utterly no remembrance of my mother. Consumption ran in her
family. And bearing and giving birth to me woke the inherited weakness
in her. She was not even strong enough to suckle me.
* * * * *
I was born in the early eighties, in Mornington, Ohio, in a section of
that great, steel-manufacturing city which was neither city, suburb, nor
country,--but a muddy, green-splashed, murky mixture of all three.
* * * * *
They told me, when I was old enough to understand, that my mother was
English, that her folks lived in Cleveland and owned a millinery and
drygoods store there ... and that my father met my mother one day in
Mornington. She was visiting an uncle who ran a candy store on Main
Street, and, she girl-like, laughed and stood behind the counter, ready
for a flirtation....
My father was young, too. And he was employed there in the store,
apprenticed to the candy-maker's trade. And, on this day, as he passed
through, carrying a trayful of fresh-dipped chocolates, he winked at my
mother and joked with her in an impudent way ... and she rebuffed him,
not really meaning a rebuff, of course ... and he startled her by
pulling off his hat and grotesquely showing himself to be entirely bald
... for he had grown bald very young--at the age of sixteen ... both
because of scarlet fever, and because baldness for the men ran in his
family ... and he was tall, and dark, and walked with rather a military
carriage.
* * * * *
I was four years old when my mother died.
When she fell sick, they tell me, my grandfather did one of the few
decent acts of his life--he let my father have a farm he owned in
central Kansas, near Hutchinson. But my father did not try to work it.
He was possessed of neither the capital nor knowledge necessary for
farming.
He went to work as clerk in a local hotel, in the rapidly growing town.
Crazy with grief, he watched my mother drop out of his life a little
more each day.
* * * * *
My father and mother both had tempers that flared up and sank as
suddenly.
* * * * *
I had lung fever when I was a baby. That was what they called it then. I
nearly died of it. It left me very frail in body.
* * * * *
As soon as I could walk and talk my mother made a great companion of me.
She didn't treat me as if I were only a child. She treated me like a
grown-up companion. I am told that I would follow her about the house
from room to room, clutching at her skirts, while she was dusting and
sweeping and working. And to hear us two talking with each other, you
would have imagined there was a houseful of people.
* * * * *
My father's anguish over my mother's death caused him to break loose
from all ties. His grief goaded him so that he went about aimlessly. He
roamed from state to state, haunted by her memory. He worked at all
sorts of jobs. Once he even dug ditches for seventy-five cents a day. He
had all sorts of adventures, roaming about.
As for me, I was left alone with my grandmother, his mother,--in the big
house which stood back under the trees, aloof from the wide, dusty road
that led to the mills.
With us lived my young, unmarried aunt, Millie....
My grandmother had no education. She could barely read and write.
And she believed in everybody.
She was stout ... sparse-haired ... wore a switch ... had kindly,
confiding, blue eyes.
Beggars, tramps, pack-peddlers, book-agents, fortune-tellers,--she lent
a credulous ear to all,--helped others when we ourselves needed help,
signed up for preposterous articles on "easy" monthly payments,--gave
away food, starving her appetite and ours.
When, child though I was, even I protested, she would say, "well,
Johnnie, you might be a tramp some day, and how would I feel if I
thought some one was turning you away hungry?"
* * * * *
My Grandfather Gregory was a little, alert, erect, suave man,--he was a
man whose nature was such that he would rather gain a dollar by some
cheeky, brazen, off-colour practice than earn a hundred by honest
methods.
He had keen grey eyes that looked you in the face in utter, disarming
frankness. He was always immaculately dressed. He talked continually
about money, and about how people abused his confidence and his trust in
men. But there was a sharpness like pointed needles in the pupils of his
eyes that betrayed his true nature.
Coming to Mornington as one of the city's pioneers, at first he had kept
neck to neck in social prestige with the Babsons, Guelders, and the
rest, and had built the big house that my grandmother, my aunt, and
myself now lived in, on Mansion avenue....
When the Civil War broke out, that streak of adventure and daring in my
grandfather which in peace times turned him to shady financial
transactions, now caused him to enlist. And before the end of the war he
had gone far up in the ranks.
After the war he came into still more money by a manufacturing business
which he set up. But the secret process of the special kind of material
which he manufactured he inveigled out of a comrade in arms. The latter
never derived a cent from it. My grandfather stole the patent, taking it
out in his own name. The other man had trusted him, remembering the
times they had fought shoulder to shoulder, and had bivouacked
together....
My grandfather, though so small as to be almost diminutive, was spry and
brave as an aroused wasp when anyone insulted him. Several times he
faced down burly-bodied men who had threatened to kill him for his
getting the better of them in some doubtful business transaction.
For a long time his meanness and sharp dealings were reserved for
outsiders and he was generous with his family. And my sweet, simple, old
grandmother belonged to all the societies, charitable and otherwise, in
town ... but she was not, never could be "smart." She was always saying
and doing naive things from the heart. And soon she began to disapprove
of my grandfather's slick business ways.
I don't know just what tricks he put over ... but he became _persona non
grata_ in local business circles ... and he took to running about the
country, putting through various projects here and there ... this
little, dressy, hard-faced man ... like a cross between a weasel and a
bird!
He dropped into Mornington, and out again, each time with a wild,
restless story of fortunes to be made or in the making!
Once he came home and stayed for a longer time than usual. During this
stay he received many letters. My grandmother noticed a furtiveness in
his manner when he received them. My grandmother noticed that her
husband always repaired immediately to the outhouse when he received a
letter.
She followed after him one day, and found fragments of a torn letter
cast below ... she performed the disagreeable task of retrieving the
fragments, of laboriously piecing them together and spelling them out.
She procured a divorce as quietly as possible. Then my grandfather made
his final disappearance. I did not see him again till I was quite grown
up.
All support of his numerous family ceased. His sons and daughters had to
go to work while still children, or marry.
My Aunt Alice married a country doctor whom I came to know as "Uncle
Beck." My Uncle Joe, who inherited my grandfather's business-sense, with
none of his crookedness, started out as a newsboy, worked his way up to
half-proprietorship in a Mornington paper ... the last I heard of him he
had money invested in nearly every enterprise in town, and had become a
substantial citizen.
My father still pursued his nomadic way of living, sending, very seldom,
driblets of money to my grandmother for my support ... my uncle Jim went
East to work ... of my uncle Landon I shall tell you later on.
* * * * *
The big house in which my grandmother, my Aunt Millie, and I lived was
looking rather seedy by this time. The receding tide of fashion and
wealth had withdrawn far off to another section of the rapidly growing
city ... and, below and above, the Steel Mills, with their great,
flaring furnaces, rose, it seemed, over night, one after one ... and a
welter of strange people we then called the "low Irish" came to work in
them, and our Mansion Avenue became "Kilkenny Row." And a gang of tough
kids sprang up called the "Kilkenny Cats," with which my gang used to
fight.
After the "Low Irish" came the "Dagoes" ... and after them the "Hunkies"
... each wilder and more poverty-stricken than the former.
* * * * *
The Industrial Panic of '95 (it was '95, I think) was on ... always very
poor since the breaking up of our family, now at times even bread was
scarce in the house.
I was going to school, scrawny and freckle-faced and ill-nourished. I
had a pet chicken that fortunately grew up to be a hen. It used to lay
an egg for me nearly every morning during that hard time.
* * * * *
My early remembrances of school are chiefly olfactory. I didn't like the
dirty boy who sat next to me and spit on his slate, rubbing it clean
with his sleeve. I loved the use of my yellow, new sponge, especially
after the teacher had taught me all about how it had grown on the bottom
of the ocean, where divers had to swim far down to bring it up, slanting
through the green waters. But the slates of most of the boys stunk
vilely with their spittle.
I didn't like the smell of the pig-tailed little girls, either. There
was a close soapiness about them that offended me. And yet they
attracted me. For I liked them in their funny, kilt-like, swinging
dresses. I liked the pudginess of their noses, the shiny apple-glow of
their cheeks.
It was wonderful to learn to make letters on a slate. To learn to put
down rows of figures and find that one and one, cabalistically, made
two, and two and two, four!
It always seemed an age to recess. And the school day was as long as a
month is now.
We were ready to laugh at anything ... a grind-organ in the street, a
passing huckster crying "potatoes," etc.
I have few distinct memories of my school days. I never went to
kindergarten. I entered common school at the age of eight.
My grandfather, after his hegira from Mornington, left behind his
library of travels, lives of famous American Statesmen and Business
Men, and his Civil War books. Among these books were four treasure
troves that set my boy's imagination on fire. They were _Stanley's
Adventures in Africa_, Dr. Kane's Book of _Polar Explorations_, _Mungo
Park_, and, most amazing of all, a huge, sensational book called _Savage
Races of the World_ ... this title was followed by a score of harrowing
and sensational sub-titles in rubric. I revelled and rolled in this book
like a colt let out to first pasture. For days and nights, summer and
winter, I fought, hunted, was native to all the world's savage regions
in turn, partook gleefully of strange and barbarous customs, naked and
skin-painted. I pushed dug-outs and canoes along tropic water-ways where
at any moment an enraged hippopotamus might thrust up his snout and
overturn me, crunching the boat in two and leaving me a prey to
crocodiles ... I killed birds of paradise with poison darts which I blew
out of a reed with my nostrils ... I burned the houses of white settlers
... even indulged shudderingly in cannibal feasts.
The one thing that pre-eminently seized my imagination in _Savage Races
of the World_ was the frontispiece,--a naked black rushing full-tilt
through a tropical forest, his head of hair on fire, a huge
feather-duster of dishevelled flame ... somehow this appealed to me as
especially romantic. I dreamed of myself as that savage, rushing
gloriously through a forest, naked, and crowned with fire like some
primitive sun-god. It never once occurred to me how it would hurt to
have my hair burning!
* * * * *
When Aunt Millie was taken down with St. Vitus's dance, it afforded me
endless amusement. She could hardly lift herself a drink out of a full
dipper without spilling two-thirds of the contents on the ground.
Uncle Beck, the Pennsylvania Dutch country doctor who married Aunt
Alice, came driving in from Antonville, five miles away, once or twice a
week to tend to Millie, free, as we were too poor to pay for a doctor. I
remember how Uncle Beck caught me and whipped me with a switch. For I
constantly teased Aunt Millie to make her scream and cry.
* * * * *
"Granma," I used to call out, on waking in the morning....
"Yes, Johnnie darling, what is it?"
"Granma, yesterday ... in the woods back of Babson's barn, I killed
three Indians, one after the other." (The funny part of it was that I
believed this, actually, as soon as the words left my mouth.)
A silence....
"Granma, don't you believe me?"
"Yes, of course, I believe you."
Aunt Millie would strike in with--"Ma, why do you go on humouring
Johnnie while he tells such lies? You ought to give him a good
whipping."
"The poor little chap ain't got no mother!"
"Poor little devil! If you keep on encouraging him this way he'll become
one of the greatest liars in the country."
A colloquy after this sort took place more than once. It gave me
indescribable pleasure to narrate an absurd adventure, believe it myself
in the telling of it, and think others believed me. Aunt Millie's scorn
stung me like a nettle, and I hated her.
In many ways I tasted practical revenge. Though a grown girl of
nineteen, she still kept three or four dolls. And I would steal her
dolls, pull their dresses for shame over their heads, and set them
straddle the banisters.
* * * * *
We took in boarders. We had better food. It was good to have meat to eat
every day.
Among the boarders was a bridge builder named Elton Reeves. Elton had a
pleasant, sun-burnt face and a little choppy moustache beneath which his
teeth glistened when he smiled.
He fell, or pretended to fall, in love with gaunt, raw-boned Millie.
At night, after his day's work, he and Millie would sit silently for
hours in the darkened parlour,--silent, except for an occasional murmur
of voices. I was curious. Several times I peeked in. But all I could see
was the form of my tall aunt couched half-moonwise in Elton Reeve's lap.
I used to wonder why they sat so long and still, there in the
darkness....
* * * * *
Once a grown girl of fourteen named Minnie came to visit a sweet little
girl named Martha Hanson, whose consumptive widower-father rented two
rooms from my grandmother. They put Minnie to sleep in the same bed with
me....
After a while I ran out of the bedroom into the parlour where the
courting was going on.
"Aunt Millie, Minnie won't let me sleep."
Millie did not answer. Elton guffawed lustily.
I returned to bed and found Minnie lying stiff and mute with fury.
* * * * *
Elton left, the bridge-work brought to completion. He had a job waiting
for him in another part of the country.
It hurt even my savage, young, vindictive heart to see Millie daily
running to the gate, full of eagerness, as the mail-man came....
"No, no letters for you this morning, Millie!"
Or more often he would go past, saying nothing. And Millie would weep
bitterly.
* * * * *
I have a vision of a very old woman walking over the top of a hill. She
leans on a knobby cane. She smokes a corn-cob pipe. Her face is
corrugated with wrinkles and as tough as leather. She comes out of a
high background of sky. The wind whips her skirts about her thin shanks.
Her legs are like broomsticks.
This is a vision of my great-grandmother's entrance into my boyhood.
I had often heard of her. She had lived near Halton with my Great-aunt
Rachel for a long time ... and now, since we were taking in boarders and
could keep her, she was coming to spend the rest of her days with us.
At first I was afraid of this eerie, ancient being. But when she dug out
a set of fish-hooks, large and small, from her tobacco pouch, and gave
them to me, I began to think there might be something human in the old
lady.
She established her regular place in a rocker by the kitchen stove. She
had already reached the age of ninety-five. But there was a constant,
sharp, youthful glint in her eye that belied her age.
She chewed tobacco vigorously like any backwoodsman (had chewed it
originally because she'd heard it cured toothache, then had kept up the
habit because she liked it).
Her corncob pipe--it was as rank a thing as ditch digger ever poisoned
the clean air with.
Granma Wandon was as spry as a yearling calf. She taught me how to
drown out groundhogs and chipmunks from their holes. She went fishing
with me and taught me to spit on the bait for luck, or rub a certain
root on the hook, which she said made the fish bite better.
And solemnly that spring of her arrival, and that following summer, did
we lay out a fair-sized garden and carefully plant each kind of
vegetable in just the right time and phase of the moon and, however it
may be, her garden grew beyond the garden of anyone else in the
neighbourhood.
* * * * *
The following winter--and her last winter on earth--was a time of wonder
and marvel for me ... sitting with her at the red-heated kitchen stove,
I listened eagerly to her while she related tales to me of old settlers
in Pennsylvania ... stories of Indians ... ghost stories ... she curdled
my blood with tales of catamounts and mountain lions crying like women,
and babies in the dark, to lure travellers where they could pounce down
from branches on them.
And she told me the story of the gambler whom the Devil took when he
swore falsely, avowing, "may the Devil take me if I cheated."
She boasted of my pioneer ancestors ... strapping six-footers in their
stocking feet ... men who carried one hundred pound bags of salt from
Pittsburgh to Slippery Rock in a single journey.
The effect of these stories on me--?
I dreamed of skeleton hands that reached out from the clothes closet for
me. Often at night I woke, yelling with nightmare.
With a curious touch of folk lore Granma Gregory advised me to "look for
the harness under the bed, if it was a nightmare." But she upbraided
Granma Wandon, her mother, for retailing me such tales.
"Nonsense, it'll do him good, my sweet little Johnnie," she assured her
daughter, knocking her corncob pipe over the coal scuttle like a man.
* * * * *
There was a story of Granma Wandon's that cut deep into my memory. It
was the story of the man who died cursing God, and who brought, by his
cursing, the dancing of the very flames of Hell, red-licking and
serrate, in a hideous cluster, like an infernal bed of flowers, just
outside the window, for all around his death-bed to see!
In the fall of the next year Granma Wandon took sick. We knew it was
all over for her. She faded painlessly into death. She knew she was
going, said so calmly and happily. She made Millie and Granma Gregory
promise they'd be good to me. I wept and wept. I kissed her leathery,
leaf-like hand with utter devotion ... she could hardly lift it. Almost
of itself it sought my face and flickered there for a moment.
* * * * *
She seemed to be listening to something far off.
"Can't you hear it, Maggie?" she asked her daughter.
"Hear what, mother?"
"Music ... that beautiful music!"
"Do you see anything, mother?"
"Yes ... heaven!"
Then the fine old pioneer soul passed on. I'll bet she still clings
grimly to an astral corncob pipe somewhere in space.
* * * * *
A week before she died, Aunt Millie told us she was sure the end was
near. For Millie had waked up in the night and had seen the old lady
come into her room, reach under the bed, take the pot forth, use
it,--and glide silently upstairs to her room again.
Millie spoke to the figure and received no answer. Then, frightened, she
knew she had seen a "token" of Granma Wandon's approaching death.
* * * * *
In the parlour stood the black coffin on trestles; the door open, for we
had a fear of cats getting at the body,--we could glimpse the ominous
black object as we sat down to breakfast. And I laid my head on the
table and wept as much because of that sight as over the loss of my old
comrade and playmate.
Something vivid had gone out of my life. And for the first time I felt
and knew the actuality of death. Like a universe-filling, soft,
impalpable dust it slowly sifted over me, bearing me under. I saw for
the first time into all the full graves of the world.
* * * * *
To my great-grandmother's funeral came many distant relatives I had
never rested eye on before ... especially there came my Great-aunt
Rachel, Granma Gregory's sister,--a woman just as sweet-natured as she,
and almost her twin even to the blue rupture of a vein in the middle of
the lower lip. She, too, had a slightly protrusive stomach over which
she had the habit of folding her hard-working hands restfully, when she
talked ... and also there came with her my Great-uncle Joshua, her
husband ... and my second cousins, Paul and Phoebe, their children. The
other children, two girls, were off studying in a nurses' college ...
working their way there.
After the burial Josh and Paul went on back to Halton, where they worked
in the Steel Mills. They left Aunt Rachel and Phoebe to stay on and pay
us a visit.
Paul and Josh were "puddlers"--when they worked ... in the open furnaces
that were in use in those days ... when you saw huge, magnificent men,
naked to the belt, whose muscles rippled in coils as they toiled away in
the midst of the living red of flowing metal.
* * * * *
Phoebe was wild and beautiful in a frail way. She wore a pea green skirt
and a waist of filmy, feminine texture. We instantly took to each other.
She was always up and off, skimming swallow-like in all directions, now
this way, now that, as if seeking for some new flavour in life, some
excitement that had not come to her yet.
We made expeditions together over the country. She joined me in my
imaginary battles with Indians ... my sanguinary hunts for big game....
It was she who first taught me to beg hand-outs at back doors--one day
when we went fishing together and found ourselves a long way off from
home.
Once Phoebe fell into a millpond from a springboard ... with all her
clothes on ... we were seeing who dared "teeter" nearest the end.... I
had difficulty in saving her. It was by the hair, with a chance clutch,
that I drew her ashore.
The picture of her, shivering forlornly before the kitchen stove! She
was beautiful, even in her long, wet, red-flannel drawers that came down
to her slim, white ankles. She was weeping over the licking her mother
had given her.
* * * * *
"I'm afraid your cousin Phoebe will come to no good end some day, if she
don't watch out," said my grandmother to me, "and I don't like you to
play with her much.... I'm going to have Aunt Rachel take her home
soon" ... after a pause, "as sure as I have ten fingers she'll grow up
to be a bad woman."
* * * * *
"Granma, what is a bad woman?"
* * * * *
Aunt Rachel and Cousin Phoebe returned home. Uncle Josh, that slack old
vagabond with his furtive, kindly eye-glances, came for them with a
livery rig.
* * * * *
I think I read every dime novel published, during those years of my
childhood ... across the bridge that Elton had helped build, the new
bridge that spanned the Hickory River, and over the railroad tracks,
stood a news-stand, that was run by an old, near-sighted woman. As she
sat tending counter and knitting, I bought her books ... but for each
dime laid down before her, I stole three extra thrillers from under her
very eye.
From my grandfather's library I dug up a book on the Hawaiian Islands,
written by some missionary. In it I found a story of how the natives
speared fish off the edges of reefs. Straightway I procured a pitchfork.
I searched the shallows and ripples of Hickory River for miles ... I
followed Babson's brook over the hills nearly to its source.
One day, peering through reeds into a shallow cove, I saw a fish-fin
thrust up out of the water. I crept cautiously forward.
It was a big fish that lay there. Trembling all over with excitement, I
made a mad thrust. Then I yelled, and stamped on the fish, getting all
wet in doing so. I beat its head in with the haft of the fork. It rolled
over, its white belly glinting in the sun. On picking it up, I was
disappointed. It had been dead for a long time; had probably swam in
there to die ... and its gills were a withered brown-black in colour,
like a desiccated mushroom ... not healthy red.
But I was not to be frustrated of my glory. I tore the tell-tale gills
out ... then I beat the fish's head to a pulp, and I carried my capture
home and proudly strutted in at the kitchen door.
"Look, Granma, at what a big fish I've caught."
"Oh, Millie, he's really got one," and Granma straightened up from the
wash-tub. Millie came out snickering scornfully.
"My Gawd, Ma, can't you see it's been dead a week?"
"You're a liar, it ain't!" I cried. And I began to sob because Aunt
Millie was trying to push me back into ignominy as I stood at the very
threshold of glory.
"Honest-to-God, it's--fresh--Granma!" I gulped, "didn't I just kill it
with the pitchfork?" Then I stopped crying, absorbed entirely in the
fine story I was inventing of the big fish's capture and death. I stood
aside, so to speak, amazed at myself, and proud, as my tongue ran on as
if of its own will.
Even Aunt Millie was charmed.
* * * * *
But she soon came out from under the spell with, "Ma, Johnnie means well
enough, but surely you ain't going to feed that fish to the boarders?"
"Yes, I am. I believe in the little fellow."
"All right, Ma ... but I won't eat a mouthful of it, and you'd better
drop a note right away for Uncle Beck to drive in, so's he'll be here on
time for the cases of poison that are sure to develop."
* * * * *
Cleaned and baked, the fish looked good, dripping with sauce and basted
to an appetizing brown.
As I drew my chair up to the table and a smoking portion was heaped on
my plate, Aunt Millie watched me with bright, malicious eyes.
"Granma, I want another cup o' coffee," I delayed.
But the big, fine, grey-haired mill boss, our star boarder, who liked me
because I always listened to his stories--he sailed into his helping
nose-first. That gave me courage and I ate, too ... and we all ate.
"Say, but this fish is good! Where did it come from?"
"The kid here caught it."
"Never tasted better in my life."
None of us were ever any the worse for our rotten fish. And I was
vindicated, believed in, even by Aunt Millie.
* * * * *
Summer vacation again, after a winter and spring's weary grind in
school.
Aunt Rachel wrote to Granma that they would be glad to have me come over
to Halton for a visit.
Granma let me, after I had pleaded for a long while,--but it was with
great reluctance, warning me of Phoebe.
* * * * *
Aunt Rachel, Uncle Joshua, Cousin Phoebe and cousin Paul lived in a big,
square barn-like structure. Its unpainted, barren bulk sat uneasily on
top of a bare hill where the clay lay so close to the top-soil that in
wet weather you could hardly labour up the precipitous path that led to
their house, it was so slippery.
As I floundered upward in the late spring rain, gaining the bare summit
under the drizzly sky, a rush of dogs met me. They leaped and slavered
and jumped and flopped and tumbled and whined all about me and over me
... ten of them ... hound dogs with flop-ears and small, red-rimmed eyes
... skinny creatures ... there was no danger from them; but they planted
their mud-sticky paws everywhere in a frenzy of welcome.
"A hound ain't got no sense onless he's a-huntin'," drawled Paul, as his
great boot caught them dextrously under their bellies and lifted them
gently, assiduously, severally, in different directions from me....
Aunt Rachel's face, ineffably ignorant and ineffably sweet, lit up with
a smile of welcome. She met me in the doorway, kissed me.
And she made me a great batch of pancakes to eat, with bacon dripping
and New Orleans molasses ... but first--
"Josh, where on earth is them carpet slippers o' yourn?"
Josh yawned. He knocked the tobacco out of his pipe leisurely ... then,
silent, he began scraping the black, foul inside of the bowl ... then at
last he drawled.
"Don't know, Ma!"
But Phoebe knew, and soon, a mile too wide, the carpet slippers hung on
my feet, while my shoes were drying in the oven and sending out that
peculiar, close smell that wet leather emanates when subjected to heat.
Also, I put on Phoebe's pea-green cotton skirt, while my knee britches
hung behind the stove, drying. The men chaffed me.
* * * * *
In the industrial Middle West of those days, when the steel kings'
fortunes were in bloom of growth, these distantly related kinsfolk of
mine still lived the precarious life of pioneer days. Through the bare
boards of the uneven floor whistled the wind. Here and there lay a
sparse, grey, homemade rag rug. And here and there a window pane,
broken, had not been replaced. And an old pair of pants, a ragged shirt,
a worn out skirt stuffed in, kept out the draft,--of which everybody but
Phoebe seemed mortally afraid. Incidentally these window-stuffings kept
out much of the daylight.
Aunt Rachel, near-sighted, with her rather pathetic stoop, was
ceaselessly sewing, knitting, scrubbing, washing, and cooking. She took
care of her "two men" as she phrased it proudly--her husband and her
great-bodied son--as if they were helpless children.
* * * * *
"We're going a-huntin' to-day, Johnny,--wan' ter come along?"
"Sure!"
"Wall, git ready, then!"
But first Paul fed the hounds out in the yard ... huge slabs of white
bread spread generously with lard. This was all they ever got, except
the scraps from the table, which were few. They made a loud, slathering
noise, gulping and bolting their food.
* * * * *
But we started off without the hounds.
"Ain't you going to take the dogs along?"
"Nope."
"Why not--ain't we going to hunt rabbits?"
"Yep."
"Then why not take them?"
"Put your hand in my right hand pocket an' find out!"
I stuck my hand down, and it was given a vicious bite by a white,
pink-eyed ferret Paul was carrying there. I yelled with pain and
surprise. I pulled my hand up in the air, the ferret hanging to a
finger. The ferret dropped to the ground. Paul stooped and picked it up,
guffawing. It didn't bite him. It knew and feared him. That was his idea
of a joke, the trick he played on me!
"Yew might git blood-pisen from that bite!" teased Josh, to scare me.
But I remained unscared. I sucked the blood from the tiny punctures,
feeling secure, after I had done it. I remembered how Queen Eleanore had
saved the life of Richard Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, when he had
been bitten by an adder, by sucking out the venom. I enjoyed the thrill
of a repeated historic act.
"If we got ketched we'd be put in jail fer this!" remarked Josh with
that sly, slow smile of his; "it ain't the proper season to hunt
rabbits in, an' it's agin the law, in season or out, to hunt 'em with
ferrets," and he chuckled with relish over the outlawry of it.
We came to a hole under a hollow tree. Paul let the ferret go down,
giving him a preliminary smack.
"Mind you, Jim,--God damn you,--don't you stay down that hole too long."
"Think he understands you?"
"In course he does: jest the same es you do."
"And why would Jim stay down?"
"He might corner the rabbit, kill him, an' stay to suck his blood ...
but Jim knows me ... I've given him many's the ungodly whipping for
playing me that trick ... but he's always so greedy and hongry that
sometimes the little beggar fergits."
"And then how do you get him out again?"
"Jest set an' wait till he comes out ... which he must do, sometime ...
an' then you kin jest bet I _give_ it to him."
We waited a long time.
"Damn Jim, he's up to his old tricks again, I'll bet," swore Josh,
shifting his face-deforming quid of tobacco from one protuberant cheek
to the other, meditatively....
The ferret appeared, or, rather, a big grey rabbit ... squealing with
terror ... coming up backward ... the ferret clinging angrily to his
nose ... and tugging like a playing pup.
Paul took Jim off and put him back in his pocket ... he had to smack him
smartly to make him let go--"hongry little devil!" he remarked fondly.
A crack of the hand, brought down edgewise, broke the rabbit's neck, and
he was thrust into a bag which Josh carried slung over his shoulder.
We caught fifteen rabbits that afternoon.
We had a big rabbit stew for supper. Afterward the two men sat about in
their socks, chairs tilted back, sucking their teeth and picking them
with broom straws ... and they told yarns of dogs, and hunting, and
fishing, till bed-time.
* * * * *
The morning sun shone brightly over me through three panes of glass in
the window, the fourth of which was stopped up with an old petticoat.
I woke with Phoebe's warm kiss on my mouth. We had slept together, for
the older folks considered us too young for it to make any difference.
We lay side by side all night ... and like a little man and woman we lay
together, talking, in the morning.
We could smell the cooking of eggs and bacon below ... an early
breakfast for Paul, for he had been taken by a whim that he must work in
the mine over the hill for a few weeks in order to earn some money ...
for he was a miner, as well as a puddler in the mills ... he worked in
coal mines privately run, not yet taken into the trust. He often had to
lie on his side in a shallow place, working the coal loose with his
pick--where the roof was so close he couldn't sit up straight....
* * * * *
"What shall we do to-day?" asked Phoebe of me, as we lay there, side by
side, "I say let's go swimming?"
"You and me together?" I demurred.
"In course!"
"And you a girl?"
"Can't I swim jest as well as you can?"
"Phoebe, git up, you lazy-bones," called Aunt Rachel, from the bottom of
the stairs.
"All right, Ma!"
"Johnnie, you git up, too!"
"Coming down right now, Aunt Rachel!"
"Hurry up, or your breakfast'll git cold ... the idea of you children
laying in bed like this ... what on earth are you doing up there,
talking and talking? I kin hear you buzzing away clear down here!"
I had been rapt in telling Phoebe how, when I grew to be a man, I was
going to become a great adventurer, traveller, explorer.
Phoebe sat up on the edge of the bed, lazily stretching for a moment, as
a pretty bird stretches its leg along its wing. Then, her slim, nubile
body outlined sharply in the brilliant day, she stood up, slipped off
her flannel nightgown with a natural, unaffected movement, and stood
naked before me.
* * * * *
It was a custom of mine to swing my feet as I ate; "just like a little
calf wags its tail when it sucks its mother's tit," my grandmother would
say. I swung my feet vigorously that morning, but did not eat noisily,
as my uncles, all my male relatives, in fact, did. I never made a noise
when I ate. I handled my food delicately by instinct. If I found a fly
in anything it generally made me sick to my stomach.
Feeling warm, I suppose, in her heart toward me, because I was different
in my ways, and frail-looking, and spoke a sort of book-English and not
the _lingua franca_ that obtained as speech in the Middle West, my Aunt
Rachel heaped my plate with griddle cakes, which she made specially for
me.
"You're goin' to be diff'rent from the rest, the way you read books and
newspapers," she remarked half-reverentially.
* * * * *
A foamy bend in a racing brook where an elbow of rock made a swirling
pool about four-foot deep. Phoebe took me there.
We undressed.
How smooth-bodied she was, how different from me! I studied her with
abashed, veiled glances. The way she wound her hair on the top of her
head, to put it out of the way, made her look like a woman in miniature.
She dove first, like a water-rat. I followed on her heels.
We both shot to the surface immediately. For all the warmth of the day,
the water was deceptively icy. We crawled out. We lay on the bank, in
the good sun, gasping....
* * * * *
As we lay there, I spoke to her of her difference ... a thing which was
for the first time brought home to me in clear eyesight.
Phoebe proceeded to blaze her way into my imagination with quaint,
direct, explanatory talk ... things she had picked up God knows where
... grotesque details ... Rabelaisan concentrations on seldom-expressed
particulars....
I learned many things at once from Phoebe ... twisted and childish, but
at least more fundamental than the silly stories about storks and
rabbits that brought babies down chimneys, or hid them in hollow stumps
... about benevolent doctors, who, when desired by the mothers and
fathers, brought additions to the family, from nowhere!...
The house-cat ... kittens and the way they came ... surely I knew, but
had not lifted the analogy up the scale....
A furtive hand touched mine, interwove itself, finger with thrilling
finger ... close together, we laughed into each other's eyes, over-joyed
that we knew more than our elders thought we knew....
Girls, just at the gate of adolescence, possess a directness of purpose
which, afterwards, is looked upon as a distinct, masculine
prerogative....
Phoebe drew closer to me, pressing against me ... but a fierce, battling
reluctance rose in my breast....
* * * * *
She was astonished, stunned by my negation.
Silently I dressed,--she, with a sullen pout on her fresh, childish
mouth.
"You fool! I hate you! You're no damn good!" she cried passionately.
With a cruel pleasure in the action, I beat her on the back. She began
to sob.
Then we walked on a space. And we sat down together on the crest of a
hill. My mood changed, and I held her close to me, with one arm flung
about her, till she quietened down from her sobbing. I was full of a
power I had never known before.
* * * * *
I have told of the big, double house my grandmother had for renting, and
how she might have made a good living renting it out, if she had used a
little business sense ... but now she let the whole of it to a caravan
of gypsies for their winter quarters,--who, instead of paying rent,
actually held her and Millie in _their_ debt by reading their palms,
sometimes twice a day ... I think it was my Uncle Joe who at last ousted
them....
* * * * *
When I came back from Aunt Rachel's I found a voluble, fat, dirty, old,
yellow-haired tramp established in the ground floor of the same house.
He had, in the first place, come to our back door to beg a hand-out.
And, sitting on the doorstep and eating, and drinking coffee, he had
persuaded my grandmother that if she would give him a place to locate on
credit he knew a way to clear a whole lot of money. His project for
making money was the selling of home-made hominy to the restaurants up
in town.
* * * * *
I found him squatted on the bare floor, with no furniture in the room.
He had a couple of dingy wash-boilers which he had picked up from the
big garbage-dump near the race-track.
Day in, day out, I spent my time with this tramp, listening to his
stories of the pleasures and adventures of tramp-life.
I see him still, wiping his nose on his ragged coat-sleeve as he
vociferates....
When one day he disappeared, leaving boilers, hominy and all, behind, I
missed his yarns as much as my grandmother missed her unpaid rent.
* * * * *
It appears that at this time my grandfather had a manufacturing plant
for the terra cotta invention he had stolen from his comrade-in-arms, in
Virginia somewhere, and that, during all these years, he had had Landon
working with him,--and now word had come to us that Landon was leaving
for Mornington again.
My grandmother was mad about him, her youngest ... always spoke of him
as "her baby" ... informed me again and again that he was the most
accomplished, the handsomest man the Gregory family had ever produced.
* * * * *
Landon arrived. He walked up to the front porch from the road. He came
in with a long, free stride ... he gave an eager, boyish laugh ... he
plumped down his big, bulged-to-bursting grip with a bang.
"Hello, Ma!... hello, Millie!... well, well, so this is Duncan's kid?...
how big he's grown!"
Landon's fine, even, white teeth gleamed a smile at me.
Granma couldn't say a word ... she just looked at him ... and looked at
him ... and looked at him ... after a long while she began saying his
name over and over again....
"Landon, Landon, Landon,"--holding him close.
Landon began living with us regularly as one of the family. He went to
work in the steel mills, and was energetic and tireless when he worked,
which he did, enough to pay his way and not be a burden on others. He
performed the hardest kinds of labour in the mills.
But often he laid off for long stretches at a time and travelled about
with a wild gang of young men and women, attending dances, drinking,
gambling.
Nothing seemed to hurt him, he was so strong.
At most of the drinking bouts, where the object was to see who could
take down the most beer, Landon would win by drinking all he could
hold, then stepping outside on another pretext ... where he would push
his finger down his throat and spout out all he had drunk. Then he would
go back and drink more.
Sunday afternoons were the big gambling and card-playing times in our
semi-rural neighbourhood.
The "boys" spent the day till dusk in the woods back of Babson's Hill.
They drank and played cards. Landon taught me every card game there was.
He could play the mouth-organ famously, too ... and the guitar and
banjo. And he had a good strong voice with a rollick in it. And he was
also a great mimic ... one of his stunts he called "the barnyard," in
which he imitated with astonishing likeness the sounds every farm-animal
or bird makes ... and by drumming on his guitar as he played, and by the
energetic use of his mouth-organ at the same time, he could also make
you think a circus band was swinging up the street, with clowns and
camels and elephants.
* * * * *
His great fault was that he must have someone to bully and domineer. And
he began picking on me, trying to force me to model my life on his
pattern of what he thought it should be.
One day I saw him eating raw steak with vinegar. I told him it made me
sick to see it.
"Well, you'll have to eat some, too, for saying that." And he chased me
around and 'round the table and room till he caught me. He held me,
while I kicked and protested. He compelled me, by forcing his finger and
thumb painfully against my jaws, to open my mouth and eat. He struck me
to make me swallow.
Everything I didn't want to do he made me do ... he took to beating me
on every pretext. When my grandmother protested, he said he was only
educating me the way I should go ... that I had been let run wild too
long without a mastering hand, and with only women in the house. He must
make a man out of me....
My reading meant more to me than anything else. I was never so happy as
when I was sitting humped up over a book, in some obscure corner of the
house, where Uncle Landon, now grown the incarnate demon of my life,
could not find me.
It was a trick of his, when he surprised me stooping over a book, to hit
me a terrific thwack between the shoulder-blades, a blow that made my
backbone tingle with pain.
"Set up straight! Do you want to be a hump-back when you grow big?"
His pursuit drove me from corner to corner, till I lost my mischievous
boldness and began to act timid and fearful.
Whenever I failed to obey Granma, that was his opportunity. (Millie
would cry triumphantly, "_Now_ you have someone to make you be good!")
The veins on his handsome, curly forehead would swell with delight, as
he caught me and whipped me ... till Granma would step in and make him
stop ... but often he would over-rule her, and keep it up till his right
arm was actually tired. And he would leave me to crawl off, sobbing dry
sobs, incapable of more tears.
A black hatred of him began to gnaw at my heart ... I dreamed still of
what I would do when I had grown to be a man ... but now it was not any
more to be a great traveller or explorer, but to grow into a strong man
and kill my uncle, first putting him to some savage form of torture ...
torture that would last a long, long while.
He would often see it in my eyes.
"Don't you look at me that way!" with a swipe of the hand.
* * * * *
Out in the woods I caught a dozen big yellow spiders, the kind that make
pretty silver traceries, like handwriting with a flourish--on their
morning webs.
I brought these spiders home in a tin can and transferred them to some
empty fruit jars in the cellar, keeping them for some boyish reason or
other, in pairs, and putting in flies for them.
Aunt Millie came upon them and set up a scream that brought Uncle "Lan,"
as we called him, down to see what was the matter....
I took my beating in silence. I would no longer beg and plead for mercy.
After he had finished, I lay across the sloping cellar door, lumpish and
still, inwardly a shaking jelly of horror.
I was wanting to die ... these successive humiliations seemed too great
to live through.
* * * * *
The grey light of morning filtering in.
Lan stood over my bed.
"--want to go hunting with me to-day?... shootin' blackbirds?"
"Yes, Uncle Lan," I assented, my mind divided between fear of him and
eagerness to go.
In the kitchen we ate some fried eggs and drank our coffee in silence.
Then we trudged on through the dew-wet fields, drenched to the knees as
if having waded through a brook.
Lan bore his double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder. He shot into a
tree-top full of bickering blackbirds and brought three down, torn,
flopping, bleeding. He thrust them into his sack, which reddened
through, and we went on ... still in silence. The silence began to make
me tremble but I was glad, anyhow, that I had gone with him. I
conjectured that he had brought me a-field to give me a final
whipping--"to teach me to mind Granma."
"--had to bring you out here ... the women are too chicken-hearted--they
stop me too soon...."
"--Pity your pa's away ... don't do to leave a kid alone with women
folks ... they don't make him walk the chalk enough!"
It was about an hour after sunrise. We had come to an open field among
trees. Lan set down his gun against a tree-trunk.
"--needn't make to run ... I can catch you, no matter how fast you go."
He cut a heavy stick from a hickory.
"Come on and take your medicine ... I'm goin' away to-morrow to Halton,
and I want to leave you something to remember me by--so that you'll obey
Ma and Millie while I'm gone. If you don't, when I come back, you'll
catch it all over again."
My heart was going like a steam engine. At the last moment I started to
run, my legs sinking beneath me. He was upon me with my first few steps,
and had me by the scruff of the neck, and brought down the cudgel over
me.
Then an amazing thing happened inside me. It seemed that the blows were
descending on someone else, not me. The pain of them was a dull,
far-away thing. Weak, fragile child that I was (known among the other
children as "Skinny Gregory" and "Spider-Legs") a man's slow fury was
kindling in me ... let Lan beat me for a year. It didn't matter. When I
grew up I would kill him for this.
I began to curse boldly at him, calling him by all the obscene terms I
had ever learned or heard. This, and the astounding fact that I no
longer squirmed nor cried out, but physically yielded to him, as limp as
an empty sack, brought him to a puzzled stop. But he sent me an extra
blow for good measure as he flung me aside. That blow rattled about my
head, missing my shoulders at which it had been aimed. I saw a shower
of hot sparks soaring upward into a black void.
I woke with water trickling down my face and all over me. I heard, far
off, my uncle's voice calling, cajoling, coaxing, with great fright
sounding through it....
"Johnnie, Johnnie ... I'm so sorry ... Johnnie, only speak to me!" He
was behaving exactly like Aunt Millie when she had St. Vitus' dance.
He began tending me gently like a woman. He built a fire and made some
coffee over it--he had brought coffee and some lunch. I crouched white
and still, saying not a word.
Landon squatted with his back turned, watching the coffee. His shotgun,
leaning against the tree-trunk, caught my eye. I crept toward that
shotgun. I trembled with anticipatory pleasure. God, but now I would pay
him back!...
But it was too heavy. I had struggled and brought it up, however, half
to my shoulder, when that uncanny instinct that sometimes comes to
people in mortal danger, came to Uncle Lan. He looked about.
He went as pale as a sheet of paper.
"--God, Johnnie!" he almost screamed my name.
I dropped the gun in the grass, sullenly, never speaking.
"Johnnie, were you--were you?" he faltered, unnerved.
"Yes, I was going to give you both barrels ... and I'm sorry I didn't."
All his desire to whip me had gone up like smoke.
"Yes, and I'll tell you what, you big, dirty ----, I'll kill you yet,
when I grow big."
* * * * *
That night I fainted at supper. When Granma put me to bed she saw how
bruised and wealed I was all over ... for the first time she went after
Uncle Lan--turned into a furious thing.
* * * * *
Shortly after, I was taken sick with typhoid fever. They used the
starvation cure for it, in those days. When they began to give me solid
food, I chased single grains of rice that fell out of the plate, about
the quilt, just as a jeweller would pearls, if a necklace of them broke.
* * * * *
With my recovery came news, after many days, of my father.
The Hunkies were pushing out the Irish from the mills--cheaper labour.
My grandmother could not afford to board the Hunkies, they lived so
cheaply. Renewed poverty was breaking our household up.
My grandmother was about to begin her living about from house to house
with her married sons and daughters.
My father was sending for me to come East. He had a good job there in
the Composite Works at Haberford. He was at last able to take care of
his son--his only child.
* * * * *
My grandmother and my aunt Millie took me to the railroad station. I
tried to be brave and not cry. I succeeded, till the train began to pull
out. Then I cried very much.
The face of my grandmother pulled awry with grief and flowing tears.
Aunt Millie wept, too.
No, I wouldn't leave them. I would stay with them, work till I was rich
and prosperous, never marry, give all my life to taking care of them, to
saving them from the bitter grinding poverty we had shared together.
I ran into the vestibule. But the train was gathering speed so rapidly
that I did not dare jump off.
I took my seat again. Soon my tears dried.
The trees flapped by. The telegraph poles danced off in irregular lines.
I became acquainted with my fellow passengers. I was happy.
I made romance out of every red and green lamp in the railroad yards we
passed through, out of the dingy little restaurants in which I ate....
The mysterious swaying to and fro of the curtains in the sleeper
thrilled me, as I looked out from my narrow berth.
In the smoker I listened till late to the talk of the drummers who
clenched big black cigars between their teeth, or slender Pittsburgh
stogies, expertly flicking off the grey ash with their little fingers,
as they yarned.
I wore a tag on my coat lapel with my name and destination written on
it. My grandmother had put it there in a painful, scrawling hand.
* * * * *
The swing out over wide, salt-bitten marshes, the Jersey marshes grey
and smoky before dawn!... then, far off, on the horizon line, New York,
serrate, mountainous, going upward great and shining in the still dawn!
* * * * *
Beneath a high, vast, clamorous roof of glass....
As I stepped down to the platform my father met me.
I knew him instantly though it had been years since I had seen him.
* * * * *
My father whisked me once more across the long Jersey marshes. To
Haberford. There, on the edge of the town, composed of a multitude of
stone-built, separate, tin-roofed houses, stood the Composite Works. My
father was foreman of the drying department, in which the highly
inflammable sheets of composite were hung to dry....
My father rented a large, front room, with a closet for clothes, of a
commuting feed merchant named Jenkins ... whose house stood three or
four blocks distant from the works.
So we, my father and I, lived in that one room. But I had it to myself
most of the time, excepting at night, when we shared the big double bed.
* * * * *
Still only a child, I was affectionate toward him. And, till he
discouraged me, I kissed him good night every night, I liked the smell
of the cigars he smoked.
I wanted my father to be more affectionate to me, to notice me more. I
thought that a father should be something intuitively understanding and
sympathetic. And mine was offish ... of a different species.. wearing
his trousers always neatly pressed ... and his neckties--he had them
hanging in a neat, perfect row, never disarranged. The ends of them were
always pulled even over the smooth stick on which they hung.
I can see my father yet, as he stands before the mirror, painstakingly
adjusting the tie he had chosen for the day's wear.
I was not at all like him. Where I took my knee britches off, there I
dropped them. They sprawled, as if half-alive, on the floor ... my
shirt, clinging with one arm over a chair, as if to keep from falling to
the floor.. my cap, flung hurriedly into a corner.
* * * * *
"Christ, Johnnie, won't you ever learn to be neat or civilised? What
kind of a boy are you, anyhow?"
He thought I was stubborn, was determined not to obey him, for again and
again I flung things about in the same disorder for which I was rebuked.
But a grey chaos was settling over me. I trembled often like a person
under a strange seizure. My mind did not readily respond to questions.
It went here and there in a welter. Day dreams chased through my mind
one after another in hurried heaps of confusion. I was lost ... groping
... in a curious new world of growing emotions leavened with grievous,
shapeless thoughts.
Strange involuntary rhythms swung through my spirit and body. Fantastic
imaginations took possession of me.
And I prayed at night, kneeling, great waves of religious emotion going
over me. And when my father saw me praying by the bedside, I felt
awkwardly, shamefully happy that he saw me. And I took to posing a
childishness, an innocence toward him.
Jenkins, the little stringy feed merchant, had two daughters, one
thirteen, Alva, and another Silvia, who was fifteen or sixteen.. and a
son, Jimmy, about seven....
It was over Alva and Silvia that my father and Jenkins used to come
together, teasing me. And, though the girls drew me with an enchanting
curiosity, I would protest that I didn't like girls ... that when I
became full-grown I would never marry, but would study books and mind my
business, single....
After this close, crafty, lascivious joking between them, my father
would end proudly with--
"Johnnie's a strange boy, he really doesn't care about such things. All
he cares about is books."
So I succeeded in completely fooling my father as to the changes going
on within me.
* * * * *
Though I had not an atom of belief left in orthodox Christianity (or
thought I had not) I still possessed this all-pervasive need to pray to
God. A need as strong as physical hunger.
Torn with these curious, new, sweet tumults, I turned to Him. And I
prayed to be pure ... like Sir Galahad, or any of the old knights who
wore their lady's favour in chastity, a male maiden,--and yet achieved
great quests and were manly in their deeds....
* * * * *
The crying and singing of the multitudinous life of insects and animals
in the spring marshes under the stars almost made me weep, as I roamed
about, distracted yet exalted, alone, at night.
I was studying the stars, locating the constellations with a little book
of star-maps I possessed.
I wanted, was in search of, something ... something ... maybe other
worlds could give this something to me ... what vistas of infinite
imagination I saw about me in the wide-stretching, star-sprinkled sky!
Dreaming of other worlds swinging around other suns, seething with
strange millions of inhabitants, through all space, I took to reading
books on astronomy ... Newcomb ... Proctor's _Other Worlds_ ... Camille
Flammarion ... Garret Serviss as he wrote in the daily papers ... and
novels and romances dealing with life on the moon, on Mars, on Venus....
During my night-rovings I lay down in dark hollows, sometimes, and
prayed to God as fervently as if the next moment I might expect His
shining face to look down at me out of the velvet, far-reaching
blackness of night:
"O God, make me pure, and wonderful ... let me do great things for
humanity ... make me handsome, too, O God, so that girls and women will
love me, and wonder at me, in awe, while I pass by unperturbed--till one
day, having kept myself wholly for _her_ as she has kept herself for
me,--give me then the one wonderful and beautiful white maiden who will
be mine ... mine ... all and alone and altogether, as I shall be all and
alone and altogether hers. And let me do things to be wondered at by
watching multitudes, while bands play and people applaud."
Such was my mad, adolescent prayer, while the stars seemed to answer in
sympathetic silence. And I would both laugh and weep, thrilled to the
core with ineffable, enormous joy because of things I could not
understand ... and I would want to shout and dance extravagantly.
* * * * *
The Jenkins girls were curious about me, and while they, together with
the rest of the feed merchant's family, thought me slightly "touched,"
still they liked the unusual things I said about the stars ... and about
great men whose biographies I was reading ... and about Steele's Zoology
I was studying, committing all the Latin nomenclature of classification
to heart, with a curious hunger for even the husks and impedimenta of
learning....
Silvia was a rose, half-opened ... an exquisite young creature. Alva was
gawky and younger. She was callow and moulting, flat-footed and
long-shanked. Her face was sallow and full of freckles.
In the long Winter evenings we sat together by the warmth of the kitchen
stove, alone, studying our lessons,--the place given over entirely to us
for our school work.
A touch of the hand with either of them, but with Silvia especially, was
a superb intoxication, an ecstasy I have never since known. When all my
power of feeling fluttered into my fingers ... and when we kissed, each
night, good-night (the girls kissed me because I pretended to be
embarrassed, to object to it) our homework somehow done,--the thought of
their kisses was a memory to lie and roll in, for hours, after going to
bed.
I would pull away as far as I could from my father, and think
luxuriously, awake sometimes till dawn.
* * * * *
I hated school so that I ran away. For the first time in my life, but by
no means my last, I hopped a freight.
I was absent several weeks.
When I returned, weary, and dirty from riding in coal cars, my father
was so glad to see me he didn't whip me. He was, in fact, a little proud
of me. For he was always boastful of the many miles he had travelled
through the various states, as salesman, not many years before. And
after I had bathed, and had put on the new suit which he bought me, I
grew talkative about my adventures, too.
I now informed my father that I wanted to go to work. Which I didn't so
very much. But anything, if only it was not going to school. He was not
averse to my getting a job. He took out papers for me, and gave me work
under him, in the drying department of the Composite Works. My wage was
three dollars a week. My task, to hang the thin sheets of composite, cut
from three to fifteen hundredths of an inch in thickness, on metal clips
to dry.
In the Composite Works I discovered a new world--the world of factory
life.
I liked to be sent to the other departments on errands. There were
whirling wheels and steadily recurring, ever-lapsing belts ... and men
and women working and working in thin fine dust, or among a strong smell
as of rubbed amber--the characteristic smell of composite when subjected
to friction....
And these men and women were continually joking and jesting and making
horse-play at one another's expense, as rough people in their social
unease do.
They seemed part and adjunct to the machines, the workers! Strong,
sturdy, bared forearms flashed regularly like moving, rhythmic shafts
... deft hands clasped and reached, making only necessary movements.
Each department housed a different kind of worker. In the grinding,
squealing, squeaking, buzzing machine shop the men were not mixed with
women.
They were alert, well-muscled; their faces were streaked with paleness
and a black smutch like dancers made up for a masquerade. Always they
were seeking for a vigorous joke to play on someone. And, if the trick
were perpetrated within the code, the foreman himself enjoyed it,
laughing grimly with the "boys."
Once I was sent to the machine shop for "strap oil." I was thrown over a
greasy bench and was given it--the laying on of a heavy strap not at all
gently! I ran away, outraged, to tell my father; as I left, the men
seemed more attentive to their work than ever. They smiled quietly to
themselves.
In the comb department the throwing of chunks of composite was the
workers' chief diversion. And if you were strange there, you were sure
to be hit as you passed through.
The acid house was a gruesome place. Everything in it and for yards
around it, was covered with a yellow blight, as if the slight beard of
some pestilential fungous were sprouting ... the only people the company
could induce to work there were foreigners who knew little of
America.... Swedes mostly ... attentive churchgoers on Sunday,--who on
week-days, and overtime at nights, laboured their lives out among the
pungent, lung-eating vats of acid. The fumes rose in yellow clouds. Each
man wore something over his nose and mouth resembling a sponge. But
many, grown careless, or through a silly code of mistaken manliness,
dispensed with this safeguard part of the time. And whether they
dispensed with it or not, the lives of the workers in the acid house was
not much more than a matter of a few years ... big, hulking, healthy
Swedes, newly arrived, with roses in their cheeks like fair, young
girls, faded perceptibly from day to day, into hollow-cheeked,
jaundice-coloured death's-heads. They went about, soon, with eyes that
had grey gaunt hollows about them--pits already cavernous like the
eye-pits of a skull.
* * * * *
"Well, they don't _have_ to work in there unless they want to, do they?"
"Ah, they're only a lot of foreigners anyhow."
* * * * *
Three dollars a week was a lot of money for me ... a fortune, because I
had never owned anything higher than nickles and dimes before.
And my father, for the first few weeks, allowed me to have all I earned,
to do with as I wished. Later on he made me save two dollars a week.
Each Saturday I went down to Newark and bought books ... very cheap,
second hand ones, at Breasted's book store.
Every decisive influence in life has been a book, every vital change in
my life, I might say, has been brought about by a book.
My father owned a copy of Lord Byron in one volume. It was the only book
he cared for, outside of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, together with, of
course, his own various books on Free Masonry and other secret
societies.
At first, oddly enough, it was my instinct for pedantry and linguistic
learning that drew me to Byron. I became enamoured of the Latin and
Greek quotations with which he headed his lyrics in _Hours of Idleness_,
and laboriously I copied them, lying on my belly on the floor, under the
lamp light. And under these quotations I indited boyish rhymes of my
own.
Then I began to read--_Manfred, Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus_--the
Deformed Transformed ... The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, The
Prisoner of Chillon_.
The frontispiece to the book was a portrait of Byron with flowing tie
and open shirt. Much as a devout Catholic wears a gold cross around his
neck to signify his belief, with a like devoutness I took to wearing my
shirt open at the neck, and a loose, flowing black tie. And I ruffled my
hair in the Byronic style.
"I see you're discovering Byron," my father laughed.
Then he slyly intimated that the best of the poet's works I had
evidently overlooked, _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_. And he quoted me
the passage about the lifted skirt above the peeking ankle. And he
reinforced his observation by grinning salaciously.
From that time on I searched with all the fever of adolescence through
Byron for every passage which bore on sex, the mystery of which was
beginning to devour my days.
I read and pondered, shaking with eagerness, the stories of Haidee, of
Antonia and Julia--the tale of the dream of Dudu. I dwelt in a
musk-scented room of imagination. Silver fountains played about me.
Light forms flowed and undulated in white draperies over mosaiced
pavements ... flashing dark eyes shone mysteriously and amorously,
starry through curtains and veils.
My every thought was alert with naive, speculative curiosity concerning
the mystery of woman.
Through Byron I learned about Moore. I procured the latter's _Lalla
Rookh_, his odes of Anacreon.
From Byron and Moore I built up an adolescent ideal of
woman,--exquisitely sensual and sexual, and yet an angel, superior to
men: an ideal of a fellow creature who was both a living, breathing
mystery and a walking sweetmeat ... a white creation moved and actuated
by instinct and intuition--a perpetually inexplicable ecstasy and
madness to man.
I drew more and more apart to myself. Always looked upon as queer by the
good, bourgeois families that surrounded us, I was now considered madder
still.
* * * * *
How wonderful it would be to become a hermit on some far mountain side,
wearing a grey robe, clear-browed and calmly speculative under the
stars--or, maybe,--more wonderful: a singer for men, a travelling
minstrel--in each case, whether minstrel or hermit, whether teaching
great doctrines or singing great songs for all the world--to have come
to me, as a pilgrim seeking enlightenment, the most beautiful maiden in
the world, one who was innocent of what man meant. And together we would
learn the mystery of life, and live in mutual purity and innocence.
* * * * *
The strangeness of my physical person lured me. I marvelled at,
scrutinised intimately the wonder of myself. I was insatiable in my
curiosities.
* * * * *
My discovery of my body, and my books, held me in equal bondage. I
neglected my work in the drying room. My father was vexed. He'd hunt me
out of the obscure corners back of the hanging sheets of composite where
I hid, absorbed in myself and the book I held, and would run me back to
work.
* * * * *
One day, in the factory, two other boys on an errand from another
department, came back where I sat, in a hidden nook, reading Thompson's
_Seasons_. One of them spit over my shoulder, between the leaves. I
leaped to my feet, infuriated, and a fight began. The desecration of my
beloved poetry gave me such angry strength that I struck out lustily and
dropped both of them....
Rushing in on the uproar and blaming me for it, my father seized me by
the collar. He booted the other boys off, who were by this time on their
feet again, took me up into the water-tower, and beat me with one of the
heavy sticks, with metal clips on it, that was used for hanging the
composite on.
Still trembling with the fight, I shook with a superadded ague of fear.
My father's chastisement brought back to me with a chill the remembrance
of the beatings Uncle Landon had given me.
* * * * *
"By God, Johnnie, this is the only thing there's left to do with you."
He flung me aside. I lay there sobbing.
"Tell me, my boy, what _is_ the matter with you?" he asked, softening.
Unlike Landon, he was usually gentle with me. He seldom treated me
harshly.
"Father, I don't want to work any more."
"Don't want to work?... but you quit school just to _go_ to work, at
your own wish!"
"I want to go back to school!"
"Back to school?... you'll be behind the rest by now."
"I've been studying a lot by myself," I replied, forgetting the feel of
the stick already and absorbed in the new idea.
By this time we were down the stairs again, and I was sitting by my
father's desk. He took up the unlighted cigar he always carried in his
mouth (for smoking was not allowed among such inflammable material as
composite). He sucked at it thoughtfully from habit, as if he were
smoking.
"Look here, my son, what _is_ the matter with you ... won't you tell
your daddy?"
"Nothing's the matter with me, Pop!"
"You're getting thin as a shadow ... are you feeling sick?"
"No, Pop!"
"You're a queer little duck."
There was a long silence.
"You're always reading ... good books too ... yet you're no more good in
school than you are at work ... I can't make you out, by the living God,
I can't ... what is it you want to be?"
"I don't know, only I want to go back to school again."
"But what did you leave for?"
"I hated arithmetic."
"What do you want to study, then?"
"Languages."
"Would you like a special course in the high school?
"Principal Balling of the Keeley Heights High School might be able to
work you in. He is a brother Mason of mine."
"I know some Latin and Greek and Ancient History already. I have been
teaching myself."
"Well, you _are_ a queer fish ... there never was anyone like you in the
family, except your mother. She used to read and read, and read. And
once or twice she wrote a short story ... had one accepted, even, by the
_Youth's Companion_ once, but never printed."
* * * * *
Though it was some months off till the Fall term began, on the strength
of my desire to return to school my father let me throw up my job....
But we soon found out that, brother in the bond, or not, Principal
Balling could not get me into high school because I was not well enough
prepared. My studying and reading by myself, though it had been quite
wide, had also been too desultory. The principal advised a winter in the
night school where men and boys who had been delayed in their education
went to learn.
I ran about that summer, with a gang of fellow adolescents; our
headquarters, strange to say, being the front room and outside steps of
an undertaker's establishment. This was because our leader was the
undertaker's boy-of-all-work. Harry Mitchell was his name. Harry, a sort
of young tramp, fat and pimply-faced, had jaunted into our town one day
from New York, and had found work with the undertaker. Harry had watery
blue eyes and a round, moon face. He was a whirlwind fighter but he
never fought with us. It was only with the leaders of other gangs or
with strangers that he fought.
Harry continued our education in the secrets and mysteries of life, in
the stable-boy and gutter way,--by passing about among us books from a
sort of underground library ... vile things, fluently conceived and made
even more vivid and animal with obscene and unimaginable illustrations.
And our minds were trailed black with slime.
And whole afternoons we stood about on the sidewalk jeering and
fleering, jigging and singing, talking loud, horse-laughing, and
hungrily eyeing the girls and women that passed by, who tried hard to
seem, as they went, not self-conscious and stiff-stepping because of our
observation ... and sometimes we whistled after them or called out to
them in falsetto voices.
* * * * *
As a child my play had been strenuous and absorbing, like work that one
is happy at, so that at night I fell asleep with all the pleasant
fatigue of a labourer.
It is the adolescent who loafs and dawdles on street corners. For the
cruel and fearful urge of sex stirs so powerfully in him, that he hardly
knows what to do, and all his days and nights he writhes in the grip of
terrible instincts.
* * * * *
Yet, in the midst of the turbidness of adolescence, I was still two
distinct personalities. With my underground library of filth hidden
away where my father could not find it, at the same time I kept and
read my other books. The first were for the moments of madness and
curious ecstasy I had learned how to induce.
But my better self periodically revolted. And I took oath that I would
never again spew a filthy expression from my mouth or do an ill thing. I
suffered all the agonies of the damned in hell. I believe hell to be the
invention of adolescence.
Always, inevitably, I returned to my wallow and the gang.
* * * * *
We were not always loafing in front of the undertaker's shop. Sometimes
we were quite active. Many windows and street lamps were smashed. And we
derived great joy from being pursued by the "cops"--especially by a
certain fat one, for whom we made life a continual burden.
Once we went in a body to the outskirts of the town and stoned a
greenhouse. Its owner chased us across ploughed fields. We flung stones
back at him. One hit him with a dull thud and made him cry out with
pain, and he left off pursuing us. It was so dark we could not be
identified.
One of our favourite diversions was to follow mature lovers as they
strolled a-field, hoping to catch them in the midst of intimate
endearments.
* * * * *
My father received a raise of a few dollars in salary. As it was they
paid him too little, because he was easy-going. The additional weekly
money warranted our leaving the Jenkinses and renting four rooms all our
own, over the main street. This meant that I was to have a whole room to
myself, and I was glad ... a whole room where I could stand a small
writing desk and set up my books in rows. With an extreme effort I
burned my underground books.
* * * * *
All the women liked my father. He dressed neatly and well. His trousers
were never without their fresh crease. He was very vain of his neat
appearance, even to the wearing of a fresh-cut flower in his buttonhole.
This vanity made him also wear his derby indoors and out, because of his
entirely bald head.
Every time he could devise an excuse for going to the departments where
the women worked, he would do so, and flirt with them. He, for this
reason I am sure, made special friends with Schlegel, foreman of the
collar department. I never saw a man derive a keener pleasure out of
just standing and talking with women.
Though, like most men, he enjoyed a smutty story, yet I never heard him
say a really gross thing about any woman. And his language was always in
good English, with few curses and oaths in it.
* * * * *
Our new place was a bit of heaven to me. I procured a copy of Whitman's
_Leaves of Grass_, of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ and _Descent of Man_.
Laboriously I delved through these last two books, my knowledge of
elementary zoology helping me to the explication of their meaning.
The theory of evolution came as a natural thing to me. It seemed that I
knew it all, before,--as I did, because, in my own way, I had thought
out the problem of the growth of the varying forms of animal life,
exactly to the Darwinian conclusion.
Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_ became my Bible.
* * * * *
It was at this time that I made the harrowing discovery that I had been
working evil on myself ... through an advertisement of a quack in a
daily paper.
And now I became an anchorite battling to save myself from the newly
discovered monstrosity of the flesh.... For several days I would be the
victor, but the thing I hugged to my bosom would finally win. Then would
follow a terror beyond comprehension, a horror of remorse and
degradation that human nature seemed too frail to bear. I grew thinner
still. I fell into a hacking cough.
And, at the same time, I became more perverse in my affectation of
innocence and purity--saying always to my father that I never could care
for girls, and that what people married for was beyond my comprehension.
Thus I threw his alarmed inquisitiveness off the track....
I procured books about sexual life. My most cherished volume was an old
family medical book with charred covers, smelling of smoke and water,
that I had dug out of the ruins of a neighbouring fire.
In the book was a picture of a nude woman, entitled _The Female Form
Divine_. I tore this from the body of the book and kept it under my
pillow.
I would draw it forth, press it against myself, speak soft words of
affection to it, caress and kiss it, fix my mind on it as if it were a
living presence. Often the grey light of dawn would put its ashen hand
across my sunken cheeks before dead-heavy, exhausted sleep proved kind
to me....
* * * * *
Again: my imagination grew to be all graveyards, sepulchral urns,
skeletons. How beautiful it would be to die young and a poet, to die
like the young English poet, Henry Kirke White, whose works I was so
enamoured of. The wan consumptive glamour of his career led me, as he
had done, to stay up all night, night after night, studying....
* * * * *
After the surging and mounting of that in me which I could not resist,
several hours of strange, abnormal calm would ensue and for that space I
would swing calm and detached from myself, like a luminous, disembodied
entity. And then it was that I would write and write. The verses would
come rushing from my pen. I must hurry with them before my early death
overtook me.
* * * * *
There were two visions I saw continually in my sleep:
One was of myself walking with a proud step down a vast hall, the usual
wreath of fame on my head. I wore a sort of toga. And of course a great
concourse of people stood apart in silent reverence on either side,
gazing at me admiringly. With the thunder of their hand-clapping I would
wake.
The other dream was of being buried alive.
I lay there, smelling the dark earth, and not being able to stir so much
as the last joint of my little finger. Yet every nerve of me ached with
sentience.. and I woke gasping, my face bathed with tears and the
moisture of terror.
* * * * *
From head to foot hot flushes swept over me. And I was stung with the
pricking of a million needles, going in sharply at every pore!... was
bathed in cold sweats. And I hoped I was dying.
* * * * *
"Johnnie, what are you doing to yourself?" And my father fixed his eyes
on me.
"Nothing, Father!"
"If you weren't such a good boy, I'd--" and he halted, to continue,
"as it is, you're a clean boy, and I'm proud of you."
I struggled hard to speak with him, to make a confidant of him, but I
could not.
"I wonder," he added with alarm in his voice, "I wonder if you're
catching consumption, the disease your mother died of ... you must be
careful of yourself."
I told him I would be careful....
"I think I'll send you back home to visit the folks this fall."
* * * * *
There was a restaurant just around the corner from where we lived in our
second story flat--a restaurant which bore the legend stuck up in the
window, "Home Cooking." The sign itself was of a dull, dirty,
fly-specked white which ought to have been a sufficient warning to the
nice palate.
The place was run by a family of three ... there was Mister Brown, the
man, a huge-built, blotch-faced, retired stone-mason, his meagre little
wife, Mrs. Brown, and their grass-widow daughter, Flora.... Flora did
but little work, except to lean familiarly and with an air of unspoken
intimacy, over the tables of the men, as she slouched up with their food
... and she liked to sit outside in the back yard when there was
sunshine ... in the hammock for more comfort ... shelling peas or
languidly peeling potatoes.
Flora's vibrant, little, wasplike mother whose nose was so sharp and red
that it made me think of Paul's ferret--she bustled and buzzed about,
doing most of the work.
* * * * *
Looking out from our back window, I could see Flora lolling, and I would
read or write a little and then the unrest would become too strong and I
would go down to her. Soon two potato knives would be working.
"Come and sit by me in the hammock."
I liked that invitation ... she was plump to heaviness and sitting in
the hammock crushed us pleasantly together.
This almost daily propinquity goaded my adolescent hunger into an
infatuation for her,--I thought I was in love with her,--though I never
quite reconciled myself to the cowlikeness with which she chewed gum.
She was as free and frank of herself as I was curious and timid.
"Johnnie, what small feet and little hands you have ... you're a
regular aristocrat."
* * * * *
A pause.
I give her a poem written to her. She reads it, letting her knife stick
in a half-peeled potato. She looks up at me out of heavy-lidded eyes.
* * * * *
"I believe you're falling in love with me."
I trembled, answered nothing, was silent.
"Kiss me!"
Seeing me so a-tremble, she obeyed her own injunction. With slow
deliberation she crushed her lips, full and voluptuous, into mine. The
warmth of them seemed to catch hold of something deep down in me, and,
with exquisite painfulness, draw it out. Blinded with emotion, I
clutched close to her. She laughed. I put one hand over her full breast
as infants do. She pushed me back.
"There, that's enough for one day--a promise of sweets to come!" and she
laughed again, with a hearty purr like a cat that has a mouse at its
mercy.
She rose and carried in the pan of potatoes we had just finished
peeling. And I saw her sturdy, but not unshapely ankles going from me as
she went up the steps from the yard, her legs gleaming white through her
half-silk hose (that were always coming down, and that she was always
twisting up, just under her knees, before my abashed eyes). She wore
shoes much too little for her plump feet ... and, when not abroad, let
them yawn open unbuttoned. And her plump body was alive and bursting
through her careless, half-fastened clothes.
She sang with a deep sultriness of voice as she walked away with the pan
of potatoes.
* * * * *
"You ought to see my Florrie read books!" exclaimed the mother.
Flora did read a lot ... but chiefly the erotic near-society novels that
Belford used to print....
"Yes, she's a smart girl, she is."
And the father....
"I won't work till the unions get better conditions for a man. I won't
be no slave to no man."
* * * * *
One sultry afternoon I went into the restaurant and found Flora away.
Poignantly disappointed, I asked where she was.
"--Gone on a trip!" her mother explained, without explaining.
From time to time Flora went on "trips."
* * * * *
And one morning, several mornings, Flora was not there to serve at the
breakfast table ... and I was hurt when I learned that she had gone back
to Newark to live, and had left no word for me. Her father told me she
"had gone back to George," meaning her never-seen husband from whom she
evidently enjoyed intervals of separation and grass-widowhood.
I was puzzled and hurt indeed, because she had not even said good-bye
to me. But soon came this brief note from her:
"Dearest Boy:--
Do come up to Newark and see me some afternoon. And come more than
once. Bring your Tennyson that you was reading aloud to me. I love
to hear you read poetry. I think you are a dear and want to see
more of you. But I suppose you have already forgotten
Your loving
FLORA."
In the absurd and pitiful folly of youth I lifted the letter to my lips
and kissed it. I trembled with eagerness till the paper rattled as I
read it again and again. It seemed like some precious holy script.
I bolted my lunch nervously and it stuck half way down in a hard lump. I
would go to her that very afternoon.
* * * * *
The car on which I rode was subject to too frequent stoppage for me. I
leaped out and walked along with brisk strides. But the car sailed forth
ahead of me now on a long stretch of roadway and I ran after it to catch
it again. The conductor looked back at me in derisive scorn and made a
significant whirling motion near his temple with his index finger,
indicating that I had wheels there....
At last I found the street where Flora lived. I trailed from door to
door till the number she had given me met my eye. It made my heart jump
and my knees give in, to be so near the quarry. For the first time I was
to be alone with a woman I desired.
At the bell, it took me a long time to gain courage to pull. But at last
I reached out my hand. I had to stand my ground. I couldn't run away
now. The bell made a tinkling sound far within.
* * * * *
The door opened cautiously. A head of touseled black hair crept out.
"Johnnie, dear! _You_!... you _are_ a surprise!"
Did I really detect an echo of disappointment in her deep, contralto
voice?
Frightened in my heart like a trapped animal, I went in. Down a long,
dusk, musty-smelling corridor and into a back-apartment on the first
floor; she led me into a room which was bed-and-sitting room combined.
In one part of it stood several upholstered chairs with covers on,
cluttered about a plain table. In the other part stood a bureau heaped
with promiscuous toilette articles, and a huge, brass-knobbed bed with a
spread of lace over its great, semi-upright pillows.
"Shall I let in a little more light, dear?"
"Do."
For the blinds were two-thirds down.
"I like to sit and think in the dark," she explained, and her one dimple
broke in a rich, brown-faced animal smile.
"Yes, but I--I want to see your lovely face," I stuttered, with much
effort at gallantry....
* * * * *
"He's not at home ... he's off at Wilmington, on a job" (meaning her
husband, though I had not asked about him). "But what made you come so
soon? You must of just got my letter!"
"I--I wanted you," I blurted ... in the next moment I was at her feet in
approved romantic fashion, following up my declaration of desire. Calmly
she let me kneel there ... I put my arms about her plump legs ... I was
almost fainting....
After a while she took me by the hair with both hands. She slowly bent
my head back as I knelt. Leaning over, she kissed deliberately, deeply
into my mouth ... then, gazing into my eyes with a puzzled expression,
as I relaxed to her--almost like something inanimate....
"Why, you dear boy, I believe you're innocent like a child. And yet you
know so much about books ... and you're so wise, too!"
As she spoke she pushed back my mad hands from their clutching and
reaching. She held both of them in hers, and closed them in against her
half-uncovered, full breasts, pressing them there.
"Do you mean to tell me that you've never gone out with the boys for a
good time?... how old are you?"
I told her I was just sixteen.
"Do you think I'm ... I'm too young?" I asked.
"I feel as if I was your mother ... and I'm not much over twenty ... but
do sit up on a chair, dear!"
She stood on her feet, shook out her dress, smiled curiously, and
started out of the room. I was up and after her, my arms around her
waist, desperate. She slid around in my arms, laughing quietly to
herself till the back of her head was against my mouth. I kissed and
kissed the top of her head. Then she turned slowly to face me, pressing
all the contours of her body into me ... she crushed her bosom to mine.
Already I was quite tall; and she was stocky and short ... she lifted
her face up to me, a curious kindling light in her eyes ... of a
phosphorescent, greenish lustre, like those chance gleams in a cat's
eyes you catch at night....
She took my little finger and deliberately bit it ... then she leaned
away from my seeking mouth, my convulsive arms....
"You want too much, all at once," she said, and, whirling about broke
away....
With the table between me and her....
"Wouldn't you like a little beer, and some sandwiches? I have some in
the ice box.... _Do_ let's have some beer and sandwiches."
I assented, though hating the bitter taste of beer, and hungry for her
instead of sandwiches. And soon we were sitting down calmly at the
table, or rather, she was sitting down calmly ... baffled, I pretended
to be calm.
As she rose for something or other, I sprang around the table and caught
her close to me once more, marvelling, at the same time, at my loss of
shyness, my new-found audacity. Again she snuggled in close to me, her
flesh like a warm, palpitating cushion.
"Flora, my darling ... help me!" I cried, half-sobbing.
"What do you mean?" laughing.
"I love you!"
"I know all _you_ want!"
"But I do love you ... see...."
And I prostrated myself, in a frenzy, at her feet.
"Say, you're the queerest kid I've ever known."
And she walked out of the room abruptly, while I rose to my feet and sat
in a chair, dejected. She came in again, a twinkle in her eye.
"Don't torture me, Flora!" I pleaded, "either send me away, or--"
"Stop pestering me ... let's talk ... read me some of that Tennyson you
gave me...." and I began reading aloud, for there was nothing else she
would for the moment, have me do....
* * * * *
"You're a poet," whimsically, "I want you to write some letters to me
because I know you must write beautiful."
"--if you will only let me love you!"
"Well, ain't I lettin' you love me?"
A perverse look came into her face, a thought, an idea that pleased
her--
"I've lots and lots of letters from men," she began, "men that have been
in love with me."
"Oh!" I exclaimed weakly ... she had just expressed a desire to add some
of mine to the pack ... the next thing that she followed up with gave me
a start--
"Your father--"
"My father?--" I echoed.
"He's written me the best letters of all ... wait a minute ... I'll read
a little here and there to you." And, gloating and triumphant, and
either not seeing or, in her vulgarity, not caring what effect the
reading of my father's love letters would have on me, she began reading
ardent passages aloud. "See!" She showed me a page to prove that it was
in his handwriting. The letters told a tale easy to understand. She was
so eager in her vanity that she read on and on without seeing in my
face what, seen, would have made her stop.
A frightful trembling seized me, a loathing, a horror. This was my
father's woman ... and ... I!...
I sat on, dumbfounded, paralysed. I remembered his stories of trips to
T---- and other places on supposed lodge business ... unluckily, I also
remembered that several times Flora had been off on trips at the same
time.
"Just listen to this, will you!" and she began at another passage.
She was so absorbed in her reading that she did not see how I was on my
feet ... had seized my hat ... was going.
"I'm sorry, Flora, but I've got to go!"
"What?" looking up and surprised, "--got to go?"
"Yes ... Yes ... I must--must go!" my lips trembled.
"Why, we're just getting acquainted ... I didn't mean for you to go
yet."
She rose, dropping the letters all in a heap.
She was the aggressive one now. She drew me to her quickly, "Stay ...
and I'll promise to be good to you!"
I pushed back, loathing ... loathing her and myself, but myself more,
because in spite of all my disgust, my pulses leaped quick again to
hers.
"Sit down again."
I did not listen, but stood.
"I was thinking that you would stay for supper and then we could go to
some show and after come back here and I would give you a good time."
* * * * *
I staggered out, shocked beyond belief, the last animal flush had died
out of me. All my body was ice-cold.
"Promise me you'll come again this day next week," she called after me
persistently.
She drew the door softly shut and left me reeling down the dark
corridor.
* * * * *
I could hardly speak to my father that night. I avoided him.
* * * * *
At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid
down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found
myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things
to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled
backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects
mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books
I had read--all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cluster of
white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into _him_.
"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"
"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall
in loathing.
"I'll call a doctor."
* * * * *
The doctor came. He felt my pulse. Put something under my tongue.
Whispered my father in a room, apart. Left.
My father returned, dejected, yet trying to act light and merry.
"What did the doctor say?" I forced myself to ask of him.
"To be frank, Johnnie ... you're old enough to learn the truth ... he
thinks you're taken down with consumption."
"That's what my mother died of."
My father shuddered and put his face down in his hands. I felt a little
sorry for him, then.
"Well you've got to go West now ... and work on a farm ... or
something."
* * * * *
I began to get ready for my trip West. Surely enough, I had consumption,
if symptoms counted ... pains under the shoulder blades ... spitting of
blood ... night-sweats....
But my mind was quickened: I read Morley's _History of English
Literature_ ... Chaucer all through ... Spenser ... even Gower's
_Confessio Amantis_ and Lydgate's ballads ... my recent discovery of
Chatterton having made me Old English-mad.
As I read the life of young Chatterton I envied him, his fame and his
early death and more than ever, I too desired to die young.
* * * * *
The week before I was to set out my father calmly discovered to me that
he intended I should work on a farm as a hand for the next four years,
when I reached Ohio ... was even willing to pay the farmer something to
employ me. This is what the doctor had prescribed as the only thing that
would save my life--work in the open air. My father had written Uncle
Beck to see that this program was inaugurated.
"I won't become a clod-hopper," I exclaimed, seeing the dreary, endless
monotony of such a life.
"But it will do you good. It will be a fine experience for you."
"If it's such a fine experience why don't you go and do it?"
"I won't stand any nonsense."
"I'd rather die.... I'm going to die anyhow."
"Yes, if you don't do what I tell you."
"I won't."
"We'll see."
"Very well, father, we _will_ see."
"If you weren't such a sick kid I'd trounce you."
* * * * *
You could approach Antonville by surrey, buggy or foot ... along a
winding length of dusty road ... or muddy ... according to rain or
shine.
My Uncle Beck drove me out in a buggy.
Aunt Alice, so patient-faced and pretty and sweet-eyed in her neat
poverty--greeted me with a warm kiss.
"Well, you'll soon be well now."
"But I won't work on a farm."
"Never mind, dear ... don't worry about that just yet."
* * * * *
That afternoon I sat with Aunt Alice in the kitchen, watching her make
bread. Everyone else was out: Uncle Beck, on a case ... Cousin Anders,
over helping with the harvest on a neighbouring farm ... Cousin Anna was
also with the harvesters, helping cook for the hands ... for the
Doctor's family needed all the outside money they could earn.
For Uncle Beck was a dreamer. He thought more of his variorum
Shakespeare than he did of his medical practice. And he was slow-going
and slow-speaking and so conscientious that he told patients the truth
... all which did not help him toward success and solid emolument. He
would take eggs in payment for his visits ... or jars of preserves ...
or fresh meat, if the farmer happened to be slaughtering.
* * * * *
"Where's Granma?" I asked Aunt Alice, as she shoved a batch of bread in
the oven.
"She's out Halton way ... she'll go crazy with joy when she gets word
you're back home. She'll start for here right off as soon as she hears
the news. She's visiting with Lan and his folks."
When I heard Lan mentioned I couldn't help giving a savage look.
Aunt Alice misinterpreted.
"What, Johnnie--won't you be glad to see her!... you ought to ... she's
said over and over again that she loved you more than she did any of her
own children."
"It isn't that--I hate Landon. I wish he was dead or someone would kill
him for me."
"Johnnie, you ought to forgive and forget. It ain't Christian."
"I don't care. I'm not a Christian."
"O Johnnie!" shocked ... then, after a pause of reproach which I
enjoyed--"your Uncle Lan's toned down a lot since then ... married ...
has four children ... one every year." And Alice laughed whimsically.
"--and he's stopped gambling and drinking, and he's got a good job as
master-mechanic in a factory....
"He was young ... he was only a boy in the days when he whipped you."
"Yes, and I suppose I was old?... I tell you, Aunt Alice, it's something
I can't forget ... the dirty coward," and I swore violently, forgetting
myself.
At that moment Uncle Beck appeared suddenly at the door, back from a
case.
"Here, here, that won't do! I don't allow that kind of language in my
household." And he gave me a severe and admonishing look before going
off on another and more urgent call that waited him.
* * * * *
"And how's Granma been getting on?"
"--aging rapidly ... " a pause, " ... hasn't got either of the two
houses on Mansion Avenue now ... sold them and divided the money among
her children ... gave us some ... and Millie ... and Lan ... wouldn't
hear of 'no' ... " parenthetically, "Uncle Joe didn't need any; he's
always prospered since the early days, you know."
"And what's Granma up to these days?" For she was always doing sweet,
ignorant, childish, impractical things.
"--spirit-rapping is it? or palmistry? or magnetic healing? or what?"
"You'll laugh!"
"Tell me!"
"She's got a beau."
"What? a beau? and she eighty if a day!"
"Yes, we--all her children--think it's absurd. And we're all trying to
advise her against it ... but she vows she's going to get married to him
anyhow."
"And who is her 'fellow'"?
"--a one-legged Civil War veteran ... a Pennsylvania Dutchman named
Snyder ... owns a house near Beaver Falls ... draws a pension ... he's a
jolly old apple-cheeked fellow ... there's no doubt they love each other
... only--only it seems rather horrible for two people as old as they
are to go and get married like two young things ... and really fall in
love, too!"
I was silent ... amused ... interested ... then--"well, Granma'll tell
me all about it when she comes ... and I can judge for myself, and," I
added whimsically, "I suppose if they love each other it ought to be all
right."
And we both laughed.
* * * * *
When Granma heard I was West she couldn't reach Antonville fast enough.
She was the same dear childlike woman, only incredibly older-looking.
Age seemed to have fallen on her like an invading army, all at once. Her
hair was, every shred of it, not only grey, but almost white. There
shone the same patient, sweet, ignorant, too-trusting eyes ... there was
the blue burst of vein on her lower lip.
After she had kissed and kissed me, stroked and stroked my head and face
in speechless love, I looked at her intently and lied to please her:
"Why, Granma, you don't look a day older."
"But I am, Johnnie, I am. I've been working hard since you left." As if
she had not worked hard _before_ I left ... she informed me that, giving
away to her children what she had received for the sale of her two
houses (that never brought her anything because of her simplicity, while
they were in her possession) she had grown tired of "being a burden to
them," as she phrased it, and had hired herself out here and there as
scrubwoman, washerwoman, housekeeper, and what not....
Later I learned that nothing could be done with her, she was so
obstinate. She had broken away despite the solicitude of all her
children--who all loved her and wanted her to stay with them.
At last she had answered an advertisement for a housekeeper ... that
appeared in a farm journal ... and so she had met her old cork-legged
veteran, whom she now had her mind set on marrying.
"But Granma, to get married at your age?"
"I'd like to ask why not?" she answered sweetly, "I feel as young as
ever when it comes to men ... and the man ... you wait till you see him
... you'll like him ... he's such a good provider, Johnnie; he draws a
steady pension of sixty dollars a month from the Government, and he'll
give me a good home."
"But any of my aunts and uncles would do the same."
"Yes, Johnnie, but it ain't the same as having a man of your own around
... there's nothing like that, Johnnie, for a woman."
"But your own children welcome you and treat you well?"
"Oh, yes, Johnnie, my little boy, but in spite of that, I feel in the
way. And, no matter how much they love me, it's better for me to have a
home of my own and a man of my own."
"Besides, Billy loves me so much," she continued, wistfully, "and even
though he's seventy whereas I'm eighty past, he says his being younger
don't make no difference ... and he's always so jolly ... always
laughing and joking."
* * * * *
"We must begin to allow for Granma," Aunt Alice told me, "she's coming
into her second childhood."
* * * * *
Granma believed thoroughly in my aspirations to become a poet. With
great delight she retailed incidents of my childhood, reminding me of a
thousand youthful escapades of which she constituted me the hero,
drawing therefrom auguries of my future greatness.
One of the incidents which alone sticks in my memory:
"Do you 'mind,'" she would say, "how you used to follow Millie about
when she papered the pantry shelves with newspapers with scalloped
edges? and how you would turn the papers and read them, right after her,
as she laid them down, and make her frantic?"
"Yes," I would respond, highly gratified with the anecdote, "and you
would say, Oh, Millie, don't get mad at the little codger, some day he
might turn out to be a great man!'"
* * * * *
Uncle Beck had a fine collection of American Letters. I found a complete
set of Hawthorne and straightway became a moody and sombre Puritan ...
and I wrote in Hawthornian prose, quaint essays and stories. And I lived
in a world of old lace and lavender, of crinoline and brocade.
And then I discovered my uncle's books on gynecology and obstetrics ...
full of guilty fevers I waited until he had gone out on a call and then
slunk into his office to read....
One afternoon my doctor-uncle came suddenly upon me, taking me unaware.
* * * * *
"Johnnie, what are you up to?"
"--was just reading your medical books."
"Come over here," already seated at his desk, on his swivel-chair, he
motioned me to a seat.
"Sit down!"
I obeyed him in humiliated silence.
He rose and closed the door, hanging the sign "Busy" outside.
* * * * *
At last I learned about myself and about life.
* * * * *
The harvesting over, Anders began to chum with me. We took long walks
together, talking of many things ... but, chiefly, of course, of those
things that take up the minds of adolescents ... of the mysteries of
creation, of life at its source ... of why men and women are so ... and
I took it for granted, after he confessed that he had fallen into the
same mistakes as I, suffering similar agonies, that he had been set
right by his father, the doctor, as I just had. I was surprised to find
he had not. So I shared with him the recent knowledge I had acquired.
* * * * *
"And you mean to tell me that Uncle Beck has said nothing to you?"
"Not a single word ... never."
"But why didn't you ask him then ... him being a doctor?"
"How can a fellow talk with his father about such things?"
"It's funny to me he didn't inform you, anyhow."
"I was his son, you see!"
* * * * *
Anders had a girl, he told me, confidingly. She was off on a visit to
Mornington, at present ... a mighty pretty little girl and the best
there was....
* * * * *
"By the way, Anders, do you know second cousin Phoebe at all?"
"Sure thing I know her ... the last time I heard of her ... which was
almost a year ago--she was wilder than ever."
"How do you mean, Anders?"
"Her folks couldn't keep her in of nights ... a gang of boys and girls
would come and whistle for her, and she'd get out, sooner or later, and
join them."
"I tell you what," I began, in an unpremeditated burst of invention,
which I straightway believed, it so appealed to my imagination, "I've
never told anybody before, but all these years I've been desperately in
love with Phoebe."
Anders scrutinised me quizzically, then the enthusiasm of the actor in
my face made him believe me....
"Well, no matter how bad she is, she certainly was a beaut, the last
time I saw her."
"I'm going," I continued "(you mustn't tell anybody), I'm going down to
Aunt Rachel's, after I leave here, and _get_ Phoebe." And eagerly and
naively we discussed the possibilities as we walked homeward....
* * * * *
After my talk with Uncle Beck all my morbidity began to melt away, and,
growing better in mind, my body grew stronger ... he wrote to my father
that it was not consumption ... so now I was turning my coming West into
a passing visit, instead of a long enforced sojourn there for the good
of my health.
* * * * *
I found different household arrangements on revisiting Aunt Rachel and
her household.
For one thing, the family had moved into town ... Newcastle ... and they
had a fine house to live in, neat and comfortable. Gone was that
atmosphere of picturesque, pioneer poverty. Though, to be sure, there
sat Josh close up against the kitchen stove, as of old. For the first
sharp days of fall were come ... he was spitting streams of tobacco, as
usual.
"I hate cities," was his first greeting to me. He squirted a brown
parabola of tobacco juice, parenthetically, into the wood-box behind the
stove, right on top of the cat that had some kittens in there.
Aunt Rachel caught him at it.
"Josh, how often have I told you you mustn't spit on that cat."
"'Scuse me, Ma, I'm kind o' absint-minded."
The incident seemed to me so funny that I laughed hard. Aunt Rachel gave
me a quiet smile.
"Drat the boy, he's allus findin' somethin' funny about things!"
This made me laugh more. But I had brought Uncle Josh a big plug of
tobacco, and he was placated, ripping off a huge chew as soon as he held
it in his hands.
The great change I have just spoken of came over the family because
Phoebe's two sisters, Jessie and Mona--who had been off studying to be
nurses, now had come back, and, taking cases in town, they were making a
good living both for themselves and the two old folks....
I had learned from Uncle Beck, as he drove me in to Mornington, that,
the last he heard of Phoebe, she was working out as a maid to "some
swells," in that city.
* * * * *
"Damme, ef I don't hate cities an' big towns," ejaculated Uncle Josh,
breaking out of a long, meditative silence, "you kain't keep no dogs
there ... onless they're muzzled ... and no ferrets, neither ... and
what 'ud be the use if you could?... there ain't nothin' to hunt anyhow
... wisht we lived back on thet old muddy hilltop agin."
* * * * *
Supper almost ready ... the appetizing smell of frying ham--there's
nothing, being cooked, smells better....
Paul came in from work ... was working steady in the mills now, Aunt
Rachel had informed me.
Paul came in without a word, his face a mask of such empty hopelessness
that I was moved by it deeply.
"Paul, you mustn't take on so. It ain't right nor religious," said Uncle
Josh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe ... he smoked and chewed in
relays. Paul replied nothing.
"Come on, folks," put in Rachel, "supper's ready ... draw your chairs
up to the table."
We ate our supper under a quiet, grey mood. An air of tragedy seemed to
hang over us ... for the life of me I couldn't understand what had
become of Paul's good-natured, rude jocosity. Why he had grown into a
silent, sorrowful man....
* * * * *
"You kin bunk up with Paul to-night, Johnnie," announced Rachel, when it
came bedtime.
Paul had already slunk off to bed right after supper. It was dark in the
room when I got there.
"Paul, where's the light?"
"--put it out ... like to lie in the dark an' think," answered a deep,
sepulchral voice.
"Whatever _is_ the matter with you, Paul?"
"Ain't you heered? Ain't Ma told you?"
"No!"
Paul struck a match and lit the lamp. I sat on the side of the bed and
talked with him.
"Ain't you heered how I been married?" he began.
"So that's it, is it?" I anticipated prematurely, "and you weren't happy
... and she went off and left you!"
"Yes, she's left me all right, Johnnie, but not that way ... she's
dead!"
And Paul stopped with a sob in his throat. I didn't know what to say to
his sudden declaration, so I just repeated foolishly, "why, I never knew
you got married!" twice.
"Christ, Johnnie, she was the best little woman in the world--such a
little creature, Johnnie ... her head didn't more'n come up to under my
armpits."
There followed a long silence, to me an awkward one; I didn't know what
to do or say. Then I perceived the best thing was to let him ease his
hurt by just talking on ... and he talked ... on and on ... in his slow,
drawling monotone ... and ever so often came the refrain, "Christ, but
she was a good woman, Johnnie ... I wish you'd 'a' knowed her."
At last I ventured, "and how--how did she come to die?"
"--baby killed her, she was that small ... she was like a little girl
... she oughtn't to of had no baby at all, doctor said...."
"I killed her, Johnnie," he cried in agony, "and that's the God's truth
of it."
Another long silence.
The lamp guttered but didn't go out. A moth had flown down its chimney,
was sizzling, charring, inside ... Paul lifted off the globe. Burnt his
hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened body to the
floor....
"But the baby?--it lived?"
"Yes, it lived ... a girl ... if it hadn't of lived ... if it had gone,
too, I wouldn't of wanted to live, either!..."
"That's why I'm workin' so hard, these days, with no lay-offs fer
huntin' or fishin' or anything."
* * * * *
The next day I learned more from Rachel of how Paul had agonized over
the death of his tiny wife ... "'she was that small you had a'most to
shake out the sheets to find her,' as Josh useter say," said Rachel
gravely and unhumorously ... and she told how the bereaved husband
savagely fought off all his womenfolk and insisted on mothering, for a
year, the baby whose birth had killed its mother.
"At last he's gittin' a little cheer in his face. But every so often the
gloomy fit comes over him like it did last night at supper. I keep
tellin' him it ain't Christian, with her dead two years a'ready--but he
won't listen ... he's got to have his fit out each time."
* * * * *
As if this had not been enough of the tragic, the next day when I asked
about Phoebe, Aunt Rachel started crying.
"Phoebe's gone, too," she sobbed.
"O, Aunt Rachel, I'm so sorry ... but I didn't know ... nobody told me."
"That's all right, Johnnie. Somehow it relieves me to talk about
Phoebe." She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a
dresser in the next room. She came out again, holding forth to me a
picture ... Phoebe's picture....
A shy, small, oval, half-wild face like that of a dryad's. Her chin
lifted as if she were some wood-creature listening to the approaching
tread of the hunter and ready on the instant to spring forth and run
along the wind....
An outdoor picture, a mere snapshot, but an accidental work of art.
Voluminous leafage blew behind and above her head, splashed with the
white of sunlight and the gloom of swaying shadow.
"Why, she's--she's beautiful!"
"Yes--got prettier and prettier every time you looked at her...."
"But," and Aunt Rachel sighed, "I couldn't do nothin' with her at all.
An' scoldin' an' whippin' done no good, neither. Josh useter whip her
till he was blue in the face, an' she wouldn't budge. Only made her more
sot and stubborner....
"--guess she was born the way she was ... she never could stay still a
minute ... always fidgettin' ... when she was a little girl, even--I
used to say, 'Now, look here, Phoebe,' I'd say, 'your ma 'ull give you a
whole dime all at once if you'll set still jest for five minutes in that
chair.' An' she'd try ... and, before sixty seconds was ticked off she'd
be on her feet, sayin', 'Ma, I guess you kin keep that dime.'
"When she took to runnin' out at nights," my great-aunt continued, in a
low voice, "yes, an' swearin' back at her pa when he gave her a bit of
his mind, it nigh broke my heart ... and sometimes she'd see me cryin',
and that would make her feel bad an' she'd quiet down fer a few days ...
an' she'd say, 'Ma, I'm goin' to be a good girl now,' an' fer maybe two
or three nights she'd help clean up the supper-things--an' then--" with
a breaking voice, "an' then all at once she'd scare me by clappin' both
hands to that pretty brown head o' hers, in sech a crazy way, an'
sayin', 'Honest, Ma, I can't stand it any longer ... this life's too
slow.... I've gotta go out where there's some life n' fun!'
"It was only toward the last that she took to sneakin' out after she
pretended to go to bed.. gangs of boys an' girls, mixed, would come an'
whistle soft fer her, under the window ... an' strange men would
sometimes hang aroun' the house ... till Josh went out an' licked a
couple.
"It drove Josh nigh crazy.
"One evenin', after this had gone on a long time, Josh ups an' says,
'Ma, Phoebe's run complete out o' hand ... she'll hafta be broke o' this
right now ... when she comes back to-night I'm going to give her the
lickin' of her life.'
"'Josh, you mustn't whip her. Let's both have a long talk with her. (I
knowed Josh 'ud hurt her bad if he whipped her. He has a bad temper when
he is het up.) Maybe goin' down on our knees with her an' prayin' might
do some good.'"
"'No, Ma, talkin' nor prayin' won't do no good ... the only thing left's
a good whippin' to straighten her out.'"
"O Aunt Rachel," I cried, all my desire of Phoebe breaking but into
tenderness. I looked at the lovely face, crossed with sunlight, full of
such quick intelligence, such mischievousness....
You can catch a wild animal in a trap, but to whip it would be sacrilege
... that might do for domesticated animals.
"Josh never laid a hand on her, though, that night ... she never came
home ... men are so awful in their pride, Johnnie ... don't you be like
that when you grow to be a man...."
Then Aunt Rachel said no more, as Paul came in at that moment. Nor did
she resume the subject.
* * * * *
Next morning I packed away to visit Uncle Lan. I might as well go, even
if I hated him. It would be too noticeable, not to go.
He was at the train, waiting for me. He proffered me his hand. To my
surprise, I took it. He seized my grip from me, put his other hand
affectionately on my shoulder.
"I've often wondered whether you'd ever forgive me for the way I beat
you.... I've learned better since."
Before I knew it my voice played me the trick of saying yes, I forgave
him.
"That's a good boy!" and Lan gave my hand such a squeeze that it almost
made me cry out with the pain of it.
* * * * *
"Lan," as we walked along, "can you tell me more about Phoebe.... Aunt
Rachel told me some, but--"
"Oh, she ended up by running away with a drummer ... she hadn't been
gone long when her ma got word from her asking her to forgive her ...
that she'd run off with a man she loved, and was to be married to him
pretty soon.... Phoebe gave no address, but the letter had a Pittsburgh
postmark....
"A month ... six months went by. Then a letter came in a strange hand.
The girl that wrote it said that she was Phoebe's 'Roommate.'" Lan
paused here, and gave me a significant look, then resumed:
"Paul went down to bring the body home, and found she'd been buried
already. They were too poor to have it dug up and brought home."
"It seems that the man that took Phoebe off was nothing but a pimp!"
* * * * *
Suicide: early one Sunday morning; early, for girls of their profession,
the two girls, Phoebe and her roommate were sitting in their bedrooms in
kimonos.
"What a nice Sunday," Phoebe had said, looking out at the window.
"Jenny," she continued to her roommate, "I have a feeling I'd like to go
to church this morning...."
Jenny had thought _that_ was rather a queer thing for Phoebe to say....
Jenny went out to go to the delicatessen around the corner, to buy a
snack for them to eat, private, away from the rest of the girls, it
being Sunday morning. She'd bring in a Sunday paper, too.
When she returned, Phoebe didn't seem to be in the room. Jenny felt that
something was wrong, had felt it all along, anyhow....
She heard a sort of gasping and gurgling....
She found Phoebe on the floor, two-thirds under the bed. Her eyes were
rolled back to the whites from agony. A creamy froth was on her mouth.
And all her mouth and chin and pretty white neck were burned brown with
the carbolic acid she had drunk.. a whole damn bottle of it.
Jenny dropped on her knees by Phoebe and called out her name--loud....
"Phoebe, why don't you speak to me!" Took her head in her lap and it
only lolled. Then she began screaming, did Jenny, and brought the whole
house up. And the madame had shouted:
"Shut up, you bitch, do you want people to think someone's gettin'
killed? Ain't we in bad enough already?"
"So Phoebe came to a bad end," commented Lan, "as we always thought she
would."
* * * * *
The nearest I came to having my long-cherished revenge on Landon:
Once, in the night, during my week's stay with him, I stepped from bed,
sleep-walking, moving toward the room where he and Aunt Emily lay.
Imagining I held a knife in my left hand (I am left-handed) to stick him
through the heart with.
But I bumped terrifically into a door half ajar, and received such a
crash between the eyes that it not only brought me broad awake, but gave
me a bump as big as a hen's egg, into the bargain.
The dream of my revenge had been so strong in my brain that still I
could feel the butcher-knife in my hand ... and I looked into the empty
palm to verify the sensation, still there, of clasping the handle.
"--that you, Johnnie?" called my uncle.
"Yep!"
"What's the matter? can't you sleep?"
"No!--got up to take a drink of water."
"You'll find a bucketful on the kitchen table, and the dipper floating
in it ... and there's matches on the stand by your bed." A pause. He
continued: "You must of run into something. I heard a bang."
"I did. I bumped my head into the door."
* * * * *
I visited Aunt Millie last.
I found her a giantess of a woman, not fat, but raw-boned and tall. Her
cheeks were still as pitted with hollows, her breath as catarrhal as
ever. But she had become a different woman since she had married.
Her husband was a widower with three children already before he took her
in marriage. He was a railroad engineer who drove a switch engine in the
yards. He was as short as she was tall ... a diminutive man, but virile
... with a deep, hoarse voice resonant like a foghorn. The little man
had an enormous chest matted with dense, black hair. It would almost
have made a whole head of hair for an average man. One could always see
this hair because he was proud of its possession, thought it denoted
virility and strength, and wore his shirt open at the neck, and several
buttons lower, in order to reveal his full hirsuteness.
Millie had already given birth to two children of her own, by him. And
she toiled about the house at endless duties, day and night, happy with
him, and loving his children and hers with an equal love. And being
adored in turn by them.
It was "Ma!" here and "Ma!" there ... the voices of the children ever
calling for her.... And she, running about, waiting on the youngsters,
baking ovensful of bread, sewing, scrubbing, dusting ... and talking,
talking, talking all the time she flew about at her ceaseless work....
Uncle Dick loved his joke, and the broader the better. As I sat across
the table from him, at mealtimes, and looked into his amused, small
twinkling eyes, I thought continually of the Miller in Chaucer's
_Canterbury Tales_....
Millie, too, was not slow at having her joke. She was roughly
affectionate of me, in memory of old days. And she continually asked me,
with loud, enjoying laughter, if I remembered this, that, and the other
bad (Rabelaisan) trick I had played on her back in Mornington....
* * * * *
But I was glad to see Haberford and the East again. I was all over my
desire to die a poet, and young.... Principal Balling had me come to see
him. He examined me in Latin and in English and History. He found that,
from study by myself, I had prepared so that I was more than able to
pass in these subjects. But when it came to mathematics I was no less
than an idiot. He informed my father that he had been mistaken in me,
before ... that he had given me a too cursory look-over, judging me
after the usual run ... he announced that he would admit me as special
student at the Keeley Heights High School.
The one thing High School gave me--my Winter there--was Shelley. In
English we touched on him briefly, mainly emphasising his _Skylark_. It
was his _Ode to the West Wind_ that made me want more of him ... with
his complete works I made myself a nuisance in class, never paying
attention to what anyone said or did, but sitting there like a man in a
trance, and, with Shelley, dreaming beautiful dreams of revolutionising
the world.
I awoke only for English Composition. But there, inevitably, I
quarrelled with the teacher over her ideas of the way English prose was
to be written. She tried to make us write after the Addisonian model. I
pointed out that the better style was the nervous, short-sentenced,
modern one--as Kipling wrote, at his best, in his prose. We had
altercation after altercation, and the little dumpy woman's eyes raged
behind her glasses at me--to the laughter of the rest of the class. Who
really did not care for anything but a lark, while I was all the while
convinced with the belief that they sat up nights, dreaming over great
books as I did.
Even yet, though now I know better, I cannot accept the fact that the
vast majority find their only poetry in a good bellyful of food, as I do
in the _Ode to the Nightingale_ and in the _Epipsychidion_....
Dissatisfied and disillusioned, it was again a book that lifted me out
of the stupidity in which I found myself enmeshed. Josiah Flynt's
_Tramping With Tramps_,--and one other--_Two Years Before the Mast_, by
Dana. And I lay back, mixing my dreams of humanity's liberation, with
visions of big American cities, fields of wheat and corn, forests,
little towns on river-bends.
A tramp or sailor--which?
First, the sea ... why not start out adventuring around the world and
back again?
Land ... sea ... everything ... become a great adventurer like my
favourite heroes in the picaresque novels of Le Sage, Defoe, Smollett
and Fielding?
It took me days of talk with the gang--boasting--and nights of dreaming,
to screw myself up to the right pitch.
Then, one afternoon, in high disgust over my usual quarrel with the
English teacher, I returned to my room determined to leave for the New
York waterfront that same afternoon....
I left a note for my father informing him that I had made up my mind to
go to sea, and that he needn't try to find me in order to fetch me home
again. I wished him good luck and good-bye.
Into my grip I cast a change of clothes, and a few books: my Caesar and
Vergil in the Latin, Young's _Night Thoughts_, and Shelley.
* * * * *
South Street ... here were ships ... great tall fellows, their masts
dizzy things to look up at.
I came to a pier where two three-masted barks lay, one on either side.
First I turned to the one on the right because I saw two men up aloft.
And there was a boy passing down the deck, carrying a pot of coffee aft.
I could smell the good aroma of that coffee. Ever since, the smell of
coffee makes me wish to set out on a trip somewhere.
"Hey, Jimmy," I shouted to the boy.
"Hey, yourself!" he replied, coming belligerently to the side. Then,
"what do ye want?"
"To go to sea. Do you need anybody aboard for the voyage?"
He looked scornfully at me, as I stood there, skinny, shadow-thin.
"You go to hell!" he cried. Then he resumed his way to the cabin,
whistling.
The ship opposite, I inspected her next. It was grand with the
figurehead of a long, wooden lady leaning out obliquely with
ever-staring eyes, her hands crossed over her breasts.
Aboard I went, down the solitude of the deck. I stopped at the cook's
galley. I had gone there because I had seen smoke coming out of the
little crooked pipe that stood akimbo.
I looked in at the door. A dim figure developed within, moving about
among pots and pans. It was the cook, I could tell by the white cap he
wore ... an old, very old man. He wore a sleeveless shirt. His long
skinny, hairy arms were bare. His long silvery-grey beard gave him an
appearance like an ancient prophet. But where the beard left off there
was the anomaly of an almost smooth, ruddy face, and very young,
straight-seeing, blue eyes.
When I told the old cook what I wanted, he invited me in to the galley
and reached me a stool to sit on.
"The captain isn't up yet. He was ashore on a jamboree last night.
You'll see him walking up and down the poop when he's hopped out of his
bunk and eaten his breakfast."
The cook talked about himself, while I waited there. I helped him peel a
pail of potatoes....
Though I heard much of strange lands and far-away ports, he talked
mostly of the women who had been in love with him ... slews of them ...
"and even yet, sixty-five years old, I can make a good impression when I
want to ... I had a girl not yet twenty down in Buenos Ayres. She was
crazy about me ... that was only two years ago."
He showed me pictures of the various women, in all parts of the world,
that had "gone mad about him" ... obviously, they were all prostitutes.
He brought out a batch of obscene photographs, chuckling over them.
It was a German ship--the _Valkyrie_. But the cook spoke excellent
English, as did, I later found out, the captain, both the mates, and all
but one or two of the crew.
Before the captain came up from below the cook changed the subject from
women to history. In senile fashion, to show off, he recited the names
of the Roman emperors, in chronological sequence. And, drawing a curtain
aside from a shelf he himself had built over his bunk, he showed me
Momsen's complete history of Rome, in a row of formidable volumes.
* * * * *
"There's the captain now!"
A great hulk of a man was lounging over the rail of the poop-deck,
looking down over the dock.
I started aft.
"Hist!" the cook motioned me back mysteriously. "Be sure you say 'Sir'
to him frequently."
* * * * *
"Beg pardon, sir. But are you Captain Schantze, sir?" (the cook had told
me the captain's name).
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I've heard you needed a cabin boy."
"Are you of German descent?"
"No, sir."
"What nationality are you, then?"
"American, sir."
"That means nothing, what were your people?"
"Straight English on my mother's side ... Pennsylvania Dutch on my
father's."
"What a mixture!"
He began walking up and down in seaman fashion. After spending several
minutes in silence I ventured to speak to him again.
"Do you think you could use me, sir?"
He swung on me abruptly.
"In what capacity?"
"As anything ... I'm willing to go as able seaman before the mast, if
necessary."
He stopped and looked me over and laughed explosively.
"Able seaman! you're so thin you have to stand twice in one place to
make a shadow ... you've got the romantic boy's idea of the sea ...
but, are you willing to do hard work from four o'clock in the morning
till nine or ten at night?"
"Anything, to get to sea, sir!"
"--sure you haven't run away from home?"
"No-no, sir!"
"Then why in the devil do you want to go to sea? isn't the land good
enough?"
I took a chance and told the captain all about my romantic notions of
sea-life, travel, and adventure.
"You talk just like one of our German poets."
"I _am_ a poet," I ventured further.
The captain gave an amused whistle. But I could see that he liked me.
"To-morrow morning at four o'clock ... come back, then, and Karl, the
cabin boy, will start you in at his job. I'll promote him to boy before
the mast."
* * * * *
I spent the night at Uncle Jim's house ... he was the uncle that had
come east, years before. He was married ... a head-bookkeeper ... lived
in a flat in the Bronx.
He thought it was queer that I was over in New York, alone ... when he
came home from work, that evening....
I could keep my adventure to myself no longer. I told him all about my
going to sea. But did Duncan (my father) approve of it? Yes, I replied.
But when I refused to locate the ship I was sailing on, at first Jim
tried to bully me into telling. I didn't want my father to learn where I
was, in case he came over to find me ... and went up to Uncle Jim's....
Then he began laughing at me.
"You've always been known for your big imagination and the things you
make up ... I suppose this is one of them."
"Let the boy alone," my aunt put in, a little dark woman of French and
English ancestry, "you ought to thank God that he has enough imagination
to make up stories ... he might be a great writer some day."
* * * * *
"Imagination's all right. I'm not quarrelling with Johnnie for that. But
you can't be all balloon and no ballast."
They made me up a bed on a sofa in the parlour ... among all the
bizarre chairs and tables that Uncle Jim had made from spools ... Aunt
Lottie still made dresses now and again ... before she married Jim she
had run a dressmaking establishment.
Uncle Jim set a Big Ben alarm clock down on one of the spool tables for
me.
"I've set the clock for half-past three. That will give you half an hour
to make your hypothetical ship in ... you'll have to jump up and stop
the clock, anyhow. It'll keep on ringing till you do."
* * * * *
My first morning on shipboard was spent scrubbing cabin floors, washing
down the walls, washing dishes, waiting on the captain and mates' mess
... the afternoon, polishing brass on the poop and officers' bridge,
under the supervision of Karl, the former cabin boy.
"Well, how do you like it?" asked the cook, as he stirred something in a
pot, with a big wooden ladle.
"Fine! but when are we sailing?"
"In about three days we drop down to Bayonne for a cargo of White Rose
oil and then we make a clean jump for Sydney, Australia."
"Around Cape Horn?" I asked, stirred romantically at the thought.
"No. Around the Cape of Good Hope."
* * * * *
Early in the afternoon of the day before we left the dock, as I was
polishing brass on deck, my father appeared before me, as abruptly as a
spirit.
"Well, here he is, as big as life!"
"Hello, Pop!"
I straightened up to ease a kink in my back.
"You had no need to hide this from me, son; I envy you, that's all, I
wish I wasn't too old to do it, myself ... this beats travelling about
the country, selling goods as a salesman. It knocks my dream of having a
chicken farm all hollow, too...."
He drew in a deep breath of the good, sunny harbour air. Sailors were up
aloft, they were singing. The cook was in his galley, singing too. There
were gulls glinting about in the sun.
"Of course you know I almost made West Point once ... had the
appointment ... if it hadn't been for a slight touch of rheumatism in
the joints ..." he trailed off wistfully.
"We've never really got to know each other, Johnnie."
I looked at him. "No, we haven't."
"I'm going to start you out right. Will the captain let you off for a
while?"
"The cook's my boss ... as far as my time is concerned. I'm cabin boy."
My father gave the cook a couple of big, black cigars. I was allowed
shore leave till four o'clock that afternoon....
"--you need a little outfitting," explained my father, as we walked
along the dock to the street....
"I've saved up a couple of hundred dollars, which I drew out before I
came over."
"But, Father...."
"You need a lot of things. I'm going to start you off right. While you
were up in the cabin getting ready to go ashore I had a talk with the
cook.... I sort o' left you in his charge--"
"But I don't want to be left in anyone's charge."
"--found out from him just what you'd need and now we're going to do a
little shopping."
I accompanied my father to a seamen's outfitting place, and he spent a
good part of his two hundred buying needful things for me ... shirts of
strong material ... heavy underwear ... oilskins ... boots ... strong
thread and needles ... and a dunnage bag to pack it all away in....
* * * * *
We stood together on the after-deck again, my father and I.
"Now I must be going," he remarked, trying to be casual. He put a ten
dollar bill in my hand.
"--to give the boys a treat with," he explained ... "there's nothing
like standing in good with an outfit you're to travel with ... and
here," he was rummaging in his inside pocket ... "put these in your
pocket and keep them there ... a bunch of Masonic cards of the lodge
your daddy belongs to ... if you ever get into straits, you'll stand a
better chance of being helped, as son of a Mason."
"No, Father," I replied, seriously and unhumorously, "I can't keep
them."
"I'd like to know why not?"
"I want to belong to the brotherhood of man, not the brotherhood of the
Masons."
He looked puzzled for a moment, then his countenance cleared.
"That's all right, Son ... you just keep those cards. They might come in
handy if you find yourself stranded anywhere."
When my father turned his back, with a thought almost prayerful to the
spirit of Shelley, I flung the Masonic cards overboard.
* * * * *
After dusk, the crew poured _en masse_ to the nearest waterfront saloon
with me. The ten dollars didn't last long.
* * * * *
"His old man has lots of money."
* * * * *
Our last night at the pier was a night of a million stars.
The sailmaker, with whom I had become well acquainted, waddled up to me.
He was bow-legged. He waddled instead of walked. We sat talking on the
foreward hatch....
"I'm glad we're getting off to-morrow," I remarked.
"--we might not. We lack a man for the crew yet."
"--thought we had the full number?"
"We did. But one of the boys in your party strayed away ... went to
another saloon and had a few more drinks ... and someone stuck him with
a knife in the short ribs ... he's in the hospital."
"But can't Captain Schantze pick up another man right away?"
"The consulate's closed till ten to-morrow morning. We're to sail at
five ... so he can't sign on a new sailor before ... of course he might
shanghai someone ... but the law's too severe these days ... and the
Sailors' Aid Society is always on the job ... it isn't like it used to
be."
* * * * *
But in spite of what the sailmaker had told me, the captain decided to
take his chance, rather than delay the time of putting forth to sea.
Around ten o'clock, in the full of the moon, a night-hawk cab drew up
alongside the ship where she lay docked, and out of it jumped the first
mate and the captain with a lad who was so drunk or drugged, or both,
that his legs went down under him when they tried to set him on his
feet.
They tumbled him aboard, where he lay in an insensate heap, drooling
spit and making incoherent, bubbling noises.
Without lifting an eyebrow in surprise, the sailmaker stepped forward
and joined the mate in jerking the man to his feet. The captain went aft
as if it was all in the day's work.
The mate and the sailmaker jerked the shanghaied man forward and bundled
him into a locker where bits of rope and nautical odds and-ends were
piled, just forward of the galley.
* * * * *
In the sharp but misty dawn we cast our moorings loose. A
busy little tug nuzzled up to take us in tow for open sea.
We were all intent on putting forth, when a cry came from the port side.
The shanghaied man had broken out, and came running aft ... he stopped a
moment, like a trapped animal, to survey the distance between the dock
and the side ... measuring the possibilities of a successful leap.
By this time the first and second mates were after him, with some of the
men ... he ran forward again, doubled in his tracks like a schoolboy
playing tag ... we laughed at that, it was so funny the way he went
under the mate's arm ... the look of surprise on the mate's face was
funny ... Then the man who was pursued, in a flash, did a hazardous
thing ... he flung himself in the air, over the starboard side, and took
a long headlong tumble into the tugboat....
* * * * *
He was tied like a hog, and hauled up by a couple of ropes, the
sailmaker singing a humorous chantey that made the boys laugh, as they
pulled away.
* * * * *
This delayed the sailing anyhow. The mist had lifted like magic,
and we were not far toward Staten Island before we knew a fine,
blowing, clear day, presided over, in the still, upper spaces, by
great, leaning cumulus clouds. They toppled huge over the great-clustered
buildings as we trod outward toward the harbour mouth....
The pilot swung aboard. The voyage was begun.
The coast of America now looked more like a low-lying fringe of
insubstantial cloud than solid land.
My heart sank. I had committed myself definitely to a three-months'
sea-trip ... there was no backing out, it was too far to swim ashore.
"What's wrong, Johann," asked the captain, "are you sea-sick already?"
He had noticed my expression as he walked by.
"No, sir!"
"If you are, it isn't anything to be ashamed of. I've known old
sea-captains who got sea-sick every time they put out of port."
* * * * *
There was a running forward. The shanghaied man hove in sight, on the
rampage again. He came racing aft. "I must speak with the captain."
There was a scuffle. He broke away. Again the two mates were close upon
him. Suddenly he flung himself down and both the mates tripped over him
and went headlong.
The captain couldn't help laughing. Then he began to swear ... "that
fellow's going to give us a lot of trouble," he prophesied.
Several sailors, grinning, had joined in the chase. They had caught the
fellow and were dragging him forward by the back and scruff of the neck,
while he deliberately hung limp and let his feet drag as if paralysed
from the waist down.
The captain stood over the group, that had come to a halt below. The
captain was in good humour.
"Bring him up here."
The shanghaied man stood facing Schantze, with all the deference of a
sailor, yet subtly defiant.
The captain began to talk in German.
"I don't speak German," responded the sailor stubbornly.
Yet it was in German that he had called out he must see the captain.
This did not make the captain angry. Instead, like a vain boy, he began
in French....
"I don't speak French ..." again objected the sailor, still in English.
"Very well, we'll speak in English, then ... bring him down into the
cabin ..." to the men and mates ... To the sailor again, "Come on,
Englishman! (in derision), and we'll sign you on in the ship's
articles."
They haled him below. The captain dismissed the sailors. The captain,
the two mates and I, were alone with the mutineer.... I stepped into the
pantry, pretending to be busy with the dishes. I didn't want to miss
anything.
"Now," explained the captain, "what's happened has happened ... it's up
to you to make the best of it ... we had to shanghai you," and he
explained the case in full ... and if he would behave and do his share
of the work with the rest of the crew, he would be treated decently and
be paid ... and let go, if he wished, when the _Valkyrie_ reached
Sydney....
"Now sign," commanded the mate, "I never heard of a man in your fix ever
being treated so good before."
"But I won't sign."
"Damme, but you will," returned Miller, the first mate, who, though
German, spoke English in real English fashion--a result, he later told
me, of fifteen years' service on English boats....
"Take hold of him, Stanger," this to the second mate, a lithe,
sun-browned, handsome lad who knew English but hated to speak it.
They wrestled about the cabin at a great rate ... finally they succeeded
in forcing a pen into the mutineer's hand....
Then the man calmed down, apparently whipped.
"Very well, where shall I sign?"
"Da," pointed the captain triumphantly, pointing the line out, with his
great, hairy forefinger ... and, with victory near, relapsing into
German.
But, just as it reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent
swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He
tore a great, ink-smeared rent through the paper....
_Whang!_ Captain Schantze caught him with the full force of his big,
open right hand on the left side of his face.... _Whish!_ Captain
Schantze caught him with the full force of his open left, on the other
cheek!
The shanghaied man stiffened. He trembled violently.
"Do it a thousand times, my dear captain. I won't sign till you kill
me."
"Take him forward. He'll work, and work hard, without signing on.... No,
wait ... tie him up to the rail on the poop ... twenty-four hours of
that, my man, since you must speak English--will make you change your
mind."
He was tied, with his hands behind him.
The captain paced up and down beside him.
Then Franz (as I afterward learned his name) boldly began chaffing the
"old man" ... first in English.
"I don't understand," replied Schantze; he was playful now, as a cat is
with a mouse ... or rather, like a big boy with a smaller boy whom he
can bully.
After all, Schantze was only a big, good-natured "kid" of thirty.
Then Franz ran through one language after another ... Spanish, Italian,
French....
The captain noticed me out of the tail of his eye. His big, broad face
kindled into a grin.
"What are you doing here on deck, you rascal!" He gave me an
affectionate, rough pull of the ear.
"Polishing the brass, sir!"
"And taking everything in at the same time, eh? so you can write a poem
about it?"
His vanity flattered, Schantze began answering Franz back, and, to and
fro they shuttled their tongues, each showing off to the other--and to
me, a mere cabin boy. And Franz, for the moment, seemed to have
forgotten how he had been dragged aboard ... and the captain--that Franz
was a mutineer, tied to the taffrail for insubordination!
* * * * *
Sea-sickness never came near me. Only it was queer to feel the footing
beneath my feet rhythmically rising and falling ... for that's the way
it seemed to my land-legs. But then I never was very sturdy on my legs
... which were then like brittle pipestems.... I sprawled about,
spreading and sliding, as I went to and from the galley, bringing, in
the huge basket, the breakfast, dinner and supper for the cabin....
The sailors called me "Albatross" (from the way an albatross acts when
sprawling on shipdeck). They laughed and poked fun at me.
* * * * *
"Look here, you Yankee rascal," said the captain, when I told him I
never drank ... "I think it would do you good if you got a little smear
of beer-froth on your mouth once in a while ... you'd stop looking
leathery like a mummy ... you've already got some wrinkles on your face
... a few good drinks would plump you out, make a man of you.
"In Germany mothers give their babies a sip from their steins before
they are weaned ... that's what makes us such a great nation."
* * * * *
If I didn't drink, at least the two mates and the sailmaker made up for
me ... we had on board many cases of beer stowed away down in the
afterhold, where the sails were stored. And next to the dining room
there was the space where provisions were kept--together with kegs of
kuemmel, and French and Rhine wines and claret....
And before we had been to sea three days I detected a conspiracy on the
part of the first and second mates, the cook, and the sailmaker--the
object of the conspiracy being, apparently, to drink half the liquor out
of each receptacle, then fill the depleted cask with hot water, shaking
it up thoroughly, and so mixing it.
As far as I could judge, the old, bow-legged sailmaker had taken out a
monopoly on the cases of beer aft. Never were sails kept in better
condition. He was always down there, singing and sewing.
Several times I saw him coming up whistling softly with a lush air of
subdued and happy reminiscence.
* * * * *
Several mornings out ... and I couldn't believe my ears ... I heard a
sound of music. It sounded like a grind-organ on a city street....
_The Sunshine of Paradise Alley_.
And the captain's voice was booming along with the melody.
I peeked into Schantze's cabin to announce breakfast.
He had a huge music box there. And he was singing to its playing, and
dancing clumsily about like a happy young mammoth.
"Spying on the 'old man,' eh?"
He came over and caught me by an ear roughly but playfully.
"No, Captain, I was only saying breakfast is ready."
"You're a sly one ... do you like that tune? _The Sunshine of Paradise
Alley?_ It's my favorite Yankee hymn."
And it must have been; every morning for eighty-nine days the gaudy
music box faithfully played the tune over and over again.
* * * * *
The ship drifted slowly through the Sargasso Sea--that dead, sweltering
area of smooth waters and endless leagues of drifting seaweed.... Or we
lifted and sank on great, smooth swells ... the last disturbance of a
storm far off where there were honest winds that blew.
* * * * *
The prickly heat assailed us ... hundreds of little red, biting pimples
on our bodies ... the cook's fresh-baked bread grew fuzz in twenty-four
hours after baking ... the forecastle and cabin jangled and snarled
irritably, like tortured animals....
* * * * *
It was with a shout, one day, that we welcomed a good wind, and shot
clear of this dead sea of vegetable matter.
* * * * *
As we crossed the equator Father Neptune came on board ... a curious
sea-ceremony that must hark back to the Greeks and Romans....
The bow-legged sailmaker played Neptune.
He combed out a beard of rope, wrapped a sheet around his shoulders,
procured a trident of wood....
"Come," shouted one of the sailors to me, running up like a happy boy,
"come, see Neptune climbing on board."
The sail-maker pretended to mount up out of the sea, climbing over the
forecastle head--just as if he had left his car of enormous,
pearl-tinted sea-shell, with the spouting dolphins still hitched to it,
waiting for him, while he paid his respects to our captain.
Captain Schantze, First Mate Miller, Second Mate Stange, stood waiting
the ceremonial on the officers' bridge, an amused smile playing over
their faces.
A big, boy-faced sailor named Klaus, and the ship's blacksmith, a
grey-eyed, sandy-haired fellow named Klumpf, followed the sailmaker
close behind, as he swept along in his regalia, solemnly and
majestically. And Klaus beat a triangle. And Klumpf played an accordion.
"Sailmaker" (the only name he was called by on the ship) made a
grandiose speech to the Captain.
Schantze replied in the same vein, beginning,
"Euer Majestaet--"
* * * * *
The sailors marched forward again, to their music, like pleased
children. For custom was that they should have plum duff this day, and
plenty of hot grog....
Before I was aware, I was caught up by several arms.
For I had never before crossed the line. So I must be initiated.
They set me on a board, over a great barrel of sea-water.
Klumpf gave me a mock-shave with a vile mixture of tar and soap. He used
a great wooden razor about three feet long. The officers shouted and
laughed, looking on from the bridge.
"What's your name, my boy?" asked Father Neptune.
"John Greg--" Before I could articulate fully the blacksmith thrust a
gob of the vile lather into my mouth. As I spluttered and spit everyone
gave shouts of laughter. One or two sailors rolled on the deck,
laughing, as savages are said to do when overtaken with humour.
The board on which I sat was jerked from under me. Once, two times,
three times, I was pushed, almost bent double, far down into the barrel
of sea-water. It was warm, at least.
Then a hue and cry went up for Franz. He was caught. He swore that he
had crossed the line before, as doubtless he had. But there was now a
sort of quiet feud between him and the rest aboard. So in a tumbling
heap, they at last bore him over. He fought and shrieked. And because he
did not submit and take the ceremony good-naturedly, he was treated
rather roughly.
* * * * *
My certificate of initiation was handed me formally and solemnly. It was
a semi-legal florid document, sealed with a bit of rope and tar. It
certified that I had crossed the line. The witnesses were "The
Mainmast," "The Mizzen Mast," and other inanimate ship's parts and
objects....
"Keep this," said Sailmaker, as he handed it to me, "as evidence that
you have already crossed the line, and you will never be shaved with tar
and a wooden razor again. You are now a full-fledged son of Neptune."
* * * * *
On a ship at sea where the work to do never ends, it is a serious matter
if one of the crew does not know his work, or fails to hold up his end.
That means that there is so much more work to be done by the others.
Franz deliberately shirked. And, as far as I could see, he purposely
got in bad with the mates, under whom he had approximately sixty days
more of pulling and hauling, going up aloft, scrubbing, and chipping to
do. I was puzzled at the steadfast, deliberate malingering of the man.
The crew all hated him, too. I have seen the man at the wheel
deliberately deflect the ship from its course, in order to bring the
wind against the mutineer's belly, hoping to have him blown overboard
while he was running aloft....
And one night, in the forecastle, someone hurled a shoe at him. A blow
so savagely well-aimed, that when he came running aft, howling with pain
(for, for all his obstinacy, he seemed to lack courage)--to complain of
the outrage, to Schantze--his eye popped out so far that it seemed as if
leaping out of its socket! It was ghastly and bloody like a butchered
heart.
Later, I asked the sailors why this had been done to Franz. And Klumpf
said--
"We had a scuffle over something. We were all taking it friendly ... and
Franz bit Klaus through the hand, almost ... then someone threw a shoe
and hit him in the eye"....
* * * * *
In about a week, after his eye had healed just a little, I drew Franz
apart. We sat down together on the main hatch. I was worried about him.
I did not understand him. I was sorry for him.
"Look here, Franz ... don't you know you might get put clean out of
business if you keep this mutiny of one up much longer? You can't whip a
whole ship's crew."
"I don't want to whip a whole ship's crew."
"The captain had to have another man in a hurry, you know ... but he's
really willing to give you decent treatment."
"Did the captain send you to tell me this?"
"Of course not ... only I'm sorry for you."
Franz gave me a broad, inexplicable wink. He smiled grotesquely--from
swollen lips made more grotesque because of a recent punch in the mouth
"Sailmaker" had fetched him....
"Don't trouble yourself about me. I know what I'm doing, my boy."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that, as soon as I came out of my drunk, and found myself
shanghaied, I _wanted_ them to ill-treat me ... there's a Sailors' Aid
Society at Sydney, you know!"
"What good will the Sailors' Aid Society do you?"
"You just wait and see what good it will do me!"
"Nonsense, Franz! The captain's willing to pay you off at Sydney."
"Pay me off, eh? Yes, and the old boy will pay me handsome damages,
too!... the sentimental old ladies that have nothing else to do but
befriend the poor abused sailor, will see to it that I find justice in
the courts there."
"You have a good case against the captain as it is, then. Why don't you
turn to and behave and be treated decently?"
"No," he replied, with a curious note of strength in his voice, "the
worse I'm treated the more damages I can collect. I'm going to make it a
real case of brutal treatment before I leave this old tub."
"But they--they'll--they might kill you!"
"Not much ... those days are about gone ... for a man who knows how to
handle himself, as I do....
"Well, let us thank God," he finished, "for the Sailors' Aid Society and
the dear old maids at Sydney!"
I walked off, thinking. Franz had sworn me not to tell. Yet I was
tempted to. It would get me in right with Captain Schantze.
* * * * *
We shaped to the Cape of Good Hope with great, southern jumps. We were
striking far south for the strong, steady winds.
* * * * *
"There was a damned English ship, the _Lord Summerville_, that left New
York about the same time we did ... she's a sky-sailer ... we mustn't
let her beat us into Sydney."
"Why not, Captain?"
"An Englishman beat a German!" the captain spat, "fui! We're going to
beat England yet at everything ... already we're taking their
world-trade away from them ... and some day we'll beat them at sea and
on land, both."
"In a war, sir?"
"Yes, in a war ... in a great, big war! It will have to come to that,
Johann, my boy."
* * * * *
The cook's opinion on the same subject was illuminating.
He told me many anecdotes which tended to prove that even England's
colonies were growing tired of her arrogance: he related droll stories
told him by Colonials about the Queen ... obscene and nasty they were,
too.
"Catch a German talking that way about the Kaiserin!"
The old cook couldn't realize a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon
temperament--that those they rail against and jibe at they love the
most!
* * * * *
Off the Tristan da Cunha Islands we ran head-on into a terrific storm
... one that lasted forty-eight hours or more, with rushing, screaming
winds, and steady, stinging blasts of sleet that came thick in
successions of driving, grey cloud.
It was then that we lost overboard a fine, handsome young Saxon, one
Gottlieb Kampke:
Five men aloft ... only four came down ... Kampke was blown overboard
off the footrope that ran under the yard, as he stood there hauling in
on the sail. For he was like a young bull in strength; and, scorning, in
his strength, the tearing wind, he used to heave in with both hands ...
not holding fast at all, no matter how hard the wind tore.
* * * * *
It was all that the ship herself could do, to live. Already two
lifeboats had been bashed in. And the compass stanchioned on the bridge
had gone along with a wave, stanchions and all.
* * * * *
There was no use trying to rescue Gottlieb Kampke. Besides, he would be
dead as soon as he reached the water, in such a boiling sea, the captain
said to me.
The melancholy cry, "Man overboard!" ...
I took oath that if I ever reached home alive, I would never go to sea
again. If I just got home, alive, I would be willing even to tie up
brown parcels in grocery cord, for the rest of my life, to sweep out a
store day after day, regularly and monotonously, in safety!...
The captain saw me trembling with a nausea of fear. And, with the winds
booming from all sides, the deck as slippery as the body of a live eel,
he gave me a shove far out on the slant of the poop. I sped in the grey
drive of sleet clear to the rail. The ship dipped under as a huge wave
smashed over, all fury and foam, overwhelming the helmsman and bearing
down on me....
It was miraculous that I was not swept overboard.
After that, strangely, I no longer feared, but enjoyed a quickening of
pulse. And I gladly took in the turns in the rope as the men sang and
heaved away ... waves would heap up over us. We would hold tight till we
emerged again. Then again we would shout and haul away.
* * * * *
"It's all according to what you grow used to," commented the captain.
* * * * *
By the time I was beginning to look into the face of danger as into a
mother's face, the weather wore down. The ocean was still heavy with
running seas, but we rode high and dry.
* * * * *
Unlucky Kampke!
His shipmates bore his dunnage aft, for the captain to take in charge.
And, just as in melodramas and popular novels, a picture of a
fair-haired girl was found at the bottom of his sea-chest, together with
one of his mother ... his sweetheart and his mother....
Depositions were taken down from his forecastle mates, as to his going
overboard, and duly entered into the log ... and the captain wrote a
letter to his mother, to be mailed to her from Sydney.
* * * * *
For a day we were sad. An imminent sense of mortality hung over us.
But there broke, the next morning, a clear sky of sunshine and an open
though still yesty sea--and we sang, and became thoughtless and gay
again.
* * * * *
"Yes," sighed the cook, "I wish it had been Franz instead of Gottlieb.
Gottlieb was such a fine fellow, and Franz is such a son of a----."
* * * * *
... I have left something out.
At the beginning of the voyage Captain Schantze housed a flock of two
dozen chickens in a coop under the forecastle ... in order to insure
himself of fresh eggs during the voyage....
And for fresh meat, he had a huge sow hauled aboard--to be killed later
on....
* * * * *
One morning, when I went forward to fetch the captain's and mates'
breakfast, I found the cook all white and ghastly....
"What's the matter, Cook?"
"To-day's the day I've got to butcher the sow," he complained, "and I'd
give anything to have someone else do it ... I've made such a pet of her
during the voyage ... and she's so intelligent and affectionate ...
she's decenter than lots of human beings I've met."
I kept to the cabin while the butchering was going on.
The cook, the next day, with tears streaming down his face, told me how
trusting the sow had been to the last moment....
"I'll never forget the look in her eyes when she realised what I had
done to her when I cut her throat."
"And I'll never be able to eat any of her. I'd throw it up as fast as it
went down ... much as I do like good, fresh pork."
* * * * *
The ship-boys, Karl and Albert, always stole the eggs, the captain was
sure, as soon as they were laid, though he was never able to catch them
at it.
"Run," he would shout hurriedly to me, "there! I hear the hens cackling.
They've laid an egg."
I'd run. But there'd be no egg. Someone would have reached the nest,
from the forecastle, before I did.
Because the eggs were always stolen as soon as laid, the captain decreed
the slaughter of the hens, too ... not a rooster among them ... the hens
were frankly unhappy, because of this....
* * * * *
The last hen was to be slain. Pursued, she flew far out over the still
ocean. Further and further she flew, keeping up her heavy body as if by
an effort of will.
"Come back! Don't be such a damn fool!" I shouted in my excitement.
Everybody was watching when the chicken would light ... how long it
could keep up....
As soon as I shouted "come back!" the bird, as if giving heed to my
exhortation, slowly veered, and turned toward the ship again. Everybody
had laughed till they nearly sank on deck, at my naive words.
Now a spontaneous cheer went up, as the hen slowly tacked and started
back....
It was still weather, but the ship was moving ahead....
"She won't make it!"
"She will!"
Another great shout. She lit astern, right by the wheel. Straightway she
began running forward, wings spread in genuine triumph.
"Catch her!" shouted the mate.
Nobody obeyed him; they stood by laughing and cheering, till the hen
made safety beneath the forecastle head.
* * * * *
She was spared for three days.
* * * * *
"If you ever tell the captain on us," First Mate Miller threatened, as
he and the second mate stood over a barrel of Kuemmel, mixing hot water
with it, to fill up for what they had stolen, "if you ever tell, I'll
see that you go overboard--by accident ... when we clear for Iqueque,
after we unload at Sydney."
"Why should I tell? It's none of my business!"
I had come upon them, as they were at work. The cook had sent me into
the store-room for some potatoes.
* * * * *
Miller, the first mate, was quite fat and bleary-eyed. He used to go
about sweating clear through his clothes on warm days. At such times I
could detect the faint reek of alcohol coming through his pores. It's a
wonder Schantze didn't notice it, as I did.
* * * * *
Sometimes, at meals, the captain would swear and say, sniffing at the
edge of his glass, "What's the matter with this damned brandy ... it
tastes more like water than a good drink of liquor."
As he set his glass down in disgust, the mates would solemnly and
hypocritically go through the same operation, and express their wonder
with the captain's.
Finally one of the latter would remark sagely, "they always try to palm
off bad stuff on ships."
In spite of my fear of the mates, I once had to stuff a dirty dish-rag
down my mouth to keep from laughing outright. The greasy rag made me gag
and almost vomit.
"And what's the matter with you?" inquired Schantze, glaring into the
pantry at me, while the two mates also glowered, for a different reason.
* * * * *
"You skinny Yankee," said the captain, taking me by the ear, rather
painfully, several days after that incident, "I'm sure someone's
drinking my booze. Could it be you, in spite of all your talk about not
drinking? You Anglo-Saxons are such dirty hypocrites."
"Indeed, no, sir,--it isn't me."
"Well, this cabin's in your care, and so is the storeroom. You keep a
watch-out and find out for me who it is.... I don't think its Miller or
the second mate ... it must be either the cook or that old rogue of a
sailmaker....
"Or it might be some of the crew," he further speculated, "but anyhow,
it's your job to take care of the cabin, as I said before....
"Remember this--all sailors are thieves, aboard ship, if the chance to
take anything good to eat or drink comes their way."
I promised to keep a good look-out.
On the other hand....
"Mind you keep your mouth shut ... and don't find things so damned
funny, neither," this from the first mate, early one morning, as I
scrubbed the floors. He stirred my posteriors heavily with a booted
foot, in emphasis.
* * * * *
The sea kicked backward in long, speedy trails of foam, lacing the
surface of a grey-green waste of waves....
* * * * *
When I had any spare time, I used to lie in the net under the bowsprit,
and read. From there I could look back on the entire ship as it sailed
ahead, every sail spread, a magnificent sight.
One day, as I lay there, reading Shelley, or was it my Vergil that I was
puzzling out line by line, with occasional glances at the great ship
seeming to sail into me--myself poised outward in space--
There came a great surge of water. I leaped up in the net, bouncing
like a circus acrobat. My book fell out of my hand into the sea.
I looked up, and saw fully half the crew grinning down at me. The mate
stood over me. A bucket that still dripped water in his hand showed me
where the water had come from.
"Come up out of there! The captain's been bawling for you for half an
hour ... we thought you'd gone overboard."
I came along the net, drenched and forlorn.
"What in hell were you doing down there?"
"I--I was thinking," I stammered.
"He was thinking," echoed the mate scornfully. "Well, thinking will
never make a sailor of you."
Boisterous laughter.
"After this do your thinking where we can find you when you're wanted."
As I walked aft, the mate went with me pace for pace, poking more fun at
me. To which I dared not answer, as I was impelled, because he was
strong and I was very frail ... and always, when on the verge of danger,
or a physical encounter, the memory of my Uncle Lan's beatings would now
crash into my memory like an earthquake, and render my resolution and
sinews all a-tremble and unstrung.
I was of a mind to tell the captain _who_ was drinking his liquor--but
here again I feared, and cursed myself for fearing.
When the mate told him of where he had found me, at last--what he had
done--what I had said--Schantze laughed....
But, later on, he sympathised with me and unexpectedly remarked:
"Johann, how can you expect a heavy-minded numbskull like Miller to
understand!"
Then, laughing, he seized me by the ear--his usual gesture of fondness
for me--
"Remember me if you ever write a book about this voyage, and don't give
me too black a name! I'm not so bad, am I, eh?"
* * * * *
The Australian coast had lain blue across the horizon for several days.
"Watch me to-morrow!" whispered Franz cryptically to me as he strolled
lazily by....
Next day, around noon, I heard a big rumpus on the main deck, I hurried
up from the cabin.
There lay Franz, sprawled on his back like a huge, lazy dog, and the
mate was shaking his belly with his foot on top of it, just as one plays
with a dog ... but to show he was not playing, he delivered the
prostrate form of the sailor a swift succession of kicks in the ribs....
"You won't work any longer, you say?"
"No."
"I'll kick your guts out."
"Very well."
"Stand on your feet like a man."
"What for? You'll only knock me down again!" and Franz grinned comically
and grotesquely upward, through the gap in his mouth where two of his
teeth had been punched out earlier in the voyage.
It was easy to see that Franz's curious attitude of non-resistance had
the mate puzzled what to do next. All the sailors indulged in furtive
laughter. None of them had a very deep-rooted love for Miller, and, for
the first time, they rather sympathised with the man who had been
shanghaied ... some of them even snickered audibly ... and straightway
grew intent on their work....
Miller turned irritably on them. "And what's the matter with _you_!"...
"Bring him up here!" shouted Captain Schantze.
Four sailors picked Franz up and carried him, unresisting, bumping his
back on the steps as he sagged like a sack half full of flour....
"Here! I've had about enough of this!" cried the captain, furious, "tie
him to the rail again!..."
"Now, we'll leave you there, on bread and water, till you say you'll
work."
"What does it matter what you do," sauced Franz; "we'll be in port in
four days ... and then you'll see what I'll do!"
* * * * *
"What's that?" cried the captain. Then catching an inkling of Franz's
scheme, he hit the man a quick, hard blow in the mouth with his clenched
fist.
"Give him another!" urged the mate.
But the captain's rage was over, though Franz sent him a bold, mocking
laugh, even as the blood trickled down in a tiny red stream from where
his mouth had, been struck.
I never saw such courage of its kind.
They left him there for ten hours. But he stood without a sign of
exhaustion or giving in. And they untied him. And let him loose.
And, till we hove to at Dalghety's Wharf, in Sydney Harbour, unnoticed,
Franz, the Alsace-Lorrainer, roamed the boat at will, like a passenger.
"Wait till I get on shore ... this little shanghaiing party of the
captain's will cost him a lot of hard money," he said, in a low voice,
to me,--standing idly by, his hands in his pockets, while I was bending
over the brass on the bridge railing, polishing away.
"But they've nearly killed you, Franz ... will it be worth it?"
"All I can say is I wish they'd use me rougher."
"You know, Franz, I'm not a bit sorry for you now ... I was at first."
"That so?... I don't need anybody to be sorry for me. In a week or so,
when I have won my suit against the captain through the Sailors' Aid
Society, I'll be rolling in money ... then you can be sorry for the
captain."
* * * * *
Sydney Harbour ... the air alive with sunlight and white flutterings of
sea gulls a-wing ... alive with pleasure boats that leaned here and yon
on white sails.
* * * * *
Now that we were safe in harbour, I hesitated whether to run away or
continue with the ship. For I had signed on to complete the voyage, via
Iqueque, on the West Coast of South America, to Hamburg ... I hesitated,
I say, because, on shipboard, you're at least sure of food and a place
to sleep....
Karl and I had been set to work at giving the cabin a thorough
overhauling. We fooled away much of our time looking into the captain's
collections of erotic pictures and photographs ... and his obscene books
in every language.
And we discovered under the sofa-seat that was built against the side, a
great quantity of French syrups and soda waters. So we spent quite a
little of our time in mixing temperance drinks for ourselves.
Cautiously I spoke to the cook about what Karl and I were doing. For he
knew, of course, that I knew of his marauding ... and of the mates' and
sailmaker's ... so it was safe to tell him.
"You'd better be careful," the cook admonished me.
"But what could Captain Schantze want with so many bottles of syrup and
soda water aboard?"
"The English custom's officer who comes aboard here is an old friend of
Schantze's, and a teetotaler ... so the captain always treats him to
soda water."
"But Karl and I have drunk it all up already," I confessed slowly.
"You'll both catch a good hiding then when he calls for it and finds
there is none."
The next day the customs man came aboard.
"Have a drink, Mr. Wollaston?" Schantze asked him.
"Yes, but nothing strong," for probably the tenth occasion came the
answer.
Then offhandedly, the captain--as if he had not, perhaps, said the same
thing for ten previous voyages: "I have some fine French soda water and
syrup in my private locker, perhaps you'd like some of that, Mr.
Wollaston?"
Mr. Wollaston, whose face and nose was so ruddy and pimply anyone would
take him for a toper, answers: "Yes, a little of that Won't do any harm,
Captain!"
"Karl!--Johann!" We had been listening, frightened, to the colloquy. We
came out, trembling.
"Look under the cushions in my cabin ... bring out some of the syrup and
soda water you find there."
"Very well, sir!"
We both hurried in ... stood facing each other, too scared to laugh at
the situation. The captain had a heavy hand--and carried a heavy cane
when he went ashore. He had the cane with him now.
After a long time: "You tell him there is none," whispered Karl.
"Well, what's wrong in there?" cried Schantze impatiently.
"We can't find a single bottle, sir!" I repeated, louder.
"What? Come out here! Speak louder! What did you say?"
"We can't find a single bottle, sir!" I murmured, almost inaudibly.
Then Karl, stammering, reinforced me with, "There are a lot of empty
bottles here, sir!"
"What does this mean? Every voyage for years I have had soda and French
syrup in my locker for Mr. Wollaston."
"Oh, don't mind me," deprecated the little customs man, at the same time
as furious as his host.
Karl had already began to blubber in anticipation of the whipping due.
The captain laid his heavy cane on everywhere. The boy fell at his feet,
bawling louder, less from fear than from the knowledge that his
abjectness would please the captain's vanity and induce him to let up
sooner.
"Now _you_ come here!" Schantze beckoned me.
He raised the cane at me. But, to my own surprise, something brave and
strange entered into me. I would not be humiliated before a countryman
of my mother's, that was what it was!
I looked the captain straight in the eye.
"Sir, I did not do it, and I won't be whipped!"
"Wha-at!" ejaculated Schantze, astonished at my novel behaviour.
"I didn't touch the syrup." Karl looked at me, astonished and
incredulous at my audacity, through his tear-stained face.
The captain stepped back from me.
I must be telling the truth to be behaving so differently.
"Get to your bunk then!" he commanded.
I obeyed.
"Who is he?" ... I heard the little customs man ask the skipper; "he
doesn't talk like an Englishman."
"He isn't. He just a damn-fool Yankee boy I picked up in New York."
* * * * *
They had rounded Franz up and locked him away. The captain was
determined to frustrate his little scheme for reimbursement, which he
had by this time guessed.
I lie. I must tell the truth in these memoirs.
I had told on him.
But my motive was only an itch to see what would then take place. But
when I saw that the issue would be an obvious one: that he would merely
be spirited forth to sea again, and this time, _forced_ to work, I felt
a little sorry for the man. At the same time, I admit I wanted to
observe the denouement myself, of his case ... and as I now intended to
desert the ship, it would have to take place in Sydney.
So, on the second night of Franz's incarceration, when nearly everybody
was away on shore-leave, I took the captain's bunch of keys, and I let
the shanghaied man, the mutineer, the man from Alsace-Lorraine--out!
It was not a very dark night. Franz stole along like a rat till he
reached the centre of the dock. There he gave a great shout of defiance
... why, I learned later....
The _Lord Summerville_, which had, after all, beat us in by two days,
despite Captain Schantze's boast, was lying on the other side of our
dock. And her mate and several sailors thus became witnesses of what
happened.
The shout brought, of course, our few men who remained on watch, on
deck, and over on the dock after Franz ... who allowed himself to be
caught ... the dock was English ground ... the ship was German ... a
good point legally, as the canny Franz had foreseen.
His clothes were almost torn from his body.
Miller accidentally showed up, coming back from shore. And he joined in.
"Come back with us, you verfluchte _Alsatz_-Lothringer."
The Englishmen from the _Lord Summerville_ now began calling out, "Let
him alone!" and "I say, give the lad fair play!"
Some of them leaped down on the dock in a trice.
"Who the hell let him out?" roared the mate.
I stood on deck, holding my breath, and ready to bolt in case Franz
betrayed me. But nevertheless my blood was running high and happy over
the excitement I had caused by unlocking the door.
"No one let me out. I picked the lock. Will that suit you?" lied Franz,
protecting me.
"What's the lad been and done?" asked the mate of the _Lord
Summerville_.
"I was shanghaied in New York," put in Franz swiftly, "and I demand
English justice."
"And you shall get it, my man!" answered the mate proudly, "for you have
been assaulted on English ground, as I'll stand witness."
A whistle was blown. Men came running. Soon Franz was outside the
jurisdiction of Germany.
* * * * *
The next day Captain Schantze stalked about, hardly speaking to Miller.
He was angry and laid the blame at the latter's door.
"Miller, why in the name of God didn't you guard that fellow better? An
English court ... you know what _they'll_ do to us!"
Miller spread his hands outward, shrugged his shoulders expressively,
remained in silence. The two mates and the captain ate the rest of their
supper in a silence that bristled.
The ship was detained for ten days more after its cargo had been
unloaded.
At the trial, during which the "old maids" and The Sailors' Aid Society
came to the fore, Captain Schantze roared his indignant best--so much so
that the judge warned him that he was not on his ship but on English
ground....
Franz got a handsome verdict in his favour, of course.
And for several days he was seen, rolling drunk about the streets, by
our boys, who now looked on him as a pretty clever person.
* * * * *
It was my time to run away--if I ever intended to. Within the next day
or so we were to take on coal for the West Coast. We were to load down
so heavily, the mate, who had conceived a hatred of me, informed me,
that even in fair weather the scuppers would be a-wash. Significantly he
added there would be much danger for a man who was not liked aboard a
certain ship ... by the mates ... much danger of such a person's being
washed overboard. For the waves, you know, washed over the deck of so
heavily loaded a ship at will.
* * * * *
On the _Lord Summerville_ was a mad Pennsylvania boy who had, like
myself, gone to sea for the first time ... but he had had no uncle to
beat timidity into him ... and he had dared ship as able seaman on the
big sky-sailed lime-juicer, and had gloriously acquitted himself.
He was a tall, rangy young bullock of a lad. He could split any door
with his fist. He liked to drink and fight. And he liked women in the
grog-house sense.
One of his chief exploits had been the punching of the second mate in
the jaw when both were high a-loft. Then he had caught him about the
waist, and held him till he came to, to keep him from falling. The mate
had used bad language at him.
Hoppner had worked from the first as if he had been born to the sea.
He and I met in a saloon. The plump little barmaid had made him what she
called, "A man's drink," while me she had served contemptuously with a
ginger ale.
Hoppner boasted of his exploits. I, of mine.
"I tell you what, Gregory, since we're both jumping ship here, let's be
pals for awhile and travel together."
"I'm with you, Hoppner."
"And why jump off empty-handed, since we are jumping off?"
"What is it you're driving at?"
"There ought to be a lot of loot on two boats!"
"Suppose we get caught?" I asked cautiously.
"Anybody that's worth a damn will take a chance in this world. Aren't
you game to take a chance?"
"Of course I'm game."
"Well, then, you watch your chance and I'll watch mine. I'll hook into
everything valuable that's liftable on my ship and you tend to yours in
the same fashion."
* * * * *
We struck hands in partnership, parted, and agreed to meet at the
wharf-gate the next night, just after dark, he with his loot, I with
mine.
I spent the morning of the following day prospecting. I had seen the
captain put the ship's money for the paying of the crew in a drawer, and
turn the key.
But first, with a curious primitive instinct, I fixed on a small ham and
a loaf of rye bread as part of the projected booty, in spite of the fact
that, if I but laid hands on the ship's money, I would have quite a
large sum.
It was the piquaresque romance of what I was about to do that moved me.
The romance of the deed, not the possession of the objects stolen, that
appealed to my imagination. I pictured my comrade and myself going
overland, our swag on our backs, eluding pursuit ... and joining with
the natives in some far hinterland. I would be a sort of Jonathan Wilde
plus a Francois Villon.
Before the captain returned I had surveyed everything to my satisfaction
... after supper the captain and the two mates left for shore again.
Now was the time. I searched the captain's old trousers and found the
ship's keys there. They were too bulky to carry around with him.
The keys seemed to jangle like thunder as I tried them one after the
other on the drawer where I had seen him put away the gold.
I heard someone coming. I started to whistle noisily, and to polish the
captain's _carpet slippers!_ ... it was only someone walking on deck ...
The last key was, dramatically, the right one. The drawer opened ... but
it was empty! I had seen the captain--the captain had also seen me. Now
I started to take anything I could lay my hands on.
I snatched off the wall two silver-mounted cavalry pistols, a present
from his brother to Schantze. I added a bottle of kuemmel to the ham and
the rye bread. The kuemmel a present for Hoppner.
Then, before leaving the _Valkyrie_ forever, I sat down to think if
there were not something I might do to show my contempt for Miller.
There were many things I could do, I found.
In the first place, I took a large sail-needle and some heavy-thread and
I sewed two pairs of his trousers and two of his coats up the middle of
the legs and arms, so he couldn't put them on, at least right away. I
picked up hammer and nails and nailed his shoes and sea-boots securely
to the middle of his cabin floor. Under his pillow I found a full flask
of brandy. I emptied half ... when I replaced it, it was full again. But
I had not resorted to the brandy cask to fill it.
* * * * *
The apprehension that I might be come upon _flagrante delictu_ gave me a
shiver of apprehension. But it was a pleasurable shiver. I enjoyed the
malicious wantonness of my acts, and my prospective jump into the
unknown ... all the South Seas waited for me ... all the world!
But, though every moment's delay brought detection and danger nearer, I
found time for yet one more stroke. With a laughable vision of Schantze
smashing Miller all over the cabin, I wrote and left this note pinned on
the former's pillow:
Dear Captain:--
By the time you read this letter I will be beyond your reach (then
out of the instant's imagination ... I had not considered such a
thing hitherto). I am going far into the interior and discover a
gold mine. When I am rich I shall repay you for the cavalry pistols
which I am compelled to confiscate in lieu of my wages, which I now
forfeit by running away, though entitled to them.
You have been a good captain and I like you.
As for Miller, he is beneath my contempt. It was he who drank all
your wines, brandies, and whiskies ... the sailmaker is to answer
for your beer. The second mate has been in on this theft of your
liquors, too (I left the cook out because he had been nice to me).
Good-bye, and good luck.
Your former cabin boy, and, though you may not believe me, always
your well-wisher and friend,
JOHN GREGORY.
I left what I had stolen bundled up in my blanket. I walked forward
nonchalantly to see if anyone was out to observe me. I discovered the
sandy-haired Blacksmith, Klumpf, sitting on the main hatch. I saw that I
could not pass him with my bundle without strategy. The strategy I
employed was simple.
I drew him a bottle of brandy. I gave it to him. After he had drawn a
long drink I told him I was running away from the ship. He laughed and
took another drink. I passed him with my bundle. He shouted good-bye to
me.
Before I had gone by the nose of the old ship, who should I run into but
Klaus, coming back from a spree. He was pushing along on all fours like
an animal, he was so drunk ... good, simple Klaus, whom I liked. I laid
down my bundle, risking capture, while I helped him to the deck. He
stopped a moment to pat the ship's side affectionately as if it were a
living friend, or nearer, a mother.
"Gute alte _Valkyrie!_.. gute alte _Valkyrie!_" he murmured.
* * * * *
Safe so far. At the outside of the dock-gate Hoppner waited my arrival.
He was interested in the kuemmel, and in the pistols, which were
pawnable.
He had been more daring than I. He had tried to pick his captain's
pocket of a gold watch while the latter slept. But every time he reached
for it the captain stirred uneasily. He would have snatched it anyhow,
but just then his first mate stepped into the cabin ... "and I hid till
the mate went out again."
"And what then?"
"I picked up a lot of silverware the captain had for show occasions ...
that I found, rummaging about."
"And him there sleeping?"
"Why not?"
"I found four revolvers that belonged to the mates and captain. I put
them all in one bundle and chucked them into a rowboat over the ship's
side. And now we must go back to your boat--"
"To my boat?" I asked, amazed.
"Yes" (I had told him how nearly I had missed our ship-money).
"To your boat, and ransack the cabin till we locate that coin."
"That's too risky."
"Hell, take a chance, can't you?"
That's what Hoppner was always saying as long as we travelled together:
"Hell, take a chance."
But when I began telling him with convulsive laughter, of the revenge I
had taken on the mate ... and also how I had thrown all the keys
overboard, Hoppner, instead of joining in with my laughter, struck at
me, not at all playfully, "What kind of damn jackass have I joined up
with, anyhow," he exclaimed. "Now it won't be any use going back, you've
thrown the keys away and we'd make too great a racket, breaking open
things...."
He insisted, however, on going back to his own boat, sliding down to the
rowboat, and rowing away with the loot he had cast into it. We had no
sooner reached the prow of the _Lord Summerville_ than we observed
people bestirring themselves on board her more than was natural.
"Come on, _now_ we'll beat it. They're after me."
Hoppner had also brought a blanket. We went "humping bluey" as swagmen,
as the tramp is called in Australia.
The existence of the swagman is the happiest vagrant's life in the
world. He is usually regarded as a bona fide seeker for work, and food
is readily given him for the asking. Unlike the American hobo, he is
given his food raw, and is expected to cook it himself. So he carries
what he calls a "tucker bag" to hold his provisions; also, almost more
important--his "billy can" or tea-pot....
Hoppner and I acquired the tea-habit as badly as the rest of the
Australian swagmen. Every mile or so the swagman seems to stop, build a
fire, and brew his draught of tea, which he makes strong enough to take
the place of the firiest swig of whiskey. I've seen an old swagman boil
his tea for an actual half-hour, till the resultant concoction was as
thick and black as New Orleans molasses. With such continual draughts of
tea, only the crystalline air, and the healthy dryness of the climate
keeps them from drugging themselves to death.
"Tea ain't any good to drink unless you can put a stick straight up in
it, and it can stand alone there," joked an old swagman, who had invited
us to partake of a hospitable "billy-can" with him.
* * * * *
We had long, marvellous talks with different swagmen, as we slowly
sauntered north to Newcastle....
We heard of the snakes of Australia, which workmen dug up in torpid
writhing knots, in the cold weather ... of native corrobories which one
old informant told us he had often attended, where he procured native
women or "gins" as they called them, for a mere drink of whiskey or gin
... "that's why they calls 'em 'gins'" he explained ... (wrong, for
"gin" or a word of corresponding sound is the name for "woman" in many
native languages in the antipodes)....
The azure beauty of those days!... tramping northward with nothing in
the world to do but swap stories and rest whenever we chose, about
campfires of resinous, sweetly smelling wood ... drinking and drinking
that villainous tea.
In Australia the law against stealing rides on freights is strictly
enforced. The tramp has always to walk--to the American tramp this is at
first a hardship, but you soon grow to like it ... you learn to enjoy
the wine in the air, the fragrance of the strange trees that shed bark
instead of leaves, the noise of scores of unseen Waterfalls in the hills
of New South Wales.
The morning that the little sea-port of Newcastle lay before us, I felt
as if I had been on tour through a strange world. For the first time the
story-books of my youth had come true.
But Hoppner rose from the camp fire that we'd been sleeping by,
stretched, and remarked, "now, thank Christ, I'll be able to find a good
seat in a pub again, just like in Sydney, and all the booze I can drink.
We can go to some sailors' boarding house here, tell them we want to
ship out, and they'll furnish us with the proper amount of drinks and
take care of us, all hunky dory, till they find us a berth on ship ...
of course they'll be well paid for their trouble ... two months' advance
pay handed over to them by the skipper ... but that won't bother me a
bit."
From the hill on which we lay encamped we saw all the ships in the
harbour. I no longer feared the sea. Your true adventurer forgets danger
and perils experienced as a woman forgets the pangs of childbirth.
* * * * *
We met a sailor on the street, who, though at first a stranger, soon
became our friend and, with the quick hospitality of the sea, steered us
to a pub known as the Green Emerald, bought us drinks, and introduced us
to Mother Conarty, the proprietress.
"I'll ship ye out all right, but where's your dunnage?"
We confessed that we had run away from our ships down at Sydney.
The old sailor had spoken of Mother Conarty as rough-mannered, but a
woman with "a good, warm heart."
She proved it by taking us in to board, with no dunnage for her to hold
as security.
"Oh, they're good lads, I'm sure," vouched our sailor-friend, speaking
of us as if we had been forecastle mates of his for twenty voyages on
end ... the way of the sea!
Now Mother Conarty was not stupid. She was a great-bodied, jolly
Irishwoman, but she possessed razor-keen, hazel eyes that narrowed on us
a bit when she first saw us. But the woman in her soon hushed her
passing suspicions. For Hoppner was a frank-faced, handsome lad, with
wide shoulders and a small waist like a girl's. It was Hoppner's good
looks took her in. She gave us a room together.
* * * * *
There was a blowsy cheeked bar-maid, Mother Conarty's daughter. She
knew well how to handle with a few sharp, ironic remarks anyone who
tried to "get fresh" with her ... and if she couldn't, there were plenty
of husky sailormen about, hearty in their admiration for the resolute,
clean girl, and ready with mauling fists.
* * * * *
"Mother Conarty's proud o' that kid o' hers, she is."
"And well she may be!"
* * * * *
"I've been thinkin' over you b'yes, an' as ye hain't no dunnage wit' ye,
I'm thinkin' ye'll be workin' fer yer board an' room."
"We're willing enough, mother," I responded, with a sinking of the
heart, while Hoppner grimaced to me, behind her back.
We scrubbed out rooms, and the stairs, the bar, behind the bar, the
rooms back and front, where the sailors drank. We earned our board and
room ... for a few days.
* * * * *
At the Green Emerald I met my first case of delirium tremens. And it was
a townsman who had 'em, not a sailor. The townsman was well-dressed and
well-behaved--at first ... but there lurked a wild stare in his eye that
was almost a glaze ... and he hung on the bar and drank and drank and
drank. It apparently had no effect on him, the liquor that he took.
"Say, but you're a tough one," complimented Molly.
But _it_ began in the afternoon. He picked up a stray dog from the floor
and began kissing it. And the dog slavered back, returning his
affection. Then he dropped the dog and began picking blue monkeys off
the wall ... wee things, he explained to us ... that he could hold
between thumb and forefinger ... only there were so many of them ...
multitudes of them ... that they rather distressed him ... they carried
the man away in an ambulance.
* * * * *
Hoppner and I tired of the ceaseless scrubbing. One day we simply walked
out of the Green Emerald and never showed up again. Hoppner stayed on in
town.
I found that the _Valkyrie_ had run up from Sydney to coal at Newcastle,
for the West Coast. I thought that in this case a little knowledge was
not a dangerous thing, but a good thing, as long as I confined that
knowledge to myself. I knew that the _Valkyrie_ was there. It was not
necessary that the officers of the boat should know I was there ...
which I wasn't, for I turned south, my swag on my back, and made Sydney
again.
* * * * *
In Sydney and "on the rocks," that is with nothing to eat and no place
to sleep but outdoors.
Of course I couldn't keep away from the ships. I arrived at the Circular
Quay. I ran into the Sailors' Mission. They were serving tea and having
a prayer-meeting. I wandered in.
A thin, wisplike man, timid, in black, but very gentlemanly, made me
heartily welcome. Not with that obnoxious, forced heartiness sky-pilots
think the proper manner to affect in dealing with sailors, but in a
human way genuinely felt.
After a service of hearty singing, he asked me if he could help me in
any way.
"I suppose you can. I'm on the rocks bad."
He gave me all the cakes to eat which were left over from the tea. And a
couple of shillings beside.
"I wonder if there's anything else I can do?"
"Yes, I'm a poet," I ventured, "and I'd like to get Chaucer's
_Canterbury Tales_ to read again." I said this as much to startle the
man as really meaning it. I can go so long without reading certain
poets, and after that I starve for them as the hungry starve for food. I
was hungry for Chaucer.
Such a request, coming from a youth almost in rags, impressed the
sky-pilot so deeply that he insisted on giving me a job pumping the
organ during services and a little room to sleep in at the mission. What
is more, he lent me Skeats' edition of Chaucer, complete. And all the
time I was with him he proved a "good sport." He didn't take advantage
of my dependence on him to bother me so very much about God.
He took it for granted that I was a Christian, since I never discussed
religion with him.
* * * * *
It began to grow wearisome, pumping an organ for a living. And I had fed
myself full on Chaucer.
I began to yawn, behind the organ, over the growing staleness of life in
a sailors' mission. And also I was being pestered by a tall, frigid old
maid in purples and blacks, who had fixed her eye on me as a heathen she
must convert.
* * * * *
"How'd you like a voyage to China?" the sky-pilot asked, one day.
Cathay ... Marco Polo ... Milton's description of the Chinese moving
their wheelbarrows along the land by means of sails ... many poetic
visions marched across my mind at the question.
"I'd like to, right enough."
"Then here's a chance for you," and he handed me a copy of the Bulletin,
pointing out an advertisement for cattlemen on the steamboat, _South Sea
King_, about to take a cargo of steers from Queensland to Taku, province
of Pechi-li, Northern China.
"What are they sending cattle away up there for?"
"Supplies for troops ... The Boxer outbreak, you know ... go down to the
number given in the advertisement, and I'm sure they'll sign you on as
cattleman, if you want the job."
"All right. I'll go now."
"No," looking me over dubiously, "you'd better not go there or anywhere
else, in your present rig ... you're too ragged to apply even for such
work ... hang around till morning, and I'll go home to-night and bring
you a decent coat, at least. Your coat is worse than your trousers ...
though _they_ are ravelled at the bottoms and coming through in the left
knee ... every time you take a step I can see a glint of white through
the cloth, and," walking round me in a tour of inspection, "the seat
might break through at any moment." All this was said without a glint of
humour in his eyes.
* * * * *
Next morning the sky-pilot came down very late. It was twelve. But he
had not forgotten me. "Here's the coat," and he solemnly unwrapped and
trailed before my astonished gaze a coat with a long, ministerial tail.
I put it on. The tail came below the bend of my knees. I laughed. The
sky-pilot did not.
Finally he stepped back, cracked a solemn smile, and remarked, "You _do_
look rather odd!"
The intonation of his voice, his solemn almost deprecatory smile, set me
off and I laughed till the tears ran down my face.
"I say, what's so funny?"
"Me! I am!... in your long-tailed coat."
"If I was on the rocks like you I wouldn't see anything to laugh
about."
* * * * *
At the shipping office, the place mentioned in the advertisement, in the
dimly lit, grey-paned room, there sat one lone, pasty-faced,
old-youngish clerk on the traditional clerk's high stool. But he proved
lively beyond his appearance.
"My God! do look who's here!" he exclaimed facetiously, and then,
rapidly, without giving me room for a biting word in return, "no,
there's no use now, my boy ... we took on all the cattlemen we needed by
ten o'clock this morning."
I walked away, disconsolate. I bore on my back my swagman's blanket. In
the blanket I carried a change of shirts the sky-pilot had given me, a
razor, a toothbrush, a Tennyson, and a Westcott and Hort's Greek New
Testament with glossary, that I had stolen from a bookstall in Sydney.
* * * * *
I found out where the dock was, nevertheless, where the men were loafing
about in groups, waiting to be taken out to the _South Sea King_ ...
which lay in the harbour.
At the entrance to the pier I met a powerful, chunky lad who was called
"Nippers," he said. He, too, was going with the _South Sea King_ ... not
as a cattleman, but as stowaway. He urged me to stow away along with
him. And he gave me, unimaginatively, my name of "Skinny," which the
rest called me during the voyage.
* * * * *
We strolled up to the men and joined them.
"Hello, kids!"
"Hello, fellows! Are you the cattlemen for the _South Sea King_?"
"Right you are, my lad ... we are that!"
The men went on with their arguing. They were fighting the Boer War all
over again with their mouths. Some of them had been in it. Many of them
had tramped in South Africa. They shouted violently, profanely, at each
other at the tops of their voices, contending with loud assertions and
counter-assertions, as if about to engage in an all-round fight.
Several personal altercations sprang up, the points of the debate
forgotten ... I couldn't discover what it was about, myself ... only
that one man was a fool ... another, a silly ass ... another, a bloody
liar!
* * * * *
The launch which was to carry them to the _South Sea King_ at this
moment started nosing into the dock, on a turbulent zig-zag across the
harbour; and the men forgot their quarrelling. It brought up at the foot
of a pile and made fast.
"Come on, Skinny," Nippers urged me aggressively, "it's front seats or
nothing. Act as if you owned the boat." We thrust ahead of the others
and swarmed down the ladder ... heaping, swearing, horse-playing, the
cattlemen filled the launch from stern to bow.
Nippers had been a professional stowaway since his tenth year. He had
gone all over the world in that fashion, he had informed me. He was now
sixteen. I was almost eighteen.
His six years of rough life with rough men had brought him to premature
manhood, taught him to exhibit a saucy aplomb to everybody, to have at
his finger-ends all the knockabout resourcefulness and impudence that
the successful vagrant must acquire in order to live at all as an
individual....
* * * * *
We were the first on deck.
"Where are the cattlemen's bunks?" Nippers asked of an oiler who stood,
nonchalant, somewhat contemptuous, looking over the side at the
seething, vociferous cattlemen.
Not wasting a word on us, the oiler pointed aft over his shoulder, with
a grimy thumb.
We found a dark entrance like the mouth to a cave, that led down below.
In our hurry we lost our footing on the greasy ladder and tumbled all
the way to the bottom.
We had not time to rub our bruises. We plumped down and under the lower
tier of bunks ... just in time ... the men came pouring down
helter-skelter ... the talking, arguing, voluble swearing, and obscenity
was renewed ... all we could see, from where we lay, was a confusion of
legs to the knee, moving about....
They settled down on the benches about the table. They slackened their
talk and began smacking their lips over ship-biscuit, marmalade, and
tea.
* * * * *
Still we lay in silence. The screw of the propeller had not started
yet. We dared not come out or we would be put ashore.
* * * * *
We were hungry. We could hear their tin plates clattering and clinking
as the cattlemen ate supper, and smell the smell of cornbeef and boiled
potatoes. Our mouths ran from hunger.
--"wish I had something to scoff, I'm starvin'," groaned Nippers, "but
we'll hafta lay low till the bloody tub pulls out or we'll get caught
an' dumped ashore."
Supper done with, the men were sitting about and smoking. They were
soon, however, summoned up on deck, by a voice that roared down to them,
from above, filling their quarters with a gust of sound.
We were alone now, perhaps,--it was so still.
With an almost imperceptible slowness, Nippers thrust his head out, as
cautiously as a turtle ... he emerged further.
He made a quick thrust of the arm for a platter of beef and potatoes,
that stood, untouched, on the table ... someone coughed. We had thought
we were alone. Nippers jerked back. The tin came down with a clatter,
first to the bench, then to the floor. A big friendly potato rolled
under to where we were. We seized on it, divided it, ate it.
Contrary to our conjecture, some of the men must have stayed below.
Someone jumped out of a bunk.
"There's rats down here!"
"--mighty big rats, if you arsks me."
"It's not rats," and I could hear a fear in the voice that quavered the
words forth, "I tell you, buddy, this ship is haunted."
"--haunted!" boomed the voice of a man coming down the ladder, "you stop
this silly nonsense right now ... don't spread such talk as that ...
it's stowaways!"
We saw a pair of legs to the knees again. We lay still, breathless. A
watch chain dangled down in a parabolic loop. Then followed a round
face, beef-red with stooping. It looked under apoplectically at us.
"Ah, me b'yes, c'm on out o' there!"
And out we came, dragged by the foot, one after the other, as I myself
in my childhood have pulled frogs out from a hole in a brook-bank.
"I've been hearing them for hours, Mister," spoke up the little,
shrivelled, leathery-skinned West Indian negro, who spoke English
without a trace of dialect, "and I was sure the place was haunted."
* * * * *
We stood before the captain, cap deferentially in hand.
But he looked like anything but a man in charge of a ship. He was short.
In outward appearance, moreover, he was like a wax doll. He had
waxen-white cheeks with daubs of pink as if they had been put there from
a rouge pot. His hair was nicely scented, oiled, and patted down. His
small hands were white and perfectly manicured.
Nippers began to snicker openly at him. But the sharp variety and
incisiveness of the oaths he vented at us, soon disabused us of any
opinion we might have held that he was sissified....
"What's wrong with _you_, you young ---- ---- ---- ---- you?" began the
captain. The snicker died slowly from Nipper's lips, and in his face
dawned an infinite, surprised respect....
Then, after he had subdued us:
"So you're stowaways, eh?... and you think you're going to be given a
free ride to Brisbane and let go ashore, scot free?... not much! You'll
either go to jail there or sign up here, as cattlemen for the trip to
China--even though I can see that your mouths are still wet from your
mothers' tits!" And he ended with a blasphemous flourish.
Nippers and I looked at each other in astonishment. Of course we wanted
to sign on as cattlemen. No doubt some of the men hired at Sydney had
failed to show up at the wharf.
The ship's book was pushed before us.
"Sign here!" I signed "John Gregory" with satisfaction. Nippers signed
after, laboriously.
"And now get aft with you, you ----!" cursed the captain, dismissing us
with a parting volley that beat about our ears.
"Gawd, but the skipper's a _right_ man enough!" worshipped Nippers.
We hurried down the ladder to gobble up what was left of the cornbeef
and potatoes.... Nippers looked up at me, with a hunk of beef sticking
from his mouth, which he poked in with the butt-end of his knife....
"Say, didn't the old man cuss wonderful, and him lookin' like such a
lady!"
* * * * *
There was plenty of work to do in the few days it took to reach
Brisbane, where the cattle were to be taken aboard. The boat was an
ordinary tramp steamer, and we had to make an improvised cattleboat out
of her. Already carpenters had done much to that effect by erecting
enclosures on the top deck, the main deck, by putting up stalls in the
hold. Every available foot was to be packed with the living flesh of
cattle.
We gave the finishing touches to the work, trying to make the boarding
and scantling more solid--solid enough to withstand the plunging,
lurching, and kicking of fear-stricken, wild Queensland steers unused to
being cooped up on shipboard....
* * * * *
We had made fast to a dock down the Brisbane River, several miles out
from Brisbane ... nearby stood the stockyards, with no cattle in them
yet.
In a day's time of lusty heaving and running and hauling we had taken on
the bales of compressed fodder that were to feed the cattle for the
twenty-day trip to Taku, China.
Then the little, fiery, doll-like skipper made the tactical error of
paying each man a couple of bob advance on his forthcoming wages.
In a shouting, singing mob we made for Brisbane, like schoolboys on a
holiday.
Two shilling apiece wasn't much. But a vagabond can make a little silver
go far. And there are more friends to be found by men in such a
condition, more good times to be had--of a sort--than a world held by
more proper standards can imagine.
In both brothel and pub the men found friends. There were other sailors
ashore, there were many swagmen just in from the bush--some with
"stakes" they had earned on the ranches out in the country ... and in
their good, simple hearts they were not averse to "standing treats."
* * * * *
As if by previous appointment, one by one we drifted together, we
cattlemen of the _South Sea King_--we drifted together and found each
other in the fine park near the Queensland House of Parliament.
We had, all of us, already over-stayed our shore-leave by many hours.
We grouped together in informal consultation as to what should be
done--should we go back to the ship or not?
"We might run into a typhoon ... with all them crazy cattle on board!"
voiced one....
* * * * *
Nevertheless, perhaps because it was, after all, the line of least
resistance, because there regular meals awaited us, and a secure place
of sleep, by twos and threes we drifted back, down the long, hot, dusty
road, to where the _South Sea King_ lay waiting for us ... the mate, the
captain, and the cattle-boss furious at us for our over-stayed
shore-leave....
* * * * *
The cattle had been there these many hours, bellowing and moving
restlessly in their land-pens, the hot sun blazing down upon them.
* * * * *
Our cattle-boss, it seems, knew all about the handling of his animals on
land. But not on sea. When, the following morning, we started early,
trying to drive the cattle on board ship, they refused to walk up the
runway. In vain the boss strewed earth and sod along its course, to make
it seem a natural passage for them ... they rushed around and around
their pens, kicking up a vast, white, choking dust,--snorting,
bellowing, and throwing their rumps out gaily in sidelong gallopades ...
all young Queensland steers; wild, but not vicious. Still full of the
life and strength of the open range....
Then we scattered bits of the broken bales of their prepared food, along
the runway, to lure them ... a few were led aboard thus. But the captain
cried with oaths that they didn't have time to make a coaxing-party of
the job....
At last the donkey-engine was started, forward. A small cable was run
through a block, and, fastened by their halters around their horns, one
after the other the steers, now bellowing in great terror, their eyes
popping for fear--were hoisted up in the air, poised on high, kicking,
then swung down, and on deck.
You had to keep well from under each one as he descended, or suffer the
befouling consequences of his fear ... we had great laughter over
several men who came within the explosive radius ... till the mate hit
on the device of tying each beast's tail close before he was jerked up
into the air.
What a pandemonium ... shouting ... swearing ... whistles blowing
signals ... the chugging respiration of the labouring donkey-engine ...
and then the attempted stampede of each trembling, fear-crazy animal as
soon as he rose four-footed, on deck, after his ride through the sky....
* * * * *
The ship was crammed as full as Noah's ark. In the holds and on the main
deck stood the steers, in long rows....
On the upper deck, exposed to all the weather, were housed the more
tractable sheep, who had, without objection, bleated their way aboard
docilely up the runway--behind their black ram ... that the cattle-boss
had to help on a bit, by pulling him the few first yards by his curly
horns.
* * * * *
As we swam by in the fading day, a pale ghost of a moon was already up.
Ghostly rows of knee-ing trees stood out like live things in the
river....
Under the night, off at sea, what with the mooing and baaing through all
the ship, it seemed like an absurd farmyard that had somehow got on the
ocean.
* * * * *
There were two quarters for the men ... a place under the forecastle
head, forward--as well as the after-quarters. Nippers and I had been
separated--he staying aft, while I took up my bunk forward.
* * * * *
But the men on the boat, the few that stick in my memory as distinct
personages:
There was the bloated, fat Scotch boy, whom we called just Fatty, a
sheepherder by calling. He had signed on for the trip, to take care of
the sheep on the upper deck;
There was a weak, pathetic cockney, who died of sun-stroke;
The ex-jockey, a bit of a man with a withered left arm--made that way
from an injury received in his last race, when his mount fell on him;
There was the West Indian Negro, a woolly, ebony wisp of a creature, a
great believer in ghosts (he who thought we stowaways were ghosts when
we hid under the bunk). The Irish cattle-boss gave him the job of
night-watchman, "to break him of his superstitious silliness";
There was the big, black Jamaica cook ... as black as if he was polished
ebony ... a fine, big, polite chap, whom everyone liked. He had a white
wife in Southampton (the sailors who had seen her said she was pretty
... that the cook was true to her ... that she came down to the boat the
minute the _South Sea King_ reached an English port, they loved each
other so deeply!) ...
Then there was the giant of an Irishman ... who, working side by side
with me in the hold, shovelling out cattle-ordure there with me,
informed me that I looked as if I had consumption ... that I would not
be able to stand the terrific heat for many days without keeling over
... but, his prediction came true of himself, not of me.
One morning, not many days out, the little West Indian watchman,
bringing down the before-daylight coffee and ships-biscuits and rousing
the men, as was his duty,--found the big fellow, with whom he used to
crack cheery jokes, apparently sound asleep. The watchman shook him by
the foot to rouse him ... found his big friend stiff and cold.
The watchman let out a scream of horror that woke us right and proper,
for _that_ day....
The next day was Sunday. It was a still, religious afternoon.
We men ranged in two rows aft. The body had been sewn up in coarse
canvas, the Union Jack draped over it.
The captain, dapper in his gold-braided uniform, stood over the body as
it lay on the plank from which it was to descend into the sea. In a
high, clear voice he read that beautiful burial-service for the dead ...
an upward tilt of the board in the hands of two brown-armed seamen, the
body flashed over the side, to swing feet-down, laden with shot, for
interminable days and nights, in the vast tides of the Pacific.
No one reached quickly enough. The Union Jack went off with the body,
like a floral decoration flung after....
* * * * *
We drank the coffee brought to us before dawn, in grouchy, sleepy,
monosyllabic silence. Immediately after, the cattle were to water and
feed ... and a hungry lot they were ... but despite their appetites,
with each day, because of the excessive heat of the tropics, and the
confined existence that was theirs--such an abrupt transition from the
open range--they waxed thinner and thinner, acquired more of large-eyed
mournfulness and an aspect of almost human suffering in their piteous,
pleading faces....
* * * * *
If the big chap who succumbed to heart failure that night had lived a
few days longer, he would have wondered still more at me or anyone else
surviving a day's work in the hold.
For the thermometer ran up incredibly ... hotter and hotter it grew ...
and down there in the hold we had to shovel out the excrement every
morning after breakfast. It was too infernal for even the prudish
Anglo-Saxon souls of us to wear clothes beyond a breechclout, and shoes,
to protect our feet from the harder hoof.
Our eyes stung and watered from the reek of the ammonia in the
cattle-urine. What with the crowding, the bad air (despite the canvas
ventilators let down) and the sudden change from green pasturage to
dry, baled food, most of the beasts contracted "the skitters." This
mess was what we had to shovel out through the portholes ... an
offensive-smelling, greenish, fluidic material, that spilled, the half
of it, always, from the carefully-held scoop of the shovel.
Cursing, with the bitter sweat streaming off our bodies and into our
eyes, and with an oblique eye to guard from heat-maddened, frantic
steer-kicks,--each day, for several hours, we suffered through this hell
... to emerge panting, like runners after a long race; befouled ... to
throw ourselves down on the upper deck, under the blue, wind-free sky
and feel as if we had come into paradise....
* * * * *
"I wish I had never come back to this hell-ship, at Brisbane!"
"I wish I had never come aboard at all at Sydney!"
* * * * *
At such times, and at other odd ends of leisure, I brought my Westcott
and Hort's Greek New Testament from my bunk, and with the nasty smell of
sheep close-by, but unheeded through custom--I studied with greater
pleasure than I ever did before or since.
* * * * *
As I said before, it was not long before these poor steers were
broken-spirited things.
But there was one among them whose spirit kept its flag in the air,
"The Black Devil," as the cook had named him fondly ... a steer, all
glossy-black, excepting for a white spot in the center of his forehead.
He behaved, from the first, more like a turbulent little bull than a
gelding. The cook fed him with tid-bits from the galley.
He had evidently been someone's pet before he had been sold for live
meat, to be shipped to China.
When we took him on board by the horns he showed no fear as he rode in
the air. And, once on his feet again, and loose on deck, he showed us
hell's own fight--out of sheer indignation--back there in Brisbane. He
flashed after us, with the rapid motions of a bullfight in the movies.
Most of us climbed every available thing to get out of his reach. He
smashed here and there through wooden supports as if they were of
cardboard.
The agile little ex-jockey kept running in front of him, hitting him on
the nose and nimbly escaping--in spite of his wing-like, wasted arm,
quicker than his pursuer ... that smashed through, while he ducked and
turned....
"I'll be God-damned," yelled the captain from the safe vantage of the
bridge, "fetch me my pistol," to the cabin boy, "I'll have to shoot the
beast!"
All this while the big black Jamaica cook had been calmly looking on,
leaning fearlessly out over the half-door of the galley ... while the
infuriated animal rushed back and forth.
The cook said nothing. He disappeared, and reappeared with a bunch of
carrots which he held out toward "The Black Devil."...
In immediate transformation, the little beast stopped, forgot his anger,
stretched forth his moist, black nuzzle, sniffing ... and walked up to
the cook, accepting the carrots. The cook began to stroke the animal's
nose....
"_You_ little black devil," he said, in a soft voice, "you're all right
... they don't understand you ... but we're going to be pals--us
two--aren't we?"
Then he came out at the door to where the steer stood, took "The Black
Devil," as we henceforth called him, gently by the under-jaw,--and led
him into a standing-place right across from the galley.
* * * * *
As we struck further north under vast nights of stars, and days of
furnace-hot sunshine, the heat, confinement, and dry, baled food told
hideously on the animals ... the sheep seemed to endure better, partly
because they were not halted stationary in one spot and could move about
a little on the top deck.... But they suffered hardships that came of
changing weather.
* * * * *
Especially the cattle in the lower hold suffered, grew weak and
emaciated.... We were ever on the watch to keep them from going down ...
there was danger of their sprawling over each other and breaking legs in
the scramble. So when one tried to lie down, his tail was twisted till
the suffering made him rise to his feet ... sometimes a steer would be
too weak to regain his feet ... in such a case, in a vain effort to make
the beast rise, I have seen the Irish foreman twist the tail nearly off,
while the animal at first bellowed, then moaned weakly, with anguish ...
a final boot at the victim in angry frustration....
Last, a milky glaze would settle over the beast's eyes ... and we would
drag him out and up by donkey-engine, swing him over and out, and drop
him, to float, a bobbing tan object, down our receding ocean-path.
* * * * *
The coast of Borneo hovered, far and blue, in the offing, when we struck
our first, and last, typhoon. The mate avowed it was merely the tail-end
of a typhoon; if that was the tail-end, it is good that the body of it
did not strike down on us.
The surface of the ocean was kicked up into high, ridge-running masses.
The tops of the waves were caught in the wind and whipped into a wide,
level froth as if a giant egg-beater were at work ... then water, water,
water came sweeping and mounting and climbing aboard, hill after
bursting hill.
The deck was swept as by a mountain-torrent ... boards whirled about
with an uncanny motion in them. They came forward toward you with a
bound, menacing shin and midriff,--then on the motion of the ship, they
paused, and washed in the opposite direction.
Here and there a steer broke loose, which had to be caught and tethered
again. But in general the animals were too much frightened to do
anything but stand trembling and moaning ... when they were not
floundering about....
Down below was a suffocating inferno. For the hatches that were
ordinarily kept open for more air, had to be battened down till the
waves subsided.
* * * * *
At the very height of the storm, we heard a screaming of the most abject
fear.
The jockey had passed, in forgetful excitement, too close to his enemy,
The Black Devil--who had not forgotten, and gave him a horn in the side,
under the withered arm.
Several sailors carried the bleeding man aft to the captain ... who
dressed his wound with fair skill. The jockey was not so badly injured,
all things considered. The thrust had slanted and made only a flesh
wound ... which enabled the fellow to loaf on a sort of sick-leave,
during the rest of the trip.
* * * * *
The storm over, frantically we tore off the hatches again ... to find
only ten steers dead below. The rest were gasping piteously for air. It
was a day's work, heaving the dead stock overboard ... including the two
more which died of the after-effects....
When we went to look the sheep over, we found that over a third of them
had been washed overboard. The rest were huddled, in frightened,
bleating heaps, wondering perhaps what kind of an insane world it was
that they had been harried into.
* * * * *
The story of this cattleboat unfolds freshly before me again, out of the
records of memory ... the pitiful suffering of the cattle ... the lives
and daily doings of the rowdy, likeable men, who were really still
undeveloped children, and would so go down to the grave ... with their
boasting and continual vanity of small and trivial things of life.
* * * * *
All the time I was keeping a diary of my adventures ... in a large,
brown copybook, with flexible covers. I carried it, tightened away,
usually, in the lining of my coat, but occasionally I left it under the
mattress of my bunk.
Nippers observed me writing in it one day.
That night it was gone. I surmised who had taken it.
Seeking Nippers, I came upon him haltingly reading my diary aloud to an
amused circle of cattlemen, in his quarters aft.
"Give me that book back!" I demanded.
He ignored me.
"Give him a rap in the kisser, Skinny!"
I drew back, aiming a blow at Nippers. He flung the book down and was on
me like the tornado we had just run through ... he was a natural-born
fighter ... in a twinkling I was on the floor, with a black eye, a
bleeding mouth.
I flung myself to my feet, full of fury ... then something went in my
brain like the click of a camera-shutter ... I had an hallucination of
Uncle Landon, coming at me with a club....
I plumped into a corner, crouching. "Don't hit me any more ... please
don't, Uncle Lan!"
"He's gone crazy!"
"Naw, he's only a bloody, bleedin' coward," returned another voice, in
surprise and disgust.
Someone spat on me. I was let up at last.... I staggered forward to my
bunk. My book had been handed back to me. It's a wonder I didn't throw
myself into the sea, in disgust over the queer fit that had come over
me. I lay half the night, puzzling ... was I a coward?
Not unless an unparalleled change had occurred in me. I had fought with
other children, when a boy ... had whipped two lads at once, when
working in the Composite factory, that time they spit into my book.
* * * * *
One day a fishing-junk hove into sight, just as if it had sailed out of
a Maxfield Parrish illustration,--swinging there in the mouth of a
blood-red sunset ... then, like magic, appeared another and another and
another....
"Fishing-junks," ejaculated the mate, "--pretty far out, too, but a
Chink'll risk his life for a few bleedin' cash ... and yet he won't
fight at all ... an' if you do him an injury he's like as not likely to
up an' commit suicide at your door, to get even!"
"That's a bally orful way to get even with a henemy!" exclaimed a
stoker, who sat on the edge of the forward hatch.
"I should say so, too!"
Then, far and faint, were heard a crew of Chinese sailors, on the
nearest junk, singing a curious, falsetto chantey as they hauled on a
bamboo-braced sail....
"A feller wot never travelled wouldn't bloody well believe they was
such queer people in the world," further observed the philosophic
coal-heaver.
* * * * *
Next morning the coast of China lay right against us, on the starboard
side ... we ran into the thick of a fleet of sampans, boats fashioned
flat like overgrown rowboats, propelled each by a huge sculling oar,
from the stern ... they were fishers who manned them ... two or three to
a boat ... huge, bronze-bodied, fine-muscled, breech-clouted men ... as
they sculled swiftly to give us sea-room each one looked fit to be a
sculptor's model.
Their bodies shone in the sun like bronze. Several, fearing we might run
them down, as we clove straight through their midst, raised their arms
with a shout full of pleading and fright.
"What's the matter? are they trying to murder some of these poor chaps?"
I asked.
"No ... we're just having a little fun ... what's the life of a Chink
matter?"
* * * * *
"I say, if the Chinks up where the Boxers are fighting are big and
strong as them duffers, here's one that don't want no shore-leave!"
commented someone, as we stood ranged by the side.
"I always thought Chinamen was runts."
"Oh, it's only city Chinks--mostly from Canton, that come to civilized
countries to run laundries ... but these are the real Chinamen."
* * * * *
After the cattle had been unladen, the crew were to be taken down to
Shanghai and dumped ashore ... as it was an English Treaty port, that
would be, technically, living up to the ship's articles, which
guaranteed that the cattlemen aboard would be given passage back to
English ground....
But I was all excitement over the prospect of making my way ashore to
where the Allied troops were fighting....
* * * * *
Dawn ... we were anchored in Taku Bay among the warships of the Allied
nations ... grey warships gleaming in the sun like silver ... the sound
of bugles ... flags of all nations ... of as many colours as the coat of
Joseph.
"Well, here we are at last!"
* * * * *
Next day the work of unloading the cattle began ... hoisted again by the
horns from our boat of heavy draught to the hold of a coasting steamer,
that had English captain and mates, and a Chinese crew.
Some of the steers were so weak that they died on deck ... as they were
dying, butchers cut their throats so their beef could be called fresh.
The only one who desired to go ashore there, I made my way, when it was
dark and the last load of steers was being transferred to shore, down
below to the hold of the coaster. I stood in a corner, behind an iron
ladder, so that the cattle couldn't crush me during the night ... for
the Chinese had turned them loose, there, in a mass.
* * * * *
I stumbled ashore at Tongku, a station up a way on the banks of the Pei
Ho river.
My first night ashore in China was a far cry from the China of my dreams
... the Cathay of Marco Polo, with its towers of porcelain.... I crept,
to escape a cold drizzle, under the huge tarpaulin which covered a great
stack of tinned goods--army supplies. A soldier on guard over the stack,
an American soldier, spotted me.
"Come, my lad," lifting up the tarpaulin, "what are you doing there?"
"--Trying to keep from the wet!"
"--run off from one of the transports?"
"Yes," was as good an answer as any.
"You're pretty cold ... your teeth are chattering. Here, take a swig o'
this."
And the sentinel reached me a flask of whiskey from which I drew a nip.
Unaccustomed as I was to drink, it nearly strangled me. It went all the
way down like fire. Then it spread with a pleasant warmth all through my
body....
"Stay here to-night ... rather uncomfortable bed, but at least it's dry.
No one 'ull bother you ... in the morning Captain ----, who is in charge
of the commissariat here, might give you a job."
* * * * *
That next morning Captain ---- gave me a job as mate, eighty dollars
Mex. and a place to sleep, along with others, in a Compound, and find my
food at my own expense....
Mate, on a supply-launch that went in and out to and from the
transports, that were continually anchoring in the bay. Our job was to
keep the officers' mess in supplies....
"And, if you stick to your job six months," I was informed, "you'll be
entitled to free transportation back to San Francisco."
My captain was a neat, young Englishman, with the merest hint of a
moustache of fair gold.
Our crew--two Chinamen who jested about us between themselves in a
continuous splutter of Chinese. We could tell, by their grimaces and
gestures ... we rather liked their harmless, human impudence ... as long
as they did the work, while we lazed about, talking ... while up and
down the yellow sweep of the Pei-ho the little boat tramped.
* * * * *
"It's too bad you didn't arrive on the present scene a few weeks,
sooner," said my young captain ... "it was quite exciting here, at that
time. I used to have to take the boathook and push off the Chinese
corpses that caught on the prow of the boat as they floated down, thick
... they seemed to catch hold of the prow as if still alive. It was
uncanny!"
* * * * *
We slept, rolled up in our blankets, on the floor of a Chinese compound
... adventurers bound up and down the river, to and from Tien-Tsin and
Woo-shi-Woo and Pekin ... a sort of caravanserai....
* * * * *
Though it was the fall of the year and the nights were cold enough to
make two blankets feel good, yet some days the sun blazed down
intolerably on our boat, on the river....
When we grew thirsty the captain and myself resorted to our jug of
distilled water. I had been warned against drinking the yellow,
pea-soup-like water of the Pei-ho....
But one afternoon I found our water had run out.
So I took the gourd used by the Chinese crew, and dipped up, as they
did, the river water.
The captain clutched me by the wrist.
"Don't drink that water! If you'd seen what I have, floating in it,
you'd be afraid!"
"What won't hurt a Chinaman, won't hurt me," I boasted....
The result of my folly was a mild case of dysentery....
In a few days I was so weak that I went around as if I had no bones left
in my body. And I wanted to leave the country. And I repaired to Captain
---- who had given me the job, and asked him for my pay and my
discharge. He lit into me, disgusted, upbraiding me for a worthless
tramp....
"I might have known that you were of that ilk, from the first, just by
looking at you!"
He handed me the eighty dollars in Mexican silver, that was coming to
me.... I repaid the captain the forty I had borrowed, for food.
"Sick! yes, sick of laziness!"
Captain ---- was partly right. I had an uncontrollable distaste for the
monotony of daily work, repeated in the same environment, surrounded by
the same scenery ... but I was also quite weak and sick, and I am
persuaded, that, if I had stayed on there, I might have died.
* * * * *
I sat on one of the wharves and played host to a crowd of romantic
thoughts that moved in their pageant through my brain ... now I would go
on to Pekin and see the great Forbidden City. Now I would dress in
Chinese clothes and beg my way through the very heart of the Chinese
Empire ... and write a book, subsequently, about my experiences and
adventures ... and perhaps win a medal of some famous society for it ...
and I had a dream of marrying some quaintly beautiful mandarin's
daughter, of becoming a famous, revered Chinese scholar, bringing
together with my influence the East and the West....
I reached so far, in the dream, as to buy several novels of the Chinese,
printed in their characters, of an itinerant vendor....
The everyday world swung into my ken again.
Three junks, laden with American marines, dropping down the river from
Pekin, cut across my abstracted gaze ... the boys were singing.
They marched off on the dock on which I sat. They were stationed right
where they deployed from the junks. Men were put in guard over them.
At Tien Tsin they had behaved rather badly, I was told by one of
them,--had gone on a Samshu jag ... a Chinese drink, worse than the
worst American "rot-gut." ...
"Wisht I c'd git off the dock an' rustle up another drink somewheres."
"They wouldn't let us off this dock fer love nor money," spoke up a
lithe, blue-shaven marine to me--the company's barber, I afterward
learned him to be....
"Yah, we got ter stay here all afternoon, an' me t'roat's es dry es
san'paper."
"Where are they taking you to, from here?"
"Manila!... the _Indiana's_ waitin' out in th' bay fer us."
"--Wish I could get off with you!" I remarked.
"Wot's the matter? On th' bum here?"
"Yes."
Immediately the barber and two others, his pals, became intensely,
suspiciously so, interested in my desire to sail with them....
"--Tell you wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a
surreptitious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past
to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell
you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of
bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' booze, we'll see to it that
you get took out to the transport with us, all right ... won't we,
boys?"
"--betcher boots we will."
* * * * *
"God, but this is like heaven to me," exclaimed the barber, as he tilted
up his bottle, while the two others stood about him, to keep him from
being seen. The three of them drank their bottles of whiskey as if it
was water.
"That saved me life...."
"An' mine, too. You go to Manila wit' us, all right,--kid!"
* * * * *
Toward dusk came the sharp command for the men to march aboard the
coaster that had drawn up for them. The boys kept their word. They
loaded me down with their accoutrements to carry. I marched up the
gangway with them, and we were off to the _Indiana_.
I was the first, almost, to scamper aboard the waiting transport in the
gathering dusk ... and, to make sure of staying aboard, I hurried down
one ladder after the other, till I reached the heavy darkness of the
lowermost hold. Having nothing to do but sleep, I stumbled over some
oblong boxes, climbed onto one, and composed myself for the night, using
a coil of rope for a pillow.
I woke to find a grey patch of day streaming down the ladder-way. My
eyes soon adjusted themselves to the obscurity.
And then it was that I gave a great, scared leap. And with difficulty I
held myself back from crying out.
Those curious oblong boxes among which I had passed the night--they were
hermetically sealed coffins, and there were dead soldiers in them.
Ridges of terror crept along my flesh. Stifling a panic in me, I forced
myself to go slow as I climbed the iron rungs to the hold above ...
where living soldiers lay sleeping in long rows....
Still undetected, I scrambled along an aisle between them and put myself
away in a sort of life-preserver closet. Not till I had heard the
familiar throb of the propeller in motion for a long time, did I come
forth.
* * * * *
During the voyage of, I believe, eight days, I loafed about, lining up
for rations with the boys ... no one questioned me. My engineer's
clothes that I had taken, in lieu of part of my wages, from the
slop-chest of _The South Sea King_, caused the officers of the marines
to think I belonged to the ship's crew ... and the ship-officers must
have thought I was in some way connected with the marines ... anyhow, I
was not molested, and I led a life much to my liking ... an easy-going
and loafing and tale-telling one ... mixing about and talking and
listening ... and reading back-number magazines.
* * * * *
One day my friend the barber called me aside:
"Say, kid, I've been delegated to tell you that you've got lice." I
flamed indignant.
"That's a God-damned lie! and whoever told you so is a God-damned liar,
too! I never had a louse in my life."
"Easy! Easy!... no use gittin' huffy ... if it ain't lice you got, wot
you scratchin' all the time fer? Look in the crotch of yer pants and the
seams of your shirt, an' see!"
I _had_ been scratching a lot ... and wondering what was wrong ... my
breast was all red ... but I had explained it to myself that I was
wearing a coarse woolen undershirt next my skin ... that I had picked up
from the slop-chest, also.
The barber walked jauntily away, leaving me standing sullenly alone.
I sneaked into the toilet, looking to see if anyone was about. I turned
my shirt back. To my horror, my loathing,--the soldier's accusation was
true!... they were so thick, thanks to my ignorant neglect, that I could
see them moving in battalions ... if I had been the victim of some
filthy disease, I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a
pariah. I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the
thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that
of the inside of my woolen shirt.
I threw the shirt away, content to shiver for a few days till we had
steamed to warmer weather ... I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed
myself.... I had, up to now, had experience with head-lice only ... as a
child, in school....
I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience. During my
subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few
others that I met, did. Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother
about 'em ... and you would soon get used to 'em ... and not feel them
biting at all ... but most tramps "boil up"--that is, take off their
clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them--whenever they find
opportunity.
* * * * *
Manila. A brief adventure there ... a bum for a few weeks, hanging
around soldiers' barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till
Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys
who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me and several other rovers
and stowaways free transportation back to America....
A brief stop at Nagasaki to have a broken propeller shaft mended: a long
Pacific voyage ... then hilly San Francisco one golden morning....
* * * * *
All these ocean days I peeled potatoes and helped to dish out rations
to the lined-up soldiers at meal-times ... one slice of meat, one or two
potatoes, to a tin plate ...
For long hours I listened to their lying tales and boasting ... then
lied and boasted, myself....
My most unique adventure aboard the _Thomas_; making friends with a
four-times-enlisted soldier named Lang, who liked army life because, he
said, outside of drills and dress parade, it was lazy and easy ... and
it gave him leisure to read and re-read his Shakespeare. He was a
Shakespearean scholar....
"It's the best life in the world ... no worries or responsibilities
about food and lodging--it spoils a fellow for any other kind of life
... the officers are always decent to a fellow who respects himself as a
soldier and citizen."
Lang and I became good pals. Day after day I sat listening to him, as,
to the accompaniment of the rumble and pulse of the great boat a-move,
he quoted and explained Shakespeare to me, nearly always without the
book.
His talk was fascinating--except when he insisted on repeating to me his
own wretched rhymes ... in which he showed he had learned nothing about
how to write poetry from his revered Shakespeare ... it was very bad
Kiplingesque stuff ... much like my own bad verse of that period....
Once Lang recited by heart the whole of _King Lear_ to me, having me
hold a copy of the play, to prove that he did not fumble a single line
or miss a single word ... which he did not....
Lang was a prodigious drunkard. At Nagasaki I rescued him from the
water-butt. Coming back drunk on rice wine, he had stuck his head down
for a cool drink, as a horse does. And in he had tumbled, head-first. If
I had not seen his legs wiggling futilely in the air, and drawn him
forth, dripping, he would have drowned, as the butt was too solid for
his struggles to dump, and he couldn't make a sound for help.
* * * * *
As we neared San Francisco several of the boys spoke to me of taking up
a purse for my benefit. Soldiers are always generous and
warm-hearted--the best men, individually, in the world.
I said no to them, that they must not take up a collection for me ... I
did not really feel that way, at heart, but I liked better seeming proud
and independent, American and self-reliant....
Later on, at the very dock, I acceded ... but now I was punished for my
hypocrisy. The boys were so eager to be home again, they only threw
together about five dollars for me ... when, if I hadn't been foolish, I
might have had enough to loaf with, say a month, at San Francisco, and
do a lot of reading in the Library, and in books of poetry that I might
have picked up at second-hand book stores....
However, I gathered together, before I went ashore, two suits of khaki
and two army blankets, and a pair of good army shoes that afterwards
seemed never to wear out.
And a young chap named Simmons, who had been sergeant, had joined the
army by running away from home, took me to an obscure hotel as his valet
... he wanted to "put on dog," as the Indians say.
He had parents of wealth, back in Des Moines.
I served him as his valet for the two weeks he stayed at the hotel. He
had been shot through the left foot so that a tendon was severed, and he
had to walk with a cane, with a foot that flopped at every step.
He gave me fifteen dollars for wages. After he had departed I rented a
cheap room for a week.
* * * * *
Standing in front of a store on Kearney Street, one afternoon, dressed
in my suit of soldier's khaki, looking at the display in the window, I
got the cue that shaped my subsequent adventures in California....
"Poor lad," I heard one girl say to another, standing close by, "he
looks so sick and thin, I'm sorry for him."
They did not notice that my soldier's uniform had cloth buttons. Simmons
had made me put cloth buttons on, at the hotel,--had furnished them to
me--
"I don't want you going about the other way ... you're such a nut, you
might get into trouble."
Mule-drivers and others in subsidiary service were allowed khaki with
cloth buttons only ... at that time ... I don't know how it goes now.
* * * * *
The girls' taking me for a sick, discharged soldier made me think. I
would travel in that guise.
* * * * *
With a second-hand Shakespeare, in one volume, of wretched print, with a
much-abused school-copy of Caesar, in the Latin (of whose idiomatic Latin
I have never tired), an extra suit of khaki, a razor, tooth-brush, and
tooth-powder--and a cake of soap--all wrapped up in my army blankets, I
set forth on my peregrinations as blanket-stiff or "bindle-bum."
Where I saw I could escape without awkward questioning, I played the
convalescent ex-soldier ... I thrived. My shadow-thinness almost turned
to fatness. It would have, had there been any disposition toward obesity
in me....
At times I was ashamed of doing nothing ... queer spurts of American
economic conscience....
Once I worked, plowing ... to drive the horses as far as a tall tree for
shade, at the end of the third day, sneak back to the house ... and out
to the highway with my bundle and my belongings, kicking up my heels
ecstatically, glad to be freed from work.
I plumped down in a fence corner and did not stir till I had read a
whole play of Shakespeare, and a snatch of my Caesar.
Once or twice, sheriffs who were bent on arresting me because I had no
visible means of support, let me go, because it awed them to find a
tramp reading Shakespeare....
"It's a shame, a clever lad like you bein' a bum!"
* * * * *
Tramps, though anti-social in the larger aspects of society (as, for
that matter, all special classes are, from millionaires down--or up),
are more than usually companionable among themselves. I never lived and
moved with a better-hearted group of people.
By "jungle" camp-fires--("the jungles," any tramp rendezvous located
just outside the city limits, to be beyond police jurisdiction), in
jails, on freights ... I found a feeling of sincere companionship ... a
companionship that without ostentation and as a matter of course, shared
the last cent the last meal ... when every cent _was_ the last cent,
every meal the _last_ meal ... the rest depending on luck and
Providence....
* * * * *
Tramps often travel in pairs. I picked up a "buddy" ... a short,
thick-set man of young middle age, of Scandinavian descent ... so blond
that his eyebrows were white in contrast with his face, which was ruddy
with work in the sun. He, like me, was a "gaycat" or tramp who is not
above occasional work (as the word meant then--now it means a cheap,
no-account grafter). He had recently been working picking oranges ...
previous to that, he had been employed in a Washington lumber camp.
* * * * *
Together we drifted along the seacoast south to San Diego ... then back
again to Santa Barbara ... for no reason but just to drift. Then we
sauntered over to San Bernardino--"San Berdu," as the tramps call it....
* * * * *
It struck chilly, one night. So chilly that we went into the freightyard
to put up in an empty box-car till the sun of next day rose to warm the
world.
We found a car. There were many other men already there, which was good;
the animal heat of their bodies made the interior warmer.
The interior of the car sounded like a Scotch bagpipe a-drone ... what
with snoring, breaking of wind in various ways, groaning, and muttering
thickly in dreams ... the air was sickeningly thick and fetid. But to
open a side door meant to let in the cold.
Softly my buddy and I drew off our shoes, putting them under our heads
to serve as pillows, and also to keep them from being stolen. (Often a
tramp comes along with a deft enough touch to untie a man's shoes from
his feet without waking him. I've heard of its being done.) We wrapped
our feet in newspapers, then. Our coats we removed, to wrap them about
us ... one keeps warmer that way than by just wearing the coat....
* * * * *
The door on each side crashed back!
"Here's another nest full of 'em!"
"Come on out, boys!"
"What's the matter?" I queried.
"'stoo cold out here. We have a nice, warm calaboose waitin' fer ye!"
Grunting and grumbling, we dropped to the cinders, one after the other.
A posse of deputies and citizens, had, for some dark reason, rounded us
up.
One or two made a break for it, and escaped, followed by a random shot.
After that, no one else cared to be chased after by a bullet.
They conducted us to what they had termed "the calaboose," a big,
ramshackle, one-roomed barn-like structure. Piled in so thick that we
almost had to stand up, there were so many of us--we were held there
till next morning.
But we were served, then, a good breakfast, at the town's expense. The
owner of the restaurant was a queer little, grey-faced, stringy fellow.
He fed us all the buckwheat cakes and sausages we could hold, and won
every hobo's heart, by giving all the coffee we could drink ... we held
our cups with our hands about them, grateful for the warmth.
"Say, you're all right, mister!" ventured a tramp to the proprietor, as
he walked by.
"Bet your God-damned life I'm all right!... because I ain't nothin' but
a bum myself ... yes, an' I'm not ashamed of it, neither ... before I
struck this burg an' started this "ham-and" and made it pay, I was on
the road same es all o' you!"
"Kin I have more pancakes, boss, an' another cup of coffee?"
"You sure can, bo!... es I was sayin', I'm a bum myself, an' proud of it
... and I think these here damn bulls (policemen ... who were sitting
nearby, waiting for us to finish) have mighty little to 'tend to,
roundin' up you boys, now the orange-pickin' season's over with, an'
puttin' you away like this ... why, if any one of them was half as
decent as one o' you bums--"
"Sh! fer Christ's sake!" I admonished, "they're hearing you."
"That's jest what I want 'em to do ... I don't owe nothin' to no man,
an' it's time someone told 'em somethin'."
* * * * *
Breakfast over, we were marched off to the courthouse. We were turned
loose together in a large room. We felt so good with the sausage, cakes
and coffee in our bellies, that we pushed each other about, sang,
jigged, whistled.
As we had walked in, I had asked, of the cop who walked by my side--who
seemed affable....
"Say, mister, after all what's the idea?"
"We had to make an example," he returned, frankly.
"I don't quite get you!"
"Last week a bunch of bums dropped off here at our town, and they
almost ran the diggings for about twenty-four hours ... insulted women
on the streets ... robbed ice-boxes ... even stole the clothes off the
lines."
"In other words, you mean that a bunch of drunken yeggs dropped in on
the town, gutted it, and then jumped out ... and we poor harmless bums
are the ones that have to pay."
"--guess that's about how it is."
I passed the word along the line. My companion tramps cursed the yegg
and his ways....
"They're always raisin' hell ... an' we git the blame ... when all we
want is not loot, but hand-outs and a cup o' coffee ... and a piece of
change now and then."
The yegg, the tiger among tramps--the criminal tramp--despises the
ordinary bum and the "gaycat." And they in turn fear him for his
ruthlessness and recklessness.
He joins with them at their camp-fires ... rides with them on the road
... robs his store or house, or cracks his safe, then flies on, taking
the blinds or decking on top of a "flyer." The law, missing the right
quarry, descends on the slower-moving, harmless bum. And often some poor
"fall-guy" gets a good "frame-up" for a job he never thought of ... and
the majesty of the law stands vindicated.
* * * * *
The charge against us was vagrancy. We were tried by twos.
"Come on, buddy!... you an' your pal."
My companion and I were led in before, I think, a justice of the peace.
The latter was kindly-disposed toward me because I was young and looked
delicate.
When I began my plea for clemency I appropriated the name, career, and
antecedents of Simmons, the young soldier whose body-servant I had been,
back in San Francisco. The man on the bench was impressed by my story of
coming of a wealthy family ... my father was a banker, no less.
The justice waved me aside. He asked my buddy to show his hands. As the
callouses on the palms gave evidence of recent hard work, he was set
free along with me. We were the only two who were let off. The rest were
sent up for three months each, I am told....
And, after all that, what did my buddy do but up and steal my blanket
roll, with all in it--including my Caesar and Shakespeare--and my extra
soldier uniform--the first chance he got!...
* * * * *
An American who had married a Mexican girl gave me work sawing and
chopping wood. I stayed with him long enough to earn a second-hand suit
of clothes he owned, which was too small for him, but almost fitted me
... civilian clothes ... my soldier clothes were worn to tatters.
* * * * *
I picked up another pal. A chunky, beefy nondescript. I was meditating a
jump across "the desert." The older hoboes had warned me against it,
saying it was a cruel trip ... the train crews knew no compunction
against ditching a fellow anywhere out in the desert, where there would
be nothing but a tank of brackish water....
My new chum, on the other hand, swore, that, to one who knew the ropes,
it was not so hard to make the jump on the Southern Pacific ... through
Arizona and New Mexico, to El Paso. He said he would show me how to
wiggle into the refrigerator box of an orange car ... on either end of
the orange car is a refrigerator box, if I remember correctly ... access
to which is gained through the criss-cross bars that hold up a sort of
trap-door at the top. It was in the cold season, so there was now no ice
inside. These trap-doors are always officially sealed, when the car is
loaded. To break a seal is a penitentiary offense.
I stood off and inspected the place I was supposed to go in at. The
triangular opening seemed too small for a baby to slide through. I
looked my chunky pal up and down and laughed.
"--think I can't make it, eh?... well, you watch ... there's an art in
this kind of thing just like there is in anything."
Inch by inch he squeezed himself in. Then he stood up inside and called
to me to try ... and he would pull me the rest of the way, if I stuck.
He was plump and I was skinny. It ought to be easy for me. Nevertheless,
it was the hardest task I ever set myself ... I stuck half-way. My pal
pulled my shirt into rags, helping me through,--I had handed my coat in,
previously, or he would have ripped that to pieces, too. It seemed that
all the skin went off my hips, as I shot inside with a bang. And none
too soon. A "shack" (brakeman) passed over the tops of the cars at
almost that very moment. We lay still. He would have handed me a
merciless drubbing if he had caught me, with my nether end hanging
helplessly on the outside.
* * * * *
We squatted on the floor of the refrigerator box. When we reached Yuma
my pal rose to his feet.
"Ain't yer goin' ta throw yer feet fer a hand-out?" he asked me.
"No, I'm going to stick in here till I reach El Paso, if I can."
"What's the fun bein' a bum, if you're goin' ter punish yerself like
that!"
"I want to find a country where there's growing green things, as soon as
I can."
"So long, then."
"So long.. don't you think you'd better stick till we reach Tuscon? Some
of the boys told me the 'bulls' (officers) here have been 'horstile'
(had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg bumped off a
deputy, a while back."
"Naw, I'll take my chances."
As I rode on, alone, I stood up and took in the scenery like a tourist
... there danced away, and gathered in, the shimmering, sun-flooded
desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus. I
saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up
into the sky ... I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some
melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for
sale in second-rate art stores.
* * * * *
I stuck till Tuscon was reached. There I was all in for lack of food and
water....
A woman gave me a good "set-down" at her kitchen table. I was as hungry
for something to read as I was for something to eat. When she walked out
of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a
compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine. Two
steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently
eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential. I believe that it
served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in
the penitentiary.
* * * * *
I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso. But El Paso at that
time was "unhealthy" for hoboes. They were holding twenty or thirty of
us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all
directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among
themselves, to avoid the town--that it was "horstile."...
* * * * *
Again rolling miles of arid country. But this time, like a soldier on a
long march, I was prepared: I had begged, from door to door, enough
"hand-outs" to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ...
keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake. I sat in my open box-car,
on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my
"hand-outs" and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment.
I was half-way to San Antonio when I fell in with as jolly a bunch of
bums as I ever hope to see in this world ... just outside a little town,
in the "jungles."
These tramps were gathered together on a definite plan, and I was
invited to join them in it: the plan was, to go, _en masse_, from town
to town, and systematically exploit it; one day one man would go to the
butcher shops, the next, another man would take them, and the first
would, let's say, beg at the baker's ... and each day a different man
would take a different section among the houses. Then all the food so
procured would be put together and shared in common.
As usual, there was among them an individual who held them together--the
originator of the idea. He was a fat, ruddy-faced alcoholic ex-cook, who
had never held a job for long because he loved whiskey so much.
Besides being the presiding genius of the gang, he also did all the
cooking. He loved to cook. Each day he jumbled all the mixable portions
of the food together, and, in a big tin wash-boiler which he had rescued
from "the dump" outside of town, he stewed up quite a palatable mess
which we called "slum" or "slumgullion," or, more profanely,
"son-of-a-b----."
For plates we used old tomato cans hammered out flat ... for knives and
forks, our fingers, pocket-knives, and chips of wood.
It was a happy life.
One afternoon mysteriously our leader and cook disappeared--with a broad
grin on his face. Soon he returned, rolling a whole barrel of beer which
he had stolen during the night from the back of a saloon ... and had
hidden it nearby in the bushes till it was time to bring it forth....
We held a roaring party, and had several fights. ("Slopping up" is what
the tramps call a drinking jamboree.) This was the first time I got
drunk in my life. It took very little to set me off ... I burned a big
hole in my coat. I woke lying in the mud near the willows ... and with a
black eye ... a fellow tramp affectionately showed me his finger that I
had bitten severely ... for a day we had bad nerves, and lay about
grumbling....
We kept quite clean. The tramp is as clean as his life permits him to be
... usually ... the myth about his dirtiness is another of the myths of
the newspaper and magazine world ... though I have seen ones who were
extraordinarily filthy....
We "boiled up" regularly ... and hung our shirts and other articles of
apparel on the near-by willows to dry....
After about ten days of scientific exploitation of them, the "natives"
of the town on the verge of which we were encamping, began to evidence
signs of restlessness.
So we moved on to another town by means of a local freight.
Settled there in "the jungles," we hilariously voted to crown the cook
our king. We held the ceremony, presenting him with a crown made out of
an old tin pan, which one of the more expert among us hammered into a
circlet and scoured bright with sand....
* * * * *
But soon I grew tired of the gang and started on alone.
"You'd better beat it on out of the South as quick as you can," an old
tramp had warned me, "they're hell on a bum down here, and harder yet on
a Yankee ... no, they haven't forgot _that_ yet--not by a damn sight!"
I was soon to wish that I had listened to the old tramp's wisdom.
* * * * *
In the chill grey dip of an early spring dawn I dropped off a freight in
the yards of the town of Granton.
I drew my threadbare coat closer as I made my way up the track, on the
look-out for some place to go into and warm myself. Usually, in chilly
weather, each railroad station throughout the country has a stove a-glow
in the waiting room ... I found the railroad station, and the stove,
red-hot, was there ... it was good to be near a fire. In the South it
can be at times heavily cold. There is a moisture and a rawness in the
weather, there, that hurts.
I was not alone. Two negro tramps followed me; like myself, seeking
warmth and shelter. Then came a white tramp.
We stood around the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of
dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip
about the country we were in.
The two negroes soon left to catch a freight for Austin. My fellow tramp
and I stretched ourselves along the benches. He yawned with a loud noise
like an animal. "I'm worn-out," he said, "I've been riding the bumpers
all night." I noticed immediately that he did not speak tramp argot.
"And _I_ tried to sleep on the bare boards of a box car."
We had disposed ourselves comfortably to sleep for the few hours till
wide day, in the station, when the station master came. He poked the
fire brighter, shook it down, then turned to us. "Boys," not unkindly,
"sorry, but you can't sleep here ... it's the rules."
We shuffled to our feet.
"Do you mind if we stand about the stove till the sun's high enough to
take the chill off things?"
"No."
But, standing, we fell to talking ... comparing notes....
"I've been through here once before," remarked my companion, whom I
never knew otherwise than as "Bud."
"There's a cotton seed mill up the tracks a way toward town, and we can
sleep there, if you want ... to-day's Sunday, and no one will be around,
working, to disturb us. In the South it's all right for a tramp to sleep
among cotton seed, provided he doesn't smoke there."
"Come on, then, let's find a place. I can hardly hold my head up."
We slumped along the track. A cinder cut into my foot through the broken
sole of one shoe. It made me wince and limp.
Soon we came to the cotton seed house and looked it over from the
outside. It was a four-square building, each side having a door. All the
doors but one were locked. That one, when pushed against, tottered over.
We climbed in over the heavy sacks, seemingly full of cement, with which
the unlocked door had been propped to. It also was unhinged.
It was dark inside. There were no windows.
We struck matches and explored. We found articles of heavier hardware
scattered and piled about, some sacks of guano, and about a dozen wired
bales of hay.
"I thought this was a cotton seed mill," commented Bud, "because I saw
so many niggers working around it, when I passed by, the other time."
"Well, and what is it, then?"
"Evidently a warehouse--where they store heavier articles of hardware."
"What are you going to do?"
"Twist the wires off a couple of these bales of hay, use it for bedding,
and have a good sleep anyhow."
"But--suppose we're caught in here?"
"No chance. It's Sunday morning, no one will be here to work to-day, and
we'll be let alone."
With a little effort we twisted the bales apart and made comfortable
beds from the hay.
It seemed I had slept but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I
dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing
flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the
centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in part, my dream was
true.
There straddled over me an excited man, swearing profusely to keep his
courage up. He was pressing the cold muzzle-end of a "forty-four-seventy"
into my forehead.
"Come on! Get up, you ---- ---- ----! Come on out of here, or I'll blow
your ---- ---- ---- brains out, do you hear?"
Then I caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and
composed, and in English that was almost academic--"my dear man, put up
your gun and I will go with you quietly. I am only a tramp and not a
desperado."
This both puzzled and at the same time reassured my captor ... and made
him swear all the louder,--this time, with a note of brave certainty in
his tone.
His gun poked me in the back to expedite my exit. I stepped out at the
open door into streaming daylight that at first dazzled my eyes. I saw
waiting on the track outside a posse of about fifteen citizens.
"Good work, McAndrews," commended one of them, deep-voiced. The others
murmured gruff approval.
McAndrews, from conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the
yards. He had one red-rimmed eye. The other was sightless but had a
half-closed leer that seemed to express discreet visual powers.
"Now go on in an' fetch out the other bum," commanded the deep-voiced
member of the posse, speaking with authority.
"There wasn't but only this 'un," McAndrews replied, with renewed
timidity in his voice, scarcely concealed, and jerking his thumb toward
me.
"But the little nigger said they was--ain't that so, nigger?"
"Yassir, boss--I done seen two o' dem go in dar!" replied a wisp of a
negro boy, rolling wide eye-whites in fright, and wedged in among the
hulking posse.
"Well, this 'un's all I seen!" protested the night watchman, "an' you
betcher I looked about mighty keerful ... wot time did you see 'um break
in?" turning to the negro child.
"Jes' at daylight, boss!"
"An' wot was you-all a-doin' down hee-ar?"
"He was a-stealin' coal f'um the coalkiars," put in one of the posse,
"in cohse!"
All laughed.
"Anyhow, I done seed two o' dem," protested the boy, comically, "wot
evah else I done!"
Everybody was now hilarious.
"Whar's yoah buddy?" I was asked.
"Did unt you-all hev no buddy wit' you?"
"Yes, I did have a buddy with me, but--" trying to give Bud a chance of
escape,--"but he caught a freight West, just a little bit ago."
"You're a liar," said the one in authority, who I afterward heard was
the head-clerk of the company that ran the warehouse. The negro boy had
run to his house and roused him. He had drawn the posse together....
"You're a liar! Your buddy's still in there!"
"No, I'll sweah they haint nobuddy else," protested McAndrews.
But prodded by their urging, he climbed in again over the sacks of
guano, and soon brought out Bud, who had waked, heard the rumpus, and
had been hiding, burrowed down under the hay as deep as he could go.
There was a burst of laughter as he stood framed in the doorway, in
which I couldn't help but join. He had such a silly, absurd, surprised
look in his face ... a look of stupefied incredulity, when he saw all
the men drawn up to receive him. From a straggled lock of hair that fell
over one eye hung several long hay-wisps. His face looked stupid and
moon-fat. He rolled his big, brown eyes in a despairful manner that was
unconsciously comic. For he was, instinctively, as I was not, instantly
and fully aware of the seriousness of what might come upon us for our
innocent few hours' sleep.
"Come on, boys. Up with your hands till we go through your pockets."
On Bud's hip they found a whiskey flask, quarter-full. In my inside
pocket, a sheaf of poor verse--I had barely as yet come to grips with my
art--and, in an outside pocket, the Bible I had filched from the woman's
sewing machine in Tuscon.
The finding of the Bible on my person created a speechless pause.
Then--
"Good Gawd! A bum with a Bible!"
Awe and respect held the crowd for a moment.
* * * * *
The march began.
"Where are you taking us to?"
"To the calaboose."
Down a long stretch of peaceful, Sunday street we went--small boys
following in a curious horde, and Sunday worshippers with their women's
gloved hands tucked in timidly under their arms as we passed by. They
gave us prim, askance glances, as if we belonged to a different species
of the animal kingdom.
Buck negroes with their women stepped out into the street, while, as is
customary there,--the white men passed, taking us two tramps to jail. We
came to a high, newly white-washed board fence. Within it stood a
two-story building of red brick. On the fence was painted, in big black
letters the facetious warning, "Keep out if you can." A passage in
through the gate, and McAndrews first knocked at, then kicked against
the door.
The sleepy-faced, small-eyed jailer finally opened to us. The wrinkled
skin of the old man hung loosely from his neck. It wabbled as he talked.
"What the hell's the mattah with you folks?" protested McAndrews, the
night watchman, "slep' late," yawned the jailer, "it bein' Sunday
mawhnin'."
By this time the sheriff, summoned from his house, had joined us. A big
swashbuckler of a man with a hard face, hard blue eyes with quizzical
wrinkles around them. They seemed wrinkles of good humour till you
looked closer.
"--s a damn lie ... you 'en Jimmy hev bin a-gamblin' all night,"
interjected the sheriff, in angry disgust.
* * * * *
They marched us upstairs. The whole top floor, was given over to a huge
iron cage which had been built in before the putting on of the roof. A
narrow free space--a sort of corridor, ran all around it, on the
outside.
Eager and interested, the prisoners already in the cage pushed their
faces against the bars to look at us. But at the sheriff's word of
command they went into their cells, the latter built in a row within the
cage itself, and obediently slammed their doors shut while a long iron
bar was shot across the whole length, from without ... then the big door
of the cage was opened, and we were thrust in. The bar was drawn back,
liberating the others, then, from their cells.
The posse left. Our fellow prisoners crowded about us, asking us
questions ... what had we done?... and how had we been caught?... and
what part of the country were we from?... etc. etc....
From the North ... yes, Yankee ... well, when a fellow was both a Yank
and a tramp he was given a short shrift in the South.
They talked much about themselves ... one thing, however, we all held in
common ... our innocence ... we were all innocent ... every one of us
was innocent of the crime charged against us ... we were just being
persecuted.
* * * * *
That afternoon a negro preacher, short and squat, who, innocent, was yet
being held for Grand Jury, delivered us a fearful half-chanted sermon on
the Judgment Day. I never heard so moving, compelling a sermon. I saw
the sky glowing like a furnace, the star-touching conflagration of the
End of Things rippling up the east in increasing waves of fire, in place
of the usual dawn ... I heard the crying of mankind ... of sinners ...
for mountains to topple over on them and cover them from the wrath of
the Lord....
* * * * *
"In co'hse I nevah done it," explained the preacher, "I had some hawgs
of mah own. Mah hawgs had an under-bit an' an ovah-bit in dere eahs, an'
de ones I's 'cused o' stealin', dey had only an ovah-bit. But heah dey's
got me, holdin' me foh de pen."
* * * * *
The little grey-faced pickpocket--caught at his trade at the Dallas
Fair, told me how easy it was to add an under-bit to an over-bit to the
ears of the two hogs stolen, "Sure that sneakin' niggah pahson did it,"
he averred--but all the while he likewise averred that _he_ hadn't
picked the pocket of the man from whom he was accused of stealing a
wallet....
"Yes, I'll admit Ah've done sech things. But this taime they was sure
wrong. Ef I git framed up," he added, "I mean tuh study law ... pull foh
a job in th' prison libery an' read up ... an' take up practice when I
serve my term."
Beside the hog-stealing parson and the little grey-faced pickpocket
there were also:
A big negro youth, black as shiny coal, who was being held over on
appeal. He'd been sentenced to ninety-nine years for rape of a negro
girl ... if it had been a white girl he would have been burned long ago,
he said ... as it was, the sheriff's son, who was handling his case,
would finally procure his release--and exact, in return, about ten
years' of serfdom as payment. And there was a young, hard-drinking
quarrelsome tenant-farmer, who was charged with having sold two bales of
cotton not belonging to him, to get money for drinking....
There was another negro, hanging-handed, simous-faced, who had, in a fit
of jealousy, blown two heads off by letting loose both barrels at once
of his heavily charged shotgun ... the heads were his wife's ... and her
lover's. He caught them when their faces were close together ... and
they were kissing. But he seemed a gentle creature, tractable and
harmless.
On the outside of the cage in which we were cooped like menagerie
animals, a negro girl had her cot. She slept and lived out there by the
big stove which heated the place. She was a girl of palish yellow
colour. She was a trusty. She had been caught watching outside of a
house while two grown-up negro women went within to rob.
* * * * *
Monday morning "kangaroo court" was called ... that court which
prisoners hold, mimicking the legal procedure to which they grow so
accustomed during their lives. We were arraigned for trial--the charge
against us, that of "Breaking Into Jail."
The cotton thief served as prosecuting attorney. The negro youth in for
rape of one of his own colour,--the sergeant-at-arms; while the negro
preacher in for hog-stealing defended us ... and he did it so well that
we were let off with ten blows of the strap a-piece. We had no money to
be mulcted of, nor were we able to procure from friends, as the custom
is, funds for the buying of whiskey and tobacco.
* * * * *
In a few days Bud and I had settled down into the routine of jail-life.
Every morning we swept our cells, and all the prisoners took turns
sweeping the corridor. The fine for spitting on the floor was ten lashes
laid on hard. And each day before breakfast we soaked the seams of our
clothes in vile-smelling creosote to kill off the lice and nits. We had
no chance to bathe, and were given but little water to wash our face and
hands.
* * * * *
"I wonder what they are going to do with us?"
"Anything they please," answered Bud gloomily.
"From thirty to ninety days on the county farm, I suppose?"
"We'll be lucky if we don't get from four to ten years in the pen."
"What for?"
"Burglary--didn't we break into that warehouse?"
* * * * *
Our meals were passed in to us through an open space near the level of
the floor, at the upper end of the cage, where a bar had been removed
for that purpose. We'd line up and the tin plates would be handed in,
one after the other ... two meals a day. For breakfast a corn pone of
coarse, white corn meal, and a bit of fried sow-belly. For dinner, all
the water we could drink. For supper, breakfast all over again, with
the addition of a dab of greens. On rare occasions the sheriff's son or
the jailer went hunting ... and then we'd have rabbit. The sheriff had
the contract, at so much per head, for feeding the prisoners.
Each morning I used to ask the jailer for the occasional newspaper with
which he covered the basket in which he brought our food to us. One
morning my eyes fell upon an interesting item:
The story of how two young desperadoes had been caught in the warehouse
beside the railroad track, in the act of committing burglary ... the
tale of our capture was briefly told ... the bravery of the night
watchman and the posse extolled ... and the further information was
conveyed, that, having waved preliminary examination (and we had, for
they told us the justice was continually too drunk to examine us) we
were being held over for Grand Jury ... on a charge of burglary.
Though he had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a
heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour,
hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment to
despair.
My reaction was a strange one. I wanted to sing ... whistle ... dance
... I was in the midst of adventure and romance. I was a Count of Monte
Cristo, a Baron von Trenck. I dreamed of linguistic and philosophic
studies in the solitude of my cell at the penitentiary till I was master
of all languages, of all wisdom, or I dreamed of escape and of rising to
wealth and power, afterwards, so that I would be pardoned and could come
back and magnanimously shame with my forgiveness the community that had
sent me up.
Bud stopped his pacing to and fro to stand in our cell-doorway. I was
sitting on a stool, thinking hard.
"We can't do a thing," said Bud, "we're in for it, good and proper."
"--tell you what _I'll_ do," I responded, "I'll write a letter to the
owner of the warehouse and appeal to his humanity."
"You romantic jack-ass," yelled Bud, his nerves on edge. He walked away
angry. He came back calmer.
"Look here, Gregory, I want you to excuse that outburst--but you _are_ a
fool. This is _real life_ we're up against now. You're not reading about
this in a book."
"We'll see what can be done," I returned.
* * * * *
At the extreme end of the big cage, the end furthest from the entrance
door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for
my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of
Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern
viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied
and wrote assiduously. And it was here I went to sit on my stool and
write the letter to the owner of the warehouse ... a certain Mr.
Womber....
In it I pointed out the enormity of sending to the penitentiary two
young men, on a merely technical charge of burglary. For if we had gone
into the place to rob, why had we so foolishly, then, gone to sleep? And
what, at the final analysis, could we have stolen but bales of hay,
sacks of guano, and plowshares? All of them too unwieldy to carry away
unless we had other conveyance than our backs. It was absurd, on the
face of it.
Furthermore, I appealed to him, as a Christian, to let us go free ... in
the name of God, not to wreck our lives by throwing us, for a term of
years, into contact with criminals of the hardened type--to give us one
more chance to become useful citizens of our great and glorious country.
Bud laughed sneeringly when I read the letter aloud to him ... said it
was a fine effort as a composition in rhetoric, but I might expect
nothing of it--if the perpetually drunk jailer really brought it to its
destination--except that it would be tossed unread into the
wastebasket....
I pleaded with the jailer to deliver it for me ... told him how
important it would be to our lives ... adjured him to consider our
helpless and penniless state. He promised to deliver it for me.
"I have nothing to give you, now," I ended, "but, if I ever get free,
I'll send you twenty-five dollars or so from up home, when I reach the
North."
* * * * *
A prisoner's first dream is "escape." Voices outside on the street, the
sight of the tops of green trees through bars, dogs barking far away,
the travels of the sun as shown by moving bands of light on the walls
and in the cells--all remind him of the day when he was, as he now sees
it, happy and free ... he forgets entirely, in the midst of the jail's
black restraints, the lesser evils of outside, daily life. Even the
termagant wife is turned into a domestic angel.
* * * * *
Under the smoky prison lamp made of a whiskey bottle filled with oil,
and a shred of shirt drawn through a cork, we planned to cut out.
"The way to do it is easy," said the little pickpocket, "in the sole of
every good shoe is a steel spring. I'll take the steel from my shoe.
There's already one bar removed from the chuck-hole (No use trying to
reproduce the dialect). If we saw out another bar, that will give us
enough room for going through. Then it will be easy to dig out the
mortar between the bricks, in the jail wall. Once out, we can make for
the river bottoms, and, by wading in the water, even their bloodhounds
can't track us."
"And once I get over into Indian Territory or Arkansas, you'll never see
me in Texas again," I muttered.
"How'll we conceal where we've been sawing?" Bud asked.
"By plugging up the grooves with corn bread blackened with soot that we
can make by holding the wick of this smoky lamp against the
cage-ceiling."
"And how'll we keep folks from hearing the sawing?"
"By dancing and singing while Baykins here" (alluding to a "pore white"
fiddler who had almost killed a man at a dance) "while Baykins here
plays 'whip the devil.'"
The very next day we began dancing and singing and taking turns at the
chuckhole bar.
"Whip the Devil" is an interminable tune like the one about the "old
woman chasing her son round the room with a broom."...
The mistake was, that in our eagerness we "whipped the devil" too long
at a time. Naturally, the jailer grew suspicious of such sudden and
prolonged hilarity. But even at that it took almost a week for them to
catch on. We knew it was all up when, one morning at breakfast, the
sheriff came in with the jailer.
"Boys, all back into your cells!" he growled.
The long bar was thrown over our closed doors.
The sheriff stooped down and inspected the chuck-hole.
"Why, Jesus Christ, they'd of been through in two more nights. It's good
we caught them in time or they'd of been a hell of a big jail-delivery
... do you mean to tell me," turning to the jailer, "you never noticed
this before?" and with one finger he raked out the blackened corn bread.
"You see, I'm a little near-sighted, Mistah Jenkins."
"Too damned near-sighted, an' too damned stupid, too."
The big iron door of the cage was locked again, the long bar thrown off
our cell doors.
"Now, you sons of b---- can come out into the cage again; but, mind you,
if any of you try such a thing again, I'll take you out one by one and
give you all a rawhiding."
We received the abuse in sullen silence. For three days our rations
lacked cornpone, for punishment.
We decided among ourselves that the negro preacher, to stand in well
with the authorities, had given us away....
And if he had not, panic-stricken, pleaded with the sheriff to be taken
out and put in a separate cell, I believe we would have killed him.
* * * * *
There was one more way. It was so simple a way that we had not thought
of it before. The mulatto girl, who slept by the big stove, on a cot,
just outside the cage ... a trusty and the jailer's unwilling concubine
... this slim, yellow creature was much in love with the lusty young
farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And
it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the
keys. For, every day, she informed us, she passed them by where they
hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned house for the
jailer.
It was not a difficult matter to procure them. She would bring them up
to us and hand them in through the chuck-hole, which the village
blacksmith had repaired and once more reinforced with extra bars, "so
them bastards won't even think of sawing out again," as the jailer had
expressed it.
The evening she handed the keys in to us we were so excited we wanted to
have "Whip the Devil" played again for our singing and dancing. But this
might have once more awakened suspicion. Before, we had raised such a
row as to have caused pedestrians to stop and listen in groups,
wondering what made the men inside so happy....
There were three separate locks on the great cage door. One, two of them
went back with an easy click. For the third we could find no key. There
was nothing else to do now but to have recourse to singing and dancing
again. Baykins started sawing his fiddle furiously while the big negro
in for rape hammered and hammered on the lock to break it, with one
prison stool after another, till all were tossed aside, broken as
kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf,
or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey.
Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The
first sign of weakness I ever detected in him.
"Now it's shore either ninety-nine yeahs in de pen foh me, or ten yeahs
for th' sheriff's son foh lawyah fees ... an' the footprints in de
flowah bed ... of the man what done de rape was two sizes biggah dan
mine."
* * * * *
The next day the jailer, of course, missed the keys. Panic-stricken, the
mulatto girl was afraid to slip them back to their accustomed nail, for
fear she'd be seen at it; or was it out of vindictiveness against the
jailer that she had now actually hidden them somewhere (for, finding
them of no use, we had handed them back to her)!
That same afternoon the sheriff, with his son and the little,
shrivelled, stuttering, half-deaf jailer, came in at the door of the big
room. It was easy to see what they wanted. They wanted the keys and they
were going to make the girl confess where they were ... as she was the
only other person, beside the prison authorities, that was in the way to
come at them.
"Martha, we want them keys! Show us where they is, like a good girl!"
"'Deed, Ah don' know where dey is a-tall, Marse Sheriff!"
"Come on, gal, you was the only one downstairs exceptin' Jacklin heah!"
pointing to the jailer.
The jailer nodded his head asseveratingly.
"Yes, Martha, tell us whar the keys air," urged the latter, with
caressing softness and fright in his voice. He didn't want his mistress
whipped.
"If you don't, by God, I'll whup the nigger hide clean off yore back,"
and the sheriff reached for the braided whip which his son Jimmy handed
him.
"I sweah Ah don' know where dey is!"
"You dirty liah," taking out a watch; "I'll give you jest five minutes
t' tell, an' then--" he menaced with the up-lifted whip.
In stubborn silence the girl waited the five minutes out.
"Jimmy!... Jacklin!... throw her down an' hold her, rump up, over that
cot." They obeyed. With a jerk the sheriff had her dress up and her bare
buttocks in view.
"I'm a-goin' to whup an' whup till you confess, Martha."
Crack! Crack! Crack! the whip descended, leaving red whelts each time.
The mulatto girl writhed, but did not cry quits. Beads of perspiration
glistened on the jailer's face. The girl shook off his lax grip on her
arms ... the sheriff's son was holding her legs. We were crowded against
the bars, angry and silent. We admired the girl's hopeless pluck. We saw
she was holding out just to, somehow, have vengeance on the jailer for
her being held in unwilling concubinage by him, hoping he would catch it
hard for having let the keys hang carelessly in open view, and so,
stolen.
"Damn you, Jacklin," shouted the sheriff, "I believe you're a little
soft on the gal ... come here ... you swing the whip an' I'll hold her
arms."
In mute agony Jacklin obeyed ... whipping the woman of whom he was fond.
"Harder, Jacklin, harder," and the sheriff drew his gun on him to
emphasise the command.
Under such impulsion, a shower of heavy blows fell. The girl screamed.
"I'll give up ... Oh, good Lordy, I'll give up."
And she dug the keys out from under the mattress across which they had
whipped her.
After they had gone she lay crying on her face for a long while. When
night came she still lay crying. Nothing any of us could say would
console her. Not even the little white cotton thief had power to allay
her hurt....
At last we began cursing and railing at her. That made her stop, after a
fashion. But still she occasionally gave vent to a heart-deep, dry,
racking sob.
* * * * *
Locked in there behind bars and forced to be impotent onlookers, the
whipping we had witnessed made us as restless as wild animals. That
night, under the dim flare of our jail-made lamps, the boys gambled as
usual, for their strips of paper,--and as eagerly as if it were real
currency. I, for my part, drew away to the vacant cell at the far end of
the cage to study and read and dream my dreams....
As I sat there I was soon possessed with a disagreeable feeling that a
malignant, ill-wishing presence hovered near. I shifted in my seat
uneasily. I looked up. There stood, in the doorway, the lusty young
farmer who was in for stealing the bales of cotton. He wore an evil,
combative leer on his face. He was "spoiling" for a quarrel--just for
the mere sake of quarrelling--that I could see. But I dissembled.
"Well, Jack?" I asked gently.
"You're a nice one," he muttered, "you pale-faced Yankee son of a b----
... think you're better 'n the rest of us, don't ye?... readin' in yore
books?"
"Nonsense, what are you picking at me for? I'm not harming anybody, am
I?"
"No, but you're a God damned fool!"
"Look here, what have I ever done to you?"
"Nothin', only you're a white-livered stinker, an' I'm jest a-spoilin'
foh a fight with you-all."
"But I don't want to fight with you."
"I'll make you," he replied, striding in; and fetching me a cuff on the
ear ... then, in a far-away voice that did not seem myself, I heard
myself pleading to be let alone ... by this time all the other boys had
crowded down about the cell to see the fun.
I was humiliated, ashamed ... but, try as I would, the thought and
vision of my uncle came on me like a palsy.
Bud stepped up. He had always been so meek and placid before that what
he did then was a surprise to me.
"_I'll_ fight!"
"What! you?" glowered the young farmer, surprised.
"Yes, I'll give you all the fighting you want, you dirty cotton thief!"
Instantly the farmer made at him. Bud ran in, fetched him two blows in
the face, and clinched.
It was not going very well for the desperado. From somewhere on his
person he whipped forth a knife, and, with a series of flashes through
the air, began stabbing Bud again and again in the back.
I thank God for what came over me then. Too glad of soul to believe it,
I experienced a warm surge of angry courage rushing through me like an
electric storm. All the others were panic-stricken for the moment. But I
burst through the group, rushed back to the toilet, and, with frenzied
strength, tore loose a length of pipe from the exposed plumbing. I came
rushing back. I brought down the soft lead-pipe across "Jack's" ear,
accompanying the blow with a volley of oaths in a roaring voice.
The farmer whipped about to face his new antagonist, letting Bud drop
back. Bud sank to the iron floor. The farmer was astonished almost to
powerlessness to find facing him, with a length of swinging pipe in his
hand, the boy who had a few minutes before been afraid.
But he rapidly recovered and came on at me, gibbering like an incensed
baboon.
By this time all the humiliations I had suffered in the past, since
succumbing to the fear-complex that my uncle had beaten into me--all the
outrage of them was boiling in me for vengeance. I saw the blood bathing
the torn ear of my antagonist. It looked beautiful. I was no longer
afraid of anything. Yelling my uncle's name I came on ... I beat the
knife out of the other's hand and bloodied his knuckles with the next
blow. I beat him down with rapid blows, threshing at him, shouting and
yelling exultantly.
The other men thought me gone crazy. I had, for the time, gone crazy.
The fellow lay at my feet, inert. I stopped for the moment.
In that moment the gang began to close in on me, half frightened
themselves. I threatened them back.
"By hell, I've had enough of bullying," I shouted wildly; "I'm not
afraid of anything or anybody any more ... if there's anyone else here
that wants a taste of this pipe, let them step up."
"We ain't a-tryin' to fight you-all," called out the big negro who was
in for rape, "we jest don' want you to kill him an' git hung foh
murduh."
At the word "murder" I stepped quickly back.
"Well, don't let him come bothering me or my pal for a fight any more
when we've done nothing to him."
"Don' worry, he won't no moh!" assured the fiddler....
I threw down the lead pipe. It had seemed to me that all the while it
was my Uncle Landon who had received the blows.
The rough-neck farmer was in bad shape; he was bloodied all over like a
stuck pig. The mulatto girl on the outside had for the last five minutes
been occupied in calling out of the window for help. She managed to
attract the attention of a passerby-by.
"What's the matter?" was called up to her....
"The jailer ain't downstairs ... an' de boys is killin' each other up
heah!"
* * * * *
By the time the angry-faced sheriff came with his son, the jailer, and a
couple of doctors, we had quieted down.
Bud and the farmer were taken out; by the side of each a pail of water
was placed ... they were seated on stools, stripped to the waist. The
surgeons dressed their wounds as if on a battlefield. "Jack" needed ten
stitches in his scalp.... Bud had four knife wounds that demanded sewing
up. Both the boys went pale like ghosts and spewed their bellies empty
from weakness and loss of blood....
"Mind you, you chaps in there have raised 'bout enough hell ... ef I
hear o' any more trouble, I'll take you all out one by one an' treat
each one o' you-all to a good cowhidin', law or no law!"
* * * * *
I was let alone after that. My cowardice had gone forever. I was now a
man among men. I was happy. I saw what an easy thing it is to fight, to
defend yourself. I saw what an exhilaration, a pleasure, the exchanging
of righteous blows can be.
* * * * *
Always my dream was of being a big man when I got out--some day. Always
I acted as if living a famous prison romance like that of Baron Von
Trenck's.
* * * * *
I collected from the living voices of my fellow prisoners innumerable
jail and cocaine songs, and rhymes of the criminal world. I wrote them
down on pieces of wrapping paper that the jailer occasionally covered
the food-basket with in lieu of newspaper.
"Oh, coco-Marie, and coco-Marai,
I'se gon' ta whiff cocaine 'twill I die.
Ho! (sniff) Ho! (sniff) baby, take a whiff of me!"
(The sniffing sound indicating the snuffing up into the nostril of the
"snow," or "happy dust," as it is called in the underworld.)
Then there was the song about lice:
"There's a lice in jail
As big as a rail;
When you lie down
They'll tickle your tail--
Hard times in jail, poor boy!..."
And another, more general:
"Along come the jailer
About 'leven o'clock,
Bunch o' keys in his right hand,
The jailhouse do'h was locked....
'Cheer up, you pris'ners,'
I heard that jailer say,
'You got to go to the cane-brakes
Foh ninety yeahs to stay!'"
As you can guess, most of these jail songs and ballads of the underworld
could only be printed in asterisks. I was hoping, in the interests of
folklore, to preserve them for some learned society's private printing
press.
* * * * *
A fresher green came to the stray branches of the trees that crossed our
barred windows. The world outside seemed to waken with bird-song. It was
spring, and time for the sitting of the grand jury that was to decide
whether we were, each of us, to be held over for trial by petty jury ...
days of fretful eagerness and discontent ... from the windows the yellow
trusty-girl said she could see lines of buggies driving in to town. It
was the custom of farmers for miles around to drive in to their county
seat during the court assizes ... a week or so of holidays like a
continuous circus for them.
When the sheriff would have occasion to come into the room in which
stood our big cage, the boys would crowd up to the bars, each one hoping
for news favourable to his case ... the prevailing atmosphere was one of
hope.
* * * * *
The negro who had murdered his wife and her sweetheart with a shotgun
had already had his trial. He was--and had been--but waiting the arrival
of the prison contractor, as the latter went from county jail to county
jail, gathering in his flock, and taking them away, chained together, to
the penitentiary and the cane brakes ... "where only a big buck nigger
can live," the little pickpocket had told me, with fear in his voice....
He came ... the contractor ... to our jail at midnight. All of us leaped
from our mattresses to witness the dreary procession of neck-chained and
be-manacled convicted men. In the light of the swinging lanterns, a
lurid spectacle. Our man was taken out and chained in with the gang.
They clanked away down the stairs, leaving us who remained with heavy
chains on our hope instead of on our necks and hands and legs ...
because of the sight we had just seen. For the passing day or so we were
so depressed that we wandered about saying nothing to each other, like
dumb men.
* * * * *
One after the other the men had true bills found against them, and
little slips of folded paper were thrust in to them through the bars of
their cells. And shyster lawyers who fatten on the misfortunes of the
prison-held being, began to hold whispered conversations (and
conferences) from without, mainly to find out just how much each
prisoner could raise for fees for defence....
Bud and I were the only ones left. All the others had had true bills
found against them.
* * * * *
But there came an afternoon when the big, hulky sheriff, with the cruel,
quizzical eyes, came to the back bars of our cell and summoned us up
with a mysterious air....
"Well, boys," he began, pausing to squirt a long, brown stream of
tobacco juice, "well, boys--" and he paused again.
My nerves were so on edge that I controlled with difficulty a mad
impulse to curse at the sheriff for holding us in such needless
suspense....
Taking another deliberate chew off his plug, he told us that after
mature deliberation the grand jury had decided that there was not enough
grounds for finding a true bill against us, and, as a consequence, we
were to be let go free.
* * * * *
The following morning I had the satisfaction of hearing from old
Jacklin, the jailer, that Womber, the owner of the warehouse, had
himself gone before the grand jury and informed them that he did not
wish to press the charge of burglary against us....
Womber, Jacklin said, had received my letter and at first had tossed it
aside ... even thrown it contemptuously into the wastebasket. But his
wife and daughter had raked it out and read it and had, day and night,
given him no peace till he had promised to "go easy on the poor boys."
This was my triumph over Bud--the triumph of romance over realism.
"I'm glad we're getting out, but there's more damn fools in the world
than I thought," he remarked, with a sour smile of gratification.
* * * * *
And now, with new, trembling eagerness, we two began waiting for the
hour of our release. That very afternoon it would be surely, we thought
... that night ... then the next morning ... then ... the next day....
But until a week more had flown, the sheriff did not let us go. In order
to make a little more profit on his feeding contract, averred our
prisoners.
But on Saturday morning he came to turn us loose. By this time we seemed
blood brothers to the others in the cage ... negro ... mulatto ... white
... criminal and vicious ... weak, and victims of circumstance ...
everything sloughed away. Genuine tears stood in our eyes as with strong
hand-grips we wished the poor lads good luck!
We stumbled down the jail stairway up which, three months before, we had
been conducted to our long incarceration in the cage. The light of free
day stormed in on our prison-inured eyes in a blinding deluge of white
and gold ... we stepped out into what seemed not an ordinary world, but
a madness and tumult of birds, a delirious green of trees too beautiful
for any place outside the garden of Paradise.
"Come on," said Bud, "let's go on down the main street and thank Womber
for not pressing the case--"
"To hell with Womber!"
"Well, then, I'm going to thank him."
"I'm grateful enough.... I might write him a letter thanking him ...
but I'm not anxious to linger in this neighbourhood."
So Bud and I parted company, shaking hands good-bye; he headed west ...
to China and the East, finally, he said ... I never knew his real name
... neither of us gave his right name to the town's officials....
As I sought the railroad tracks again, the good air and my unwonted
freedom made me stagger, so that several negroes laughed at me heartily,
thinking I was drunk.
* * * * *
I sat down on a railroad tie and tenderly and solicitously took a brown
package out of my inside pocket--the brown paper on which I had
inscribed with enthusiasm the curious songs of jail, cocaine, criminal,
and prostitute life I had heard during my three months' sojourn behind
bars.
I looked them over again. With all their smut and filth, they were yet
full of naive folk-touches and approximations to real balladry. I was as
tender of the manuscript as a woman would be with her baby.
* * * * *
The sky grew overcast. A rain storm blew up. A heavy wind mixed with
driving wet ... chilly ... I found shelter under a leaky shed ... was
soggy and miserable ... even wished, in a weak moment, for the
comparative comfort of my cell again....
The fast freight I was waiting for came rocking along. I made a run for
it in the rapidly gathering dusk. I grabbed the bar on one side and made
a leap for the step, but missed, like a frantic fool, with one
foot--luckily caught it with the other, or I might have fallen
underneath--and was aboard, my arms almost wrenched from their sockets.
Not till I had climbed in between the cars on the bumpers did I realise
that my coat had been torn open and my much-valued songs jostled out.
Without hesitation I hurled myself bodily off the train. My one idea to
regain the MSS. I landed on my shoulders, saw stars, rolled over and
over. I groped up and down. And tears rained from my eyes when I
understood those rhymes were lost forever....
It was midnight before I caught another freight. I climbed wearily into
an empty box car while the freight was standing still. I was seen. A
brakeman came to the door and lifted up his lantern, glancing within, I
was crouching, wet and forlorn, in a corner of the car, waiting for the
freight to be under way.
"Come on out with you! Hit the grit!" commanded the "shack" grimly.
I rose. I came to the door. I hated him in my heart, but quite simply
and movingly I recited the story of my imprisonment, ending by asking
him to let me ride, in the name of God.
He crunched away down the path, his lantern bobbing as he went.
* * * * *
All night long I rode ... bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump! All
night long my head was a-ferment with dreams of the great things I would
achieve, now that I was free of the shadow of imprisonment.
* * * * *
When I walked down the streets of Haberford once more, though I was
leathery and stronger-looking, my adventures had added no meat to my
bones. I was amused at myself as I walked along more than usually erect,
for no other reason than to keep my coat-tail well down in back in order
not to show the hole in the seat of my trousers. As I came down the
street on which my father and I had lived, an anticipatory pleasure of
being recognised as a sort of returned Odysseus beat through my veins
like a drum. But no one saw me who knew me. It hurt me to come home,
unheralded.
I came to the house where I had dwelt. I pulled the bell. There was no
answer. I walked around the corner to the telegraph office. I was
overjoyed to see lean, lanky Phil, the telegraph operator, half
sleeping, as usual, over the key of his instrument.
"Hel-lo, John Gregory!" he shouted, with glad surprise in his voice.
* * * * *
He telephoned my father ... who came over from the works, running with
gladness. I was immediately taken home. I took three baths that
afternoon before I felt civilised again....
* * * * *
My father had returned to the Composite Works. I was alone in my little
room, with all my cherished books once more. They had been, I could
plainly observe, kept orderly and free of dust, against cay home-coming.
I took down my favourite books, kissing each one of them like a
sweetheart. Then I read here and there in all of them, observing all the
old passages I had marked. I lay in all attitudes. Sprawling on the
floor on my back, on my belly ... on my side ... now with my knees
crossed....
Whitman, Shakespeare, Scott, Shelley, Byron ... Speke, Burton, Stanley
... my real comrades!... my real world! Rather a world of books than a
world of actuality!...
I was so glad to be among my books again that for a month I gave no
thought to the future. I did nothing but read and study ... except at
those times when I was talking to people prodigiously of my trip and
what I had seen and been through. And naturally and deftly I wove huge
strips of imagination and sheer invention into the woof of every tale or
anecdote....
I captained ships, saw Chinese slaughtered by the thousands, fought
bandits on the outskirts of Manila, helped loot the palace of the
empress in the Sacred City at Pekin ... tales of peril and adventure
that I had heard others relate at camp-fires, in jail, in the
forecastle, on the transport, I unhesitatingly appropriated as my own
experiences.
All the papers printed stories about me. And I was proud about it. And I
became prouder still when I sold a story in two parts to a New York
Sunday paper ... I liked the notoriety....
But as usual, the yarns I retailed struck in upon my own imagination,
too ... just as had my earlier stories of killing Indians. Particularly
the tale I had related of having seen dead Chinamen in heaps with their
heads lopped off. A nightmare of this imaginary episode began to come to
me. And another dream I had--of a huge Boxer, with a cutlass, standing
over me. And he was about to carve me piecemeal while I lay bound and
helpless before him. The dream persisted so strongly that, after I
awoke, I still seemed to see him standing in a corner of my room. And I
cried aloud. And felt foolish when it brought my father in. So I stopped
making up adventures, especially the disagreeable ones, because they
eventually had more effect on me than they did on my auditors.
* * * * *
My father had changed boarding places ... but, as usual, it was not
better food, but a little, dark widow that attracted him to that
boarding house.
* * * * *
I now devoted myself exclusively to poetry--the reading of it. I always
had a book in my pocket. I read even at meals, despite my father's
protests that it was bad-mannered.
* * * * *
Breasted's book store, down in Newark, was where I was nearly always to
be found, in the late afternoons.
It was there, in the murky light of a dying twilight, that I came Upon
the book that has meant more to my life than any other book ever
written....
For a long time I had known of John Keats, that there was such a poet.
But, in the fever of my adolescence, in the ferment of my tramp-life, I
had not yet procured his poetry....
Now, here were his complete works, right at hand, in one volume ... a
damaged but typographically intact copy....
I had, once before, dipped into his _Endymion_ and had been discouraged
... but this time I began to read him with his very first lines--his
dedication to Leigh Hunt, beginning:
"Glory and loveliness have passed away."
Then I went on to a pastoral piece:
"I stood tiptoe upon a little hill."
I forgot where I was. A new world of beauty was opened to me.... I read
and read....
"Come, Gregory, it's time to close"--a voice at my elbow. It was
Breasted's assistant, a little, curious man who reminded me of my
sky-pilot at Sydney. He, also, wore a black, long-tailed coat. He was
known as "the perfessor."
"You've been standing here as quiet as a crane for three hours."
"How much do you want for this book?"
"A quarter ... for you!" He always affected to make me special
reductions, as an old customer....
A quarter was all I had. I paid for my Keats, and walked home. Walked? I
went with wings on each heel. I was as genuinely converted to a new life
as a sinner is converted to the Christian religion.
I lit the light in my room. All night I read and re-read, not a whit
sleepy or tired.
I went for a week in a mad dream, my face shining and glowing with inner
ecstasy and happiness.
* * * * *
There did not seem to be time enough in the twenty-four hours of each
day for reading and studying and writing. And a new thing came to me: a
shame for my shadow thinness and a desire to build myself into a better
physical man.
At that time _McFadden's Physical Culture Magazine_ was becoming widely
read. I came across a copy of it. I found in it a guide to what I was in
search for. Faithfully I took up physical culture. Fanatically I kept
all the windows open, wore as little clothing as possible ... adopted a
certain walk on tiptoe, like a person walking on egg-shells, to develop
the calves of my legs from their thinness to a more proportionate shape.
And, as I walked, I filled and emptied my lungs like a bellows. I kept a
small statue of Apollo Belvedere on top of my bookcase. I had a print of
the Flying Mercury on the wall, at the foot of my bed. Each morning, on
waking, I filled my mind full of these perfect specimens of manhood,
considering that by so doing I would gradually pilot my body to physical
perfection.... I know that many things I say about myself will appeal to
the "wit" as humorous. I can't help it if I am laughed at ... everybody
would be, if they told the truth about themselves, like this.
* * * * *
I joined the Y.M.C.A. for the physical side, not for the spiritual. I
found a spirit that I did not like there, a sort of mental deadness and
ineffectually. But one thing the Y.M.C.A. did for me: I found on the
bulletin board one day an announcement of the summer term of Mt. Hebron
Preparatory School.... It was a school for poor boys and men ... neither
age nor even previous preparation counted ... only earnestness of
purpose. And, as each student had his two hours' work a day to do, the
expense for each term was nominal.
I had been paid fifty dollars for my article on my adventures in the New
York Sunday paper. A Newark Sunday paper bought several articles also.
To the money I had saved up my father contributed as much again. I
started for preparatory school.
* * * * *
Mt. Hebron School consisted of a series of buildings set apart on a
hill. It was an evangelical school founded by a well-known
revivalist--William Moreton.
Around it lay pine forests and, at its feet, the valley of the
Connecticut River.
No matter what subjects they taught, the main endeavour of its
professors, in season and out, was the conversion of every freshman
immediately to Evangelical Christianity, as soon as he had had his
quarters assigned to him....
Scarcely had we settled ourselves, each with his roommate, than the two
weeks' revival began. I will not enter into the details of this revival.
This was merely the opening of the summer term. At the opening of the
school year in the fall--that was when they held the _real_
revival,--and the story of the whipped-up frenzy of that will afford a
more characteristic flavour.
* * * * *
It put a singing in my heart to find myself at last a student in a
regular preparatory school, with my face set toward college.
I had passed my examinations with credit, especially the one in the
Bible. This won me immediate notice and approval among the professors.
Fortunate, indeed, I now regarded those three months in jail ... the
most fruitful and corrective period of my life. For not only had I
studied the Bible assiduously there, but I had learned American
history--especially that of the Civil War period ... and I had studied
arithmetic and algebra, so that in these subjects I managed to slide
through.
* * * * *
I was put to cleaning stalls and currying horses for my two hours' work
each day. Though I hated manual labour, I bent my back to the tasks with
a will, glad to endure for the fulfillment of my dream.
That first summer I took Vergil and began Homer. I had studied these
poets by myself already, but found many slack ends that only the aid and
guidance of a professor could clear up. And, allowing for their narrow
religious viewpoints, real or affected, in order to hold their
positions, they were fine teachers--my teachers of Latin and Greek--with
real fire in them.... Professor Lang made Homer and his days live for
us. The old Greek warriors rose up from the dust, and I could see the
shining of their armour, hear the clash of their swords.
Professor Dunn made of Vergil a contemporary poet....
Lang was of the fair Norse type, so akin to the Greek in adventurous
spirit. Dunn was of the dark, stocky, imperial Roman type. In a toga he
would have resembled some Roman senator....
That summer there were long woodland walks for me, when I would take a
volume of some great English poet from the library and roam far a-field.
* * * * *
After that first summer it was my father who kept me at school. He was
too poor to pay in a lump sum for my tuition, so he sent four dollars
every week from his meagre pay, to keep me going.
* * * * *
There was a wide, wind-swept oval for an athletic field. From it you
gazed on a beautiful vista of valleys and enfolding hills. Here every
afternoon I practiced running ... to the frequent derision of the other
athletes, who made fun of my skinny legs, body, and arms....
But as I ran, and ran, every afternoon, my mile, the boys stopped
laughing, and I heard them say among themselves, "Old Gregory, he'll get
there!"
After the exercise there would be the rub-down with fragrant witch hazel
... then supper!
A dining-room, filled to the full, every table, with five hundred
irrepressible boys ... it was a cheerful and good attendance at each of
the three meals. We joined together in saying a blessing. We sang a
lusty hymn together, accompanied on the little, wheezy, dining-room
organ. I liked the good, simple melodies sung, straight and hearty,
without trills and twirls....
Every night, just before "lights out," at ten, fifteen minutes was set
aside, called "silent time"--and likewise in the morning, just before
breakfast-bell--for prayer and religious meditation.
* * * * *
Jimmy Anderson, my little blond roommate, fair-haired and delicate-faced
as a girl (his sisters, on the contrary, not femininely pretty, as he,
but masculine and handsome)--Jimmy Anderson read his Bible and knelt and
prayed during both "silent times."
I read the Bible and prayed for the quiet, religious luxury of it. My
prayer, when I prayed, was just to "God," not Jehovah ... not to God of
any sect, religion, creed.
"Dear God," ran always my prayer, "Dear God, if you really exist, make
me a great poet. I ask for nothing else. Only let me become famous."
* * * * *
I was so happy in my studies,--my work, even,--my wanderings in the
woods and along the country roads, with the poets under my arms.... I
read them all, from Layamon's _Brut_ on. For, for me, all that existed
was poetry. At this stage of my life it was my be-all and end-all.
* * * * *
My father was a most impractical man. He would sit in his office as
foreman, read the New York _Herald_, and suck at an unlit cigar, telling
anyone who listened how he would be quite happy to retire and run a
little chicken farm somewhere the rest of his life.
The men all liked him ... gave him a present every Christmas ... but
they never jumped up and lit into their work, when they saw him coming,
as they did for the other bosses. And the management, knowing his
easiness, never paid him over twenty or twenty-five dollars a week. But
whenever I could cozen an extra dollar out of him, alleging extra school
expenses, I would do so. It meant that I could buy some more books of
poetry.
* * * * *
I was sent from the stable out into the fields to work ... harder and
more back-breaking than currying horses. But my labour was alleviated by
the fact that a little renegade ex-priest from Italy worked by my
side,--and while we weeded beets or onions, or hoed potatoes, he taught
me how to make Latin a living language by conversing in it with me.
* * * * *
There were no women on the hill but the professors' wives, and they were
an unattractive lot. We were as exempt from feminine influence as a
gathering of monks--excepting when permission was given any of us to go
over to Fairfield, where, besides the native New England population of
women and girls, was situated the girls' branch of our educational
establishment....
* * * * *
The fall term ... the opening of the regular school year. The regular
students began to pour in, dumping off the frequent trains at the
little school station ... absurd youths dressed in the exaggerated
style of college and preparatory school ... peg-top trousers ...
jaunty, postage-stamp caps ... and there was cheering and hat-waving
and singing in the parlours of the dormitories on each floor.
* * * * *
There were three dormitory groups on the "hill." The "villas" were the
most aristocratic. There the "gentlemen" among the students, and the
teachers' favourites, dwelt--with the teachers. Then there was Crosston
Hall, and Oberly. Crosston was the least desirable of the halls. It was
there that I lived.
We were hardly settled in our rooms when the usual fall revival
began....
One of the founders of the school, a well-known New England
manufacturer, came on his yearly pilgrimage ... a fanatic disciple of
the great Moreton, he considered it his duty to see to the immediate
conversion, by every form of persuasion and subtle compulsion, of every
newly arrived student.
Rask was a tall, lean, ashen-faced man. He had yellow, prominent teeth
and an irregular, ascetic face. In his eyes shone an undying lightning
and fire of sincere fanaticism and spiritual ruthlessness that, in
mediaeval times, would not have stopped short of the stake and fagot to
convince sinners of the error of their ways.
The evangelist's two sons also hove on the scene from across the river
... both of them were men of pleasing appearance. There was the
youthful, elegant, dark, intellectual-browed John Moreton, who had
doctorates of divinity from half a dozen big theological seminaries at
home and abroad; and there was the business man of the two--Stephen,
middle-aged before his time, staid and formal ... to the latter, the
twin schools: the seminary for girls and the preparatory school for
boys--and the revivalistic religion that Went with them, meant a, sort
of exalted business functioning ... this I say not at all invidiously
... the practical business ideal was to him the highest way of men's
getting together ... the _quid pro quo_ basis that even God accepted.
* * * * *
The first night of the opening of the term, when the boys had scarcely
been herded together in their respective dormitories, the beginning of
the revival was announced from the little organ that stood in the middle
of the dining-room ... a compulsory meeting, of course. In newly
acquainted groups, singing, whistling, talking, and laughing, as
schoolboys will, the students tramped along the winding path that led to
the chapel on the crest of the hill.
On the platform sat the teachers. In the most prominent chair, with
its plush seat and its old-fashioned peaked back, sat the
evangelist-manufacturer, Rask,--the shine of hungry fanaticism in his
face like a beacon, his legs crossed, a dazzling shine on his shoes,
his hands clutching a hymn book like a warrior's weapon.
Little Principal Stanton stood nearby, his eyes gleaming spectrally
through his glasses, his teeth shining like those of a miniature
Roosevelt.
"We will begin," he snapped decisively, "with John Moreton's favourite
hymn, when he was with us in this world."
We rose and sang, "There is a green hill far away--"
Then there were prayers and hymns and more prayers, and a lengthy
exhortation from Rask, who avowed that if it wasn't for God in his heart
he couldn't run his business the way he did; that God was with him every
hour of his life,--and oh, wouldn't every boy there before him take the
decisive step and come to Christ, and find the joy and peace that
passeth understanding ... he would not stop exhorting, he asserted, till
every boy in the room had come to Jesus....
And row by row,--Rask still standing and exhorting,--each student was
solicited by the seniors, who went about from bench to bench, kneeling
by sinners who proved more refractory ... the professors joined in the
task, led by the principal himself.
Finally they eliminated the sheep from the goats by asking all who
accepted the salvation of Christ to rise. In one sweep, most of the boys
rose to their feet ... some sheepishly, to run with the crowd ... but a
few of us were more sincere, and did not rise ... it was at these that
the true fire of the professors and seniors was levelled.
They knelt by us. They prayed. They agonised. They groaned. They adjured
us, by our mothers, to come to Jesus ... all the while, over and over
again, softly, was sung, "O Lamb of God, I come, I come!"
"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me!"
Weakening under the pressure, and swung by the power of herd-instinct,
most of us "came."
Then there was the hypnotism of the enthusiasm which laid hold of us.
It was indescribable in its power. It even made me want to rise and
declare myself, to shout and sing, to join the religious and emotional
debauch.
When chapel adjourned at ten o'clock many had been cajoled and bullied
into the fold. Then, still insatiable for religion, at the villas and
halls, the praying and hymn-singing was kept up.
In the big parlour of Crosston Hall the boys grouped in prayer and
rejoicing. One after the other each one rose and told what God had done
for him. One after the other, each offered up prayer.
Toward three o'clock the climax was reached, when the captain of the
hall's football team jumped to a table in an extra burst of enthusiasm
and shouted, "Boys, all together now,--three cheers for Jesus Christ!"
I was one of the three in our hall who resisted all efforts at
conversion. The next morning a group of convertees knelt and prayed for
me, in front of my door ... that God might soften the hardness of my
heart and show me the Light.
For two weeks the flame of the revival burned. Some were of the opinion
that from the school this time a fire would go forth and sweep the
world....
There were prayer-meetings, prayer-meetings, prayer-meetings ... between
classes, during study-periods, at every odd minute of time to be
snatched.
Though, my preceding summer, my chief pastime had been to argue against
the Bible, all this praying and mental pressure was bound to have an
influence on my imaginative nature....
Besides, the temptation toward hypocrisy was enormous. The school was
honeycombed with holy spies who imputed it merit to report the laxity of
others. And, once you professed open belief, everything immediately grew
easy and smooth--even to the winning of scholarships there, and, on
graduation, in the chief colleges of the land.
So, suddenly, I took to testifying at prayer meetings, half believing I
meant it, half because of the advantages being a professed Christian
offered. And the leaders sang and rejoiced doubly in the Lord over the
signal conversion of so hard and obdurate a sinner as I.
* * * * *
One day, as I was marching in line from the chapel, a queer thing took
place....
One of the boys whom I could not identify hissed, "Go on, you
hypocrite!" at me.
* * * * *
In a few weeks the pendulum swung as far to the other extreme. My
hypocrisy made me sick of living in my own body with myself. I threw off
the transient cloak of assumed belief. Once more I attacked the
stupidity of belief in a six-day God, inventor of an impossible
paradise, an equally impossible hell.
* * * * *
In the early spring I left school before the term was over, impatient,
restless, at odds with the faculty ... Stanton termed it "under a
cloud." I had my eyes set on another ideal.
* * * * *
Down in the mosquito-infested pine woods of New Jersey Stephen Barton
had located. Barton was possessed with the dream of making the men and
women of the world physically perfect--a harking back to the old Greeks
with their worship of the perfection of bodily beauty and health. I had
long been a reader of his magazines, a follower of his cult, and, now
that I heard of his planning to build a city out in the open country,
where people could congregate who wished to live according to his
teachings, I enrolled myself ardently as one of his first followers and
disciples....
Barton had taken over a great barn-like, abandoned factory building that
stood on the shore of an artificial lake--which, in his wife's honour,
he re-named after her, Lake Emily ... his wife was a fussy Canadian
woman who interfered in everyone's affairs beyond endurable measure. I
was told she used to steal off the chair the old clothes Barton used to
wear by preference--paddling along the winding creek in a canoe to his
work each morning, his pants rolled up to the knees--and put in their
stead a new, nicely creased suit!
* * * * *
Barton's face was wizened and worried ... but, when we took our morning
shower, after exercise, under the lifted gates of the dam, his body
showed like a pyramid of perfect muscles ... though his legs--one of
the boys who had known him a long time said his chief sorrow was that he
could never develop his legs the way he wished them to be.
* * * * *
We began the building of the city. We laid out the streets through the
pines ... many of us went clad in trunks ... or in nothing ... as we
surveyed, and drove stakes. The play of the sun and the wind on the
naked skin--there is nothing pleasanter, what though one has to slap
away horseflies and mosquitoes ... the vistas through the pines were
glorious. I saw in my mind's eyes a world of the physically perfect!
As the laying out of the sites and the streets progressed, dwellers came
to join with us ... fanatics ... "nuts" of every description ... the
sick....
* * * * *
A woman, the wife of some bishop or other, came to join us early in the
season. She had cancer and came there to be cured of it by the nature
treatment. She brought with her an old-fashioned army tent, and rented
for its location the most desirable site on the lake shore.
She had a disagreement with Barton--and left to consult regular doctors.
She turned over all rights to her tent and to the site to me.
"And mind you, Mr. Gregory," she admonished, "this tent and the place it
stands on is as much yours as if you paid for it ... for it's paid for
till Christmas."
So, with my Shelley, my Keats, and my growing pile of manuscript, I took
possession. And with covering from the wet and weather over my head and
with plenty of mosquito netting, I felt established for the summer.
Every morning I rose to behold the beauty of the little, mist-wreathed
lake. Every morning I plunged, naked, into the water, and swam the
quarter of a mile out to the float, and there went through my system of
calisthenics.
I lived religiously on one meal a day--a mono-diet (mostly) of whole
wheat grains, soaked in water till they burst open to the white of the
inside kernel....
Everybody in our rapidly increasing tent-colony enjoyed a fad of his or
her own. There was a little brown woman like the shrivelled inside of
an old walnut, who believed that you should imbibe no fluid other than
that found in the eating of fruits ... when she wanted a drink she never
went to the pitcher, bucket, or well ... instead she sucked oranges or
ate some watermelon. There was a man from Philadelphia who ate nothing
but raw meat. He had eruptions all over his body from the diet, but
still persisted in it. There were several young Italian nature-folk who
ate nothing but vegetables and fruits, raw. They insisted that all the
ills of flesh came to humanity with the cooking of food, that the sun
was enough of a chef. If appearances prove anything, theirs was the
theory nearest right. They were like two fine, sleek animals. A fire of
health shone in their eyes. As they swam off the dam they looked like
two strong seals.
Each had his special method of exercising--bending, jumping, flexing the
muscles this way or that ... lying, sitting, standing!... those who
brought children allowed them to run naked. And we older ones went
naked, when we reached secluded places in the woods.
The townspeople from neighbouring small towns and other country folk
used to come from miles about, Sundays, to watch us swim and exercise.
The women wore men's bathing suits, the men wore just trunks. I wore
only a gee-string, till Barton called me aside and informed me, that,
although he didn't mind it, others objected. I donned trunks, then, like
the rest of the men....
Behind board lean-tos,--one for the men, the other for the women,--we
dressed and undressed....
One Sunday afternoon a Russian Jewess slipped off her clothes, in an
innocent and inoffensive manner, just as if it was quite the
thing,--standing up in plain view of everybody. There went up a great
shout of spontaneous astonishment from both banks of the lake where the
on-lookers sat. But the shout did not disturb the rather pretty, dark
anarchist. Leisurely she stepped into her onepiece bathing suit.
* * * * *
Barton was a strange, strong-minded, ignorant man. Hardly able to
compose a sentence in correct English, he employed educated, but
unresourceful assistants who furnished the good grammar, while he
supplied the initiative and original ideas, and increased the influence
and circulation of his magazine. Also he lived strenuously up to the
doctrines he taught; fasting, for instance.
Soon after I reached "Perfection City" he launched on his two weeks'
annual fast. Up in the big house where he lived, in the next town of
Andersonville (he himself would have been gladder of a mere shack or
tent like the rest of us--but his wife negated any such idea) Mrs.
Barton used to taunt and insult him by putting out the best food under
his nose, during this time.
Mrs. Barton was a terror. She was ever inviting to her house that kind
of people who know somebody "worth while" or are related to somebody
who, in their turn, are, perhaps, related to--somebody else!...
In their presence she would patronise Barton by calling him "Stevie!" in
her drawling, patronising manner....
When the woman came in among the tents and shacks of our "city" she
would, in speaking with any of us, imply all sorts of mean, insinuating
things about her reformer-husband....
Barton, they said, met her while on one of his lecture tours....
Their baby ... a little, red object like a boiled lobster ... the
anonymous, undistinguished creatures all babies are at that time--the
mother used to bring it in among us and coo and coo over it so
ridiculously that we made her behaviour a joke among us.
* * * * *
Barton's secretary was a beautiful, gentle, large-eyed girl ... wholly
feminine ... soft-voiced ... as a reaction from the nagging of his wife,
from her blatancy and utter lack of sympathy with any of his projects,
he insensibly drifted into a relationship closer and closer, with this
girl ... they used to take long walks into the pines together ... and be
observed coming back slowly out of the sunset ... hand in hand ... to
drop each other's hands, when they considered that the observing line of
vision had been reached.
* * * * *
Lying under my huge army tent, by the shore of pretty little Lake Emily,
I dreamed long and often, in the hush of starry midnight, of
reconstructing the life of the whole world--especially the love-life
between men and women.
Shelley was my God, not Christ. Shelley's notes to _Queen Mab_ were my
creed, as his poetry and Whitman's furnished me my Bible. Through them I
would reform the world!
I had not realised then (as Shelley did not till his death), the
terrific inertia of people, their content, even, with the cramping and
conventional ideas and beliefs that hold them in unconscious slavery....
I think that summer I learned Shelley and Whitman by heart.
And Keats was more than my creed. He comprised my life!
Day by day I took care of my body, gaining in weight, filling out the
hollows in my face, till I had grown into a presentable young man. For
the first time in my life I knew the meaning of perfect health. Every
atom of my blood tingled with natural happiness as I have felt it in
later days, under the stimulation of good wine.
No coffee, no tea, no beefsteak, no alcohol....
On that summer's ideal living I built the foundation of the health and
strength, that, long after, I finally acquired as a permanent
possession.
* * * * *
Stephen Barton and I had many interesting talks together. With the
cultural background of Europe he might have been a Rousseau or a
Phalanisterian. As it was, he ran a "natural life" magazine which,
though crude, benefited hundreds of people. What though it showed
pictures of stupid men and women revealing, in poses rivalling the
contortionist, their physical development acquired through his methods.
* * * * *
We would collect many people about us, to serve as a nucleus from which
the future society of men and women would expand ... we would all live
together as nearly naked as possible, because that was, after all, the
only pure thing ... as Art showed, in its painting and sculpture. We
would make our livings by the manufacture of all sorts of exercising
apparatus and health-foods....
And so the world would be leavened with the new idea ... and men and
women and little children would wander forth from the great, unclean,
insanitary cities and live in clusters of pretty cottages ... naked, in
good weather,--in bad, clothed for warmth and comfort, but not for
shame. And the human body would become holy.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the petty, local fight had started which was to disrupt this
hope of Barton's, and thwart its fulfillment forever.
The town of Andersonville became jealous of the town of Cottswold
because the latter handled most of the mail of our city and thereby had
achieved the position of third or fourth class postoffice--I don't know
exactly which.
The struggle commenced when the two lone policemen of Andersonville
began to arrest us--men and women--when we walked into their town for
provisions, clad in our bathing suits ... later on, we were forbidden to
run for exercise, in our bathing suits, on the fine, macadamised road
that passed not far from our dwellings ... it shocked the motorists.
Yet people came from far and near, just to be shocked. That seems to be
the chief, most delightful, and only lawfully indulged emotion of the
Puritan.
Barton summoned us to a meeting, one night, and we held a long palaver
over the situation. We decided to become more cautious, in spite of a
few hotheads who advised defiance to the hilt....
And the beautiful girl that possessed such fine breasts could no longer
row about on our little lake, naked to the waist. And we were requested
to go far in among the trees for our nude sun-baths.
The more radical of us moved entirely into the woods, despite the sand
flies....
Then the affair simmered down to quietness--till the New York _World_
and the New York _Journal_ sent out their reporters.... After that, what
with the lurid and insinuating stories printed, the state authorities
began to look into the matter--and found no harm in us.
But the Andersonville officials were out for blood. Cottswold was
growing too fast for their injured civic pride and vanity.
"Can't you divide your mail between the two towns, and make them both
third or fourth class or whatever-it-is postoffice towns?" I asked
Barton, after he had given me the simple explanation of the whole
affair.
"No--for if I took anything away from Cottswold and added it to
Andersonville, then the Cottswold authorities would become my
adversaries, too ... the only thing I can do," he added, "is what I
meant to do all along,--as soon as our 'city' has grown important
enough--have 'Perfection City' made a postoffice."
"And then make enemies of both towns at once?"
He threw up his hands in despair and walked away.
* * * * *
Having quit work with the gang that was laying out the streets of the
future city through the pines, I was entirely out of the few dollars my
several weeks' work had enabled me to save ... though but little was
needed to exist by, in that community of simple livers ... my procuring
my tent free had rendered me quite independent....
One afternoon Barton met me on the dam-head.
"Come on in swimming with me ... I have something to talk with you
about," he said.
We swam around and talked, as nonchalantly as two other men would have
done, sitting in their club.
"How would you like to work for me again?"
"What is it you want me to work at?"
"I need a cook for my nature restaurant ... can you cook?"
I thought. I knew his present cook, MacGregor, the Scot, and I didn't
want to do him out of a job. Besides, I didn't know how to cook.
The first objection Barton read in my face.
"MacGregor is quitting ... I'm not firing him."
"All right ... I'll take the job."
Our conference over, we had climbed out to the top of the dam, slid
over, and were now standing beneath. The water galloped down in a snowy
cataract of foam, as we topped off our swim with the heavy "shower-bath"
that was like a massage in its pummelling.
* * * * *
MacGregor good-naturedly stayed an extra week, saying he'd show me the
run of things. Secretly he tried to teach me how to cook....
As the cooking was not all of the "nature" order, but involved preparing
food for a horde of people we called "outsiders" who were employed in
Barton's publishing plant, I would have to prepare meat and bake bread
and make tea and coffee....
Barton confessed to me that a food-compromise was distasteful to him.
But he could not coerce. While lecturing about the country it was often,
even with him, "eat beefsteaks or starve!"
MacGregor was a professional Scotchman, just as there are professional
Irishmen, Englishmen and professional Southern Gentlemen ... every
Scotchman is a professional Scotchman ... but there is always something
pleasant and poetic about his being so ... it is not as it is with the
others--whose "professionalism" generally bears an unpleasant reek.
MacGregor had sandy, scanty hair, a tiny white shadow of a moustache,
kindly, weak eyes, a forehead prematurely wrinkled with minute,
horizontal lines. Burns ... of course ... he knew and quoted every line
to me. And _Sentimental Tommy_ and _Tommy and Grizel_.
* * * * *
In a week I was left in full possession of the nature restaurant.
Barton had been rendered slightly paring and mean, in matters of
money,--by smooth individuals who came to him, glowing with words of
what they could effect for him, in this or that project--individuals who
soon decamped, leaving Barton the poorer, except in experience.
In return he had to retrench. But the retrenchments fell in the place
where the penny, not the dollar, lay.
He practised economy on me. He gave me only ten dollars a week, board
and room free, as cook; and also I was to wait on the diners, as well as
prepare the meals.
Nevertheless the fault for having two jobs at once thrust on me, rested
partly with me: when he asked me if I was able to do both, I fell into a
foolish, boasting mood and said "yes."
MacGregor figured out my menu for me a week ahead, the day he left:
"Anyhow, you'll only last a week," he joked.
The night before the first breakfast I lay awake all night, worrying ...
hadn't I better just sneak away with daylight?... no, I must return to
Mt. Hebron in the fall. Though all I wanted to return for was to show
the school, that, in spite of my spindly legs, I could win my "H" in
track athletics.
I must make good at this job, and save ... my grandmother, who had sent
me money the previous year, I must not call on her again. And I did not
count on my father ... for he was strenuously in the saddle to a grass
widow, the one who had lured him to change boarding houses, and she was
devouring his meagre substance like the Scriptural locust.
* * * * *
That first breakfast was a nightmare. I "practised breakfast" from three
o'clock till six ... by six I had started another breakfast, and by
seven, after having spoiled and burned much food, I was tolerably ready
for customers ... who seemed, at that hour, to storm the place.
* * * * *
It is not necessary to go into detail. In three days I was through. And
I had my first fight with Barton.
* * * * *
I was back in my army tent once more, free, with my Shelley, my Keats,
my manuscript....
In despair of ever returning to Hebron, once more I lay under starry
nights, dreaming poetry and comparing myself to all the Great Dead....
With the top of the tent pulled back to let the stars in, I lay beneath
the gigantic, marching constellations overhead--under my mosquito
netting--and wrote poems under stress of great inspiration ... at times
it seemed that Shelley was with me in my tent--a slight, grey form ...
and little, valiant, stocky Keats, too.
* * * * *
After my quarrel with Barton, he tried to oust me from that desirable
site the Bishop's wife had turned over to me ... indeed, he tried to
persuade me to leave the colony. But I would not stir.
There was a young fellow in the "City" named Vinton.... Vinton was the
strong man of the place. He spent three hours every morning exercising,
in minute detail, every muscle of his body ... and he had developed
beautiful muscles, each one of which stood out, like a turn in a rope,
of itself.
Vinton was sent to oust me, by force if need be.
I really was afraid of him when he strode up to me, as I lay there
reading the _Revolt of Islam_ again.
With a big voice he began to hint, mysteriously, that it would be wise
for me to clear out. I showed him that I held a clear title and right to
sojourn there till Christmas, if I chose to, as the bishop's wife had
paid for the site till that time, and had then transferred the use of
the location to me. I showed him her letter ... with the Tallahassee
postmark.
His only answer was, that he knew nothing about that ... that Barton
wanted the place, and, that if I wouldn't vacate peaceably--and he
looked me in the eyes like some great, calm animal.
Though my heart was pounding painfully, against, it seemed, the very
roof of my mouth, I compelled my eyes not to waver, but to look fiercely
into his....
"Are you going to start packing?"
"No, I am not going to start packing."
"I can break your neck with one twist," and he illustrated that feat
with a turn of one large hand in the air.
He came slowly in, head down, as if to pick me up and throw me down.
I waited till he was close, then gave him an upward rip with all my
might, a blow on the forehead that made the blood flow, and staggered
him with consternation. To keep myself still at white heat, I showered
blows on him. To my surprise, he fell back.
"Wait--wait," he protested in a small voice, "I--I was just fooling."
* * * * *
After Vinton left, my blood still pouring through my veins in a
triumphant glow, I sat on the ground by the side of my tent-floor and
composed a poem....
That afternoon Barton's office boy was sent to me, as an emissary of
peace.
"The boss wants to see you in his office."
"Tell your boss that my office is down here. If he wants to see me he
can come here."
The boy scurried away. I was now looked upon as a desperate man.
* * * * *
And I was happy. I sang at the top of my voice, an old ballad about
Captain John Smith, so that Barton could hear it through the open window
of his office....
"And the little papooses dig holes in the sand ...
_Vive le Capitaine John!_..."
I leaped into the lake, without even my gee-string on, and swam far out,
singing....
* * * * *
Late that evening, Barton came to my tent ... very gently and sweetly
... he no longer called me John or Johnnie ... I was now Mr. Gregory. He
asked me, if he rented the plot back from me, would I go in peace? I
replied, no, I meant to stay there till the middle of September, when
the fall term opened at Mt. Hebron.
Then he asked me, would I just join forces with him,--since we must put
the movement above personalities....
We had a long talk about life and "Nature" ideals. The man showed all
his soul, all his struggles, to me. And I saw his real greatness and was
moved greatly. And I informed him I would antagonise him no longer,
that, though I would not give up the desirable site, otherwise, I would
help him all I could.
Then he said he would be glad to have me stay, and we shook hands
warmly, the moisture of feeling shining in our eyes.
* * * * *
As the time for my return to school drew near, I was in fine physical
condition, better than ever before in my life. I was still somewhat
thin, but now it could be called slenderness, not thinness. And I was
surprised at the laughing, healthy, sun-browned look of my face.
I felt a confidence in myself I had never known before....
* * * * *
I had a flirtation with a pretty, freckle-faced girl. She worked in
Barton's "factory," and she used to come down to my tent where I sat
reading, with only my trunks on,--during the noon hour,--and ask me to
read poetry aloud to her. And I read Shelley. She would draw shyly
closer to me, sending me into a visible tremour that made me ashamed of
myself.
At times, as we read, her fair, fine hair would brush my cheek and send
a shiver of fire through me. But I still knew nothing about women. I
never even offered to kiss her.
But when she was away from me, at night specially, I would go into long,
luxurious, amorous imaginations over her and the possession of her, and
I would dream of loving her, and of having a little cottage and
children....
But words and elegant, burning phrases are never enough for a woman.
In a week I noticed her going by on the arm of a mill-hand.
* * * * *
And, broke again, I wrote to my grandmother that I must have fifty
dollars to get back to school on. And, somehow, she scraped it together
and sent it to me. My first impulse was to be ashamed of myself and
start to return it. Then I kept it. For, after all, it was for poetry's
sake.
* * * * *
On the train to Hebron, as I walked up the car to my seat, health
shining in my smooth, clear face and skin, the women and girls gave me
approving, friendly glances, and I was happy.
A summer of control from unhealthy habits had done this for me, a summer
of life, naked, in the open air, plus exercise. I had learned a great
lesson. To Barton I owe it that I am still alive, vigorously alive, not
crawlingly ... but I suffered several slumps before I attained and held
my present physique. For the world and life afford complications not
found in "Perfection City."
* * * * *
The school hill lay before my eyes again. From it spread on all sides
the wonderful Connecticut valley. Up and down the paths to the dining
hall, the buildings in which classes were held, the Chapel crowning the
topmost crest, wandered groups of boys in their absurd, postage-stamp
caps, their peg-top trousers, their wide, floppy raglan coats.
I was a senior now. At first my change in bodily build and bettered
health rendered me hardly recognisable to my friends.
The very first day I reached Hebron again I was out on the wide, oval
field, lacing around the track. In a month would come the big track-meet
and I was determined this time, to win enough points to earn me my "H."
* * * * *
Principal Stanton sent for me, the second day after my arrival.
"I wanted to have a long talk with you before you got settled, Gregory."
His steely, blue eyes gleamed through his gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
"Sit down."
And we had a talk lasting over an hour ... about religion mainly. He was
surprised to learn that I knew a lot about the early Church fathers, had
read Newman, and understood the Oxford controversy ... had read many of
the early English divines....
"Gregory," he cried, putting his hand on my knee, "what a power for God
you would be, if you would only give over your eccentricities and
become a Christian ... a chap with your magnetism--in spite of your
folly!--"
He impressed on me the fact, that, now I was a senior, more would be
expected of me ... that the younger boys would look up to me, as they
did to all seniors, and I must be more careful of my deportment before
them ... my general conduct....
He asked me what I intended making of myself.
"A poet!" I exclaimed.
He spread his hands outward with a gesture of despair.
"Of course, one can write poetry if necessary ... but what career are
you choosing?"
"The writing of poetry."
"But, my dear Gregory, one can't make a living by that ... and one must
live."
"Why must one live?" I replied fervently, "did Christ ever say 'One must
live'?"
"Gregory, you are impossible," laughed Stanton heartily, "but we're all
rather fond of you ... and we want you to behave, and try to graduate.
Though we can't tell just what you might do in after-life ... whether
you'll turn out a credit to the School or not."
"Professor Stanton, I have a favour to ask of you before I go," I asked,
standing.
"Yes?" and he raised his eyebrows.
"I want to know if I can have that room alone, over the platform, in
Recitation Hall."
"You'll have to ask Professor Dunn about that ... he has charge of
room-transfers ... but why can't you room as the other students do?... I
don't know whether it is good for you, to let you live by yourself ...
you're already different enough from the other boys ... what you need is
more human companionship, Gregory, not less."
"I want to do a lot of writing. I want to be alone to think. I plan to
read Westcott and Hort's Greek New Testament all through, again, this
winter." ... This was a sop to his religious sentiment. I related how I
had first read the New Testament in the Greek, while on a cattle-boat,
in the China Seas....
"Gregory, you're quite mad ... but you're a smooth one, too!" his eyes
gleamed, amused, behind his glasses....
"And I want to write a lot of poems drawn from the parables of the New
Testament"--though, not till that minute had such an idea entered my
head....
When I was admitted to the study of Professor Dunn and sat down waiting
for him among his antique busts and rows of Latin books, I had
formulated further plans to procure what I desired....
He came in, heavily dignified, like a dark, stocky Roman, grotesque in
modern dress, lacking the toga.
I told him of my New Testament idea ... and added to it, as an
afterthought, that I also wanted to prosecute a special study of the
lyrics of Horace. Though he explained to me that Horace belonged to the
college curriculum, his heart expanded. Horace was his favourite
poet--which, of course, I knew....
I got my room.
I borrowed a wheelbarrow from the barn, and wheeled my trunk down to
Recitation Hall, singing.
* * * * *
What a hypocrite I had been! But I had obtained what I sought--a room
alone. But now I must, in truth, study the Greek Testament and
Horace....
I figured out that if I enrolled for several extra Bible courses the
Faculty would be easier on me with my other studies, and let me cut some
of them out entirely.
To make myself even more "solid," I gave out that I had been persuaded
to Christianity so strongly, of a sudden, that I contemplated studying
for the ministry. I even wrote my grandmother that this was what I
intended to do. And her simple, pious letter in return, prayerful with
thanks to God for my conversion so signal--in secret cut me to the
heart....
But it gave me a temporary pleasure, now, to be looked upon as "safe."
To be openly welcomed at prayer-meetings ... I acted, how I acted, the
ardent convert ... and how frightened I was, at myself, to find that, at
times, I believed that I believed!...
My former back-sliding was forgiven me.
And the passage of Tennyson about "one honest doubt" being more than
half the creeds, was quoted in my favour.
* * * * *
Field-day!...
* * * * *
I entered for the two-mile, to be run off in the morning ... for the
half-mile, the first thing in the afternoon ... the mile, which was to
be the last event, excepting the hammer-throw. My class, in a body, had
urged me to enter for all the "events" I could ... when the delegation
came, I welcomed them, with gratified self-importance, to my solitary
room. I invited them in, and they sat about ... on my single chair ...
my bed ... the floor....
"You see, Gregory, if you win two of these races, we'll get the banner
that goes to the class that makes the greatest number of points ... you
must do it for us ... we have never yet won the banner, and this is our
last chance."
They left, solemnly shaking my hand, as over a matter of vast
importance....
Hurrying into my track suit, I went out to the Oval. It was three days
before the meet.
Dunn was there, with several others, measuring out distances and
chalking lanes.
With all the delicate joy of an aesthete I took my slim, spiked running
shoes. I patted them with affection as I pushed my feet into them. I
removed the corks from the shining spikes....
I struck out with long, low-running, greyhound strides ... around and
around ... the wind streamed by me....
I knew I was being watched admiringly. I could see it out of the tail of
my eyes. So I threw forward in a final sprint, that brought me up, my
eyes stinging with the salt of sweat, my legs aching ... my chest
heaving....
"Good boy," complimented Dunn, coming up to me, and patting me on the
back ... Gregory, I'm _for_ you. I'm so glad you've come out a clean,
fine, clear-cut Christian."
* * * * *
For the two-mile, the half, and the mile, each--a single athlete was
training, his heart set on the record. It seemed impossible that I
should win all three races. Yet I did.
I was all nerves and sinews for the two-mile. The night before I had
lain awake. I could not sleep so I read a poor translation of the odes
of Pindar. But behind the bad verbiage of the translator, I fed on the
shining spirit of the poetry. With Pindar's music in me, I was ready for
the two-mile.
* * * * *
Tensely we leaned forward, at the scratch. I had my plan of campaign
evolved. I would leap to the fore, at the crack of the pistol, set a
terrific pace, sprint the first quarter, and then settle into my long,
steady stride, and trust to my good lung power ... for I had paid
special attention to my lung-development, at "Perfection City."
I felt a melting fire of nervousness running through my body, a
weakness.
I bowed my face in my hands and prayed ... both to Christ and to Apollo
... in deadly seriousness ... perhaps all the gods really were....
The gun cracked. Off I leapt, in the lead ... in the first lap the field
fell behind.
"Steady, Gregory, steady!" advised Dunn, in a low voice, as I flashed
into the second....
I thought I had distanced everybody ... but it chilled me to hear the
soft swish, swish of another runner ... glancing rapidly behind, I saw a
swarthy lad, a fellow with a mop of wiry, black hair, whom we called
"The Hick" (for he had never been anywhere but on a farm)--going stride
for stride, right in my steps, just avoiding my heels....
Run as I might, I couldn't shake him off....
Every time I swept by, the crowd would set up a shout ... but now they
were encouraging "The hick" more than me. This made me furious, hurt my
egotism. My lungs were burning with effort ... I threw out into a longer
stride. I glanced back again. Still the chap was lumbering along ... but
easily, so easily ... almost without an effort....
"Good God, am I going to be beaten?" I sensed a terrific sprinting-power
in the following, chunky body of my antagonist.
There were only two more laps ... the rest of the field were a lap and a
half behind, fighting for third place amongst themselves ... jeered at
by the instinctive cruelty of the onlookers....
My ears perceived a cessation of the following swish, the tread.
Simultaneously I heard a great shout go up. I dared not look back,
however, to see what was happening--I threw myself forward at that
shout, fearing the worst, and ran myself blind....
* * * * *
"Take it easy, you have it!"
"Shut up! he's after the record."
* * * * *
The shrill screaming of the girls who had come over, in a white,
linen-starched wagon load, from Fairfield, gave me my last spurt.
Expecting every moment to hear my antagonist grind past me, on the
cinders, I sped up the home-stretch.
The air was swimming in a gold mist. I felt arms under mine, and I was
carried off to the senior tent, by my class-mates....
Yet I am convinced that I would have been beaten, if my rival had not
had the string that held his trunks up, break. He had sunk down on the
track, when they had fallen, not to show his nakedness ... and, pulling
them up, and holding them, amid great laughter, he had still won second
ribbon.
* * * * *
I won the second race--the half-mile, without the humour of such a
fateful intervention. It was my winning of the first that won me the
second. I had just equalled the two-mile record, in the first....
I ran that half, blindly, like a mad man. I was drunk with joy over my
popularity ... for when I had gone into the big dining room for lunch,
all the boys had shouted and cheered and roared, and pounded the dishes
with their knives.
* * * * *
"Now, Gregory, you've just got to take the mile away from Learoyd ...
he's a junior ... you've just _got_ to!... besides, if you don't ...
there's Flammer has lost the broad jump ... and we won't win the class
banner after all."
Learoyd was a smallish, golden-faced, downy-headed boy ... almost an
albino.... I had seen him run ... he ran low to the ground, in flashes,
like some sort of shore-bird.
* * * * *
In the class-tent, alone. Dunn had driven my class out, where they had
been massaging and kneading my legs ... which trembled and tottered
under me, from the excessive use they had already undergone.
I sat down and put my head between my knees, and groaned. Then I
straightened out my right leg and rubbed it, because a cramp was
knotting it.
"Hello, Gregory!"
The tent-flap opened. The athletic director poked his head in.
"Come on, Gregory, we're waiting for you."
"Wait a minute, Smythe ... I want to pray," I replied simply. Reverently
he withdrew ... impressed ... awed....
I flung myself on my face.
"Look here, God, I'll really believe in you, if you give me this last
race ... it will be a miracle, God, if you do this for me, and I will
believe in your Bible, despite my common sense ... despite history ...
despite Huxley and Voltaire," then, going as far as I could--"yes, and
despite Shelley ... dear God, dear Christ, please do what I have asked."
My hand struck on a bottle of witch hazel as I rose. Impulsively, I
drank off half the contents. It sent a warmth through me. I straightened
up, invigorated.
"Come on, Gregory ... what's the matter?" it was Dunn, protesting,
"we'll have to run off the mile without you, if you don't come."
"I'm ready ... I'm coming."
* * * * *
All that I had in my head, when the pistol cracked, was to _run!_ ...
all I felt about me was only a pair of mad legs.
I licked out, neither seeing nor caring ... almost feeling my way along
the rim of the track with my toes, as I ran--as if I had racing eyes in
them. There was a continuous roar that rose and fell like the sea. But I
neither saw nor heeded. I just ran and ran.
On the home-stretch a fellow came breast to breast with me. It was
Learoyd ... running low like a swallow skimming the ground. But it
didn't worry me. I was calm, just floating along, it seemed to me.
I saw Dunn throwing his camera into the air, in the forefront of the
seething crowd. He was crying for me to come on. The camera fell in a
smashed heap, unregarded.
Barely, with my chest flung out, I took the tape ... trailing off ... I
ran half a lap more, with my class leaping grotesquely and shouting,
streaming across field after me--before I had my senses back again, and
realised that the race was over.
"Did I win? Did I win? Did I win?" I asked again and again.
"Yes, you won!"
I was being carried about on their shoulders.
"A little more, and we'd have to take you over to the hospital,"
commented Smythe, as he looked at me, while I lay prone on my back,
resting, under shelter of the tent.
"Who--who used up all this witch-hazel?" he asked of the rubbers....
I hid my face in the grass, pretending to groan from the strain I had
just undergone. Instead, I was smothering a laugh at myself ... at the
school ... at all things....
"God and witch-hazel," I wanted to shout hysterically, "hurrah for God
and witch-hazel."
Then I rose shakily to my feet, and, flinging myself loose from those
who offered to help me, I ran at a good clip, in my sneakers, dangling
my running shoes affectionately--to my solitary room ... with a bearing
that boasted, "why, I could run all those three races over again, one
right after the other, right now ... no, I'm not tired ... not the least
bit tired!"
That night, in the crowded dining hall, the ovation for me was
tremendous.
"I'll smash life just like those races," I boasted, in my heart.
But my triumph and eminence were not to last long.
To be looked up to at Mt. Hebron you had to lead a distasteful,
colourless life of hypocrisy and piety such as I have seldom seen
anywhere before. Under cover of their primitive Christianity I never
found more pettiness. First, you prayed and hymn-sung yourself into
favour, and then indulged in sanctimonious intrigue to keep yourself
where you had arrived.
I could not stand my half self-hypnotised hypocrisy any longer. A spirit
of mischief and horseplay awoke in me. I perpetrated a hundred
misdemeanours, most of them unpunishable elsewhere, but of serious
import in schools and barracks, where discipline is to be maintained. I
stayed out of bounds late at night ... I cut classes continually. I
visited Fairfield ... and a factory town further south, where I lounged
about the streets all day, talking with people.
Professor Stanton, not to my surprise, sent for me again.
Yet I was amazed at what he knew about me, amazed, too, to discover the
extent of the school's complicated system of pious espionage that
checked up the least move of every student.
Stanton brought out a sheet of paper with dates and facts of my
misbehaviour that could not be controverted....
"So we will have to ask you to withdraw from the school, unless you
right-about-face ... otherwise, we have had enough of you ... in fact,
if it had not been for your great promise--your talents!--"
I waved the compliment aside rather wearily.
"I think that if this school has had enough of me, I have had about
enough of the school."
I expressed, in plain terms, my opinion of their espionage system.
"Your omnipotent God must be hard put to it when He has to rely on the
help of such sneakiness to keep His Book (and I couldn't help laughing
at the literary turn I gave to my denunciation) before the public!"
Stanton's eyes flamed behind their glasses.
"Gregory, I shall have to ask you to leave the Hill as soon as you can
get your things together," he shouted.
"--which can hardly be soon enough for me," I replied.
"Come, my boy," continued Stanton, as if ashamed at himself for his
outburst, and putting his hand on my shoulder, "you're a good sort of
boy, after all ... you have so much in you, so much energy and power ...
why don't you put it to right uses?... after your father has made such
sacrifices for you, I hate to see you run off to a ravelled edge like
this.
"Even yet, if you'll only promise to behave and preserve a proper
dignity in the presence of the other students--even yet we would be glad
to have you stay and graduate ... and we might be able to procure you a
scholarship at Harvard or Princeton or Yale or Brown. Lang says you put
yourself into the spirit of Homer like an old Greek, always doing more
work than the requirements,--and Dunn says, that you show him things in
Vergil that he never saw before."
Moved, I shook my head sadly. I hated myself for liking these people.
"If you mean that I should be like other people ... I just can't ...
it's neither pose nor affectation." (He had intimated that some of the
professors alleged that as the core of the trouble.) "I guess I don't
belong here ... yes, it would be better for me to go away!"
* * * * *
That night, unobserved, I stole into the chapel that stood on the Crest
of the hill, against the infinite stars.
I spent nearly all the night in the chapel, alone. The place was full of
things. I felt there all the gods that ever were worshipped ... and all
the great spirits of mankind. And I perceived fully how silly, weak,
grotesque, and vain I was; and yet, how big and wonderful, it would be
to swim counter, as I meant, to the huge, swollen, successful currents
of the commercial, bourgeois practicality of present-day America.
* * * * *
I pinned up a sign on the bulletin board in the hall, in rhyme,
announcing, that, that afternoon, at four o'clock, John Gregory would
hold an auction of his books of poetry.
* * * * *
My room was crowded with amused students. I mounted the table, like an
auctioneer, while they sat on my cot and on the floor, and crowded the
door.
At first the boys jeered and pushed. But when I started selling my copy
of Byron and telling about his life, they fell into a quiet, and
listened. After I had made that talk, they clapped me. Byron went for a
dollar, fetching the largest price. I sold my Shelley, my Blake, my
Herrick, my Marvell, my Milton ... all....
My Keats I could not bring myself to sell. I kept that like a treasure.
What I could not sell I gave away.
My entire capital was ten dollars ... one suit of clothes ... a change
of underwear ... two shirts. I discarded my trunk and crammed what
little I owned into my battered suitcase.
That night, the story of my dismissal from school having travelled about
from mouth to mouth, and the tale of my poets' auction--the boys
cheered me, as I came into the dining hall--cheered me partly
affectionately, partly derisively.
* * * * *
In the morning mail I received a letter from the New York _Independent_,
a weekly literary magazine. Dr. Ward, the editor, informed me that I
possessed genuine poetic promise, and he was taking two of the poems I
had recently submitted to him, for publication in his magazine.
* * * * *
Like the vagrant I was, I considered myself indefinitely fixed, with
that ten dollars. I went to Boston ... hung about the library and the
waterfront ... stayed in cheap lodging houses for a few days--and found
myself on the tramp again.
* * * * *
I freighted it to New York, where I landed, grimy and full of coal-dust.
And I sought out my uncle who lived in the Bronx.
I appeared, opportunely, around supper time. I asked him if he was not
glad to see me. He grimaced a yes, but wished that I would stop tramping
about and fit in, in life, somewhere.... He observed that my shirt was
filthy and that I must take a bath immediately and put on a clean one of
his.
In Boston I had ditched everything but the clothes I wore ... and my
suit was wrecked with hard usage.
"Get work at anything," advised my Uncle Jim, "and save up till you can
rig yourself out new. You'll never accomplish anything looking the way
you do. Your editor at the _Independent_ will not be impressed and think
it romantic, if you go to see him the way you are ... ragged poets are
out of date."
* * * * *
At "Perfection City" I had made the acquaintance of a boy, whom,
curiously enough, I have left out of that part of the narrative that has
to deal with the Nature Colony. He was a millionaire's son: his father,
a friend of Barton's, had sent him out to "Perfection City" with a
tutor. His name was Milton Saunders. He was a fine, generous lad, but
open as the weather to every influence ... especially to any which was
not for his good.
One morning I saw him actually remove his own shoes and give them to a
passing tramp who needed them worse than he.
"That's nothing, dad's money will be sufficient to buy me a new pair,"
he explained, going back to his tent, in his bare feet, his socks in his
hand--to put on his sneakers while he hastened to the shoe store in
Andersonville.
* * * * *
Milton had urged me to be sure to come and see him if I chanced to be in
New York.
I now called him on the telephone and was cordially invited to visit
him, and that, immediately.
The servants eyed me suspiciously and sent me up by the tradesmen's
elevator. Milton flew into a fury over it. His friend was his friend, no
matter how he was dressed--he wanted them to remember that, in the
future!
He brought out a bottle of wine, had a fine luncheon set before me. I
went for the food, but pushed the wine aside. He drank the bottle
himself. I was still, for my part, clinging to shreds of what I had
learned at "Perfection City." ...
He rushed me to his tailor. I had told him of my first poems' being
accepted.
"Of course, you must be better dressed when you go to see the editor."
The tailor looked me over, in whimsical astonishment. He vowed that he
could not have a suit ready for me by ten the next morning, as Milton
was ordering.
"Then you have a suit here for me about ready."
"It is ready now."
"Alter it immediately to fit Mr. Gregory ... we're about the same
height."
The tailor said _that_ could be done.
For the rest of the day Milton and I peregrinated from one saloon
back-room to another ... in each of which the boy seemed to be well
known. He drank liquor while I imbibed soft drinks ... the result was
better for him than for me. I soon had the stomach-ache, while he only
seemed a little over-exhilarated.
At his door-step he shoved a ten dollar bill into my hand. I demurred,
but accepted it.
"I'd hand you more," he apologised, "but the Old Man never lets me have
any more than just so much at a time ... says I waste it anyhow ... but
I manage to do a lot of charging," he chuckled.
"Have you a place to stay to-night?"
"Yes ... I have an uncle who lives uptown."
* * * * *
When I showed up at my uncle's, that night, I showed him my new rig-out,
and explained to him how I came into possession of it. But he did not
accept my explanation. Instead, he shook his head in mournful
dubiousness ... indicating that he doubted my story, and insinuating
that I had not come by my suit honestly; as well as by the new dress
suitcase Saunders had presented me with, and the shirts and
underclothing.
"God knows where you'll end up, Johnny."
After supper Uncle Jim grew restive again, and he came out frankly with
the declaration that he did not want me to stay overnight in the house,
but to pack on out to Haberford to my father ... or, since I must stay
in town to see my editor (again that faint, dubious smile), I might stay
the night at a Mills Hotel ... since my rich friend had given me money,
too ... besides my aunt was not so very strong and I put a strain on
her.
* * * * *
At the Mills Hotel I was perched in a cell-like corner room, high up.
The room smelt antiseptic. Nearby, Broadway roared and spread in
wavering blazons of theatric gold. I looked down upon it, dreaming of my
future fame, my great poetic and literary career ... my plays that would
some day be announced down there, in great shining sign-letters.
* * * * *
The sound of an employee's beating with a heavy stick, from door to iron
door, to wake up all the Mills Hotel patrons, bestirred me at an early
hour.
* * * * *
I meditated my next move, and now resolved on another try at community
life.... The Eos Artwork Studios, founded in the little New York State
town of Eos, by the celebrated eccentric author and lecturer, Roderick
Spalton.
I was in such impatience to reach Eos that I did not cross over to
Haberford, to drop in on my father. I feared also that my leaving school
the second time, "under a cloud," would not win me an enthusiastic
welcome from him.
* * * * *
By nightfall I was well on my way to Eos, sitting in an empty box-car. I
had with me my new clothes--which I wore--and my suitcase, a foolish way
to tramp. But I thought I might as well appear before Roderick Spalton
with a little more "presence" than usual. For I intended spending some
time in his community.
Characteristically, I had gone to the office of the _Independent_, had
not found the editor in, that morning, and had chafed at the idea of
waiting till the afternoon, when I might have had a fruitful talk with a
man who was interested in the one real thing in my life--my poetry.
* * * * *
I reached Rochester safely. It was on the stretch to Buffalo that I paid
dearly for being well-dressed and carrying a suitcase ... as I lay
asleep on the floor of the box-car I was set upon by three tramps, who
pinioned my arms and legs before I was even fully awake. I was forced to
strip off my clothes, after wrestling and fighting as hard as I could. I
floated off into the stars from a blow on the head....
When I came to, I was trembling violently both with cold and from the
nervous shock. My assailants had made off with my suitcase ... I was in
nothing but my B.V.D.'s and shirt. Even my Keats had been stolen. But
beside me I found the ragged, cast-off suit of one of the tramps ... and
my razor, which had dropped out of my coat pocket, while the tramp had
changed clothes, and not been noticed. Gingerly, I put on the ragged
suit....
* * * * *
I stood in front of the Eos Artwork Studios.
I saw a boy coming down the path from one of the buildings.
"Would you tell me please where I can find the Master?" I asked,
reverently.
The boy gave me a long stare.
"Oh, you mean Mr. Spalton?"
"Yes."
"That's him ... there ... choppin' wood."
There was a young man and an older one, both chopping wood, in the back
of a building, but in fairly open view.
I walked to where they worked with both inward and outward trepidation,
for, to me, Spalton was one of the world's great men.
Just as I reached the spot, the younger of the two threw down his axe.
"So long, Dad! now I'll go into the shop and tend to those letters."
I stood in the presence of the great Roderick Spalton himself, the man
who, in his _Brief Visits to the Homes of Famous Folk_, had written more
meatily and wisely than any American author since Emerson ... the man
whose magazine called _The Dawn_, had rendered him an object of almost
religious veneration and worship to thousands of Americans whose spirits
reached for something more than the mere piling of dollars one on the
other....
I stood before him, visibly overwhelmed. It was evident that my silent
hero-worship was sweet to him. He bespoke me gently and courteously.
"So you want to become an Eoite?"
"Yes," I whispered, bending my gaze humbly before his.
"And what is your name, my dear boy."
"John Gregory, Master!"
"What have you brought with you? where is your baggage?"
"I--I lost my baggage ... all I have with me is a-a r-razor."
He leaned his head back and laughed joyously. His lambent brown eyes
glowed with humour. I liked the man.
"Yes, we'll give you a job--Razorre!" he assured me, calling me by the
nickname which clung to me during my stay....
"Take that axe and show me what you can do."
I caught up the axe and fell to with enthusiasm. The gospel of the
dignity and worth of labour that he preached thrilled in me. It was the
first time I ever enjoyed working....
As we worked the Master talked ... talked with me as if he had known me
for years--as if I, too, were Somebody.
There was nothing he did not discuss, in memorable phrase and trenchant,
clever epigram. For he saw that I believed in him, worshipped
whole-heartedly at his shrine of genius, and he gave me, in return, of
his best. For the first time I saw what human language is for. I thought
of Goethe at Weimar ... Wilde's clever conversation in London....
Never since did I see the real man, Spalton, as I saw him then, the man
he might always have been, if he had had an old-world environment,
instead of the environment of modern, commercial America--the spirit of
which finally claimed him, as he grew more successful....
Modern, commercial America--where we proudly make a boast of lack of
culture, and where artistic and aesthetic feeling, if freely expressed,
makes one's hearers more likely than not, at once uneasy and restive.
* * * * *
That night, at supper, I caught my first glimpse of the Eoites in a
body. The contrast between them and my school-folk was agreeably
different. I found among them an atmosphere of good-natured greeting and
raillery, that sped from table to table. And when Spalton strode in,
with his bold, swinging gait (it seemed that he had just returned from a
lecture in a distant city early that afternoon), there was cheering and
clapping.
Guests and workers joined together in the same dining hall, with no
distinctive division.... I sat next to Spalton's table, and a warm glow
of pleasure swept through me when he sent me a pleasant nod.
"Hello, Razorre," he had greeted me; then he had turned to the group at
his table and told them about me, I could see by their glances--but in a
pleasant way.
* * * * *
The next morning I was at work in the bindery, smearing glue on the
backs of unbound books. My wage was three dollars a week and "found," as
they say in the West. Not much, but what did it matter? There was a fine
library of the world's classics, including all the liberal and
revolutionary books that I had heard about, but which I could never
obtain at the libraries ... and there were, as associates and
companions, many people, who, if extremely eccentric, were,
nevertheless, alive and alert and interested in all the beautiful things
Genius has created in Art and Song....
Derelicts, freaks, "nuts" ... with poses that outnumbered the silver
eyes in the peacock's tail in multitude ... and yet there was to be
found in them a sincerity, a fineness, and a genuine feeling for
humanity that "regular" folks never achieve--perhaps because of their
very "regularness."
* * * * *
Here, at last, I had found another environment where I could "let loose"
to the limit ... which I began to do....
In the first place, there was the matter of clothes. I believed that men
and women should go as nearly naked as possible ... clothing for warmth
only ... and, as one grew in strength and health through nude contact
with living sun and air and water, the body would gradually attain the
power to keep itself warm from the health and strength that was in it.
So, in the middle of severe winter that now had fallen on us, I went
about in sandals, without socks. I wore no undershirt, and no coat ...
and went with my shirt open at the neck. I wore no hat....
Spalton himself often went coatless--in warm weather. His main sartorial
eccentricity was the wearing of a broad-brimmed hat. And whenever he
bought a new Stetson, he cut holes in the top and jumped on it, to make
it look more interesting and less shop-new ... of course everybody in
the community wore soft shirts and flowing ties.
We addressed each other by first names and nicknames. Spalton went under
the appellation of "John." One day a wealthy visitor had driven up.
Spalton was out chopping wood.
"Come here, John, and hold my horses."
Spalton dropped the axe and obeyed.
Afterward he had been dismissed with a fifty cent tip.
He told the story on himself, and the name "John" stuck.
* * * * *
Working in the bindery, I began to find out things about the community
of Eos that were not as ideal as might be ... most of the illumination
of the books was done by girls, even by children after school hours. The
outlines of the letters and objects to be hand-illumined were printed in
with the text, the girls and children merely coloured them between the
lines.
In each department, hidden behind gorgeous, flowing curtains, were
time-clocks, on which employees rang up when they came to work, and when
they left. Also, each worker was supposed to receive dividends--which
dividends consisted in pairs of mittens and thick woolen socks
distributed by the foremen at Christmas time ... or maybe an extra
dollar in pay, that week.
"Two dollars a week less than a fellow would draw at any other place
that ran the same sort of business," grumbled a young bookbinder who was
by way of being a poet, "and a pair of woolen mittens or socks, or an
extra dollar, once a year, as dividends!"
However, I think that the artworkers had finer lodgings and board than
most workers could have supplied for themselves ... and the married
couples lived in nicer houses ... and they heard the best music, had the
best books to read, lived truly in the presence of the greatest art and
thought of the world ... and heard speak in the chapel, from time to
time, all the distinguished men of the country ... who came, sooner or
later, to visit Spalton and am? community....
What though the wages were not so big, what though you rang up the time
of arrival at work and the time of departure from it, on hidden
time-clocks, what though every piece of statuary, every picture, every
stick of furniture, had, on the bottom of it, its price label, or,
depending from it, its tag that told the price at which it might be
bought!...
* * * * *
Spalton had begun his active career as a business man, had swung out
from that, his fertile mind glimpsing what worlds of thought and
imagination lay beyond it!
But now Big Business was calling him back again, using him for its
purposes.
Oftener and oftener magnificently written articles by him began to
appear in his remarkable little magazine, _The Dawn_. And the Ingersoll
of Dollar Watch fame crowded out the Ingersoll of brave agnosticism ...
and when he wrote now of artists and writers, it was their thrifty
habits, their business traits, that he lauded.
"A great man can be practical and businesslike, in fact the greatest of
them always are," he defended. "There was Voltaire, the successful
watchmaker at Ferney ... and there was Shakespeare, who, after his
success in London, returned to Avon and practically bought up the whole
town ... he even ran a butcher shop there, you know."
* * * * *
"The people expect startling things ... and, as the winds of genius blow
where they list--when they refuse to blow in the direction required,
divine is the art of buncombe," he jested.
I suppose this applied to his musician-prodigy, a girl of eight, who
worked, in the afternoons, in the bindery. And when a visiting party
swept through that department, it was part of her job to rise as if
under the impulse of inspiration, leave her work, and go to a nearby
piano and play ... the implication being that the piano was placed there
for the use of the workers when melody surged within them....
But she was the only one who played. And she never played except when
she was tipped the wink. And it was only one thing--a something of
Rubenstein's ... which she had practised and practised and practised to
perfection; and _that_ rendered, with haughty head like a little sibyl,
she would go back to her work-bench. And if urged to play more, she
would answer, lifting her great, velvet eyes in a dreamy gaze, "no, no
more to-day. The inspiration has gone." And, awed, the visitors would
depart.
* * * * *
Back of the bindery stood the blacksmith shop, where MacKittrick, the
historian-blacksmith, plied the bellows and smote the anvil.
MacKittrick took a liking to me. For one day we began talking about
ancient history, and he perceived that I had a little knowledge of it,
and a feeling for the colour and motion of its long-ago life.
"I want you to come and work for me," he urged, "my work is mostly
pretty," he apologised, with blacksmith sturdiness, "--not making
horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for
aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to
swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and cut put the dainty
filigree the "Master" sells to folk, afterward, as art."
"Well, isn't it art?" I asked.
"I suppose it is. But I like the strong work of blacksmithing best. You
see, I was born to be a great historian. But destiny has made me a
blacksmith," he continued irrelevantly ... "do come out and work for me.
I'm hungry for an intelligent helper who can talk history with me while
we work."
My transfer was effected. And I was immediately glad of it. "Mac," as we
called him, was a fine, solid man ... and he did know history. He knew
it as a lover knows his mistress. He was right. He should have been a
great historical writer--great historian he _was_!
For two glorious months I was with him. And during those two months, I
learned more about the touch and texture of the historic life of man
than three times as many years in college could have taught me.
"Mac" talked of Caesar as if only yesterday he had shaken hands with him
in the Forum ... and he was shocked over his murder as if it had
happened right after....
"Ah, that was a bad day for Rome and the future of the world, when those
mad fellows struck him down there like a pig!" he cried.
And Mary, Queen of Scots, was "a sweet, soft body of a white thing that
should have been content with being in love, and never tried to rule!"
* * * * *
"Can you cook?" asked Spalton of me one day, just as Barton had done at
"Perfection City."
"No," I replied honestly, thinking back to that experience.
"Fine!" was the unexpected rejoinder, "I'm going to send you put to the
camp to cook for my lumber-jacks for a few weeks."
"But I said I couldn't cook."
"You know how to turn an egg in the pan? you know enough not to let ham
and bacon burn?... you know water won't scorch, no matter how long it
stands over the fire?...
"You'll make an excellent cook for lumber-jacks ... so long as it's
something to eat that's stuck under their noses, they don't give a
damn!... they're always hungry enough to eat anything ... and can digest
anything....
"Get ready! I'm sending you out on one of the waggons by noon."
* * * * *
Perched on the high seat of the waggon by the side of the driver! The
latter was bundled up to the chin ... wore a fur cap that came down over
the ears ... was felt-booted against the cold ... wore heavy gloves.
It was so cold that the breath of the horses went straight up into the
air like thick, white wool. As we rode by, the passing farmers that were
driving into town almost fell off their seats, startled, and staring at
me. For there I perched ... coatless and hatless ... sockless feet in
sandals ... my shirt flung open, a la Byron, at the neck.
It is true that the mind can do anything. I _thought_ myself into being
composed and comfortable. I did not mind, truly I did not mind it.
The driver had protested, but only once, laconically:
"Whar's y'r coat an' hat?"
"I never wear any," I explained, beginning a propagandistic harangue on
the non-essentiality of clothes....
He cut in with the final pronouncement:
"Damn fool, you'll git pneumony."
Then he fell into obdurate, contemptuous silence.
* * * * *
The snow was deep about our living shanty and cook-shack in one, but
hard-frozen enough to bear a man's weight without snow-shoes. Over the
crust had fallen a powdery, white, new snow, about four inches deep.
Every morning, after the "boys" had eaten their breakfast and left for
the woods, I went through my exercises, stripped, out in the open ... a
half hour of it, finished by a roll in the snow, that set me tingling
all over.
One morning I made up my mind to startle the "boys" by running,
mother-naked, in a circle, whooping, about them, where they were sawing
up fallen trees and felling others.
It was a half mile to where they worked.
For more bizarre effect, I clapped on a straw hat which I found in the
rafters--a relic of the preceding summer....
* * * * *
"Gosh a'mighty, what's this a-comin!"...
Everybody stopped working. Two neighbour farmers, who had come over for
a bit of gossip, stooped, their hands on their knees, bowed with
astonishment, as if they had beheld an apparition.
One of the "boys" told me the two held silence for a long time--till I
was entirely out of sight again, and after.
Then one exclaimed, "air they any more luny fellers like thet, back at
them Artwork shops?"
The incident gave birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's
care, whose chief insanity was running naked through snowdrifts.
Spalton had three sons. Roderick was the eldest: named after his father.
Level-headed and businesslike, he followed his father's vagaries because
he saw the commercial possibilities in them ... though he did so more as
a practical man with a sense of humour than as a man who was on the
make. Spalton, who knew men thoroughly and quickly appraised their
individual natures, had installed Roderick in the managing end of
things,--there with the aid of an older head--one Alfoxden, of whom
Spalton made too much of a boast, telling everyone he had rescued him
from a life of crime; Alfoxden, when younger, forged a check and had
served his term for it. Coming out into the world again, no one would
trust him because of that one mistake, Spalton, at this juncture, took
him in and gave him a new chance--but--as I said unkindly, in my mind,
and publicly, he made capital of his generous action.
But Alfoxden was a soul of rare quality. He never seemed to resent
"John's" action. He was too much of a gentleman and too grateful for the
real help Spalton had extended to him.
Alfoxden was a slight, Mephistophelian man ... with bushy, red eyebrows.
And he was totally bald, except for the upper part of his neck, which
was fiery with red hair. He had a large knowledge of the Rabelaisan in
literature ... had in his possession several rather wild effusions of
Mark Twain in the original copy, and a whole MSS. volume of Field's
smutty casual verse....
* * * * *
But I was in the lumber camp, cooking for the "boys."...
"Hank," Spalton's youngest son (there was a second son, whose name I
forget ... lived with his mother, Spalton's divorced wife, in Syracuse,
and was the conventional, well-brought-up, correct youth)--Hank worked
in the camp, along with the other lumber-jacks.
The boy was barely sixteen, yet he was six feet two in his stocking feet
... huge-shouldered, stupendous-muscled, a vegetarian, his picture had
appeared in the magazines as the prodigy who had grown strong on "Best
o' Wheat," a prepared breakfast food then popular.
I asked him if the story that he had built his growth and strength on it
was a fake.
"Yes. I never ate 'Best o' Wheat' in my life, except once or twice," he
answered, "I like only natural food ... vegetables ... and lots of milk
... but I draw the line at prepared, pre-digested stuff and baled
breakfast foods."
"Then why did you lend them the use of your name?"
"Oh, everybody that has any prominence does that ... for a price ... but
I really didn't want to do it. 'John' made me ... or I wouldn't have."
"And now you have your hair cropped close, why is that?"
"I suppose it's all right to wear your hair long ... but, last summer,
it got so damned hot with the huge mop I had, that I always had a
headache ... so one day I went down town to the barber and slipped into
his chair. 'Hello, Hank,' says he, 'what do you want, a shave?' (joking
you know--I didn't have but one or two cat-hairs on my face)....
"'No, Jim, I want a hair-cut.' At first he refused ... said 'The
Master' would bite his head off ... but then he did it--
"John wouldn't speak to me that night, at table ... but the other
fellows shouted and clapped....
"I don't exactly get dad's idea all the time ... he's a mighty clever
man, though....
"Books? Oh, yes ... the only ones I care about are those on Indians and
Indian lore ... I have all the Smithsonian Institution books on the
subject ... and I have a wigwam back of the bindery--haven't you noticed
it?--where I like to go and sit cross-legged and meditate ... no, I
don't want to study regular things. Dad always makes me give in, in
fact, whenever I act stubborn, by threatening to send me off to a
regular school....
"No, I want nothing else but to work with my hands all my life."
* * * * *
But, with all his thinking for himself, "Hank" was also childishly
vulgar. He gulped loudly as he ate, thinking it an evidence of hearty
good-fellowship. And he deliberately broke wind at the table ... then
would rap on wood and laugh....
I, on my dignity as cook, and because the others, rough as they were,
complained to me in private about this behaviour, but did not openly
speak against it because "Hank" was their employer's son. I took
exception to the good-natured "lummox's" behaviour.
One morning he was the last to climb out from over the bench at the
rough, board table....
"Hank ... wait. I want to speak to you a minute."
"Yes, Razorre, what is it?" he asked, waiting....
"Hank, the boys have delegated me to tell you that you must use better
manners than you do, at meals."
"The hell you say! and what are you going to do if I don't?"
"I--why, Hank, I hadn't thought of that ... but, since you bring up the
question, I'm going to try to stop you, if you won't stop yourself."
"--think you can?--think you're strong enough?"
"I said '_try_'!"
"Listen, Razorre," and he came over to me with lazy, good-natured
strength, "I'll pick you up, take you out, and roll you in the snow, if
you don't keep still."
"And I'll try my best to give you a good whipping," replied I, setting
my teeth hard, and glaring at him.
He started at me, grinning. I put the table between us, and began taking
deep breaths to thoroughly oxygenate my blood, so it would help me in my
forthcoming grapple with the big, over-grown giant.
He toppled the table over. We were together. I kept on breathing like a
hard-working bellows, as I wrestled about with him.
He seized me by the right leg and tried to lift me up, carry me out. I
pushed his head back by hooking my fingers under his nose, like a prong.
Then I grabbed him by the seat of the britches and heaved. And they
burst clean up the back like a bean pod....
Unexpectedly Hank flopped on the bench and began to shout with
laughter....
My heavy, artificial breathing, like a bellows, for the sake of
oxygenating more strength into my muscles, had struck him as being so
ludicrous, that he was in high good humour. I joined in the laughter,
struck in the same way.
"I surrender, Razorre, and I'll promise to be decent at the table--you
skinny, crazy, old poet!"
And he rumbled and thundered again with Brobdingnagian mirth.
* * * * *
Back from the lumber camp. Comparatively milder weather, but still the
farmers we passed on the road were startled by my summery attire. But by
this time the lumber-jacks and I were on terms of proven friendship ...
I had told them yarns, and had listened to their yarns, in turn ... the
stories of their lives ... and their joys and troubles....
I was reported to Spalton as having been a first-rate cook.
I went to work in the bindery again.
* * * * *
Every day seemed to bring a new "eccentric" to join our colony. I have
hardly begun to enumerate the prime ones, yet....
But when I returned to the little settlement a curious man had already
established himself ... one who was called by Spalton, in tender
ridicule, Gabby Jack ... that was Spalton's nickname for him ... and it
stuck, because it was so appropriate. Jack was a pilgrim in search of
Utopia. And he was straightway convinced, wholly and completely, that
he had found it in Eos. To him Spalton was the one and undoubted prophet
of God, the high priest of Truth.
Gabby Jack was a "j'iner." From his huge, ornate, gold watch-chain hung
three or four bejewelled insignia of secret societies that he was a
member of. He wore a flowered waistcoat ... an enormous seal-ring,
together with other rings.
He had laid aside a competence, by working his way from journeyman
carpenter to an independent builder of frame houses, in some thriving
town in the Middle West ... where, in his fifty-fifth year, he had
received the call to go forth in quest of the Ideal, the One Truth.
His English was a marvel of ignorant ornateness, like his vest and his
watch-chain and rings. He had, apparently, no family ties. Spalton
became his father, his mother, his brother, his sister, almost his God.
There was nothing the Master said or did that was not perfect ... he
would stand with worship and adoration written large on his swarthy,
great face, listening to Spalton's most trivial words....
Otherwise, he was Gabby Jack ... talking ... talking ... talking ...
with everybody he met ... enquiring ... questioning ... taking notes in
a large, crude, misspelling hand ... trying himself to write....
We ran away from him ... Spalton ran away from him ... "this fellow will
be the death of me," he remarked to me, one afternoon, with a light of
pleasure and pride in his eyes, however, at being so worshipped. "Ah,
Razorre, beware of the ignorant disciple!"
There was nothing Jack would not do for Spalton. He sought out
opportunities and occasions for serving him.
And he would guide visitors over the establishment. And, coming to the
office where Spalton usually sat and worked, he was heard to say once,
with a wide-spread, reverential sweep of the hand--"and this, ladies and
gents, is the (his voice dropping to a reverential whisper) 'Sancta
Sanctoria.'"
Jack could not see so well with one eye as he could with the other. A
cataract was there which gave that eye the appearance of a
milky-coloured, poached egg....
Coming home from Buffalo one evening, he stepped down on the wrong side
of the train, in the dusk ... perhaps from his eagerness to sit by his
prophet at supper again that night--there being too long a line leaving
at the station, ahead of him.
A freight was drawing out on the track opposite. And Gabby was so huge
that he was rolled like a log in a jam, between the two moving trains
... when the freight had passed, he rose and walked. He took a cab to
the Artwork Studios.
All in tatters, he hurried to his room and put on another suit. He
appeared at supper by the side of the Master. He narrated what had
happened, amid laughter and joking. When Spalton wanted to send for his
old, frail, white-headed father, the elder Spalton, who was the
community doctor, Jack waved the idea aside.
"Oh, no, Master!" (Master he called Spalton, and never the familiar,
more democratic John) "Oh, no, I'm all right."...
The next morning Jack did not show up for breakfast.
At ten o'clock Spalton, solicitous, went up to his room....
He shouted for help. He had found his disciple there, huge and dead,
like a stranded sea-thing.
* * * * *
In Gabby Jack's will ... for they found one, together with a last word
and testament for humanity,--it was asked of Spalton that he should
conduct the funeral from the Chapel ... and read the funeral oration,
written by the deceased himself ... and add, if the Master felt moved, a
few words thereto of his own ... if he considered that so mean a
disciple deserved it.
* * * * *
All work was suspended the day of Jack's funeral.
Spalton eloquently read the curious, crude composition of his disciple
... which had fine flashes, as of lightning in a dark sky, here and
there, in it.
Then Spalton began adding words of his own, in praise of the deceased--
"You all know this dear comrade of ours," he began, "this dear friend
whose really fine soul, while in the body--went under the appellation of
Gabby Jack--"
Here Spalton broke down. He unashamedly dropped into the chair behind
the reading-desk and wept aloud. He could say no more....
* * * * *
In _The Dawn_ for the ensuing month he put a wonderful and beautiful
tribute to his disciple ... who had thoroughly loved, and believed in
him.
* * * * *
On a cold day of blowing snow, "Pete" came tramping in to town ... his
high boots laced to the knees, a heavy alpaca coat about him ... he had
come all the way from Philadelphia on foot, to add his portrait to our
gallery of eccentrics ... but he was not so unusual after all ... there
was too much of the hungry hardness of youth in him, the cocksureness of
conceit which he considered genius.
Immediately he put Spalton to question ... and everything and everybody
to question....
He irritated Spalton most by attacking doctors ... (though Spalton
himself did so in his magazine) ... Spalton's father was an old family
practitioner....
But the Master's revenge came.
"Pete" fell sick. Spalton sent for his father to doctor him. And made
the old man use a strong horse-medicine on him ... which he himself
brought up from the stables....
"The boy is such an ass ..." Spalton told me laughingly, "that it's a
veterinarian he needs, not a doctor."
* * * * *
There was Speedwell, the young naturalist ... a queer, stooping, gentle,
shy thing, who talked almost as an idiot would talk till he got on his
favourite topic of bird and beast and flower. In personal appearance he
was a sort of Emerson gone to weed ... he walked about with a quick,
perky, deprecative step....
"--queer fish," John remarked of him, "but, Razorre, you ought to come
on him in the woods ... there he is a different person ... he sits under
a tree till he seems to become part of the vegetation, the landscape ...
when I had him out to camp with me last summer he would go off alone and
stay away till we thought he had got lost, or had walked into a pond, in
his simpleness, and drowned...."
We followed him, and watched him....
There he sat ... in his brown corduroys ... his lock of hair over his
eyes ... that simple, sweet, idiotic expression, like sick sunshine, on
his mouth....
And after a while the birds came down to him ... pecked all around him
... and a squirrel climbed up on his shoulder ... he seemed to have an
attraction for the wild things ... it wasn't as if they just accepted
him as a part of the surroundings ... the man sat there like a stump
till we grew tired watching, and returned to camp....
Each day he spent most of the day, immobile, like that....
"Say Razorre," the Master continued, after a thoughtful pause, "you know
you nuts are teaching me a lot of things....
"The trouble with the educated, regular folks is that they lose so much
by drawing the line ... often everything that is spontaneous and
fine.... This thing called God, you know, draws the line nowhere....
"If 'Crazy' Speedwell fell heir to a large sum of money, his relatives
could find a commission of physicians anywhere, who would honestly have
him into custody for lunacy ... yet, in some respects, he is the wisest
and kindest man I have ever known ... though, in others, he is often
such a fool as to try my patience very hard, at times."
* * * * *
Most of us who had arrived at "The Studios" from "foreign" parts, slept
in the common dormitory.
We held frequent "roughhouses" there, the younger of us ... to the
annoyance of Speedwell. Spalton finally gave him permission to sleep and
live, alone, in the shed where the fire-truck and hose was stored....
One night, for malicious fun, a beak-nosed young prize-fighter, and
several others (including myself) sneaked into his abode while he slept
... thoughtlessly we turned the gas on and tiptoed out again....
Not long after he came staggering forth, half-suffocated....
Everybody laughed at the tale of this ... at first Spalton himself
laughed, our American spirit of rough joking and horse-play gaining the
uppermost in him ... but then he recalled to mind the seriousness of our
practical joke, and burned with anger at us over what we had done. And
he threatened to "fire" on the spot anyone who ever again molested
"Crazy" Speedwell....
* * * * *
"Old Pfeiler" we called him....
Pfeiler had attended one of Spalton's lectures at Chicago.
Afterward, he had come up front and asked the lecturer if he could make
a place for him at Eos ... that he was out of a job ... starving ... a
poor German scholar ... formerly, in better days, a man of much wealth
and travel....
He had spent his last nickel for admission to Spalton's lecture. Spalton
brought him back to the Eos Artwork Studios.
There he found that the queer, gentle, old man was as helpless as a
child ... all he could be trusted to do was to write addresses on
letters ... which he was set at, not too exactingly....
I never saw so happy a man as Pfeiler was that winter.
He was a Buddhist, not by pose, but by sincere conviction. He thought,
also, that the Koran was a greater book than the Bible ... and more
miraculous ... "one man, Mohammed, who left a work of greater beauty
than the combined efforts of the several hundred who gave us that
hodge-podge, the Bible."
* * * * *
Pfeiler had been left a fortune by his father, a wealthy German merchant
... so, like Sir Richard Burton, he had made off to the Near East ...
where he had lived among the Turks for ten years ... till, what with his
buying rare manuscripts and Oriental and Turkish art, he had suddenly
run upon the rocks of bankruptcy ... and had returned from the Levantine
a ruined, helpless scholar, who had never been taught to be anything
else but a man of culture and leisure....
By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works
of art, his priceless manuscripts sold ... the money gone like water
through the assiduities of false friends and sycophants....
On the bum in Chicago ... a hotel clerk, discharged as incompetent--he
had forgotten to insist that a man and woman register always as man and
wife ... "because it was such hypocrisy" ... finally a dishwasher, who
lived in a hall bed-room ... no friends because of his abstractedness,
his immersion in oriental scholarship ... his only place of refuge, his
dwelling place, when not washing dishes for a mere existence, the Public
Library....
"Old Pfeiler" drank coffee by the quart, as drunkards drink whiskey. He
had a nervous affliction which caused him to shake his head continually,
as if in impatience ... or as a dog shakes his head to dislodge
something that has crept into his ear....
He was as timid as a girl....
The common dormitory was no place for him ... I am sorry to confess
that, for a while, I helped to make his life miserable for him ... each
night the beak-nosed pugilist-lad and I raised a merry roughhouse in the
place.... Pfeiler was our chief butt. We put things in his bed ... threw
objects about so they would wake him up. One night I found him crying
silently ... but somehow not ignobly ... this made me shift about in my
actions toward him, and see how miserable my conduct had been....
So the next time "Beak-horn," as I called my plug-ugly friend, started
to tease the old man, I asked him to stop ... that we had tormented
Pfeiler long enough. "Beak-horn" replied with a surprised, savage stare
... and the next moment he was on me, half in jest, half in earnest. I
boxed with him as hard and swift as I was able ... but a flock of fists
drove in over me ... and I was thrown prone across the form of the old
man ... who stuttered with fright and impotent rage, swearing it was all
a put-up game between us to torment him further, when I protested that I
had not tried to do it.
* * * * *
The next morning Spalton sent for me.
"Look here, Razorre, if _you_ were not the biggest freak of them all, I
could understand," he remarked severely....
I tried to explain how sorry I was for the way I had joined in Pfeiler's
persecution ... but the master would have none of it ... he told me to
look better to my conduct or he would have to expel me from the
community....
"Gregory," he ended, calling me by my name, "somehow I never quite _get
you_ ... most of the time you are refined and almost over-gentle ... you
know and love poetry and art and the worthwhile things ... but then
there's also the hoodlum in you ... the dirty Hooligan--" his eyes
blazed with just rebuke.... I trod out silently, sick of myself, at
heart ... as I have often, often been.
* * * * *
After that, Pfeiler avoided me. I went up to him in apology. Most
contritely I said I was sorry.
"You are a fraud," he cried at me, spluttering, almost gnashing his
teeth in fury, "you go around here, pretending you are a poet, and have
the soul of a thug, a brute, a coward and bully ... please don't speak
to me any more as long as I'm here ... you only pretend interest in
spiritual and intellectual things, always for some brutal reason ...
even now you are planning something base, some diabolical betrayal of
the Master, perhaps, or of all of us.... I myself have advised Mr.
Spalton, for the good of his community to send you back to the tramps
and jail-birds from whom you come ... you scum! you filthy pestilence!"
His head was shaking like an oscillating toy ... his eyes were starting
from his head through force of his invective ... he was jerking about,
in his anger, like a dancing mouse....
I hurried out of his word-range, overwhelmed with greater shame than I
can ever say.
* * * * *
The editor of the _Independent_, Dr. William Hayes Ward, had, so far,
not found room in his magazine for the two poems of mine he had bought.
I was chagrined, and wrote him, rather impetuously, that, if he didn't
care for the poems he might return them. Which he did, with a rather
frigid and offended reply. I was rendered unhappy by this.
I spoke to Spalton about it.
"Why Razorre, so you _have_ come that near to being in print?" I showed
him the poems. "Yes, you have the making of a real poet in you!"
A day or so after he approached me with--"I'm writing a brief visit to
the home of Thoreau ... how would you like to compose a poem for me, on
him--for the first page of the work?"
"I would like it very much," I said. In a few days I handed him the
poem. A "sonnet," the form of which I myself had invented, in fifteen
lines.
* * * * *
For days I lived in an intoxication of anticipation ... just to have one
poem printed, I was certain, would mean my immediate fame ... so
thoroughly did I believe in my genius. I was sure that instantly all of
the publishers in the world would contend with each other for the
privilege of bringing out my books.
Spring had begun to give hints of waking green, when _The Brief Visit_
was issued from the press. I rushed to procure a copy before it was
bound. I was surprised and dumbfounded to find that the Master had used
the poem without my name attached ... just as if it, with the rest of
the book, was from his own pen.
My first impulse was to rush into the dining hall, at breakfast, Waving
the sheets, and calling "John" to account for his theft, before
everybody ... then I bethought myself that, perhaps, some mistake had
been made ... that the proofreader might have left my name out.
Spalton looked up quickly as I passed by his table. He read in my face
that I had already discovered what he had done. He blushed. I nodded him
a stiff greeting. I ate in silence--at the furthest table.
In a few minutes he did me an honour he had never shown me before. He
came over to where I sat. "Razorre," he invited, "how would you like to
take a hike with me into the country, this morning?"
I gave him a swift glance. "I would like it very much."
"Then as soon as you are through, meet me in the library."
I drank a second cup of coffee with studied deliberation--in spite of
myself, I was thrilled with the notice that had been shown me before all
the others. Already my anger had somewhat lessened.
* * * * *
Never had the master been so eloquent, so much his better self, since
that first day, at the wood-pile. He strove to throw the magic of his
spirit over me with all his power. For hours we walked, the light, pale
green of the renewing year about us. But through it all I saw what he
was trying to effect ... to impress me so deeply that I would not only
forgive him for having stolen my poem, but actually thank him, for
having used it--even consider it a mark of honour ... which his
eloquence almost persuaded me to do.
Indeed I saw the true greatness in "John" ... but I also saw and
resented the petty, cruel pilferer--stealing helpless, unknown, youthful
genius for his own--resented it even more because the resources of the
man's nature did not require it of him to descend to such pitiful
expedients. He was rich enough in himself for his own fame and glory.
And why should he rob a young poet of his first fame, of the exquisite
pleasure of seeing his name for the first time in print? ... than which
there is no pleasure more exquisite ... not even the first possession of
a loved woman!...
We had almost returned to the "Artworks" before I tried to let loose on
him ... but even then I could not. Gently I asked him why he had not
affixed my name to my poem.
He looked at me with well-simulated amazement.
"Why, Razorre, I never even thought of it ... we are all a part of one
community of endeavour here ... and we all give our efforts as a
contribution to the Eos Idea ... I have paid you a higher compliment
than merely giving you credit ... instead, I have incorporated your
verse into the very body of our thought and life."
His effrontery struck me silent. I told him sadly that I must now go
away.
"Nonsense," he replied, "this is as good a place in which to develop
your poetic genius as any place in the world. I may say, better. Here
you will find congenial environment, ready appreciation .. come, let us
walk a little further," and we turned aside from the steps of the dining
room and struck down the main street of the town.
"I mean bigger things for you, Razorre, than you can guess.... I will
make you the Eos Poet--look at Gresham, he is the Eos Artist, and, as
such, his fame is continent-wide ... just as yours will become ... and I
will bring out a book of your poetry ... and advertise it in _The
Dawn_."
His eloquence on art and life, genius and literature, had enthralled and
placated me ... his personal wheedling irritated and angered.
"A book of my poems ... without my name on the title page, perhaps," I
cried, impassioned, looking him deep in the eyes. He shifted his glance
from me--
* * * * *
I threw my few belongings together.
Everybody, in saying good-bye, gave me a warm hand-clasp of friendship
(excepting Pfeiler), including Spalton, who assured me--
"Razorre, you'll be back again ... despite its faults, they all come
back to Eos."
"Yes," I responded, sweeping him off his feet by the unexpectedness of
my reply, "yes, in spite of all, Eos is a wonderful place ... it has
given me something ... in my heart ... in my soul ... which no other
place in the world could have given ... and at the time I needed it most
... a feeling for beauty, a fellowship--"
"Razorre," he cut in, moved, "we all have our faults,--God knows _you_
have--mutual forgiveness--" he murmured, pressing my hand warmly again;
his great, brown eyes humid with emotion ... whether he was acting, or
genuine ... or both ... I could not tell. I didn't care. I departed
with the warmth of his benediction over my going.
* * * * *
This time I did not freight it. I paid my fare to New York.
* * * * *
My father ... I must pay him a visit, before lifting my nose in the air
like a migrating bird. Where I would go or what I would do that spring
and summer, I hadn't the vaguest idea....
It seemed but the day before that I had left Haberford. The fat
policeman who leaned against the iron railing of the small park near the
station was there in the same place. The same young rowdies pushed each
other about, and spat, and swore, near the undertaker shop and the
telegraph office.
But as I walked past the Hartman express office--the private concern
which Hartman, the thin, wiry shock-haired Swede, had built up through
arduous struggle, beginning with one wagon--
Hartman saw me through the window, and beckoned vigorously for me to
step in....
"--just got home from another hobo-trip, Johnny?"
"You're almost right, Mr. Hartman."
"A pause....
"--been to see your father yet?"
"No, sir, I'm on the way there now ... just arrived this minute, on the
train from New York."
"I'm glad I caught sight of you, then, to prepare you." A longer pause
... mysteriously embarrassing, on his part.
"I have something to tell you about him ...--guess you're old enough to
stand plain talk ... sit down!"
I took a chair.
"You see, it's this way," and he leaned forward and put his hand on my
knee.. "it's women--a woman" ... he paused, I nodded to him to go on,
feeling very dramatic and important....
"It's Mrs. Jenkins, the widow, that has her hooks in him ... around
where he boards ... and, to be frank with you, he's going it so strong
with her that he's sick and rundown ... and not so right, at times, _up
here_!" and Hartman tapped his forehead with his forefinger
significantly....
"Now, you're the nearest one to him around here," he went on, "and I'll
tell you what we were going to do ... his lodge, of which I'm a member,
was going to give him a trip, to separate him from her, and cure him ...
you come back just pat....
"Has your daddy any relatives that can afford to entertain him, out in
the West, where you came from?"
"Yes, one of my uncles, his brother, is very well off, and would be glad
to take him in ... in fact any of the folks back home would," my voice
sounded hollow and far off as I answered.
"You're a pretty smart lad ... do you want to go back with him when he
goes?"
"No, Mr. Hartman."
"Well, we can tip the porter to take care of him ... but why don't you
want to go with him, we will foot your expenses?"
"I have other things to do," I answered vaguely.
He gave a gesture of impatience....
* * * * *
There was a hush in the house, as I stepped softly up the stairs. The
catch of the front door was back....
First I went to my room and found all my books intact ... in better
condition even, than when I was home with them ... there was not a speck
of dust anywhere. Evidently my father was not too sick to keep the place
clean ... but then, I meditated he would attend to that, with his last
effort.
My books were my parents, my relatives. I had been born of them, not of
my own father and mother. My being born in the flesh was a mere accident
of nature. My father and mother happened to be the vehicle.
But the place was so quiet it perturbed me.
"Pop!" I called, going toward his bed-room.
The door leading into it slowly opened. The little, dark widow was in
there with him.
"Hush! your father is asleep."
A hatred of both him and her shot up quick in my heart. I sensed their
abandonment to the sheerly physical, till it took in their whole
horizon. It was utterly ignoble. I had a vision of all humanity, living,
for the most part, merely for food and sex, letting art and poetry and
beauty and adventure pass by, content if they only achieved the bare
opportunity of daily wallowing in their mire.
I was bad and mean enough, but the conception of a single poem in my
brain, till it found birth on paper, was, I swore, bigger and finer
than all this world-mess at its best. Also there was in me somewhat the
thwarted, sinister hatred of the celibate....
* * * * *
"You mustn't bother your father now," little Mrs. Jenkins interposed, as
I started in, "you must let him rest for awhile, and not wake him."
Through the door, half open, I caught a glimpse of a hollow, wax-white
face ... he looked as if all the blood had been let out of his body,
little by little. The little, pretty, dark woman looked like a crafty
animal ... there was a beady shine of triumph, which she could not
conceal, in her eyes, as she opposed my entering. I smelt the pungent
smell of her physical womanhood. There was a plumpness about her body, a
ruddiness to her lips, that gave me the phantasy that, perhaps, the
moment before, she had drunk of my father's blood, and that she was
preventing me from going in to where he lay till a certain tiny, red
puncture over his jugular vein had closed.
"You forget, Mrs. Jenkins, that he is my father."
"You shan't go in ... please, Johnnie ... let him sleep just a little
longer ... as soon as he wakes he asks for another drink!"
"And who put him in this state?" I charged directly, vividly remembering
what Hartman had said....
"What, you don't mean to insinuate?"--she gasped.
"I mean nothing, only that I have come home to take care of my father,
till his lodge takes charge of him, and that, for the present, I want
you to please leave me alone with him."
Her small, black pupils dilated angrily. But she did not press the point
of her staying. She had put her hand on my arm cajolingly, but I had
shook it off with such evident disgust--founded partly and secretly on a
horror of physical attraction for her--that drew my morbid, starved
nature--
"Very well!... but I'll be back this afternoon, early. When he wakes up
and asks for a drink of whiskey ... starts out to get one ... draw him a
glass of water from the faucet, and take your oath that it's whiskey ...
he'll believe you and drink it!"
And she departed, an odor of strong perfume in her wake.
* * * * *
Had this planet of earth been populated from without?... there were
evidently two races on it--the race of men--the race of women--men had
voyaged in from some other world in space women had done the like from
their world ... to this world, alien to both of them. And here a
monstrous thing had brought them together like an interlocking
fungus--their sex-union ... a function that monstrously held together
two different species of animals that should not even be on meeting
terms.
Thus my morbid fancy ran, as I entered slowly my father's room.
He slept.
On a chair by his bed lay a copy of _Hamlet_, his favourite
Shakespearean play. I picked it up, read in it, waiting for him to wake,
while he breathed laboriously.
I became absorbed in the play ... I must write a poem, some time, called
"Hamlet's Last Soliliquy."
* * * * *
My father was awake.
I did not know how long he had been so, for his breathing had not
changed and the only difference from his sleeping state was that his
eyes stared, wide and glassy, at the ceiling, as if they comprehended
nothing.
A feeling of horror crept over my body. This was more than I had counted
on.. my father, helpless on his back and his wits off gathering wool....
"Father!" I put my hand on a talon of his.
He turned his head slightly. Smiled vacuously.
"Father!"
A perturbation clouded his eyes ... that painful struggle toward
comprehension observed in an infant's face.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"I'm your son--Johnnie!... and I've come back to take care of you."
"Johnnie is away ... far off ... on the sea ... in a ship."
And he sighed and turned his face to the wall as if the thought troubled
him, and he wished to dismiss it. Then, in a moment, he whirled about,
changed and furious. He rose to a sitting posture ... swung his legs
out, bringing the bed-clothes a-wry with him....
"You are an impostor ... you are not my son ... I tell you again, he is
away ... has been away for years ... as long as I can remember ...
perhaps he is dead ... you are an impostor."
He leaped up, full of madness, and seized hold of me.
"Stop, Father, what are you trying to do?"
As I grappled with him, trying to keep him from hurting me--and he was
quite strong, for all his emaciation--the horror of my situation made me
sick at the stomach, quite sick ... and my mind went ridiculously back
to the times when my father and I had eaten oyster-fries together ...
"that is the only thing you and this man have in common ...
oyster-fries," remarked my mind to me. All the while I was pinning his
wrists in my grasp ... re-pinning them as he frantically wrested them
loose ... swearing and heaping obscenities on my head ... all the while,
I thought of those oyster-fries ... we had saved up a lard-tin full of
bacon grease to fry them in ... and fry after fry had been sizzled to a
rich, cracker-powdered brown in that grease ... a peculiar smell waxed
in the kitchen, however ... which we could never trace to its source ...
"a dead rat somewhere, maybe," suggested my father.
When we had used a third of the bacon grease, the dead rat's foot stood
up ... out of that can.
We discharged the contents of our stomachs in the sink.
This was the ridiculous incident that possessed my imagination while I
struggled with my father.
* * * * *
I had my father over on the bed. He fought to a sitting posture again
... got his finger in my eye and made me see a whorl of dancing sparks.
With irritation and a curse ... then both laughing hysterically and
sobbing ... I bore him back to his pillow....
The strength had gone entirely out of him ... now it came into his mind
that I was there trying to rob or kill him.
"Spare me, spare me!" he pleaded, "you can have everything in the house
... only don't kill me! My God!"
"Good Christ!" I groaned, as he beat upward, fighting again.
I let him rise, almost palsied with horror.
He perched on the edge of the bed, exhausted,--began groping with one
hand, in the air, idly.
"What is it? What do you want?"
"Give me my pants! I don't trust you. I want to go to the corner and get
a drink ... give me my pants!"
"Pop, look at me ... stop this nonsense ... you're safe ... I'm your
son, Johnnie!"
"That's all very well," he assented with an air of reserved cunning.
"Please believe me," I pleaded.
"All right ... you are my son ... only don't kill me," he responded
craftily.
"Father!... good God!"
He perceived by the emotion of my last exclamation, that at least I was
not ill-disposed toward him.
He clutched at the advantage.
"Promise to take care of me till Johnnie comes--he's just around the
corner," slyly.
"Pop, what is it you want? What can I do for you?"
"A curious greed flickered in his eyes.
"Get me a drink!"
"All right! I'll get it for you!"
"Let me think! There's none in the house ... none left, Emily said."
"But I brought some with me ... wait a minute." I went into the kitchen,
turned on the tap softly, filled a glass half full of water, brought it
back to him.
"Here it is."
"I don't like the colour of it."
"Why, it has a nice, rich colour."
"What is it?--Scotch?"
"Yes."
He sipped of it. Made a rueful face. "I don't like the taste of it ...
it tastes too much like water," he commented, with a quiet, grave,
matter-of-fact grimace that set me laughing, in spite of myself....
"Drink it down! I swear it's all right."
He tossed off the water.
"Give me my pants. I want to get out of here."
"Why, wasn't that whiskey that I just gave you?"
"Yes, yes ... but not very good stuff. I know where I can get better."
Humouring him, I helped him into his trousers ... painfully he put on
his shirt, neatly tied his tie, while I steadied him. This manual
function seemed to better his condition straightway. He startled me by
turning to me with a look of amused recognition in his eyes. He was no
longer off his head, just a very sick man.
"Well, Johnnie, so you're back again?"
"Yes, Pop--back again!"
"What are you going to do next?" he queried wearily, seating himself
laboriously in an armchair.
"Stay, and take care of you!"
"That will be unnecessary. I have had a rather severe attack of malaria
... that is all ... left me rather weak ... but now I'm getting over it
... had to take a lot of whiskey and quinine, though, to break it up!
"Malaria comes on me, every spring, you know ... harder than usual, this
spring, though ... it's made me dotty ... made me say things, at times,
I'm afraid!"
We sat silent.
"--need any money?" he was reaching into his pocket.
"No, I don't want a cent!"
"Then take this five dollar bill and go around to the corner saloon and
buy me a pint ... what I had is all used up, and the chills are not
quite out of me yet."
* * * * *
On the way to the saloon I stopped at Hartman's express office ...
related the foregoing story....
"H'm! yes!... I see!" ... Hartman braced his thumbs together
meditatively, "--from what you say it's pretty serious ... something
will have to be done this very day....
"Yes, go and get the pint ... let him have a drink of it. And--and keep
close to him all the time ... don't," he added significantly, "leave the
lady in question in the room alone with him for a single moment."
* * * * *
"Have you got the pint, Son?"
"Yes, Father. Here it is ... but just a little!"
"I know what I'm doing!"
He took most of it down at a gulp.
Noticing the anxious look in my eyes.
"Don't worry about me, Johnnie. I can take it or leave it alone ...
--always could!"
* * * * *
Before Mrs. Jenkins could come back, Hartman anticipated her with a
nurse and a doctor. As Mrs. Jenkins came in, chagrin and indignation
showed on her face. But she bowed perforce to the situation. She was too
wise not to.
"His lodge-brothers are taking care of Mr. Gregory now, Mrs. Jenkins,"
explained Mr. Hartman suavely, warning her off, at the same time, with a
severe, understanding look in his eyes.
She dropped her eyelashes--though with a bit of instinctive coquetry in
them--under his straight-thrusting glance.
"Well, I suppose professional care _would_ be better than anything I
could do for him ... but," sweetly, "I'll drop in from time to time to
see if there's any little thing I can do."
* * * * *
Deprived of the loving care of Emily Jenkins, though he called for her
many times, my father mended his condition rapidly. And, after a long,
mysterious conference with Hartman and other members of his fraternal
order, he consented to allow himself to be sent West on a visit. But not
till they had promised to keep his job as foreman in the Composite
Works, open for him, till he was well enough to come back.
After I had seen my father off, I stayed in the silent rooms only long
enough to pack up my books, which I left in care of Hartman.
I had at last arrived at a definite plan of action.
My grandfather was transacting some sort of business in Washington, as
my uncle, Jim, had informed me. There he was living in affluence,
married again, in his old age ... just like his former wife.
I had evolved a scheme which seemed to me both clever and feasible, by
which to extract from him a few hundred or a thousand dollars with which
to prosecute my studies further, and enter, eventually, say, Princeton
or Harvard ... perhaps Oxford.
* * * * *
I found my grandfather holding forth in a swell suite of offices in the
business district of Washington.
Near his great desk, with a little table and typewriter, sat a girl,
very pretty--he would see to that!... evidently his stenographer and
private secretary.
As I stood by the railing, she observed me coldly once or twice, looking
me over, before she thrust her pencil in her abundant hair and sauntered
haughtily over to see what I was after.
Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as
the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ...
that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.
I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office,
where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War
battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp
stools,--bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.
Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about,
first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in
a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.
"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.
I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and
appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of
myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying
my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure
of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly,
the while.
I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that
I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college
with....
"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded,
"I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval
buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry
... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else."
"No! how absurd!" he was snapping decisively. I came to from my vision.
"My dear Johnnie, your proposition is both absurd and--" as if that were
the last enormity--"very unbusinesslike!"
"But I will then become a great poet! On my word of honour, I will! and
I will be a great honour to the Gregory family!"
He shook his head. He rose, standing erect and slender, like a small
flagpole. As I rose I towered high over the little-bodied, trim man.
"Come, you haven't eaten yet?"
"No!"
Well, he had a sort of a heart, after all ... some family feeling.
Walking slightly ahead, so as not to seem to be in my company, old
Grandfather Gregory took me to a--lunch counter ... bowing to numerous
friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a
hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a
scarecrow in a field.
I grew so angry at him I could hardly bridle my anger in.
"--like oyster sandwiches?" he asked.
* * * * *
He didn't even wait to let me choose my own food.
"Two oyster sandwiches and--a cup of coffee," he barked.
While I ate he stepped outside and talked with another friend.
* * * * *
"Good-bye," he was bidding me, extending a tiny hand, the back of it
covered with steel-coloured hairs, "you'd better go back up to
Jersey--just heard your daddy is very sick there ... he might need your
help."
I thought cautiously. Evidently he knew nothing of my father's having
been sent home by his lodge. I affected to be perturbed....
"In that case--could you--advance me my fare to Haberford?"
I'd wangle a _few_ dollars out of him.
My grandfather's answer was a silent, granite smile.
"--just want to see what you can cajole out of the old man, eh? No,
Johnnie--I'll leave you to make your way back in the same way you've
made your way to Washington ... from all accounts railroad fare is the
least of your troubles."
My whole hatred of him, so carefully concealed while I thought there was
some hopes of putting through my educational scheme, now broke out--
"_You"_--I began, cursing....
"I knew that's the way you felt all along ... better run along now, or
I'll say I don't know you, and have you taken up for soliciting alms."
* * * * *
Before nightfall I was well on my way to Philadelphia. For a while I
resigned myself to the life of a tramp. I hooked up with another gang of
hoboes, in the outskirts of that city, and taught them the plan of the
ex-cook that we'd crowned king down in Texas....
I kept myself in reading matter by filching the complete works of
Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton--from an outside stand
of a second hand book store....
* * * * *
--left that gang, and started forth alone again. I became a walking bum,
if a few miles a day constitutes taking that appellation. I walked ahead
a few miles, then sat down and studied my Milton, or dug deep into
_Tristram Shandy_. Hungry, I went up to farmhouse or backdoor of city
dwelling, and asked for food....
* * * * *
I found myself in the outskirts of Newark again.
I took my Sterne and Milton to Breasted's, hoping to trade them for
other books. I stood before the outside books, on the stand, hesitating.
I was, for the moment, ashamed to show myself to "the perfesser,"
because of the raggedness that I had fallen into.
While I was hesitating, a voice at my elbow--
"Any books I can show you?--any special book you're looking for?"
The voice was the voice of the tradesman, warning off the man unlikely
to buy--but it was the familiar voice of my friend, "the perfesser,"
just the same. I turned and smiled into his face, happy in greeting him,
losing the trepidation my rags gave me.
"Why, Johnnie Gregory!" he shook my hand warmly as if I were a prince. I
was enchanted.
"I want to exchange two books if I can--for others!"
"Come right into the back. Breasted, the boss, is out for the day....
I'm having my lunch sent in, won't you have some with me?"
He acted just as if he hadn't noticed my dilapidation.
I said I'd gladly share his lunch.
He drew my story out of me,--the story of my life, in fact, before the
afternoon wore to dusk.
* * * * *
"Do you think I'm crazy?" I asked him.
"No ... far from it ... " adding gently, with a smile, "sometimes an
awful fool, though, Johnnie--if I may say it."
* * * * *
"Won't you stay overnight?"
"No, thanks just the same, 'Perfesser.'"
"I have room enough ... better hang around a few days and look for a job
here."
"It's too near Haberford."
"But I know you'd take a couple of fresh books, if I gave them to you,
now wouldn't you?"
My eyes lit up as with hunger.
"This Milton and Sterne are too used-up to be worth a nickel a-piece.
Maybe, if I'd keep them, they might be worth something, some day, when
you're famous," he joked.
"If you want to give me a couple of books ... how about this Keats and
this Ossian? I want the Keats for myself. It will renew my courage.
And--the Ossian--will you mail that book on for me, to Eos, to old
Pfeiler?"
I had told him, in the course of my talking, about them both.
Pfeiler used often to talk of the greatness of Ossian's poetry ... and
how he'd like to possess a volume of it again ... that is, before he
grew to hate me.
Maybe if I sent him the book, with a letter, he would think less harshly
of me.
* * * * *
I tramped through New England. My whole life had settled back into
tramping ... only my Keats remained. I read and re-read his poems, not
caring to write a line myself.
* * * * *
I worked as a dish-washer or pearl-diver for several weeks in Boston,
and bought a very cheap second-hand suit.
I shifted my mind like a weather vane and decided against shipping to
England, with the forlorn hope of, somehow attending Oxford or
Cambridge, and studying English literature there. My old ideal of being
a great adventurer and traveller had vanished, and, in its stead, came
the desire to live a quiet life, devoted entirely to writing poetry, as
the poet Gray lived his.
* * * * *
I drifted inland to Concord, a-foot, as a pilgrim to the town where
Emerson and Thoreau had lived. I was happy in loitering about the haunts
of Thoreau; in sitting, full of thought, by the unhewn granite tombstone
of Emerson, near the quiet of his grave.
Toward evening I realised that I had gone without food all day....
On a hill mounting up toward the West, outside of Concord, I stopped at
the house of a market-gardener and asked for something to eat. A
tottering old man leaned forward through the half-open door. He asked me
in, and set before me a plate of lukewarm beans and a piece of jelly
roll. But he delighted the tramp in me by setting before me, also, a cup
of excellent, hot, strong coffee.
Afterward when he asked me if I wanted a job, I said yes.
The old man lit my way upstairs to a bed in the attic.
It was hardly dawn when he woke me....
A breakfast of soggy pancakes and more beans, which his equally aged
wife had prepared. And we were out in the fields, at work. And soon his
wife was with us, working, too.
When Sowerby, this market gardener, told me that he was almost ninety I
could believe him. He might have added a few more years, with credence.
He went actively about his toil, but yet shaky like a bicycle till it
fully starts, when it runs the steadier the more it is speeded. It was
work that kept him on his feet, work that sustained life in him. His
whole life and pleasure was senseless work.
And yet he was not a bookless man. He possessed many books, mostly the
old religious classics. Fox's _Book of Martyrs_, Baxter's _Saint's
Rest_, Blair, _On the Grave_ ... Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living_ and _Holy
Dying_, that gave me a shock almost of painful remembrance--Keats had
read the latter when he was dying in Rome ... and there were the New
England Divines, the somber Jonathan Edwards whose sermon on the day of
doom and the tortures of hell made his auditors faint ... I thought back
to the terrifying sermon of the illiterate negro preacher in the Texas
jail.
But now old Sowerby read nothing. "I have no time left for a book."
I never met the old man's equal for parsimony. "The last man--the man
who worked for me before you came--he was a Pole, who could hardly speak
English. He left because he didn't like the food ... yes, that was what
he had the impudence to announce ... and you can see that I am not so
bad ... don't I give you a slice of jelly roll with your beans, every
other night?"
I assented to what the old man said. He had been the milkman to the
Emerson and Thoreau families, and, in that capacity, had known both the
great men. And I was more eager to hear what he had to say about them,
than to draw wages for my work.
But he had little to say about them, except that they were as great
fools as the outside world esteemed them great men.
"They talked a lot about work and a man's being independent, earning his
living with his own hands, from the soil, but,--did they follow their
teachings?... that's the test....
"And I saw them, often, strolling out a-field together, talking and
talking a lot of nonsense about philosophy, and going on, regardless,
across their neighbours' crops."
And that was the only information I could get of these famous men from
their milkman.
* * * * *
Sowerby kept pigs under the barn.... For economy's sake the cows' dung
was shovelled down to them. And over them the outhouse was also built,
so that our human efforts might not be wasted....
* * * * *
One night, despite a hard day's work, I could not sleep. So I went out
on the hillside to enjoy the moonlight.
On my way back to the attic I observed a light in the barn. I stopped in
to see who was there. It was Sowerby, cleaning out the stable, to the
plain disgust of the horses and cows.
I asked him if anything was the matter. I learned that he had risen in
the middle of the night and gone to work ... because that was his
happiness, his only happiness.
* * * * *
Driven by an impulse of distaste for him and his house and market
garden, I started to leave in secret. What money was coming to me for my
two weeks' work I did not care about--in the face of the curious
satisfaction it would give me just to quit, and to have the old man call
up to me and find me missing....
I heard him pottering back to his bedroom again.... I waited till he was
quiet and back to sleep--then I stole forth in the quiet moonlight near
dawn.
It gave me a pleasure to vanish like smoke. I thought of the time when I
had that job plowing in Southern California; that time I had driven the
horses to the further end of the field, and left them standing there
under the shade of a tree and then made off, wishing to shout and sing
for the sheer happiness of freedom from responsibility and regular work.
Each time I have made off that way, from a multitude of varying
employments, it has not been, surely, to the detriment of my successive
employers. I have always decamped with wages still owing me.
* * * * *
I swung a scythe for a week for another Yankee farmer, on a marsh where
the machine couldn't be driven in--which I was informed was King
Phillip's battle ground.
* * * * *
I visited the inn where Longfellow was supposed to have gotten his
inspiration for _Tales of a Wayside Inn_.
I must see all the literary landmarks, even those where I considered the
authors that had caused the places to be celebrated, as dull and third
rate....
* * * * *
With gathering power in me grew my desire to attend college. I would
tramp, as I was doing, through the country, and end up at some western
university for the fall term.
* * * * *
The art workers' community lay in my way at Eos.
I dropped off a freight, one morning, in the Eos yards....
The gladdest to see me again was the Buddhist, Pfeiler. He rushed up to
me, in the dining hall, that night, and took both my hands in his ...
thanking me for my kind thought of him in sending him my Ossian ...
avowing that he had made a mistake in his opinion of me and asking my
indulgence ... for he was old and a failure ... and I was young and
could still look forward to success.
My unexpected dropping-in at Eos created quite a stir.
Spalton welcomed me back, and stood, that evening, before the fire in
the sitting room, with his arm about my shoulder ... even as he did so I
remembered the picture taken of him and the celebrated poet L'Estrange,
together ... their arms about each other's shoulders ... and the current
Eos proverb, that Spalton always quarrelled not long after with anyone
about whose shoulder he first cast his arm.
* * * * *
Already a change was manifest in the little community. Tabled off by
themselves sat the workers and the folk of the studios, that night.
While the guests who stayed at the inn occupied separate tables.
And there were many secret complaints about a woman they referred to as
"Dorothy" ... Dorothy had done this ... Dorothy had done that ...
Dorothy would be the ruination of "the shop" ... it would have been
better if she had never shown up at the Eos Studios....
I asked who was Dorothy....
"Don't you know ... we thought you did ... Spalton's new wife ... the
one his first wife got a divorce from him for?"
And I heard the story, part of which I knew, but not the final details.
Spalton's first wife had been an easy-going, amiable creature ... fair
and pretty in a soft, female way ... a teacher in the local Sunday
school ... one who accepted all the conventions as they were ... who
could not understand anyone not conforming to them ... life was easier
and more comfortable that way....
Spalton's originality and genius would in the end have of itself
produced a rupture between them ... few women are at home with genius,
much as they clasp their hands in ecstasy over it, as viewed on the
lecture and concert platform....
But the wedge that drove them apart was entered when his first wife,
Anne, brought into their married life, Dorothy, a fellow teacher, a
visiting friend.
Dorothy was so thin as to be stringy of body. She had a sharp
hatchet-face, eyes with the colour of ice in them ... a cold, blue-grey.
She was a woman of culture, yet at the same time she was possessed of a
great instinct for organisation and business enterprise--just what was
needed for the kind of thing Spalton was trying to inaugurate at Eos.
She fell in readily with the Master's schemes ... even with his
price-tags on objects of art, his egregious overvaluation of hand
illumined books ... which his wife, with old-fashioned honesty, rebuked
him for.
An affinity of like-mindedness grew up between Spalton and this intense,
homely woman, Dorothy ... whose face, like that of all clever, homely
women, grew to a beauty in his eyes, that mere beauty which plastic form
can never attain.
There was a local busybody of a minister, and it was he who first
intimated to the then Mrs. Spalton that her dear and intimate friend,
was betraying her....
There followed the usual spying and publicity ... Mrs. Spalton won her
divorce....
* * * * *
But this was after several years. Long before the divorce was granted
John and Dorothy were aware of a tangible fruit of their love.... I had
often wondered why the Master so ardently, so often, wrote eloquently in
defense of the superior qualities of illegitimate children....
Dorothy bore their child ... a girl ... and went away to teach in a
smart school somewhere in the East, under an assumed name....
Now, after many years, Spalton and she married.
* * * * *
I saw in the sitting room a wonderful girl. She had shining, abundant
hair, and a face rendered superlatively beautiful by the glowing of
vivacity, understanding, feminine vitality behind it and through it,
like a lamp held up within. She was absorbed in the new exhibit of
Gresham's that hung on the walls of the guest room ... she wore a short,
bouncing, riding skirt, and carried a quirt in her hand.
I walked up to her, fascinated. Without letting her know who I was I
quoted Poe's _To Helen_ to her. She stood, smiling sweetly, as if it
were the most usual thing in the world, to have a lean, wild-faced
stranger address her with a poem.
"That's the way I feel about you!" I ended.
She gave a lovely laugh ... held out both her hands, dropping the quirt
on the floor ... took my hands and leaned back gaily, like a child.
"Oh, I know who you are ... you're Razorre ... father wrote me a lot
about you ... when I lived East ... you were one of his pet 'nuts'!"
We sat there and conversed a long time. She talked of Socrates and Plato
as if she had broken bread with them ... she discussed science, history,
art as if wisdom and understanding were nearer her desire than anything
else....
She was the child of "John" and Dorothy.
* * * * *
Again Spalton asked me to stay, "we need a poet for Eos!"
But I insisted that I must go on and acquire a college education ...
which he maintained would be a hindrance, not a help--"they will iron
you out, and make you a decent member of society--and then, Razorre, God
help the poet in you ... poets and artists should never be decent ...
only the true son of Ishmael can ever write or paint," he waved.
* * * * *
There came to the artworkers one day a young Southern woman, a six
months' widow ... she was gentle and lily-coloured and lovely. She had
great, swimming, blue eyes, a sensitive red bow of a mouth ... and the
lashes of her eyes lay far down on her cheeks. She was the first woman I
had met who approximated my poet's ideal of what a woman should be.
I was working for Spalton during my stay, which I meant to make a brief
one. I was shovelling coal for him, and firing a furnace.
Wash as I might, I could not remove a faint blackness that clung to the
edges of my eyes. This made my eyes glow and seem larger than they were.
On such an extraneous and whimsical exterior circumstance hinged the
young widow's interest in me.
And I decided that I'd stay a little longer at the Eos Studios ... all
winter, if she stayed all winter. And I no longer asked for an easier
job. For I wanted my eyes to remain large-seeming, since, half in jest,
she admired their present appearance.
She manifested a close and affectionate friendship for me, and all day
long all I thought of, as I kept the furnace going, was the evening
after dinner, when I could sit close by her reading poetry in a low
voice to her.
I leaned over her on every pretext to smell her hair,--her body, through
her low-necked dress--to breathe in giddily that delicate fragrance that
emanates from the bodies of beautiful women, as perfume from flowers.
Once, in spite of my timidity, I dared place my arm about her shoulders,
there in the dark. There was a lecture on over in the "chapel" and
mostly everybody had gone to it. Spalton, in passing through where we
sat together, asked her if she was coming. "No, she was too tired." She
remained sitting by me. Spalton shot me a glance of scarcely concealed
resentment and went on. We were left alone.
She began telling me of her deceased husband ... of their devotion to
each other ... she applied a dainty thing of lace to her eyes, pausing a
moment....
"John? may I call you by your name, not by the odious name they have for
you here?..."
She leaned her head against my shoulder.
"Johnnie, you are a fine, sensitive soul, and I know you'll be a great
poet some day ... but why don't these people take you more seriously?
"I think it must be your childlikeness ... and your spirit of
horse-play, that breaks through at the most inopportune moments, that
encourages these fools to treat you with levity."...
"Dear woman," I began, "dearest woman," and my throat bunched queerly so
that I could not speak further.
She stroked my hair....
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"I am just a year younger."
"May I kiss you?" I asked, stumblingly.
"Yes, Johnnie, you may kiss me"....
"Why, you dear child, you ... you kiss just like a small boy ..." in a
lower voice, "can it be possible that you, with all your tramping, your
knowledge of life in books, of people?--"
I bent my head, ashamed, silently acknowledging my inexperience of
women.
"No, it's nothing to be ashamed of, dearest boy ... I think you are a
fine man--to have gone through what you have--and still--"
Her voice trailed off. She put her arm around my neck, drew me to her,
and kissed me!
* * * * *
As we sat close together, a brooding silence. Then, with a transition of
thought to the practical, she remarked....
"I'm angry with these people ... they over-charge for everything."
"Just think of it--I--I feel I may speak of it to you ... we seem to
have come so near to each other to-night--"
"They brought my laundry back yesterday, and for one piece of silk
lingerie I was charged--guess?"
I couldn't imagine how much.
"Seventy-five cents--think of that!"
* * * * *
As the Eoites came tramping back from the lecture, they found us still
seated there. At the first footstep we had swiftly moved apart.
I had been half-reclining, my head in her lap, strangely soothed and
happy as she ran her fingers through my hair. For a long time neither of
us had said a word.
Now I sat apart from her, awkward and wooden.
Spalton did not speak, inclined his head icily, as he strode by.
"He's mad because I didn't come to his talk," she whispered.
"I see my finish," I replied.
* * * * *
Now, Spalton was as much in love with Dorothy, his second wife, as I
have ever known a man to be in love with a woman. But that could not
entirely exclude his jealousy over my sympathetic relation with the
"Southern Lady," as the artworkers termed her. And he feared for her on
another score. She was, to use a constantly recurring phrase of the
Master's, whenever he wished to describe anyone as being wealthy, "lousy
with money," and he suspected, not without good cause, that I would warn
her against paying exorbitant prices for books and objects of art....
* * * * *
One night I was the cause of an accident which gave him a handle to
seize on.
We were having a musicale. A new musician had come to Eos. The former
Eos musician, Von Hammer, the father of the prodigy who played the
piano, had quarrelled with the Master and had retired to Buffalo. Where,
after a brief struggle as teacher of music, he had turned to playing for
the movies. It must have nearly slain the man, for he was a sincere
artist, a lover of classical music ... and now compelled to play ragtime
and popular melodies for a living.
All that I held of him, despite myself, was an unkind remembrance--his
breath had been charnel-foul, and always, when discussing anything, he
insisted on taking the lapel of his listener's coat and talking directly
into his nose....
* * * * *
But his successor was playing at an introductory musicale....
A tall, alert, dark young man ... Italian-dark ... his eyes shone behind
his gold-rimmed glasses, swimming large and distorted under the
magnification of the lenses ... his lips were full and red, his
moustache of a heavy, bristly black that made them look redder and
fuller still, almost negroid.
He played the piano with violent, expert energy ... his favourite work
was the "Turkish Patrol," which, Spalton exclaimed, as he applauded
vigorously, he would now adopt as the Eos anthem.
The drawing-room was crowded ... a few visiting celebrities ... Eoites,
too, but only the quasi-celebrities among them. The mass of the workers
was as rigidly excluded now, under the new regime, as ordinary retainers
ever are.
I stood by my "Southern Lady." She was in evening dress ... wore a
lorgnette ... I trembled as I leaned over her, for I could see the firm,
white-orbed upper parts of her breasts ... I was trying to be lightly
playful, and was clumsy at it. I took up her lorgnette and toyed with
it. I sat on the edge of a table ... and where I sat stood a supposed
Greek vase of great antiquity and value.
It is a law that prevails in three-dimensional space that two objects
cannot occupy the same place at one time. I dislodged the vase. It came
to the floor in a crash ... which stopped the music ... which stopped
everything. There fell a dead silence. I looked down at the fragments,
hardly knowing what to do....
Spalton came over to me ... intensely ... his eyes blazing.
"Razorre, come out into the lobby ... I want to speak to you." I
willingly followed him ... he wheeled on me when he had me alone.
"Do you know why we have these paintings of Gresham's hung high up there
on the wall?" he asked rhetorically, with an eloquent, upward sweep of
his arm, "it's so bums like you ... dirty tramps ... can't wipe their
feet on them."
"I am so sorry, so very sorry," I murmured, contrite.
Thinking my contrition meekness, and possibly fear of him, he went to
take me by the shoulders. I knocked his hands away promptly and quickly
stepped back, on the defensive ... all my reverence for him swallowed up
in indignation, rising at last, against his vulgar chiding.
At that moment, my widow, Mrs. Tighe, arrived ... she was weeping....
"Don't be hard on the poor boy," she pleaded ... "anyhow, it was all my
fault ... and I want to pay you for your vase ... whatever it cost."...
A momentary flicker of greed lighted the Master's eyes. But he
perceived as instantly how unmagnanimous he would appear if he accepted
a cash settlement.
"I am not thinking of my financial loss ... beauty cannot be valued that
way!" he exclaimed.
"Then you must not blame the boy."
"He is clumsy ... he is a terrible fool ... he is always doing the wrong
thing. Oh, my beautiful vase!" and he wrung his hands, lost in the pose.
Out he strode through the front door.
* * * * *
The musicale had been broken up.
"My poor, dear Johnnie, I am so sorry," murmured the young woman. I was
sitting in the large armchair where she had sat the memorable night of
the lecture that neither of us attended. She had seated herself on one
of the arms.
"You mustn't be despondent!" She was patting my hand.
She mistook my rage at the gratuitous insults Spalton had heaped on me
as despondency. She leaned closer against me ... quickly I caught her
into my arms, drew her into my lap ... held her little, quiet, amazed
face in my hands firmly, as I kissed and kissed her.... I knew how to
kiss now....
She rose presently. I stood up and caught her in my arms. Slowly and
firmly she disengaged herself ... silently she slid away. She stopped in
the shadow a moment before going up the long, winding stairs.
"Good night, my dear poet," she whispered.
She had no sooner disappeared than I started out, my heart beating like
a drum to a charge in me. Spalton frequently wrote till late, in his
office. I would go over there and, if he was there, call him to account
for his insults. There was a light lit within, and I could see him
through the window at his desk.
"Come in!" in answer to my knock. "Oh, it's you, Razorre!" and his eyes
snapped with fresh resentment. "What do you want? Don't you know that
I'm busy on _A Brief Visit_?"
"You know why I'm here!"
"Well?" challengingly.
"I've come for two reasons. I want to apologise to you for breaking that
vase ... and I demand an equal apology from you, in turn, for the way
you insulted me in Mrs. Tighe's presence."
"You deserved everything I said to you," he replied, rising quietly
from his chair.
"I may have deserved it ... but that doesn't alter in the least my
intention of smashing your face flat for the way you spoke to me, unless
you tell me you're sorry for it."
"My dear Gregory, don't be a fool."
"A fool?" I replied, inflamed further by the appellation applied to
quiet me in such a superior tone, "if you'll come on out into the street
and away from your own property, I'll show you who's a fool ... you'll
find you can't treat me like a dog, and get away with it!"
"Why, Razorre ... my dear, dear boy," calling me by my nickname and
taking another tack ... he laid his hand gently on my shoulder and gave
me a deep, burning look of compassionate rebuke ... though I saw fear
flickering back of it all....
"Look here, John," I burst out, never able to hold my wrath long, "I
like you ... think you're a great man--but you humiliated me before
other people ... and I've come to such a pass in my life that I wouldn't
let God Himself get away with a thing like that!"
"Then I apologise ... most humbly!"
"That was all I wanted. Good-night!" But I could not bring myself to
leave so abruptly.
"John," I wavered, "you _are_ a great man ... a much greater man than
you allow yourself to be ... I'm--I'm going away from here forever, this
time ... and I--I want you to know how I reverence and love the bigness
in you, in spite of our--our differences."
He was pleased.
"And so you're going to college somewhere?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
I had talked much of college being my next aim.
"Either the University of Chicago, or further west."
"I can give you commutation as far as Chicago."
"I cannot accept it."
"You must, Razorre."
* * * * *
A week from then I left.
I went up to Mrs. Tighe's room to say good-bye. Awkwardly and with the
bearlike roughness of excessive timidity I put my arms about her, drew
her to me tentatively.
"Be careful, poet dear, or you'll hurt me," she warned, giving me a look
of fondness. Her left arm was in a sling. She had fallen on the steps a
few days before and had broken a small bone in the wrist. "My sweet
poet!"
The bandaged arm being in the way, I put my head down in her lap again,
as she sat there on the edge of the great, white bed.
She leaned over, turned my face up with her free hand, kissed me full in
the mouth....
"My sweet poet," she repeated, "good-bye!"
* * * * *
While at Mt. Hebron I had chosen German as my modern language. And it
was a Professor Langworth's grammar and exercise book that we used as a
text-book. Langworth, I learned from the title page, was professor of
Germanic languages in Laurel University, at Laurel, Kansas.
And now I bethought me that it would be much better to go to college in
Kansas than attend the University at Chicago, where, I felt, education
was made an industry, just like pork-packing and the hundred other big
concerns in that city. Kansas would encourage individuality more, be
less appallingly machine-like.
The great, roaring city bewildered me, and the buildings of the
University of Chicago (for I got so far as to ask for the registrar's
office) overwhelmed me with their number. And I fled. With the exception
of a few days I put in washing dishes in a restaurant there, I stayed no
longer, but freighted it southwest to Kansas City ... from whence I rode
a freight further to Laurel.
* * * * *
In the evening twilight I climbed out of a box car in the railroad yards
at Laurel....
I enquired my way to the university.
"Up on the hill."
I veered off from the main street of the town ... a length of marching
telegraph poles and flat-roofed Western houses. I struck across lots in
the cold and dark. I floundered through half-hardened puddles of mud,
over vacant lots that afterward seemed to have been conjured up for my
impediment by some devil of piquaresque romance....
The hill, the very top of it, I had laboriously attained. On all sides
the college buildings gloomed in dusky whiteness of architecture.
One of them was lit inside with the mellow glow of electric lights. As I
stepped into the vestibule timidly, to enquire my way to Professor
Langworth's house (for it was his I decided to seek out first), a group
of fragrant, white-clad girls herded together in astonished tittering
when they saw me. And I surely looked the tramp, dusty and soiled from
my long ride.
I asked them the direction to Langworth's house, but they ignored me,
and scattered. Turning in confusion, I ran into a man-student bodily ...
excused myself ... the girls, standing further off, tittered again.
"Can you direct me to Professor Gustav Langworth's house?"
The student looked me over curiously. But he was of the right sort.
"Certainly. Come with me. I'm going that way. I'll show you where it
is...."
* * * * *
In silence we descended the hill....
"That house, in there a bit, under the trees ... that is where the
professor lives."
My knock set a dog barking inside ... the quick, insistent bark of a
collie that romped against me, putting up its paws on me when the door
was opened by a slim-bodied man of middle height. The man was dressed in
a grey suit ... he had a kindly, smooth-shaven face except for a
close-cropped pepper-and-salt moustache ... and grey-blue, quizzical,
but kindly eyes.
"Here, Laddie, come here!" called the voice of a frail, little woman
whose hair was white like wool, and like wool in texture. She sat
crumpled up by an open gas fire of imitation logs. She Was wry-backed,
her right shoulder thrust out into a discernible hunch.
She flung her arm tenderly about the dog, when it came to her. She was,
I figured, the professor's mother.... He held a hurried, whispered
consultation with her--after I had told him that studying his German
book at Mt. Hebron had impelled me to come to Laurel. Which story I
could see pleased and flattered him.
I was waiting in the storm porch.
He returned. He thrust his hand into his pocket and fetched forth a
two-dollar bill.
"Go downtown to one of the restaurants you will find on the main street.
You can get a square meal in one of them for a quarter or, at the most,
fifty cents ... a bed for the same price ... climb the hill again in the
morning, say about ten o'clock, and ask for me at the German Department
... I am sorry I can't invite you to stay here for the night ... but we
have no room ..." and he glanced timidly at the woman whom I had taken
to be his mother, but who, I afterward learned, was his wife.
* * * * *
I found a restaurant-hotel, as he had directed me, and procured my
supper for a quarter ... fried potatoes and a cold slab of steak ... and
a big Westerner who wore a sombrero and had a stupid, kindly, boyish
face, showed me to a bed ... which also cost but a quarter for the night
... with a scattered ambuscade of bedbugs thrown in for good measure.
In the morning, fried pork chops, pancakes and two cups of coffee--and I
set out for the hill.
The place buzzed with activity. The fall term was already in full swing,
and students poured in lines up and down both sides of the steep street
that led to the college ... girls and boys both, for it was
co-educational. They were well dressed and jolly, as they moved in the
keen windy sun of autumn.
I was not a part of this. I felt like an outcast, but I bore myself with
assumed independence and indifference. I thought everybody was looking
at me. Most of them were.
* * * * *
Langworth enrolled me as a special student. He himself paid my tuition
fee, which was a nominal one. I enrolled in Philosophy, Economics,
German, Latin.
My patron, furthermore, slipped a ten-dollar bill into my hand. "For the
books you will need."
He directed me to the Y.M.C.A. employment bureau. "They will see that
you get work at something, so you can be sure of board and room ... in
the early days we did not have things so well arranged. I worked my way
through college, too. I nearly perished, my first year. After you
settle somewhere, come and see me once in a while and let me hear how
you're getting on."
* * * * *
My first job was milking a cow and taking care of a horse, for board and
room.... The man for whom I worked was an old, retired farmer.
The disagreeable part of taking care of horses and cows is the smell. My
clothes, my room, even the skin of my body, soon reeked with the faint
yet penetrating odour of stable and barn.
But I was happy. Many great men had done as I was doing. Always trust me
to dramatise every situation!
I arranged my meagre row of text-books on the shelf in my attic. I set
Keats apart in a sacred nook by himself.
I sat humming softly to myself, studying my first lessons.
* * * * *
"Look," cried a girl, her voice vibrating with the hard sarcasm of
youth, "look, there goes Abe Lincoln," to another girl and two boys, who
lolled with her on the porch of the house next mine.
I was stabbed with a bitter pang of resentment. For my face was thin and
weather-beaten ... my sharp, bent knees never straightened as I walked
along, like a man going through snow drifts. Yet I held my head erect,
ridiculously erect ... and my chest was enormous through
over-development, as my arms and legs were thin.
* * * * *
My first few days at Laurel University brought me that beginning of
newspaper notoriety that has since followed me everywhere as a shadow
goes with a moving object. And then originated the appellation which has
since clung to me, that of "The Vagabond Poet."
One morning, when I was hardly awake, there came a knock at my door.
"Just a moment," I called, getting into my shirt and trousers, "who is
it?"
"A reporter to interview you."
I opened the door to admit a pale, young chap, who expertly flirted the
ashes off a cigarette as he said, leaning his head sidewise, that he
represented the Kansas City _Star_. As he spoke his keen grey eyes
looked me over impartially, but with intelligent, friendly interest.
Though he was dressed in the student's conventional style, even to the
curiously nicked and clipped soft hat then predominant, there was still
about him an off-handedness, an impudent at-homeness that bespoke a
wider knowledge, or assumed knowledge, of the world, than the average
student possesses.
The interview appeared the next afternoon.
"VAGABOND POET ARRIVES.
LAUREL ENROLLS BOX-CAR STUDENT."
It made me a nine days' wonder with the students. I caught the men
staring at me, the girls shyly observing me, as I strode from class room
to class room....
But the reek of the stable. It went with me like a ghost everywhere.
Maybe it was because I had no change of suits ... I saw that it was
noticeable to others, and I sat 'way back, in a seat apart, by myself.
* * * * *
Langworth watched my progress narrowly the first few weeks.
One afternoon as I was passing his house he beckoned me in.
"You're making good, and I'm glad of it ... because they're looking on
you as my protege ... holding me responsible for you. Munday, in the
Schiller class, tells me you sometimes bring in your daily lesson in
_Wilhelm Tell_, translated into blank verse ... and good stuff, too....
And King says he turns over the most difficult lines in Horace in class
for you to translate and construe."
Langworth had only half the truth from King.
Whenever the latter came upon a passage a little off colour, he put me
on it, chuckling to himself ... he knew I would go right through with it
without hesitation.
* * * * *
About this time I received a letter from William Hayes Ward, editor of
the New York _Independent_. He informed me that he had taken a poem of
mine. And, as indubitable proof, he enclosed a check for five dollars.
Professor Langworth was himself a poet of no mean ability: he was
pleased to hear that I had sold a poem to the _Independent_.
* * * * *
I was sick of being shunned because I carried stable smells about with
me wherever I went.
Also, sanguinely, with the sale of my first poem, I was sure that my
literary career had begun, and that from now on I would be enabled to
earn my living by my pen, and pay my way as a student, too. So I threw
up the job that made me smell so unpleasantly.
* * * * *
The city of Laurel had been, in the early days, in the memory of
settlers yet living a hale life, a pioneer outpost. Through it flowed a
great, muddy river. The flat roofs of its main street still preserved a
frontier appearance. It was surrounded by high, wind-swept bluffs.
They still talked of the Quantrell raid and repeated the story of it ...
and of how the six men were lynched under the bridge that swung over the
dam....
At the time of the slavery agitation its citizens had encouraged the
negroes to escape, had petted them, idealised them as no human beings of
any race should be idealised ... had run schools specially for them
where it was considered an honour for the women of the settlers to
teach.
Now, the great negro population, at first so encouraged, was crowded
into a festering multitude of dilapidated buildings that stood on the
flats close by the region where the river coiled through level acres of
low-lying country. This place was known as the "Bottoms."
I am trying to give you the flavour of the town.
They had prohibition there, too ... long before it won nation-wide power
... consequently the negroes drove a vast trade in bootlegging ... and a
concomitant prostitution of coloured women and girls throve. One or two
students on the hill had, to my knowledge, negro mistresses of whom they
were fond....
The drug stores did a thriving business in the sale of spiritus
frumenti--for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble," which seemed to be
prevalent and epidemic throughout the community.
* * * * *
Saturday was market day for the farmers who lived in the adjoining
countryside ... and the livery stables where they put up their horses
were also resorts for gambling and the selling of "bootleg" booze....
These farmers were a wild lot ... something like European peasants in
their smacking of the soil and the country to which they belonged, but
with a verve and dash of their own distinctly American.
There were three or four cheap restaurants that catered solely to their
trade ... "a square meal for a quarter" ... and a square meal they
served ... multitudes of fried stuff ... beefsteak, potatoes, boiled
ham, cabbage, heaps of white bread constantly replenished as it was
voraciously devoured ... always plenty of hot, steaming coffee. Where
these restaurants profited I could never see ... unless by a little
bootlegging on the side.
It was to one of them that I repaired when I left my malodorous job. The
same one where I had spent my first night in town.
* * * * *
Langworth sent for me one day.
"I have heard wild tales about you, Johnnie. I don't usually listen to
gossip, but these tales are so recurrent and persistent ... about your
going about with the degraded people who live in the Bottoms, that I
considered I ought to see you about it."
I confessed that, though I did not drink their bootleg booze, I did have
a wide acquaintanceship with the folk of the Bottoms, and that I knew
all the rowdies among the farmers ... that I passed a lot of time about
the livery stables talking with them. That I often rode out to their
farms in the hills and spent Saturdays and Sundays there. I avowed that
there people were more interesting to me than the carefully tailored
professors and students.
My schoolmates had met me on the streets in company with these
wild-looking yokels, sometimes taking them to their waggons when they
were too drunk to pilot themselves effectively. And they had applied to
me the proverb of "birds of a feather."
* * * * *
Before I left, Langworth drew from me the admission that I was away
behind in my board bill at the Farmers' Restaurant. My hopes of making
immediate money as a writer of poems for the magazines had so far been
barren of fruit.
"Sh! sit down a minute and wait." His wife was coming downstairs,
querulously, waveringly; her eyes red from weeping.
"Laddie has just died."
"The shepherd dog?" I enquired; for she had spoken as of a human demise.
"Yes, the dog ... but he was human, if anyone was." There was an
acidulous resentment in the tone of her answer that indicated that she
wanted her husband to send me away.
"She wants you to go," whispered Langworth, humouring his wife like a
sick child. He escorted me into the storm porch. "You have no idea," he
apologised defensively, "how human a dog can be, or how fond of one you
can become...."
"What's this?" I asked, taken aback. He had thrust a check into my hand
as he shook hands good-bye.
"It's a check I've just endorsed over to you. Royalties on a recent
text-book. Please do take it." I had intimated that I would probably be
compelled to quit college and go on the tramp again ... confessing
frankly, also, that a stationary life got on my nerves at times.
"I want you to keep on, not go back to the tramp life ... we'll make
something of you yet," he jested, diffidently, steering me off when he
noticed that I was about to heap profuse thanks on him.
"How can I ever thank you--"
"By studying hard and making good. By becoming the great poet I wanted
to be."
"But how can I pay this back? It will take a long time--"
"When you arrive at the place where you can afford to pay me back, pass
it on to someone else who is struggling as you are now, and as I myself
have struggled."
* * * * *
Always, always I wrote my poetry and kept studying in my own fashion ...
marks of proficiency, attendance at class went by the board. My studying
was rather browsing among the multitudes of books in the college
library. I passed hours, back in the stacks, forgetting day and night
... recitations ... meals....
I was soon in trouble with my professors ... I was always up, and even
ahead, with my studies, but I was a disrupting influence for the other
students, because of my irregularity.
I discovered wonderful books back there in the "stack" ... the works of
Paracelsus, who whispered me that wisdom was to be found more in the
vagabond bye-ways of life than in the ordered and regulated highways.
That the true knowledge was to be garnered from knocking about with
vagrants, gipsies, carriers ... from corners in wayside inns where
travellers discoursed....
And there was Boehmen, the inspired German shoemaker, who was visited
by an angel, or some sort of divine stranger, and given his first
illumination outside his shop ... and later walked a-field and heard
what the flowers were saying to each other, seeing through all creation
at one glance, crystal-clear.
And there were the unusual poets ... old Matthew Prior, who wrote
besides his poems, the Treaty, was it, of Utrecht?... hobnobbed with the
big people of the land ... yet refused all marks of honour ... the best
Latinist of the day ... at a time when Latin was the diplomatic language
of Europe.
When he wasn't hobnobbing with the aristocracy or writing treaties he
was sitting in inns and drinking with teamsters ... had a long love
affair with a cobbler's wife, and married the lady after the cobbler
died....
There was Skelton and his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than
strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but
with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem
about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he
prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in
heaven--"to tread, for _solas_!"
And Gay, the author of many delightful fables ... who must wait still
longer for his proper niche, because he showed gross levity on the
subject of death and life ... he who wrote for his own epitaph:
"Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, but now I know it."
For all those who would not keep step, who romped out of the regular
procedure and wantoned by the way, picking what flowers they chose, I
held feeling and sympathy.
* * * * *
The _Annual_, a book published by the seniors each spring, now
advertised a prize for the best poem submitted by any student ... a
prize of twenty-five dollars. I had no doubt but that the prize was mine
already. Not that I had become as yet the poet I desired, but that the
average level of human endeavour in any art is so low that I knew my
assiduity and application and fair amount of inspiration would win.
I wrote my poem--_A Day in a Japanese Garden_, ... only two lines I
remember:
"And black cranes trailed their long legs as they flew
Down to it, somewhere out of Heaven's blue,"
descriptive of a little lake ... oh, yes, and two more I remember,
descriptive of sunset:
"And Fujiyama's far and sacred top
Became a jewel shining in the sun."
The poem was an over-laquered, metaphor-cloyed thing ... much like the
bulk of our free verse of to-day ... but it was superior to all the rest
of the contributions.
The prize was declared off. After an evening's serious discussion the
committee decided that, though my effort was far and away the best, it
would not do to let me have the prize, because I was so wild-appearing
... because I was known as having been a tramp. And because seniors and
students of correct standing at the university had tried. And it would
not be good for the school morale to let me have what I had won.
They compromised by declaring the prize off.
A year after, Professor Black, assistant professor in English
literature, who served on the judging board, told me confidentially of
this ... though he declared that he had fought for me, alleging how I
needed the money, and how I had honestly won the award.
I thought of the couplet of Gay:
"He who would without malice pass his days
Must live obscure and never merit praise."
* * * * *
Outwardly I maintained a bold and courageous rudeness. Inwardly a panic
had swept over me ... not the panic of deep solitude when a man is alone
at night in a boundless forest ... I have known that, too, but it is
nothing to that which comes to a man who knows all society, by its very
structure, arrayed against him and his dreams.
When the ancient Egyptians had finished the building of a pyramid, they
began polishing it at the top, proceeding downward. And it has been said
that on the finished, hard, smooth exterior even a fly would slip....
Huge, granite, towering, the regularised life appeared to me, the life
that bulked on all sides ... I saw that it was the object of education,
not to liberate the soul and mind and heart, but to reduce everything to
dead and commonplace formulae.
On all sides, so to speak, I saw Christ and Socrates and Shelley valeted
by society ... dress suits laid out for them ... carefully pressed and
creased ... which,--now dead,--it was pretended their spirits took up
and wore ... had, in fact, always worn....
* * * * *
And my mind went back to those happy days at Eos ... happy despite the
fly in the ointment....
I thought of my Southern widow, Mrs. Tighe.
"Poet," she had once said, "come to my place in the South. I have a
bungalow back of my house that you may live in ... write your poems
unmolested ... I won't be going there for awhile yet, but I will give
you a letter to the caretaker, and you can use the place. And my pantry
and ice box will be at your service ... so you'll need do nothing but
write."
Now, fed full of rebuffs, I wished I had accepted her offer. And I wrote
her, care of the Eos Artworks ... an ingenuous letter, burning with
naive love....
She had once told me how she had scandalised the neighbours by painting
a little boy, in the nude, in that same bungalow ... the story being
carried about by the servants ... and if it had not been for her social
prestige!--
I thought there could be nothing pleasanter than living in her place,
perhaps becoming her lover....
I imagined myself posing, nude, for her canvases....
But my brief hope fell to earth. A curt note from a married sister of
hers ... who first apologised for having read my letter.... But Mrs.
Tighe was abroad, painting in Spain.
The shock of having someone else, indubitably with a hostile eye, read
my letter, in which I had poured forth all my heart, made me almost
sick. I was chagrined inexpressibly.
* * * * *
The truth was, spring was coming on. Spring affects me as it does
migratory fowls. With its first effort of meadow and bough toward
renewed flowers and greenness, the instinct for change and adventure
stirs anew in me.
The school year was not yet up, but I didn't want to graduate.
* * * * *
At that time I had a passion for meeting well-known people.
It was then my only avenue of literary publication, so to speak. The
magazines were steadily returning my deluge of poems--I sent at least
three a week to them ... but to those who had established themselves I
could show my work, and get their advice and notice....
* * * * *
Walking along the main street, I ran into Jack Travers, the young
reporter who had dubbed me the "Vagabond Poet," the "Box-car Bard."...
"Well, what are you up to now, Gregory?"
"Nothing, only I'm thinking of a trip south to Osageville to pay a visit
to Mackworth, the Kansas novelist."
"That's the stuff ... I need another good story for the _Era_."
"I'm going to make it a sort of pilgrimage a-foot."
"Great! 'Vagabond Poet' Pilgrims to Home of Celebrated Kansan. It's only
ninety miles to Osageville from here ... still rather cold of nights ...
but you'll find plenty of shelter by the way ... start to-day and I can
get the story in in time for this Sunday's _Era_...."
Travers got a camera from a fraternity brother.
"Come on, we'll walk up an alley and I'll snap you just as if you were
on the way...."
"No, I won't do that!"
--"won't do what?"
--"won't fake it ... if you want a picture of me on the way, it will
have to be on the way!"
"Of all the fools! Ain't the alleys muddy enough to be like the gumbo
you'll have to plough through?" he teased. But I wouldn't allow him to
take a fraudulent picture. He had to come with me, through the mud,
grumbling, to the edge of town.
There, on the country road that led in the direction of Osageville, my
feet rooted in gumbo, a sort of thick composite of clay and mud that
clings to the feet in huge lumps, I had my photograph taken ... actually
on the march toward my destination ... no hat on ... a copy of Keats in
my hand.
Travers waved me good-bye. "You'll see the story in the _Era_ Sunday
sure," he shouted, in a tone half affection, half irony. I was nettled
at the irony. I wanted it to be looked on as a quest entirely heroic.
* * * * *
It began to rain. Far off, like a high, great ship riding on the
horizon, rode the hill, with its cluster of university buildings.
My first impulse was to turn back, to quit. That is always my first
impulse. The instincts of my bourgeois ancestry against the unusual, the
impractical,--the safe-and-sane conservatism of the farmers and clerks
and small business men bred in my people for generations!...
I pushed on through the clinging, maddening gumbo, slithering and
sliding. Fortunately, I wore an overcoat, which, after it had reached
the saturation point, shed most of the steady, oblique-driving rain that
came for miles over the plains in a succession of grey, windy sheets.
But my wrists and hands were aching, wet, and my thin, plying legs, to
my knees. And the "squash-squish!" of my soaked feet in the mud plodded
a steady refrain of misery.
My Keats, at least, was dry. I kept the volume under my belt and against
my naked belly.
And I was happy and buoyed up by the thought, which lessened my
discomfiture, that Sunday morning thousands of readers in comfortable
homes would be reading about me, would gaze upon my photograph.
People looked out of their farmhouse windows at me as if an insane man
were stalking by.
It darkened rapidly.
My first night's shelter was in a leaky outhouse. The farmstead to which
it belonged had burned down. I might have been taken in at any number of
places, but my access of timidity was too great ... it might on the
following dawn be followed by as great an effrontery. My year in college
had disorganized me, pulled me out of my tramp character. It was no more
a usual thing to beg or ask for shelter.
I could not sleep. My muscles were already overstrained from the
excessive effort of struggling along in the tenacious mud, like a fly
escaping from the edge of spilled molasses.
I had brought a box of small candles for just such an emergency. I lit
one after the other, sat on the seat, and read Keats all night ... in
an ecstasy, forgetting my surroundings, my pitiful poverty, my
pilgrimage that would seem ridiculous to most.
The rain increased. Outside it drummed and drummed. Inside it dripped
and dripped.
And as I sat there, upright, to escape the drip from the leaks, I
climbed to a high, crystal-clear state of spirit.
Again I burned through Keats' life as if remembering that it was what I
had myself suffered ... as if suddenly I awoke to the realisation that
_I_ was Keats, re-born in America, a tramp-student in Kansas....
And now Severn, my true, faithful friend, was with me.... Severn, who
had given up his career as painter to be near me in my last days ... we
were on the _Maria Crowther_ ... we were still off the coast of England,
and I had gone ashore for the last touching of my foot on English
soil....
There hung the great, translucent star of evening, at that hushed moment
of twilight, before any other of the stars had come forth....
"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,..."
The evening star made me dream of immortality and love--my love for
Fanny Brawne....
Now we, Severn and I, were journeying across the country to Rome ...
voyaging, rather, through fields of flowers ... like my procession of
Bacchus in _Endymion_ ... that was a big poem, after all....
Now the fountain played under the window ... where I was to die....
"Severn, I feel the daisies growing over me."
"Severn, I--I--Severn ... I am dying ... Severn, lift me up--I--"
"Here lies one whose fame was writ in water." (How they cruelly laughed
at that--for a time!)
* * * * *
I gave a start, almost a scream of agony ... the candle, somehow, had
served me a ghastly trick ... it had cast my shadow backward on the wall,
like that shadow cast by the head of the dying poet, as Severn had
sketched it.... I ran my hand over my face ... it was hollow and
tight-drawn like the face of a consumptive.
The mass of resistance I had to face, for poetry's sake, was too
enormous ... my country's motto was not "beauty is truth, truth beauty,"
but "blessed be that man who can make two hills of corn grow where one
bank of violets grew before," ... and my pilgrimage, in that hour of
vision, it disgusted me ... for I was making it not to some grand poet
like L'Estrange, but to the home of the chief exponent of the
"Honest-to-God, No-Nonsense-About-Me Hick School of Literature" ... and
associated with him was the syndicate poet, William Struthers, called
familiarly Uncle Bill, whose daily jingles run together as prose, were
now making him a fortune.
With the coming of dawn the day cleared, the sun glistened on a thousand
puddles, making them silver and gold....
By walking carefully on the side of the road, I made progress less
muddy. I was used to the squashing of the water in my shoes. The weather
turned warmer.
* * * * *
I found myself on the usual long one-street called Main Street, in the
prosperous little city of Osageville. It was Sunday. A corner loiterer
directed me to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth's house.
A habitation of sequestered quiet ... as I stood before the door I heard
the sunrise song of Rossini's _Wilhelm Tell_ ... a Red Seal record ...
accompanied by the slow, dreamy following of a piano's tinkle ... like
harp sounds or remote, flowing water.
I halted, under a charm. I waited till the melody was at an end before I
knocked. A small, pale-faced, pretty little woman answered.
"Does Mr. Jarvis Mackworth live here?"
"Yes. Come in. We have been expecting you. You are the poet, aren't
you?"
"Yes, I am the poet."
"You're a good walker ... we didn't expect you before Monday or
Tuesday.... Jarvis, here's the poet-boy from the university."
My host, unseen within, turned off another Red Seal record he had just
started, again to the accompaniment of the piano.... Kreisler's _Caprice
Viennoise_....
Jarvis Alexander Mackworth came forth like a leisurely duck, waddling.
He was very, very fat. He extended me a plump, white hand ... a slack
hand-shake ... but not an unhearty one, rather a grip of easy welcome.
A kind, rubicund, moon-round face, full of large blue eyes smiling a
gentle and kindly welcome ... if the face of Shelley's father, plump and
methodic-oracular, could have been joined to the wild, shining ecstasy
of Shelley's countenance itself--you would have had Mackworth's face
before its time. I never beheld such spirituality in a fat man. His
stoutness was not unpleasing.
"My boy ... come in ... my God, you're all wet ... you look frail, too."
A pity shone in his eyes. "Minnie, call up Ally Merton ..." turning to
me, "I have, as you can see, no clothes to fit you ... but Ally might
have ... he's about your size, but he carries a trifle more meat on his
bones....
"Come in and dry yourself before the fire till he gets over."
We sat before the gas-fire of artificial logs.
"Minnie, will you make a cup of tea for this--poor boy," and he lowered
his voice at the last two words, realising that I was hearing, too.
"Yes, Jarv!"
* * * * *
I sat at the table in the dining room. Jarvis Alexander Mackworth sat on
the piano-stool, again playing the piano in rhythm rather than in
accompaniment with the records ... it was Caruso now....
"A glorious voice, isn't it, young man?" Mackworth asked, as I ate
voraciously of the cold roast set before me ... of the delicious white
bread and fresh dairy butter, just from the churn of some neighbouring
farmer.
"I know nothing much about music," he continued, "--just appreciate it
... --seems to me that's what we need now, more than anything else ...
appreciation of the arts.... I like to sit here and pick out the
melodies on the piano as the tune runs on. It inspires me. The precious
people, the aesthetic upstarts, make fun of Edison and his 'canned
music,' as they call it ... but I say Edison is one of the great forces
for culture in America to-day. Everybody can't go to New York, London,
Paris, Bayreuth ... not to Chicago even....
"Beauty must come to Osageville, since Osageville cannot come to
Beauty."
I was charmed.
"Mr. Mackworth, you are a great man," I said.
* * * * *
A ring at the bell. Ally Merton....
"Ally, this is Mr. John Gregory, poet at large, Villon of American
Literature ... let us hope, some day a little more of the Whittier ...
Ally--" and the speaker turned to me, "Ally Merton is my right hand man
... my best reporter...."
He took Merton aside, in private talk.... Ally looked me over with a
keen, swift glance that appraised me from head to foot instantly ...
sharply but not hostilely ... as one who takes in a situation in a
comprehensive instant.
"Yes, Mr. Mackworth, I can do it easily ... if they'll fit him."
There was an impersonality, however, about Merton's cryptic words that
annoyed me.
"You are going home with Ally, John," Mackworth said to me, using my
familiar name for the first time, "and borrow a suit of his clothes ...
and you are coming back with him to dinner ... where you'll meet a very
famous person--Miss Clara Martin."
* * * * *
Ally's blue serge suit was too short in the legs and arms for me ...
otherwise it fitted. His gentleness and unobtrusive quietness entered
into me, along with the putting on of his apparel. He led me upstairs in
his house.
"Mr. Mackworth has asked me to put you up while you are in town ...
because his own house is full at present, otherwise he would accommodate
you there ... I guess we can make shift to entertain you properly.
"Here is the bathroom ... if you don't mind my saying it, when you throw
the toilet seat up, let the water run from the tap over the wash basin
... my mother and sisters!" he trailed off in inaudible, deprecative
urge of the proprieties.
Ally was anything but a small-town product. Suave, socially adroit, an
instinctive creature of Good Form....
He came into the room he had given me to stay in. I looked like a
different man, togged out in his clothes. Ally was surprised that I
could wear his shoes ... he had such small feet ... I informed him
proudly that I, too, had small feet....
"No, no, that is not the way to tie a tie ... let me show you ... you
must make both ends meet exactly ... there, that's it!" and he stepped
back, a look of satisfaction on his face ... he handed me a pearl stick
pin.
"This is a loan, not a gift," he murmured.
I returned a quick, angry look.
"I don't want your pin."
"No offence meant," he deprecated, "and you must wear it" (for I was
putting it aside) "Mr. Mackworth and I both want you to look your best
when you meet Miss Martin at dinner to-night".... I angrily almost
decided to take his pin with me when I left, just to fulfill his
pre-supposition.
"No, that's not the place to stick it ... let me show you ... not in the
body of the tie, but further down," and he deftly placed the pin in the
right spot. Then he stepped back like an artist who is proud of having
made a good job of bad materials....
"You look almost like a gentleman."
I was about to lick into Merton and lend him a sample of a few strong
objurgations of road and jail, when I saw myself in the glass. I stood
transfixed. He had not meant to be ironic. The transformation was
startling....
"If you would only keep yourself tidy all the time that way!... it's
easy."
"Not for me ... everything material that I touch seems to fall apart....
I lose my shirts inexplicably ... my socks ... holes appear overnight in
my clothes. Books are the only things I can keep. I am always cluttered
up with them."
"Appearances mean everything ... then, if you have the rest, the goods
to deliver, there is no place a man might not go nor attain."
I looked the small town reporter over in surprise. I studied him closely
for the first time. He belonged to the world, not to Osageville ... the
world of fashion, of smartness ... a world I despised. My world and his
would always be like separate planets. He would consort with people for
the mere pleasure of social life with them. The one thing I did not like
about him was his small mouth ... but then I did not like my own mouth
... it was large, sensual, loose and cruel.
And his walk ... it was almost dainty mincing. But then my walk was a
loose, bent-kneed method of progression....
* * * * *
Miss Martin, the celebrated exposer of corrupt millionaires and captains
of industry, was dark and tall. She had been good-looking in girlhood.
She had fine eyes in a devastated face.
I found myself petted, mothered by her. As soon as she saw me she
removed a thread that hung to my coatsleeve.
At supper I was told of a new project. A group of writers, especially of
writers who were in revolt against big business and the corruption of
the trusts, were about to effect a combination and start what was to be
called the _National Magazine_; for it was to be no less than that, a
magazine embracing all America, to serve as a re-invigorant and
re-corroborant for new national ideals ... really only a tilting against
the evils of big combinations, in favour of the earlier and more
impossible ideals of small business units--the ideal of a bourgeois
commercial honesty and individual effort that could no more be
re-established than could the big shoe factory be broken up and returned
to the shanty of the village shoemaker.... Bryan's dream ... the last
effort of the middle classes to escape their surely destined
strangulation ... which gave birth to the abortive progressive party.
I was assured by Miss Martin and Mackworth that a poet who could sing
American ideals and dreams w 
Tramping on Life An Autobiographical Narrative / Kemp, Harry, 1883-1960