The vagabond lover

"The vagabond lover" by Charleson Gray and James Ashmore Creelman is a novelization written in the early 20th century. It follows Rudy Bronson, a shy dreamer and aspiring saxophonist-singer who flunks out of a state university yet vows to make it in popular music, buoyed and bedeviled by his bold friend Sport O’Malley, a roadhouse proprietor and his captivating daughter, and a distant campus queen, Jean Whitehall. The story blends ambition, friendship, romance, and Prohibition-era nightlife as Rudy stumbles, fights back, and chases a place on the bandstand. At the start of the story, Rudy fails his university exams and is humiliated in a band tryout, all while mooning over Jean and clinging to a correspondence course from famed sax man Ted Grant. Sport sweeps him to The Magic Lantern roadhouse, where Rudy is roped into pretending to be Sport’s brother and a Grant protégé, then pushed into a solo that falls flat; afterward, he nudges Molly Bland to confront Sport about his drinking. Overhearing a plot by the headwaiter to hijack the roadhouse’s “dry” delivery, Rudy and Sport intercept the truck and brawl with the crooks; when police arrive, Rudy tries to take the blame to shield Molly and Sport, only to learn Bland staged a ginger-ale sting to catch the culprit. That night Rudy sings a tender love refrain outside Jean’s sorority dance, unseen but heard, and the next morning he leaves school with Sport, debating the worth of college and fixing on music as his path. Back in their Connecticut hometown, Rudy lands a soda-fountain job, teams with Sport to revive a local jazz outfit dubbed the Playboys, and pledges to improve both sax and vocals.

The vagabond lover, by Charleson Gray. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77384.