Chapter XIV: Part 14

Later I was to learn that he was to himself an experiment station. On his own person he directly and practically tried out each idea ... his wife was also a convertee, slightly reluctant, to his tests ... and his son, perforce. Baxter actually kept a vegetarian dog. "Even carnivorous animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet." But the dog was no corroboration of his theory. It lacked gloss and shine to its coat, and seldom barked.

One afternoon I came upon Dan, Baxter's son, puking in the bushes, not far from the tents.

"What's the matter, Dan," he turned to me, wan, and serious, and with a grown-up look on his face.

"Nothing! Only sometimes the warm milk father has me drink makes me throw up. I'm on a milk diet, you know."

"Does your father know that you can't keep the milk down?"

"Mostly it does stay down ... I guess father's all right," he defended, "maybe the diet will do me good."

"Do you ever get a beefsteak?"

"Father says meat is no good ... maybe he's right about killing animals. He says it wouldn't be half so bad if everyone killed their own meat, instead of making brutes out of men who do the killing for them ... but it is kind of hard on the dog, though," and the little fellow laughed.

* * * * *

"I think my boy is going to become an engineer of some sort; he's always playing about with machinery," Penton said to me....

"Suppose you let him take a trip with me to town, then? I'm going to look through the Best o' Wheat factory this afternoon, and watch how Best o' Wheat biscuits are made. Perhaps he'd like to see the machinery working!"

"Johnnie, I'll trust him with you, if you'll promise me not to meddle with his diet."

"Of course."

"I don't like people stuffing him full of candy and ice cream. I want to bring him up with a good digestion and sound teeth."

* * * * *

Daniel took my hand as we went through the factory from department to department. I enjoyed a paternal pride in the handsome, pale, preternaturally intelligent little fellow.

"Look at the young father!" exclaimed one girl softly to another, with a touch of pathos in her voice, intimating that perhaps I was a widower.

I blushed with pleasure to the tips of my ears, to be thought the father of so prepossessing a child.

It delighted him to look into the huge bake ovens where first the wheat was baked in big brown loaves, before it was broken up into biscuit form. I thought of Hank Spalton and how he was supposed to have grown strong on a diet of Best o' Wheat.

It was customary to serve sight-seers, in a dining room kept for that purpose, with Best o' Wheat and cream, and wheat coffee ... free....

With a little reluctance Dan sat down and ate.

"Hum! that was good; but look here, Buzzer" (that was the nickname he had invented for me) you mustn't tell Mubby."

"Mubby?"

"That's what mother and I call my father."

"Of course I won't tell him ... and now we must go to a restaurant and have something real to eat."

"I can't. I don't dare. But I'll sit and watch you eat."

I ordered a steak, and persuaded Dan, finally, to have one too.

"If it's not good for people to eat, why does it taste so good?" mooted Dan meditatively....

"Now I'll be in for it," he added, as we walked out of the door and started back to the Health Home.

"But your father need never know."

"At first I thought it might be all right to fool him just this once. But I mustn't. I've promised him I'd never lie to him about what I ate, and I must keep my word ... he'll whip me, perhaps."

"Does he whip you much?"

"Not very much ... only when I need it ... and then when I cry, he stops--so it is never very hard!"

I laughed at the boy's frank philosophy....

"But daddy's so funny ... not at all like other daddies," wistfully.

* * * * *

I did not grow friendly enough with Mrs. Baxter even to call her by her first name of Hildreth ... during that brief visit....

Hildreth Baxter was always moving about leisurely, gracefully, like some strange, pretty animal. Not shy, just indifferent, as if processes of thought were going on inside of her that made an inner world that sufficed, to the exclusion of all exterior happenings.

She had a beautiful small head with heavy dark hair; large, brown, thoughtful eyes ... a face so strong as to be handsome rather than beautiful. She walked about in bloomers, languidly conscious that her legs were graceful and lovely....

To her I was, at that time, merely one of her husband's visiting friends....

* * * * *

After little Daniel had manfully squared himself with his conscience, Penton did not whip him. He came to me.

"I did not punish my boy: because it was you, Johnnie, that tempted him," and he flushed angrily. "I'm sure you didn't consider what you were doing. If I thought you did it out of deliberation, I would never speak to you again ... you must learn not to tamper with the ideals of others, Johnnie."

I apologised. I spoke of my reverence and regard for him and his greatness. I asked him to forgive me, which he did. And, as I pronounced him to be as great at Shelley, the Rousseau of America--his naive, youthful face wreathed with smiles and peace fell between us again.

* * * * *

"I am thinking of going to live at Eden, the Single Tax Colony not far from Philadelphia ... I want you to come there and visit us in the spring. In the meantime don't let them make you bourgeois in Kansas ... don't let them smash you into the academic mould."

"They haven't so far, have they?"

"But what in the world are you going back to Kansas for?"

"Because I have them trained there to accept me. I can do pretty much as I choose at the university. But mainly I want to write my four-act play in earnest--my New Testament drama, _Judas_. And I know of no better place to go to."

"Good-bye, and don't fail to pay me a visit in the spring."

"I will ... for a few weeks ... on my way to Paris."

"Paris? How are you going to get there?"

"I'll take a few cars of cattle east to New York from the Kansas City stock yards ... and I'll work my way across on a cattle boat."

"Good-bye! I wish I had your initiative!"

"Good-bye! Mrs. Baxter ... glad to have met you!"

"Good-bye, Mr. Gregory," and she dropped my hand quickly and turned on her heel, walking away with easy grace. I admired the back of her legs as she disappeared into her tent.

"Good-bye, Dan!"

"Good-bye, Buzzer!"

"Daniel," called Mrs. Baxter from the interior of her tent, "you mustn't call Mr. Gregory that!"

* * * * *

At Laurel again, I found it still a month before fall session. All summer I had lacked my nude sunbaths to which I had become accustomed. So again I sought my island.

* * * * *

I rented my room over the tinshop again, and was soon in the thick of the fall term. By this time I had my contemporaries on the hill very much puzzled.

Henry Belton, the Single Tax millionaire, had come to Kansas City. He was so diminutive as to be doll-like. He had to stand on a box to be seen, when he spoke from the floor, at the banquet tendered him ... and I had gone in to Kansas City as his guest, and had been seated on his right hand--I, in my painfully shabby clothes.

The professors and students could not see why I made such a stir with prominent people, how I held their friendship despite my eccentricities and deep poverty.

* * * * *

"I can't help you any more," observed Belton to me, as we sat in the lobby of the Coates House where he was putting up.

"Who the hell's asking you to help me?" I replied. "I came down from Laurel with no ulterior motive; I came just to pay you a visit, and to thank you personally for giving me six months of freedom from economic worry while I wrote my fairy drama ... anyhow, please remember that it wasn't me you helped, but Poetry!"

"It's too bad you can't be a Single Taxer," he sighed. "I like you, Gregory, and I'd put you on my pension list if you'd only shift some of your fanaticism for poetry to the Single Tax cause."

Since then I have been frankly sorry that I did not play the hypocrite to Belton, in order to be put on a pension for several years. I might have achieved great verse during the leisure so afforded for calm, creative work.

* * * * *

I started a poetry club on the Hill.... I determined that it should be anarchistic in principle ... we should have no officials ... no dues ... not even a secretary to read dull minutes of previous meetings ... we should take turns presiding as chairman. And the membership was to be divided equally with girls.

But the school year had begun unhappily for me. I did not find Vanna there. I went to visit her homely roommate.

"Vanna has gone off to Arkansas ... she is teaching school down there for the winter."

"Thank God she's not married somebody!" I cried, forgetting, and giving myself away. Then Vanna Andrews' roommate saw at last that it was not she I was interested in. She gave way to invective.

"You! a worthless tramp like you! A crazy fool!... to dare even hope that Vanna Andrews would ever love _you_!" In a torrent of tears she asked me never to speak to her again.

I was sorry I had not procured Vanna's address before I had betrayed myself. But, anyhow, I wrote her a long letter and sent it in care of the university registrar.

Flamboyantly I confessed my love ... rehearsed the story of my worship of her from afar....

For a month, every day, I sent her a bulky envelope full of mad verse and declarations of undying love. As the letters were not being returned, she must be receiving them.

One morning, with trembling hands and a pounding heart that nearly bore me down, it acted so like a battering ram on the inside, I drew a delicately scented envelope from my mailbox ... addressed in a dainty hand.

I kissed the letter again and again before I tore it open ... it was well that I did it then. I would not have kissed it afterward.

It was filled with stinging rebuke for my presumption ... if I had a shred of the gentleman in me I would cease troubling her.... I had caused her exceeding annoyance by my deluge and torrent of absurd letters ... she did not care for me ... she thought my poetry was bad ... and why had I behaved so brutally toward her former roommate?...

I saw that the homely girl had not been remiss in writing to Vanna about me....

My reply was a very poetic letter.

"I will trouble you no more," I ended; "but do not destroy my letters and poems, for, long after your wonderful beauty has become a mere handful of oblivious dust blowing about the stones of the world, you will be famous because a great poet loved you ... a poet whom you unwisely and ignorantly scorned."

* * * * *

Dr. Van Maarden, the Dutch psychiatrist and playwright, author of _De Kleine Man_, was to come to Laurel to deliver his celebrated lectures on "The Socialisation of Humanity."...

Professor Dineen, a flabby, feminine little fellow, one of our professors of philosophy, and hated by the dean of his department because he was a real philosopher, despite his physical ludicrousness,--and had published a book which the critics were hailing as a real contribution to the world of thought--

Dineen had engineered the bringing of the semi-radical Van Maarden to Laurel....

"For such men are needed here ... to rouse us out of the petty, dogmatic ways of our crude pioneers...."

"Van Maarden is a remarkable man," continued Dineen; "he writes plays, poems, books of economic philosophy, novels ... recently he tried to start a co-operative colony for Dutch farmers in South Carolina, but it went on the rocks ... and now Van Maarden, for all his genius, is practically stranded here in America.

"It is, or ought to be, one of the duties of an educational centre like Laurel, to aid such men ... men who travel about, disseminating ideas, carrying the torch of inspiration ... like Giordano Bruno, in former days."

Van Maarden came ... a little, dapper, black-bearded man ... but a very boy in his enthusiasm. He advanced many doctrines at variance with even the political radicalism of Kansas.

But whether it was his winning way or his foreign reputation, he was accepted gravely, and ideas won consideration, enunciated by him, that would have been looked on as mad, coming from me....

Again the faculty were nonplussed ... puzzled....

Dineen, Van Maarden and I were together much. And the latter found more delight in the time when he could discuss freely and unacademically with me than when he was invited to formal teas and dinners by the weightier members of the faculty and community.

It was psychic research that we particularly discussed. Van Maarden was the greatest scholar in the Mystic, the Occult, the Spiritualistic that I have ever met. He claimed to be able to go out of the body at will and see what any friend was up to at any time, in any out-of-the-way place in the world....

When I jested that such a faculty might sometimes prove embarrassing to his friends, he laughed and slapped me on the back.

* * * * *

Dineen was a queer little chap. He roomed de luxe at the Bellman House.

One night, during a cyclone that swept the town and the adjacent country, a fragment of roof was lifted off the hostelry in which he dwelt. The women-servants and waitresses were thrown into a panic. One, who collapsed on a lounge in the upstairs hall, swore that Dineen had felt of her leg as she lay there. A scandal was started. I know that Dineen, in his European fashion, was free with his hands, when he meant no harm. He had merely laid his hand on the girl's leg, in friendly fashion, and asked if she was hurt.

But the nasty Puritan mind of the community went to work, and the story was hawked about that Professor Dineen, taking advantage of the cyclone, had tried to "feel the girl up."

This, and the fact that he had been a friend of mine (after my forthcoming scandal it counted strongly against him) later effected in his being requested to resign from the faculty.

But the real cause of the brilliant, strange man's persecution was the jealousy of the dean of the philosophical department of the former's real ability.

* * * * *

"We must do more for this man than we have ... he is a genius ... he has not enough money to return to Europe on....

"He has written a curious, mad play called _Iistral_ ... one dealing with psychic phenomena, which we ought to put on....

"That way we'll net him three or four hundred dollars."

It was Dineen who spoke.

We chanced to be walking up the Hill together.

* * * * *

The school cheer-leader was tall and statuesque, and his voice was deep and resonant ... but, though pleased with his stature and his vocal qualifications, Van Maarden decided on me to play the lead in his abnormal play.... I did not possess as fine a voice, but I knew the mystics almost as well as he did.... I believed in spiritism, and would be accordantly sympathetic with the author's ideas....

* * * * *

The rehearsal of the play progressed. Van Maarden, receiving' from Dineen's own personal bank-account a substantial advance on the expected receipts from the two performances, returned East, and sailed away for Holland.

But an intimate friend of Penton Baxter's, before he left, he related to me many fine things about the latter, and spoke in special admiration of his wife, Hildreth.

* * * * *

I rehearsed and rehearsed.

I fought and fought with the directress, a teacher of elocution, who tried to make me mouth my words in the old style.

She swore that she would get rid of me as Iistral (pronounced Eestral), if it were not for the fact that it would seriously embarrass her to try others for the part, the time of production being so near.

Dineen upbraided me for being insubordinate....

I asked Dineen please to believe in me, and watch results.

My idea of acting was to go into the part, be burned alive by it ... to recite my lines naturally.

I was proud of myself. I was to act as lead in a play by a world-celebrated author, in its premier American production.

The story of it was that of a young poet-student, Iistral ... eccentric ... a sensitive ... who had, while tutoring the children of a count, fallen in love with the countess, his wife ... on the discovery of the liaison, she had committed suicide in a lake on their private grounds....

The play opened up with the young student, Iistral, come back home, after the wife's death....

The tragedy had affected him strangely.

He wore a Hindoo robe, let his beard grow like a Yogi ... was irritated with the unimaginative, self-seeking smugness of the grown-ups.

He found in Lisel, a little niece of his, the wise, innocent, illuminated imagination of childhood. And he associated with her, teaching her the mystic meanings of flowers in the garden.

But he lived for one thing only--the coming of the voice of Egeria, as he called the spirit of the dead countess....

Her voice came to him continually ... preluded by strains of music ... he lived from day to day with her lovely speech, a clairaudient.

As long as nothing material was involved, he was regarded as merely a gentle eccentric ... by his relatives and the bourgeoisie....

But as soon as word came that he had inherited a fortune through the death of a rich uncle in America--the attitude of the people around him changed. His relatives began intriguing to have him declared insane.

But the village burgomaster, ordinarily decent, saw through their artifices....

Goaded and goaded, finally Iistral assailed his pestering relatives with a shovel with which he was working among the gentle flowers in the garden ... at his customary task of tending them with Lisel....

And now the burgomaster, bribed, had reason to adjudge him insane.

And Iistral was dragged off, wailing, to the asylum.

* * * * *

With my clothes in literal rags I went through the rehearsals, attended classes, kept up my athletics....

Often I woke up in the night, crying out, with tears rolling down my cheeks, the lines of unhappy Iistral ... the spirit-woman Egeria grew real as flesh and blood to me....

"Egeria! Egeria!--"

I woke, time and again, and heard my own voice, like the voice of another, calling her name in the dark.

* * * * *

"You mustn't take the play so desperately ... remember it's just a play ... you rehearse as if the whole thing were a part of your life."

"Some of the boys," I replied, "some of the football boys lost ten or twelve pounds in our Thanksgiving game at Kansas City last fall ... why do you rebuke me for taking art and beauty as seriously as athletes take a football match?"

* * * * *

Two days before the play, as I was walking by the Bellman House, I saw Jarvis Alexander Mackworth standing there, come up from Osageville for a regents' conference....

"Hello!" the dear, good man called, "you heavenly bum! You starry young tramp!"

His eyes were twinkling in appreciative merriment over his quaint phraseology.

"What are you doing in Laurel, Mr. Mackworth?"

I noticed that he did not wear his many-patched trousers, but was well dressed....

--"attending a regents' meeting, young man,--where I suppose I'll have to stand up in your defence again....

"It's a good thing you don't run after the women, Gregory, or your case would be entirely lost."

(Yet Mackworth didn't know of the dirty trick that had been played on me:

One of the boys from the school, running wild down in Kansas City, had, with a curious sense of humour, given my name as his ... to the "girls" in various houses of prostitution....

And "do you know Johnnie Gregory?" and "when is Johnnie Gregory coming to see us again?" other students were asked who frequented the "houses.")

"And what are you up to now?" asked Mackworth.

--"acting ... in Van Maarden's _Iistral_ ... leading role!"

"You look skinnier than ever!"

"I am taking the part seriously, and it's bringing me down. I like to do real things when I get a chance, Mr. Mackworth ... and I am going to make the two performances of _Iistral_ memorable ones."

"You need a new suit of clothes very badly."

"I know I do. But I have no money, and no credit."

"Well see about that, my young Villon."

Mackworth took me to one side and thrust a fifty-dollar bill into my hand.

I hurried down to Locker, the clothier....

In a very little while I was again walking by the Bellman House, completely togged out in new apparel from head to heel.

Mackworth was still standing there, and he laughed with astonishment at the lightning-quick change in my appearance....

"You're a card, Gregory!"

He afterward repeated the story with gusto....

* * * * *

The day before the night of our first performance at the Bowersby Opera House, Jack Travers, always turning up, came to me with a smile of faint sarcasm on his face--

"How's the great actor, eh?"

"Don't be an ass, Jack!"

"I've got a good proposition to make for advertising the show--and there'll be a lot of fun in it, too....

"Suppose we kidnap you, take you out somewhere in the country--then, after a day or so--find you bound, in a farm house....

"Of course it would compel them to put off the performances for a few days ... but look at the excitement; and the stories in the papers!... afterwards you could go on tour through all the principal cities of Kansas."

The idea fascinated me, in spite of myself....

"But how about Dineen? He'd go nearly crazy!"

"There's where a lot of the fun would come in. And to see the way Gertie Black, the elocution teacher, would carry on!..."

But after a long pause of temptation I shook my head in negation of the suggestion....

It _would_ be a lark, but I had pledged Dineen that I would give him no more trouble with my vagaries....

And, besides, I didn't trust Jack Travers--once they had me in their power, he and his kidnappers might hide me away for several weeks ... to "bust up" the play entirely; would, I wisely reflected, be, to Travers, even a greater joke than merely to delay its production.

And I wanted this time to show my enemies that I could be depended on in affairs of moment....

* * * * *

We had to have recourse to Kansas City for our costumes. And we were more fortunate in them than the cast of _She Stoops to Conquer_ had been the year before....

Costumes had then been rented for them which left the children mysteriously itching, driven to the inexplicable necessity of scratching in embarrassing localities....

The poor girls especially were terror-stricken ... and many of the boys were too innocent to conjecture what was the matter ... at first they thought that the rented costumes had imparted some obscure skin disease to the entire company ... and word was conveyed to the costuming firm that they were to be sued....

But when it was discovered that an indecent sort of vermin was the cause, the case was dropped....

Suit could not be conducted on such grounds....

But the joke was passed around and caused considerable merriment among the wise ones.

* * * * *

The only thing I allowed the elocution teacher and directress to do was to put on my make-up for me ... including the sticking to my face of a close Van Dyke beard....

I refused to avail myself of her instruction for acting, as I perceived that was all bosh....

* * * * *

The curtain went up, I sitting there, the orchestra softly breathing Massenet's _Elegy_--meant to be the music sent from the spirit world, the melody that I, Iistral, heard, whenever my dead mistress was present....

The orchestra finished the melody. It stopped and left the house in expectancy.

A mistake had been made on the entrance-cue of little Lisel, my child-nephew.

There I sat, in my strange robe, like a bath-robe, with stars cast over it, waiting.

I knew something had gone wrong.

Several girls (of course everyone in the audience knew me) began to titter at my strange appearance, in my apotheosised bathrobe, in my close Van Dyke beard....

I knew inwardly that in a moment all the house would be laughing ... at first out of sheer nervousness over the delay in the progress of the play--then from genuine amusement....

I threw my will, my entire spirit, against the incoming tide of ridicule which would wreck the play even with the rising of the curtain.

I pictured to myself the beautiful woman who had drowned herself; I burned with her unhappiness ... I felt her hovering near me ... I thought of the lovely passion we had known together ... I _was_ Iistral.

I was not on a stage, but in a room, holding actual and rapt communion with my spirit-bride, Egeria!...

"Egeria! Egeria!" I sobbed ... and tears streamed down my face.

I was miserable, without her, in the flesh ... though she was there, beside me, in soul!

* * * * *

I was aware of the audience again. I was proud and strong in my confidence now. The tittering had stopped. The house was filling with awe. I was pushing something back, back, back--over the footlights. I did not stop pushing till it had reached the topmost galleries....

I _had_ them....

The applause after the first act was wonderful.

"Great! You're great ... you've vindicated my belief in you entirely!" Dineen was shouting, as he clapped me on the back, beside himself.

"Oh, I knew I'd do it!... I want a drink!"

"Here's some grape juice!" Gertie Black hold out a glass to me....

"No, I won't drink that stuff," I replied, with all the petulance and ill-humour traditionally allowed a star.

A Sig-Kapp, whom I had got into the play as a supe, slipped me a drink of real booze....

* * * * *

I had to run to the toilet three times before the second act, I was so nervous and excited.

"For God's sake, keep it up!" urged Dineen.

"For Christ's sake, let me alone, all of you,--I know what I'm doing," this, as the elocution teacher tried to press home some advice....

* * * * *

During the second act I was as electric as during the first, but now I allowed myself to see over the foot-lights and recognise people I knew. I even overheard one girl say to another, "why, Johnnie Gregory is handsome in that Van Dyke!"

"Yes, he has a fine profile ... he looks quite distinguished."

* * * * *

Before the curtain for the third act, Jack Travers worked his way back through the props to my dressing room....

"Sh! I've brought a nip of something real for you, Johnnie!"

"Bill already has given me some. It's enough! I don't want any more!--wait till the last act, and then I'll take it!

"I don't want it _now_! _Do you hear_!" I almost screamed, as he mischievously insisted.

The bell rang for the third curtain....

The news had come for Iistral that his rich uncle in America had died and left him a fortune ... now his family would try and have him adjudged insane, in order to lay hands on the wealth for their own uses....

That third act went off well....

"But you skipped a few lines in that act, Mr. Gregory," warned the directress, concerned.

"Oh, let me alone, will you!" I returned, enjoying the petulance of stardom to the full....

"Remember the fight-scene at the finish," she persisted, "just _pretend_ to strike with the shovel ... you might hurt someone!" anxiously.

"I am going to act the thing realistically, not as a matter of stagecraft."

She tiptoed away. And I had the satisfaction of hearing her instruct the boys who acted as guards, and who were to seize on me--in my moment of physical exasperation--

"Grab him before the cue, just a trifle before it! I think Mr. Gregory is going to forget himself!"

* * * * *

I swung the shovel high in the air, making at all my relatives, crying out terms of reproach ... sobbing....

In the audience, everybody sat still with wonder.

The actors scattered from my brandished shovel, just as they would have done in real life ... the directress had schooled them to crowd about me so as to mask the action.

But the action needed no masking. It was real.

The two guards were on me,--boys who, in everyday life, were big football men on the freshman team....

I fought them, frenzied, back and forth over the stage, smashing down the pasteboard hedge, falling ... getting up again....

But, though the scenery went down, the audience did not laugh, but sat spellbound.

I was finally dragged away ... on the way to the asylum, half my costume torn from my body ... and I kept crying aloud ... for mercy ... for deliverance ... after the curtain had long gone down....

"Big Bill" Heizer gave me a thump in the ribs.

"For God's sake, Mr. Gregory" (he had called me "Johnnie" always, before) "it's only play-acting ... it's not real ... quit it ... it gets me."

* * * * *

The audience went wild with applause. I had won Laurel's complete approbation--for the day, as I had won Mt. Hebron's, that fall Field Day, long before!

* * * * *

Travers had slipped me just one shot of whiskey before the last act went on. He had tried to persuade me to drink more. He was in my dressing room....

* * * * *

I could hardly stand, from the weakness of excitement and exertion.

After the play was over--

"_Now_ you can give me the rest of the bottle."

"We'll drink it together ... to your success, Gregory!"

"Yes--you devil!" I replied, fond of him, "you'd have had me reeling drunk, that last act, if I had listened to you."

And I gave him an affectionate clout in the ribs.

* * * * *

Again the professors were urging me to become more "regular" and pointing out the great career that awaited me--if I only would work.

There was some subsequent talk of sending the play to Osageville, Topeka, Kansas City....

But the faculty opposed it ... it would not be proper to send girls and boys out together, travelling about like a regular theatrical company.

* * * * *

As it had been said that I was going to take up the career of animal trainer,--after my going into the cage with the lions--so it was now pronounced, and reported in the papers--Travers saw to that--that I meditated a career as a professional actor....

* * * * *

Gleeful, and vastly relieved, Professor Dineen slipped me twenty-five dollars out of his own pocket.

Several fraternities showed indications of "rushing" me, after my star performance ... but my associations with the odd characters about town and the wild, ignorant farmers of the lower type that drove in each Saturday from the adjacent country, made them, at first, hesitate ... then utterly drop the idea....

* * * * *

Broke, I now wrote a long letter to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth.

I boldly complained of my poverty, inasmuch as it deterred me from my work.

"I have now proven my case," I wrote him,--"my poems have appeared in the _Century_, in _Everybody's_, in _Munsey's_....

"I have acted, as well, as a professional in a first-rate play, by a great European dramatist ... giving Kansas the distinction of being the first to produce _Iistral_ on the American stage....

"_Now_ I want to finish my four-act play on Judas. To do so I must have enough to eat and a place to sleep, without being made to worry about it, for a year....

"Can't you help me to a millionaire?"

Mackworth answered me generously, affectionately.

In two weeks he had procured my millionaire ... Derek, of Chicago, the bathtub magnate ... how much could I get on with?

I wrote that I could do with seven dollars a week....

Mackworth replied not to be a fool--that Derek was willing to make it fifteen, for a year's duration....

I replied that I could only take enough to fill my simplest wants....

Derek jocosely added fifty cents to the sum I asked--"for postage stamps"-- ... for one year, week in, week out, without a letter from me except those indicating changes of address, without sending me a word of advice, criticism, or condemnation, no matter what I got into ... Derek sent me that weekly stipend of seven dollars and fifty cents!...

* * * * *

I settled down to consecutive literary work.

Lyrics I could write under any condition. They came to me so deeply from the subconscious that at times they almost seemed like spirit-control, which, at times, I am sure they had been, till I set the force of my will against them. For I was resolved that what _I_ wrote should be an emanation from my own personality, not from dead and gone poets who used me for a medium.

But when it came to long and consecutive effort, the continual petty worry of actual penury sapped my mind so that I lacked the power of application....

With Derek's remittances this obstacle was removed....

I had soon completed the first act of my apostolic play....

And then I plunged into a scrape, together with my fellow members of the press or "Scoop Club," as it was more popularly known, which halted my work mid-way....

* * * * *

Our common adventure derived its inception from a casual remark of Jack Travers', at one of our meetings....

Ever since Arthur Brisbane had come to Laurel, Jack had been on his toes....

"Brisbane brought me a breath of what it must mean to be a big newspaper man in the world outside," said Travers, as he stretched and yawned, "why don't we," he continued, "_start_ something to show 'em we're alive, and not dead like so many of the intellects on the Hill!"

"--s all right to talk about starting something ... that's easy to do. The hell of it is, to stop it, after you've got it started," philosophised "The Colonel"....

"Just what is it that you propose starting?" asked practical, pop-eyed Tom Jenkins.

"Oh, anything that will cause excitement!" waved Travers, serenely.

"If you boys really want some excitement ... and want to do some service for the community at the same time,--I've got a scheme to suggest ... something I've been thinking over for a long time," suggested Jerome Miller, president of the club....

"Tell us what it is, Jerome!"

"The Bottoms ... you know how rotten it is down there ... nigger whorehouses ... every other house a bootlegger's joint ... blind pigs ... blind tigers, for the students....

"We might show up the whole affair....

"--how the city administration thrives on the violation of the law from that quarter ... how the present administration depends on crime and the whiskey elements to keep it in power by their vote....

"_That_ would be starting something!"

"I should say it would!" shouted Jack Travers, ablaze with enthusiasm.

"Then we might extend operations," continued the masterful, incisive Jerome, "and show up how all the drug stores are selling whiskey by the gallon, for 'medicinal' purposes, abusing the privilege of the law."

"But how is all this to be done?"

"Through the _Laurelian_?"

"No ... I have a better plan than that ... we might be able to persuade 'Senator' Blair and old Sickert, joint editors of the _Laurel Globe_, to let the Scoop Club run their paper for a day--just as a college stunt!"

"They'd never stand for it!" I averred, innocently.

"Of course they wouldn't--if we let them in on what we were up to!--for they are staunch supporters of the present administration--but they won't smell a rat till the edition is off the press ... and then it will be too late to stop it!"

"In other words," laughed Travers, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his nose, "they'll think they're turning over their paper, _The Globe_, to a bunch of boys to have some harmless fun ... a few sophomoric jokes on the professors, and so forth....

"And they'll wake up, to find we've slipped a real man-size sheet over on them, for the first time in local history!"

"It'll raise hell's all I've got to say!" sagely commented the prematurely bald "Colonel," his eyes glinting merrily.

"It'll be lots of fun," remarked Travers, characteristically, "and I'm for it, lock, stock, and barrel."

"That's not the reason I'm for it; I'm for it for two reasons," reinforced Jerome Miller magisterially, "first, because it will put the Scoop Club on the map as something more than a mere college boys' organisation; secondly, because it will lead to civic betterment, if only temporary--a shaking up where this old burg needs a shaking up ... right at the court house and in the police station....

"But, make no mistake about it,--it's going to kick up a big dust!

"Also, remember, no one is going to stand by us ... even the Civic Betterment League, headed by Professor Langworth--your friend, Johnnie--will be angry with us--say our methods are too sensational.

"And the university authorities will say we shouldn't have done it because it will give the school a black eye ... it will be Ibsen's _Enemy of Society_ all over again!..."

Immediately some of our more conservative members set themselves against the "clean up" ... but Jack Travers and I delivered eloquent, rousing speeches. And the decision was more for full steam ahead.

* * * * *

"Senator" Blair was easily deluded, and persuaded to turn his paper over to us, for one day.

Our strong-featured, energetic president, Jerome Miller, together with the suave, plausible Travers, went to see him, deputation-wise, where he sat, in the Laurel _Globe's_ editorial office,--white and unhealthy-looking, a great, fat slug of a man, with the slug's nature, which battens on the corruption of earth.

He liked the idea of the publicity his paper would get through the stunt of the "boys." He did not guess the kind of publicity he would really come into.

During the three weeks that we had before we were to bring out the paper we grew quite proficient in the tawdry life lived in the "Bottoms."

We found out that most of the ramshackle "nigger" dives were owned by a former judge ... from which he derived exorbitant rents.

We located all the places where booze was sold, and ascertained exactly how much whiskey was disposed of in the town's drug stores for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble." We discovered many interesting things--that, for instance, "Old Aunt Jennie," who would allow her patrons any vice, but demurred when they took the name of "De Lawd" in vain--"Old Aunt Jennie" ran a "house" where the wilder and more debauched among the students came (in justice to Laurel University, let me add, very few) girls and boys together,--and stayed for the night--when they were supposed to be on trips to Kansas City....

Travers and "The Colonel" and I were half-lit for two weeks....

That was the only way to collect the evidence.

I drank but sparingly, as I loafed about the joints and "houses."

Jerome Miller did not drink at all ... and was the spirit and soul of our activities.

* * * * *

"Senator" Blair came out with a humorous editorial the night before we were to take the day's charge of his paper.

He headed his editorial "A Youthful Interim ... Youth Must Be Served!"

He was laying down his pen, he wrote, for a week-end holiday ... he had dug a can of bait and would go fishing, turning all the care and trouble of a newspaper over to youth and eagerness ... would forgot all his troubles for a few days....

The editorial made us roar with laughter ... Blair didn't know the trouble that was preparing for him.

* * * * *

I wrote a poem for the Scoop Club Edition of the Laurel _Globe_ ...

"The Bottoms now I sing, where whiskey flows
And two-cent makes life coleur de rose,
Where negro shanties line the sordid way
And rounders wake by night who sleep by day--"

* * * * *

By noon of the day, hints of what was coming were riding the winds of general report....

Carefully we read the proofs.

At last there it was--all the data, statistics, and details of the town's debauchery and corruption ... damning, in cold type, the administration, and the aquiescent powers in the university.

We ourselves had not as yet begun to perceive what it would lead to--a state-wide scandal that would echo in the Chicago, San Francisco and New York newspapers, and result in severe criticism of the university faculty for remaining blind to such a condition of affairs ... and how there would be interrogations in the Kansas Legislature and a complete shake-up of the political power in Laurel.

* * * * *

News of the forthcoming expose spread mysteriously in "The Bottoms" before the paper was off the press. To avoid the coming storm, already negro malefactors and white, were "streaming" as Travers phrased it, "in dark clouds" out of town, for brief sojourns, beyond reach of the compelling subpoena, in Kansas City, Missouri.

By five o'clock the edition, an extra large one, had been almost exhausted, and people were lining up at the newspaper office, paying five cents a copy....

"Senator" Blair rushed back, having heard of what he called our "treachery" and abuse of his confidence, over telephone....

He looked sick and worried, as if he had run in all the way from the little lake, five miles from town, where he had gone for his week-end of idyllic, peaceful fishing....

"You've ruined me, you boys have!" he almost sobbed, collapsing fatly in his chair, then he flamed, "by God, I'll have you each investigated personally and clapped in jail," ... which threat, however, he did not even try to carry through....

Instead, his paper, and the other two town papers, tried to turn off the affair as a mere college joke, played on a whole community....

But we had expected just such action--rather the executive genius of Jerome had expected it--for which reason we had confronted the readers of the _Globe_ with damning facts and statistics, carefully gathered, which presented an insurmountable barrier to evasion.

And as we also had expected, the Civic Betterment League was also dead against us....

"Why," cried Langworth to me, "why didn't you bring all the evidence to us, and let _us_ proceed calmly and soberly with the case?"

"Professor Langworth, you are a friend of mine, and a very good one--but you know very well that the conditions exposed you people knew of all along ... and for years you have dallied along without acting on it."

"We were biding the proper time!"

"The reason you never started something was your fear of involving the university in the publicity that was sure to follow!..."

Langworth was a good man, but he knew I had him. He hemmed and hawed, then covered his retreat in half-hearted anger at me....

"You know well enough, Johnnie Gregory, that all you boys did it for was to 'pull a stunt'--indulge in a little youthful horseplay."

"Granted--but we have effected results!"

* * * * *

"What results? merely a lot of trouble for everybody!"

"The Civic Betterment League now has a chance afforded it to make good ... we've provided you with the indisputable data, the evidence ... it's up to you, now, to go ahead."

"So God help me, Johnnie, sometimes you make me wish I had never sponsored you here."

* * * * *

The editor of the _Globe_ made a right-about-face--repudiating us.

Jack Travers, in the style of his beloved Brisbane, put an editorial in the school paper, the _Laurelian_, addressed to Blair, beginning, "Get back into the collar of your masters, you contemptible cur."

* * * * *

The usual thing took place. Most of the worst criminals were mysteriously given ample time to make their get-away ... probably aided in it. The humorous side of the resulting investigation and trials of various minor malefactors were played up almost exclusively.

Little by little the town dropped back to its outward observance of not seeing in its civic life what it did not care to see, and which no one could radically remedy till human nature is itself different.

* * * * *

The school year was drawing to a close, my last year at Laurel.

Professor Black, of the English department, had assured me that, if I would tone down a bit, I could easily win a scholarship in his department, and, later, an assistant professorship.

But I preferred my rambling, haphazard course of life, which was less comfortable, but better for the freedom of mind and spirit that poets must preserve....

Dr. Hammond, when I had given him that luncheon on the borrowed money, had taken me aside and informed me that one of the professors--an influential man on the Hill (beyond that, he refused to identify him further) had advised him, Hammond, not to accept the luncheon in his honour....

"We don't approve generally of Gregory, on the Hill, you know...."

And Hammond had, he told me, replied--

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Gregory is my friend, and Dr. Ward, our literary editor, looks on him as a distinguished contributor to the _Independent_, and a young writer of great and growing promise" ... so the luncheon was given ... I wonder if the protesting professor was one of those invited, and if so, if he attended?...

I saw clearly that I could never fit into the formal, academic life of the college--where professors were ashamed to be seen carrying packages and bags home from the stores, but must have them delivered ... for fear of losing their social status!

* * * * *

There was a park on the outskirts of town where I loved to loaf, when the weather was sunny,--a place where the blue jays fought with the squirrels and the leaves flickered in the sun ... sometimes I lay on the grass, reading ... sometimes I lounged on a bench ... I read my Greek and Latin poets there ... and my English and German poets ... and, when hungry, I sauntered home to my bread and cheese, or, now that I was in receipt of Derek's weekly stipend, to a frugal meal at some lunch counter. I dearly liked rib-ends of beef....

One day, when I was in my park, lying on my belly, reading Josephus, I was aware of the deputy sheriff, Small, whom I knew, standing over me....

"Oh, it's _you_, Gregory!"

"Yes, what's the matter, Deputy Small? what do you want?"

"People who drove in from the country complained about your lying here."

"Complained about my lying here? what the hell!... look'e here, Jim Small, there's no ordinance to prevent me from lying on the grass."

"Well, Johnnie, you either got to git up and sit, proper, on a bench, or I'll have to pull you in, much as I dislike to do it."

"Jim, you just 'pull' ahead, if you think you're lucky ... it'll be a fine thing for me ... I'll sue the city for false arrest."

Deputy Small was puzzled. He pushed his hat back and scratched his head....

"Jim, who put you up to this?"

"The people what saw you lying here, as they drove in, stopped off at the office of the _Globe_ ... it was 'Senator' Blair telephoned the courthouse--"

"Blair, eh?... trying to get even for what we boys did with his dirty paper ... he knows I like to lie out here and read my books of poetry!"

I was thoroughly aroused. I jumped to my feet.

"Jim, do me a favour, and arrest me ... and I'll sue you, the city of Laurel, and 'Senator' Blair ... all three of you!"

"--guess I won't do it ... but _do_ sit on the bench ... I ask it as a personal favour, Johnnie."

"As a personal favour, Jim, till you are out of sight. Then I'll go back to the grass."

That night Blair, cocksure, had the story of my arrest in the paper. But, as it happened, he was too previous....

Jerome Miller and Jack Travers joined me in going to the office of the _Globe_, the next morning....

After we had finished telling him what we thought of him, the "Senator" begged my pardon profusely, and the next day a retraction was printed....

* * * * *

And now school was over at Laurel.

And I determined to bum my way to New York, and, from there, ship on a cattleboat to Europe. Where I would finish writing my play, _Judas_.

Farewell to Laurel!--

I went up to the athletic field and ran my last two miles on its track, at top speed, as good-bye to its cinders forever!

I walked, with a guilty feeling of too much sentimentality, back into the "stack" at the university library. I took down book after book of the great English poets, and pressed my cheek to them in long farewell ... first glancing cautiously around, to be sure that no one was near to observe my actions....

I did not say good-bye to Langworth or my other professor friends, as they had already left for their summer vacations.

* * * * *

I sat in Joe Deacon's room, talking, that last night of my sojourn in Laurel....

"Good old Joe" we called him, because he was possessed of all the old-fashioned virtues, and unassumingly lived up to them. He was a fellow member of the Scoop Club, an associate teacher in the School of Journalism, and taught during the summer session....

Long, long Joe and I talked ... of everything young idealists discuss or dream of. We ended with a discussion of the sex question. I reiterated what he already had heard me say, that I had had so far no sex experience. He confessed that he, also, had had none ... maintained that a decent man should wait, if he expected a woman to come pure to him....

I spoke ardently in favour of free love.

He assented that, theoretically, it was the thing ... but there were a multitude of practical difficulties that made for favour of the convention of marriage....

"No, if a convention is wrong, it is the duty of everyone who knows the right in his heart, to help smash that convention...."

"You just wait," I boasted imaginatively, "and I'll show you!" "Maybe, Joe," I concluded, for I knew what I said would tease him, "maybe, when I reach the East, I shall break loose." Then I added--and to this day I cannot imagine what put it into my head to say it--what fantastic curl of thought, unless perhaps a premonition of what was soon to come to pass--

"Penton Baxter has invited me to pay him a visit at Eden, a Single Tax Colony just outside of Philadelphia, before I go on to Europe via cattleboat ... maybe I'll take him up, go down there, and run away with his wife ... she's a mighty pretty woman, Joe!"

Joe was scandalised at my remark--the effect I had wished for.

* * * * *

But after the uproar broke, Joe stoutly maintained that our elopement had all been a frame-up, alleging his conversation with me as proof ... as who would have not?

* * * * *