Chapter IX: Part 9

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.