Chapter 5

“Yes, yes, I know,” interrupted the disconsolate man. “Earn himself a livelihood in the wilderness, live as the cave-man lived, carefree and far from the curse of civilization!”

“That’s it. That was my idea,” I said, my enthusiasm rekindling as I spoke. “That’s what I’m doing; my food is to be the rude grass and the roots that Nature furnishes for her children, and for my drink--”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted again with impatience, “for your drink the running rill, for your bed the sweet couch of hemlock, and for your canopy the open sky lit with the soft stars in the deep-purple vault of the dewy night. I know.”

“Great heavens, man!” I exclaimed. “That’s my idea exactly. In fact, those are my very phrases. How could you have guessed it?”

He made a gesture with his hand to indicate weariness and disillusionment.

“Pshaw!” he said. “I know it because I’ve been doing it. I’ve been here a fortnight now on this open-air, life-in-the-woods game. Well, I’m sick of it! This last lets me out.”

“What last?” I asked.

“Why, meeting you. Do you realize that you are the nineteenth man that I’ve met in the last three days running about naked in the woods? They’re all doing it. The woods are full of them.”

“You don’t say so!” I gasped.

“Fact. Wherever you go in the bush you find naked men all working out this same blasted old experiment. Why, when you get a little farther in you’ll see signs up: NAKED MEN NOT ALLOWED IN THIS BUSH, and NAKED MEN KEEP OFF, and GENTLEMEN WHO ARE NAKED WILL KINDLY KEEP TO THE HIGH ROAD, and a lot of things like that. You must have come in at a wrong place or you’d have noticed the little shanties that they have now at the edge of the New England bush with signs up: UNION SUITS BOUGHT AND SOLD, CAMERAS FOR SALE OR TO RENT, HIGHEST PRICE FOR CAST-OFF CLOTHING, and all that sort of thing.”

“No,” I said. “I saw nothing.”

“Well, you look when you go back. As for me, I’m done with it. The thing’s worked out. I’m going back to the city to see whether I can’t, right there in the heart of the city, earn myself a livelihood with my unaided hands and brains. That’s the real problem; no more bumming on the animals for me. This bush business is too easy. Well, good-bye; I’m off.”

“But stop a minute,” I said. “How is it that, if what you say is true, I haven’t seen or heard anybody in the bush, and I’ve been here since the middle of the morning?”

“Nonsense,” the man answered. “They were probably all round you but you didn’t recognize them.”

“No, no, it’s not possible. I lay here dreaming beneath a tree and there wasn’t a sound, except the twittering of a squirrel and, far away, the cry of a lake-loon, nothing else.”

“Exactly, the twittering of a squirrel! That was some feller up the tree twittering to beat the band to let on that he was a squirrel, and no doubt some other feller calling out like a loon over near the lake. I suppose you gave them the answering cry?”

“I did,” I said. “I gave that low guttural note which--”

“Precisely--which is the universal greeting in the freemasonry of animal speech. I see you’ve got it all down pat. Well, good-bye again. I’m off. Oh, don’t bother to growl, please. I’m sick of that line of stuff.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

He slid through the bushes and disappeared. I sat where I was, musing, my work interrupted, a mood of bitter disillusionment heavy upon me. So I sat, it may have been for hours.

In the far distance I could hear the faint cry of a bittern in some lonely marsh.

“Now, who the deuce is making that noise?” I muttered. “Some silly fool, I suppose, trying to think he’s a waterfowl. Cut it out!”

Long I lay, my dream of the woods shattered, wondering what to do.

Then suddenly there came to my ear the loud sound of voices, human voices, strident and eager, with nothing of the animal growl in them.

“He’s in there. I seen him!” I heard some one call.

Rapidly I dived sideways into the underbrush, my animal instinct strong upon me again, growling as I went. Instinctively I knew that it was I that they were after. All the animal joy of being hunted came over me. My union suit stood up on end with mingled fear and rage.

As fast as I could I retreated into the wood. Yet somehow, as I moved, the wood, instead of growing denser, seemed to thin out. I crouched low, still growling and endeavouring to bury myself in the thicket. I was filled with a wild sense of exhilaration such as any lover of the wild life would feel at the knowledge that he is being chased, that some one is after him, that some one is perhaps just a few feet behind him, waiting to stick a pitchfork into him as he runs. There is no ecstasy like this.

Then I realized that my pursuers had closed in on me. I was surrounded on all sides.

The woods had somehow grown thin. They were like the mere shrubbery of a park--it might be of Central Park itself. I could hear among the deeper tones of men the shrill voices of boys. “There he is,” one cried, “going through them bushes! Look at him humping himself!” “What is it, what’s the sport?” another called. “Some crazy guy loose in the park in his underclothes and the cops after him.”

Then they closed in on me. I recognized the blue suits of the police force and their short clubs. In a few minutes I was dragged out of the shrubbery and stood in the open park in my pyjamas, wide awake, shivering in the chilly air of early morning.

Fortunately for me, it was decided at the police-court that sleep-walking is not an offence against the law. I was dismissed with a caution.

My vacation is still before me, and I still propose to spend it naked. But I shall do so at Atlantic City.

VII. The Cave-Man as He is

I think it likely that few people besides myself have ever actually seen and spoken with a “cave-man.”

Yet everybody nowadays knows all about the cave-man. The fifteen-cent magazines and the new fiction have made him a familiar figure. A few years ago, it is true, nobody had ever heard of him. But lately, for some reason or other, there has been a run on the cave-man. No up-to-date story is complete without one or two references to him. The hero, when the heroine slights him, is said to “feel for a moment the wild, primordial desire of the cave-man, the longing to seize her, to drag her with him, to carry her away, to make her his.” When he takes her in his arms it is recorded that “all the elemental passion of the cave-man surges through him.” When he fights, on her behalf against a dray-man or a gun-man or an ice-man or any other compound that makes up a modern villain, he is said to “feel all the fierce fighting joy of the cave-man.” If they kick him in the ribs, he likes it. If they beat him over the head, he never feels it; because he is, for the moment, a cave-man. And the cave-man is, and is known to be, quite above sensation.

The heroine, too, shares the same point of view. “Take me,” she murmurs as she falls into the hero’s embrace, “be my cave-man.” As she says it there is, so the writer assures us, something of the fierce light of the cave-woman in her eyes, the primordial woman to be wooed and won only by force.

So, like everybody else, I had, till I saw him, a great idea of the cave-man. I had a clear mental picture of him--huge, brawny, muscular, a wolfskin thrown about him and a great war-club in his hand. I knew him as without fear with nerves untouched by our effete civilization, fighting, as the beasts fight, to the death, killing without pity and suffering without a moan.

It was a picture that I could not but admire.

I liked, too--I am free to confess it--his peculiar way with women. His system was, as I understood it, to take them by the neck and bring them along with him. That was his fierce, primordial way of “wooing” them. And they liked it. So at least we are informed by a thousand credible authorities. They liked it. And the modern woman, so we are told, would still like it if only one dared to try it on. There’s the trouble; if one only _dared_!

I see lots of them--I’ll be frank about it--that I should like to grab, to sling over my shoulder and carry away with me; or, what is the same thing, allowing for modern conditions, have an express man carry them. I notice them at Atlantic City, I see them in Fifth Avenue--yes, everywhere. But would they come? That’s the _deuce_ of it. Would they come right along, like the cave-woman, merely biting off my ear as they came, or are they degenerate enough to bring an action against me, indicting the express company as a party of the second part?

Doubts such as these prevent me from taking active measures. But they leave me, as they leave many another man, preoccupied and fascinated with the cave-man.

One may imagine, then, my extraordinary interest in him when I actually met him in the flesh. Yet the thing came about quite simply, indeed more by accident than by design, an adventure open to all.

It so happened that I spent my vacation in Kentucky--the region, as everybody knows, of the great caves. They extend--it is a matter of common knowledge--for hundreds of miles; in some places dark and sunless tunnels, the black silence broken only by the dripping of the water from the roof; in other places great vaults like subterranean temples, with vast stone arches sweeping to the dome, and with deep, still water of unfathomed depth as the floor; and here and there again they are lighted from above through rifts in the surface of the earth, and are dry and sand strewn--fit for human habitation.

In such caves as these--so has the obstinate legend run for centuries--there still dwell cave-men, the dwindling remnant of their race. And here it was that I came across him.

I had penetrated into the caves far beyond my guides. I carried a revolver and had with me an electric lantern, but the increasing sunlight in the cave as I went on had rendered the latter needless.

There he sat, a huge figure, clad in a great wolfskin. Besides him lay a great club. Across his knee was a spear round which he was binding sinews that tightened under his muscular hand. His head was bent over his task. His matted hair had fallen over his eyes. He did not see me till I was close beside him on the sanded floor of the cave. I gave a slight cough.

“Excuse me!” I said.

The Cave-man gave a startled jump.

“My goodness,” he said, “you startled me!”

I could see that he was quite trembling.

“You came along so suddenly,” he said, “it gave me the jumps.” Then he muttered, more to himself than to me, “Too much of this darned cave-water! I must quit drinking it.”

I sat down near to the Caveman on a stone, taking care to place my revolver carefully behind it. I don’t mind admitting that a loaded revolver, especially as I get older, makes me nervous. I was afraid that he might start fooling with it. One can’t be too careful.

As a way of opening conversation I picked up the Cave-man’s club.

“Say,” I said, “that’s a great club you have, eh? By gee! it’s heavy!”

“Look out!” said the Cave-man with a certain agitation in his voice as he reached out and took the club from me. “Don’t fool with that club! It’s loaded! You know you could easily drop the club on your toes, or on mine. A man can’t be too careful with a loaded club.”

He rose as he said this and carried the club to the other side of the cave, where he leant it against the wall. Now that he stood up and I could examine him he no longer looked so big. In fact he was not big at all. The effect of size must have come, I think, from the great wolfskin that he wore. I have noticed the same thing in Grand Opera. I noticed, too, for the first time that the cave we were in seemed fitted up, in a rude sort of way, like a dwelling-room.

“This is a nice place you’ve got,” I said.

“Dandy, isn’t it?” he said, as he cast his eyes around. “_She_ fixed it up. She’s got great taste. See that mud sideboard? That’s the real thing, A-one mud! None of your cheap rock about that. We fetched that mud for two miles to make that. And look at that wicker bucket. Isn’t it great? Hardly leaks at all except through the sides, and perhaps a little through the bottom. _She_ wove that. She’s a humdinger at weaving.”

He was moving about as he spoke, showing me all his little belongings. He reminded me for all the world of a man in a Harlem flat, showing a visitor how convenient it all is. Somehow, too, the Cave-man had lost all appearance of size. He looked, in fact, quite little, and when he had pushed his long hair back from his forehead he seemed to wear that same, worried, apologetic look that we all have. To a higher being, if there is such, our little faces one and all appear, no doubt, pathetic.

I knew that he must be speaking about his wife.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“My wife?” he said. “Oh, she’s gone out somewhere through the caves with the kid. You didn’t meet our kid as you came along, did you? No? Well, he’s the greatest boy you even saw. He was only two this nineteenth of August. And you should hear him say ‘Pop’ and ‘Mom’ just as if he was grown up. He is really, I think, about the brightest boy I’ve ever known--I mean quite apart from being his father, and speaking of him as if he were anyone else’s boy. You didn’t meet them?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t.”

“Oh, well,” the Cave-man went on, “there are lots of ways and passages through. I guess they went in another direction. The wife generally likes to take a stroll round in the morning and see some of the neighbours. But, say,” he interrupted, “I guess I’m forgetting my manners. Let me get you a drink of cave-water. Here, take it in this stone mug! There you are, say when! Where do we get it? Oh, we find it in parts of the cave where it filters through the soil above. Alcoholic? Oh, yes, about fifteen per cent, I think. Some say it soaks all through the soil of this State. Sit down and be comfortable, and, say if you hear the woman coming just slip your mug behind that stone out of sight. Do you mind? Now, try one of these elm-root cigars. Oh, pick a good one--there are lots of them!”

We seated ourselves in some comfort on the soft sand, our backs against the boulders, sipping cave-water and smoking elm-root cigars. It seemed altogether as if one were back in civilization, talking to a genial host.

“Yes,” said the Cave-man, and he spoke, as it were, in a large and patronizing way. “I generally let my wife trot about as she likes in the daytime. She and the other women nowadays are getting up all these different movements, and the way I look at it is that if it amuses her to run around and talk and attend meetings, why let her do it. Of course,” he continued, assuming a look of great firmness, “if I liked to put my foot down--”

“Exactly, exactly,” I said. “It’s the same way with us!”

“Is it now!” he questioned with interest. “I had imagined that it was all different Outside. You’re from the Outside, aren’t you? I guessed you must be from the skins you wear.”

“Have you never been Outside?” I asked.

“No fear!” said the Cave-man. “Not for mine! Down here in the caves, clean underground and mostly in the dark, it’s all right. It’s nice and safe.” He gave a sort of shudder. “Gee! You fellows out there must have your nerve to go walking around like that on the outside rim of everything, where the stars might fall on you or a thousand things happen to you. But then you Outside Men have got a natural elemental fearlessness about you that we Cave-men have lost. I tell you, I was pretty scared when I looked up and saw you standing there.”

“Had you never seen any Outside Men?” I asked.

“Why, yes,” he answered, “but never close. The most I’ve done is to go out to the edges of the cave sometimes and look out and see them, Outside Men and Women, in the distance. But of course, in one way or another, we Cave-men know all about them. And the thing we envy most in you Outside Men is the way you treat your women! By gee! You take no nonsense from them--you fellows are the real primordial, primitive men. We’ve lost it somehow.”

“Why, my dear fellow--” I began.

But the Cave-man, who had sat suddenly upright, interrupted.

“Quick! quick!” he said. “Hide that infernal mug! She’s coming. Don’t you hear!”

As he spoke I caught the sound of a woman’s voice somewhere in the outer passages of the cave.

“Now, Willie,” she was saying, speaking evidently to the Cave-child, “you come right along back with me, and if I ever catch you getting in such a mess as that again I’ll never take you anywhere, so there!”

Her voice had grown louder. She entered the cave as she spoke--a big-boned woman in a suit of skins leading by the hand a pathetic little mite in a rabbit-skin, with blue eyes and a slobbered face.

But as I was sitting the Cave-woman evidently couldn’t see me; for she turned at once to speak to her husband, unconscious of my presence.

“Well, of all the idle creatures!” she exclaimed. “Loafing here in the sand”--she gave a sniff--“and smoking--”

“My dear,” began the Cave-man.

“Don’t you my-dear me!” she answered. “Look at this place! Nothing tidied up yet and the day half through! Did you put the alligator on to boil?”

“I was just going to say--” began the Cave-man.

“_Going_ to say! Yes, I don’t doubt you were going to say. You’d go on saying all day if I’d let you. What I’m asking you is, is the alligator on to boil for dinner or is it not--My gracious!” She broke off all of a sudden, as she caught sight of me. “Why didn’t you say there was company? Land sakes! And you sit there and never say there was a gentleman here!”

She had hustled across the cave and was busily arranging her hair with a pool of water as a mirror.

“Gracious!” she said, “I’m a perfect fright! You must excuse me,” she added, looking round toward me, “for being in this state. I’d just slipped on this old fur blouse and run around to a neighbour’s and I’d no idea that he was going to bring in company. Just like him! I’m afraid we’ve nothing but a plain alligator stew to offer you, but I’m sure if you’ll stay to dinner--”

She was hustling about already, good primitive housewife that she was, making the stone-plates rattle on the mud table.

“Why, really--” I began. But I was interrupted by a sudden exclamation from both the Cave-man and the Cave-woman together:

“Willie! where’s Willie!”

“Gracious!” cried the woman. “He’s wandered out alone--oh, hurry, look for him! Something might get him! He may have fallen in the water! Oh, hurry!”

They were off in a moment, shouting into the dark passages of the outer cave: “Willie! Willie!” There was agonized anxiety in their voices.

And then in a moment, as it seemed, they were back again, with Willie in their arms, blubbering, his rabbit-skin all wet.

“Goodness gracious!” said the Cave-woman. “He’d fallen right in, the poor little man. Hurry, dear, and get something dry to wrap him in! Goodness, what a fright! Quick, darling, give me something to rub him with.”

Anxiously the Cave-parents moved about beside the child, all quarrel vanished.

“But surely,” I said, as they calmed down a little, “just there where Willie fell in, beside the passage that I came through, there is only three inches of water.”

“So there is,” they said, both together, “but just suppose it had been three feet!”

Later on, when Willie was restored, they both renewed their invitation to me to stay to dinner.

“Didn’t you say,” said the Cave-man, “that you wanted to make some notes on the difference between Cave-people and the people of your world of to-day?”

“I thank you,” I answered, “I have already all the notes I want!”

VIII. Ideal Interviews

I. WITH A EUROPEAN PRINCE

With any European Prince, travelling in America

On receiving our card the Prince, to our great surprise and pleasure, sent down a most cordial message that he would be delighted to see us at once. This thrilled us.

“Take us,” we said to the elevator boy, “to the apartments of the Prince.” We were pleased to see him stagger and lean against his wheel to get his breath back.

In a few moments we found ourselves crossing the threshold of the Prince’s apartments. The Prince, who is a charming young man of from twenty-six to twenty-seven, came across the floor to meet us with an extended hand and a simple gesture of welcome. We have seldom seen anyone come across the floor more simply.

The Prince, who is travelling incognito as the Count of Flim Flam, was wearing, when we saw him, the plain morning dress of a gentleman of leisure. We learned that a little earlier he had appeared at breakfast in the costume of a Unitarian clergyman, under the incognito of the Bishop of Bongee; while later on he appeared at lunch, as a delicate compliment to our city, in the costume of a Columbia professor of Yiddish.

The Prince greeted us with the greatest cordiality, seated himself, without the slightest affectation, and motioned to us, with indescribable bonhomie, his permission to remain standing.

“Well,” said the Prince, “what is it?”

We need hardly say that the Prince, who is a consummate master of ten languages, speaks English quite as fluently as he does Chinese. Indeed, for a moment, we could scarcely tell which he was talking.

“What are your impressions of the United States?” we asked as we took out our notebook.

“I am afraid,” answered the Prince, with the delightful smile which is characteristic of him, and which we noticed again and again during the interview, “that I must scarcely tell you that.”

We realized immediately that we were in the presence not only of a soldier but of one of the most consummate diplomats of the present day.

“May we ask then,” we resumed, correcting our obvious blunder, “what are your impressions, Prince, of the Atlantic Ocean?”

“Ah,” said the Prince, with that peculiar thoughtfulness which is so noticeable in him and which we observed not once but several times, “the Atlantic!”

Volumes could not have expressed his thought better.

“Did you,” we asked, “see any ice during your passage across?”

“Ah,” said the Prince, “ice! Let me think.”

We did so.

“Ice,” repeated the Prince thoughtfully.

We realized that we were in the presence not only of a soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but of a trained scientist accustomed to exact research.

“Ice!” repeated the Prince. “Did I see any ice? No.”

Nothing could have been more decisive, more final than the clear, simple brevity of the Prince’s “No.” He had seen no ice. He knew he had seen no ice. He said he had seen no ice. Nothing could have been more straightforward, more direct. We felt assured from that moment that the Prince had not seen any ice.

The exquisite good taste with which the Prince had answered our question served to put us entirely at our ease, and we presently found ourselves chatting with His Highness with the greatest freedom and without the slightest _gene_ or _mauvaise honte_, or, in fact, _malvoisie_ of any kind.

We realized, indeed, that we were in the presence not only of a trained soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but also of a conversationalist of the highest order.

His Highness, who has an exquisite sense of humour--indeed, it broke out again and again during our talk with him--expressed himself as both amused and perplexed over our American money.

“It is very difficult,” he said, “with us it is so simple; six and a half groner are equal to one and a third gross-groner or the quarter part of our Rigsdaler. Here it is so complicated.”

We ventured to show the Prince a fifty-cent piece and to explain its value by putting two quarters beside it.

“I see,” said the Prince, whose mathematical ability is quite exceptional, “two twenty-five-cent pieces are equal to one fifty-cent piece. I must try to remember that. Meantime,” he added, with a gesture of royal condescension, putting the money in his pocket, “I will keep your coins as instructors”--we murmured our thanks--“and now explain to me, please, your five-dollar gold piece and your ten-dollar eagle.”