Part 8

The above was what Steve enjoyed in his progress through Watertown. He finally shook off his pursuers on the edge of the village, and breathed freely again, as he "crossed the river and mounted the steep." The beauty of the Charles begins at this point, and he sat down for a minute to look at it and rest. On his left was the first dam, the end of navigation for the college craft; on his right the river wound away from its high banks to the brown meadows beyond. While he sat there a four-oared crew shot under the bridge and rested on their oars in the quiet pool at his feet, just in front of the falls. He knew the man who was steering and called to him. "Hullo, Hudson," came the recognition, "what are you doing up here?"

"Off on a tramp. Glorious day for exercise, isn't it?"

"Yes, you have no idea how I enjoy this rowing," answered the coxswain.

"Have you seen Holworthy and Randolph up around this part of the river?"

"No, they were coming in this boat, but backed out because they had something else on hand, I believe."

"Oh, did they? Well, good-by, I have got to hurry along. I am walking against time."

Steve strode on through Newton, and Newton Centre, and Newton Lower Falls, and all the other Newtons, and to his horror he found in each town the same gathering, and went through the same ovation that he had received in Watertown. Had he gone to work and picked out a public holiday? No, he was sure it was not that, and the fact that it was Saturday, and the schools had therefore turned their swarms loose on the suffering country, would not account for all of the crowd in every village. Perhaps there was an extra election going on in that county. What puzzled him most, however, was that all the urchins seemed to expect something of him besides mere amusement, and a pitiable example of dress.

He passed close by Joe Lee's at Auburndale; several children ran across the lawn of the famous hostel, and after "sizing him up," went back with expressions of disappointment. The worst trial of all, however, was the battery at Wellesley. He had to go by the Female College, or Ladies' Seminary, and there was a large group of the students of that institution, by the roadside. Steve had never before been afflicted with bashfulness, and did not acknowledge that he was troubled in that way now, but he felt peculiarly alone, and would have given much for another man or just a few less girls. By the terms of his bet he could not run any of the distance; but a giggle almost made him throw up the stakes and break the pace. By a great effort, however, he brazened it out, and even smiled cheerfully. He made a penitent inward resolution never to lean out of the window again when a girl went through the Yard.

When more than half way, he stopped to speak with a farmer leaning over the fence by the road. The uncrossed Yankee of the rural districts still clings to a prejudice of his fathers, a prejudice, long since dropped in our more progressive communities, that a man has a right to wear what he chooses and do what he chooses provided he neither shocks nor interferes with any one else. This old farmer looked at Steve with wonder and interest, but did not think it necessary, as had the good citizens of the factory towns, to heap scorn and derision on "de dood." He bowed to the wayfarer, as he would to any well-behaved stranger.

"Good afternoon," said Hudson, grateful for this drop of human kindness. "Can you tell me, sir, how far it is to Framingham?"

"Wa-al, abaout nigh on to ten mile or more, they call it. There's a train goes pretty soon; ye won't find it so fur in the cars."

"Oh, I'm going to walk it," explained Steve, with a smile.

"Thet's a powerful long walk, young man. How fur ye come already?"

"From Cambridge."

"Gosh! Well your legs is young and pretty long, but ye must want suthin to do' pretty bad. Be ye broke or anythin'? Want any victuals?"

"No, thanks, I am walking for fun, trying to do it on time, you see."

"Mebbe you're advertisin' suthin'? Oh, I want to know! Be you the winged wonder o' Westchester, or some sech place I hear tell on jest now?"

A light began to glimmer in Hudson's mind. He had been asked several times if he was the "winged wonder," but had paid no attention to the question, supposing that it was merely a form of the great public wit. Now it was asked him in perfect good faith, and the name of his own home was added to the alliteration. He began to connect his persecution with Holworthy and Randolph's failure to row.

"No," he answered his friendly interrogator, "not intentionally, but I am beginning now to suspect that I _am_ occupying some such position. I am much obliged to you for your information. I must move along now."

"Good day, sir; guess ye'll want a heap o' corn-plasters when ye git to Framin'am."

"Not with these stockings," laughed Hudson, glad of an opportunity to justify his clothes, "they're thick and soft, great things to walk in."

"They be, eh? Well, I kinder thought they wasn't just for looks. I don't want none to-day, though, good day."

"Good-by," and Steve went on, feeling sure that the old man still suspected him at least of peddling footgear.

Just before the end of his tramp he sat down for a rest on an inviting fence rail. He had plenty of time to spare, but the grassy bank might have kept him too long and made him stiff. Oh, how pleasant that three-cornered rail did feel! A piece of paper blew across the road and whirled up in his face. It was a hand-bill of some sort; he remembered now having seen several of them along the way, but had picked up none. He caught this one and turned it over. This was what he read:

HE IS COMING!

WAIT FOR HIM! WATCH FOR HIM!

THE WINGED WONDER OF WESTCHESTER!

PEERLESS PEDESTRIAN PRODIGY!

He is matched to walk twenty-four miles to-day for an enormous purse. He holds world records for pedestrianism. He will wear one of our custom-made London suitings, unexcelled for natty outdoor wear and stylish appearance. They are all the rage in England, and therefore sure to be popular here.

He will also distribute, gratis, tops and marbles to the boys and chewing-gum to the ladies. Watch for him, everybody; he will be here soon, and will follow this road.

COME OUT, GIRLS! COME OUT, BOYS!

NOW IS YOUR CHANCE.

WAIT, WATCH FOR THE WINGED WONDER OF WESTCHESTER!

The glimmer dawned to a great light. He jumped down and hurried along the remaining mile or two as fast as his weary legs would go. There was no crowd awaiting him on the out-skirts of Framingham, and for a few minutes he hoped that he was going to at least finish in peace. Vain hope! As he approached the public square he saw it crowded with people and heard the strains of a brass band. On turning the corner he was received with a great shout. Then he saw a sight that explained it all, and caused him to exclaim, "The three-year-old idiots!"

In front of the town-hall was drawn up a barge with four plumed horses. In it were a band of music and a full delegation of Steve's devoted friends. Ned Burleigh was up on the box haranguing the populace.

"What sort of a fool circus are you children trying to make of yourselves," asked Hudson, as he came up.

"A grand one, old man, and you have been the elephant, the shining star of the whole show," replied Burleigh. "You will find beer in the ambulance."

"You have won the money handsomely, Steve," acknowledged Stoughton, "and we all accept with pleasure your kind invitation to dinner."

A RAMBLING DISCUSSION AND AN ADVENTURE, PERHAPS UNCONNECTED.

Dick Stoughton came to lunch that day in a decidedly bad humor, cause unknown. He was late, and all the other members of the club table were there, including the two dogs. A "Gray baiting" was going on. This sport consisted in working up the poetic feelings of Ernest Gray, and then ruthlessly harrowing the same. Gray was a fiery, imaginative little man, whose soul compassed far more than his body. His impulsive nature drove him constantly into the net spread by his friends, but he had become used to the process, and perhaps it did him good. Whether or not he had in him the stuff for a true poet, he was at least in no danger among those men of becoming a false one. He was just then stirred to a fine condition on the subject of Philistinism, was violently supporting the famous professor of the Humanities, and had almost got to the point of quoting poetry.

"It makes me laugh a low, sad laugh," remarked Stoughton, gloomily buttering a muffin, "when I think what Gray will be doing thirty years from now."

"We have arranged all that," said Burleigh. "Ernest is going to marry a strong-minded woman four times as big as himself, who will take him out shopping and make him carry the bundles and the twins."

"No, it will be a greater change than that," continued Dick. "At fifty he will probably be a keen, representative business man. He will be celebrated for being better able than any one in Wall Street to cheat his neighbor, and he will be absorbed in the occupation. He will be a man of strength and stamen, a man of industry, a plain, hard-working man. He will publish Letters of a Parent, in bad English, about the degeneracy of education at Harvard, and will refuse to send his sons here for fear of their becoming dudes and loafers. He won't spoil good paper then with odes and fantasies; he will devote it, instead, to watering stock and foreclosing mortgages. Just see if he doesn't."

"Are you narrow enough to think," asked Gray, defiantly, "that a man cannot work in this world, and work hard, without shutting his mind to everything outside of his tool shop?"

"Perhaps he can," answered Stoughton, "but he never does in this country; he hasn't time. Whatever we take up, we have got to keep at fever heat or else go to the wall. It will be work, work, work until we become utterly uninteresting machines. It can't be helped, we have got to make up our minds to it some day and we had better do so now. We are all wasting four valuable years in this anomalous spot of Cambridge, when we ought to be learning bookkeeping. We are a nation of one-sided workers, and we might just as well accept the situation philosophically. I am sure I for one don't care a cent. Only I wish I had not fooled away my time so long, with a set of men made up of dilettantes and bummers."

Dick emphasized the concluding word by handsomely scooping the last sausage just ahead of Jack Randolph, who with a bow and wave of his hand gracefully acknowledged the defeat. It was a strict rule of etiquette at the club table to take the odd trick of any dish, whether you wanted it or not.

"Hello," exclaimed Burleigh, with a happy light in his face, "Dick has waked up to the seriousness of life again. That is the third time this month." Stoughton's occasional pessimism was as fair game to his friends, as Gray's poetry, so the victim for that day's lunch was promptly changed.

"So he has," added Hudson. "He has a good, old-fashioned attack of remorse. Where were you last night, Dick? Must have been an awful spree."

"Is it a letter from your governor?" queried Rattleton, sympathetically.

"Perhaps it is the letter on your forensic," suggested Randolph. "Jack Rat got an E. on his, but just see how sweetly _he_ takes it."

"A little serious reflection is undoubtedly a good thing for you, my son," observed Hollis Holworthy. "But though I don't want to flatter you, excuse my saying that you talk like an ass. Even if your premises were true your conclusion is false. If we Americans are all such narrow-minded money-makers, that is all the more reason for trying to be something better. But it isn't so. I don't believe work has necessarily any such effect. Gray is right."

"My conclusion is all right. The difference between us is that I am perfectly contented to be as the rest of my countrymen are; you want to be something different, _ergo_, you are a snob. Furthermore my premises _are_ true, and you will find them so, my poor children. I am a few years in advance of you, that's all. Just see how men change after they leave college. Go over to the Law School and look at those grinds, each one working night and day to get ahead of the rest. I met old Dane Austin the other day crossing the Yard, three huge books under each arm, and a pair of spectacles across his nose. He used to be the best built man in the 'Varsity boat, but he doesn't touch an oar now, and won't try for the crew, unless they absolutely need him at the last minute. He is getting red-eyed and pale, and looks almost hollow-chested. A man can't keep up with the law and pay any attention to his physique. He is losing all his strength and good looks."

"You had better hit him once and find out," suggested Holworthy.

"Thanks; I don't care to put my theories to quite such a test," acknowledged Dick, with a grin. "But it is true just the same. It is true of every other occupation. Go down to New York and stand on Wall Street. You will see a dozen men you knew, at least by sight, in college, men who used to be well-dressed and well-bred. Down there they rush by you with a nod, in all sorts of costumes,--dirty, slovenly, nervous. Sometimes they will stop for a moment to shake hands, and make some impertinent remark on your clothes. I don't mind the prospect myself, but I am only laying it fairly before you blissful, careless, conceited youths."

"I rather think you will find that those fellows haven't forgotten how to turn themselves out properly when there is any need for it," said Holworthy. "You don't wear your town togs to recitations here."

"There is no doubt about it, this work and worry does spoil a man's looks," said Burleigh. "Just look at that poor wreck over there," pointing to Rattleton.

That student had finished his lunch (or breakfast) and stretched his legs as usual in the next chair. He was engaged in throwing crackers for his dog Blathers to catch, and was rather out of the conversation. He caught the last remark only.

"You have no idea what a handsome man I'd be if I didn't work so hard," he replied.

"It is all right for you, Jack," Stoughton went on. "A watchful Providence has sent you an income. It is almost a pity, though, for you would make a fascinating tramp. No amount of either starvation or public opinion would ever make you change your calm, philosophical life. But the rest of us must all get into the procession and keep up with the brazen band. No wonder so many of our girls marry Englishmen. They are dead right, too; they don't want to marry worn-out machines, they prefer men."

"Hurray!" shouted Hudson. "The secret is out. Some Englishman has cut him out with his best girl."

"I am not handicapped with any such nonsense, thank Heaven," growled Dick. "But if I was, by Jove, I wouldn't be fool enough to do any work for her sake, as so many misguided men do. No, sir, I'd take life easily and keep my figure, as our trans-Atlantic cousins do. I'd spend my days with the daughter and live on the old man. That is what girls like, and they do have some sense."

"That is perfect rot," exclaimed the poetic Gray, expressing his roused sentiment with more force than grace. "Life to-day is just what it was in the days of chivalry. A true knight must prove his love with his lance, and win his wife like a man."

"There you go, of course," answered Stoughton; "clap your leg over Pegasus, and off across country, regardless of hedges and ditches, or the narrow roads of commerce. Suppose his lance got busted, as was frequently the case?"

"Sic 'im, sic 'im," chuckled Burleigh. "We have got the poet and the cynic by the ears. Oh, this is lovely!"

"Both of 'em amateurs," added Holworthy, "and neither knowing what he is talking about."

"Two to one on the poet, though," said Randolph. "He is always in earnest, anyway."

"Shake hands, gents," said Rattleton, getting interested. "Time."

"Now just listen to me," said Dick, tilting back his chair and waving his fork pedantically. "I'll give you a really accurate picture of your dear days of chivalry, such as you never got out of a romance."

"Silence for Sir Walter Stoughton's account of a tourney," commanded Burleigh. "Steve Hudson, pull that pup of yours off the table; she'll upset the milk pitcher."

"I have just been reading all about that sort of game," interrupted Rattleton. "Seems to me they were a most unsporting lot. They had no classes or handicaps; just lumped 'em all in together, feather-weights and heavy-weights. No idea of a fair thing."

"Shut up your childish prattle, Jack," commanded Burleigh. "If you will push your researches far enough you will find that the little fellows always won. The giants invariably got the heads smote off 'em. We are not on the brutal subject of prize-fighting, we are on chivalry. You know nothing about that, so keep quiet and let Dick go on."

"I suppose you have an idea," Stoughton went on, "that every interesting young gentleman who entered the lists was a sure winner, and then all he had to do was to crown the heroine as Queen of Love and Beauty and live happily ever afterwards. Now of course that wasn't so. Some one had to get thrashed, and most young knights probably occupied that position for the first ten years or so of their career. Take an individual case; Sir Ernest Gray, bent on winning glory for Dulcinea, looks over the sporting calendar and enters himself for every big field-meeting during the season. He bears himself right bravely in them all, but gets stood on his head with great regularity; in fact Dulcinea gets a little tired of watching his performance. Nevertheless she goes to the crack meeting of Ashby de la Zouche, to see Gray try again.

"This tourney is carried off with great ease by an old hand, Sir Thomas de Mainfort, who, having been separated from his third wife on the ground of brutal treatment, is not doing any love-proving with his lance. He is simply a mug hunter; he is in for the white Barbary steed, and the other fellows' armor."

"Gate money?" broke in Rattleton interrogatively.

"Same principle," answered Dick. "He wins the appointment of the Queen of Love and Beauty, and takes d---- good care to choose the king's elderly daughter; thereby putting in good work for a government office. Of course, none of the fair damsels in the ladies' gallery are in the slightest degree interested in _him_, that goes without saying; but do you suppose that they are a bit more interested in the poor youngsters whom he has been knocking about? Not much. The fellow who takes their eyes is a chap in a white satin doublet, cut in the latest French fashion, who has sent flowers to Dulcinea, and is hanging over the rail of the ladies' gallery, talking to her. He is a delightful young man. He can sing the songs of the Troubadours that he has heard in Provence. He knows all the latest gossip about that delicious row between the Pope and the German Emperor. He spends the proper season in each Continental court. He is so different from the homely, insular youths who are pummelling each other down below in the lists. They never can think or talk anything but fight. He says funny things about those youths, and criticizes their armor. Altogether he is charming. Handsome and well preserved, too. Splendid figure, and could undoubtedly fight well if he had to; but he doesn't have to, and isn't fool enough to do it. No bruises on him.

"After the fight is over young Sir Ernest comes along, in a sheepish sort of a way, to see what Dulcinea thinks of his day's work. Sir Ernest was a pretty good-looking boy when he started on the career of arms. Now, however, he is showing marks of wear. The saddle has made him bow-legged, the helmet has worn off much of his hair, and the gauntlet has raised corns on his knuckles. Some of his front teeth have been knocked out. Besides the wear and tear in his personal appearance, his mind runs largely on parries and thrusts, relative advantages of chain-mail and Milan plate, and all that sort of shop talk. He can not sing the new Romance songs, he knows only the old ones that his nurse taught him. Dulcinea used to like him very much, and is still fond of him in a way. If he had accomplished the marvel of winning the whole tournament, of unhorsing the old veteran De Mainfort; if he had won the crown of Love and Beauty, and brought it to her, giving that hideous stuck-up old Princess the go-by, Dulcinea would have loved him fondly, and been ready to marry him then and there. But he has not brought her the crown of Love and Beauty; he has only brought a stove-in helmet and a black eye. True, he has been fighting his level best, but how much good has it done him? He has unhorsed two or three young men of his own weight; he has even put up a stiff set-to against big De Thumper, who won the Templar stakes; but Dulcinea did not see him then, she was talking to the interesting foreigner. Then he ran up against Sir Thomas de Mainfort, and got landed on his back; Dulcinea was looking right at him that time. He got up like a little man, without claiming his ten seconds, and went for the redoubtable Sir Thomas again. Thereupon the big fellow smashed him on the jaw, and put him to sleep, so that it took his squires half an hour to bring him round. Dulcinea took that in, too, and the amusing foreigner remarked on what conceit a youngster must have to go in for this sort of thing against men like De Mainfort. The highest renown that the young knight has so far won may possibly be a line next day in the Ashby _Herald_ and _Tournament Gazette_. It will run something like this: 'Where are we to look for the De Mainforts and Thumpers of the next generation? There is absolutely no new material worth mentioning. Young Gray gives a little glimmer of promise in some of his back-strokes, but his work is eminently crude and boyish. However, if he gets over his swelled head, he may in twenty or thirty years of hard work become a fair lance.' Do you think that helps his chances with Dulcinea? D---- that dog of yours, Hudson, she has stolen my muffin!"

"Are you all through?" demanded Gray, who had been restraining himself with difficulty.

"No; hold on. I haven't shown you half your trouble yet. At the banquet in the evening, Gray sits on one side of Dulcinea and the handsome stranger on the other. Gray is sore and tired and comes near falling asleep at the table, while the other fellow discusses the Italian painters, and tells anecdotes of the Dauphin of France. Gray used to be able to play the harp well, and can still play sometimes in the evenings, when his fingers are not too lame; but they generally are. He can also get into his satin doublet on Sundays and great occasions, and look almost as well as the other chap; but he does so _only_ on occasions, whereas the stranger keeps himself up to the mark all the time. Dulcinea cannot help thinking, therefore, that Gray is a boor and a bore, even though he sometimes shows capabilities other than those of getting his head smashed. On the other hand, Dulcinea's governor is a stout baron of the old school. He looks upon Gray as a dude and aper of foreign customs, for taking a bath after a hard day in the lists and leaving off his breastplate at dinner. The old man's chief boast is that with his own good sword he has carved out all his fat lands and broad baronies, and he asks, as he proudly thumps his chest, how he could ever have done all that if he had put on effeminate airs and fooled away ten minutes every week in a bath-tub. Now I ask you to drop your poetry for a minute, substitute reason for imagination, and confess that this is really what a young knight had to take. Dixi, let's hear what you have got to say."