Chapter 17

There was nothing he did not discuss, in memorable phrase and trenchant, clever epigram. For he saw that I believed in him, worshipped whole-heartedly at his shrine of genius, and he gave me, in return, of his best. For the first time I saw what human language is for. I thought of Goethe at Weimar ... Wilde's clever conversation in London....

Never since did I see the real man, Spalton, as I saw him then, the man he might always have been, if he had had an old-world environment, instead of the environment of modern, commercial America--the spirit of which finally claimed him, as he grew more successful....

Modern, commercial America--where we proudly make a boast of lack of culture, and where artistic and aesthetic feeling, if freely expressed, makes one's hearers more likely than not, at once uneasy and restive.

* * * * *

That night, at supper, I caught my first glimpse of the Eoites in a body. The contrast between them and my school-folk was agreeably different. I found among them an atmosphere of good-natured greeting and raillery, that sped from table to table. And when Spalton strode in, with his bold, swinging gait (it seemed that he had just returned from a lecture in a distant city early that afternoon), there was cheering and clapping.

Guests and workers joined together in the same dining hall, with no distinctive division.... I sat next to Spalton's table, and a warm glow of pleasure swept through me when he sent me a pleasant nod.

"Hello, Razorre," he had greeted me; then he had turned to the group at his table and told them about me, I could see by their glances--but in a pleasant way.

* * * * *

The next morning I was at work in the bindery, smearing glue on the backs of unbound books. My wage was three dollars a week and "found," as they say in the West. Not much, but what did it matter? There was a fine library of the world's classics, including all the liberal and revolutionary books that I had heard about, but which I could never obtain at the libraries ... and there were, as associates and companions, many people, who, if extremely eccentric, were, nevertheless, alive and alert and interested in all the beautiful things Genius has created in Art and Song....

Derelicts, freaks, "nuts" ... with poses that outnumbered the silver eyes in the peacock's tail in multitude ... and yet there was to be found in them a sincerity, a fineness, and a genuine feeling for humanity that "regular" folks never achieve--perhaps because of their very "regularness."

* * * * *

Here, at last, I had found another environment where I could "let loose" to the limit ... which I began to do....

In the first place, there was the matter of clothes. I believed that men and women should go as nearly naked as possible ... clothing for warmth only ... and, as one grew in strength and health through nude contact with living sun and air and water, the body would gradually attain the power to keep itself warm from the health and strength that was in it.

So, in the middle of severe winter that now had fallen on us, I went about in sandals, without socks. I wore no undershirt, and no coat ... and went with my shirt open at the neck. I wore no hat....

Spalton himself often went coatless--in warm weather. His main sartorial eccentricity was the wearing of a broad-brimmed hat. And whenever he bought a new Stetson, he cut holes in the top and jumped on it, to make it look more interesting and less shop-new ... of course everybody in the community wore soft shirts and flowing ties.

We addressed each other by first names and nicknames. Spalton went under the appellation of "John." One day a wealthy visitor had driven up. Spalton was out chopping wood.

"Come here, John, and hold my horses."

Spalton dropped the axe and obeyed.

Afterward he had been dismissed with a fifty cent tip.

He told the story on himself, and the name "John" stuck.

* * * * *

Working in the bindery, I began to find out things about the community of Eos that were not as ideal as might be ... most of the illumination of the books was done by girls, even by children after school hours. The outlines of the letters and objects to be hand-illumined were printed in with the text, the girls and children merely coloured them between the lines.

In each department, hidden behind gorgeous, flowing curtains, were time-clocks, on which employees rang up when they came to work, and when they left. Also, each worker was supposed to receive dividends--which dividends consisted in pairs of mittens and thick woolen socks distributed by the foremen at Christmas time ... or maybe an extra dollar in pay, that week.

"Two dollars a week less than a fellow would draw at any other place that ran the same sort of business," grumbled a young bookbinder who was by way of being a poet, "and a pair of woolen mittens or socks, or an extra dollar, once a year, as dividends!"

However, I think that the artworkers had finer lodgings and board than most workers could have supplied for themselves ... and the married couples lived in nicer houses ... and they heard the best music, had the best books to read, lived truly in the presence of the greatest art and thought of the world ... and heard speak in the chapel, from time to time, all the distinguished men of the country ... who came, sooner or later, to visit Spalton and am? community....

What though the wages were not so big, what though you rang up the time of arrival at work and the time of departure from it, on hidden time-clocks, what though every piece of statuary, every picture, every stick of furniture, had, on the bottom of it, its price label, or, depending from it, its tag that told the price at which it might be bought!...

* * * * *

Spalton had begun his active career as a business man, had swung out from that, his fertile mind glimpsing what worlds of thought and imagination lay beyond it!

But now Big Business was calling him back again, using him for its purposes.

Oftener and oftener magnificently written articles by him began to appear in his remarkable little magazine, _The Dawn_. And the Ingersoll of Dollar Watch fame crowded out the Ingersoll of brave agnosticism ... and when he wrote now of artists and writers, it was their thrifty habits, their business traits, that he lauded.

"A great man can be practical and businesslike, in fact the greatest of them always are," he defended. "There was Voltaire, the successful watchmaker at Ferney ... and there was Shakespeare, who, after his success in London, returned to Avon and practically bought up the whole town ... he even ran a butcher shop there, you know."

* * * * *

"The people expect startling things ... and, as the winds of genius blow where they list--when they refuse to blow in the direction required, divine is the art of buncombe," he jested.

I suppose this applied to his musician-prodigy, a girl of eight, who worked, in the afternoons, in the bindery. And when a visiting party swept through that department, it was part of her job to rise as if under the impulse of inspiration, leave her work, and go to a nearby piano and play ... the implication being that the piano was placed there for the use of the workers when melody surged within them....

But she was the only one who played. And she never played except when she was tipped the wink. And it was only one thing--a something of Rubenstein's ... which she had practised and practised and practised to perfection; and _that_ rendered, with haughty head like a little sibyl, she would go back to her work-bench. And if urged to play more, she would answer, lifting her great, velvet eyes in a dreamy gaze, "no, no more to-day. The inspiration has gone." And, awed, the visitors would depart.

* * * * *

Back of the bindery stood the blacksmith shop, where MacKittrick, the historian-blacksmith, plied the bellows and smote the anvil.

MacKittrick took a liking to me. For one day we began talking about ancient history, and he perceived that I had a little knowledge of it, and a feeling for the colour and motion of its long-ago life.

"I want you to come and work for me," he urged, "my work is mostly pretty," he apologised, with blacksmith sturdiness, "--not making horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and cut put the dainty filigree the "Master" sells to folk, afterward, as art."

"Well, isn't it art?" I asked.

"I suppose it is. But I like the strong work of blacksmithing best. You see, I was born to be a great historian. But destiny has made me a blacksmith," he continued irrelevantly ... "do come out and work for me. I'm hungry for an intelligent helper who can talk history with me while we work."

My transfer was effected. And I was immediately glad of it. "Mac," as we called him, was a fine, solid man ... and he did know history. He knew it as a lover knows his mistress. He was right. He should have been a great historical writer--great historian he _was_!

For two glorious months I was with him. And during those two months, I learned more about the touch and texture of the historic life of man than three times as many years in college could have taught me.

"Mac" talked of Cæsar as if only yesterday he had shaken hands with him in the Forum ... and he was shocked over his murder as if it had happened right after....

"Ah, that was a bad day for Rome and the future of the world, when those mad fellows struck him down there like a pig!" he cried.

And Mary, Queen of Scots, was "a sweet, soft body of a white thing that should have been content with being in love, and never tried to rule!"

* * * * *

"Can you cook?" asked Spalton of me one day, just as Barton had done at "Perfection City."

"No," I replied honestly, thinking back to that experience.

"Fine!" was the unexpected rejoinder, "I'm going to send you put to the camp to cook for my lumber-jacks for a few weeks."

"But I said I couldn't cook."

"You know how to turn an egg in the pan? you know enough not to let ham and bacon burn?... you know water won't scorch, no matter how long it stands over the fire?...

"You'll make an excellent cook for lumber-jacks ... so long as it's something to eat that's stuck under their noses, they don't give a damn!... they're always hungry enough to eat anything ... and can digest anything....

"Get ready! I'm sending you out on one of the waggons by noon."

* * * * *

Perched on the high seat of the waggon by the side of the driver! The latter was bundled up to the chin ... wore a fur cap that came down over the ears ... was felt-booted against the cold ... wore heavy gloves.

It was so cold that the breath of the horses went straight up into the air like thick, white wool. As we rode by, the passing farmers that were driving into town almost fell off their seats, startled, and staring at me. For there I perched ... coatless and hatless ... sockless feet in sandals ... my shirt flung open, a la Byron, at the neck.

It is true that the mind can do anything. I _thought_ myself into being composed and comfortable. I did not mind, truly I did not mind it.

The driver had protested, but only once, laconically:

"Whar's y'r coat an' hat?"

"I never wear any," I explained, beginning a propagandistic harangue on the non-essentiality of clothes....

He cut in with the final pronouncement:

"Damn fool, you'll git pneumony."

Then he fell into obdurate, contemptuous silence.

* * * * *

The snow was deep about our living shanty and cook-shack in one, but hard-frozen enough to bear a man's weight without snow-shoes. Over the crust had fallen a powdery, white, new snow, about four inches deep.

Every morning, after the "boys" had eaten their breakfast and left for the woods, I went through my exercises, stripped, out in the open ... a half hour of it, finished by a roll in the snow, that set me tingling all over.

One morning I made up my mind to startle the "boys" by running, mother-naked, in a circle, whooping, about them, where they were sawing up fallen trees and felling others.

It was a half mile to where they worked.

For more bizarre effect, I clapped on a straw hat which I found in the rafters--a relic of the preceding summer....

* * * * *

"Gosh a'mighty, what's this a-comin!"...

Everybody stopped working. Two neighbour farmers, who had come over for a bit of gossip, stooped, their hands on their knees, bowed with astonishment, as if they had beheld an apparition.

One of the "boys" told me the two held silence for a long time--till I was entirely out of sight again, and after.

Then one exclaimed, "air they any more luny fellers like thet, back at them Artwork shops?"

The incident gave birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's care, whose chief insanity was running naked through snowdrifts.

Spalton had three sons. Roderick was the eldest: named after his father. Level-headed and businesslike, he followed his father's vagaries because he saw the commercial possibilities in them ... though he did so more as a practical man with a sense of humour than as a man who was on the make. Spalton, who knew men thoroughly and quickly appraised their individual natures, had installed Roderick in the managing end of things,--there with the aid of an older head--one Alfoxden, of whom Spalton made too much of a boast, telling everyone he had rescued him from a life of crime; Alfoxden, when younger, forged a check and had served his term for it. Coming out into the world again, no one would trust him because of that one mistake, Spalton, at this juncture, took him in and gave him a new chance--but--as I said unkindly, in my mind, and publicly, he made capital of his generous action.

But Alfoxden was a soul of rare quality. He never seemed to resent "John's" action. He was too much of a gentleman and too grateful for the real help Spalton had extended to him.

Alfoxden was a slight, Mephistophelian man ... with bushy, red eyebrows. And he was totally bald, except for the upper part of his neck, which was fiery with red hair. He had a large knowledge of the Rabelaisan in literature ... had in his possession several rather wild effusions of Mark Twain in the original copy, and a whole MSS. volume of Field's smutty casual verse....

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *