Chapter 20

Spalton's originality and genius would in the end have of itself produced a rupture between them ... few women are at home with genius, much as they clasp their hands in ecstasy over it, as viewed on the lecture and concert platform....

But the wedge that drove them apart was entered when his first wife, Anne, brought into their married life, Dorothy, a fellow teacher, a visiting friend.

Dorothy was so thin as to be stringy of body. She had a sharp hatchet-face, eyes with the colour of ice in them ... a cold, blue-grey.

She was a woman of culture, yet at the same time she was possessed of a great instinct for organisation and business enterprise--just what was needed for the kind of thing Spalton was trying to inaugurate at Eos. She fell in readily with the Master's schemes ... even with his price-tags on objects of art, his egregious overvaluation of hand illumined books ... which his wife, with old-fashioned honesty, rebuked him for.

An affinity of like-mindedness grew up between Spalton and this intense, homely woman, Dorothy ... whose face, like that of all clever, homely women, grew to a beauty in his eyes, that mere beauty which plastic form can never attain.

There was a local busybody of a minister, and it was he who first intimated to the then Mrs. Spalton that her dear and intimate friend, was betraying her....

There followed the usual spying and publicity ... Mrs. Spalton won her divorce....

* * * * *

But this was after several years. Long before the divorce was granted John and Dorothy were aware of a tangible fruit of their love.... I had often wondered why the Master so ardently, so often, wrote eloquently in defense of the superior qualities of illegitimate children....

Dorothy bore their child ... a girl ... and went away to teach in a smart school somewhere in the East, under an assumed name....

Now, after many years, Spalton and she married.

* * * * *

I saw in the sitting room a wonderful girl. She had shining, abundant hair, and a face rendered superlatively beautiful by the glowing of vivacity, understanding, feminine vitality behind it and through it, like a lamp held up within. She was absorbed in the new exhibit of Gresham's that hung on the walls of the guest room ... she wore a short, bouncing, riding skirt, and carried a quirt in her hand.

I walked up to her, fascinated. Without letting her know who I was I quoted Poe's _To Helen_ to her. She stood, smiling sweetly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world, to have a lean, wild-faced stranger address her with a poem.

"That's the way I feel about you!" I ended.

She gave a lovely laugh ... held out both her hands, dropping the quirt on the floor ... took my hands and leaned back gaily, like a child.

"Oh, I know who you are ... you're Razorre ... father wrote me a lot about you ... when I lived East ... you were one of his pet 'nuts'!"

We sat there and conversed a long time. She talked of Socrates and Plato as if she had broken bread with them ... she discussed science, history, art as if wisdom and understanding were nearer her desire than anything else....

She was the child of "John" and Dorothy.

* * * * *

Again Spalton asked me to stay, "we need a poet for Eos!"

But I insisted that I must go on and acquire a college education ... which he maintained would be a hindrance, not a help--"they will iron you out, and make you a decent member of society--and then, Razorre, God help the poet in you ... poets and artists should never be decent ... only the true son of Ishmael can ever write or paint," he waved.

* * * * *

There came to the artworkers one day a young Southern woman, a six months' widow ... she was gentle and lily-coloured and lovely. She had great, swimming, blue eyes, a sensitive red bow of a mouth ... and the lashes of her eyes lay far down on her cheeks. She was the first woman I had met who approximated my poet's ideal of what a woman should be.

I was working for Spalton during my stay, which I meant to make a brief one. I was shovelling coal for him, and firing a furnace.

Wash as I might, I could not remove a faint blackness that clung to the edges of my eyes. This made my eyes glow and seem larger than they were. On such an extraneous and whimsical exterior circumstance hinged the young widow's interest in me.

And I decided that I'd stay a little longer at the Eos Studios ... all winter, if she stayed all winter. And I no longer asked for an easier job. For I wanted my eyes to remain large-seeming, since, half in jest, she admired their present appearance.

She manifested a close and affectionate friendship for me, and all day long all I thought of, as I kept the furnace going, was the evening after dinner, when I could sit close by her reading poetry in a low voice to her.

I leaned over her on every pretext to smell her hair,--her body, through her low-necked dress--to breathe in giddily that delicate fragrance that emanates from the bodies of beautiful women, as perfume from flowers.

Once, in spite of my timidity, I dared place my arm about her shoulders, there in the dark. There was a lecture on over in the "chapel" and mostly everybody had gone to it. Spalton, in passing through where we sat together, asked her if she was coming. "No, she was too tired." She remained sitting by me. Spalton shot me a glance of scarcely concealed resentment and went on. We were left alone.

She began telling me of her deceased husband ... of their devotion to each other ... she applied a dainty thing of lace to her eyes, pausing a moment....

"John? may I call you by your name, not by the odious name they have for you here?..."

She leaned her head against my shoulder.

"Johnnie, you are a fine, sensitive soul, and I know you'll be a great poet some day ... but why don't these people take you more seriously?

"I think it must be your childlikeness ... and your spirit of horse-play, that breaks through at the most inopportune moments, that encourages these fools to treat you with levity."...

"Dear woman," I began, "dearest woman," and my throat bunched queerly so that I could not speak further.

She stroked my hair....

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

"I am just a year younger."

"May I kiss you?" I asked, stumblingly.

"Yes, Johnnie, you may kiss me"....

"Why, you dear child, you ... you kiss just like a small boy ..." in a lower voice, "can it be possible that you, with all your tramping, your knowledge of life in books, of people?--"

I bent my head, ashamed, silently acknowledging my inexperience of women.

"No, it's nothing to be ashamed of, dearest boy ... I think you are a fine man--to have gone through what you have--and still--"

Her voice trailed off. She put her arm around my neck, drew me to her, and kissed me!

* * * * *

As we sat close together, a brooding silence. Then, with a transition of thought to the practical, she remarked....

"I'm angry with these people ... they over-charge for everything."

"Just think of it--I--I feel I may speak of it to you ... we seem to have come so near to each other to-night--"

"They brought my laundry back yesterday, and for one piece of silk lingerie I was charged--guess?"

I couldn't imagine how much.

"Seventy-five cents--think of that!"

* * * * *

As the Eoites came tramping back from the lecture, they found us still seated there. At the first footstep we had swiftly moved apart.

I had been half-reclining, my head in her lap, strangely soothed and happy as she ran her fingers through my hair. For a long time neither of us had said a word.

Now I sat apart from her, awkward and wooden.

Spalton did not speak, inclined his head icily, as he strode by.

"He's mad because I didn't come to his talk," she whispered.

"I see my finish," I replied.

* * * * *

Now, Spalton was as much in love with Dorothy, his second wife, as I have ever known a man to be in love with a woman. But that could not entirely exclude his jealousy over my sympathetic relation with the "Southern Lady," as the artworkers termed her. And he feared for her on another score. She was, to use a constantly recurring phrase of the Master's, whenever he wished to describe anyone as being wealthy, "lousy with money," and he suspected, not without good cause, that I would warn her against paying exorbitant prices for books and objects of art....

* * * * *

One night I was the cause of an accident which gave him a handle to seize on.

We were having a musicale. A new musician had come to Eos. The former Eos musician, Von Hammer, the father of the prodigy who played the piano, had quarrelled with the Master and had retired to Buffalo. Where, after a brief struggle as teacher of music, he had turned to playing for the movies. It must have nearly slain the man, for he was a sincere artist, a lover of classical music ... and now compelled to play ragtime and popular melodies for a living.

All that I held of him, despite myself, was an unkind remembrance--his breath had been charnel-foul, and always, when discussing anything, he insisted on taking the lapel of his listener's coat and talking directly into his nose....

* * * * *

But his successor was playing at an introductory musicale....

A tall, alert, dark young man ... Italian-dark ... his eyes shone behind his gold-rimmed glasses, swimming large and distorted under the magnification of the lenses ... his lips were full and red, his moustache of a heavy, bristly black that made them look redder and fuller still, almost negroid.

He played the piano with violent, expert energy ... his favourite work was the "Turkish Patrol," which, Spalton exclaimed, as he applauded vigorously, he would now adopt as the Eos anthem.

The drawing-room was crowded ... a few visiting celebrities ... Eoites, too, but only the quasi-celebrities among them. The mass of the workers was as rigidly excluded now, under the new régime, as ordinary retainers ever are.

I stood by my "Southern Lady." She was in evening dress ... wore a lorgnette ... I trembled as I leaned over her, for I could see the firm, white-orbed upper parts of her breasts ... I was trying to be lightly playful, and was clumsy at it. I took up her lorgnette and toyed with it. I sat on the edge of a table ... and where I sat stood a supposed Greek vase of great antiquity and value.

It is a law that prevails in three-dimensional space that two objects cannot occupy the same place at one time. I dislodged the vase. It came to the floor in a crash ... which stopped the music ... which stopped everything. There fell a dead silence. I looked down at the fragments, hardly knowing what to do....

Spalton came over to me ... intensely ... his eyes blazing.

"Razorre, come out into the lobby ... I want to speak to you." I willingly followed him ... he wheeled on me when he had me alone.

"Do you know why we have these paintings of Gresham's hung high up there on the wall?" he asked rhetorically, with an eloquent, upward sweep of his arm, "it's so bums like you ... dirty tramps ... can't wipe their feet on them."

"I am so sorry, so very sorry," I murmured, contrite.

Thinking my contrition meekness, and possibly fear of him, he went to take me by the shoulders. I knocked his hands away promptly and quickly stepped back, on the defensive ... all my reverence for him swallowed up in indignation, rising at last, against his vulgar chiding.

At that moment, my widow, Mrs. Tighe, arrived ... she was weeping....

"Don't be hard on the poor boy," she pleaded ... "anyhow, it was all my fault ... and I want to pay you for your vase ... whatever it cost."...

A momentary flicker of greed lighted the Master's eyes. But he perceived as instantly how unmagnanimous he would appear if he accepted a cash settlement.

"I am not thinking of my financial loss ... beauty cannot be valued that way!" he exclaimed.

"Then you must not blame the boy."

"He is clumsy ... he is a terrible fool ... he is always doing the wrong thing. Oh, my beautiful vase!" and he wrung his hands, lost in the pose. Out he strode through the front door.

* * * * *

The musicale had been broken up.

"My poor, dear Johnnie, I am so sorry," murmured the young woman. I was sitting in the large armchair where she had sat the memorable night of the lecture that neither of us attended. She had seated herself on one of the arms.

"You mustn't be despondent!" She was patting my hand.

She mistook my rage at the gratuitous insults Spalton had heaped on me as despondency. She leaned closer against me ... quickly I caught her into my arms, drew her into my lap ... held her little, quiet, amazed face in my hands firmly, as I kissed and kissed her.... I knew how to kiss now....

She rose presently. I stood up and caught her in my arms. Slowly and firmly she disengaged herself ... silently she slid away. She stopped in the shadow a moment before going up the long, winding stairs.

"Good night, my dear poet," she whispered.

She had no sooner disappeared than I started out, my heart beating like a drum to a charge in me. Spalton frequently wrote till late, in his office. I would go over there and, if he was there, call him to account for his insults. There was a light lit within, and I could see him through the window at his desk.

"Come in!" in answer to my knock. "Oh, it's you, Razorre!" and his eyes snapped with fresh resentment. "What do you want? Don't you know that I'm busy on _A Brief Visit_?"

"You know why I'm here!"

"Well?" challengingly.

"I've come for two reasons. I want to apologise to you for breaking that vase ... and I demand an equal apology from you, in turn, for the way you insulted me in Mrs. Tighe's presence."

"You deserved everything I said to you," he replied, rising quietly from his chair.

"I may have deserved it ... but that doesn't alter in the least my intention of smashing your face flat for the way you spoke to me, unless you tell me you're sorry for it."

"My dear Gregory, don't be a fool."

"A fool?" I replied, inflamed further by the appellation applied to quiet me in such a superior tone, "if you'll come on out into the street and away from your own property, I'll show you who's a fool ... you'll find you can't treat me like a dog, and get away with it!"

"Why, Razorre ... my dear, dear boy," calling me by my nickname and taking another tack ... he laid his hand gently on my shoulder and gave me a deep, burning look of compassionate rebuke ... though I saw fear flickering back of it all....

"Look here, John," I burst out, never able to hold my wrath long, "I like you ... think you're a great man--but you humiliated me before other people ... and I've come to such a pass in my life that I wouldn't let God Himself get away with a thing like that!"

"Then I apologise ... most humbly!"

"That was all I wanted. Good-night!" But I could not bring myself to leave so abruptly.

"John," I wavered, "you _are_ a great man ... a much greater man than you allow yourself to be ... I'm--I'm going away from here forever, this time ... and I--I want you to know how I reverence and love the bigness in you, in spite of our--our differences."

He was pleased.

"And so you're going to college somewhere?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

I had talked much of college being my next aim.

"Either the University of Chicago, or further west."

"I can give you commutation as far as Chicago."

"I cannot accept it."

"You must, Razorre."

* * * * *

A week from then I left.

I went up to Mrs. Tighe's room to say good-bye. Awkwardly and with the bearlike roughness of excessive timidity I put my arms about her, drew her to me tentatively.

"Be careful, poet dear, or you'll hurt me," she warned, giving me a look of fondness. Her left arm was in a sling. She had fallen on the steps a few days before and had broken a small bone in the wrist. "My sweet poet!"

The bandaged arm being in the way, I put my head down in her lap again, as she sat there on the edge of the great, white bed.

She leaned over, turned my face up with her free hand, kissed me full in the mouth....

"My sweet poet," she repeated, "good-bye!"

* * * * *

While at Mt. Hebron I had chosen German as my modern language. And it was a Professor Langworth's grammar and exercise book that we used as a text-book. Langworth, I learned from the title page, was professor of Germanic languages in Laurel University, at Laurel, Kansas.

And now I bethought me that it would be much better to go to college in Kansas than attend the University at Chicago, where, I felt, education was made an industry, just like pork-packing and the hundred other big concerns in that city. Kansas would encourage individuality more, be less appallingly machine-like.

The great, roaring city bewildered me, and the buildings of the University of Chicago (for I got so far as to ask for the registrar's office) overwhelmed me with their number. And I fled. With the exception of a few days I put in washing dishes in a restaurant there, I stayed no longer, but freighted it southwest to Kansas City ... from whence I rode a freight further to Laurel.

* * * * *

In the evening twilight I climbed out of a box car in the railroad yards at Laurel....

I enquired my way to the university.

"Up on the hill."

I veered off from the main street of the town ... a length of marching telegraph poles and flat-roofed Western houses. I struck across lots in the cold and dark. I floundered through half-hardened puddles of mud, over vacant lots that afterward seemed to have been conjured up for my impediment by some devil of piquaresque romance....

The hill, the very top of it, I had laboriously attained. On all sides the college buildings gloomed in dusky whiteness of architecture.

One of them was lit inside with the mellow glow of electric lights. As I stepped into the vestibule timidly, to enquire my way to Professor Langworth's house (for it was his I decided to seek out first), a group of fragrant, white-clad girls herded together in astonished tittering when they saw me. And I surely looked the tramp, dusty and soiled from my long ride.

I asked them the direction to Langworth's house, but they ignored me, and scattered. Turning in confusion, I ran into a man-student bodily ... excused myself ... the girls, standing further off, tittered again.

"Can you direct me to Professor Gustav Langworth's house?"

The student looked me over curiously. But he was of the right sort.

"Certainly. Come with me. I'm going that way. I'll show you where it is...."

* * * * *

In silence we descended the hill....

"That house, in there a bit, under the trees ... that is where the professor lives."

My knock set a dog barking inside ... the quick, insistent bark of a collie that romped against me, putting up its paws on me when the door was opened by a slim-bodied man of middle height. The man was dressed in a grey suit ... he had a kindly, smooth-shaven face except for a close-cropped pepper-and-salt moustache ... and grey-blue, quizzical, but kindly eyes.

"Here, Laddie, come here!" called the voice of a frail, little woman whose hair was white like wool, and like wool in texture. She sat crumpled up by an open gas fire of imitation logs. She Was wry-backed, her right shoulder thrust out into a discernible hunch.

She flung her arm tenderly about the dog, when it came to her. She was, I figured, the professor's mother.... He held a hurried, whispered consultation with her--after I had told him that studying his German book at Mt. Hebron had impelled me to come to Laurel. Which story I could see pleased and flattered him.

I was waiting in the storm porch.

He returned. He thrust his hand into his pocket and fetched forth a two-dollar bill.

"Go downtown to one of the restaurants you will find on the main street. You can get a square meal in one of them for a quarter or, at the most, fifty cents ... a bed for the same price ... climb the hill again in the morning, say about ten o'clock, and ask for me at the German Department ... I am sorry I can't invite you to stay here for the night ... but we have no room ..." and he glanced timidly at the woman whom I had taken to be his mother, but who, I afterward learned, was his wife.

* * * * *

I found a restaurant-hotel, as he had directed me, and procured my supper for a quarter ... fried potatoes and a cold slab of steak ... and a big Westerner who wore a sombrero and had a stupid, kindly, boyish face, showed me to a bed ... which also cost but a quarter for the night ... with a scattered ambuscade of bedbugs thrown in for good measure.

In the morning, fried pork chops, pancakes and two cups of coffee--and I set out for the hill.

The place buzzed with activity. The fall term was already in full swing, and students poured in lines up and down both sides of the steep street that led to the college ... girls and boys both, for it was co-educational. They were well dressed and jolly, as they moved in the keen windy sun of autumn.

I was not a part of this. I felt like an outcast, but I bore myself with assumed independence and indifference. I thought everybody was looking at me. Most of them were.

* * * * *

Langworth enrolled me as a special student. He himself paid my tuition fee, which was a nominal one. I enrolled in Philosophy, Economics, German, Latin.

My patron, furthermore, slipped a ten-dollar bill into my hand. "For the books you will need."

He directed me to the Y.M.C.A. employment bureau. "They will see that you get work at something, so you can be sure of board and room ... in the early days we did not have things so well arranged. I worked my way through college, too. I nearly perished, my first year. After you settle somewhere, come and see me once in a while and let me hear how you're getting on."

* * * * *

My first job was milking a cow and taking care of a horse, for board and room.... The man for whom I worked was an old, retired farmer.

The disagreeable part of taking care of horses and cows is the smell. My clothes, my room, even the skin of my body, soon reeked with the faint yet penetrating odour of stable and barn.

But I was happy. Many great men had done as I was doing. Always trust me to dramatise every situation!

I arranged my meagre row of text-books on the shelf in my attic. I set Keats apart in a sacred nook by himself.

I sat humming softly to myself, studying my first lessons.

* * * * *

"Look," cried a girl, her voice vibrating with the hard sarcasm of youth, "look, there goes Abe Lincoln," to another girl and two boys, who lolled with her on the porch of the house next mine.

I was stabbed with a bitter pang of resentment. For my face was thin and weather-beaten ... my sharp, bent knees never straightened as I walked along, like a man going through snow drifts. Yet I held my head erect, ridiculously erect ... and my chest was enormous through over-development, as my arms and legs were thin.

* * * * *

My first few days at Laurel University brought me that beginning of newspaper notoriety that has since followed me everywhere as a shadow goes with a moving object. And then originated the appellation which has since clung to me, that of "The Vagabond Poet."

One morning, when I was hardly awake, there came a knock at my door.

"Just a moment," I called, getting into my shirt and trousers, "who is it?"

"A reporter to interview you."