Chapter 28

"Mostly it does stay down ... I guess father's all right," he defended, "maybe the diet will do me good."

"Do you ever get a beefsteak?"

"Father says meat is no good ... maybe he's right about killing animals. He says it wouldn't be half so bad if everyone killed their own meat, instead of making brutes out of men who do the killing for them ... but it is kind of hard on the dog, though," and the little fellow laughed.

* * * * *

"I think my boy is going to become an engineer of some sort; he's always playing about with machinery," Penton said to me....

"Suppose you let him take a trip with me to town, then? I'm going to look through the Best o' Wheat factory this afternoon, and watch how Best o' Wheat biscuits are made. Perhaps he'd like to see the machinery working!"

"Johnnie, I'll trust him with you, if you'll promise me not to meddle with his diet."

"Of course."

"I don't like people stuffing him full of candy and ice cream. I want to bring him up with a good digestion and sound teeth."

* * * * *

Daniel took my hand as we went through the factory from department to department. I enjoyed a paternal pride in the handsome, pale, preternaturally intelligent little fellow.

"Look at the young father!" exclaimed one girl softly to another, with a touch of pathos in her voice, intimating that perhaps I was a widower.

I blushed with pleasure to the tips of my ears, to be thought the father of so prepossessing a child.

It delighted him to look into the huge bake ovens where first the wheat was baked in big brown loaves, before it was broken up into biscuit form. I thought of Hank Spalton and how he was supposed to have grown strong on a diet of Best o' Wheat.

It was customary to serve sight-seers, in a dining room kept for that purpose, with Best o' Wheat and cream, and wheat coffee ... free....

With a little reluctance Dan sat down and ate.

"Hum! that was good; but look here, Buzzer" (that was the nickname he had invented for me) you mustn't tell Mubby."

"Mubby?"

"That's what mother and I call my father."

"Of course I won't tell him ... and now we must go to a restaurant and have something real to eat."

"I can't. I don't dare. But I'll sit and watch you eat."

I ordered a steak, and persuaded Dan, finally, to have one too.

"If it's not good for people to eat, why does it taste so good?" mooted Dan meditatively....

"Now I'll be in for it," he added, as we walked out of the door and started back to the Health Home.

"But your father need never know."

"At first I thought it might be all right to fool him just this once. But I mustn't. I've promised him I'd never lie to him about what I ate, and I must keep my word ... he'll whip me, perhaps."

"Does he whip you much?"

"Not very much ... only when I need it ... and then when I cry, he stops--so it is never very hard!"

I laughed at the boy's frank philosophy....

"But daddy's so funny ... not at all like other daddies," wistfully.

* * * * *

I did not grow friendly enough with Mrs. Baxter even to call her by her first name of Hildreth ... during that brief visit....

Hildreth Baxter was always moving about leisurely, gracefully, like some strange, pretty animal. Not shy, just indifferent, as if processes of thought were going on inside of her that made an inner world that sufficed, to the exclusion of all exterior happenings.

She had a beautiful small head with heavy dark hair; large, brown, thoughtful eyes ... a face so strong as to be handsome rather than beautiful. She walked about in bloomers, languidly conscious that her legs were graceful and lovely....

To her I was, at that time, merely one of her husband's visiting friends....

* * * * *

After little Daniel had manfully squared himself with his conscience, Penton did not whip him. He came to me.

"I did not punish my boy: because it was you, Johnnie, that tempted him," and he flushed angrily. "I'm sure you didn't consider what you were doing. If I thought you did it out of deliberation, I would never speak to you again ... you must learn not to tamper with the ideals of others, Johnnie."

I apologised. I spoke of my reverence and regard for him and his greatness. I asked him to forgive me, which he did. And, as I pronounced him to be as great at Shelley, the Rousseau of America--his naïve, youthful face wreathed with smiles and peace fell between us again.

* * * * *

"I am thinking of going to live at Eden, the Single Tax Colony not far from Philadelphia ... I want you to come there and visit us in the spring. In the meantime don't let them make you bourgeois in Kansas ... don't let them smash you into the academic mould."

"They haven't so far, have they?"

"But what in the world are you going back to Kansas for?"

"Because I have them trained there to accept me. I can do pretty much as I choose at the university. But mainly I want to write my four-act play in earnest--my New Testament drama, _Judas_. And I know of no better place to go to."

"Good-bye, and don't fail to pay me a visit in the spring."

"I will ... for a few weeks ... on my way to Paris."

"Paris? How are you going to get there?"

"I'll take a few cars of cattle east to New York from the Kansas City stock yards ... and I'll work my way across on a cattle boat."

"Good-bye! I wish I had your initiative!"

"Good-bye! Mrs. Baxter ... glad to have met you!"

"Good-bye, Mr. Gregory," and she dropped my hand quickly and turned on her heel, walking away with easy grace. I admired the back of her legs as she disappeared into her tent.

"Good-bye, Dan!"

"Good-bye, Buzzer!"

"Daniel," called Mrs. Baxter from the interior of her tent, "you mustn't call Mr. Gregory that!"

* * * * *

At Laurel again, I found it still a month before fall session. All summer I had lacked my nude sunbaths to which I had become accustomed. So again I sought my island.

* * * * *

I rented my room over the tinshop again, and was soon in the thick of the fall term. By this time I had my contemporaries on the hill very much puzzled.

Henry Belton, the Single Tax millionaire, had come to Kansas City. He was so diminutive as to be doll-like. He had to stand on a box to be seen, when he spoke from the floor, at the banquet tendered him ... and I had gone in to Kansas City as his guest, and had been seated on his right hand--I, in my painfully shabby clothes.

The professors and students could not see why I made such a stir with prominent people, how I held their friendship despite my eccentricities and deep poverty.

* * * * *

"I can't help you any more," observed Belton to me, as we sat in the lobby of the Coates House where he was putting up.

"Who the hell's asking you to help me?" I replied. "I came down from Laurel with no ulterior motive; I came just to pay you a visit, and to thank you personally for giving me six months of freedom from economic worry while I wrote my fairy drama ... anyhow, please remember that it wasn't me you helped, but Poetry!"

"It's too bad you can't be a Single Taxer," he sighed. "I like you, Gregory, and I'd put you on my pension list if you'd only shift some of your fanaticism for poetry to the Single Tax cause."

Since then I have been frankly sorry that I did not play the hypocrite to Belton, in order to be put on a pension for several years. I might have achieved great verse during the leisure so afforded for calm, creative work.

* * * * *

I started a poetry club on the Hill.... I determined that it should be anarchistic in principle ... we should have no officials ... no dues ... not even a secretary to read dull minutes of previous meetings ... we should take turns presiding as chairman. And the membership was to be divided equally with girls.

But the school year had begun unhappily for me. I did not find Vanna there. I went to visit her homely roommate.

"Vanna has gone off to Arkansas ... she is teaching school down there for the winter."

"Thank God she's not married somebody!" I cried, forgetting, and giving myself away. Then Vanna Andrews' roommate saw at last that it was not she I was interested in. She gave way to invective.

"You! a worthless tramp like you! A crazy fool!... to dare even hope that Vanna Andrews would ever love _you_!" In a torrent of tears she asked me never to speak to her again.

I was sorry I had not procured Vanna's address before I had betrayed myself. But, anyhow, I wrote her a long letter and sent it in care of the university registrar.

Flamboyantly I confessed my love ... rehearsed the story of my worship of her from afar....

For a month, every day, I sent her a bulky envelope full of mad verse and declarations of undying love. As the letters were not being returned, she must be receiving them.

One morning, with trembling hands and a pounding heart that nearly bore me down, it acted so like a battering ram on the inside, I drew a delicately scented envelope from my mailbox ... addressed in a dainty hand.

I kissed the letter again and again before I tore it open ... it was well that I did it then. I would not have kissed it afterward.

It was filled with stinging rebuke for my presumption ... if I had a shred of the gentleman in me I would cease troubling her.... I had caused her exceeding annoyance by my deluge and torrent of absurd letters ... she did not care for me ... she thought my poetry was bad ... and why had I behaved so brutally toward her former roommate?...

I saw that the homely girl had not been remiss in writing to Vanna about me....

My reply was a very poetic letter.

"I will trouble you no more," I ended; "but do not destroy my letters and poems, for, long after your wonderful beauty has become a mere handful of oblivious dust blowing about the stones of the world, you will be famous because a great poet loved you ... a poet whom you unwisely and ignorantly scorned."

* * * * *

Dr. Van Maarden, the Dutch psychiatrist and playwright, author of _De Kleine Man_, was to come to Laurel to deliver his celebrated lectures on "The Socialisation of Humanity."...

Professor Dineen, a flabby, feminine little fellow, one of our professors of philosophy, and hated by the dean of his department because he was a real philosopher, despite his physical ludicrousness,--and had published a book which the critics were hailing as a real contribution to the world of thought--

Dineen had engineered the bringing of the semi-radical Van Maarden to Laurel....

"For such men are needed here ... to rouse us out of the petty, dogmatic ways of our crude pioneers...."

"Van Maarden is a remarkable man," continued Dineen; "he writes plays, poems, books of economic philosophy, novels ... recently he tried to start a co-operative colony for Dutch farmers in South Carolina, but it went on the rocks ... and now Van Maarden, for all his genius, is practically stranded here in America.

"It is, or ought to be, one of the duties of an educational centre like Laurel, to aid such men ... men who travel about, disseminating ideas, carrying the torch of inspiration ... like Giordano Bruno, in former days."

Van Maarden came ... a little, dapper, black-bearded man ... but a very boy in his enthusiasm. He advanced many doctrines at variance with even the political radicalism of Kansas.

But whether it was his winning way or his foreign reputation, he was accepted gravely, and ideas won consideration, enunciated by him, that would have been looked on as mad, coming from me....

Again the faculty were nonplussed ... puzzled....

Dineen, Van Maarden and I were together much. And the latter found more delight in the time when he could discuss freely and unacademically with me than when he was invited to formal teas and dinners by the weightier members of the faculty and community.

It was psychic research that we particularly discussed. Van Maarden was the greatest scholar in the Mystic, the Occult, the Spiritualistic that I have ever met. He claimed to be able to go out of the body at will and see what any friend was up to at any time, in any out-of-the-way place in the world....

When I jested that such a faculty might sometimes prove embarrassing to his friends, he laughed and slapped me on the back.

* * * * *

Dineen was a queer little chap. He roomed de luxe at the Bellman House.

One night, during a cyclone that swept the town and the adjacent country, a fragment of roof was lifted off the hostelry in which he dwelt. The women-servants and waitresses were thrown into a panic. One, who collapsed on a lounge in the upstairs hall, swore that Dineen had felt of her leg as she lay there. A scandal was started. I know that Dineen, in his European fashion, was free with his hands, when he meant no harm. He had merely laid his hand on the girl's leg, in friendly fashion, and asked if she was hurt.

But the nasty Puritan mind of the community went to work, and the story was hawked about that Professor Dineen, taking advantage of the cyclone, had tried to "feel the girl up."

This, and the fact that he had been a friend of mine (after my forthcoming scandal it counted strongly against him) later effected in his being requested to resign from the faculty.

But the real cause of the brilliant, strange man's persecution was the jealousy of the dean of the philosophical department of the former's real ability.

* * * * *

"We must do more for this man than we have ... he is a genius ... he has not enough money to return to Europe on....

"He has written a curious, mad play called _Iistral_ ... one dealing with psychic phenomena, which we ought to put on....

"That way we'll net him three or four hundred dollars."

It was Dineen who spoke.

We chanced to be walking up the Hill together.

* * * * *

The school cheer-leader was tall and statuesque, and his voice was deep and resonant ... but, though pleased with his stature and his vocal qualifications, Van Maarden decided on me to play the lead in his abnormal play.... I did not possess as fine a voice, but I knew the mystics almost as well as he did.... I believed in spiritism, and would be accordantly sympathetic with the author's ideas....

* * * * *

The rehearsal of the play progressed. Van Maarden, receiving' from Dineen's own personal bank-account a substantial advance on the expected receipts from the two performances, returned East, and sailed away for Holland.

But an intimate friend of Penton Baxter's, before he left, he related to me many fine things about the latter, and spoke in special admiration of his wife, Hildreth.

* * * * *

I rehearsed and rehearsed.

I fought and fought with the directress, a teacher of elocution, who tried to make me mouth my words in the old style.

She swore that she would get rid of me as Iistral (pronounced Eestral), if it were not for the fact that it would seriously embarrass her to try others for the part, the time of production being so near.

Dineen upbraided me for being insubordinate....

I asked Dineen please to believe in me, and watch results.

My idea of acting was to go into the part, be burned alive by it ... to recite my lines naturally.

I was proud of myself. I was to act as lead in a play by a world-celebrated author, in its premier American production.

The story of it was that of a young poet-student, Iistral ... eccentric ... a sensitive ... who had, while tutoring the children of a count, fallen in love with the countess, his wife ... on the discovery of the liaison, she had committed suicide in a lake on their private grounds....

The play opened up with the young student, Iistral, come back home, after the wife's death....

The tragedy had affected him strangely.

He wore a Hindoo robe, let his beard grow like a Yogi ... was irritated with the unimaginative, self-seeking smugness of the grown-ups.

He found in Lisel, a little niece of his, the wise, innocent, illuminated imagination of childhood. And he associated with her, teaching her the mystic meanings of flowers in the garden.

But he lived for one thing only--the coming of the voice of Egeria, as he called the spirit of the dead countess....

Her voice came to him continually ... preluded by strains of music ... he lived from day to day with her lovely speech, a clairaudient.

As long as nothing material was involved, he was regarded as merely a gentle eccentric ... by his relatives and the bourgeoisie....

But as soon as word came that he had inherited a fortune through the death of a rich uncle in America--the attitude of the people around him changed. His relatives began intriguing to have him declared insane.

But the village burgomaster, ordinarily decent, saw through their artifices....

Goaded and goaded, finally Iistral assailed his pestering relatives with a shovel with which he was working among the gentle flowers in the garden ... at his customary task of tending them with Lisel....

And now the burgomaster, bribed, had reason to adjudge him insane.

And Iistral was dragged off, wailing, to the asylum.

* * * * *

With my clothes in literal rags I went through the rehearsals, attended classes, kept up my athletics....

Often I woke up in the night, crying out, with tears rolling down my cheeks, the lines of unhappy Iistral ... the spirit-woman Egeria grew real as flesh and blood to me....

"Egeria! Egeria!--"

I woke, time and again, and heard my own voice, like the voice of another, calling her name in the dark.

* * * * *

"You mustn't take the play so desperately ... remember it's just a play ... you rehearse as if the whole thing were a part of your life."

"Some of the boys," I replied, "some of the football boys lost ten or twelve pounds in our Thanksgiving game at Kansas City last fall ... why do you rebuke me for taking art and beauty as seriously as athletes take a football match?"

* * * * *

Two days before the play, as I was walking by the Bellman House, I saw Jarvis Alexander Mackworth standing there, come up from Osageville for a regents' conference....

"Hello!" the dear, good man called, "you heavenly bum! You starry young tramp!"

His eyes were twinkling in appreciative merriment over his quaint phraseology.

"What are you doing in Laurel, Mr. Mackworth?"

I noticed that he did not wear his many-patched trousers, but was well dressed....

--"attending a regents' meeting, young man,--where I suppose I'll have to stand up in your defence again....

"It's a good thing you don't run after the women, Gregory, or your case would be entirely lost."

(Yet Mackworth didn't know of the dirty trick that had been played on me:

One of the boys from the school, running wild down in Kansas City, had, with a curious sense of humour, given my name as his ... to the "girls" in various houses of prostitution....

And "do you know Johnnie Gregory?" and "when is Johnnie Gregory coming to see us again?" other students were asked who frequented the "houses.")

"And what are you up to now?" asked Mackworth.

--"acting ... in Van Maarden's _Iistral_ ... leading rôle!"

"You look skinnier than ever!"

"I am taking the part seriously, and it's bringing me down. I like to do real things when I get a chance, Mr. Mackworth ... and I am going to make the two performances of _Iistral_ memorable ones."

"You need a new suit of clothes very badly."

"I know I do. But I have no money, and no credit."

"Well see about that, my young Villon."

Mackworth took me to one side and thrust a fifty-dollar bill into my hand.

I hurried down to Locker, the clothier....

In a very little while I was again walking by the Bellman House, completely togged out in new apparel from head to heel.

Mackworth was still standing there, and he laughed with astonishment at the lightning-quick change in my appearance....

"You're a card, Gregory!"

He afterward repeated the story with gusto....

* * * * *

The day before the night of our first performance at the Bowersby Opera House, Jack Travers, always turning up, came to me with a smile of faint sarcasm on his face--

"How's the great actor, eh?"

"Don't be an ass, Jack!"

"I've got a good proposition to make for advertising the show--and there'll be a lot of fun in it, too....

"Suppose we kidnap you, take you out somewhere in the country--then, after a day or so--find you bound, in a farm house....

"Of course it would compel them to put off the performances for a few days ... but look at the excitement; and the stories in the papers!... afterwards you could go on tour through all the principal cities of Kansas."

The idea fascinated me, in spite of myself....

"But how about Dineen? He'd go nearly crazy!"

"There's where a lot of the fun would come in. And to see the way Gertie Black, the elocution teacher, would carry on!..."

But after a long pause of temptation I shook my head in negation of the suggestion....

It _would_ be a lark, but I had pledged Dineen that I would give him no more trouble with my vagaries....

And, besides, I didn't trust Jack Travers--once they had me in their power, he and his kidnappers might hide me away for several weeks ... to "bust up" the play entirely; would, I wisely reflected, be, to Travers, even a greater joke than merely to delay its production.

And I wanted this time to show my enemies that I could be depended on in affairs of moment....

* * * * *

We had to have recourse to Kansas City for our costumes. And we were more fortunate in them than the cast of _She Stoops to Conquer_ had been the year before....

Costumes had then been rented for them which left the children mysteriously itching, driven to the inexplicable necessity of scratching in embarrassing localities....

The poor girls especially were terror-stricken ... and many of the boys were too innocent to conjecture what was the matter ... at first they thought that the rented costumes had imparted some obscure skin disease to the entire company ... and word was conveyed to the costuming firm that they were to be sued....

But when it was discovered that an indecent sort of vermin was the cause, the case was dropped....

Suit could not be conducted on such grounds....

But the joke was passed around and caused considerable merriment among the wise ones.

* * * * *

The only thing I allowed the elocution teacher and directress to do was to put on my make-up for me ... including the sticking to my face of a close Van Dyke beard....

I refused to avail myself of her instruction for acting, as I perceived that was all bosh....

* * * * *

The curtain went up, I sitting there, the orchestra softly breathing Massenet's _Elegy_--meant to be the music sent from the spirit world, the melody that I, Iistral, heard, whenever my dead mistress was present....

The orchestra finished the melody. It stopped and left the house in expectancy.

A mistake had been made on the entrance-cue of little Lisel, my child-nephew.

There I sat, in my strange robe, like a bath-robe, with stars cast over it, waiting.

I knew something had gone wrong.

Several girls (of course everyone in the audience knew me) began to titter at my strange appearance, in my apotheosised bathrobe, in my close Van Dyke beard....

I knew inwardly that in a moment all the house would be laughing ... at first out of sheer nervousness over the delay in the progress of the play--then from genuine amusement....

I threw my will, my entire spirit, against the incoming tide of ridicule which would wreck the play even with the rising of the curtain.