Chapter 29

I pictured to myself the beautiful woman who had drowned herself; I burned with her unhappiness ... I felt her hovering near me ... I thought of the lovely passion we had known together ... I _was_ Iistral.

I was not on a stage, but in a room, holding actual and rapt communion with my spirit-bride, Egeria!...

"Egeria! Egeria!" I sobbed ... and tears streamed down my face.

I was miserable, without her, in the flesh ... though she was there, beside me, in soul!

* * * * *

I was aware of the audience again. I was proud and strong in my confidence now. The tittering had stopped. The house was filling with awe. I was pushing something back, back, back--over the footlights. I did not stop pushing till it had reached the topmost galleries....

I _had_ them....

The applause after the first act was wonderful.

"Great! You're great ... you've vindicated my belief in you entirely!" Dineen was shouting, as he clapped me on the back, beside himself.

"Oh, I knew I'd do it!... I want a drink!"

"Here's some grape juice!" Gertie Black hold out a glass to me....

"No, I won't drink that stuff," I replied, with all the petulance and ill-humour traditionally allowed a star.

A Sig-Kapp, whom I had got into the play as a supe, slipped me a drink of real booze....

* * * * *

I had to run to the toilet three times before the second act, I was so nervous and excited.

"For God's sake, keep it up!" urged Dineen.

"For Christ's sake, let me alone, all of you,--I know what I'm doing," this, as the elocution teacher tried to press home some advice....

* * * * *

During the second act I was as electric as during the first, but now I allowed myself to see over the foot-lights and recognise people I knew. I even overheard one girl say to another, "why, Johnnie Gregory is handsome in that Van Dyke!"

"Yes, he has a fine profile ... he looks quite distinguished."

* * * * *

Before the curtain for the third act, Jack Travers worked his way back through the props to my dressing room....

"Sh! I've brought a nip of something real for you, Johnnie!"

"Bill already has given me some. It's enough! I don't want any more!--wait till the last act, and then I'll take it!

"I don't want it _now_! _Do you hear_!" I almost screamed, as he mischievously insisted.

The bell rang for the third curtain....

The news had come for Iistral that his rich uncle in America had died and left him a fortune ... now his family would try and have him adjudged insane, in order to lay hands on the wealth for their own uses....

That third act went off well....

"But you skipped a few lines in that act, Mr. Gregory," warned the directress, concerned.

"Oh, let me alone, will you!" I returned, enjoying the petulance of stardom to the full....

"Remember the fight-scene at the finish," she persisted, "just _pretend_ to strike with the shovel ... you might hurt someone!" anxiously.

"I am going to act the thing realistically, not as a matter of stagecraft."

She tiptoed away. And I had the satisfaction of hearing her instruct the boys who acted as guards, and who were to seize on me--in my moment of physical exasperation--

"Grab him before the cue, just a trifle before it! I think Mr. Gregory is going to forget himself!"

* * * * *

I swung the shovel high in the air, making at all my relatives, crying out terms of reproach ... sobbing....

In the audience, everybody sat still with wonder.

The actors scattered from my brandished shovel, just as they would have done in real life ... the directress had schooled them to crowd about me so as to mask the action.

But the action needed no masking. It was real.

The two guards were on me,--boys who, in everyday life, were big football men on the freshman team....

I fought them, frenzied, back and forth over the stage, smashing down the pasteboard hedge, falling ... getting up again....

But, though the scenery went down, the audience did not laugh, but sat spellbound.

I was finally dragged away ... on the way to the asylum, half my costume torn from my body ... and I kept crying aloud ... for mercy ... for deliverance ... after the curtain had long gone down....

"Big Bill" Heizer gave me a thump in the ribs.

"For God's sake, Mr. Gregory" (he had called me "Johnnie" always, before) "it's only play-acting ... it's not real ... quit it ... it gets me."

* * * * *

The audience went wild with applause. I had won Laurel's complete approbation--for the day, as I had won Mt. Hebron's, that fall Field Day, long before!

* * * * *

Travers had slipped me just one shot of whiskey before the last act went on. He had tried to persuade me to drink more. He was in my dressing room....

* * * * *

I could hardly stand, from the weakness of excitement and exertion.

After the play was over--

"_Now_ you can give me the rest of the bottle."

"We'll drink it together ... to your success, Gregory!"

"Yes--you devil!" I replied, fond of him, "you'd have had me reeling drunk, that last act, if I had listened to you."

And I gave him an affectionate clout in the ribs.

* * * * *

Again the professors were urging me to become more "regular" and pointing out the great career that awaited me--if I only would work.

There was some subsequent talk of sending the play to Osageville, Topeka, Kansas City....

But the faculty opposed it ... it would not be proper to send girls and boys out together, travelling about like a regular theatrical company.

* * * * *

As it had been said that I was going to take up the career of animal trainer,--after my going into the cage with the lions--so it was now pronounced, and reported in the papers--Travers saw to that--that I meditated a career as a professional actor....

* * * * *

Gleeful, and vastly relieved, Professor Dineen slipped me twenty-five dollars out of his own pocket.

Several fraternities showed indications of "rushing" me, after my star performance ... but my associations with the odd characters about town and the wild, ignorant farmers of the lower type that drove in each Saturday from the adjacent country, made them, at first, hesitate ... then utterly drop the idea....

* * * * *

Broke, I now wrote a long letter to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth.

I boldly complained of my poverty, inasmuch as it deterred me from my work.

"I have now proven my case," I wrote him,--"my poems have appeared in the _Century_, in _Everybody's_, in _Munsey's_....

"I have acted, as well, as a professional in a first-rate play, by a great European dramatist ... giving Kansas the distinction of being the first to produce _Iistral_ on the American stage....

"_Now_ I want to finish my four-act play on Judas. To do so I must have enough to eat and a place to sleep, without being made to worry about it, for a year....

"Can't you help me to a millionaire?"

Mackworth answered me generously, affectionately.

In two weeks he had procured my millionaire ... Derek, of Chicago, the bathtub magnate ... how much could I get on with?

I wrote that I could do with seven dollars a week....

Mackworth replied not to be a fool--that Derek was willing to make it fifteen, for a year's duration....

I replied that I could only take enough to fill my simplest wants....

Derek jocosely added fifty cents to the sum I asked--"for postage stamps"-- ... for one year, week in, week out, without a letter from me except those indicating changes of address, without sending me a word of advice, criticism, or condemnation, no matter what I got into ... Derek sent me that weekly stipend of seven dollars and fifty cents!...

* * * * *

I settled down to consecutive literary work.

Lyrics I could write under any condition. They came to me so deeply from the subconscious that at times they almost seemed like spirit-control, which, at times, I am sure they had been, till I set the force of my will against them. For I was resolved that what _I_ wrote should be an emanation from my own personality, not from dead and gone poets who used me for a medium.

But when it came to long and consecutive effort, the continual petty worry of actual penury sapped my mind so that I lacked the power of application....

With Derek's remittances this obstacle was removed....

I had soon completed the first act of my apostolic play....

And then I plunged into a scrape, together with my fellow members of the press or "Scoop Club," as it was more popularly known, which halted my work mid-way....

* * * * *

Our common adventure derived its inception from a casual remark of Jack Travers', at one of our meetings....

Ever since Arthur Brisbane had come to Laurel, Jack had been on his toes....

"Brisbane brought me a breath of what it must mean to be a big newspaper man in the world outside," said Travers, as he stretched and yawned, "why don't we," he continued, "_start_ something to show 'em we're alive, and not dead like so many of the intellects on the Hill!"

"--s all right to talk about starting something ... that's easy to do. The hell of it is, to stop it, after you've got it started," philosophised "The Colonel"....

"Just what is it that you propose starting?" asked practical, pop-eyed Tom Jenkins.

"Oh, anything that will cause excitement!" waved Travers, serenely.

"If you boys really want some excitement ... and want to do some service for the community at the same time,--I've got a scheme to suggest ... something I've been thinking over for a long time," suggested Jerome Miller, president of the club....

"Tell us what it is, Jerome!"

"The Bottoms ... you know how rotten it is down there ... nigger whorehouses ... every other house a bootlegger's joint ... blind pigs ... blind tigers, for the students....

"We might show up the whole affair....

"--how the city administration thrives on the violation of the law from that quarter ... how the present administration depends on crime and the whiskey elements to keep it in power by their vote....

"_That_ would be starting something!"

"I should say it would!" shouted Jack Travers, ablaze with enthusiasm.

"Then we might extend operations," continued the masterful, incisive Jerome, "and show up how all the drug stores are selling whiskey by the gallon, for 'medicinal' purposes, abusing the privilege of the law."

"But how is all this to be done?"

"Through the _Laurelian_?"

"No ... I have a better plan than that ... we might be able to persuade 'Senator' Blair and old Sickert, joint editors of the _Laurel Globe_, to let the Scoop Club run their paper for a day--just as a college stunt!"

"They'd never stand for it!" I averred, innocently.

"Of course they wouldn't--if we let them in on what we were up to!--for they are staunch supporters of the present administration--but they won't smell a rat till the edition is off the press ... and then it will be too late to stop it!"

"In other words," laughed Travers, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his nose, "they'll think they're turning over their paper, _The Globe_, to a bunch of boys to have some harmless fun ... a few sophomoric jokes on the professors, and so forth....

"And they'll wake up, to find we've slipped a real man-size sheet over on them, for the first time in local history!"

"It'll raise hell's all I've got to say!" sagely commented the prematurely bald "Colonel," his eyes glinting merrily.

"It'll be lots of fun," remarked Travers, characteristically, "and I'm for it, lock, stock, and barrel."

"That's not the reason I'm for it; I'm for it for two reasons," reinforced Jerome Miller magisterially, "first, because it will put the Scoop Club on the map as something more than a mere college boys' organisation; secondly, because it will lead to civic betterment, if only temporary--a shaking up where this old burg needs a shaking up ... right at the court house and in the police station....

"But, make no mistake about it,--it's going to kick up a big dust!

"Also, remember, no one is going to stand by us ... even the Civic Betterment League, headed by Professor Langworth--your friend, Johnnie--will be angry with us--say our methods are too sensational.

"And the university authorities will say we shouldn't have done it because it will give the school a black eye ... it will be Ibsen's _Enemy of Society_ all over again!..."

Immediately some of our more conservative members set themselves against the "clean up" ... but Jack Travers and I delivered eloquent, rousing speeches. And the decision was more for full steam ahead.

* * * * *

"Senator" Blair was easily deluded, and persuaded to turn his paper over to us, for one day.

Our strong-featured, energetic president, Jerome Miller, together with the suave, plausible Travers, went to see him, deputation-wise, where he sat, in the Laurel _Globe's_ editorial office,--white and unhealthy-looking, a great, fat slug of a man, with the slug's nature, which battens on the corruption of earth.

He liked the idea of the publicity his paper would get through the stunt of the "boys." He did not guess the kind of publicity he would really come into.

During the three weeks that we had before we were to bring out the paper we grew quite proficient in the tawdry life lived in the "Bottoms."

We found out that most of the ramshackle "nigger" dives were owned by a former judge ... from which he derived exorbitant rents.

We located all the places where booze was sold, and ascertained exactly how much whiskey was disposed of in the town's drug stores for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble." We discovered many interesting things--that, for instance, "Old Aunt Jennie," who would allow her patrons any vice, but demurred when they took the name of "De Lawd" in vain--"Old Aunt Jennie" ran a "house" where the wilder and more debauched among the students came (in justice to Laurel University, let me add, very few) girls and boys together,--and stayed for the night--when they were supposed to be on trips to Kansas City....

Travers and "The Colonel" and I were half-lit for two weeks....

That was the only way to collect the evidence.

I drank but sparingly, as I loafed about the joints and "houses."

Jerome Miller did not drink at all ... and was the spirit and soul of our activities.

* * * * *

"Senator" Blair came out with a humorous editorial the night before we were to take the day's charge of his paper.

He headed his editorial "A Youthful Interim ... Youth Must Be Served!"

He was laying down his pen, he wrote, for a week-end holiday ... he had dug a can of bait and would go fishing, turning all the care and trouble of a newspaper over to youth and eagerness ... would forgot all his troubles for a few days....

The editorial made us roar with laughter ... Blair didn't know the trouble that was preparing for him.

* * * * *

I wrote a poem for the Scoop Club Edition of the Laurel _Globe_ ...

"The Bottoms now I sing, where whiskey flows And two-cent makes life coleur de rose, Where negro shanties line the sordid way And rounders wake by night who sleep by day--"

* * * * *

By noon of the day, hints of what was coming were riding the winds of general report....

Carefully we read the proofs.

At last there it was--all the data, statistics, and details of the town's debauchery and corruption ... damning, in cold type, the administration, and the aquiescent powers in the university.

We ourselves had not as yet begun to perceive what it would lead to--a state-wide scandal that would echo in the Chicago, San Francisco and New York newspapers, and result in severe criticism of the university faculty for remaining blind to such a condition of affairs ... and how there would be interrogations in the Kansas Legislature and a complete shake-up of the political power in Laurel.

* * * * *

News of the forthcoming exposé spread mysteriously in "The Bottoms" before the paper was off the press. To avoid the coming storm, already negro malefactors and white, were "streaming" as Travers phrased it, "in dark clouds" out of town, for brief sojourns, beyond reach of the compelling subpoena, in Kansas City, Missouri.

By five o'clock the edition, an extra large one, had been almost exhausted, and people were lining up at the newspaper office, paying five cents a copy....

"Senator" Blair rushed back, having heard of what he called our "treachery" and abuse of his confidence, over telephone....

He looked sick and worried, as if he had run in all the way from the little lake, five miles from town, where he had gone for his week-end of idyllic, peaceful fishing....

"You've ruined me, you boys have!" he almost sobbed, collapsing fatly in his chair, then he flamed, "by God, I'll have you each investigated personally and clapped in jail," ... which threat, however, he did not even try to carry through....

Instead, his paper, and the other two town papers, tried to turn off the affair as a mere college joke, played on a whole community....

But we had expected just such action--rather the executive genius of Jerome had expected it--for which reason we had confronted the readers of the _Globe_ with damning facts and statistics, carefully gathered, which presented an insurmountable barrier to evasion.

And as we also had expected, the Civic Betterment League was also dead against us....

"Why," cried Langworth to me, "why didn't you bring all the evidence to us, and let _us_ proceed calmly and soberly with the case?"

"Professor Langworth, you are a friend of mine, and a very good one--but you know very well that the conditions exposed you people knew of all along ... and for years you have dallied along without acting on it."

"We were biding the proper time!"

"The reason you never started something was your fear of involving the university in the publicity that was sure to follow!..."

Langworth was a good man, but he knew I had him. He hemmed and hawed, then covered his retreat in half-hearted anger at me....

"You know well enough, Johnnie Gregory, that all you boys did it for was to 'pull a stunt'--indulge in a little youthful horseplay."

"Granted--but we have effected results!"

* * * * *

"What results? merely a lot of trouble for everybody!"

"The Civic Betterment League now has a chance afforded it to make good ... we've provided you with the indisputable data, the evidence ... it's up to you, now, to go ahead."

"So God help me, Johnnie, sometimes you make me wish I had never sponsored you here."

* * * * *

The editor of the _Globe_ made a right-about-face--repudiating us.

Jack Travers, in the style of his beloved Brisbane, put an editorial in the school paper, the _Laurelian_, addressed to Blair, beginning, "Get back into the collar of your masters, you contemptible cur."

* * * * *

The usual thing took place. Most of the worst criminals were mysteriously given ample time to make their get-away ... probably aided in it. The humorous side of the resulting investigation and trials of various minor malefactors were played up almost exclusively.

Little by little the town dropped back to its outward observance of not seeing in its civic life what it did not care to see, and which no one could radically remedy till human nature is itself different.

* * * * *

The school year was drawing to a close, my last year at Laurel.

Professor Black, of the English department, had assured me that, if I would tone down a bit, I could easily win a scholarship in his department, and, later, an assistant professorship.

But I preferred my rambling, haphazard course of life, which was less comfortable, but better for the freedom of mind and spirit that poets must preserve....

Dr. Hammond, when I had given him that luncheon on the borrowed money, had taken me aside and informed me that one of the professors--an influential man on the Hill (beyond that, he refused to identify him further) had advised him, Hammond, not to accept the luncheon in his honour....

"We don't approve generally of Gregory, on the Hill, you know...."

And Hammond had, he told me, replied--

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Gregory is my friend, and Dr. Ward, our literary editor, looks on him as a distinguished contributor to the _Independent_, and a young writer of great and growing promise" ... so the luncheon was given ... I wonder if the protesting professor was one of those invited, and if so, if he attended?...

I saw clearly that I could never fit into the formal, academic life of the college--where professors were ashamed to be seen carrying packages and bags home from the stores, but must have them delivered ... for fear of losing their social status!

* * * * *

There was a park on the outskirts of town where I loved to loaf, when the weather was sunny,--a place where the blue jays fought with the squirrels and the leaves flickered in the sun ... sometimes I lay on the grass, reading ... sometimes I lounged on a bench ... I read my Greek and Latin poets there ... and my English and German poets ... and, when hungry, I sauntered home to my bread and cheese, or, now that I was in receipt of Derek's weekly stipend, to a frugal meal at some lunch counter. I dearly liked rib-ends of beef....

One day, when I was in my park, lying on my belly, reading Josephus, I was aware of the deputy sheriff, Small, whom I knew, standing over me....

"Oh, it's _you_, Gregory!"

"Yes, what's the matter, Deputy Small? what do you want?"

"People who drove in from the country complained about your lying here."

"Complained about my lying here? what the hell!... look'e here, Jim Small, there's no ordinance to prevent me from lying on the grass."

"Well, Johnnie, you either got to git up and sit, proper, on a bench, or I'll have to pull you in, much as I dislike to do it."

"Jim, you just 'pull' ahead, if you think you're lucky ... it'll be a fine thing for me ... I'll sue the city for false arrest."

Deputy Small was puzzled. He pushed his hat back and scratched his head....

"Jim, who put you up to this?"

"The people what saw you lying here, as they drove in, stopped off at the office of the _Globe_ ... it was 'Senator' Blair telephoned the courthouse--"

"Blair, eh?... trying to get even for what we boys did with his dirty paper ... he knows I like to lie out here and read my books of poetry!"

I was thoroughly aroused. I jumped to my feet.

"Jim, do me a favour, and arrest me ... and I'll sue you, the city of Laurel, and 'Senator' Blair ... all three of you!"

"--guess I won't do it ... but _do_ sit on the bench ... I ask it as a personal favour, Johnnie."

"As a personal favour, Jim, till you are out of sight. Then I'll go back to the grass."

That night Blair, cocksure, had the story of my arrest in the paper. But, as it happened, he was too previous....

Jerome Miller and Jack Travers joined me in going to the office of the _Globe_, the next morning....

After we had finished telling him what we thought of him, the "Senator" begged my pardon profusely, and the next day a retraction was printed....

* * * * *

And now school was over at Laurel.

And I determined to bum my way to New York, and, from there, ship on a cattleboat to Europe. Where I would finish writing my play, _Judas_.

Farewell to Laurel!--

I went up to the athletic field and ran my last two miles on its track, at top speed, as good-bye to its cinders forever!