* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
All work was suspended the day of Jack's funeral.
Spalton eloquently read the curious, crude composition of his disciple
... which had fine flashes, as of lightning in a dark sky, here and
there, in it.