"You all know this dear comrade of ours," he began, "this dear friend
whose really fine soul, while in the body--went under the appellation of
Gabby Jack--"
Here Spalton broke down. He unashamedly dropped into the chair behind
the reading-desk and wept aloud. He could say no more....
* * * * *
In _The Dawn_ for the ensuing month he put a wonderful and beautiful
tribute to his disciple ... who had thoroughly loved, and believed in
him.
* * * * *
On a cold day of blowing snow, "Pete" came tramping in to town ... his
high boots laced to the knees, a heavy alpaca coat about him ... he had
come all the way from Philadelphia on foot, to add his portrait to our
gallery of eccentrics ... but he was not so unusual after all ... there
was too much of the hungry hardness of youth in him, the cocksureness of
conceit which he considered genius.
Immediately he put Spalton to question ... and everything and everybody
to question....
He irritated Spalton most by attacking doctors ... (though Spalton
himself did so in his magazine) ... Spalton's father was an old family
practitioner....
But the Master's revenge came.
"Pete" fell sick. Spalton sent for his father to doctor him. And made
the old man use a strong horse-medicine on him ... which he himself
brought up from the stables....
"The boy is such an ass ..." Spalton told me laughingly, "that it's a
veterinarian he needs, not a doctor."
* * * * *
There was Speedwell, the young naturalist ... a queer, stooping, gentle,
shy thing, who talked almost as an idiot would talk till he got on his
favourite topic of bird and beast and flower. In personal appearance he
was a sort of Emerson gone to weed ... he walked about with a quick,
perky, deprecative step....
"--queer fish," John remarked of him, "but, Razorre, you ought to come
on him in the woods ... there he is a different person ... he sits under
a tree till he seems to become part of the vegetation, the landscape ...
when I had him out to camp with me last summer he would go off alone and
stay away till we thought he had got lost, or had walked into a pond, in
his simpleness, and drowned...."
We followed him, and watched him....
There he sat ... in his brown corduroys ... his lock of hair over his
eyes ... that simple, sweet, idiotic expression, like sick sunshine, on
his mouth....
And after a while the birds came down to him ... pecked all around him
... and a squirrel climbed up on his shoulder ... he seemed to have an
attraction for the wild things ... it wasn't as if they just accepted
him as a part of the surroundings ... the man sat there like a stump
till we grew tired watching, and returned to camp....
Each day he spent most of the day, immobile, like that....
"Say Razorre," the Master continued, after a thoughtful pause, "you know
you nuts are teaching me a lot of things....
"The trouble with the educated, regular folks is that they lose so much
by drawing the line ... often everything that is spontaneous and
fine.... This thing called God, you know, draws the line nowhere....
"If 'Crazy' Speedwell fell heir to a large sum of money, his relatives
could find a commission of physicians anywhere, who would honestly have
him into custody for lunacy ... yet, in some respects, he is the wisest
and kindest man I have ever known ... though, in others, he is often
such a fool as to try my patience very hard, at times."
* * * * *
Most of us who had arrived at "The Studios" from "foreign" parts, slept
in the common dormitory.
We held frequent "roughhouses" there, the younger of us ... to the
annoyance of Speedwell. Spalton finally gave him permission to sleep and
live, alone, in the shed where the fire-truck and hose was stored....
One night, for malicious fun, a beak-nosed young prize-fighter, and
several others (including myself) sneaked into his abode while he slept
... thoughtlessly we turned the gas on and tiptoed out again....
Not long after he came staggering forth, half-suffocated....
Everybody laughed at the tale of this ... at first Spalton himself
laughed, our American spirit of rough joking and horse-play gaining the
uppermost in him ... but then he recalled to mind the seriousness of our
practical joke, and burned with anger at us over what we had done. And
he threatened to "fire" on the spot anyone who ever again molested
"Crazy" Speedwell....
* * * * *
"Old Pfeiler" we called him....
Pfeiler had attended one of Spalton's lectures at Chicago.
Afterward, he had come up front and asked the lecturer if he could make
a place for him at Eos ... that he was out of a job ... starving ... a
poor German scholar ... formerly, in better days, a man of much wealth
and travel....
He had spent his last nickel for admission to Spalton's lecture. Spalton
brought him back to the Eos Artwork Studios.
There he found that the queer, gentle, old man was as helpless as a
child ... all he could be trusted to do was to write addresses on
letters ... which he was set at, not too exactingly....