He was a Buddhist, not by pose, but by sincere conviction. He thought,
also, that the Koran was a greater book than the Bible ... and more
miraculous ... "one man, Mohammed, who left a work of greater beauty
than the combined efforts of the several hundred who gave us that
hodge-podge, the Bible."
* * * * *
Pfeiler had been left a fortune by his father, a wealthy German merchant
... so, like Sir Richard Burton, he had made off to the Near East ...
where he had lived among the Turks for ten years ... till, what with his
buying rare manuscripts and Oriental and Turkish art, he had suddenly
run upon the rocks of bankruptcy ... and had returned from the Levantine
a ruined, helpless scholar, who had never been taught to be anything
else but a man of culture and leisure....
By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works
of art, his priceless manuscripts sold ... the money gone like water
through the assiduities of false friends and sycophants....
On the bum in Chicago ... a hotel clerk, discharged as incompetent--he
had forgotten to insist that a man and woman register always as man and
wife ... "because it was such hypocrisy" ... finally a dishwasher, who
lived in a hall bed-room ... no friends because of his abstractedness,
his immersion in oriental scholarship ... his only place of refuge, his
dwelling place, when not washing dishes for a mere existence, the Public
Library....
"Old Pfeiler" drank coffee by the quart, as drunkards drink whiskey. He
had a nervous affliction which caused him to shake his head continually,
as if in impatience ... or as a dog shakes his head to dislodge
something that has crept into his ear....
He was as timid as a girl....
The common dormitory was no place for him ... I am sorry to confess
that, for a while, I helped to make his life miserable for him ... each
night the beak-nosed pugilist-lad and I raised a merry roughhouse in the
place.... Pfeiler was our chief butt. We put things in his bed ... threw
objects about so they would wake him up. One night I found him crying
silently ... but somehow not ignobly ... this made me shift about in my
actions toward him, and see how miserable my conduct had been....
So the next time "Beak-horn," as I called my plug-ugly friend, started
to tease the old man, I asked him to stop ... that we had tormented
Pfeiler long enough. "Beak-horn" replied with a surprised, savage stare
... and the next moment he was on me, half in jest, half in earnest. I
boxed with him as hard and swift as I was able ... but a flock of fists
drove in over me ... and I was thrown prone across the form of the old
man ... who stuttered with fright and impotent rage, swearing it was all
a put-up game between us to torment him further, when I protested that I
had not tried to do it.
* * * * *
The next morning Spalton sent for me.
"Look here, Razorre, if _you_ were not the biggest freak of them all, I
could understand," he remarked severely....
I tried to explain how sorry I was for the way I had joined in Pfeiler's
persecution ... but the master would have none of it ... he told me to
look better to my conduct or he would have to expel me from the
community....
"Gregory," he ended, calling me by my name, "somehow I never quite _get
you_ ... most of the time you are refined and almost over-gentle ... you
know and love poetry and art and the worthwhile things ... but then
there's also the hoodlum in you ... the dirty Hooligan--" his eyes
blazed with just rebuke.... I trod out silently, sick of myself, at
heart ... as I have often, often been.
* * * * *
After that, Pfeiler avoided me. I went up to him in apology. Most
contritely I said I was sorry.
"You are a fraud," he cried at me, spluttering, almost gnashing his
teeth in fury, "you go around here, pretending you are a poet, and have
the soul of a thug, a brute, a coward and bully ... please don't speak
to me any more as long as I'm here ... you only pretend interest in
spiritual and intellectual things, always for some brutal reason ...
even now you are planning something base, some diabolical betrayal of
the Master, perhaps, or of all of us.... I myself have advised Mr.
Spalton, for the good of his community to send you back to the tramps
and jail-birds from whom you come ... you scum! you filthy pestilence!"
His head was shaking like an oscillating toy ... his eyes were starting
from his head through force of his invective ... he was jerking about,
in his anger, like a dancing mouse....
I hurried out of his word-range, overwhelmed with greater shame than I
can ever say.
* * * * *
The editor of the _Independent_, Dr. William Hayes Ward, had, so far,
not found room in his magazine for the two poems of mine he had bought.
I was chagrined, and wrote him, rather impetuously, that, if he didn't
care for the poems he might return them. Which he did, with a rather
frigid and offended reply. I was rendered unhappy by this.