Finally she straightened up her head, stopping her crying with
difficulty.
"We're all so funny, aren't we?"
"Yes, we're a funny bunch, Darrie ... all so mixed up,--the world
wouldn't believe it, would they, if we told them?"
"And you could never make them understand, even if you did tell them.
You know, my dear, old Southern daddy--he thinks Penton is a limb of the
old Nick himself ... with his theories about life, and the freedom of
relations between the sexes, and all that ... even yet he may leave me
out of his will for coming up here, though he has all the confidence in
the world in me."
And Mary Darfield Malcolm--whom we always called "Darrie"--went quickly
to her room when we got back, so the others wouldn't notice that she had
been crying....
* * * * *
Quite often, in the afternoons, toward dusk, around a dying fire, the
whole community had "sings" out in the woods, near the one large stream
that abutted the colony, and gathered into itself, all the little
brooks....
The old songs were sung; rich, beautiful, old Scotch and English and
Irish ballads--which were learnt, by all who wanted to know them, at the
singing school ... and the old-fashioned American songs, too.
And the music softened our hearts and fused us into one harmony of
feeling. And all the bickerings of the community's various "isms" melted
away ... after all, there was not so very much disharmony among us. And,
after all, the marvel is that human beings get along together at all.
* * * * *
The afternoon before the "circus" the little settlement more than ever
took on the appearance of a medieval village ... almost everybody took
turns in participating in the "circus" ... almost everybody togged out
in costume. But first we had a parade of the "guilds" ... the Actors'
Guild, in which Hildreth bore a part; in her pretty tights she looked
like a handsome boy page in some early Italian prince's court.
Don Grahame was the son of the leader of the community whom Jones had
promised to rake over the coals that night, after the circus.
Don led the Carpenters' Guild, looking like nothing else than a handsome
boy Christ. Don, secretly disliking in his heart the free-love doctrines
his father and others taught (though he always rose loyally in his
father's defence) had gone to the other extreme, he lived an ascetic,
virgin life. But it didn't seem to hurt him. He was as handsome as
Hildreth was beautiful.
Everybody liked the young fellow. He had sworn that he would maintain
his manner of abstinent living till he fell in love with a girl who
loved him in return. Then they would live together....
That, he maintained, was the true and only meaning of free love. He had
no use for varietism nor promiscuity.
The Guilds paraded twice around the Village Green, led by the Guild of
Music Masters, who played excellently well.
The Children's Guild was a romping, lovely sight.
* * * * *
The circus was held shortly afterward in the huge communal barn, in the
centre of its great floor,--the spectators seated about on the sides....
There was the trick mule, made up of two men under an ox-hide, the mule
fell apart and precipitated Don Grahame in between its two halves ...
each half then ran away in opposite directions.
Don rode so well that that was the only way they (I mean the mule) could
unseat him. He won much affectionate applause.
Then there was the fearful, great boa-constrictor ... which turned out
to be a double-jointed, lithe, acrobatic, boy-like girl whom we knew as
Jessie ... Jessie, they whispered, was marked for death by consumption,
if she didn't look out and stop smoking so many cigarettes ... she was
slender and pretty--but spoke with an adenoidal thickness of speech.
The colony was as merry as if no storm impended.
We adjourned for supper.
After supper, under the evening star we marched back to the barn again,
which also served as our town hall. On the way there our talk was
subdued and expectant. Many people were disgruntled with Jones.
"Why must he do this?"
"Why can't old Jones let well enough alone?... no community's perfect,
not even our community."
Daniel had been put to bed, angrily objecting.
The five of us joined the flow of people toward the barn. Penton carried
a lantern.
"Jones is all right," said Penton to me, "I like his spirit. I'm going
to stand by him, if he finds himself seriously pressed, just because the
man's spirit is a good one ... nothing mean about him ... but I know
he'll place me among the snobs and wealthy of the community."
When all were gathered, as still as at the opening of a prayer meeting,
Grahame came in, and, with his son and other friends, took seats
opposite Jones. Grahame, who had been master of ceremonies and ring
master for the afternoon circus, had not changed his dress of
knee-britches and ruffed shirt.
The debate was prolonged and fiery....
Jones launched into a gallant attack on Grahame, and was replied to
evasively. Don Grahame wanted to punch Jones's head for what he called
slurs cast at his father's good name....
Penton made a famous speech reconciling, almost, the irreconcilable
parties.
And so we adjourned.
Penton and I accompanied Jones home. All the way the latter was arguing
against Baxter's plea, that he be more lenient with Grahame....
"You look out, Penton," Jones warned with genial firmness ... "Grahame
has been trying to persuade people in this community not to bring shoes
to me to be mended ... a dirty attempt to starve me out ... Oh, no!... I
haven't the slightest trace of persecution mania....
"And you'd better look out, Penton, and not play tennis this Sunday, for
I'm going to strike back at the tennis-playing snobs here, of whom
you're one."
"Jones, what do you mean by that? Surely not a bomb to smear us all over
the courts!" Penton joked.
"A bomb, yes ... it will be a bomb of sorts ... but I warn you you
shan't play games on Sunday any more. I'll see to that ... not that I've
unexpectedly grown religious, but that I mean to strike back as pettily
as the way in which I'm being persecuted."
* * * * *
"I suppose he means the Blue Laws," Penton commented seriously, "but
surely he can get no one to enforce them."
* * * * *
But Jones found a facetious officer of the law or so, down in
Philadelphia, who were as glad of a chance to molest a radical colony as
of an opportunity to put over a good joke....
Baxter, Grahame, Bedell, and others of the prominent members of the
community were haled in to court ... and, to the surprise of everyone,
sentenced to forty-eight hours hard labour on the rock-pile, in the
workhouse....
And Jones sang triumphant snatches of song and hammered away merrily at
shoes in his little shack along the road, while unused hands gathered
water blisters making big stones into little ones, with other and
heavier hammers.
The newspapers made a great to-do about the matter. The affair was just
serio-comic enough to attract nation-wide attention. And the story was a
good one--the story of the anarchist-shoemaker who invoked the use of
archaic, reactionary laws, in his battle against his less radical
antagonists, the Single Taxers and Socialists.
Story after story was also written about our curious little colony.
Penton Baxter shared honours with the shoemaker. Reporters swarmed over
his front porch and into his house to interview him, on the triumphant
return of the party when they had served their forty-eight hours.
Penton gave out interview after interview. And, to his credit let it be
said, though he revelled in the notice accorded him, he also effected
two serious results from what had begun as almost a practical joke ...
he started a fight on the absurd Blue Laws by focusing publicity on them
... and he exposed the bad prison conditions his unknown fellow
prisoners lived under, who had _not_ gone to the workhouse in a jocular
mood because of resurrected Blue Laws.
Jones was willing to let the matter rest, as well as were his other
opponents ... but Baxter kept the fight going as long as he could. He
was accused of loving notoriety. His attitude toward it was mixed. He
did love notoriety ... he enjoyed every clipping about himself with
infinite gusto. But he also used publicity as a lever to get things done
with, that would otherwise never have been noticed. The others were
willing to consider what had happened to them, as a private affair.
Penton gracelessly used that, and every private adventure for
propaganda--turned it sincerely in the way he thought it might benefit
people....
He gave the papers a very bad poem--_The Prison Night_. I remember but
one line of it--
"The convict rasped his vermin-haunted hide."
* * * * *
"Come, get into the group; I want the papers to tell the public about
you, too," he urged me, prophetically, as I stood on the outskirts,
while three camera men were focusing on him, as he stood, expectant,
blandly smiling, and vain-glorious.
"Boys, I want my friend, the poet, Mr. John Gregory, in the picture,
too."
"Oh, all right!" they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism.
But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty.
Penton would have been franker.
Finally, at his urgency, they snapped us, our arms about each other's
shoulders.
In the light of subsequent events, they were glad of that picture.
* * * * *
Our tennis-playing, Blue-Law martyrs, as I have said, were held over
night in the workhouse ... or maybe two nights, I do not exactly
remember which ... and when they came back they were full of the
privations of jail-life, and the degradation of the spirit and mind
suffered by prisoners there. To me, their attitude seemed rather
tender-foot and callow. It was something that would have been accepted
off-handedly by me. I had been in jail often, not for a cause, as I
punned wretchedly, but _be-cause_. I did not accord hero-worship to
Penton when he returned, as the women of the household did.
For a week it quite reconciled Hildreth with him....
* * * * *
But on the first night of his absence Hildreth and I took a stroll
together in the moonlight.
Long the three women and myself had sat in the library, while I read
aloud from a MSS. volume of my poetry, which I intended submitting to
the Macmillans soon. For Ruth knew Mr. Brett and promised to give me an
introduction to him. And I was to make a special trip to the city on the
money I had saved from my weekly remittances ... for Penton would not
permit me to spend a cent for my keep while I visited him. And I had
already been with him three weeks....
* * * * *