A child of the road--a gypsy I--
My path o'er the land and sea;
With the fire of youth I warm my nights
And my days are wild and free.
Then ho! for the wild, the open road!
Afar from the haunts of men.
The woods and the hills for my spirit untamed--
I'm away to mountain and glen.
If ever I tried to leave my hills
To abide in the cramped haunts of men,
The urge of the wild to her wayward child
Would drag me to freedom again.
I'm slave to the call of the open road;
In your cities I'd stifle and die.
I'm off to the hills in fancy I see--
On the breast of old earth I'll lie.
WILFRED LENNOX, the Hobo Poet,
On a Coast-to-Coast Walking Tour.
These Cards for sale.
I briefly pondered the lyric. It told its own simple story and could at
once have been dismissed but for its divined and puzzling relationship
to the popular society favourite of Nome, Alaska. What could there be in
this?
Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill bustled in upon my speculation, but as
usual I was compelled to wait for the talk I wanted. For some moments
she would be only the tired owner of the Arrowhead Ranch--in the tea
gown of a debutante and with too much powder on one side of her
nose--and she must have at least one cup of tea so corrosive that the
Scotch whiskey she adds to it is but a merciful dilution. She now drank
eagerly of the fearful brew, dulled the bite of it with smoke from a
hurriedly built cigarette, and relaxed gratefully into one of those
chairs which are all that most of us remember William Morris for. Even
then she must first murmur of the day's annoyances, provided this time
by officials of the United States Forest Reserve. In the beginning I
must always allow her a little to have her own way.
"The annual spring rumpus with them rangers," she wearily boomed. "Every
year they tell me just where to turn my cattle out on the Reserve, and
every year I go ahead and turn 'em out where I want 'em turned out,
which ain't the same place at all, and then I have to listen patiently
to their kicks and politely answer all letters from the higher-ups and
wait for the official permit, which always comes--and it's wearing on a
body. Darn it! They'd ought to know by this time I always get my own
way. If they wasn't such a decent bunch I'd have words with 'em, giving
me the same trouble year after year, probably because I'm a weak,
defenceless woman. However!"
The lady rested largely, inert save for the hand that raised the
cigarette automatically to her lips. My moment had come.
"What did Wilfred Lennox, the hobo poet, have to do with Mr. Ben Sutton,
of Nome, Alaska?" I gently inquired.
"More than he wanted," replied the lady. Her glance warmed with
memories; she hovered musingly on the verge of recital. But the
cigarette was half done and at its best. I allowed her another moment, a
moment in which she laughed confidentially to herself, a little dry,
throaty laugh. I knew that laugh. She would be marshalling certain
events in their just and diverting order. But they seemed to be many and
of confusing values.
"Some said he not only wasn't a hobo but wasn't even a poet," she
presently murmured, and smoked again. Then: "That Ben Sutton, now, he's
a case. Comes from Alaska and don't like fresh eggs for breakfast
because he says they ain't got any kick to 'em like Alaska eggs have
along in March, and he's got to have canned milk for his coffee. Say, I
got a three-quarters Jersey down in Red Gap gives milk so rich that the
cream just naturally trembles into butter if you speak sharply to it or
even give it a cross look; not for Ben though. Had to send out for
canned milk that morning. I drew the line at hunting up case eggs for
him though. He had to put up with insipid fresh ones. And fat, that man!
My lands! He travels a lot in the West when he does leave home, and he
tells me it's the fear of his life he'll get wedged into one of them
narrow-gauge Pullmans some time and have to be chopped out. Well, as I
was saying--" She paused.
"But you haven't begun," I protested. I sharply tapped the printed
verses and the photograph reading from left to right. Now she became
animated, speaking as she expertly rolled a fresh cigarette.
"Say, did you ever think what aggravating minxes women are after they
been married a few years--after the wedding ring gets worn a little bit
thin?"
This was not only brutal; it seemed irrelevant.
"Wilfred Lennox--" I tried to insist, but she commandingly raised the
new cigarette at me.
"Yes, sir! Ever know one of 'em married for as long as ten years that
didn't in her secret heart have a sort of contempt for her life partner
as being a stuffy, plodding truck horse? Of course they keep a certain
dull respect for him as a provider, but they can't see him as dashing
and romantic any more; he ain't daring and adventurous. All he ever does
is go down and open up the store or push back the roll-top, and keep
from getting run over on the street. One day's like another with him,
never having any wild, lawless instincts or reckless moods that make a
man fascinating--about the nearest he ever comes to adventure is when he
opens the bills the first of the month. And she often seeing him without
any collar on, and needing a shave mebbe, and cherishing her own secret
romantic dreams, while like as not he's prosily figuring out how he's
going to make the next payment on the endowment policy.
"It's a hard, tiresome life women lead, chained to these here plodders.
That's why rich widows generally pick out the dashing young devils they
do for their second, having buried the man that made it for 'em. Oh,
they like him well enough, call him 'Father' real tenderly, and see
that he changes to the heavy flannels on time, but he don't ever thrill
them, and when they order three hundred and fifty dollars' worth of duds
from the Boston Cash Emporium and dress up like a foreign countess, they
don't do it for Father, they do it for the romantic guy in the magazine
serial they're reading, the handsome, cynical adventurer that has such
an awful power over women. They know darned well they won't ever meet
him; still it's just as well to be ready in case he ever should make Red
Gap--or wherever they live--and it's easy with the charge account there,
and Father never fussing more than a little about the bills.
"Not that I blame 'em. We're all alike--innocent enough, with freaks
here and there that ain't. Why, I remember about a thousand years ago I
was reading a book called 'Lillian's Honour,' in which the rightful earl
didn't act like an earl had ought to, but went travelling off over the
moors with a passel of gypsies, with all the she-gypsies falling in love
with him, and no wonder--he was that dashing. Well, I used to think what
might happen if he should come along while Lysander John was out with
the beef round-up or something. I was well-meaning, understand, but at
that I'd ought to have been laid out with a pick-handle. Oh, the nicest
of us got specks inside us--if ever we did cut loose the best one of us
would make the worst man of you look like nothing worse than a naughty
little boy cutting up in Sunday-school. What holds us, of course--we
always dream of being took off our feet; of being carried off by main
force against our wills while we snuggle up to the romantic brute and
plead with him to spare us--and the most reckless of 'em don't often get
their nerve up to that. Well, as I was saying--"
But she was not saying. The thing moved too slowly. And still the woman
paltered with her poisoned tea and made cigarettes and muttered
inconsequently, as when she now broke out after a glance at the
photograph:
"That Ben Sutton certainly runs amuck when he buys his vests. He must
have about fifty, and the quietest one in the lot would make a leopard
skin look like a piker." Again her glance dreamed off to visions.
I seated myself before her with some emphasis and said firmly: "Now,
then!" It worked.
"Wilfred Lennox," she began, "calling himself the hobo poet, gets into
Red Gap one day and makes the rounds with that there piece of poetry you
see; pushes into stores and offices and hands the piece out, and like as
not they crowd a dime or two bits onto him and send him along. That's
what I done. I was waiting in Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale's office for a
little painless dentistry, and I took Wilfred's poem and passed him a
two-bit piece, and Doc Martingale does the same, and Wilfred blew on to
the next office. A dashing and romantic figure he was, though kind of
fat and pasty for a man that was walking from coast to coast, but a
smooth talker with beautiful features and about nine hundred dollars'
worth of hair and a soft hat and one of these flowing neckties. Red it
was.
"So I looked over his piece of poetry--about the open road for his
untamed spirit and him being stifled in the cramped haunts of men--and
of course I get his number. All right about the urge of the wild to her
wayward child, but here he was spending a lot of time in the cramped
haunts of men taking their small change away from 'em and not seeming to
stifle one bit.
"Ain't this new style of tramp funny? Now instead of coming round to the
back door and asking for a hand-out like any self-respecting tramp had
ought to, they march up to the front door, and they're somebody with two
or three names that's walking round the world on a wager they made with
one of the Vanderbilt boys or John D. Rockefeller. They've walked
thirty-eight hundred miles already and got the papers to prove it--a
letter from the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the mayor of
Davenport, Iowa, a picture post card of themselves on the courthouse
steps at Denver, and they've bet forty thousand dollars they could start
out without a cent and come back in twenty-two months with money in
their pocket--and ain't it a good joke?--with everybody along the way
entering into the spirit of it and passing them quarters and such, and
thank you very much for your two bits for the picture post card--and
they got another showing 'em in front of the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt
Lake City, if you'd like that, too--and thank you again--and now they'll
be off once more to the open road and the wild, free life. Not! Yes, two
or three good firm Nots. Having milked the town they'll be right down to
the dee-po with their silver changed to bills, waiting for No. 6 to come
along, and ho! for the open railroad and another town that will skin
pretty. I guess I've seen eight or ten of them boys in the last five
years, with their letters from mayors.
"But this here Wilfred Lennox had a new graft. He was the first I'd give
up to for mere poetry. He didn't have a single letter from a mayor, nor
even a picture card of himself standing with his hat off in front of
Pike's Peak--nothing but poetry. But, as I said, he was there with a
talk about pining for the open road and despising the cramped haunts of
men, and he had appealing eyes and all this flowing hair and necktie. So
I says to myself: 'All right, Wilfred, you win!' and put my purse back
in my bag and thought no more of it.
"Yet not so was it to be. Wilfred, working the best he could to make a
living doing nothing, pretty soon got to the office of Alonzo Price,
Choice Improved Real Estate and Price's Addition. Lon was out for the
moment, but who should be there waiting for him but his wife, Mrs.
Henrietta Templeton Price, recognized leader of our literary and
artistic set. Or I think they call it a 'group' or a 'coterie' or
something. Setting at Lon's desk she was, toying petulantly with horrid
old pens and blotters, and probably bestowing glances of disrelish from
time to time round the grimy office where her scrubby little husband
toiled his days away in unromantic squalor.
"I got to tell you about Henrietta. She's one of them like I just said
the harsh things about, with the secret cry in her heart for romance and
adventure and other forbidden things and with a kindly contempt for
peaceful Alonzo. She admits to being thirty-six, so you can figure it
out for yourself. Of course she gets her husband wrong at that, as women
so often do. Alonzo has probably the last pair of side whiskers outside
of a steel engraving and stands five feet two, weighing a hundred and
twenty-six pounds at the ring side, but he's game as a swordfish, and as
for being romantic in the true sense of the word--well, no one that ever
heard him sell a lot in Price's Addition--three miles and a half up on
the mesa, with only the smoke of the canning factory to tell a body they
was still near the busy haunts of men, that and a mile of concrete
sidewalk leading a life of complete idleness--I say no one that ever
listened to Lon sell a lot up there, pointing out on a blue print the
proposed site of the Carnegie Library, would accuse him of not being
romantic.
"But of course Henrietta never sees Lon's romance and he ain't always
had the greatest patience with hers--like the time she got up the Art
Loan Exhibit to get new books for the M.E. Sabbath-school library and
got Spud Mulkins of the El Adobe to lend 'em the big gold-framed oil
painting that hangs over his bar. Some of the other ladies objected to
this--the picture was a big pink hussy lying down beside the
ocean--but Henrietta says art for art's sake is pure to them that are
pure, or something, and they're doing such things constantly in the
East; and I'm darned if Spud didn't have his oil painting down and the
mosquito netting ripped off it before Alonzo heard about it and put the
Not-at-All on it. He wouldn't reason with Henrietta either. He just said
his objection was that every man that saw it would put one foot up
groping for the brass railing, which would be undignified for a
Sabbath-school scheme, and that she'd better hunt out something with
clothes on like Whistler's portrait of his mother, or, if she wanted the
nude in art, to get the Horse Fair or something with animals.
"I tell you that to show you how they don't hit it off sometimes. Then
Henrietta sulks. Kind of pinched and hungry looking she is, drapes her
black hair down over one side of her high forehead, wears daring
gowns--that's what she calls 'em anyway--and reads the most outrageous
kinds of poetry out loud to them that will listen. Likes this Omar
Something stuff about your path being beset with pitfalls and gin fizzes
and getting soused out under a tree with your girl.
"I'm just telling you so you'll get Henrietta when Wilfred Lennox drips
gracefully in with his piece of poetry in one hand. Of course she must
have looked long and nervously at Wilfred, then read his poetry, then
looked again. There before her was Romance against a background of
Alonzo Price, who never had an adventurous or evil thought in his life,
and wore rubbers! Oh, sure! He must have palsied her at once, this wild,
free creature of the woods who couldn't stand the cramped haunts of men.
And I have said that Wilfred was there with the wild, free words about
himself, and the hat and tie and the waving brown hair that give him so
much trouble. Shucks! I don't blame the woman. It's only a few years
since we been let out from under lock and key. Give us a little time to
get our bearings, say I. Wilfred was just one big red splash before her
yearning eyes; he blinded her. And he stood there telling how this here
life in the marts of trade would sure twist and blacken some of the very
finest chords in his being. Something like that it must have been.
"Anyway, about a quarter to six a procession went up Fourth Street,
consisting of Wilfred Lennox, Henrietta, and Alonzo. The latter was
tripping along about three steps back of the other two and every once in
a while he would stop for a minute and simply look puzzled. I saw him.
It's really a great pity Lon insists on wearing a derby hat with his
side whiskers. To my mind the two never seem meant for each other.
"The procession went to the Price mansion up on Ophir Avenue. And that
evening Henrietta had in a few friends to listen to the poet recite his
verses and tell anecdotes about himself. About five or six ladies in
the parlour and their menfolks smoking out on the front porch. The men
didn't seem to fall for Wilfred's open-road stuff the way the ladies
did. Wilfred was a good reciter and held the ladies with his voice and
his melting blue eyes with the long lashes, and Henrietta was envied for
having nailed him. That is, the women envied her. The men sort of
slouched off down to the front gate and then went down to the Temperance
Billiard Parlour, where several of 'em got stewed. Most of 'em, like old
Judge Ballard, who come to the country in '62, and Jeff Tuttle, who's
always had more than he wanted of the open road, were very cold indeed
to Wilfred's main proposition. It is probable that low mutterings might
have been heard among 'em, especially after a travelling man that was
playing pool said the hobo poet had come in on the Pullman of No. 6.
"But I must say that Alonzo didn't seem to mutter any, from all I could
hear. Pathetic, the way that little man will believe right up to the
bitter end. He said that for a hobo Wilfred wrote very good poetry,
better than most hobos could write, he thought, and that Henrietta
always knew what she was doing. So the evening come to a peaceful end,
most of the men getting back for their wives and Alonzo showing up in
fair shape and plumb eager for the comfort of his guest. It was Alonzo's
notion that the guest would of course want to sleep out in the front
yard on the breast of old earth where he could look up at the pretty
stars and feel at home, and he was getting out a roll of blankets when
the guest said he didn't want to make the least bit of trouble and for
one night he'd manage to sleep inside four stifling walls in a regular
bed, like common people do. So Lon bedded him down in the guest chamber,
but opened up the four windows in it and propped the door wide open so
the poor fellow could have a breeze and not smother. He told this
downtown the next morning, and he was beginning to look right puzzled
indeed. He said the wayward child of Nature had got up after about half
an hour and shut all the windows and the door. Lon thought first he was
intending to commit suicide, but he didn't like to interfere. He was
telling Jeff Tuttle and me about it when we happened to pass his office.
"'And there's another funny thing,'" he says. 'This chap was telling us
all the way up home last night that he never ate meat--simply fruits and
nuts with a mug of spring water. He said eating the carcasses of
murdered beasts was abhorrent to him. But when we got down to the table
he consented to partake of the roast beef and he did so repeatedly. We
usually have cold meat for lunch the day after a rib roast, but there
will be something else to-day; and along with the meat he drank two
bottles of beer, though with mutterings of disgust. He said spring water
in the hills was pure, but that water out of pipes was full of typhoid
germs. He admitted that there were times when the grosser appetites
assailed him. And they assailed him this morning, too. He said he might
bring himself to eat some chops, and he did it without scarcely a
struggle. He ate six. He said living the nauseous artificial life even
for one night brought back the hateful meat craving. I don't know. He is
undeniably peculiar. And of course you've heard about Pettikin's affair
for this evening?'
"We had. Just before leaving the house I had received Henrietta's card
inviting me to the country club that evening 'to meet Mr. Wilfred
Lennox, Poet and Nature Lover, who will recite his original verses and
give a brief talk on "The World's Debt to Poetry."' And there you have
the whole trouble. Henrietta should have known better. But I've let out
what women really are. I told Alonzo I would sure be among those
present, I said it sounded good. And then Alonzo pipes up about Ben
Sutton coming to town on the eleven forty-two from the West. Ben makes a
trip out of Alaska every summer and never fails to stop off a day or two
with Lon, they having been partners up North in '98.
"'Good old Ben will enjoy it, too,' says Alonzo; 'and, furthermore, Ben
will straighten out one or two little things that have puzzled me about
this poet. He will understand his complex nature in a way that I confess
I have been unequal to. What I mean is,' he says, 'there was talk when I
left this morning of the poet consenting to take a class in poetry for
several weeks in our thriving little city, and Henrietta was urging him
to make our house his home. I have a sort of feeling that Ben will be
able to make several suggestions of prime value. I have never known him
to fail at making suggestions.'
"Funny, the way the little man tried to put it over on us, letting on he
was just puzzled--not really bothered, as he plainly was. You knew
Henrietta was still seeing the big red splash of Romance, behind which
the figure of her husband was totally obscured. Jeff Tuttle saw the
facts, and he up and spoke in a very common way about what would quickly
happen to any tramp that tried to camp in his house, poet or no poet,
but that's neither here nor there. We left Alonzo looking cheerily
forward to Ben Sutton on the eleven forty-two, and I went on to do some
errands.
"In the course of these I discovered that others besides Henrietta had
fell hard for the poet of Nature. I met Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale
and she just bubbles about him, she having been at the Prices' the night
before.
"'Isn't he a glorious thing!' she says; 'and how grateful we should be
for the dazzling bit of colour he brings into our drab existence!' She
is a good deal like that herself at times. And I met Beryl Mae Macomber,
a well known young society girl of seventeen, and Beryl Mae says: 'He's
awfully good looking, but do you think he's sincere?' And even Mrs.
Judge Ballard comes along and says: 'What a stimulus he should be to us
in our dull lives! How he shows us the big, vital bits!' and her at that
very minute going into Bullitt & Fleishacker's to buy shoes for her
nine year old twin grandsons! And the Reverend Mrs. Wiley Knapp in at
the Racquet Store wanting to know if the poet didn't make me think of
some wild, free creature of the woods--a deer or an antelope poised for
instant flight while for one moment he timidly overlooked man in his
hideous commercialism. But, of course, she was a minister's wife. I said
he made me feel just like that. I said so to all of 'em. What else could
I say? If I'd said what I thought there on the street I'd of been
pinched. So I beat it home in self-protection. I was sympathizing good
and hearty with Lon Price by that time and looking forward to Ben Sutton
myself. I had a notion Ben would see the right of it where these poor
dubs of husbands wouldn't--or wouldn't dast say it if they did.
"About five o'clock I took another run downtown for some things I'd
forgot, with an eye out to see how Alonzo and Ben might be coming on.
The fact is, seeing each other only once a year that way they're apt to
kind of loosen up--if you know what I mean.
"No sign of 'em at first. Nothing but ladies young and old--even some of
us older ranching set--making final purchases of ribbons and such for
the sole benefit of Wilfred Lennox, and talking in a flushed manner
about him whenever they met. Almost every darned one of 'em had made it
a point to stroll past the Price mansion that afternoon where Wilfred
was setting out on the lawn, in a wicker chair with some bottles of beer
surveying Nature with a look of lofty approval and chatting with
Henrietta about the real things of life.
"Beryl Mae Macomber had traipsed past four times, changing her clothes
twice with a different shade of ribbon across her forehead and all her
college pins on, and at last she'd simply walked right in and asked if
she hadn't left her tennis racquet there last Tuesday. She says to Mrs.
Judge Ballard and Mrs. Martingale and me in the Cut-Rate Pharmacy, she
says: 'Oh, he's just awfully magnetic--but do you really think he's
sincere?' Then she bought an ounce of Breath of Orient perfume and kind
of two-stepped out. These other ladies spoke very sharply about the
freedom Beryl Mae's aunt allowed her. Mrs. Martingale said the poet, it
was true, had a compelling personality, but what was our young girls
coming to? And if that child was hers--
"So I left these two lady highbinders and went on into the retail side
of the Family Liquor Store to order up some cooking sherry, and there
over the partition from the bar side what do I hear but Alonzo Price and
Ben Sutton! Right off I could tell they'd been pinning a few on. In
fact, Alonzo was calling the bartender Mister. You don't know about Lon,
but when he calls the bartender Mister the ship has sailed. Ten minutes
after that he'll be crying over his operation. So I thought quick,
remembering that we had now established a grillroom at the country club,
consisting of a bar and three tables with bells on them, and a
Chinaman, and that if Alonzo and Ben Sutton come there at all they had
better come right--at least to start with. When I'd given my order I
sent Louis Meyer in to tell the two gentlemen a lady wished to speak to
them outside.
"In a minute Ben comes out alone. He was awful glad to see me and I said
how well he looked, and he did look well, sort of cordial and
bulging--his forehead bulges and his eyes bulge and his moustache and
his chin, and he has cushions on his face. He beamed on me in a wide and
hearty manner and explained that Alonzo refused to come out to meet a
lady until he knew who she was, because you got to be careful in a small
town like this where every one talks. 'And besides,' says Ben, 'he's
just broke down and begun to cry about his appendicitis that was three
years ago. He's leaning his head on his arms down by the end of the bar
and sobbing bitterly over it. He seems to grieve about it as a personal
loss. I've tried to cheer him up and told him it was probably all for
the best, but he says when it comes over him this way he simply can't
stand it. And what shall I do?'
"Well, of course I seen the worst had happened with Alonzo. So I says to
Ben: 'You know there's a party to-night and if that man ain't seen to he
will certainly sink the ship. Now you get him out of that swamp and I'll
think of something.' 'I'll do it,' says Ben, turning sideways so he
could go through the doorway again. 'I'll do it,' he says, 'if I have to
use force on the little scoundrel.'
"And sure enough, in a minute he edged out again with Alonzo firmly
fastened to him in some way. Lon hadn't wanted to come and didn't want
to stay now, but he simply couldn't move. Say, that Ben Sutton would
make an awful grand anchor for a captive balloon. Alonzo wiped his eyes
until he could see who I was. Then I rebuked him, reminding him of his
sacred duties as a prominent citizen, a husband, and the secretary of
the Red Gap Chamber of Commerce. 'Of course it's all right to take a
drink now and then,' I says.
"Alonzo brightened at this. 'Good!' says he; 'now it's now and pretty
soon it will be then. Let's go into a saloon or something like that!'
"'You'll come with me,' I says firmly. And I marched 'em down to the
United States Grill, where I ordered tea and toast for 'em. Ben was
sensible enough, but Alonzo was horrified at the thought of tea. 'It's
tea or nice cold water for yours,' I says, and that set him off again.
'Water!' he sobs. 'Water! Water! Maybe you don't know that some dear
cousins of mine have just lost their all in the Dayton flood--twenty
years' gathering went in a minute, just like that!' and he tried to snap
his fingers. All the same I got some hot tea into him and sent for Eddie
Pierce to be out in front with his hack. While we was waiting for Eddie
it occurs to Alonzo to telephone his wife. He come back very solemn and
says: 'I told her I wouldn't be home to dinner because I was hungry and
there probably wouldn't be enough meat, what with a vegetarian poet in
the house. I told her I should sink to the level of a brute in the night
life of our gay little city. I said I was a wayward child of Nature
myself if you come right down to it.'
"'Good for you,' I says, having got word that Eddie is outside with his
hack. 'And now for the open road!' 'Fine!' says Alonzo. 'My spirit is
certainly feeling very untamed, like some poet's!' So I hustled 'em out
and into the four wheeler. Then I give Eddie Pierce private
instructions. 'Get 'em out into the hills about four miles,' I says,
'out past the Catholic burying ground, then make an excuse that your
hack has broke down, and as soon as they set foot to the ground have
them skates of yours run away. Pay no attention whatever to their
pleadings or their profane threats, only yelling to 'em that you'll be
back as soon as possible. But don't go back. They'll wait an hour or so,
then walk. And they need to walk.'
"'You said something there,' says Eddie, glancing back at 'em. Ben
Sutton was trying to cheer Alonzo up by reminding him of the Christmas
night they went to sleep in the steam room of the Turkish bath at Nome,
and the man forgot 'em and shut off the steam and they froze to the
benches and had to be chiselled off. And Eddie trotted off with his
load. You'd ought to seen the way the hack sagged down on Ben's side.
And I felt that I had done a good work, so I hurried home to get a bite
to eat and dress and make the party, which I still felt would be a good
party even if the husband of our hostess was among the killed or
missing.
"I reached the clubhouse at eight o'clock of that beautiful June
evening, to find the party already well assembled on the piazza and the
front steps or strolling about the lawn, about eight or ten of our
prominent society matrons and near as many husbands. And mebbe those
dames hadn't lingered before their mirrors for final touches! Mrs.
Martingale had on all her rings and the jade bracelet and the art-craft
necklace with amethysts, and Mrs. Judge Ballard had done her hair a new
way, and Beryl Mae Macomber, there with her aunt, not only had a new
scarf with silver stars over her frail young shoulders and a band of
cherry coloured velvet across her forehead, but she was wearing the
first ankle watch ever seen in Red Gap. I couldn't begin to tell you the
fussy improvements them ladies had made in themselves--and all, mind
you, for the passing child of Nature who had never paid a bill for 'em
in his life.
"Oh, it was a gay, careless throng with the mad light of pleasure in its
eyes, and all of 'em milling round Wilfred Lennox, who was eating it up.
Some bantered him roguishly and some spoke in chest tones of what was
the real inner meaning of life after all. Henrietta Templeton Price
hovered near with the glad light of capture in her eyes. Silent but
proud Henrietta was, careless but superior, reminding me of the hunter
that has his picture taken over in Africa with one negligent foot on
the head of a two-horned rhinoceros he's just killed.
"But again the husbands was kind of lurking in the background, bunched
up together. They seemed abashed by this strange frenzy of their
womenfolks. How'd they know, the poor dubs, that a poet wasn't something
a business man had ought to be polite and grovelling to? They affected
an easy manner, but it was poor work. Even Judge Ballard, who seems nine
feet tall in his Prince Albert, and usually looks quite dignified and
hostile with his long dark face and his moustache and goatee--even the
good old judge was rattled after a brief and unhappy effort to hold a
bit of converse with the guest of honour. Him and Jeff Tuttle went to
the grillroom twice in ten minutes. The judge always takes his with a
dash of pepper sauce in it, but now it only seemed to make him more
gloomy.
"Well, I was listening along, feeling elated that I'd put Alonzo and Ben
Sutton out of the way and wondering when the show would begin--Beryl Mae
in her high, innocent voice had just said to the poet: 'But seriously
now, are you sincere?' and I was getting some plenty of that, when up
the road in the dusk I seen Bush Jones driving a dray-load of furniture.
I wondered where in time any family could be moving out that way. I
didn't know any houses beyond the club and I was pondering about this,
idly as you might say, when Bush Jones pulls his team up right in front
of the clubhouse, and there on the load is the two I had tried to lose.
In a big armchair beside a varnished centre table sits Ben Sutton
reading something that I recognized as the yellow card with Wilfred's
verses on it. And across the dray from him on a red-plush sofa is Alonzo
Price singing 'My Wild Irish Rose' in a very noisy tenor.
"Well, sir, I could have basted that fool Bush Jones with one of his own
dray stakes. That man's got an intellect just powerful enough to take
furniture from one house to another if the new address ain't too hard
for him to commit to memory. That's Bush Jones all right! He has the
machinery for thinking, but it all glitters as new as the day it was put
in. So he'd come a mile out of his way with these two riots--and people
off somewhere wondering where that last load of things was!
"The ladies all affected to ignore this disgraceful spectacle, with
Henrietta sinking her nails into her bloodless palms, but the men broke
out and cheered a little in a half-scared manner and some of 'em went
down to help the newcomers climb out. Then Ben had words with Bush Jones
because he wanted him to wait there and take 'em back to town when the
party was over and Bush refused to wait. After suffering about twenty
seconds in the throes of mental effort I reckon he discovered that he
had business to attend to or was hungry or something. Anyway, Ben paid
him some money finally and he drove off after calling out 'Good-night,
all!' just as if nothing had happened.
"Alonzo and Ben Sutton joined the party without further formality. They
didn't look so bad, either, so I saw my crooked work had done some good.
Lon quit singing almost at once and walked good and his eyes didn't
wabble, and he looked kind of desperate and respectable, and Ben was
first-class, except he was slightly oratorical and his collar had melted
the way fat men's do. And it was funny to see how every husband there
bucked up when Ben came forward, as if all they had wanted was some one
to make medicine for 'em before they begun the war dance. They mooched
right up round Ben when he trampled a way into the flushed group about
Wilfred.
"'At last the well-known stranger!' says Ben cordially, seizing one of
Wilfred's pale, beautiful hands. 'I've been hearing so much of you,
wayward child of the open road that you are, and I've just been reading
your wonderful verses as I sat in my library. The woods and the hills
for your spirit untamed and the fire of youth to warm your
nights--that's the talk.' He paused and waved Wilfred's verses in a fat,
freckled hand. Then he looked at him hard and peculiar and says: 'When
you going to pull some of it for us?'
"Wilfred had looked slightly rattled from the beginning. Now he smiled,
but only with his lips--he made it seem like a mere Swedish exercise or
something, and the next second his face looked as if it had been sewed
up for the winter.
"'Little starry-eyed gypsy, I say, when are you going to pull some of
that open-road stuff?' says Ben again, all cordial and sinister.
"Wilfred gulped and tried to be jaunty. 'Oh, as to that, I'm here to-day
and there to-morrow,' he murmurs, and nervously fixes his necktie.
"'Oh, my, and isn't that nice!' says Ben heartily--'the urge of the wild
to her wayward child'--I know you're a slave to it. And now you're going
to tell us all about the open road, and then you and I are going to have
an intimate chat and I'll tell you about it--about some of the dearest
little open roads you ever saw, right round in these parts. I've just
counted nine, all leading out of town to the cunningest mountains and
glens that would make you write poetry hours at a time, with Nature's
glad fruits and nuts and a mug of spring water and some bottled beer and
a ham and some rump steak--'
"The stillness of that group had become darned painful, I want to tell
you. There was a horrid fear that Ben Sutton might go too far, even for
a country club. Every woman was shuddering and smiling in a painful
manner, and the men regarding Ben with glistening eyes. And Ben felt it
himself all at once. So he says: 'But I fear I am detaining you,' and
let go of the end of Wilfred's tie that he had been toying with in a
somewhat firm manner. 'Let us be on with your part of the evening's
entertainment,' he says, 'but don't forget, gypsy wilding that you are,
that you and I must have a chat about open roads the moment you have
finished. I know we are cramping you. By that time you will be feeling
the old, restless urge and you might take a road that wasn't open if I
didn't direct you.'
"He patted Wilfred loudly on the back a couple of times and Wilfred
ducked the third pat and got out of the group, and the ladies all began
to flurry their voices about the lovely June evening but wouldn't it be
pleasanter inside, and Henrietta tragically called from the doorway to
come at once, for God's sake, so they all went at once, with the men
only half trailing, and inside we could hear 'em fixing chairs round and
putting out a table for the poet to stand by, and so forth.
"Alonzo, however, had not trailed. He was over on the steps holding
Beryl Mae Macomber by her new scarf and telling her how flowerlike her
beauty was. And old Judge Ballard was holding about half the men,
including Ben Sutton, while he made a speech. I hung back to listen.
'Sir,' he was saying to Ben, 'Secretary Seward some years since
purchased your territory from Russia for seven million dollars despite
the protests of a clamorous and purblind opposition. How niggardly seems
that purchase price at this moment! For Alaska has perfected you, sir,
if it did not produce you. Gentlemen, I feel that we dealt unfairly by
Russia. But that is in the dead past. It is not too late, however, to
tiptoe to the grillroom and offer a toast to our young sister of the
snows.'
"There was subdued cheers and they tiptoed. Ben Sutton was telling the
judge that he felt highly complimented, but it was a mistake to ring in
that snow stuff on Alaska. She'd suffered from it too long. He was going
on to paint Alaska as something like Alabama--cooler nights, of course,
but bracing. Alonzo still had Beryl Mae by the scarf, telling her how
flowerlike her beauty was.
"I went into the big room, picking a chair over by the door so I could
keep tabs on that grillroom. Only three or four of the meekest husbands
had come with us. And Wilfred started. I'll do him the justice to say he
was game. The ladies thought anything bordering on roughness was all
over, but Wilfred didn't. When he'd try to get a far-away look in his
eyes while he was reciting his poetry he couldn't get it any farther
away than the grillroom door. He was nervous but determined, for there
had been notice given of a silver offering for him. He recited the
verses on the card and the ladies all thrilled up at once, including
Beryl Mae, who'd come in without her scarf. They just clenched their
hands and hung on Wilfred's wild, free words.
"And after the poetry he kind of lectured about how man had ought to
break away from the vile cities and seek the solace of great Mother
Nature, where his bruised spirit could be healed and the veneer of
civilization cast aside and the soul come into its own, and things like
that. And he went on to say that out in the open the perspective of life
is broadened and one is a laughing philosopher as long as the blue sky
is overhead and the green grass underfoot. 'To lie,' says he, 'with
relaxed muscles on the carpet of pine needles and look up through the
gently swaying branches of majestic trees at the fleecy white clouds,
dreaming away the hours far from the sordid activities of the market
place, is one of the best nerve tonics in all the world.' It was an
unfortunate phrase for Wilfred, because some of the husbands had tiptoed
out of the grillroom to listen, and there was a hearty cheer at this,
led by Jeff Tuttle. 'Sure! Some nerve tonic!' they called out, and
laughed coarsely. Then they rushed back to the grillroom without
tiptoeing.
"The disgraceful interruption was tactfully covered by Wilfred and his
audience. He took a sip from the glass of water and went on to talk
about the world's debt to poetry. Then I sneaked out to the grillroom
myself. By this time the Chinaman had got tangled up with the orders and
was putting out drinks every which way. And they was being taken
willingly. Judge Ballard and Ben Sutton was now planting cotton in
Alaska and getting good crops every year, and Ben was also promising to
send the judge a lovely spotted fawnskin vest that an Indian had made
for him, but made too small--not having more than six or eight fawns, I
judged. And Alonzo had got a second start. Still he wasn't so bad yet,
with Beryl Mae's scarf over his arm, and talking of the unparalleled
beauties of Price's Addition to Red Gap, which he said he wouldn't trade
even for the whole of Alaska if it was offered to him to-morrow--not
that Ben Sutton wasn't the whitest soul God ever made and he'd like to
hear some one say different--and so on.
"I mixed in with 'em and took a friendly drink myself, with the aim of
smoothing things down, but I saw it would be delicate work. About all I
could do was keep 'em reminded there was ladies present and it wasn't a
barroom where anything could be rightly started. Doc Martingale's
feelings was running high, too, account, I suppose, of certain
full-hearted things his wife had blurted out to him about the hypnotic
eyes of this here Nature lover. He was quiet enough, but vicious, acting
like he'd love to do some dental work on the poet that might or might
not be painless for all he cared a hoot. He was taking his own drinks
all alone, like clockwork--moody but systematic.
"Then we hear chairs pushed round in the other room and the chink of
silver to be offered to the poet, and Henrietta come out to give word
for the refreshments to be served. She found Alonzo in the hallway
telling Beryl Mae how flowerlike her beauty was and giving her the elk's
tooth charm off his watch chain. Beryl Mae was giggling heartily until
she caught Henrietta's eye--like a cobra's.
"The refreshments was handed round peaceful enough, with the ladies
pressing sardine sandwiches and chocolate cake and cups of coffee on to
Wilfred and asking him interesting questions about his adventurous life
in the open. And the plans was all made for his class in poetry to be
held at Henrietta's house, where the lady subscribers for a few weeks
could come into contact with the higher realities of life, at eight
dollars for the course, and Wilfred was beginning to cheer up again,
though still subject to dismay when one of the husbands would glare in
at him from the hall, and especially when Ben Sutton would look in with
his bulging and expressive eyes and kind of bark at him.
"Then Ben Sutton come and stood in the doorway till he caught Wilfred's
eye and beckoned to him. Wilfred pretended not to notice the first time,
but Ben beckoned a little harder, so Wilfred excused himself to the six
or eight ladies and went out. It seemed to me he first looked quick
round him to make sure there wasn't any other way out. I was standing in
the hall when Ben led him tenderly into the grillroom with two fingers.
"'Here is our well-known poet and _bon vivant_,' says Ben to Alonzo, who
had followed 'em in. So Alonzo bristles up to Wilfred and glares at him
and says: 'All joking aside, is that one of my new shirts you're wearing
or is it not?'
"Wilfred gasped a couple times and says: 'Why, as to that, you see, the
madam insisted--'
"Alonzo shut him off. 'How dare you drag a lady's name into a barroom
brawl?' says he.
"'Don't shoot in here,' says Ben. 'You'd scare the ladies.'
"Wilfred went pasty, indeed, thinking his host was going to gun him.
"'Oh, very well, I won't then,' says Alonzo. 'I guess I can be a
gentleman when necessary. But all joking aside, I want to ask him this:
Does he consider poetry to be an accomplishment or a vice?'
"'I was going to put something like that to him myself, only I couldn't
think of it,' says Doc Martingale, edging up and looking quite
restrained and nervous in the arms. I was afraid of the doc. I was
afraid he was going to blemish Wilfred a couple of times right there.
"'An accomplishment or a vice? Answer yes or no!' orders the judge in a
hard voice.
"The poet looks round at 'em and attempts to laugh merrily, but he only
does it from the teeth out.
"'Laugh on, my proud beauty!' says Ben Sutton. Then he turns to the
bunch. 'What we really ought to do,' he says, 'we ought to make a
believer of him right here and now.'
"Even then, mind you, the husbands would have lost their nerve if Ben
hadn't took the lead. Ben didn't have to live with their wives so what
cared he? Wilfred Lennox sort of shuffled his feet and smiled a smile of
pure anxiety. He knew some way that this was nothing to cheer about.
"'I got it,' says Jeff Tuttle with the air of a thinker. 'We're cramping
the poor cuss here. What he wants is the open road.'
"'What he really wants,' says Alonzo, 'is about six bottles of my pure,
sparkling beer, but maybe he'll take the open road if we show him a good
one.'
"'He wants the open road--show him a good one!' yells the other husbands
in chorus. It was kind of like a song.
"'I had meant to be on my way,' says Wilfred very cold and lofty.
"'You're here to-day and there to-morrow,' says Ben; 'but how can you be
there to-morrow if you don't start from here now?--for the way is long
and lonely.'
"'I was about to start,' says Wilfred, getting in a couple of steps
toward the door.
"''Tis better so,' says Ben. 'This is no place for a county recorder's
son, and there's a bully road out here open at both ends.'
"They made way for the poet, and a sickening silence reigned. Even the
women gathered about the door of the other room was silent. They knew
the thing had got out of their hands. The men closed in after Wilfred as
he reached the steps. He there took his soft hat out from under his coat
where he'd cached it. He went cautiously down the steps. Beryl Mae broke
the silence.
"'Oh, Mr. Price,' says she, catching Alonzo by the sleeve, 'do you think
he's really sincere?'
"'He is at this moment,' says Alonzo. 'He's behaving as sincerely as
ever I saw a man behave.' And just then at the foot of the steps Wilfred
made a tactical error. He started to run. The husbands and Ben Sutton
gave the long yell and went in pursuit. Wilfred would have left them all
if he hadn't run into the tennis net. He come down like a sack of meal.
"'There!' says Ben Sutton. 'Now he's done it--broke his neck or
something. That's the way with some men--they'll try anything to get a
laugh.'
"They went and picked the poet up. He was all right, only dazed.
"'But that's one of the roads that ain't open,' says Ben. 'And besides,
you was going right toward the nasty old railroad that runs into the
cramped haunts of men. You must have got turned round. Here'--he pointed
out over the golf links--'it's off that way that Mother Nature awaits
her wayward child. Miles and miles of her--all open. Doesn't your gypsy
soul hear the call? This way for the hills and glens, thou star-eyed
woodling!' and he gently led Wilfred off over the links, the rest of the
men trailing after and making some word racket, believe me. They was all
good conversationalists at the moment. Doc Martingale was wanting the
poet to run into the tennis net again, just for fun, and Jeff Tuttle
says make him climb a tree like the monkeys do in their native glades,
but Ben says just keep him away from the railroad, that's all. Good
Mother Nature will attend to the rest.
"The wives by now was huddled round the side of the clubhouse, too
scared to talk much, just muttering incoherently and wringing their
hands, and Beryl Mae pipes up and says: 'Oh, perhaps I wronged him
after all; perhaps deep down in his heart he was sincere.'
"The moon had come up now and we could see the mob with its victim
starting off toward the Canadian Rockies. Then all at once they began to
run, and I knew Wilfred had made another dash for liberty. Pretty soon
they scattered out and seemed to be beating up the shrubbery down by the
creek. And after a bit some of 'em straggled back. They paid no
attention to us ladies, but made for the grillroom.
"'We lost him in that brush beyond the fifth hole,' says Alonzo. 'None
of us is any match for him on level ground, but we got some good
trackers and we're guarding the line to keep him headed off from the
railroad and into his beloved hills.'
"'We should hurry back with refreshment for the faithful watchers,' says
Judge Ballard. 'The fellow will surely try to double back to the
railroad.'
"'Got to keep him away from the cramped haunts of business men,' says
Alonzo brightly.
"'I wish Clay, my faithful old hound, were still alive,' says the judge
wistfully.
"'Say, I got a peach of a terrier down to the house right now,' says
Jeff Tuttle, 'but he's only trained for bear--I never tried him on
poets.'
"'He might tree him at that,' says Doc Martingale.
"'Percy,' cries his wife, 'have you forgotten your manhood?'
"'Yes,' says Percy.
"'Darling,' calls Henrietta, 'will you listen to reason a moment?'
"'No,' says Alonzo.
"'It's that creature from Alaska leading them on,' says Mrs. Judge
Ballard--'that overdressed drunken rowdy!'
"Ben Sutton looked right hurt at this. He buttoned his coat over his
checked vest and says: 'I take that unkindly, madam--calling me
overdressed. I selected this suiting with great care. It ain't nice to
call me overdressed. I feel it deeply.'
"But they was off again before one thing could lead to another, taking
bottles of hard liquor they had uncorked. 'The open road! The open
road!' they yelled as they went.
"Well, that's about all. Some of the wives begun to straggle off home,
mostly in tears, and some hung round till later. I was one of these, not
wishing to miss anything of an absorbing character. Edgar Tomlinson went
early, too. Edgar writes 'The Lounger in the Lobby' column for the
_Recorder_, and he'd come out to report the entertainment; but at one
o'clock he said it was a case for the sporting editor and he'd try to
get him out before the kill.
"At different times one or two of the hunters would straggle back for
more drink. They said the quarry was making a long detour round their
left flank, trying his darndest to get to the railroad, but they had
hopes. And they scattered out. Ever and anon you would hear the long
howl of some lone drunkard that had got lost from the pack.
"About sunup they all found themselves at the railroad track about a
mile beyond the clubhouse, just at the head of Stender's grade. There
they was voting to picket the track for a mile each way when along come
the four-thirty-two way freight. It had slowed up some making the grade,
and while they watched it what should dart out from a bunch of scrub oak
but the active figure of Wilfred Lennox. He made one of them iron
ladders all right and was on top of a car when the train come by, but
none of 'em dast jump it because it had picked up speed again.
"They said Wilfred stood up and shook both fists at 'em and called 'em
every name he could lay his tongue to--using language so coarse you'd
never think it could have come from a poet's lips. They could see his
handsome face working violently long after they couldn't hear him. Just
my luck! I'm always missing something.
"So they come grouching back to the clubhouse and I took 'em home to
breakfast. When we got down to the table old Judge Ballard says: 'What
might have been an evening of rare enjoyment was converted into a
detestable failure by that cur. I saw from the very beginning that he
was determined to spoil our fun.'
"'The joke is sure on us,' says Ben Sutton, 'but I bear him no grudge.
In fact, I did him an injustice. I knew he wasn't a poet, but I didn't
believe he was even a hobo till he jumped that freight.'
"Alonzo was out in the hall telephoning Henrietta. We could hear his
cheerful voice: 'No, Pettikins, no! It doesn't ache a bit. What's that?
Of course I still do! You are the only woman that ever meant anything to
me. What? What's that? Oh, I may have errant fancies now and again, like
the best of men--you know yourself how sensitive I am to a certain type
of flowerlike beauty--but it never touches my deeper nature. Yes,
certainly, I shall be right up the very minute good old Ben
leaves--to-morrow or next day. What's that? Now, now! Don't do that!
Just the minute he leaves--G'--by.'
"And the little brute hung up on her!"