Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
THE LANDLOPER
THE ROMANCE OF A MAN ON FOOT
By Holman Day
1915
THE LANDLOPER
I
IN THE DUST OF THE LONG HIGHWAY
The man who called himself Walker Farr plodded down the dusty stretches
of a country road.
He moved leisurely. He neither slouched like a vagabond nor did he swing
with a stride which indicated that he had aim in life or destination in
mind. When he came under arching elms he plucked his worn cap from his
head and stuffed it into a coat pocket which already bulged bulkily
against his flank. He gazed to right and left upon the glories of a
sun-bathed June morning and strolled bareheaded along the aisle of a
temple of the great Out-of-Doors.
He was young and stalwart and sunburnt.
A big, gray automobile squawked curt warning behind him and then swept
past and on its way, kicking dust upon him from its whirring wheels.
He gave the car only an indifferent glance, but, as he walked on, he
was conscious that out of the blur of impressions the memory of a girl's
profile lingered.
A farmer-man who had come to the end of a row in a field near the
highway fence leaned on his hoe-handle and squinted against the sun
at the face of the passer-by. Then the farmer shifted his gaze to the
stranger's clothing and scowled. The face was the countenance of a man
who was somebody; the clothing was the road-worn garb of a vagrant.
“Here, you!” called the farmer.
“I hear you,” said the man who called himself Walker Farr, smiling and
putting subtle insolence into the smile.
“Do you want a job?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you got a job?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is it?”
“Chopping down well-holes that have been turned inside out by a
cyclone.”
The man in the highway flashed a wonderful smile at the farmer and
passed on. The farmer blinked and then he scowled more savagely. He
climbed the fence and followed, carrying his hoe.
“Look here, you! There ain't no such business.”
“Send for me next time you have a well turned wrong side out and I'll
prove it.”
“You're a tramp.”
Farr sauntered on.
“You're a tramp, and here's what we are doing to tramps in this county
right now!”
Beyond them in the highway men were delving with shovels and hacking
with mattocks. The men wore blue drilling overalls, obtrusively new, and
their faces were pasty pale.
“We have taken 'em out of jail and put 'em doing honest work,” said the
farmer. He pointed to guards who were marching to and fro with rifles
in the hook of their arms. “Here's where you belong. I'm a constable of
this town. I arrest you.”
The young man halted. His smile became provokingly compassionate as he
stared down at the nickel badge the farmer was tapping.
“So you represent the law, do you?” inquired Farr.
“I do.”
“It's too bad you don't know more about the law, then. I have neither
solicited alms, trespassed on private property, begged food, nor
committed crime in your little kingdom, my good and great three-tailed
bashaw. Here is a coin to clear the law.” He exhibited a silver piece.
“I am sorry I cannot remain here and help you mend your ways--they seem
to need it!”
He went on past the sullen gang of pick and shovel, treading the middle
of the broad turnpike.
“Ain't that a tramp?” asked one of the guards.
“I don't know what he is,” confessed the farmer.
The man who called himself Farr turned a corner and came upon the same
automobile which had overtaken and passed him, contemptuously kicking
its dust over him, a few minutes before he arrived at the farmer's
fence.
A rear tire was flat and a young man who was smartly attired in gray
was smacking gloved hands together and cursing the lumps of a
jail-bird-built road and the guilty negligence of a garage-man who had
forgotten to put a lift-jack back into the kit. Two women stood beside
the car and looked upon the young man's helplessness.
“Enter tortoise, second scene of the ancient drama, 'The Tortoise and
the Hare,'” Walter Farr informed himself.
His amused brown eyes noted the young man was obviously flabby.
“Here, you! Help me prop up this axle,” commanded the charioteer.
“You do not need help,” suggested Farr. “You need somebody who can do
the whole job.”
The glance he gave the young man, up and down, conveyed his full
meaning.
“Well, I must say that's saucy talk from a hobo,” declared one of the
women.
“Mother!” warned the third member of the party.
Farr turned his cynical gaze from the older woman to the younger--from
the bleached hair and rouged lips to a fresh, pure, and vivid
loveliness. He saw her profile once more.
“No one has remembered to say 'please' yet,” the girl informed him,
meeting his gaze. “I say it, sir!”
He bowed and went straight to the roadside and picked up a bit of plank
on which his searching eyes rested.
He gave it into the gloved hands of the car's owner, he slipped off his
own sun-faded coat and rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt above
his elbows, and then, with shoulder thrusting up; and arms straining,
he heaved the car high enough so that the flabby gentleman could set the
prop under the axle. And when the gentleman began to dust his gloves and
to search for spots on his gray immaculateness, Farr dug tools from the
box and proceeded to the work of replacing the tire.
The girl stood near him and regarded him with interest. He looked up
when he had the opportunity and found her eyes studying him. She was
entirely frank in her gaze. There was nothing in her eyes except the
earnestness of a scrutiny which was satisfying curiosity.
When the work was done the owner offered money.
Farr refused with curt decisiveness.
“Well, have a drink?” invited the debtor.
“I do not use liquor.”
The autoist emptied his cigar-case into his hand and offered the cigars
to Farr, who had just tugged on his coat.
“I do not smoke, sir.”
It was not declination with humility; the manner of the man of the road
contained a hint that anybody who drank or smoked was no better than he
should be. The girl studied him with renewed interest.
“Don't stand there and try to put anything over on me,” advised the man
in gray, showing resentment. “What can I do for you?”
“You might thank the man, Richard,” declared the girl, tartly. She
turned to Farr.
“He seems to have forgotten 'thank you' as he forgot 'please.' May I
make amends? We thank you!”
“And now I am in your debt,” said the rover. He bowed and walked on.
When the car passed him the girl turned and gave him a long look. He
waved his hand. The dust-cloud closed in between them.
“Kat Kilgour! That's a tramp! I'm amazed!” said the elder woman,
observing the look and the salute.
“Yes, this world is full of surprises,” agreed the girl, sweetly.
“But your own eyes told you that he was a tramp.”
“There isn't any doubt of it, is there, if you used your eyes?” demanded
their escort.
“We'll consider that the eyes have it--and let the matter drop,” said
the girl--and her tone was not sweet.
The man of the keen brown eyes and the faded garb fared on.
He plucked a rose from a wayside bush and carried the flower in his
hand.
“Your sister just passed this way,” he informed the rose in whimsical
fashion. “I don't suppose you and I will ever catch up with her. I go
very slowly, but you may journey along with me.”
II
A HOME-MADE KNIGHT-ERRANT
The wayfarer who called himself Farr came down the long hill and turned
the corner of the highway where the alders crowded to the banks of the
narrow brook; they whispered to one another as the breeze fluttered
their leaves. He drank there, bending and scooping the water in his
palm. He bathed the rose and stroked its wilted petals.
“Too bad, little one!” he said. “The long road is a killing proposition,
and I'm afraid I had no business inviting you to go with me. Your sister
must be a long way ahead of us.”
The rocks were cool where the alders cast shade, and he sat there for
a little while, watching the drift of tiny flotsam down the eddying
current and observing the skipper-bugs skating over the still shallows
on their spraddled legs.
There was a pleasant hush all about. The bubbling ecstasy of a bobolink
floated above the grasses of a meadow, and near at hand a wren hopped
about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness
brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the
water and then rose and shook the drops from his thick thatch of brown
hair. He did it with a sort of canine wriggle and smiled at the thought
which came to him.
“A stray dog!” he muttered. “Of as much account--and he'd better forget
the sister of the rose. Here's a good place to put imagination to
sleep--here's a place where all is asleep.”
He went on around the curtain of the alders.
There was a big old-fashioned house near at hand. Its walls were
weather-worn, its yard was not tidy. The faded curtains at the windows
hung crookedly. The glass of the panes was dirty. The entire aspect of
the place indicated that there was no woman's hand to make it home. It
was commonplace and uninteresting.
But the front door was flung open suddenly with a screech of rusty
hinges.
Then came backing out of the doorway a very old man--a bent and
wrinkled old man with long white hair which trailed down from under a
broad-brimmed hat. He was dragging a coffin, single-handed. The free
end of the solemn box bumped down the wooden steps with a hollow clatter
that suggested emptiness. There was a woodpile at one side of the yard.
The old man tugged the casket over the litter of chips and dropped the
end. He wrenched an ax from its cleft in a chopping-block and caved in
the top of the coffin with the first blow.
The man Farr, observing from the road, saw that the casket was empty.
The old man continued to bash and batter.
The wayfarer, before the destruction was begun, had time to note that
the coffin was a remarkably fine specimen of cabinet-maker's work. There
were various sorts of wood inlaid with care, and the fretwork along
its sides had been jig-sawed with much pains spent in detail, and the
pilasters were turned with art. But the old man battered at all this
excellence with savageness. It was evident that he was not merely
providing kindling-wood--he was expending fury.
It was an affair that demanded undivided attention from the observer in
the road; but a man came around the corner of the house just then and
Farr promptly gave over his interest in the aged chopper.
The new arrival was clothed cap-a-pie in armor.
He stood quietly at a little distance and gazed from under his vizor on
the energetic old man at the woodpile.
Farr noted that the armor was obviously home-made. The helmet, though
burnished and adorned with a horse's tail, had the unmistakable outlines
of a copper kettle. The cuirass could not disguise its obligation to
certain parts of an air-tight stove. But the ensemble was peculiarly
striking and the man in the road took a quick glance around at the New
England landscape in order to assure himself that he was still where he
supposed he was.
Farr went to the fence and folded his arms on the top.
The old man, resting a moment, seemed to feel that intent regard from
behind and, without turning his body, hooked his narrow and bony chin
over his shoulder and swapped a long stare with the stranger.
“Well,” inquired the venerable chopper, “what is on thy mind, sir?” His
tone was sour.
“Seeing that the question is direct and remembering that age deserves
the truth, I'll say that I was thinking that this seems to be an ideal
location for a private lunatic-asylum, and that guests are allowed to
enjoy themselves.”
“I will have thee to understand that I have sat for thirty long years at
the head of the Friends' meeting in this town and never has it been said
that my wits are cracked. Furthermore, this is none of thy affair. Move
on.”
Farr merely shifted his feet and took an easier pose at the fence.
“Feeling as I do, it will not trouble me much to come over there and
take a chop or two at thee,” warned the old man.
“I didn't know that Quakers ever allowed their feelings to get so highly
spiced.”
“Along with thee, tramp!”
“You see, my dear sir,” drawled the man in the road, “I am out in search
of peace of mind. If I should go on my way without understanding what
this means my itching curiosity would never allow me another good
night's sleep. A word from you to soothe curiosity, and then I go!”
“Thee has seen me knocking into pieces a coffin. Is there anything
strange in seeing me knock into pieces a coffin I have made with my own
hands?”
“No, sir. That is quite within your rights. But why? From what little I
saw of it it seemed to me to be a mighty fine piece of work.”
“It was,” stated the old man, a bit mollified. “Walnut with bird's-eye
maple inlaid.”
“May I ask if it was made for anybody who died lately?”
“I made it for myself--I have had it by me for twenty years! Seeing that
thee must stick thy nose into my business!” His tone was pettish and
he stooped down and began to toss splinters and broken boards upon the
woodpile.
“Then I suppose it was--er--sort of out of date,” suggested Farr,
blandly.
“I see thee is minded to tease me--the world is full of fools.” He
straightened as best he could, propping hands on his hips, and divided
angry gaze between the man at the fence and the armored figure. “I am
not going to die--I have decided to stay alive. I have a fool on my
hands.”
“Father, I think thee had better choose thy words a bit better in the
presence of a stranger,” advised the man in armor.
“Can't thee see that he is a fool?” demanded the old man.
“I don't think I want to venture an opinion, sir. I'll simply say that
your son's choice of a summer suit seems a little peculiar. But, of
course, every man to his liking!”
The old man walked down to the fence. He was crooked at the waist and
his legs were hooked with the curves of age, but he strode along with
brisk vigor. His gaze was as sharp as a gimlet, though the puckered lids
were cocked over his eyes with the effect of little tents whose flaps
were partly closed. He put his face close to Farr's.
“Thee is as cheeky as a crow and as prying as a magpie and I venture
to say thee is a roving scamp. But I may as well talk to thee as to
anybody.”
With armor rattling and squeaking, the son started toward them.
“I do not care to have thee talk about me, father,” he warned.
Farr noted that the son had eyes as keen and as gray as those of the
elder. The armored citizen was sturdy and of middle age and the face
under the vizor revealed intelligence and self-possession.
The father paid no heed to the son.
“Has thee traveled around the world much?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thee has met many men?”
“Many and of all sorts and conditions.”
“Then I want to ask thee what thee thinks of the good wit of a man who
declares that he will go forth into the world, faring here and there,
to try to do good to all men, to try to settle the troubles between men,
free of all price?”
Farr turned gaze from the father to the earnest countenance of the son,
and then stared again into the searching eyes of the old man. Prolonged
and embarrassed silence followed.
“Thy looks speak louder than words,” declared the father. “Thy eyes say
it--he is a fool.”
“It may be as well not to say so with thy tongue,” advised the son. “I
might not be as patient with a stranger as I am with my father. He is
wholly practical, without imagination, and so I excuse him.”
“I offer no comments,” said Walker Farr with a frank smile which won an
answering flicker from the face under the vizor. “I do not understand.”
“I would not expect a vagabond to understand anything or to be brave
enough to say what he thinks,” piped the father. He turned on his son.
“Here's a scalawag of a tramp. Go along with him and be another such.”
“I may be a peripatetic philosopher, for all you know,” said Farr,
teasingly. “There are knights in fustian as well as knights in armor.”
“I think thee is of more account than thy clothing indicates,” stated
the son, regarding the stranger keenly. “And thee carries a rose in thy
hand. Little things tell much.”
Farr put the flower into his pocket. “Don't fool yourself about me,” he
said, roughly.
“Thy speech has betrayed thee,” insisted the other.
“I have met crib-crackers who were college men--and pocket dictionaries
are cheap. And so good day to you, gentlemen.”
“Wait one moment!” appealed the man in armor. His face softened when he
approached his father.
“We have talked much and there is no more to say to each other now.
I have served here patiently many years. If I leave thee for a little
while there is old Ben to wait and tend. And I will come back after I
have done my duty.”
“I will stay alive so that I can bail thee out of prison,” his father
informed him, sourly. “Go on, thou fool; learn thy lesson! The world is
all right as it is; it will cuff the ears of meddlers. But go on!”
“I would rather thee would show another spirit at parting--but have it
thy way,” returned the son, with Quaker repression of all emotions. He
came forth from the gate.
“I am going thy road,” he informed Farr, “because all ways are alike to
me. I would be pleased to talk with one who has journeyed. Thee may have
good counsel for me. May I walk with thee?”
The wayfarer opened his mouth and closed it suddenly on a half-spoken
and indignant refusal of this honor. He pursed his lips and his thick
brows drew together in a frown. Then, as if in spite of himself, he
began to smile.
“I will be no burden to thee,” pleaded the home-made knight. “I have had
my armor for a long time and have practised walking in it.”
“But why the tin suit?” expostulated Farr.
“I will explain as we walk.”
“Well, come along!” blurted the wayfarer. “Nothing more can happen to
me, anyway.”
“So thee has found one of thy own kind to follow about in the world?”
inquired the father, tauntingly. “Feathers on the head and rattles in
the hand! Cockahoops and fiddle-de-lorums! Thee'll be back soon with thy
folly cured after I have bailed thee from the calaboose! Then thee'll
stick to thy forge and be sensible!”
Farr noted a small shop by the roadside as they started off.
“My father is a good man, but practical--wholly practical,” said his new
comrade of the ways. “From my good mother I derive imagination. My life
has not been happy here. But work has helped.”
He pointed to the shop. Over the main door a faded, weather-worn sign
advertised “Eastup Chick & Son, Blacksmiths.” On the gable was a newer
sign heralding “Jared Chick & Father, Inventors.”
“I am Jared Chick, my friend.”
He talked slowly, pausing to pick words, phrasing with the carefulness
of the man of method, talking as those persons talk who have read many
books and use their tongue but seldom. Farr found much quaintness in the
solemn man's discourse.
“My father put my name on the sign when I was young, and it pleased me.
I put his name on the other sign when he was old and it did not please
him, though I have insisted that he must share in all credit which comes
to me. But my father does not possess imagination. I am sorry he lost
his temper to-day and broke up his coffin. Not that I approved of having
it in the house all these years, but he was very proud of it. He made
it soon after my mother died. I think, now that he has destroyed it, he
will live many years longer. He is very strong-minded.”
“I'm glad to have my suspicions confirmed,” said Farr.
“He was extremely angry when his eldest brother died at eighty. He
stood over him in the last moments and made us all very uncomfortable
by telling Uncle Joachim that there was no need of his dying--that if he
would only show a little Chick spunk he could stay alive just as well
as not and would not go fushing out just when he was most needed in the
Friends' meeting.”
“Considering that the old fellow was eighty and probably felt like
quitting, seems as if your father was rubbing it in just a little.”
“Perhaps he was a mite harsh, but there is another side of it. There
were only three of us left of the Friends' society to go to the old
meeting-house on First Day so that it might not be said that after one
hundred years we had allowed the society of the fathers to perish in
our town. Thee may have noted that my father and I still use the plain
language, keeping up the ways of the founders. My father sat at the head
of the meeting, my Uncle Joachim was next to him on the facing seat. I
am the only worshiper. I am not fitted to be a minister. My father, when
Joachim died, had no one with whom to exchange the hand-shake at the end
of the meeting.”
“And now he's losing his congregation?”
“Yes, my friend, and so my father blames me for going, just as he blamed
Uncle Joachim for dying. He has the meeting much at heart.”
“What will he do for a crowd after you go away?”
“He will continue to sit at the head of the meeting, sir.”
There was silence between them for some time. The blacksmith clanked on
his way sturdily.
“He will still sit at the head of the meeting! Only a little fire is
left there, sir, but he will not allow it to go out as long as he is
alive to blow the bellows of devotion.”
“Look here, Brother Chick,” demanded Farr. “I don't want to be prying or
impertinent, but what's your idea?”
“I'm not ashamed of anything I'm going to do. Even though it is a very
strange plan, as the world would look at it, I'm not ashamed of it. A
very few words will tell you: I'm going out among men and spread the
gospel of mercy and forbearance, teach the lessons of peace, urge men to
forgive instead of fight--showing them that courts of law are more often
the devil's playground than the abode of real justice. I have worked
hard, I have read many books, I have stored information in my mind, I
have laid up money enough. You behold my armor--I have wrought at it
patiently for a long time.”
“Expect to have 'em throw things at you?”
But the blacksmith, replying, gave no sign that he resented this brusque
humor.
“It is well known that it is hard to attract the attention of the world
from its own affairs. For instance, if I had stood in the yard to-day,
dressed as a plain man, thee would have passed on thy way--providing
father had been chopping up kindling-wood instead of a coffin. If I had
stopped thee and started to explain my views thee would have paid little
attention to me. Isn't that so?”
“It's so.”
“Well, then, thee have my theory and know my plan and have noted how it
has worked,” said Mr. Chick.
“I don't want to discourage you in a good thing, but how long do you
think a policeman would let you stand on a street corner?”
“I shall find places where I can deliver my message without offending.”
“There's another point--a rather delicate point to consider, Brother
Chick. There are plenty of persons who are a bit dull when they are
examining a man's motives, but who think they are almighty smart in
detecting a man's mental failings; when somebody does anything they
wouldn't do they say he's crazy.”
The blacksmith turned his serene face and smiled at Farr.
“I appeal to thy good judgment, sir. Would thee, after talking with me,
even if I do wear iron outside my wool garments, send me to an asylum?”
“No,” acknowledged Farr, “I don't believe I would send you to an
asylum.”
“Thank thee! I believe thee can speak quite generally for the average
man.”
“But the armor scheme--it's a little risky, Friend Chick.”
“But it has been the trade-mark of unselfishness ever since the days of
the Crusaders,” declared Mr. Chick. “Why shouldn't its significance
be revived in these modern times? At any rate,” he added, with Yankee
shrewdness, “it's necessary to give the world quite a jump these days
before it will stop, look, and listen.”
“Some advertising concern will make you an offer that will pull you into
camp your second day out, if you're not careful. You've certainly got a
good idea of the business.”
“I am sincere. I am not trifling. I have pondered on this for a long
time. I shall be misjudged--but I shall not be afraid!”
III
KNIGHT-ERRANTRY TESTED
The two marched on, side by side, and Walker Farr, piecing in his mind,
from the scraps he had heard, the entire history of the Chick family,
indulged the whim of Jared and forgot for a moment the grotesque figure
presented by his companion.
“No, I am not afraid!” repeated the new apostle of world harmony.
But it became promptly apparent that Mr. Chick could not communicate his
intrepidity to other creatures.
Around the bend of the road came a sleepy horse, stubbing his hoofs into
the dust, dragging a wagon in which rode a farmer and his wife.
The horse became wide awake at sight of Mr. Chick.
With head up, eyes goggling, nostrils dilating, and mane erect, the
animal stopped short on straddled legs. Then he snorted, whirled, took
the wagon around in a circle on two wheels in spite of the farmer's
endeavors, and made off in the opposite direction, the driver pulling
hard on the reins, hands above his head, elbows akimbo.
“It occurs to me, Friend Chick,” said his companion, after the outfit
had disappeared, “that in planning this pilgrimage of yours you have
failed to take everything into account. If that farmer-man and his
wife pile into the ditch and break their necks, then all your general
mediating in other quarters will hardly make up for the damage you have
caused right here.”
“The world is full of problems,” sighed the man in armor. “There seems
to be a hitch to about everything!”
After a few moments the farmer came pelting into sight on foot.
“What in the name of bald-headed Nicodemus do you call yourself, and
what are you trying to do?” he shouted. “It's only by luck and chance
and because the webbin's held that me and my wife ain't laying stiff and
stark in the ditch.”
“I am sorry,” said friend Chick with dignity.
“Get a hoss used to bicycles, flying-machines, red whizzers and blue
devils, and then along comes something else that ain't laid down in the
back of the Old Farmer's Almanick! You there, the one that ain't crazy,
what's this thing you're teaming round?” the farmer demanded, addressing
Farr.
“In this case I am not my brother's keeper,” stated the young man.
“Well, where is his keeper, then? He needs one.” He walked around Chick
and rudely rapped his whip-butt on the breastplate. “If I wasn't
afraid of spraining a toe I'd boot you from here to hackenny, you old
two-legged cook-stove!”
“If there has been damage done, I'll pay for it.”
“There isn't any damage and I'm not looking for anybody's money. But
there _will_ be damage unless you get out of this highway. If you're in
sight when I drive my hoss past here again I'll lick you, even if I have
to use blasting-powder and a can-opener to get you out of that suit.”
Jared Chick went apart into the bushes and Farr accompanied him.
“This is a rather vulgar and discouraging adventure for high ideals to
run into so soon,” averred the younger man.
“I am not discouraged.”
“I'm afraid you'll be even more greatly misunderstood.”
“I don't expect silly old horses to understand me. My appeal is to men.”
Farr sniffed scornfully. “You'd better let men alone,” he advised.
“The world needs pure unselfishness,” insisted Chick.
“The purer it is the more it is misunderstood. I have tested the matter.
I know.”
“Then you yourself would not go forth into the world and do good to men,
without calculation and without price?”
“I don't think I would,” declared Farr, dryly. “And I am so little
interested in the matter that I think you'll have to excuse me from
further talk about it. You have just had one illustration in a crude way
of how the world misunderstands anything that's out of the ordinary.”
“Have you any advice to give me?”
“Not a word. I'm not even able to give myself sensible counsel. Good day
to you!”
“Then you do not care for my company longer on the way?”
“I do not. Excuse my bluntness, but these are parlous times for
wayfarers and I cannot afford to have a tin can tied to me as I go
about.”
“And you are absolutely selfish?” called Chick.
“I think so,” replied Farr from the highway, getting into his stride.
“When I see you again I expect you'll be wondering why you ever were
altruistic. That will be the case, providing you wear that armor any
longer.”
Jared Chick from behind his bush called, appealingly, “But I fear I
shall never see thee again and I have some questions to ask of thee!”
“Oh, I promise to look you up somewhere in the world. If you keep on
wearing that suit it will be easy to find you.”
The man in armor leaned against a tree and pondered.
“A strange young man, and callous and selfish. But there is truly
something under his shell. I would relish putting some questions to
him.”
Then Jared Chick plunked an ash staff from a pile of hoop-poles left by
a chopper and went on his way along shaded woodland paths, avoiding
the main highroad. He decided that it would be better to go by the
roundabout way and show himself on the streets of town instead of on a
rural turnpike where countrified horses did not take kindly to a real
knight-errant.
“It was a good place back there for sleeping,” reflected Walker Farr,
remembering the brook, singing over the stones, the whispering alders,
the old-fashioned house, and the somnolent landscape. “That man who has
been living there until the day of his emigration has certainly been
asleep for a long time and is sleeping soundly now; he is having a
wonderful dream. The nightmare will begin shortly and he will wake up.”
After a time Farr came into a village, a hamlet of small houses which
toed the crack of a single street. It was near the hour of noon and from
the open windows of kitchens drifted scents of the dinners which the
women were preparing. All the men of the place seemed to be afield; only
women were in sight here and there at back doors, pinning freshly washed
garments on lines, beating dust from rugs, or, seen through the windows,
were bustling about the forenoon tasks set for patient household slaves
in gingham.
At one back door, his back comfortably set against a folded
clothes-reel, was a greasily fat tramp, gobbling a hand-out lunch which
a housewife had given to him.
Under a little hill where the road dipped at the edge of the hamlet here
sounded clink of steel on rock, suggesting that men labored there with
trowel and drill. There was complaining creaking of cordage--the arm of
a derrick sliced a slow arc across the blue sky of June.
The fat tramp held up his empty plate and whined a request and the hand
of a woman emerged from a close-by window and placed something in the
dish.
Farr slowed his steps and looked at the tramp, and a woman in a yard
near by stared over the top of a sheet which she was pinning on the line
and scowled at the new arrival.
“I wonder if I'm considered as the Damon of that Pythias?” Farr asked
himself, smiling into her frown. “But Damon is nomad spelled backward! I
wish I dared to ask her for a piece of that pie cooling on the sill.”
Just then, over the clink of metal under the hill, above wail of
straining pulley, rose the screech of a man in agony, the raucous male
squall whose timbre is more hideous than the death-cry of swine.
Then came a man running from the valley under the hill.
“It's your husband, Mrs. Jose,” he panted, turning in at the house where
the fat tramp ate with his back against the clothes-reel. “You better
go! I'll telephone for a doctor.”
She ran, white-faced, gasping cries. Other women ran. The spirit of
helpfulness and curiosity to know what had happened set wings on the
heels of the little community. The messenger telephoned and followed
them.
The fat tramp set down his plate and glanced to right and left and all
about. Then he shuffled into the deserted house and after a brief stay
hastened out with his pockets crammed and bearing garments in his arms;
he scuttled away with sagging trot across the fields.
Farr saw him go and did not pursue.
“Yonder goes the spirit of the age,” he told himself, with sardonic
twisting of his lips. “When Opportunity knocks, knock Opportunity
down. Embrace Opportunity, but be sure it's with the strangle hold. The
directors of a robbed railroad make a more dignified getaway than
that porcine pedestrian is making--but it's the same as far as the
stockholders are concerned.”
He went on slowly toward the hollow under the hill.
The procession met him--a limp man, moaning, borne in the arms of his
sweating mates, women trotting alongside and crossing the road, to and
fro, like frightened hens--clucking sympathy.
Farr found a half-finished stone bridge under the hill. A paunchy boss
with underset jaw and overhanging upper lip was profanely urging his
helpers back to their jobs.
“Fifteen minutes before knock-off time--fifteen minutes! You can't help
that man by standing around and doing his grunting for him. Get busy!”
The men lifted their tools slowly and sullenly.
“It's hell what can happen when you're fifteen days behind on a
contract, with county commissioners waiting and anxious to grab off a
penalty,” declared the boss, to nobody in particular. “One man bunged,
and four to lug him home, and the rest of the crew taking a sympathetic
vacation!”
Farr, sauntering, swung off the highway down the lane leading to the
temporary bridge.
“Here, you long-horned steer, want a job?” called the contractor from
his rostrum on the granite block.
“No, my Sussex shote, I do not!”
“Damnation! You dare to call me names, you hobo?”
“Yes,” returned Farr, quite simply.
“Well, quit it. I need men here. You're husky. Two dollars a day, even
if you're not a regular mason.”
“No.”
He drawled both the affirmative and the negative and there was something
subtly insolent in his tone--something that aroused more ire than a
cruder retort would have accomplished. He turned his back on the cursing
man and went on down to the bridge. He waited there for a time and
watched the drift of foam on the fretted waters. The steady burbling of
the stream made him oblivious to other sounds and he did not hear the
two men approach. They leaped on him and seized him. One of his captors
was the paunchy man, and his hands were heavy and his fingers gripped
viciously.
“No wonder you wouldn't work! You're making your living in an easier
way.”
“What is the occasion of this effusive welcome to your city?” asked
Farr.
The man who held one of the captive's arms was panting. He had run at
top speed from the house to which he and his mates had borne the injured
man.
“You thief! You sneak! Eat a man's grub, his hard-earned grub, and steal
when his wife's back is turned!”
“Of all dirty work this job is the worst,” declared the big man.
“She gave you all you could stuff into yourself, you loafer. You
ransacked when her back was turned. You even stole her husband's Sunday
suit. Where is it?”
“I saw a fat tramp running away into the woods,” returned Farr, quietly.
“He was carrying articles in his arms.”
“You're the only tramp in sight around here,” insisted the contractor.
“Where did you hide the plunder?”
“She said she fed a tramp. She left him at the back door. You're the
sneak,” indorsed the panting emissary.
“If you will take me back to the house you may get some new light on the
affair,” suggested their captive. “You need not drag me there. I'll go
with much pleasure.”
The mistress of the despoiled home, red of eyes, hurrying from her sink
with a cold compress in her trembling hands, viewed Farr from her back
door.
“That isn't the man. I never saw him before. Oh, he is in awful pain.
Why doesn't that doctor get here? But there doesn't seem to be anything
broken. He took my pocketbook, too, with two dollars and twenty-seven
cents in it. And it's every cent of money we've got by us. And it may be
weeks before he can go to work again. Troubles don't come singly. That
mis'able, fat, greasy thief! After I had fed him--even gave him pie!”
“As I told you, gentlemen, it was a fat tramp. I saw him run away into
the woods.”
“If you call yourself a man why didn't you chase him?” inquired the
contractor, with disgust.
“I took no interest in his affairs--no interest whatever,” stated Farr,
with languid tone.
“You don't care much what happens to anybody else, you hog!”
“My interest in other persons is very limited.”
“You'll stand by and see one of your kind run away with the property of
poor folks, will you? You meet him later and get your whack?” asked the
big man.
“No,” said Farr, mildly. He directed compelling gaze into the eyes of
his detractor. “And you do not think so yourself.”
“Perhaps not. But you're worse. You have just said it. You're a selfish
renegade!”
“Peculiarly selfish, hard, and unfeeling.”
“And wouldn't turn your hand over to do a good turn for anybody?”
“I don't think so.”
“I'll tell you what I think _I'll_ do--I'll detail four of my men to
ride you out of this town on a rail.”
“I wouldn't call them off their jobs if I were you! I overheard you say
that you are short of time and men. By the way, you offered me a job.
I'll take it.”
The contractor blinked and hesitated.
“If after a half-day you find I'm not worth the money I'll pass on and
you'll have a half-day's work free.”
“Get on to the job, then.”
Through the open door Farr could see the woman of the house wringing
cloths at the sink.
He stepped to the door and addressed her. “Madame, will you take a
boarder? I'm going to do your husband's work on the job yonder. I will
pay liberally. In your present difficulties the money may help. I'll be
small trouble.”
“We need the money terribly,” she said, after pondering. “Yes, I will
take you. In the face you do not look like a tramp!”
“I thank you,” said Farr. “If you will give me some food in my hands
I'll take myself out of your way.”
That afternoon Jared Chick came over the hill where the trowels clinked
and the great derrick complained with its pulleys. He carried his armor
on his back.
He stopped and watched for some time his former companion of the road,
who was sweating over his man's toil.
“May I have sixty seconds off to speak with that man yonder?” Farr asked
the contractor. “It partly concerns your business.”
The big man nodded surly assent.
“Thee sees I have taken off the armor for a time. I will wear it in the
city where horses and people are not so silly. What is thee doing here?”
“I have no time to talk about myself, Friend Chick. I want to ask you if
you are still of the same mind about your mission?”
“I am.”
“Then throw down that hardware and come to work on this job. A man has
been hurt here--his wife is in need. Earn some money and give it to
them.”
“But my mission concerns the world--the wide world.”
“Real selfishness's chief excuse! Here's something ready to your hand.
Will you do it?”
“But thee told me thee would not go forth and do good!”
“No matter about me. I am not a professional knight-errant! Will you do
this?”
“Ten seconds more!” warned the boss.
“I cannot change my plans so suddenly,” protested Chick.
“A knight-errant should not have plans! My time is up and I have work.
Good-by, Friend Chick!”
The young man went back to his task and the Quaker passed on, muttering
reaffirmation of his own high aims.
“And how could I expect a vagrant to understand?” he asked himself.
The vagrant toiled two weeks at his heavy task and when the man Jose was
about again the volunteer slipped away without farewell.
He left on the table of his under-the-eaves bedroom in the Jose house
all the pay he received for his work, to the last penny.
“He wasn't what he seemed to be,” ran the burden of Mrs. Jose's various
disquisitions on this strange guest. “He ate his vittles and asked no
questions, and was out from underfoot, and was always willing to set up
with my husband and give me a snippet of rest and a wink of sleep; and
he read out of little books all the time--he had 'em stuffed into his
pockets. And there needn't anybody tell _me_! He left all his pay on the
table, every cent of it, and stole away without waiting for no thanks
from nobody!”
IV
FARR, THE FAT TRAMP, AND A SUIT OF CLOTHES
On a balmy forenoon a jovial-appearing old gentleman went jogging out
of the mill city of Marion and along a country road in his two-wheeled
chaise. He sat erect and he was tall above the average of men, and he
was very neat in his attire.
“I wish,” he mused, “that the men who could really appreciate a
good outfit of clothing and could use the same properly were not so
infernally touchy. As it is, cranky human nature drives me out on an
expedition like this--and I'm afraid I am just as cranky as the rest of
'em, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this!”
The old gentleman hummed a song under his breath and slapped his reins
against the flanks of the plodding horse to keep time. He came into a
piece of woodland. He seemed to take cheery and fresh interest in this
place. He poked his rubicund face out from the shadow of the chaise's
canopy and peered to right and to left. There was a smile in his puckery
eyes. When there were trees ahead of him, trees behind him, and trees
all about he pulled his old horse to a standstill.
He listened, squinted quizzically through the glass of his chaise's rear
curtain, and then climbed down. From a box at the rear of the vehicle he
secured various articles of clothing and draped them over his arm.
There was a frock-coat, not too badly worn, trousers in good repair,
waistcoat, and a shirt. He also took out of the box a pair of shoes and
a hat. With this load he went to the roadside and began to rig out a
fence-post. When the garments were hung on it and the broad-brimmed,
black, slouch-hat had been jauntily set on top of the post, anybody
could see that the old gentleman was thus disposing of some of his own
extra clothing. He was wearing a similar hat and a frock-coat, himself,
and the decorated post took on a bizarre and slouchy resemblance to its
decorator.
He went back to the chaise and found a nickel alarm-clock in the box. He
wound this up carefully and propped it on a rail of the fence near the
clothing.
Before he could escape from the vicinity of the exhibit and get into
his chaise a wagon came rattling around the bend of the road. There were
firkins and jars in the rear of this wagon and the driver was plainly a
farmer-man.
He pulled up short and then saluted the old gentleman with a stab of
forefinger at his hat-brim.
“Any trouble, Judge?” he inquired, affably.
“None at all,” replied the old gentleman, edging away from the fully
garbed fence-post.
“Airing 'em out, hey?” A jab of the forefinger toward the garments.
“No, leaving them out.”
All at once the old gentleman appeared to remember something else. He
took off his hat and produced a placard. He straightened it and stuck it
into a crack in a fence-rail. Its legend was “Help Yourself.”
“You're giving them clothes away, are you, Judge Peterson?”
“I am leaving them here for any one who chooses to take them. Do you
want first pick, Jolson?”
“Not me! I ain't taking charity hand-me-downs from any man, Judge. If
it's a polite question, why are you giving away your duds this way?”
“I think you have just answered that question, Jolson. I offered you
these clothes. Your nose went into the air. Other men have acted in the
same way in the past when I have offered to give a fellow a good suit.
I don't want to hurt other folks' feelings. I don't want to have my own
feelings hurt. So, let any man help himself when no one is looking.”
“I'll take the alarm-clock, if you say so,” volunteered Jolson. “It'll
help to rout me out of bed at milking-time.”
“No, you cannot have the clock, Jolson. I have tinkered it so that
it will purr a little every half-hour. It will call attention to the
clothes. You see, a good many men rush through life without looking to
right or left, and so they miss a lot of opportunities.”
Jolson clucked to his horse and rattled away down the road, muttering
sour remarks.
The old gentleman, with the air of a man who has satisfied his
philanthropic ambitions, climbed into his chaise and followed the
farmer.
The brisk breeze flirted the tails of the frock-coat and the trousers
legs tried out a modest little gig as if some of the jocose spirit of
the old gentleman had remained with the garments he had discarded.
There were several passers before another half-hour had elapsed.
The trousers kicked out quite hilariously when a young couple drove by
in a buggy. The girl was pretty, and companionship with her might have
suited even a judge's garments. But the young man and the girl were
quite absorbed in each other, and the trousers kicked and the frock-coat
flirted ineffectually.
A peddler's cart passed very slowly, but the driver did not look up from
a paper filled with figures.
There were others to whom the judge's garments offered themselves
mutely, but no one glanced that way and the clock was discreetly silent.
The breeze died down and the trousers and the coat hung with a sort of
homeless, homesick, and wistful air. One might have thought they were
trying to conceal themselves when the next person appeared, so still
were they. He was not an inviting person--not such a new lord and master
as a judge's garments might be expected to welcome.
He was grossly fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging
waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap
was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon
his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable. Surely, a
most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments
of a judge! But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of
inanimate things, the clock jangled its alarm.
The tramp--there was no mistaking that gait and that general air of the
vagrant--snapped himself about, located the noise, stared at the post,
and then hurried to it. He made sure that there was no one in sight. He
scooped all into his arms, climbed the fence and trotted into the woods.
He kept looking behind him as if he feared pursuit. It was plain from
his disturbed demeanor that he was much perplexed and was chased by the
uncomfortable thought that he was stealing this property. He bestowed so
much attention behind him that he paid but little attention to what was
ahead of him, and so he ran down into a little bowl of a valley among
the trees and stopped short there, for he had come upon a man.
It was the man who called himself Walker Farr.
The man was kneeling beside a tiny fire, toasting bread on the end of a
beech twig. He held the twig in one hand and an open book in the other.
He looked up without changing his position when the tramp came charging
down the hillside.
He had wide-open, brown eyes, this man in the hollow. The eyes were not
merely wide open on account of surprise at this irruption--one could see
that they were naturally that way--keenly observant eyes. He had hair as
brown as his eyes; his cap was on the ground beside him.
But the tramp was not taking account of the attractions of this
stranger; he was more interested in searching for flaws.
He had been frightened at first sight of the man--for the tramp had the
timidity of his kind; now he began to feel cheered. This stranger in the
hollow had not been shaved recently, his clothing was unkempt, his
shoes bore the marks of a long hike. He was cooking in the open--plain
indication of the nomad.
“Well, I say, bo,” chaffed the tramp, shifting from fright to high
spirit with the hysteria of weak natures. “I'm sure glad to see one of
the good old sort. I didn't know what I was dropping in on when I fell
down that hill. But it's all right, hey? I'm on the road. My name is
Boston Fat, and my monacker is a bean-pot.”
The brown eyes moved slowly from the grinning face to the garments
heaped in the man's arms. They were cold and critical eyes and there was
no humor in them.
“I do not do business during my lunch-hours, my man. I do not desire to
change tailors just yet and I do not buy stolen property.”
His chilliness did not dampen the other's good nature.
“Oh, that's all right, old top. I'm no thief. These clothes were hung
on a fence-post just above here on the road. I reckon they were only
waiting for first-comer.”
He dropped the shoes, cocked the hat on his head, and began to fumble
the garments. The placard dropped out of the folds of the coat and the
man at the fire craned his neck and read aloud: “Help Yourself.”
“Oh, that's what the paper says, hey? I never learned to read any of the
modern languages,” confided Boston Fat. “I was too much taken up with
the dead ones at Harvard. Well, comrade, now you can see for yourself
that I didn't steal this mess of moth-food. There was the sign right on
it saying, 'Help Yourself.' It was there, even if I couldn't read it.
Instinck told me them clothes was for me. I took 'em and came in here.”
He shook out the garments one by one and hung them on a bush, chattering
his comments. He set the ticking clock on a stump.
The man at the fire slipped a piece of meat between two slabs of toasted
bread and began to eat. He still held the open book in his hand but his
eyes were watching the tramp.
The vagrant was orally appraising his find, exhibiting the wisdom of one
who has begged garments at back doors for the purposes of peddling them
to second-hand shops.