and sardonically exercising his vocabulary, plainly enjoying the
amazement he provoked by his style of language. “The spirit of a stray
cat at midnight, the tastes of the prowling hyena! The fat thief I saw
running away into the woods! When such as these began to take to the
road, knight-errantry vanished from the face of the earth. The varlets
borrowed the grand idea of care-free itinerancy and debased it, as
waiters borrow a gentleman's evening dress for their menial uniform, and
drunken coachmen wear the same head-gear that a duke wears to a wedding!
Why prove evolution by searching for a man with a tail? The performances
of human nature must convince any thinking man that we have descended
from apes!”
The astonished tramp stared for a short time at this person who employed
such peculiar language--then mumbled an oath and shook his head.
He began to try on the frock-coat, paying scant attention to the other's
monologue. The coat was a ludicrous misfit; it would not meet over the
bulging belly; its tails dragged on the fat man's heels.
“If I happened to stand handy by when a Kansas cyclone ripped the
insides out of a clothing-store only the boys' sizes would drop in the
same county with me,” grumbled the tramp, working his arms out of the
sleeves.
“The coat was plainly built for a gentleman,” stated the man at the
fire. “Therefore it is of no value to you.”
Boston Fat surveyed the stranger with a vicious glint in his little
eyes, as a pig might stare at a man who had struck it across the snout.
“Good afternoon, perfesser,” he sneered.
“Why 'professor,' my frayed and frowsled Falstaff?”
“There you go with it--showing yourself up out of your own mouth! Words
a yard long--words that would break a decent man's teeth! You're one of
these college dudes out on the road getting stuff to write into a book.
I've heard about your kind. And that kind is getting too thick and
plenty and you're putting slush all over the real profesh. Quit it and
go back to college. Don't use me for your book.”
This was reciprocation of derogatory sentiment with a vengeance!
The man at the fire sat back on his haunches. He finished chewing his
mouthful, regarding the tramp with a languid stare that traveled from
crown of his head to tip of his battered shoe.
“The only thing about a book that you would be good for,” he said,
“would be for use in a volume of this sort.” He tapped the book in his
palm. “Your anatomy could supply the binding. It is bound in pigskin.”
The tramp squealed an oath in the falsetto voice that the weak and the
flabby possess and took one step forward. The man at the fire came to
his feet and stood erect. He was tall, and the brown eyes talked for him
better than threats or bluster. The vagrant shifted his gaze from those
eyes and backed away.
“If I hadn't been penned in a pie-belt jail all winter up North, and all
the strength starved out of me,” he whined, “you wouldn't call me a pig
and get away with it.”
“A person who forces himself into the presence of a gentleman who is
dining mustn't expect compliments,” stated the stranger.
“You ain't a tramp--not a real one,” snarled Boston Fat.
Farr's eyes glistened; he smiled; he continued to play on this ignoramus
his satiric pranks of mystifying language:
“More of your lack of acuteness, my fat friend. Because I do not patter
the flash lingo with you, you appear to take me for a college professor
in disguise. _You_ are not a real tramp. You are a bum, a loafer, a yeg.
You never traveled more than two hundred miles away from Hoboken--the
capital city of hoboes. Have you ever hit the sage-brush trail, hiked
the milk-and-honey route from Ogden through the Mormon country, decked
the Overland Express, beaten the blind baggage on the Millionaires'
Flier? Hey?”
The sullen vagrant blinked stupidly.
“Or have you made the prairie run on the truss of a Wagner freight, or
thrown a stone at the Fox Train crew, or beaten the face off the Katy
Shack when he tried to pitch you off a gondola-car?”
“I don't know what you're chewing about,” sneered the fat man.
“Probably not, for you are not a true man of the road. You disgrace the
name of nomad, you sully an ancient profession. I'll venture to say you
don't know who Ishmael was.”
“Who said I did?”
“Not I, because I'm not a flatterer. I am going to follow the example of
the man who cast pearls before swine--I'm going to cast you a pearl from
one of my own poems. You may listen. It will pass your ears, that's all.
You cannot contaminate it by taking it in, so I repeat it for my own
entertainment, to refresh my memory:
“Of the morrow we take no heed, no care infests the day;
Some hand-out gump and a train to jump, a grip on the rods, and
away!
To the game of grab for gold we give no thought or care.
We own with you the arch of blue--our share of God's fresh air.
One coin to clear the law, a section of rubber hose.
To soften the chafe of a freight-car's truss, our portion of
cast-off clothes,
And the big wide world is ours--a title made good by right--
By mankind's deed to the nomad breed with the taint of the
Ishmaelite.
Some from the wastes of the sage-brush, some from the orange land,
Some from God's own country, dusty and tattered and tanned.
Why are we? It's idle to tell you--you'd never understand.
To and fro
We come and go.
Old Father Ishmael's band.”
He leaned back and laughed in the tramp's puzzled face.
“Well, what's the answer?” scoffed Boston Fat.
The other man talked on, humor in his eyes, plainly enjoying this verbal
skylarking.
“I'm afraid I cannot waste time and breath on you in an attempt to
answer the riddle of the ages, to explain the wanderlust that sent forth
the tribes from the Aryan bowl of the birth of the races, my
corpulent bean-pot. Your blank eyes and your flattened skull suggest a
discouraging incapacity for information.”
“I don't know what you're gabbing abut. But there's one thing I do know.
I'll tip 'em off at the next insane-asylum I come to that I met you
headed north.” The tramp gathered the articles of clothing from the
bushes and got down on his knees and began to fold them.
The man of the brown eyes stepped forward, laid down his little book,
picked up the frock-coat and pulled it on, the fat man squealing
expostulation. With serene disregard of this protest Farr buttoned the
coat, smoothed it down, and then straightened his shoulders.
“You may see that it was built for a gentleman and that it fits a
gentleman, friend pork-barrel.”
“You shuck it off and pass it over, that's what you do,” yelped the
tramp. “It's my coat.”
“It was perfectly apparent that it was not your coat when you tried it
on.”
“I tell you I found it hanging on a fence-post just above here.”
“That was merely by accident, and you should have passed on and left the
garments for one whose frame was fitted to wear them. You illustrate
the curse of modern society. Men are so filled with the greed of getting
that they grab misfits simply out of passion for possessing.”
“I've stood your slurs ever since I got here, but I'll be jobeefed if
I'll stand for your swiping my property.”
The man of the brown eyes smiled. His whole demeanor showed that he was
more than ever hugely enjoying his own verbosity--the florid language
which was both maddening and mystifying the tramp.
“Further evidence of your mean nature: a gentleman resents an insult
that steals away his character much more quickly than he resents an act
that steals mere property. In that little book which I have just laid
down Shakespeare speaks trenchantly on that matter: 'Who steals my purse
steals trash . . . but he that filches from me my good name robs me . . .
and makes me poor indeed.'”
The tramp gave over his work of folding, and awkwardly and cumbersomely
got upon his feet.
“You take off that coat and hand it over. It's mine--I found it. I can
stand a crazy man's gab, but when any one tries to do me out of what's
my own I'll fight.”
“May I ask what you're going to do with these garments of a gentleman
which have fallen into your hands by accident?”
“I'm going to cash 'em in at the nearest second-hand shop, that's just
what I'm going to do.”
“Just as you sold the Sunday suit you stole from a poor man! My friend,
I was insulted that day on account of you. You owe me something!”
Just then the alarm-clock purred a brief signal.
Up to that time the air of the man with the brown eyes had been that of
banter, of impish desire to harry and confuse by stilted language the
ignorant stranger who had come blundering upon him.
He stared at the clock, looked down upon the frock-coat, and then
surveyed the other articles of clothing. He scowled as if he had
suddenly begun to reflect. Seriousness smoldered in the brown eyes.
That tinkling touch of metal against metal seemed to change his mood in
astonishing fashion.
“Ah, it may be morning again, O my soul!” he cried with such tense
feeling in his voice that the tramp surveyed him with gaping mouth and
bulging eyes, as one stares at a person suddenly become mad.
“I will talk to you though you will not understand! Once upon a time the
world was ruled by men who were ruled by omens. Man was then not so wise
in his own conceit. His own soul was nearer the soul of things. He was
not a mere gob of bumptiousness covered with the shell of cocksureness.
He was willing to be informed. He sought the omens of true nature--he
allowed Fate to guide him. He was not a pig running against the goad of
circumstances, unheeding the upflung arms of Fortune, waving him toward
the right path. He was simpler--he was truer. He felt that he was a part
of nature instead of being boss of nature. Well, I have got nearer to
true nature since I have been in the open. I am in contact with the
soul of things. I am no longer insulated. I am not reformed, I am simply
ready once again to grab Opportunity. So you think I am crazy, do you?”
“They had a gink in a padded cell in the jail where I was last winter
and he didn't take on much worse'n you,” stated the tramp.
“As a brainless observer you may be quite right. I may be a lunatic. I
feel much like one just now. It is lunacy to go climbing back to a level
in society from which I have been kicked. But as I knelt there by
that little fire, before you came, yearning sprang up in me--and I had
thought all that sort of yearning was dead in me. A moment later came
habiliments of a gentleman, borne in the arms of a wretch who could
not wear them. There came Opportunity. Then the jangle of that clock
signaled Opportunity--and there was a throb in me as though my sleeping
soul had rolled and blinked at the sunlight of hope and had murmured,
'It's morning again.' Such are omens, when one is ready to heed.”
He set his teeth, clenched his fists, and by expression and attitude
showed that he had arrived at a decision of moment. He walked close
to the tramp. “I will admit, Friend Belly-brains, that you came upon
Opportunity before I did this day. But tell me again, are you to make no
further use of said Opportunity than to run to an old-clothes shop and
exchange for a few pennies that which will help to make a man?”
“They are mine and I'm going to sell 'em,” retorted the sullen vagrant.
“I am sorry because you have no wit--no power to understand. Otherwise
you would gladly lay these garments in my hands and bid me Godspeed. You
don't understand at all, do you?”
“Look here, are you trying to frisk me for these duds?”
“It's all a waste of breath to explain to you that Providence meant
these things for me. You are not acute enough to understand close
reasoning. I could not show you that, for the sake of a few coins, which
would do you only that harm which would come from their value in cheap
whisky or beer, you might be wrecking the future of a soul that is
awake. I simply tell you that I shall keep the clothing for myself.
Perhaps you can understand that plain statement!” The brown eyes became
resolute and piercing. “Even if I had money I would not pay you for
these garments. Money does such as you no good; it may bring you
trouble. My dear Boston Fat, I cannot afford to let you prejudice my
future, which, so instinct tells me, is wrapped up in those poor things
of wool and warp.” He snapped a finger into his palm and extended his
hand. “Give me that hat and then pass on about your business.”
The tramp backed away. His little blinking eyes expressed both fear and
rebelliousness. More than ever did he resemble a pig at bay. The black
hat, set on top of his greasy cap and topping with its respectability
his disreputable general outfit, added a bizarre touch to the scene
between the two men.
“You think now that you are the injured party,” calmly pursued the man
of the brown eyes. “You haven't intelligence enough to take my own case
into account. You are injured because you are losing a few coins--but I
may be injured in all that gives life its flavor if I do not grasp this
opportunity.” Both raillery and earnestness dropped out of his tones. He
became merely matter-of-fact. “I'll make it plain. Trot along about your
business, fat one, or I shall proceed to pound the face off you and
then kick you a few rods on your happy way. You deserve it as a thief--I
worked two weeks as a stone-mason on your account. Do you get me?”
For answer the infuriated vagrant rushed at him and kicked.
With one hand the stranger plucked the hat from the tramp's head and
sailed it to a place of safety. With the other hand he grabbed the
attacker's ankle before the foot hit him and with a jerk he laid the
tramp on his back.
The victim fell so helplessly that the concussion knocked the breath and
a groan out of him.
The man of the brown eyes had moved languidly and had talked languidly
till then. When he grabbed the foot he moved with a sort of steel-trap
efficiency and quickness. He promptly straddled his victim, seated
himself on the protruding abdomen, and began to beat the man's face. He
battered the flabby cheeks and punched his fists into the pulpy neck. He
ground his knees against the fat flanks and redoubled his blows when the
tramp struggled. After the squalling falsetto had implored for a long
time, the assailant at last gave over the exercise.
“Are you licked?” he asked.
“Yes,” whined the tramp.
“You have stolen--in most dirty style. I whipped you for that job. Now
will you stay licked for some time?”
“Yes.”
“You'll go on about your own business, will you, without any more
foolish talk about those garments?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sorry you stole from that good woman who fed you?”
“Yes.”
The man of the brown eyes swung himself off his prostrate victim, as a
rider dismounts from a horse, and the tramp sat up, moaning and patting
his purple face.
“I never had no luck, never,” he blubbered. “I was kicked out of jail
before the weather got warmed up, I was thrown in last fall just when
the Indian summer was beginning. When other fellows get hand-outs of pie
I get cold potatoes and bannock bread. I have to walk when other fellows
ride. I'm too fat for the trucks and they can always see me on the blind
baggage. I'll keep on walking. I never had no luck in all my life.”
He rolled upon his hands and knees and then stood up. He started away,
wholly cowed, whining like a quill-pig, bewailing his luck.
“Luck!” the man of the brown eyes shouted after him in a tone which
expressed anger and regret. “What do you know about luck, you animated
lard-pail? A thing like you is in luck when he is in jail where there
is no workshop. Better luck than that is too good for you. Hold on one
minute! Turn around and look at me.”
The tramp obeyed. The stranger pounded one of those hard fists on his
own breast.
“I say look at me! No matter what I was once! But to-day you found me
cooking bacon over three sticks and ready to fight for another man's
cast-off clothes. And in between whiles I have hiked every path that the
hobo knows between the oceans. Now jog on and think that over and keep
your jaw shut on luck! I say jog on! Don't look back. Forget that you
ever saw me.”
He waved angry gesture and took two steps as though to enforce his
command with his fists.
The tramp jogged on at a brisk pace. He hurried to the highway and set
out on his shuffling pilgrimage, rubbing his aching face and muttering
to himself.
V
THE GIRL WHO GUARDED HER LIPS
The brown eyes of the victor watched the tramp out of sight and for
some moments surveyed the nick in the undergrowth where the fellow had
disappeared.
There was no anger in the eyes. There had been none while their
possessor had been pummeling the wretch. He had beaten the man up in a
calm, methodical and perfectly business-like manner.
When at last he turned and looked at the clothing he smiled whimsically.
“The perambulating pork-barrel thinks I am crazy,” he mused, looking at
the frock-coat. He had stripped that garment from his shoulders and had
tossed it on a bush when he had decided on combat. “If I should stop to
argue the matter with myself just now I should find myself flattering
his good judgment. I have robbed a poor devil for a whim. Thank God,
I went at it brutally and frankly. There was no 'high finance'
sneak-thieving about that job. I sent him away with his face smarting.
They sent me away with my soul black-and-blue.”
He gathered the garments, picked up the shoes, put the hat on top of the
pile on his arm, and went farther into the woods, following the course
of a tiny stream of water. This stream led him to a pool. It was
tree-bordered, it was a center gem in a dim alcove in the forest, it was
as secret as a private chamber. The pool was glassy, for the winds were
still in the tree-tops.
The man laid down his burden. He stripped off his own well-worn coat and
shirt, and secured a razor and stick of soap from the scattered articles
he dumped from the coat pocket. He kneeled on the brink of the pool,
leaned over and shaved himself carefully, using the glassy surface as
a mirror. Then he put off his other clothing, the mean garments of a
vagrant, and plunged into the pool.
When he came forth from the water and dried himself with his discarded
shirt, he revealed himself to the birds whom his splashings had
attracted to the branches above the pool. If the birds' twitterings were
comments on his appearance, they must have been admiring comments. The
man's skin was white and he was lithe and tense and muscular. Breeding
showed in him as it shows in the muscles and conformation of a
race-horse. When he was dried he threw down the makeshift towel and
combed his shock of brown hair with his fingers. Now that the bristle of
beard was off his face he looked younger.
From the pile of clothing he selected his outfit, garment by garment.
The jovial humor of the judge had provided complete equipment for a man.
In the breast pockets of the frock-coat there were a clean collar, a
necktie, and a freshly laundered handkerchief.
By the time he had finished his dressing the pool was still and glassy
once more. He flirted out the handkerchief, holding it by one corner,
and swept the soft fabric around and around the crown of the black hat.
He carefully set the hat on his head and leaned over the pool and took
an interested peep at himself.
“You are a fool in this matter,” he informed the reflection. “And I
wonder why you are determined to persist in the folly. The man
Chick's tin suit cannot bring as much trouble to him as this garb of
respectability may bring to you. For no man can step up to that poor
Quaker and touch his shoulder and say--”
He broke off. He began to search through his discarded garments and to
stow his few possessions into the pockets of his new attire.
“All folly!” ran his thoughts. “I am consumed with it all of a sudden.
I have ranted to a tramp. Now I rant at myself. I am sloughing the rags
that have protected me. All folly!”
His searching fingers, groping to the deepest corner of a pocket,
found the crumbling fragments of a dried rose. He narrowed his eyes and
surveyed it as it lay in his palm, and then made as if to toss it into
the pool. But he checked the gesture. He set his chin in his hands and
communed aloud with himself after the fashion of those who hold aloof
from mankind:
“Folly, little sister! I may as well be truthful! Two dark eyes which
gave me the first honest, unafraid, and frank gaze I've had from a maid
in two years, two red lips which said 'Please' and 'Thank you'! A flash
of a glance behind her which called me, even if she did not mean it as
a call--and so, on I fare in a lunatic's dream. Own up! I have dreamed
that some day I will see her again. And down in the depths of me stirs
that impulse of the male which makes the peacock spread his feathers
and silly man perk in front of a mirror. Why not give in to the sense
of heredity once in a while even though it means beating up a tramp and
making myself more of a mark for human eyes?”
He rolled the old clothes into a bundle and stuffed them under the roots
of a tree. Then he strolled away leisurely, and when he as in the wider
stretches of the wood where the light was better he pulled a small book
from his pocket and read as he walked.
The volume was _Sartor Resartus_. His eyes happened to find this passage
and he smiled as he read:
All visible things are emblems. Hence clothes, as despicable as we think
them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle
downward, are emblematic not of want only but of a manifold cunning
victory over want. Men are properly said to be clothed with authority,
clothed with beauty, with curses and the like. It is written, the
Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a vesture; which indeed
they are: the time vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists,
whatsoever represents spirit to spirit, is properly a clothing, a suit
of raiment, put on for a season and to be laid off. Thus in this one
pregnant subject of clothes, rightly understood, is included all that
men have thought, dreamed, done, and been; the whole Eternal Universe
and what it holds is but clothing; and the essence of all science lies
in the Philosophy of Clothes.
From time to time he looked down upon himself complacently.
When he came near a glade in the wood he heard the chatter of the voices
of a merry party and he saw picnickers, men and women, gathered about
hampers. Automobiles were parked at a little distance, and he made a
detour to avoid the scene.
He emerged upon an animated tableau of modern nymph and modish satyr
in a close-by forest aisle. The girl was flushed and disheveled and was
resisting a young man who had pushed aside her veil and was kissing her
with ardor. She beat him back with her gloved hands and eluded him, but
he caught her to him with more of rough passion than tender affection.
“We are engaged to be married,” he insisted. “Why shouldn't I kiss you?
Don't be a prude!”
She thrust her protesting palms against him and set her arms rigidly and
held her head away, not with coyness, but with indignation and fierce
rebellion.
“I love you! My God, can't you understand?” he gasped. “I can't keep my
hands off you. You can't handle a man as you're trying to handle me. I
must have some affection from you!”
“Richard! I'll not endure this! I am insulted!”
“My kisses an insult? I'm no ice-water lover. You set me crazy. I can't
help myself.”
She wrenched herself from his grasp and faced him, her face filled with
outraged fury.
Farr had started to leave the scene. He stopped. The girl was the girl
of the red lips and the dark eyes.
“Don't touch me!” she cried. “The only promise you have had from me,
Richard, is the one my mother has fairly forced from me. I am trying
honestly to like you. I will please my mother and you if I can.”
“That's a devil of a thing to say to a man who loves you as I do,” he
declared, with anger.
“That is all I can say just now. But if you use me again as you would
pull and haul a girl of the streets, I'll despise you. I give you
warning.”
“What sort of books have you been reading, Kate?” he asked,
sarcastically. “Where did you get your idea of what love-making is?
They don't sing serenades under windows these days. They don't kiss
finger-tips and write mush poems. I am going to tell you a few things
you ought to know, as a girl engaged to be married.”
Farr stood close by them and in plain sight, but their absorption in
their struggle had left them attention only for each other. He knew
that if he started away while they were talking his presence would be
promptly noted and undoubtedly misjudged.
He set his finger between the leaves of his book and took his hat in his
hand.