Tramping on Life Part 103

The Joneses were very poor. They had two children and lived in a mere shack on the outskirts of the community. Jones was a shoemaker. His wife came twice a week to clean up and set things to rights in the Baxter menage--his two houses. I took care of the tent myself, while I was there....

By this time Darrie, Ruth, and Mrs. Baxter were up. I sat in the library, in the morris chair, deeply immersed in the life of Nietzsche, by his sister. Nevertheless I was not so preoccupied as not to catch fugitive glimpses of kimonos disappearing around door-corners ... women at their mysterious morning ritual of preparing themselves against the day.

Comfortable of mind, at ease in heart and body, I sat there, dangling one leg over the arm of the chair. I was much at home in the midst of this easy, disjointed family group.

We were, the four of us--Darrie, Hildreth, Ruth, and I--seated together at our outdoor table, scooping out soft-boiled eggs.

Hildreth Baxter had boiled my two eggs medium for me ... to the humorous, affected consternation of Darrie and Ruth, which they, of course, deliberately made visible to me, with the implication--

"You'd best look out, when Penton's lazy little wife waits on you ...

she is the one who generally demands to be waited on, and if--"

And now, for the moment, all of us were combined against the master of the house ... furtively and jocularly combined, like naughty children....

Hildreth smuggled forth her coffee percolator, which she kept hidden from her husband's search ... and we soon, by the aid of an alcohol stove, had a cup of fragrant coffee a-piece ... which Darrie made....

"Penton swears coffee is worse than whiskey, the rankest of poisons. We have to hide the percolator from him."

"He lies a-bed late, when he wakes. He lies there thinking out what he will later on dictate to Ruth.... we can finish before--"

But just then Penton himself came hurrying up the path from the little cottage.

When he saw what we were doing he gave us such a look of solemn disgust that we nearly smothered with laughter, which we tried to suppress.

"When you take that percolator off the table--" he stood aloof, "I'll sit down with you."

Then we laughed outright, not in disrespect of him, but as children laugh at a humorous incident at school.

"Oh, yes, it might seem funny ... so does a drunken man who gives up his reason to a drug seem funny.... but it's no more a joke than that ...

coffee is a vile poison ... I have a sense of humour," he continued, turning to me, "just as keen as the next one ... but I know, by scientific research, just how much damage that stuff does."

I read my sonnet to Penton, in a grave, respectful voice.

Peace was patched. We then sat together, under the chequered shade of the big tree which towered over our table ... Baxter waxed as eloquent as an angel ... the wonderful, absurd, little man.

Daniel came romping out for breakfast.

Penton reached for the morning's mail. He climbed into the hammock and read, with all the joy of a boy, the huge bunch of press clippings about himself, his activities, his work ... a daily procedure of his, I was to learn. He chuckled, joked, was immensely pleased ... handed me various items to read, or read choice bits aloud to all of us.

After all, though I pretended to criticise, to myself ... yet, in my heart, I liked his frank rejoicing in his fame, his notoriety, and only envied him his ability to do so.

I returned to my tent to work, as I had planned to do each morning, on my play _Judas_. The dialogue would not come to me ... I laid it aside and instead was inspired to set down instantly the blank verse poem to the play:--

"A noise of archery and wielded swords All night rang through his dreams. When risen morn Let down her rosy feet on Galilee Blue-vistaed, on the house-top Judas woke: Desire of battle brooded in his breast Although the day was hung with sapphire peace, And to his inner eye battalions bright Of seraphim, fledged with celestial mail, Came marching up the wide-flung ways of dawn To usher in the triumph-day of Christ....

But sun on sun departed, moon on moon, And still the Master lingered by the way, Iscariot deemed, dusked in mortality And darkened in the G.o.d by flesh of man.

For Judas a material kingdom saw And not a realm of immaterial gold, A city of renewed Jerusalem And not that New Jerusalem, diamond-paved With love and sapphire-walled with brotherhood, Which He, the Master, wrestled to make plain With thews of parable and simile-- So ''tis the flesh that clogs him,' Judas thought (A simple, earnest man, he loved him well And slew him with great friends.h.i.+p in the end); 'Yea, if he chose to say the word of power, The seraphim and cherubim, invoked, Would wheel in dazzling squadrons down the sky And for the hosts of Israel move in war As in those holy battles waged of yore'....

"Ah, all the world now knows Gethsemane, But few the love of that betraying kiss!"

I did not have to be very long at Eden to learn that the community was divided into two parties: the more conservative, rooted element whom success was making more and more conservative,--and the genuinely radical crowd. The anarchist, Jones, led the latter group, a very small one.

As far as I could see, this anarchist-shoemaker held the right. On my third day in Eden my interest in the community life about me led me to inquire my way to the place where Jones lived ... a shack built practically in its entirety of old dry goods boxes ... a two-room affair with a sort of enlarged dog-kennel adjunct that stood out nearer the road--Jones's workshop.

The man looked like the philosopher he was--the anarchist-philosopher, as the newspapers were to dub him ... as he sat there before his last, hammering away at the shoe he was heeling, not stopping the motions of his hands, while he put that pair aside, to sew at another pair, while he discoursed at large with me over men and affairs.

"What is all this trouble I'm hearing about?" I asked him.

"Trouble?--same old thing: Alfred Grahame, when he founded, started, this colony, was a true idealist. But success has turned his head, worsened him, since,--as it has done with many a good man before. Now he goes about the country lecturing, on Shakespeare, G.o.d, the Devil, or anything else that he knows nothing about....

"But it isn't that that I object to ... it is that he's allowing the original object of this colony, and of the Single Tax Idea, to become gradually perverted here. We're becoming nothing but a summer resort for the aesthetic quasi-respectables ... these folk are squeezing us poor, honest radicals out, by making the leases prohibitive in price and condition."

He stopped speaking, while he picked up another pair of shoes, examined them, chose one, and began sewing a patch on it....

He rose, with his leathern ap.r.o.n on, and saw me out....

"--glad you came to see old Jones ... you'll see and hear a lot more of me, the next week or so!" and he smiled genially, prophetically.

He looked like Socrates as he stood there ... jovially homely, round-faced ... head as bald as ivory ... red, bushy eyebrows that were so heavy he shrugged them....

"I'm just beginning the fight (would you actually believe it) for free speech here ... it takes a radical community, you know, to teach the conservatives how to suppress freedom....

"You must come around to the big barn Friday night, after the circus."

"--the circus?"

"Oh, we have a circus of our own every summer about this time ... we represent the animals ourselves ... some of us don't need to make up much, neither, if we only knew it," he roared.

"After the imitation circus, the real circus will begin. I have compelled the announcement of a general meeting to discuss my grievances, and that of others, who are not game enough to speak for themselves."

I found n.o.body but Hildreth--Mrs. Baxter--at home, when I returned. She was lying back in the hammock where Penton lounged to read his news clippings ... near the outdoor table ... dressed easily in her bloomers and white middy blouse with the blue bow tie ... her great, brown eyes, with big jet lashes, drooping langourously over her healthy, rounded cheeks ... her head of rich, dark hair touseled attractively. She was reading a book. I caught the white gleam of one of her pretty legs where the elastic on one side of her bloomers had slipped up.

Alone with her, a touch of my old almost paralytic shyness returned ...

but the pathway to my tent lay so near her hammock I would almost brush against its side in pa.s.sing....