Tramping on Life Part 106

Between the three women, nevertheless, Hildreth was easily my choice already ... Darrie was lovely, but talked like a debutante from morning till night....

Ruth had too much of the quietist in her, the non-resistent. She had a vast fund of scholars.h.i.+p, knew English poetry from the ground up ... but her bringing that knowledge to me as an attraction was like presenting a peac.o.c.k's feather to a bird of paradise....

However, when Penton came home that night, he found us all in huge good humour. I had just received a check from Derek, and had insisted on spending most of it for a spread for all of us, including a whopping beefsteak.

And we ate and joked and enjoyed ourselves just like the bourgeoisie.

If Penton only had had a sense of humour ... but this I never detected in him.

Even at singing cla.s.ses, which I attended one evening with him ... his whole entourage, in fact....

With solemn face he sang high, and always off key, till the three women had to stuff their handkerchiefs in their mouths to keep from laughing at him before his face....

After cla.s.s, we strolled home by a devious path, through the moonlight.

This time Ruth walked ahead with little Dan, Hildreth with her husband, Penton,--Darrie with me....

"Drag back a little, Johnnie ... Penton and Hildreth are having a private heart-to-heart talk, I can tell by their voices."

We hung back till they disappeared around a bend. We were alone. Darrie began to laugh and laugh and laugh.... "Oh, it's so funny, I shall die laughing"....

"Why--why, what's the matter!"

For I saw tears streaming down the girl's face in the moonlight.

"It's so awful," replied Darrie, now crying quietly, "--so tragic ...

yet I had to laugh ... I'm so sorry for Penton ... for both of them....

"Penton _is_ such a jacka.s.s, Johnnie," she gulped, "and G.o.d knows, as I do, he's such an honest, good man ... helping poor people all over the country ... really fighting the fight of the down-trodden and the oppressed."

I put my arm around the girl's waist, and she wept on my shoulder.

Finally she straightened up her head, stopping her crying with difficulty.

"We're all so funny, aren't we?"

"Yes, we're a funny bunch, Darrie ... all so mixed up,--the world wouldn't believe it, would they, if we told them?"

"And you could never make them understand, even if you did tell them.

You know, my dear, old Southern daddy--he thinks Penton is a limb of the old Nick himself ... with his theories about life, and the freedom of relations between the s.e.xes, and all that ... even yet he may leave me out of his will for coming up here, though he has all the confidence in the world in me."

And Mary Darfield Malcolm--whom we always called "Darrie"--went quickly to her room when we got back, so the others wouldn't notice that she had been crying....

Quite often, in the afternoons, toward dusk, around a dying fire, the whole community had "sings" out in the woods, near the one large stream that ab.u.t.ted the colony, and gathered into itself, all the little brooks....

The old songs were sung; rich, beautiful, old Scotch and English and Irish ballads--which were learnt, by all who wanted to know them, at the singing school ... and the old-fas.h.i.+oned American songs, too.

And the music softened our hearts and fused us into one harmony of feeling. And all the bickerings of the community's various "isms" melted away ... after all, there was not so very much disharmony among us. And, after all, the marvel is that human beings get along together at all.

The afternoon before the "circus" the little settlement more than ever took on the appearance of a medieval village ... almost everybody took turns in partic.i.p.ating in the "circus" ... almost everybody togged out in costume. But first we had a parade of the "guilds" ... the Actors'

Guild, in which Hildreth bore a part; in her pretty tights she looked like a handsome boy page in some early Italian prince's court.

Don Grahame was the son of the leader of the community whom Jones had promised to rake over the coals that night, after the circus.

Don led the Carpenters' Guild, looking like nothing else than a handsome boy Christ. Don, secretly disliking in his heart the free-love doctrines his father and others taught (though he always rose loyally in his father's defence) had gone to the other extreme, he lived an ascetic, virgin life. But it didn't seem to hurt him. He was as handsome as Hildreth was beautiful.

Everybody liked the young fellow. He had sworn that he would maintain his manner of abstinent living till he fell in love with a girl who loved him in return. Then they would live together....

That, he maintained, was the true and only meaning of free love. He had no use for varietism nor promiscuity.

The Guilds paraded twice around the Village Green, led by the Guild of Music Masters, who played excellently well.

The Children's Guild was a romping, lovely sight.

The circus was held shortly afterward in the huge communal barn, in the centre of its great floor,--the spectators seated about on the sides....

There was the trick mule, made up of two men under an ox-hide, the mule fell apart and precipitated Don Grahame in between its two halves ...

each half then ran away in opposite directions.

Don rode so well that that was the only way they (I mean the mule) could unseat him. He won much affectionate applause.

Then there was the fearful, great boa-constrictor ... which turned out to be a double-jointed, lithe, acrobatic, boy-like girl whom we knew as Jessie ... Jessie, they whispered, was marked for death by consumption, if she didn't look out and stop smoking so many cigarettes ... she was slender and pretty--but spoke with an adenoidal thickness of speech.

The colony was as merry as if no storm impended.

We adjourned for supper.

After supper, under the evening star we marched back to the barn again, which also served as our town hall. On the way there our talk was subdued and expectant. Many people were disgruntled with Jones.

"Why must he do this?"

"Why can't old Jones let well enough alone?... no community's perfect, not even our community."

Daniel had been put to bed, angrily objecting.

The five of us joined the flow of people toward the barn. Penton carried a lantern.

"Jones is all right," said Penton to me, "I like his spirit. I'm going to stand by him, if he finds himself seriously pressed, just because the man's spirit is a good one ... nothing mean about him ... but I know he'll place me among the sn.o.bs and wealthy of the community."