Tramping on Life Part 110

"It was such a beautiful night, Johnnie and I took a walk in the moonlight."

Darrie looked from one to the other of us with a wide, staring look.

"You needn't look that way, Darrie!"

"Please, please, Hildreth!"

"You and Penton have taken walks in the moonlight."

"Hildreth, dear, I'm not rebuking you ... and you know my walks with Penton are all right, are harmless."

"Yes, I know they are ... but you mustn't rebuke me, either."

"I wasn't rebuking either you or Johnnie ... it isn't that I'm thinking of at all ... but everything has been so uncanny here to-night ... I could not sleep ... every little rustle of curtains, every creak or motion in the whole house vibrated through me ... something's going to happen to someone."

"You're only upset because Penton's in jail," I explained.

"No, that's not it ... that's nothing compared to this feeling ... this premonition--"

"Come on, let's make some coffee ... in the percolator."

"You girls sit down and I'll make it. I've been a cook several times in my career."

Someone was knocking about in the dark, upstairs. We heard a match struck....

"There, we've waked Ruth, too."

"What's the matter down there?" Ruth was calling.

"Come on down and join us, Ruth,--we're having a cup of coffee a-piece."

"It's only two o'clock ... what's everybody doing up so early? Has Penton come back?"

"No ... but do come down and join us," I replied.

"I tell you, I thought it was burglars at first, and I was going to the drawer in Penton's room and get out his six-shooter."

"Does Penton keep a gun?" I asked.

"Yes ... it's the one he bought to shoot the mongrel dog with."

We ate some cold roast beef sandwiches and drank our coffee.

Hildreth stayed in the big house, not going down the path with me.

I went silently to my tent. It was blowing a little now. The moon was surging along behind little, grey, running clouds. It would rain before daylight. A haunted s.h.i.+ver swept through my back as I stole along the path. I repeated poetry rapidly aloud to crowd out uncanny imaginings. I had a silly, sick impulse to run back to the big house and sleep on the couch in the library.

But I forced myself on. "If you're ever going to be a man, you'd better begin now," I muttered to myself, as if talking to another person.

In my tent ... I lit the lamp. I removed all hanging objects because their lurching shadows sent s.h.i.+vers of apprehension through me....

"That d.a.m.ned coffee--wish I hadn't drunk it."

The wind and rain came up like a phantom army. It sang in the trees, it drummed musically on my tent. It comforted me.

The floodgates of my mind, my inspiration, broke loose. I rose to my super-self. And now if a horrible thing had stood grey at my elbow, unmoved, I would have looked it unflinchingly in the sightless visage....

My pencil raced over paper ... raced and raced.

"Here it comes ... just like your good rain, so kind to earth.... Oh, beautiful G.o.d, I thank Thee for making me a poet," I prayed, tears streaming down my face.

The second act of _Judas_ stood complete, as if it had written itself.

I rose. It seemed hardly an hour had pa.s.sed.

It took me a few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs. How they ached! I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my face in some bushes and bled from several scratches. The blare of what was full daylight hurt my eyes. I had been writing on, entranced, by unneeded lamp, when unheeded day burned about me.

Stepping inside again, I saw by my Ingersoll that it was twelve o'clock.

I fell into a deep sleep, still dressed ... I was so exhausted. Usually I slept absolutely naked.

These were the things that happened while Penton was in jail because he played tennis on Sunday.

Now I was part and parcel of the household, no longer a stranger-friend on a visit. Though Penton's jail-experience did not thrill me, the continued thronging of reporters did, as did Baxter's raging desire to do good for the poor ordinary prisoners in jail. He had got at several of them who had received a raw deal in the courts, and was moving heaven and earth to bring redress to them. He gave interviews, dictated articles ... the State officials were furious. "What's the matter with the fellow? What's he bother about the other fellows for, he ought to be glad he's not in their shoes!"...

In agitations for the public good, in humanitarian projects, Baxter was indeed a great man ... I loomed like a pigmy beside him.

Darrie and I in dialogue:

She met me on the path, as I was proceeding toward the big house. She carried Carpenter's _Love's Coming of Age_ in her hand. She was dressed daintily. Her brown eyes smiled at me, and a rich dimple broke in her cheek.

But Darrie was taller than Hildreth, and I like small women best; perhaps because I am myself so big.

"Don't go up to the house, Johnnie."