Tramping on Life Part 113

I ate a long time, dreaming.

Darrie came out, followed immediately by Daniel. Daniel was in an obstreperous mood ... he cried out that I must be his "telegraph pole,"

that he would be a lineman, and climb me. I felt an affection for him that I had not known before. I played with him, letting him climb up my leg.

He finished, a-straddle my shoulders. I reached up and sat him still higher, on my head. And he waved his arms and shouted, as if making signals to someone far off.

Darrie laughed.

"Which would you rather have, a son or a daughter?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I replied, letting Daniel slide down, "but I think I'd rather have a daughter ... the next generation will see a great age of freedom for women ... feminism....

"Then it would be a grand thing, too, to have a beautiful daughter to go about with ... and I would be old and silver-haired and benignant-looking ... and people would say, as they saw the two of us:

"'There goes the poet, John Gregory, and his daughter ... isn't she a beautiful girl!'

"And she would be a great actress."

Penton came forth from the big house ... he poised tentatively like a queer bird on the verge of a long flight ... then he wavered rapidly down the steps.

"--slept late!... has the mail come yet?... where's Ruth?"

"Isn't she in the house?" I queried.

"I saw her stepping out at the back door a minute ago" ... said Darrie.

"We had breakfast together ... I...."

"I hope she doesn't stay away long ... I have an article on Blue Laws as a Reactionary Weapon, that I want to dictate for a magazine ...--one of her moods, I suppose!"

I looked the little, large-browed man over almost impersonally. I saw him as from far away. He came out very clear to me.

I found a profound pity for him waking in my heart, together with a sort of contempt.

"And where's Hildreth?"

"Not up yet I presume," replied Darrie.

I excused myself and hurried back to my tent ... where, instead of settling down to work on the third act of my play, I lay p.r.o.ne on my cot, day-dreaming of the future. How beautiful it would be, now that I had at last found my life-mate!

I thanked G.o.d that nothing trivial was in my heart to mar the stupendousness of my love, my first real pa.s.sion for a woman!

"Johnnie!"

I leaped alert. It was Hildreth, at my tent door....

"Get up, you lazy boy ... surely you haven't been sleeping all this time?"

"No, darling."

"I ate my breakfast all alone," she remarked, in an aggrieved tone, "where's Darrie and Mubby and Ruth?"

"G.o.d knows! I don't--and I don't care!"

"You needn't be peevis.h.!.+"

"Peevish?--as long as you are with me I don't care if all the rest of humanity are dead."

I stepped out beside her. We stood locked in a long embrace.

She drew back, with belated thoughtfulness....

"We ought to be more careful ... so near the house."

"I'm so glad you're in the little house near my tent, Hildreth."

"But we can't be together there much ... it's too near the big house."

"What shall we do, then?"

"There's the fields and the woods ... miles of them ... the whole outside world for us."

"I don't see why _we_ shouldn't go strolling together ... the rest are all abroad somewhere, too ... but we must be careful, Johnnie, very careful."

"Careful--why?"

"Because of Mubby."

"But he doesn't love you any more?"

"I'm not so sure about that ... I'm not so sure about anything."

I never saw the world so beautiful as on that day. I was translated to the veritable garden of Eden. The community had been named rightly. I was Adam and Hildreth was my Eve.

And so it went on for two blissful weeks....

If the Voice of G.o.d had met us, going abroad beneath the trees, I would not have been surprised.

Hildreth took her volume of Blake with her on our rambles ... and we revelled in his "Songs of Experience" as well as "Songs of Innocence"; and we were moved deeply by the huge, cloudy grandeur of his prophetic books....

Why could it not go on forever thus? eternal summer, everlasting love in its first rosy flush?...