Tramping on Life Part 61

I found my grandfather holding forth in a swell suite of offices in the business district of Was.h.i.+ngton.

Near his great desk, with a little table and typewriter, sat a girl, very pretty--he would see to that!... evidently his stenographer and private secretary.

As I stood by the railing, she observed me coldly once or twice, looking me over, before she thrust her pencil in her abundant hair and sauntered haughtily over to see what I was after.

Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ...

that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.

I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office, where hung the old-fas.h.i.+oned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp stools,--bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.

Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about, first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.

"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.

I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly, the while.

I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college with....

"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded, "I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry ... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else."

"No! how absurd!" he was snapping decisively. I came to from my vision.

"My dear Johnnie, your proposition is both absurd and--" as if that were the last enormity--"very unbusinesslike!"

"But I will then become a great poet! On my word of honour, I will! and I will be a great honour to the Gregory family!"

He shook his head. He rose, standing erect and slender, like a small flagpole. As I rose I towered high over the little-bodied, trim man.

"Come, you haven't eaten yet?"

"No!"

Well, he had a sort of a heart, after all ... some family feeling.

Walking slightly ahead, so as not to seem to be in my company, old Grandfather Gregory took me to a--lunch counter ... bowing to numerous friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a scarecrow in a field.

I grew so angry at him I could hardly bridle my anger in.

"--like oyster sandwiches?" he asked.

He didn't even wait to let me choose my own food.

"Two oyster sandwiches and--a cup of coffee," he barked.

While I ate he stepped outside and talked with another friend.

"Good-bye," he was bidding me, extending a tiny hand, the back of it covered with steel-coloured hairs, "you'd better go back up to Jersey--just heard your daddy is very sick there ... he might need your help."

I thought cautiously. Evidently he knew nothing of my father's having been sent home by his lodge. I affected to be perturbed....

"In that case--could you--advance me my fare to Haberford?"

I'd w.a.n.gle a _few_ dollars out of him.

My grandfather's answer was a silent, granite smile.

"--just want to see what you can cajole out of the old man, eh? No, Johnnie--I'll leave you to make your way back in the same way you've made your way to Was.h.i.+ngton ... from all accounts railroad fare is the least of your troubles."

My whole hatred of him, so carefully concealed while I thought there was some hopes of putting through my educational scheme, now broke out--

"_You"_--I began, cursing....

"I knew that's the way you felt all along ... better run along now, or I'll say I don't know you, and have you taken up for soliciting alms."

Before nightfall I was well on my way to Philadelphia. For a while I resigned myself to the life of a tramp. I hooked up with another gang of hoboes, in the outskirts of that city, and taught them the plan of the ex-cook that we'd crowned king down in Texas....

I kept myself in reading matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton--from an outside stand of a second hand book store....

--left that gang, and started forth alone again. I became a walking b.u.m, if a few miles a day const.i.tutes taking that appellation. I walked ahead a few miles, then sat down and studied my Milton, or dug deep into _Tristram Shandy_. Hungry, I went up to farmhouse or backdoor of city dwelling, and asked for food....

I found myself in the outskirts of Newark again.

I took my Sterne and Milton to Breasted's, hoping to trade them for other books. I stood before the outside books, on the stand, hesitating.

I was, for the moment, ashamed to show myself to "the perfesser,"

because of the raggedness that I had fallen into.

While I was hesitating, a voice at my elbow--

"Any books I can show you?--any special book you're looking for?"

The voice was the voice of the tradesman, warning off the man unlikely to buy--but it was the familiar voice of my friend, "the perfesser,"

just the same. I turned and smiled into his face, happy in greeting him, losing the trepidation my rags gave me.

"Why, Johnnie Gregory!" he shook my hand warmly as if I were a prince. I was enchanted.

"I want to exchange two books if I can--for others!"