Tramping on Life Part 63

Driven by an impulse of distaste for him and his house and market garden, I started to leave in secret. What money was coming to me for my two weeks' work I did not care about--in the face of the curious satisfaction it would give me just to quit, and to have the old man call up to me and find me missing....

I heard him pottering back to his bedroom again.... I waited till he was quiet and back to sleep--then I stole forth in the quiet moonlight near dawn.

It gave me a pleasure to vanish like smoke. I thought of the time when I had that job plowing in Southern California; that time I had driven the horses to the further end of the field, and left them standing there under the shade of a tree and then made off, wis.h.i.+ng to shout and sing for the sheer happiness of freedom from responsibility and regular work.

Each time I have made off that way, from a mult.i.tude of varying employments, it has not been, surely, to the detriment of my successive employers. I have always decamped with wages still owing me.

I swung a scythe for a week for another Yankee farmer, on a marsh where the machine couldn't be driven in--which I was informed was King Phillip's battle ground.

I visited the inn where Longfellow was supposed to have gotten his inspiration for _Tales of a Wayside Inn_.

I must see all the literary landmarks, even those where I considered the authors that had caused the places to be celebrated, as dull and third rate....

With gathering power in me grew my desire to attend college. I would tramp, as I was doing, through the country, and end up at some western university for the fall term.

The art workers' community lay in my way at Eos.

I dropped off a freight, one morning, in the Eos yards....

The gladdest to see me again was the Buddhist, Pfeiler. He rushed up to me, in the dining hall, that night, and took both my hands in his ...

thanking me for my kind thought of him in sending him my Ossian ...

avowing that he had made a mistake in his opinion of me and asking my indulgence ... for he was old and a failure ... and I was young and could still look forward to success.

My unexpected dropping-in at Eos created quite a stir.

Spalton welcomed me back, and stood, that evening, before the fire in the sitting room, with his arm about my shoulder ... even as he did so I remembered the picture taken of him and the celebrated poet L'Estrange, together ... their arms about each other's shoulders ... and the current Eos proverb, that Spalton always quarrelled not long after with anyone about whose shoulder he first cast his arm.

Already a change was manifest in the little community. Tabled off by themselves sat the workers and the folk of the studios, that night.

While the guests who stayed at the inn occupied separate tables.

And there were many secret complaints about a woman they referred to as "Dorothy" ... Dorothy had done this ... Dorothy had done that ...

Dorothy would be the ruination of "the shop" ... it would have been better if she had never shown up at the Eos Studios....

I asked who was Dorothy....

"Don't you know ... we thought you did ... Spalton's new wife ... the one his first wife got a divorce from him for?"

And I heard the story, part of which I knew, but not the final details.

Spalton's first wife had been an easy-going, amiable creature ... fair and pretty in a soft, female way ... a teacher in the local Sunday school ... one who accepted all the conventions as they were ... who could not understand anyone not conforming to them ... life was easier and more comfortable that way....

Spalton's originality and genius would in the end have of itself produced a rupture between them ... few women are at home with genius, much as they clasp their hands in ecstasy over it, as viewed on the lecture and concert platform....

But the wedge that drove them apart was entered when his first wife, Anne, brought into their married life, Dorothy, a fellow teacher, a visiting friend.

Dorothy was so thin as to be stringy of body. She had a sharp hatchet-face, eyes with the colour of ice in them ... a cold, blue-grey.

She was a woman of culture, yet at the same time she was possessed of a great instinct for organisation and business enterprise--just what was needed for the kind of thing Spalton was trying to inaugurate at Eos.

She fell in readily with the Master's schemes ... even with his price-tags on objects of art, his egregious overvaluation of hand illumined books ... which his wife, with old-fas.h.i.+oned honesty, rebuked him for.

An affinity of like-mindedness grew up between Spalton and this intense, homely woman, Dorothy ... whose face, like that of all clever, homely women, grew to a beauty in his eyes, that mere beauty which plastic form can never attain.

There was a local busybody of a minister, and it was he who first intimated to the then Mrs. Spalton that her dear and intimate friend, was betraying her....

There followed the usual spying and publicity ... Mrs. Spalton won her divorce....

But this was after several years. Long before the divorce was granted John and Dorothy were aware of a tangible fruit of their love.... I had often wondered why the Master so ardently, so often, wrote eloquently in defense of the superior qualities of illegitimate children....

Dorothy bore their child ... a girl ... and went away to teach in a smart school somewhere in the East, under an a.s.sumed name....

Now, after many years, Spalton and she married.

I saw in the sitting room a wonderful girl. She had s.h.i.+ning, abundant hair, and a face rendered superlatively beautiful by the glowing of vivacity, understanding, feminine vitality behind it and through it, like a lamp held up within. She was absorbed in the new exhibit of Gresham's that hung on the walls of the guest room ... she wore a short, bouncing, riding skirt, and carried a quirt in her hand.

I walked up to her, fascinated. Without letting her know who I was I quoted Poe's _To Helen_ to her. She stood, smiling sweetly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world, to have a lean, wild-faced stranger address her with a poem.

"That's the way I feel about you!" I ended.

She gave a lovely laugh ... held out both her hands, dropping the quirt on the floor ... took my hands and leaned back gaily, like a child.

"Oh, I know who you are ... you're Razorre ... father wrote me a lot about you ... when I lived East ... you were one of his pet 'nuts'!"

We sat there and conversed a long time. She talked of Socrates and Plato as if she had broken bread with them ... she discussed science, history, art as if wisdom and understanding were nearer her desire than anything else....

She was the child of "John" and Dorothy.

Again Spalton asked me to stay, "we need a poet for Eos!"

But I insisted that I must go on and acquire a college education ...

which he maintained would be a hindrance, not a help--"they will iron you out, and make you a decent member of society--and then, Razorre, G.o.d help the poet in you ... poets and artists should never be decent ...

only the true son of Ishmael can ever write or paint," he waved.