Tramping on Life Part 65

It is a law that prevails in three-dimensional s.p.a.ce that two objects cannot occupy the same place at one time. I dislodged the vase. It came to the floor in a crash ... which stopped the music ... which stopped everything. There fell a dead silence. I looked down at the fragments, hardly knowing what to do....

Spalton came over to me ... intensely ... his eyes blazing.

"Razorre, come out into the lobby ... I want to speak to you." I willingly followed him ... he wheeled on me when he had me alone.

"Do you know why we have these paintings of Gresham's hung high up there on the wall?" he asked rhetorically, with an eloquent, upward sweep of his arm, "it's so b.u.ms like you ... dirty tramps ... can't wipe their feet on them."

"I am so sorry, so very sorry," I murmured, contrite.

Thinking my contrition meekness, and possibly fear of him, he went to take me by the shoulders. I knocked his hands away promptly and quickly stepped back, on the defensive ... all my reverence for him swallowed up in indignation, rising at last, against his vulgar chiding.

At that moment, my widow, Mrs. Tighe, arrived ... she was weeping....

"Don't be hard on the poor boy," she pleaded ... "anyhow, it was all my fault ... and I want to pay you for your vase ... whatever it cost."...

A momentary flicker of greed lighted the Master's eyes. But he perceived as instantly how unmagnanimous he would appear if he accepted a cash settlement.

"I am not thinking of my financial loss ... beauty cannot be valued that way!" he exclaimed.

"Then you must not blame the boy."

"He is clumsy ... he is a terrible fool ... he is always doing the wrong thing. Oh, my beautiful vase!" and he wrung his hands, lost in the pose.

Out he strode through the front door.

The musicale had been broken up.

"My poor, dear Johnnie, I am so sorry," murmured the young woman. I was sitting in the large armchair where she had sat the memorable night of the lecture that neither of us attended. She had seated herself on one of the arms.

"You mustn't be despondent!" She was patting my hand.

She mistook my rage at the gratuitous insults Spalton had heaped on me as despondency. She leaned closer against me ... quickly I caught her into my arms, drew her into my lap ... held her little, quiet, amazed face in my hands firmly, as I kissed and kissed her.... I knew how to kiss now....

She rose presently. I stood up and caught her in my arms. Slowly and firmly she disengaged herself ... silently she slid away. She stopped in the shadow a moment before going up the long, winding stairs.

"Good night, my dear poet," she whispered.

She had no sooner disappeared than I started out, my heart beating like a drum to a charge in me. Spalton frequently wrote till late, in his office. I would go over there and, if he was there, call him to account for his insults. There was a light lit within, and I could see him through the window at his desk.

"Come in!" in answer to my knock. "Oh, it's you, Razorre!" and his eyes snapped with fresh resentment. "What do you want? Don't you know that I'm busy on _A Brief Visit_?"

"You know why I'm here!"

"Well?" challengingly.

"I've come for two reasons. I want to apologise to you for breaking that vase ... and I demand an equal apology from you, in turn, for the way you insulted me in Mrs. Tighe's presence."

"You deserved everything I said to you," he replied, rising quietly from his chair.

"I may have deserved it ... but that doesn't alter in the least my intention of smas.h.i.+ng your face flat for the way you spoke to me, unless you tell me you're sorry for it."

"My dear Gregory, don't be a fool."

"A fool?" I replied, inflamed further by the appellation applied to quiet me in such a superior tone, "if you'll come on out into the street and away from your own property, I'll show you who's a fool ... you'll find you can't treat me like a dog, and get away with it!"

"Why, Razorre ... my dear, dear boy," calling me by my nickname and taking another tack ... he laid his hand gently on my shoulder and gave me a deep, burning look of compa.s.sionate rebuke ... though I saw fear flickering back of it all....

"Look here, John," I burst out, never able to hold my wrath long, "I like you ... think you're a great man--but you humiliated me before other people ... and I've come to such a pa.s.s in my life that I wouldn't let G.o.d Himself get away with a thing like that!"

"Then I apologise ... most humbly!"

"That was all I wanted. Good-night!" But I could not bring myself to leave so abruptly.

"John," I wavered, "you _are_ a great man ... a much greater man than you allow yourself to be ... I'm--I'm going away from here forever, this time ... and I--I want you to know how I reverence and love the bigness in you, in spite of our--our differences."

He was pleased.

"And so you're going to college somewhere?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

I had talked much of college being my next aim.

"Either the University of Chicago, or further west."

"I can give you commutation as far as Chicago."

"I cannot accept it."

"You must, Razorre."

A week from then I left.

I went up to Mrs. Tighe's room to say good-bye. Awkwardly and with the bearlike roughness of excessive timidity I put my arms about her, drew her to me tentatively.

"Be careful, poet dear, or you'll hurt me," she warned, giving me a look of fondness. Her left arm was in a sling. She had fallen on the steps a few days before and had broken a small bone in the wrist. "My sweet poet!"

The bandaged arm being in the way, I put my head down in her lap again, as she sat there on the edge of the great, white bed.

She leaned over, turned my face up with her free hand, kissed me full in the mouth....

"My sweet poet," she repeated, "good-bye!"