The Landloper Part 6

IV

FARR, THE FAT TRAMP, AND A SUIT OF CLOTHES

On a balmy forenoon a jovial-appearing old gentleman went jogging out of the mill city of Marion and along a country road in his two-wheeled chaise. He sat erect and he was tall above the average of men, and he was very neat in his attire.

"I wish," he mused, "that the men who could really appreciate a good outfit of clothing and could use the same properly were not so infernally touchy. As it is, cranky human nature drives me out on an expedition like this--and I'm afraid I am just as cranky as the rest of 'em, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this!"

The old gentleman hummed a song under his breath and slapped his reins against the flanks of the plodding horse to keep time. He came into a piece of woodland. He seemed to take cheery and fresh interest in this place. He poked his rubicund face out from the shadow of the chaise's canopy and peered to right and to left. There was a smile in his puckery eyes. When there were trees ahead of him, trees behind him, and trees all about he pulled his old horse to a standstill.

He listened, squinted quizzically through the gla.s.s of his chaise's rear curtain, and then climbed down. From a box at the rear of the vehicle he secured various articles of clothing and draped them over his arm.

There was a frock-coat, not too badly worn, trousers in good repair, waistcoat, and a shirt. He also took out of the box a pair of shoes and a hat. With this load he went to the roadside and began to rig out a fence-post. When the garments were hung on it and the broad-brimmed, black, slouch-hat had been jauntily set on top of the post, anybody could see that the old gentleman was thus disposing of some of his own extra clothing. He was wearing a similar hat and a frock-coat, himself, and the decorated post took on a bizarre and slouchy resemblance to its decorator.

He went back to the chaise and found a nickel alarm-clock in the box. He wound this up carefully and propped it on a rail of the fence near the clothing.

Before he could escape from the vicinity of the exhibit and get into his chaise a wagon came rattling around the bend of the road. There were firkins and jars in the rear of this wagon and the driver was plainly a farmer-man.

He pulled up short and then saluted the old gentleman with a stab of forefinger at his hat-brim.

"Any trouble, Judge?" he inquired, affably.

"None at all," replied the old gentleman, edging away from the fully garbed fence-post.

"Airing 'em out, hey?" A jab of the forefinger toward the garments.

"No, leaving them out."

All at once the old gentleman appeared to remember something else. He took off his hat and produced a placard. He straightened it and stuck it into a crack in a fence-rail. Its legend was "Help Yourself."

"You're giving them clothes away, are you, Judge Peterson?"

"I am leaving them here for any one who chooses to take them. Do you want first pick, Jolson?"

"Not me! I ain't taking charity hand-me-downs from any man, Judge. If it's a polite question, why are you giving away your duds this way?"

"I think you have just answered that question, Jolson. I offered you these clothes. Your nose went into the air. Other men have acted in the same way in the past when I have offered to give a fellow a good suit.

I don't want to hurt other folks' feelings. I don't want to have my own feelings hurt. So, let any man help himself when no one is looking."

"I'll take the alarm-clock, if you say so," volunteered Jolson. "It'll help to rout me out of bed at milking-time."

"No, you cannot have the clock, Jolson. I have tinkered it so that it will purr a little every half-hour. It will call attention to the clothes. You see, a good many men rush through life without looking to right or left, and so they miss a lot of opportunities."

Jolson clucked to his horse and rattled away down the road, muttering sour remarks.

The old gentleman, with the air of a man who has satisfied his philanthropic ambitions, climbed into his chaise and followed the farmer.

The brisk breeze flirted the tails of the frock-coat and the trousers legs tried out a modest little gig as if some of the jocose spirit of the old gentleman had remained with the garments he had discarded.

There were several pa.s.sers before another half-hour had elapsed.

The trousers kicked out quite hilariously when a young couple drove by in a buggy. The girl was pretty, and companionship with her might have suited even a judge's garments. But the young man and the girl were quite absorbed in each other, and the trousers kicked and the frock-coat flirted ineffectually.

A peddler's cart pa.s.sed very slowly, but the driver did not look up from a paper filled with figures.

There were others to whom the judge's garments offered themselves mutely, but no one glanced that way and the clock was discreetly silent.

The breeze died down and the trousers and the coat hung with a sort of homeless, homesick, and wistful air. One might have thought they were trying to conceal themselves when the next person appeared, so still were they. He was not an inviting person--not such a new lord and master as a judge's garments might be expected to welcome.

He was grossly fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable. Surely, a most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments of a judge! But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of inanimate things, the clock jangled its alarm.

The tramp--there was no mistaking that gait and that general air of the vagrant--snapped himself about, located the noise, stared at the post, and then hurried to it. He made sure that there was no one in sight. He scooped all into his arms, climbed the fence and trotted into the woods.

He kept looking behind him as if he feared pursuit. It was plain from his disturbed demeanor that he was much perplexed and was chased by the uncomfortable thought that he was stealing this property. He bestowed so much attention behind him that he paid but little attention to what was ahead of him, and so he ran down into a little bowl of a valley among the trees and stopped short there, for he had come upon a man.

It was the man who called himself Walker Farr.

The man was kneeling beside a tiny fire, toasting bread on the end of a beech twig. He held the twig in one hand and an open book in the other.

He looked up without changing his position when the tramp came charging down the hillside.

He had wide-open, brown eyes, this man in the hollow. The eyes were not merely wide open on account of surprise at this irruption--one could see that they were naturally that way--keenly observant eyes. He had hair as brown as his eyes; his cap was on the ground beside him.

But the tramp was not taking account of the attractions of this stranger; he was more interested in searching for flaws.

He had been frightened at first sight of the man--for the tramp had the timidity of his kind; now he began to feel cheered. This stranger in the hollow had not been shaved recently, his clothing was unkempt, his shoes bore the marks of a long hike. He was cooking in the open--plain indication of the nomad.

"Well, I say, bo," chaffed the tramp, shifting from fright to high spirit with the hysteria of weak natures. "I'm sure glad to see one of the good old sort. I didn't know what I was dropping in on when I fell down that hill. But it's all right, hey? I'm on the road. My name is Boston Fat, and my monacker is a bean-pot."

The brown eyes moved slowly from the grinning face to the garments heaped in the man's arms. They were cold and critical eyes and there was no humor in them.

"I do not do business during my lunch-hours, my man. I do not desire to change tailors just yet and I do not buy stolen property."

His chilliness did not dampen the other's good nature.

"Oh, that's all right, old top. I'm no thief. These clothes were hung on a fence-post just above here on the road. I reckon they were only waiting for first-comer."

He dropped the shoes, c.o.c.ked the hat on his head, and began to fumble the garments. The placard dropped out of the folds of the coat and the man at the fire craned his neck and read aloud: "Help Yourself."

"Oh, that's what the paper says, hey? I never learned to read any of the modern languages," confided Boston Fat. "I was too much taken up with the dead ones at Harvard. Well, comrade, now you can see for yourself that I didn't steal this mess of moth-food. There was the sign right on it saying, 'Help Yourself.' It was there, even if I couldn't read it.

Instinck told me them clothes was for me. I took 'em and came in here."

He shook out the garments one by one and hung them on a bush, chattering his comments. He set the ticking clock on a stump.

The man at the fire slipped a piece of meat between two slabs of toasted bread and began to eat. He still held the open book in his hand but his eyes were watching the tramp.

The vagrant was orally appraising his find, exhibiting the wisdom of one who has begged garments at back doors for the purposes of peddling them to second-hand shops.

"A moucher," observed the man at the fire. He continued aloud, evidently and sardonically exercising his vocabulary, plainly enjoying the amazement he provoked by his style of language. "The spirit of a stray cat at midnight, the tastes of the prowling hyena! The fat thief I saw running away into the woods! When such as these began to take to the road, knight-errantry vanished from the face of the earth. The varlets borrowed the grand idea of care-free itinerancy and debased it, as waiters borrow a gentleman's evening dress for their menial uniform, and drunken coachmen wear the same head-gear that a duke wears to a wedding!

Why prove evolution by searching for a man with a tail? The performances of human nature must convince any thinking man that we have descended from apes!"