Tramping on Life Part 115

"All of our tribe were slain ... Naa and I alone escaped-- going far off-- To start another people and clan: She, the woman, and I, the man!"

In my love-drunkenness, I looked directly at Hildreth as I read the last lines ... she lowered her head and picked at her sandal....

The applause was tumultuous....

Penton Baxter rose to his feet, as chairman of the occasion....

"I'm sure we all thank Mr. Gregory--"

Events trod rapidly on one another's heels. Though Penton had gone on frequent walks with Darrie, after his day's work,--chiefly because Hildreth had not wanted to go on walks with him herself, or had not wanted to accompany them both--yet she and I seized on the precedent Penton and Darrie had set, and we were abroad most of the time ...

roaming idyllically in the fields, the woods ... pa.s.sionate ... mad with the new love that had come to us ... unseeing, in our absorption in each other's arms ... praying with devout lover's prayers that we were as unseen as unseeing....

We were abroad in the fields so much that even Penton himself must notice it....

So we developed the flimsiest of all flimsy pretexts ... pretended to be engrossed, together, in of all things, the study of--toadstools and mushrooms ... taking with us Neltje Blanchan's book on _Mushrooms and Toadstools_, with its beautiful coloured ill.u.s.trations ... and we did learn a lot about these queer vegetations that grow without the need of chlorophyll ... entering into a world of new colours in the vegetable kingdom ... exquisite pinks and mauves and greys ... blues ... purples ... reds ... russets ... in the darkest spots of the woods we sought and found strange species of these marvellous growths ... that grow more readily in the dark and obscurity, the twilights of nature, than in the open sunlight of green summer days....

Down vistas of forest we often pursued each other ... often got lost so that it took hours for re-orientation ... once, for awhile, to our great fright, we could not re-discover our clothes, that we had lightly tossed aside on the bank of a brook lost and remote,--that had never before laved a human body in its singing recesses of forest foliage ... for I had been playing satyr to her nymph, pursuing her....

And each day saw us a little more reckless, more bold and open in our love, our pa.s.sion, for each other.

"How handsome love is making you, my Paphnutius!"

I was wearing my bath-robe, had stopped at her cottage a moment, in the morning, where she sat, in an easy chair, reading peacefully ... I was on my way for my morning dip in a nearby brook....

My bath-robe, that made me, somehow, feel so aristocratic, so like a member of the leisure cla.s.s ... I forgot to tell how I had brought it all the way from Kansas, together with my MSS.

As I swam about in the brook, not over four feet deep, I sang and shouted. I had never been so happy in my life....

I dried myself in the sun, using its morning heat for a towel....

As I sat there on a rock, I heard a crackling of twigs, and Penton thrust his way through the intervening branches to my bare rock and my bare self ... I hastily, I do not know why, put on my bathrobe....

"h.e.l.lo, Penton."

"Good morning, Johnnie. I felt you'd be down here for your morning bath ... I came to have a serious talk with you."

"Yes?"

"I want you to take calmly what I am about to say!"

Penton was much impressed with my stories of tramp days and tales of adventure on land and sea, which you may be sure my sense of the dramatic had encouraged me to lay on thick--and he, plainly, did not desire any heat in the discussion which was to follow....

"Recently it has come to my attention that there has been a lot of gossip about you and Hildreth ... your conduct together." He drew his lips together tightly, settled himself for a long siege....

"Why, Penton," I began, protestingly and hypocritically,--I had planned far other and franker conduct in such an emergency--but here I was, deprecating the truth--

"Why, Penton, G.o.d knows--"

"Never mind ... if it is true, I am very sorry for you--for Hildreth's sake, for yours, for mine ... but I want to warn you, if it is not true, to look out ... you, as a friend, owe me some obligations ... I have taken you in here, accepted you as one almost of my family, and--"

"But, Penton, this is unfair," I lied, "unfair even to suspect me--"

"If it had been anybody but you, Johnnie, I would have been suspicious weeks ago ... Oh, I know, Hildreth ... she is giving all the manifestations ... how her face shines, how beautiful she has grown, as she does, with a new heart interest!... and her taking my little cottage ... ousting me from it....

"If it was anyone else," and he fetched a deep sigh, with tears standing in his eyes, leaving the sentence incomplete.

At that moment I was impelled almost to cast myself at his feet, to confess, and beg forgiveness....

"I want to warn you," he went on, "of Hildreth ... once before this has happened ... she is a varietist by nature, as I am essentially a monogamist."

"--and the free love idea, it was you who taught her this, brought her into contact with Havelock Ellis, Ellen Key, Rosa Von Mayerreder?"

"I deny that. I believe in human freedom ... divorce ... remarriage ...

but not in extreme s.e.x-radicalism ... Hildreth has misinterpreted me ...

the people you mention are great idealists, but in many ways they go too far ... true--I brought Hildreth into contact with these books; but only that she might use her own judgment, not accept them wholly and blindly, as she has done...."

I looked at the man. He was sincere. An incredible, nave, almost idiotic purity shone in his face....

Again I was impelled to confess. Again I held my tongue. Again I lied.

"Penton, what you have just said about you and Hildreth and your lives together, I shall consider as sacred between us."

He gave me his hand.

"Promise me one thing, that you will not take Hildreth as your sweetheart ... be true to our friendship first, Johnnie."

"Penton, I am only flesh and blood; I will promise, if anything happens, to tell you, ultimately, the truth."

He looked at me with close scrutiny again, at this ambiguous speech.

"Johnnie, _have_ you told me the absolute truth?"

"Yes!" evading his eyes.

"--because there is a wild strain in Hildreth that only needs a little rousing--" He paused.