Tramping on Life Part 57

There he found that the queer, gentle, old man was as helpless as a child ... all he could be trusted to do was to write addresses on letters ... which he was set at, not too exactingly....

I never saw so happy a man as Pfeiler was that winter.

He was a Buddhist, not by pose, but by sincere conviction. He thought, also, that the Koran was a greater book than the Bible ... and more miraculous ... "one man, Mohammed, who left a work of greater beauty than the combined efforts of the several hundred who gave us that hodge-podge, the Bible."

Pfeiler had been left a fortune by his father, a wealthy German merchant ... so, like Sir Richard Burton, he had made off to the Near East ...

where he had lived among the Turks for ten years ... till, what with his buying rare ma.n.u.scripts and Oriental and Turkish art, he had suddenly run upon the rocks of bankruptcy ... and had returned from the Levantine a ruined, helpless scholar, who had never been taught to be anything else but a man of culture and leisure....

By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works of art, his priceless ma.n.u.scripts sold ... the money gone like water through the a.s.siduities of false friends and sycophants....

On the b.u.m in Chicago ... a hotel clerk, discharged as incompetent--he had forgotten to insist that a man and woman register always as man and wife ... "because it was such hypocrisy" ... finally a dishwasher, who lived in a hall bed-room ... no friends because of his abstractedness, his immersion in oriental scholarship ... his only place of refuge, his dwelling place, when not washing dishes for a mere existence, the Public Library....

"Old Pfeiler" drank coffee by the quart, as drunkards drink whiskey. He had a nervous affliction which caused him to shake his head continually, as if in impatience ... or as a dog shakes his head to dislodge something that has crept into his ear....

He was as timid as a girl....

The common dormitory was no place for him ... I am sorry to confess that, for a while, I helped to make his life miserable for him ... each night the beak-nosed pugilist-lad and I raised a merry roughhouse in the place.... Pfeiler was our chief b.u.t.t. We put things in his bed ... threw objects about so they would wake him up. One night I found him crying silently ... but somehow not ign.o.bly ... this made me shift about in my actions toward him, and see how miserable my conduct had been....

So the next time "Beak-horn," as I called my plug-ugly friend, started to tease the old man, I asked him to stop ... that we had tormented Pfeiler long enough. "Beak-horn" replied with a surprised, savage stare ... and the next moment he was on me, half in jest, half in earnest. I boxed with him as hard and swift as I was able ... but a flock of fists drove in over me ... and I was thrown p.r.o.ne across the form of the old man ... who stuttered with fright and impotent rage, swearing it was all a put-up game between us to torment him further, when I protested that I had not tried to do it.

The next morning Spalton sent for me.

"Look here, Razorre, if _you_ were not the biggest freak of them all, I could understand," he remarked severely....

I tried to explain how sorry I was for the way I had joined in Pfeiler's persecution ... but the master would have none of it ... he told me to look better to my conduct or he would have to expel me from the community....

"Gregory," he ended, calling me by my name, "somehow I never quite _get you_ ... most of the time you are refined and almost over-gentle ... you know and love poetry and art and the worthwhile things ... but then there's also the hoodlum in you ... the dirty Hooligan--" his eyes blazed with just rebuke.... I trod out silently, sick of myself, at heart ... as I have often, often been.

After that, Pfeiler avoided me. I went up to him in apology. Most contritely I said I was sorry.

"You are a fraud," he cried at me, spluttering, almost gnashing his teeth in fury, "you go around here, pretending you are a poet, and have the soul of a thug, a brute, a coward and bully ... please don't speak to me any more as long as I'm here ... you only pretend interest in spiritual and intellectual things, always for some brutal reason ...

even now you are planning something base, some diabolical betrayal of the Master, perhaps, or of all of us.... I myself have advised Mr.

Spalton, for the good of his community to send you back to the tramps and jail-birds from whom you come ... you sc.u.m! you filthy pestilence!"

His head was shaking like an oscillating toy ... his eyes were starting from his head through force of his invective ... he was jerking about, in his anger, like a dancing mouse....

I hurried out of his word-range, overwhelmed with greater shame than I can ever say.

The editor of the _Independent_, Dr. William Hayes Ward, had, so far, not found room in his magazine for the two poems of mine he had bought.

I was chagrined, and wrote him, rather impetuously, that, if he didn't care for the poems he might return them. Which he did, with a rather frigid and offended reply. I was rendered unhappy by this.

I spoke to Spalton about it.

"Why Razorre, so you _have_ come that near to being in print?" I showed him the poems. "Yes, you have the making of a real poet in you!"

A day or so after he approached me with--"I'm writing a brief visit to the home of Th.o.r.eau ... how would you like to compose a poem for me, on him--for the first page of the work?"

"I would like it very much," I said. In a few days I handed him the poem. A "sonnet," the form of which I myself had invented, in fifteen lines.

For days I lived in an intoxication of antic.i.p.ation ... just to have one poem printed, I was certain, would mean my immediate fame ... so thoroughly did I believe in my genius. I was sure that instantly all of the publishers in the world would contend with each other for the privilege of bringing out my books.

Spring had begun to give hints of waking green, when _The Brief Visit_ was issued from the press. I rushed to procure a copy before it was bound. I was surprised and dumbfounded to find that the Master had used the poem without my name attached ... just as if it, with the rest of the book, was from his own pen.

My first impulse was to rush into the dining hall, at breakfast, Waving the sheets, and calling "John" to account for his theft, before everybody ... then I bethought myself that, perhaps, some mistake had been made ... that the proofreader might have left my name out.

Spalton looked up quickly as I pa.s.sed by his table. He read in my face that I had already discovered what he had done. He blushed. I nodded him a stiff greeting. I ate in silence--at the furthest table.

In a few minutes he did me an honour he had never shown me before. He came over to where I sat. "Razorre," he invited, "how would you like to take a hike with me into the country, this morning?"

I gave him a swift glance. "I would like it very much."

"Then as soon as you are through, meet me in the library."

I drank a second cup of coffee with studied deliberation--in spite of myself, I was thrilled with the notice that had been shown me before all the others. Already my anger had somewhat lessened.

Never had the master been so eloquent, so much his better self, since that first day, at the wood-pile. He strove to throw the magic of his spirit over me with all his power. For hours we walked, the light, pale green of the renewing year about us. But through it all I saw what he was trying to effect ... to impress me so deeply that I would not only forgive him for having stolen my poem, but actually thank him, for having used it--even consider it a mark of honour ... which his eloquence almost persuaded me to do.

Indeed I saw the true greatness in "John" ... but I also saw and resented the petty, cruel pilferer--stealing helpless, unknown, youthful genius for his own--resented it even more because the resources of the man's nature did not require it of him to descend to such pitiful expedients. He was rich enough in himself for his own fame and glory.

And why should he rob a young poet of his first fame, of the exquisite pleasure of seeing his name for the first time in print? ... than which there is no pleasure more exquisite ... not even the first possession of a loved woman!...

We had almost returned to the "Artworks" before I tried to let loose on him ... but even then I could not. Gently I asked him why he had not affixed my name to my poem.

He looked at me with well-simulated amazement.

"Why, Razorre, I never even thought of it ... we are all a part of one community of endeavour here ... and we all give our efforts as a contribution to the Eos Idea ... I have paid you a higher compliment than merely giving you credit ... instead, I have incorporated your verse into the very body of our thought and life."

His effrontery struck me silent. I told him sadly that I must now go away.

"Nonsense," he replied, "this is as good a place in which to develop your poetic genius as any place in the world. I may say, better. Here you will find congenial environment, ready appreciation .. come, let us walk a little further," and we turned aside from the steps of the dining room and struck down the main street of the town.

"I mean bigger things for you, Razorre, than you can guess.... I will make you the Eos Poet--look at Gresham, he is the Eos Artist, and, as such, his fame is continent-wide ... just as yours will become ... and I will bring out a book of your poetry ... and advertise it in _The Dawn_."

His eloquence on art and life, genius and literature, had enthralled and placated me ... his personal wheedling irritated and angered.

"A book of my poems ... without my name on the t.i.tle page, perhaps," I cried, impa.s.sioned, looking him deep in the eyes. He shifted his glance from me--