Tramping on Life Part 61

I found my grandfather holding forth in a swell suite of offices in the business district of Washington.

Near his great desk, with a little table and typewriter, sat a girl, very pretty--he would see to that!... evidently his stenographer and private secretary.

As I stood by the railing, she observed me coldly once or twice, looking me over, before she thrust her pencil in her abundant hair and sauntered haughtily over to see what I was after.

Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ...

that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.

I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office, where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp stools,--bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.

Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about, first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.

"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.

I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly, the while.

I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college with....

"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded, "I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry ... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else."

"No! how absurd!" he was snapping decisively. I came to from my vision.

"My dear Johnnie, your proposition is both absurd and--" as if that were the last enormity--"very unbusinesslike!"

"But I will then become a great poet! On my word of honour, I will! and I will be a great honour to the Gregory family!"

He shook his head. He rose, standing erect and slender, like a small flagpole. As I rose I towered high over the little-bodied, trim man.

"Come, you haven't eaten yet?"

"No!"

Well, he had a sort of a heart, after all ... some family feeling.

Walking slightly ahead, so as not to seem to be in my company, old Grandfather Gregory took me to a--lunch counter ... bowing to numerous friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a scarecrow in a field.

I grew so angry at him I could hardly bridle my anger in.

"--like oyster sandwiches?" he asked.

He didn't even wait to let me choose my own food.

"Two oyster sandwiches and--a cup of coffee," he barked.

While I ate he stepped outside and talked with another friend.

"Good-bye," he was bidding me, extending a tiny hand, the back of it covered with steel-coloured hairs, "you'd better go back up to Jersey--just heard your daddy is very sick there ... he might need your help."

I thought cautiously. Evidently he knew nothing of my father's having been sent home by his lodge. I affected to be perturbed....

"In that case--could you--advance me my fare to Haberford?"

I'd w.a.n.gle a _few_ dollars out of him.

My grandfather's answer was a silent, granite smile.

"--just want to see what you can cajole out of the old man, eh? No, Johnnie--I'll leave you to make your way back in the same way you've made your way to Washington ... from all accounts railroad fare is the least of your troubles."

My whole hatred of him, so carefully concealed while I thought there was some hopes of putting through my educational scheme, now broke out--

"_You"_--I began, cursing....

"I knew that's the way you felt all along ... better run along now, or I'll say I don't know you, and have you taken up for soliciting alms."

Before nightfall I was well on my way to Philadelphia. For a while I resigned myself to the life of a tramp. I hooked up with another gang of hoboes, in the outskirts of that city, and taught them the plan of the ex-cook that we'd crowned king down in Texas....

I kept myself in reading matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton--from an outside stand of a second hand book store....

--left that gang, and started forth alone again. I became a walking b.u.m, if a few miles a day const.i.tutes taking that appellation. I walked ahead a few miles, then sat down and studied my Milton, or dug deep into _Tristram Shandy_. Hungry, I went up to farmhouse or backdoor of city dwelling, and asked for food....

I found myself in the outskirts of Newark again.

I took my Sterne and Milton to Breasted's, hoping to trade them for other books. I stood before the outside books, on the stand, hesitating.

I was, for the moment, ashamed to show myself to "the perfesser,"

because of the raggedness that I had fallen into.

While I was hesitating, a voice at my elbow--

"Any books I can show you?--any special book you're looking for?"

The voice was the voice of the tradesman, warning off the man unlikely to buy--but it was the familiar voice of my friend, "the perfesser,"

just the same. I turned and smiled into his face, happy in greeting him, losing the trepidation my rags gave me.

"Why, Johnnie Gregory!" he shook my hand warmly as if I were a prince. I was enchanted.

"I want to exchange two books if I can--for others!"