Tramping on Life Part 80

They stood in droves, in the sheltered entrances of the halls, and occasionally darted out by ones and twos and threes to rescue distressed co-eds.

Down in the room over the tin and plumbing shop in which I lived, I found it cold indeed. I could afford no heat ... and, believing in windows open, knew every searching drop in the barometer.

But never in my life was I happier, despite my secretly cherished love for Vanna. For I a.s.sured myself in my heart of certain future fame, the fame I had dreamed of since childhood. And I wore every hardship as an adornment, conscious of the greatness of my cause.

Isolation; half-starvation; cold; inadequate clothing;--all counted for the glory of poetry, as martyrs had accepted persecution and suffering for the glory of G.o.d.

My two hours of daily work irked me. I wanted the time for my writing and studying ... but I still continued living above the din of the shop that I had grown accustomed to, by this time.

Rarely, when the nights were so subarctic as to be almost unbearable, did I slip down through the skylight and seek out the comparative warmth of the shop ... and there, on the platform where the desk stood so that it could overlook all the store, I wrote and studied.

But Randall said this worried the night watchman too much, my appearing and disappearing, all hours of the night. He didn't relish coming every time to see if the store was being burglarised.

The outside world was beginning to notice me. My poems, two of which I had sold to the _Century_, two to _Everybody's_, and a score to the _Independent_, were, as soon as they appeared in those magazines, immediately copied by the Kansas newspapers. And the Kansas City _Star_ featured a story of me at Laurel, playing up my freaks and oddities ...

but accompanied by a flattering picture that "Con" c.u.mmins, our college photographer, had taken.

Also I was receiving occasional letters from strangers who had read my poems. But they were mostly letters from cranks ... or from girls very, very young and sentimental, or on the verge of old-maidhood, who were casting about for some escape from the narrow daily life that environed them....

But one morning a letter came to me so scrawlingly addressed that I marvelled at the ability of the postal authorities in deciphering it.

The writer of it hailed me as a poet of great achievement already, but of much greater future promise.... Mr. Lephil, editor of the _National Magazine_, for whom he was writing a serial, had showed him some of my verse, and he must hasten to encourage me ... I puzzled long over the writer's signature.... It could not be possible! but it seemed to be inscribed with the name of a novelist famous for his investigations of capitalistic abuses of the people ... the author of the sensational novel, _The Slaughter House_, which was said to out-Zola Zola--Penton Baxter.

I hurried downstairs from my attic, to intercept some friend who would confirm me in my interpretation of the signature.

It was Travers I ran into. I showed the letter to him.

"By Jove! It _is_ Baxter!" he cried.

He was as overwhelmed as I had been.

"Say, Johnnie, you must really amount to something, with all these people back East paying such attention to you ... come on into Kuhlman's and have a "c.o.ke" with me."

In Kuhlman's, the college foregathering place, the ice cream and refreshment parlour of the town, we joined with Jimmy Thompson, our famous football quarterback. The room was full of students eating ice cream and drinking coco-cola and ice cream sodas.

"Say, let me print this."

"No, but you may put an item in the _Laurelian_, if you want to."

"I must write a story for the _Star_ about it."

It would have pleased my vanity to have had Jack put the story in the papers, but I was afraid of offending Baxter ... afterward I learned that it would not have offended him ... he had the vanity of a child, as well as I.

I answered his letter promptly, in terms of what might have seemed, to the outside eye, excessive adulation. But Penton Baxter was to me a great genius ... and nothing I could have written in his praise would have overweighed the debt I owed him for that fine letter of encouragement.

So at last I was reaping the fruits of my years of struggle for the poetic ideal--my years of poverty and suffering.

A belated student at college, twenty-five years of age ... a tramp for the sake of my art ... as I sat in my cold room ... propped up by my one overturned chair ... in bed ... betaking myself there to keep from freezing while I wrote and dreamed and read and studied,--I burst out singing some of my own verses, making the tune to the lines as I went along.

"John Gregory, you are a great man, and some day all the world shall know and acknowledge it!" I said over and over again to myself....

"And now, Vanna, my love, my darling," I cried aloud, so that if anyone overheard, the auditor would think I was going mad, "now, Vanna, you shall see ... in a year I shall have my first book of poetry out ... and fame and money for royalties will be mine ... then I will dare speak to you boldly of my love for you ... and you will be glad and proud of it ... and be happy to marry me and be my wife!"

In the meantime Vanna Andrews was daily seen driving down the streets with Billy Conway, whose father was Governor of a Western State ... as I saw her going by in her fragile beauty, I bowed my head to her, and in return came a slight nod of mere, pa.s.sing acquaintanceship.

I made friends with Billy, as I had done with Vanna's homely room-mate ... who thought I was becoming interested in her--because I often spoke in Vanna's dispraise, to throw her off the track, and to encourage her to speak at greater length of the woman I loved and worshipped from a-far.

Now I sought through Billy Conway a nearer opportunity for her favour.

He approached me one day while we were out on the football field, practicing formations. I was on the scrub team--whose duty it was to help knock the big team into shape.

"Johnnie, you know Vanna, don't you?... Vanna Andrews, the art student."

"Slightly," I concealed, thanking G.o.d I hadn't blushed straightway at the mention of her name ... "--met her when I posed for Professor Grant's cla.s.ses."

"She's a beaut, ain't she?"

"Everybody thinks so."

"Don't you?"

"She'd be perfect, if she weren't so thin," I answered, almost smothering from the thumping of my heart.

"I've often wondered what makes you so cold toward the girls ... when you write poetry ... poets are supposed to be romantic."

"We have a good imagination."

"--wish you'd exercise your imagination a little for me ... I'd pay you for it."

"For what?"

"--writing poems on Vanna, for me."

My heart gave a wild jump of joy at the opportunity.

"I'll think it over. But if I do so, I won't take anything for it."

Billy shook my hand fervently.

"You're all right, Gregory ... it'll help me a lot ... I've got a case on her, I'll admit."

"Come on!" roared Coach Shaughnessy, "get on the job."

He began calling letters and numbers for a play.