The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
feeling in his voice that the tramp surveyed him with gaping mouth and
bulging eyes, as one stares at a person suddenly become mad.
“I will talk to you though you will not understand! Once upon a time the
world was ruled by men who were ruled by omens. Man was then not so wise
in his own conceit. His own soul was nearer the soul of things. He was
not a mere gob of bumptiousness covered with the shell of cocksureness.
He was willing to be informed. He sought the omens of true nature--he
allowed Fate to guide him. He was not a pig running against the goad of
circumstances, unheeding the upflung arms of Fortune, waving him toward
the right path. He was simpler--he was truer. He felt that he was a part
of nature instead of being boss of nature. Well, I have got nearer to
true nature since I have been in the open. I am in contact with the
soul of things. I am no longer insulated. I am not reformed, I am simply
ready once again to grab Opportunity. So you think I am crazy, do you?”
“They had a gink in a padded cell in the jail where I was last winter
and he didn't take on much worse'n you,” stated the tramp.
“As a brainless observer you may be quite right. I may be a lunatic. I
feel much like one just now. It is lunacy to go climbing back to a level
in society from which I have been kicked. But as I knelt there by
that little fire, before you came, yearning sprang up in me--and I had
thought all that sort of yearning was dead in me. A moment later came
habiliments of a gentleman, borne in the arms of a wretch who could
not wear them. There came Opportunity. Then the jangle of that clock
signaled Opportunity--and there was a throb in me as though my sleeping
soul had rolled and blinked at the sunlight of hope and had murmured,
'It's morning again.' Such are omens, when one is ready to heed.”
He set his teeth, clenched his fists, and by expression and attitude
showed that he had arrived at a decision of moment. He walked close
to the tramp. “I will admit, Friend Belly-brains, that you came upon
Opportunity before I did this day. But tell me again, are you to make no
further use of said Opportunity than to run to an old-clothes shop and
exchange for a few pennies that which will help to make a man?”
“They are mine and I'm going to sell 'em,” retorted the sullen vagrant.
“I am sorry because you have no wit--no power to understand. Otherwise
you would gladly lay these garments in my hands and bid me Godspeed. You
don't understand at all, do you?”
“Look here, are you trying to frisk me for these duds?”
“It's all a waste of breath to explain to you that Providence meant
these things for me. You are not acute enough to understand close
reasoning. I could not show you that, for the sake of a few coins, which
would do you only that harm which would come from their value in cheap
whisky or beer, you might be wrecking the future of a soul that is
awake. I simply tell you that I shall keep the clothing for myself.
Perhaps you can understand that plain statement!” The brown eyes became
resolute and piercing. “Even if I had money I would not pay you for
these garments. Money does such as you no good; it may bring you
trouble. My dear Boston Fat, I cannot afford to let you prejudice my
future, which, so instinct tells me, is wrapped up in those poor things
of wool and warp.” He snapped a finger into his palm and extended his
hand. “Give me that hat and then pass on about your business.”
The tramp backed away. His little blinking eyes expressed both fear and
rebelliousness. More than ever did he resemble a pig at bay. The black
hat, set on top of his greasy cap and topping with its respectability
his disreputable general outfit, added a bizarre touch to the scene
between the two men.
“You think now that you are the injured party,” calmly pursued the man
of the brown eyes. “You haven't intelligence enough to take my own case
into account. You are injured because you are losing a few coins--but I
may be injured in all that gives life its flavor if I do not grasp this
opportunity.” Both raillery and earnestness dropped out of his tones. He
became merely matter-of-fact. “I'll make it plain. Trot along about your
business, fat one, or I shall proceed to pound the face off you and
then kick you a few rods on your happy way. You deserve it as a thief--I
worked two weeks as a stone-mason on your account. Do you get me?”
For answer the infuriated vagrant rushed at him and kicked.
With one hand the stranger plucked the hat from the tramp's head and
sailed it to a place of safety. With the other hand he grabbed the
attacker's ankle before the foot hit him and with a jerk he laid the
tramp on his back.
The victim fell so helplessly that the concussion knocked the breath and
a groan out of him.
The man of the brown eyes had moved languidly and had talked languidly
till then. When he grabbed the foot he moved with a sort of steel-trap
efficiency and quickness. He promptly straddled his victim, seated
himself on the protruding abdomen, and began to beat the man's face. He
battered the flabby cheeks and punched his fists into the pulpy neck. He
ground his knees against the fat flanks and redoubled his blows when the
tramp struggled. After the squalling falsetto had implored for a long
time, the assailant at last gave over the exercise.
“Are you licked?” he asked.
“Yes,” whined the tramp.
“You have stolen--in most dirty style. I whipped you for that job. Now
will you stay licked for some time?”
“Yes.”
“You'll go on about your own business, will you, without any more
foolish talk about those garments?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sorry you stole from that good woman who fed you?”
“Yes.”
The man of the brown eyes swung himself off his prostrate victim, as a
rider dismounts from a horse, and the tramp sat up, moaning and patting
his purple face.
“I never had no luck, never,” he blubbered. “I was kicked out of jail
before the weather got warmed up, I was thrown in last fall just when
the Indian summer was beginning. When other fellows get hand-outs of pie
I get cold potatoes and bannock bread. I have to walk when other fellows
ride. I'm too fat for the trucks and they can always see me on the blind
baggage. I'll keep on walking. I never had no luck in all my life.”
He rolled upon his hands and knees and then stood up. He started away,
wholly cowed, whining like a quill-pig, bewailing his luck.
“Luck!” the man of the brown eyes shouted after him in a tone which
expressed anger and regret. “What do you know about luck, you animated
lard-pail? A thing like you is in luck when he is in jail where there
is no workshop. Better luck than that is too good for you. Hold on one
minute! Turn around and look at me.”
The tramp obeyed. The stranger pounded one of those hard fists on his
own breast.
“I say look at me! No matter what I was once! But to-day you found me
cooking bacon over three sticks and ready to fight for another man's
cast-off clothes. And in between whiles I have hiked every path that the
hobo knows between the oceans. Now jog on and think that over and keep
your jaw shut on luck! I say jog on! Don't look back. Forget that you
ever saw me.”
He waved angry gesture and took two steps as though to enforce his
command with his fists.
The tramp jogged on at a brisk pace. He hurried to the highway and set
out on his shuffling pilgrimage, rubbing his aching face and muttering
to himself.
V
THE GIRL WHO GUARDED HER LIPS
The brown eyes of the victor watched the tramp out of sight and for
some moments surveyed the nick in the undergrowth where the fellow had
disappeared.
There was no anger in the eyes. There had been none while their
possessor had been pummeling the wretch. He had beaten the man up in a
calm, methodical and perfectly business-like manner.
When at last he turned and looked at the clothing he smiled whimsically.
“The perambulating pork-barrel thinks I am crazy,” he mused, looking at
the frock-coat. He had stripped that garment from his shoulders and had
tossed it on a bush when he had decided on combat. “If I should stop to
argue the matter with myself just now I should find myself flattering
his good judgment. I have robbed a poor devil for a whim. Thank God,
I went at it brutally and frankly. There was no 'high finance'
sneak-thieving about that job. I sent him away with his face smarting.
They sent me away with my soul black-and-blue.”
He gathered the garments, picked up the shoes, put the hat on top of the
pile on his arm, and went farther into the woods, following the course
of a tiny stream of water. This stream led him to a pool. It was
tree-bordered, it was a center gem in a dim alcove in the forest, it was
as secret as a private chamber. The pool was glassy, for the winds were
still in the tree-tops.
The man laid down his burden. He stripped off his own well-worn coat and
shirt, and secured a razor and stick of soap from the scattered articles
he dumped from the coat pocket. He kneeled on the brink of the pool,
leaned over and shaved himself carefully, using the glassy surface as
a mirror. Then he put off his other clothing, the mean garments of a
vagrant, and plunged into the pool.
When he came forth from the water and dried himself with his discarded
shirt, he revealed himself to the birds whom his splashings had
attracted to the branches above the pool. If the birds' twitterings were
comments on his appearance, they must have been admiring comments. The
man's skin was white and he was lithe and tense and muscular. Breeding
showed in him as it shows in the muscles and conformation of a
race-horse. When he was dried he threw down the makeshift towel and
combed his shock of brown hair with his fingers. Now that the bristle of
beard was off his face he looked younger.
From the pile of clothing he selected his outfit, garment by garment.
The jovial humor of the judge had provided complete equipment for a man.
In the breast pockets of the frock-coat there were a clean collar, a
necktie, and a freshly laundered handkerchief.
By the time he had finished his dressing the pool was still and glassy
once more. He flirted out the handkerchief, holding it by one corner,
and swept the soft fabric around and around the crown of the black hat.
He carefully set the hat on his head and leaned over the pool and took
an interested peep at himself.
“You are a fool in this matter,” he informed the reflection. “And I
wonder why you are determined to persist in the folly. The man
Chick's tin suit cannot bring as much trouble to him as this garb of
respectability may bring to you. For no man can step up to that poor
Quaker and touch his shoulder and say--”
He broke off. He began to search through his discarded garments and to
stow his few possessions into the pockets of his new attire.
“All folly!” ran his thoughts. “I am consumed with it all of a sudden.
I have ranted to a tramp. Now I rant at myself. I am sloughing the rags
that have protected me. All folly!”
His searching fingers, groping to the deepest corner of a pocket,
found the crumbling fragments of a dried rose. He narrowed his eyes and
surveyed it as it lay in his palm, and then made as if to toss it into
the pool. But he checked the gesture. He set his chin in his hands and
communed aloud with himself after the fashion of those who hold aloof
from mankind:
“Folly, little sister! I may as well be truthful! Two dark eyes which
gave me the first honest, unafraid, and frank gaze I've had from a maid
in two years, two red lips which said 'Please' and 'Thank you'! A flash
of a glance behind her which called me, even if she did not mean it as
a call--and so, on I fare in a lunatic's dream. Own up! I have dreamed
that some day I will see her again. And down in the depths of me stirs