The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
that impulse of the male which makes the peacock spread his feathers
and silly man perk in front of a mirror. Why not give in to the sense
of heredity once in a while even though it means beating up a tramp and
making myself more of a mark for human eyes?”
He rolled the old clothes into a bundle and stuffed them under the roots
of a tree. Then he strolled away leisurely, and when he as in the wider
stretches of the wood where the light was better he pulled a small book
from his pocket and read as he walked.
The volume was _Sartor Resartus_. His eyes happened to find this passage
and he smiled as he read:
All visible things are emblems. Hence clothes, as despicable as we think
them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle
downward, are emblematic not of want only but of a manifold cunning
victory over want. Men are properly said to be clothed with authority,
clothed with beauty, with curses and the like. It is written, the
Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a vesture; which indeed
they are: the time vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists,
whatsoever represents spirit to spirit, is properly a clothing, a suit
of raiment, put on for a season and to be laid off. Thus in this one
pregnant subject of clothes, rightly understood, is included all that
men have thought, dreamed, done, and been; the whole Eternal Universe
and what it holds is but clothing; and the essence of all science lies
in the Philosophy of Clothes.
From time to time he looked down upon himself complacently.
When he came near a glade in the wood he heard the chatter of the voices
of a merry party and he saw picnickers, men and women, gathered about
hampers. Automobiles were parked at a little distance, and he made a
detour to avoid the scene.
He emerged upon an animated tableau of modern nymph and modish satyr
in a close-by forest aisle. The girl was flushed and disheveled and was
resisting a young man who had pushed aside her veil and was kissing her
with ardor. She beat him back with her gloved hands and eluded him, but
he caught her to him with more of rough passion than tender affection.
“We are engaged to be married,” he insisted. “Why shouldn't I kiss you?
Don't be a prude!”
She thrust her protesting palms against him and set her arms rigidly and
held her head away, not with coyness, but with indignation and fierce
rebellion.
“I love you! My God, can't you understand?” he gasped. “I can't keep my
hands off you. You can't handle a man as you're trying to handle me. I
must have some affection from you!”
“Richard! I'll not endure this! I am insulted!”
“My kisses an insult? I'm no ice-water lover. You set me crazy. I can't
help myself.”
She wrenched herself from his grasp and faced him, her face filled with
outraged fury.
Farr had started to leave the scene. He stopped. The girl was the girl
of the red lips and the dark eyes.
“Don't touch me!” she cried. “The only promise you have had from me,
Richard, is the one my mother has fairly forced from me. I am trying
honestly to like you. I will please my mother and you if I can.”
“That's a devil of a thing to say to a man who loves you as I do,” he
declared, with anger.
“That is all I can say just now. But if you use me again as you would
pull and haul a girl of the streets, I'll despise you. I give you
warning.”
“What sort of books have you been reading, Kate?” he asked,
sarcastically. “Where did you get your idea of what love-making is?
They don't sing serenades under windows these days. They don't kiss
finger-tips and write mush poems. I am going to tell you a few things
you ought to know, as a girl engaged to be married.”
Farr stood close by them and in plain sight, but their absorption in
their struggle had left them attention only for each other. He knew
that if he started away while they were talking his presence would be
promptly noted and undoubtedly misjudged.
He set his finger between the leaves of his book and took his hat in his
hand.
“Your pardon!” he pleaded. “I stumbled here quite by accident. Please
suspend conversation on private matters until I can walk out of
earshot.”
He stared straight into the eyes of the girl and once more received from
her that frank and wondering gaze which had touched him so strangely
when he had seen her first on the broad highway. His face was white
under the tan. His hands trembled as he replaced his hat. In his
heart he was saying farewell to her and his eyes expressed some of his
emotion.
“You may take your own time, sir,” said the girl. “This gentleman and
I have finished our conversation.” She passed Farr, looking him up and
down with increasing curiosity and dawning recognition, and when her
escort called to her impatiently, she caught her skirts around her and
ran toward the glade where the others of the party were chattering over
their hampers.
The lover started away slowly and sullenly on her trail, with only a
glance at this blundering stranger.
“No, they do not sing serenades under windows any more--nor has the
stone age returned with its love-making manners,” remarked Farr, his
lips trembling and his emotion still in his eyes. “There are some
manners which were worse, however, than knocking maidens down with
clubs.”
The other man snapped himself around on his heels.
“Damn you, you're that fresh hobo! I don't forget a man who shoots off
low-down sneers at me. Here! You come back here! I want to ask a few
questions, my man.”
Farr continued on his way, opening his book.
“If I ever see you again--” blustered the lover.
“I sincerely hope that will never happen,” remarked the stranger,
without turning his head. “Instinct of the purely animal sort tells me
that if our paths cross in this life it will be very bad for one or the
other.”
When Farr was in the highway he fumbled in his pocket and found the
withered rose. He tossed it away among the roadside bushes.
But after he had gone on his way for some distance he retraced his steps
and hunted in the bushes for a long time on his hands and knees until he
found the poor little keepsake.
He put it carefully into the deepest pocket he could find in his newly
acquired habiliments and trudged on down the world.
VI
A MAN ON FOOT AND A MAN IN HIS CHARIOT
A blatant orator, haranguing passionately, attracted two new auditors.
A tall young man sauntered to the edge of the little group in the square
and listened with a smile which indicated cynical half-interest.
An automobile halted on the opposite side of the group. A big man sat
alone in the tonneau.
He began to scowl as he listened.
The young man continued to smile.
The big man was plainly a personality. He was cool and crisp in summer
flannels--as immaculate as the accoutrements of his car.
In face and physique the young man was plainly not of that herd near
which he stood.
His glance crossed that of the man in the car; he met the scowl with his
smile.
Like a kiln open to the hot glare from a brassy sky or an oven where the
July caloric blazed like a blast from the open mouth of a retort--such
that day seemed Moosac Square in the heart of the cotton-mill city. High
buildings closed in its treeless, ill-paved, dirty area. The air, made
blistering by the torch of the sun, beat back and forth between the
buildings in shimmering waves.
In the center of the square the blatant orator balanced himself on a
stone trough which was arid and dust-choked. He harangued the group of
unkempt men; sweating, blinking, apathetic men; slouchy men; men who
were ticketed in attire and demeanor with all the squalid marks of
idlers, vagrants, and the unemployed.
The man on the trough was of the ilk of the men who surrounded him. His
face was flaming with the heat and with his vocal efforts. Perspiration
streamed into his eyes, his voice was hoarse with shouting, but he had
the natural eloquence of the demagogue. He was delivering the creed
of the propaganda of rebellious poverty, the complaints of the
dissatisfied, the demands of the idle agitators. He spiked his diatribe
with threats flavored by anarchy. He pointed to policemen who had taken
refuge in strips of shade which had been cast grudgingly by the high
buildings. He reminded his hearers that those policemen had just driven
them out of the tree-shaded parks. There the selfish rich folks were
loafing under the trees. Poor folks were herded down the street and were
forced to hold this meeting in that Gehenna, so he averred.
The man in the automobile muttered impatient words. Then he shouted,
breaking in on the impassioned anathema which the orator addressed to
the rich: “Stop lying to these men--stirring them up. The parks are for
the people. You can go there--all you men can go there--if you'll go
without making a disturbance.”
“If men in these days open their mouths to speak for their human rights
it's a disturbance,” retorted the demagogue. “If we go up to the park
and sit there and tremble like rabbits you rich men will let us stay
there--perhaps! But we don't have as many rights there as the rabbits,
for the rabbits are allowed to step on the grass.”
“You've got to obey the law like other citizens--you will not be allowed
to disturb decent and respectable people. You and men like you must stop
putting foolish notions in the heads of loafers in this city.”
“Then put something into our mouths--give us food. Why are we loafers?”
“Because you won't go to work. I'll give every able-bodied man here
all the work he wants. Apply at the office of the Consolidated Water
Company--now.”
“What's the work?” inquired a man in the crowd.
“Digging trenches for water-pipes. How many men want that work? Hold up
hands.”
“It ain't work for human beings in this weather,” snarled the man who
had inquired. No hands were raised.
“That's your style!” blazed the big man. The policemen had sauntered
into the square and their presence was reassuring. He stood up and began
to lecture them.
“And them's the kind of lord dukes that's running this country
to-day--own it and run it,” growled a slouchy fellow who stood near the
tall young man. “They ain't willing to give a poor man a show.”
“He has just offered you a show--all of you,” stated the young man.
“Yes, a Guinea job for white men.”
“You're picking a poor excuse for being a loafer, my friend.”
“Who says I'm a loafer?”
The young man shot out his hands and grasped the fellow's elbow and
hand. The arm was flabby, the palm was soft. He doubled back the fingers
and exhibited the palm to the crowd.
“I don't find any labor medals here, men. Is there anybody in the crowd
who can show some?” He released the struggling, cursing captive.
“What's labor medals?” inquired a bystander.
The big man was still denouncing them from his car, but the group paid
little attention now.
“Callous spots in the place where a working-man ought to wear them. And
that place isn't on the tongue.”
“Are you sneering at us because we can't get a job?”
“You're a loafer yourself, and anybody can see it,” declared another.
The young man raised his arms, showing them his palms.
“I carry a few labor medals,” he returned, curtly.
“Why ain't you on your job? The lord dukes won't give you one?”
“_When_ I work and _where_ I work is my own business, so long as I don't
beg food at back doors.”
“Do _we_?”
They had crowded around him and menaced him with murmurings and
glowering gaze.
“I should say so,” he replied, giving them an indifferent going-over
with his cold eyes. “You carry all the marks.”
Then he shouldered his way out from among them, displaying the air of
one who found further discourse unprofitable.
He strolled leisurely in the direction of the big man in the car. The