“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 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