"Oh, they apologized," admitted the general. "But what I want to know, and what I don't like at all, is why every one is so curious to know the make of my car, the engine number and the license number. What business is it of theirs?"
The two girls slept in one car, Bartlett and the general in the other. The Watermelon lay on the grass on Billy's side of the car and sought to reason the thing out, to plan what to do. Alone in the dark, he did not sleep, but stared before him, ears attuned to the many sounds of the summer night.
In every whir of insects' wings, in every whispering breeze that passed, he heard Billy's soft sweet voice. He stared up at the stars and likened them to Billy's eyes, twinkling points of light as far above him as Billy was, for Billy was Billy, and he was a tramp, a hobo—a Weary Willie.
CHAPTER XV
LOVE IN IDLENESS
One not born a vagabond in heart can never understand a vagabond's love for the open places, for absolute freedom, to go where he wants, see what he wants, work when he wants. To a vagabond an office is intolerable, the accumulation of dollars, grinding another man to gain a petty advance for oneself, utterly uninspiring, conventionality, the ceaseless humdrum round of existence as a clerk at ten per, revolting. Following step by step in the well-worn, beaten path, where no man dares step aside lest he be jeered at, where none dares fall, lest he be pushed from the road and another take his place, where all think alike, look alike, act alike, spending one's days in an office, bent over a littered, dusty, shabby desk, one's nights at some cheap play-house, seeking to find an outlet for the battered nerves, for the ceaseless strain of the day by stupefying the senses with some garish parody of life, is not living to a vagabond. He is willing to work if the work is a part of himself, a development of that clamorous ego that must find peace in the open, in the physical side of existence. If he is born rich, he will become a traveler, a mountain climber, an aviator; if poor, a tramp, and the Watermelon was born poor.
For the last few years his feet had followed his errant will, now here, now there. He was impervious to hardship while he could wander as he wished, indifferent to good clothes when the price was eight hours a day spent in a stuffy office, bent, round-shouldered, hump-backed, over a column of figures. Beneath good clothes or shabby, there was nothing but a human body, all more or less alike. So the Watermelon had gone his careless, contented way, now resting here, now working there, unworried by rent days falling due, by collars fraying around the edges, coats getting shabby and shiny at the seams, and then Billy came along, Billy, young, sweet, conventional, an honored member of convention's band, walking around and around the same well-beaten path, in the same small inclosure. If he had elected to be one of the throng, he would never have met her. Struggling along at ten per, he would have been so far down the line, plodding painfully on, that Billy would never have seen him.
But now he was out and a fence unscalable was between them. If he climbed the fence again, it would do no good. No vagabond can ever fall in line and keep step, and there is not room enough in the inclosure for the man who has dared to climb the fence and drop down the other side.
Bartlett, like Billy, wondered if he were growing simple-minded. A desire to confide in Henrietta, to tell her what he was up to, had come upon him and seemed too strong to be resisted. Last night, up the quiet country road, alone with Henrietta, he had been forced to suppress the desire sternly, and now in the garish light of day it was still upon him. He took a seat beside her on the stone wall where she tried to be comfortable as she fished olives from a nearly empty bottle, the remains of last night's supper.
"I wonder," said he, hovering on the edge of his foolish desire, "if any one can become a man with nothing to regret."