"What rot!" I said. "Who"s going to pose? Where?"
"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You"ll find out fast enough.
We"ve got an actual wild man. I got him. I"ll have him out here in the woods. If you don"t believe it, come over. You wouldn"t believe me when I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was actually being seen in Ess.e.x County, not twenty-five miles from Newark.
He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was a.s.sumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it!
"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned.
Not to miss so interesting a denouement as the actual capture of this prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to Newark, where in Peter"s apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were to a.s.sist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, photographing the dread peril.
"Yes, well, who"s going to be him?" I insisted.
"Never mind! Never mind! Don"t be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He"s very sensitive, and he doesn"t like newspapermen anyhow. He"ll be photographed, and he"ll be wild. That"s all you need to know."
In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well might be. It was near the old Ess.e.x and Morris Ca.n.a.l, not far from Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, was made. Then Peter, slipping away--I suddenly saw him ambling toward us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--as good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall.
"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!"
"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He strode the gra.s.s with the air of a popular movie star, while he discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and convincing att.i.tudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of his pursuers.
"But you"re not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point.
"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--"
Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next week.
Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby ca.n.a.l and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim recesses of Peter"s memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast Pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As for Peter, he emerged from the ca.n.a.l, or from its banks, a cleaner if not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.
"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!"
"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there"s nothing like it. You should not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many minds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why can"t I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What more do you wish?"
I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and the ridiculous.
For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From much of the foregoing it may have been a.s.sumed that Peter was out of sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening life along simple rather than outre lines, in so far as he himself was concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could.
He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house unless he was a public character with official duties.
"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it"s in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I"m going to live. I"m going to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog, cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and Sundays, by G.o.d, I"ll march "em all off to church, wife and seven kids, as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I"ll lead the procession."
"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk."
"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It"s the right way. I"m cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that"s nothing. I"m just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It"s the only way. It"s the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is pa.s.sing, a sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be able to, if he"s worth anything, find some one woman that he can live with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live in, and you know it. There"s a psychic call in all of us to it, I think.
It"s the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down.
And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the other lady. I"ll be a model husband and father, sure as you"re standing there. Don"t you think I won"t. Smile if you want to--it"s so. I"ll have my garden. I"ll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then and help us put the kids to bed."
"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We"ll have the vine-covered cot idea for a while, anyhow."
"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You"ll see."
Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Pa.s.saic he met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a girl as would pa.s.s among other women as fairly satisfactory.
For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he was in love with her.
"So it"s all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked.
"It"s a shame," he replied, "but I"m afraid so. I"m having a h.e.l.l of a time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you."
I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he was giving her her choice of them.
Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed.
Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it was still not believed that she had. There were those who could not only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some one was involved, turned over to Peter.
"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right.
I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has handed me a d.a.m.ned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed that she wasn"t suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover more than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she liked me. She isn"t really my sort, not simple enough."
"But you loved her, I thought?"
"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many ways about her that troubled me. You think I"m kidding about this home and family idea, but I"m not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you.
I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine experience, and I"m going to do it."
"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously.
"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If you"ll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that I wanted her to be."
"Well, that"s fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You"re no saint yourself, you know. If you"d encourage her, maybe she"d make good."
"Well, maybe, but I don"t think so really," he returned, shaking his head. "She likes me, but not enough, I"m afraid. She wouldn"t run straight, now that she"s had this other. She"d mean to maybe, but she wouldn"t. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don"t want to take any chances. I like her--I"m crazy about her really, but I"m through. I"m going to marry little Dutchy if she"ll have me, and cut out this old-line stuff. You"ll have to stand up with me when I do."
In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little Dutchy--or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought to Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe Peter not only attempting to a.s.sume but a.s.suming the role of the conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no s.p.a.ce here for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth and flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reason and forethought. I mis...o...b..ed. I was not quite willing to believe that it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter"s.
"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--Zuleika.
Isn"t she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, now, pink cheeks? What? Look at "em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn"t it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in a loud aside to me, "In six months I"ll be beating her. Come now, Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my slave."
And so they were married.
And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook something if she didn"t know how. He was running to the store or bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll for a boy, but you never can tell. I"m offering up prayers and oblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to sleep nights permitted. Here"s one kid that"s going to be raised right.
I"ve worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it.
This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old "dichtig, wichtig" law and order."
I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coa.r.s.e, plebeian point of view and tastes.
In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and the cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber b.a.l.l.s and soldiers the first or second or third week!
"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?"
"Yes, I know. That"s all good stuff before you get one. I"ve got one of my own now, and I"ve got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my advice. Go through the routine. Don"t try to escape. Have a kid or two or three. There"s a psychic punch to it you can"t get any other way.
It"s nature"s way. It"s a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid."
As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was wonderful.