Wallace Irwin

“ Little have, little want—that’s what Arcadia means. What does a man gain by being all cluttered up with material property when the only thing that’s really precious lies right here?”
His long forefinger touched his shapely forehead.
“Coohoo! Oh, Byjo!” This from upstairs.
The tall man rushed out of the room. Lance sighed and feasted his eyes upon the blissful child, roller-skating out of her frame. Somehow at that instant he thought of his father, wearing out his life in his complicated, pompous environment. These simple people, thought the young artist, had little, wanted little. ”

“ Nature wastes in order to economize. Nothing dies. And if these never-ending incarnations apply to material things, why not to immaterial things? What of ideas, of traits of character, of tendencies? Do not the abstractions like Beauty and Hunger live in a million shapes, ever changing, ever mingling in the composition of our souls?
S. W. Peebles, wholesale dealer in empires, oceans, mineral deposits and international harvests, lived palatially at Radio, Connecticut, in the year 1921. Where he got his taste for art, God only knows ”

“ A brindle skeleton of a horse, hitched to a disabled carriage of the surrey type, was grazing calmly on the very expensive Peebles lawn.
“Whose horse is that?” snapped the outraged father.
“Yours, Pop,” explained Lance. “I stole him out of the north pasture when I went out to be a gypsy.”
“Gypsy!” snarled the elder man. “Your mother’s been worried sick about you. What got into your head, going off like that, leaving a crazy note about being a gypsy?”
“I was all right,” Lansing defended himself.
“You had an awful cold.”
“I had colds in France.”
“How’d you ever get home alive? ”

“ From his altitude he gained a picture of brocaded hangings and Italian furniture in the wide space below. The hall centered in human interest. Byjo, clad decently in blue, leaned against the big table and made animated conversation with Mrs. Peebles, who had the bright air of one engaged by the hour to talk to inmates of the zoo. Mrs. Findley, in a lavender gown which managed to betray its village origin, surveyed each detail of the Peebles’ magnificence in shy side-glances.
On the curved staircase opposite where Lance took in the picture, S. W. Peebles was coming down. ”

“ A full-length portrait hung above the fireplace: It held the artist’s attention—a little girl of eight was roller-skating, coming at him so recklessly that she seemed about to leap from the frame. Plaid skirts were blowing about her coltish legs; a strawberry-colored tam-o’-shanter was thrown back to show a gypsy face, brown as a berry, red lips parted in a laugh, black eyes snapping.
“Like it?” asked a deep, pleasant voice at the door.
Lance turned to see a tall, delicately built man wearing duck trousers and soiled canvas shoes. His large gray mane matched his small gray beard ”

“ Lance laid an impulsive hand on the round, fat shoulder. “Sorry I ran away like that. But honest, I had to go somewhere—”
“Girls?” asked S. W. Peebles suddenly, a gleam in his little gray eyes.
“I’m a marked man,” blurted the young artist. “I like to work, but what does that get me? Mother’s always trying to hook me up to a skirt. Don’t blame her. Good old Mom’s so sly and tactful. But the flappers around Radio make me tired. Tired! Chickens chasing a worm. I’m the worm.” ”

“ Byjo started in valiantly enough, but she brushed away his restraining hand with the injunction: “Go somewhere and let me alone.”
“Hell’s loose now,” complained the elderly artist as he clutched at his thatch of gray and rushed from the horrid scene. But the lioness aroused would not be stilled.
“Arcadia! Drudgery: that’s what it is. Scrubbing, skimping drudgery. It’s all right for a man, living up in the clouds with no thought where the money’s coming from. Oh, it looked rosy enough when I was a girl—love in a cottage. Driveling idiocy! ”

“ He stood square before her. “Let’s go crazy.”
“Oh, Lance!” she cried, springing up, magically equipped with spiritual roller skates.
“There’s an awful old horse out in the pasture—that is, if the crows haven’t got him. His name’s Jasper. He’s a bewitched horse and goes perfectly grand with a magic surrey.”
“The very one you drove when you visited us at Stockington! ” She clapped her hands.
“Just leave him alone, and he’ll take you to Arcadia every time. But today I’ve got business at Great Barrington—regular whopping business—”
“And I’m going too.” ”

“ I swore she’d never marry an artist. Byjo, with his head in the clouds, would have been contented with the backwoods, living in a tent. But I made him move to Stockington, because I knew there were people there—well, young people Nevis might get to know. When your son came—”
“An artist with a difference,” broke in Peebles.
“Byjo didn’t think of him in connection with Nevis. He never thinks of anything.” ”

“ THAT no material thing ever perishes from the earth is a truth oft expressed by those interpreters of the obvious, poets and philosophers. The crumbling heart of Cæsar gives nourishment to the rose from which the bee draws honey for the Roman table. ”

“ I’m be ginning to see where you’re right and I’m wrong.”
“Happiness—” began Byjo rather feebly, then looked at Kiku and was still.
“A man can’t eat or drink or wear more than a certain amount during a lifetime. There’s nothing eternal about clothes and food and houses. Nobody but a Chinaman thinks he can take his property with him into the next world. Lucky you can’t, I say. Enough’s enough. Just look at the way you’ve raised your daughter. Give a woman more than she needs, and she begins to be either a paranoiac or a flapper. Nevis is a lily. ”

“ Vagabond got into my system, and in my sophomore vacation I packed my kit and started out to be a hobo—art hobo, understand?”
“Thought so,” mused Lance.
“Thought what?” snapped his father, bilious eyes rolling.
“Oh, go on, Pop,” begged the son.
“Well, one day I walked up on a consumptive lad who was sitting by a pond slapping mosquitoes with one hand and painting with the other. Funny how we hit it off. His name was Moses—I always associated him with the Promised Land. So we hooked up and went rolling along, fishing, painting, stealing chickens like a pair of gypsies. ”

“ Peebles.
“Of course, living in our small way,” Kiku was saying, “we have to adjust ourselves to our circumstances. When you’re your own cook and butler, you must do everything possible to save steps. It’s lovely to have Lance say such nice things about our house. Nevis adores pretty things. She inherits it from Byjo. If we can’t afford lace doilies, we can at least have pretty stenciled mats, she says—”
“Mrs. Findley,” broke in the master of Radio, and his voice came solemnly like the tolling of a bell, “I’ve known your husband a long time ”

“ Then, laughing queerly: “Or I might go broke.”
“Who’s joking now?” grinned Lance.
“How’d you find the gypsy trail?” asked Peebles père.
“I’ve been in another world, Pop. You see, I wanted to find out if I could make my way, selling my stuff from door to door, living on the country. Well, I made ten dollars drawing crayon sketches, and walked into Arcadia near Stockington, Connecticut.” ”

“ We’ve got over that nonsense called youth, and we can look things in the face. It’s all very well to get the Napoleon complex and think you own the earth. But what’s the earth when you own it? No sir. ”

“ The quick Japanesque eyes studied the sheets.
“Let’s make a bargain,” said Byjo at last. “You’ve come to the wrong house if you’re looking for five dollars. But I’ll commission you to do a water-color of Kiku and me; Baby’s away with her little cousins, or I’d include her.” He gestured toward the roller-skating child in the picture. “But you’ve got to sell on my terms.”
“What are your terms?” asked Lance experimentally. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”