East and west, north and south, the hoboes journeyed, and everywhere they carried with them fables of Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby, the famous wanderers, who at seventy, eighty, ninety, were exploring the world. Benighted tramps in city lock-ups, talking to bored police reporters, told the story, and it began to appear in little filler paragraphs here and there in newspapers.
Finally a feature-writer on a Boston paper, a man with imagination and a sense of the dramatic, made a one-column Sunday story out of the adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Appleby. He represented them as wealthy New-Yorkers who were at once explorers and exponents of the simple life. He said nothing about a shoe-store, a tea-room, a hobo-camp.
The idea of these old people making themselves a new life caught many imaginations. The Sunday story was reprinted and reprinted till the source of it was entirely forgotten. The names of the Applebys became stock references in many newspaper offices-Father even had a new joke appended to his name, as though he were an actor or an author or Chauncey Depew.
The Applebys were largely unconscious of their floating fame. But as they tramped westward through West Virginia, as the flood tide of spring and the vigor of summer bore them across Ohio and into Indiana, they found that in nearly every town people knew their names and were glad to welcome them as guests instead of making them work for food. When Father did insist on cutting wood or spading a garden, it was viewed as a charming eccentricity in him, a consistent following of the simple life, and they were delighted when he was so whimsical as to accept pay for his work.
But he never played the mouth-organ-except to Mother!
CHAPTER XVI
They were in Indiana, now. They had saved up six dollars and twenty cents, despite the fact that Father had overborne her caution and made her dine at a lunch-room, now and then, or sleep at a hotel, while he cheerfully scavenged in the neighborhood.
The shoes he had bought in West Virginia were impossible. They had been mended and resoled, but the new soles had large concentric holes. Mother discovered the fact, and decisively took the problem out of his hands. He was going to take that six dollars and twenty cents, he was, and get new shoes. It was incredible luxury.
He left Mother at a farm-house. He stood meditatively before the window of a shoe-store in Lipsittsville, Indiana. Lawyer Vanduzen, who read the papers, guessed who he was, and imparted the guess to the loafers in front of the Regal Drug Store, who watched him respectfully.
Inside the shoe-store, the proprietor was excited. "Why," he exclaimed to his assistant, "that must be Appleby, the pedestrian-fellow you read so much about-the Indianapolis paper said just this morning that he was some place in this part of the country-you know, the fellow who's tramped all over Europe and Asia with his wife, and is bound for San Francisco now." His one lone clerk, a youth with adenoids, gaped and grunted. It was incredible to him that any one should walk without having to.
Father was aware of the general interest, and as he was becoming used to his rôle as public character, he marched into the store like the Lord Mayor of London when he goes shopping in his gold coach with three men and a boy in powdered wigs carrying his train.
The proprietor bowed and ventured: "Glad to see you with us, Mr. Appleby. It is Mr. Appleby, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh," growled Father.
"Well, well! Tramping like yours is pretty hard on the footgear, and that's a fact! Well, well! Believe me, you've come to just the right store for sport shoes. We got a large line of smart new horsehide shoes. Dear me! Tut, tut, tut, tut! What a pity, the way the tramping has worn out yours-fine shoe, too, I can see that. Well, well, well, well! how it surely does wear out the shoes, this long tramping. Peter, bring a pair of those horsehide shoes for Mr. Appleby. Nice, small, aristocratic foot, Mr. Appleby. If you worked in a shoe-store you'd know how uncommon-"
"Huh! Don't want horsehide. Try a pair o' those pigskin shoes over there that you got a sale on."
"Well, well, you do know what you want," fawned the shoeman. "Those pigskins are a very fine grade of shoe, and very inexpensive, very good for tramping-"
"Yump. They'll do."
"Going to be with us long?" inquired the shoeman, after trying on the shoes and cursing out Peter, the adenoidic clerk, in an abstracted, hopeless manner.
"Nope." Father was wonderfully bored and superior. Surely not this Seth Appleby but a twin of his, a weak-kneed inferior twin, had loafed in Tompkins Square and wavered through the New York slums, longing for something to do. He didn't really mean to be curt, but his chief business in life was to get his shoes and hurry back to Mother, who was waiting for him, a mile from town, at a farm where the lordly Father had strung fence-wire and told high-colored stories for his breakfast.
The fascinated shoeman hated to let him go. The shoeman knew few celebrities, and a five-mile motor ride was his wildest adventure. But by the light of a secret lamp in the bathroom, when his wife supposed him to have gone to bed, he breathlessly read the Back o' the Beyond Magazine, and slew pirates with a rubber sponge, and made a Turkish towel into a turban covered with quite valuable rubies, and coldly defied all the sharks in the bathtub. He was an adventurer and he felt that Father Appleby would understand his little-appreciated gallantry. He continued, "The madam with you?"
"Yump."
"Say-uh-if I may be so bold and just suggest it, we'd be honored if you and the madam could take dinner at our house and tell us about your trip. The wife and me was talking about it just this morning. The wife said, guessed we'd have to pike out and do the same thing! Hee, hee! And Doc Schergan-fine bright man the doc, very able and cultured and educated-he's crazy to meet you. We were talking about you just this morning-read about your heading this way, in the Indianapolis paper. Say," he leaned forward and whispered, after a look at his clerk which ought to have exterminated that unadventurous youth-"say, is it true what they say, that you're doing this on a ten-thousand-dollar bet?"
"Well," and Father thawed a little, "that's what they're all saying, but, confidentially, and don't let this go any further, it isn't as much as that. This is between you and I, now."
"Oh yessss," breathed the flattered shoeman. "There's your shoes, Mr. Appleby. Four dollars, please. Thank you. And let me tell you, confidentially, you got the best bargain in the store. I can see with half an eye you've learned a lot about shoes. I suppose it's only natural, tramping and wearing them out so fast and visiting the big burgs and all-"
"Huh! Ought to know shoes. Used to be in business. Pilkings &Son's, little old New York. Me and old Pilky practically started the business together, as you might say."
"Well, well, well, well!" The shoeman stared in reverent amazement. Then, as he could think of nothing further to say, he justly observed, "Well!"
"Yump. That reminds me. Make that boy of yours rearrange that counter case there. Those pink-satin evening slippers simply lose all their display value when you stick those red-kid bed-slippers right up ferninst them that way.
"Yes, yes, that's so. I'm much obliged to you for the tip, Mr. Appleby. That's what it is to be trained in a big burg. But I'll have to rearrange it myself. That boy Peter is no good. I'm letting him go, come Saturday."
"That so?" said Father; then, authoritatively: "Peter, my boy, you ought to try to make good here. Nothing I'd like better-if I had the time-than to grow up in a shoe-store in a nice, pretty village like this."
"Yes, that's what I've told him many's the time. Do you hear what Mr. Appleby says, Peter?... Say, Mr. Appleby, does this town really strike you as having the future for the shoe business?"
"Why, sure."
"Are you ever likely to think about going back into the shoe business again, some day? 'Course," apologetically, "you wouldn't ever want to touch anything in as small a burg as this, but in a way it's kind of a pity. I was just thinking of how the youngsters here would flock to have you give 'em your expert advice as a sporting gentleman, instead of hanging around that cheap-John shoe-store that those confounded worthless Simpson boys try to run."