The Student Vagabond

In the dusty blue twilight, Mass. Avenue has shed its whirling purposiveness, its absorption in business duties, classes, shopping; and the Vagabond is thankful. Now he notices the slim young girl in the rear of the store, dressed in poor dishevelled black, and it does not matter what she is buying, what grey routine she is coming from; she is there, bright flesh, smiling, unworried, absolute in the moment, against a gaudy background of boxes and labels, like some person in a novel. The streetcars pass, carrying people to no destination; they sit in the brightly lit rows of seats, staring out, they flicker above the roar of the car-wheels, and exist no further. Enchanted, the Vagabond strolls past shops and people, in the still lingering heat, enjoying the colors and smells unthinkingly, willessly.

Suddenly he turns a corner, steps into the full of the strong wind coming out of the southward dusk, laden with the odors of vegetative must. A crabbed, sea-green foam of new leaves leaps about him, bursting through the brown screen of the late-winter town; the hedges burgeon strangely bright and noticeable about him, bristling with immaculate greenness. Through the ploughing wind he walks, feeling like a dog whose hair is blown back straight over his eyes, caressed and washed by the rapid air. Only now, through the deep blue dusk, a press of desire comes upon him, he is no more content with the street, the passers-by in their bright clothes, the scented dust that fills the air; but longs for a sudden furtherance.

White sheets bleaching on the hedge, a catch for Maytime whistled along the breeze, a square of redolent earth, a wisp of fine yellow hair blown across the check; these are the objects proper to such a day.

On either hand, the red bulk of the buildings seem to forbid his premeditations; still the Vagabond envisions beyond them his day of country pleasures, sure of fruition, his sunlit dalliance, and his final quart of ale, dish for a Ring.