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"Old Pfeiler" we called him.... Pfeiler had attended one of Spalton's lectures at Chicago. Afterward, he had come up front and asked the lecturer if he could make a place for him at Eos ... that he was out of a job ... starving ... a poor German scholar ... formerly, in better days, a man of much wealth and travel.... He had spent his last nickel for admission to Spalton's lecture.
I lit my big kerosene lamp and sat propped up with the pillows, reading, till late, the poetry of Norah May French, the beautiful, red-headed girl who had, like myself, also lived in Eos, where Roderick Spalton's Artworks were.... She had been, Penton informed me, when he handed me her book, one of the famous Bohemians of the San Francisco and Carmel art and literary crowd....
I have hardly begun to enumerate the prime ones, yet.... But when I returned to the little settlement a curious man had already established himself ... one who was called by Spalton, in tender ridicule, Gabby Jack ... that was Spalton's nickname for him ... and it stuck, because it was so appropriate. Jack was a pilgrim in search of Utopia.
Spalton's originality and genius would in the end have of itself produced a rupture between them ... few women are at home with genius, much as they clasp their hands in ecstasy over it, as viewed on the lecture and concert platform.... But the wedge that drove them apart was entered when his first wife, Anne, brought into their married life, Dorothy, a fellow teacher, a visiting friend.
There was nothing the Master said or did that was not perfect ... he would stand with worship and adoration written large on his swarthy, great face, listening to Spalton's most trivial words....
Spalton's first wife had been an easy-going, amiable creature ... fair and pretty in a soft, female way ... a teacher in the local Sunday school ... one who accepted all the conventions as they were ... who could not understand anyone not conforming to them ... life was easier and more comfortable that way....
I found among them an atmosphere of good-natured greeting and raillery, that sped from table to table. Guests and workers joined together in the same dining hall, with no distinctive division.... I sat next to Spalton's table, and a warm glow of pleasure swept through me when he sent me a pleasant nod.
I asked who was Dorothy.... "Don't you know ... we thought you did ... Spalton's new wife ... the one his first wife got a divorce from him for?" And I heard the story, part of which I knew, but not the final details.
The incident gave birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's care, whose chief insanity was running naked through snowdrifts. Spalton had three sons. Roderick was the eldest: named after his father.
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