“You aint know’d me long,” he said, with a sudden flicker of
earnestness; “and you’ve knowed the worst part of me. You’ve knowed the
trouble and the fag-end. You warn’t in at the good part of my life!”
I should think not, poor fellow. Ever since I had known him he had been
the same shabby, good-for-nothing that he is now. He had grown a bit
more serious of late, and his long face—it was abnormally long between
the eyes and the chin—had whitened somewhat, but otherwise he was about
the same shabby, ragged, half-starved old fellow I had known for a year
or so. Yes, Bob, I had clearly known the worst of you!
“I was a better man once; not a better man, either, as I know of, but I
had luck. When me and Ann married, there warn’t a happier couple
nowhere. I remember just as well when I courted her. She didn’t think
about me then as she does now. We had a buggy to ourselves, and we
turned down a shady road. I fetched it on soon after we left the crowd,
and she was about as well pleased as me. It seemed like that road was
the road to heaven, and we was so happy that we wasn’t in no hurry to
get to the end of it. Ann was handsome then. Oh yes, she was!”—as I
winced at this,—“and at first as good a wife to me as ever a man had.
“It may a-been me that started the trouble. I was unfortnit in
everything I touched. My fingers slipped off o’ everything and
everything slipped off o’ them. I could get no grip on nothin’. I worked
hard, but something harder agin me. Ann was ambitious and uppish, and I
used to think when I come home at night, most tired to death, she was
gettin’ to despise me. She’d snap me up and abuse me till actually I was
afraid to come home. I never misused her or give her a back word. I
thought maybe she wasn’t to blame, and that what she said about me was
true. Things kept a-gitten worse, and we sold off pretty much what we
had. Five years ago a big surprise came to us. It was a baby—a boy—him!”
nodding toward the hut. “It was a surprise to both of us. We’d been
married fourteen years. It made Ann harder on me than ever. She never
let me rest; it was all the time hard words and hard looks. I never
raised even a look against her, o’ course. I thought she was right about
me. He never had a cross word with me. Him and me knowed each other from
the start. We had a langwidge of our own. Ther wasn’t no words in
it—just looks and grunts. I never could git ‘nough, nuther could he. He
know’d more an’ me. Ther was a kinder way-off look in his eyes that was
solemn and deep, I tell you. At last Ann got to breaking me up. Whenever
she catch me with him she’d drive me off. I’d always hurry off, ’cause I
never wanted him to hear her ’spressin herself ’bout me. ’Peared like he
understood every word of it. Mos’t two years ago, and I ain’t had one
since. I couldn’t git one. Ann commenced takin’ in washing, and one day
she said I shouldn’t hang around no more a-eatin’ him and her out of
house and home. That was more’n a year ago, and I seen him since to talk
to him. Every time I go about she hustles me about like she did to-day.
I never make no fuss. She’s right about me, I reckon. I am powerful no
’count. But he has stirred things in me I ain’t felt movin’ for many a
year!”
“What’s his name, Bob?”
“Got none. She never would let me talk to her ’bout it, and I ain’t got
no right to name him. I ast her once how it would do to call him little
Bob, and she said I better git him sumpin’ to eat; he couldn’t eat a
name, nor dress in it neither; which was true. But he’s got my old face
on him, and my look. I know that, and he knows it too.”
“Did you ever drink, Bob?”
“Me? You know I didn’t. I did get drunk once. The boys give me the wine.
They say liquor makes a man savage, and makes him beat his wife. It
didn’t take me that way. I was the happiest fellow you ever see. I felt
light and free. My blood was warm, and just jumped along—and beat Ann?
why, all the old love come back to me, as I went to’ards home, feelin’
big as a king. I made as how I’d go up to Ann and put arm aroun’ her
neck in the old way, and tell her if she’d only encourage me a little,
I’d get about for her and him and make ’em both rich. I couldn’t hardly
wait to get home, I was so full of it. She was just settin’ down a pail
of water when I come in. I made for her, gentle like, and had just got
my arms to her neck, when she drawed back, with a few words like them
this evening, and dosed the pail of water full in my face. As I
scrambled out o’ the door, sorter blind like, I struck the edge o’ the
gulley there, rolled down head over heels, and fotch up squar’ at the
bottom, as sober a man as ever you see!”
* * * * *
I met Bob a few days after that in a state of effusive delight. He would
not disclose himself at first. He followed me through several blocks,
and at length, diving into an alley, beckoned me cautiously to him. He
took off his old hat, always with him a preliminary to conversation, and
glancing cautiously around, said in a hoarse whisper:
“Had a pic-nic to-day.”
“A pic-nic! Who?”
“Me and him!”
And his wrinkled, weather-beaten old face was broken by smiles and
chuckles, that struggled to the surface, as porpoises do, and then
shrunk back into the depths from whence they came.
“You don’t know Phenice—the neighbor’s gal as nusses him sometimes?
Well, I seed her out with him, to-day, and I tolled her off kinder, till
she got beyant the hill, and then I give her a quarter I had got, and
purposed as how she should gi’ me a little time with him. She sciddled
off to town to git her quarter spent, and I took him and made for the
woods, to meet her thar agin, by sun!”
“He’s a deep one, I tell you!” he said, drawing a breath of admiration;
“as deep a one as I ever see. He’d never been in the woods before, but
he jest knowed it all! You orter seed him when a jay-bird come and sot
on a high limb, and flung him some sass, and tried to sorter to make
free with him. The look that boy give him couldn’t a’ been beat by
nobody. The jay tried to hold up to it and chaffered a little, but he
finally had to skip, the wust beat bird you ever saw!”
And so the old fellow went on, telling me about that wonderful pic-nic;
how he had gathered flowers for the baby, and made little bouquets,
which the baby received with a critical air, as if he had spent his life
in a florist’s shop, and being a connoisseur in flowers, couldn’t afford
to become enthusiastic over pied daisies; how a gray squirrel scampering
down a near tree had startled him out of his wits, while the baby,
seated still nearer the disturbance than he, remained a marvel of
stolidity and presence of mind; how the baby was finally coaxed out of
his wise reserve by a group of yellow butterflies pulsating in the
golden sunshine, and by the flashing of the silvery brook that ran
beneath them; how all the birds in the county seemed to have entered
into a conspiracy to upset that baby’s dignity; and how they would
assail him with pert bursts of song and rapid curvetings about his head,
while Bob sat off at a distance, “and let ’em fight it out, not helping
one side or t’other,” always to see the chatterers retire in
good-humored defeat before the serene impassibility of the youngster;
how the only drawback to the pic-nic was that there was not a thing to
eat, and besides its being in violation of all pic-nic precedent, there
was danger of the little one getting very hungry; and how, in the
evening—what would have been after dinner if they’d had any dinner—the
baby, who was sitting opposite Bob on the grass, suddenly assumed an air
of deeper solemnity, even than he had worn before, and gazed at Bob with
a dense and inscrutable gaze, until he was actually embarrassed by the
searching and fixed character of this look; and how the round, grave
head suddenly keeled to one side as if it were so heavy with ideas that
it could not be held upright any longer; and how then, suddenly, and
without a sign or hint of warning, this self-possessed baby tumbled over
in the grass, shot his little toes upward, and, before Bob could reach
him, was dead asleep! And Bob told me then, with the glittering tears
gathering in his eyes and rolling down his old cheeks, how he had picked
the baby up and cuddled him close to his old bosom, and listened to his
soft breathing, and stroked his chubby face, and almost guessed the wise
dreams that were flitting through his round fuzzy head,—hugged him so
close, and pressed him to his bosom with such hungry, tender love, that
he felt as if he had him “layin’ agin’ my naked heart, and warmin’ it
up, and stirrin’ all its strings with his little fingers!”
It was late that night when I went home—after one o’clock; a fearful
night, too. The rain was pouring in torrents and the wind howled like
mad. Taking a near cut home, I passed by the hut where Bob’s wife lived.
Through the drifting rain, I saw a dark figure against the side of the
house. Stepping closer, I saw that it was Bob, mounted on a barrel,
flattened out against the planks, his old felt hat down about his ears,
and the rain pouring from it in streams—his face glued to the window.
Poor old follow! there he was! oblivious to the storm, to hunger and
everything else—clinging like some homeless night-bird, drifting and
helpless, to the outside of his own home; gazing in stealthily at the
bed where the little one slept, and warming his old heart up with the
memory of that wondrous pic-nic—of the solemn contest with the
impertinent jay-bird, and the grave rapture over the butterflies that
swung lazily about in their rift of sunshine.
One morning, many months after the pic-nic, Bob came to me sideways. His
right arm hung limp and inert by his side, and his right leg dragged
helplessly after the left. The yielding muscles of the neck had
stiffened and drawn his head awry. He stumbled clumsily to where I was
standing, and received my look of surprise shamefacedly.
“I’ve had a stroke,” he said. “Paralysis? It’s most used me up. I reckon
I’ll never be able to do anything for him! It came on me sudden,” he
said, as if to say that if it had given him any sort of notice, he could
have dodged it.
After that Bob went on from worse to worse. His face, all save that
fixed in the rigid grasp of the paralysis, became tremulous, pitiful and
uncertain. He had lost all the chirrupy good-humor of the other days,
and became shy and silent. There was a wistfulness and yearning in his
face that would have made your heart ache; a hungry passion had
struggled from the depth of his soul, and peered out of his blue eyes,
and tugged at the corners of his mouth. There was, too, a pitiful, scary
look about him. He had the air of one who is pursued. At the slightest
sigh he would pluck at his lame leg sharply, and shamble off, turning
full around at intervals to see if he was followed. I learned that his
wife had become even harder on him since his trouble, and that he was
even more than ever afraid of her.
He had never had another “pic-nic.” He had snatched a furtive interview
with the baby, under protection of the occasional nurse, from each of
which he came to me with a new idea of the “deepness” of that infant.
“He’s too much for me, that baby is!” he would say. “If I just had his
sense!” He was rapidly getting shabbier, and thinner and more
woe-begone. He became a slink. He hid about in the day-time, avoiding
everybody, and seeming to carry off his love and his passion, as a dog
with a bone, seeking an alley. At night he would be seen hanging like a
guilty thief about the hut in which his treasure was hid.
“I’ve a mind,” he said one morning, “to go home. I don’t think she” (he
had quit calling her “Ann” now) “could drive me out now. All I’d want
would be to just sit in a corner o’ the house and be with him. That’s
all.”
“Bob,” I said to him one morning, “you rascal, you are starving!”
He couldn’t deny it. He tried to put it off, but he couldn’t. His face
told on him.
“Have you had anything to eat to-day?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor yesterday?”
“No, sir.”
I gave him a half-dollar. A wolfish glare of hunger shot into his eyes
as he saw the money. He clutched it with a spasm of haste and started
off. I watched his side-long walk down the street, and then went to
work, satisfied that he would go off and pack himself full.
It was hardly an hour before he came back, his face brighter than I had
seen it in months. He carried a bundle in his live hand. He laid it on
my desk, and then fell back on his dead leg while I opened it. I found
in the bundle a red tin horse, attached to a blue tin wagon, on which
was seated a green tin driver. I looked up in blank astonishment.
“For him!” he said simply. And then he broke down. He turned slowly on
his live leg as an axis and leaned against the wall.
“Could you send it to him?” he said at last. “If she knew I sent it, she
mightn’t let him have it. He’s never had nothin’ o’ this kind, and I
thought it might pearten him up.”
“Bob, is this the money I gave you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you were starving when you left here?”
“Oh, I got some bread!”
* * * * *
I suppose every man, woman and child remembers that terrible night three
years ago when we had lightning while the snow was on the ground. The
flashes plowed great yellow seams through the gray of the day, and at
night a freezing storm of sleet and rain came.
It was a terrible night. I staggered home through it to where a big
fire, and blue eyes and black, and slippers, and roasting apples were
awaiting me. I thought of Bob—my old night-owl, with a heart in him, and
wondered whether he was keeping his silent, but uncomplaining vigil
about the little hut on the hillside. I even went so far as to speculate
on this point with a certain blue-eyed youngster on my knee, to whom
Bob’s life was a romance and a wonder.
Bless me! and all the time I was pitying him, I didn’t know that he had
“gone home” and was all right.
His wife slept uneasily that night, as she has since said. She rolled in
her sleep a long time, and at last got up and went to the window and
looked out. She shuddered at the sound of the whizzing sleet and
pitiless hum of the rain on the roof. Then she stumbled sleepily back to
her couch, and dreamed of a long shady lane, and a golden-green
afternoon in May, and a bright-faced young fellow that looked into her
heart, and held her face in his soft fingers. How this dream became
tangled in her thoughts that night of all nights, she never could tell.
But there it was gleaming like a thread of gold through the dismal warp
and woof of her life.
It was full day when she awoke. As she turned lazily upon her side she
started up in affright. There was a man, dripping wet, silent, kneeling
by her bedside. An old felt hat lay upon the floor. The man’s head was
bowed deep down over the bed and his hands were bundled tenderly about
one of the baby’s fists that had been thrown above its head.
The worn, weatherbeaten figure was familiar to her. But there was
something that stopped her, as she started forward angrily. She stood
posed like a statue for a moment, then bent down, curiously and
tenderly, and with trembling fingers pulled the cover back from the bed,
and looked up into the man’s face steadily. Then she put her fingers on
his hand furtively and shrinkingly. And then a strange look crept into
her face—the dream of the night came to her like a flash—and she sank
back upon the floor, and dropped her head between her knees.
Ah, yes, Bob had “come home.”
And the poor fellow had come to stay. Not even his place in the corner
would he want now! No place about the scanty board! Just to stay—that
was all; not to offend by his laziness, or to annoy with his ugly,
shambling figure, and his no-count ways. Just “come home to stay!”
And there the baby slept quietly, all unconscious of the shadow and the
mystery that hung above his wise little head—unconscious of the shabby
old watcher, and the woman on the floor, dreaming, perhaps, of the
swinging butterflies and the chaffing birds and the brook flashing in
the sunshine. And there was old Bob—brave, at last, through love—“come
home.”
Out of the storm like a night-bird! In the door stealthily like a thief!
Groping his way to the bedside through the dark like a murderer! But
there was no danger in him—no ill-omen about him. It was only old Bob,
come home, “come home to stay!”
He had clasped the little hand he loved so well in his rough palm and
cuddled it close, as if he hoped to hold it always—fondled it in his
hands, as if he hoped to ride his own life on the spring-tide that
gathered in its rosy palm, or to catch that young life in the ebbing
billows that wasted from his cold fingers. But no; the baby was “too
much for him!” And the young heart, all unconscious and all perverse,
sent the rich blood through the little arm, down the slender wrist, and
into the dimpled fist, where it pulsed and throbbed uneasily, as it
broke against the chill, stark presence of Death!
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