the front gateway, glancing at the flower-bed in the centre of the
diminutive grass plot, carrying his dinner-pail, having divested himself
of his grimy, greasy blouse and overalls at the great repair shops,
where his engine had already begun, with much panting, to spend the
night.
In a small railroad town on the main line, one is continually hearing
locomotive whistles. All the inhabitants know that one long moan of
the steam is the signal of the train's swift approach; that two short
shrieks of the whistle direct the trainmen to tighten the brakes; that
four, given when the train is still, are intended for the flagman, who
has gone away to the rear to warn back the next train, and that they
tell him to return to his own train as it is about to start; that
five whistles in succession announce a wreck and command the immediate
attendance of the wreck crew.
In the town many cheeks blanch when those five long, ominous wails of
the escaping steam cleave the air. A husband, a son, a father who has
gone forth blithely in the morning, with his dinner-pail full, may be
brought out of the wreck, mangled or dead. And until complete details
are known there is a tremor in the whole community. Some hearts beat
faster, others seem to stand still. People speak in hushed tones.
One afternoon, the engineer's wife, observing the altitude of the sun,
looked at the clock and saw that the time was a few minutes before five.
Tom's whistle had not yet blown.
At five-fifteen came the sound of another whistle. It was prolonged and
then repeated. The engineer's wife stood still and counted.
Five!
The most docile and apparently cheerful patient in the ---- Asylum for
the Insane is a widow, still young, who spends the greater time of each
day sewing and humming tunes softly to herself. Every afternoon at
about half-past four she assumes a listening attitude, suddenly hears
an inaudible whistle, smiles tenderly, starts up and places invisible
dishes and impalpable viands upon an imaginary table, and then loses
herself in a reverie which ends in slumber.
No striking clock is allowed within her hearing. It was long ago noticed
that the stroke of five or any series of five similar sounds would cause
her to moan piteously.
The people afar in the country town do not laugh now when they talk
of Tom and the whistle which was shrieking madly as he and his engine
plunged down the bank together on that day when the huge boulder rolled
from the hillside stone quarry and lay upon the tracks, just on this
side of the curve above the town.
XIV. -- WHISKERS
The facts about the man we called “Whiskers” linger in my mind, asking
to be recorded, and though they do not make much of a story, I am
tempted to unburden myself by putting them on paper. It was mentally
noted as a sure thing by everybody who saw him go into the managing
editor's room, to ask for a position on the staff of the paper, that if
he should obtain a place and become a fixture in the office, he would
be generally known as Whiskers within twenty-four hours after his
instalment.
What tale he told the managing editor no one knew, but every one in the
editorial rooms deduced later that it must have been something a trifle
out of the common, for the managing editor, who had gone through the
form of taking the names of three previous applicants that afternoon and
telling them that he would let them know when a vacancy should occur on
the staff, told the man whom we eventually christened Whiskers that he
might come around the next day and write whatever he might choose to in
the way of Sunday “specials,” comic verses, or editorial paragraphs, on
the chance of their being accepted.
The next day the hairy-faced man took possession of a desk in the room
occupied by the exchange editor and one of the editorial writers, and
began to grind out “copy.”
He was a slim, figure, with what is commonly denominated a “slight
stoop.” His trousers were none too long for his thin legs, his tightly
fitting frock coat, threadbare, shiny, and unduly creased, was hardly of
a fit for his slender body and his long arms. It was his face, however,
that mostly individualized his appearance.
The face was pale, the outlines symmetrical, but rather feeble, and the
countenance would have seemed rather lamblike but for the fact that it
was framed with thick, long hair and a luxuriant beard, which caressed
his waistcoat.
These made him impressive at first sight.
On the first day of his presence, he said little to the men with whom he
shared his room in the office. On the second day he grew communicative
and talked rather pompously to the exchange editor. He prated of his
past achievements as a newspaper man in other cities. He had a cheerful
way of talking in a voice that was high but not loud. His undaunted
manner of uttering self-praise caused the exchange editor to wink at the
editorial writer. It engendered, too, a small degree of dislike on the
part of these worthies; and the exchange editor made it a point to watch
for some of the new man's work in the paper, that he might be certain
whether the new man's ability was equal to the new man's opinion of it.
The exchange editor found that it was not. The new man had been in the
office four days before any of his contributions had gone through the
process of creation, acceptance, and publication. Some verses and some
alleged jokes were his first matter printed. They were below mediocrity.
The exchange editor ceased to dislike the whiskered man and thereafter
regarded him as quite harmless and mildly amusing.
This view of him was eventually accepted by every one who came to know
him, and he was made the object of a good deal of gentle chaffing.
He earned probably $15 or $20 at space rates, a lamentably small amount
for so intellectual looking a man, but a very large amount considering
the quality of work turned out by him.
Doubtless he would not have made nearly so much had not the managing
editor whispered something in the ears of the assistant editor-in-chief,
whose duty it was to judge of the acceptability of editorial matter
offered, the editor of the Sunday's supplement, and other members of
the staff who might have occasion to “turn down” the new man's
contributions, or to wink at the deficiencies in his work.
One day Whiskers, with many apologies and much embarrassment, asked
the exchange editor to lend him a quarter, which request having been
complied with, he put on his much rubbed high hat and hurried from the
room.
“It's funny the old man's hard up so soon,” the exchange editor said
to the editorial writer at the next desk, “It's only two days since
pay-day.”
“Where does he sink his money?” asked the editorial writer. “His
sleeping-room costs him only $3 a week, and, eating the way he does, at
the cheapest hash-houses, his whole expenses can't be more than $8. No
one ever sees him spend a cent. He must sink it away in a bank.”
“Hasn't he any relatives?”
“He never spoke of any, and he lives alone. Wotherspoon, who lodges
where he does, says no one ever comes to see him.”
“He certainly doesn't spend money on clothes.”
“No; and he never drinks at his own expense.”
“He's probably leading a double life,” said the exchange editor,
jestingly, as he plunged his scissors into a Western paper, to cut out a
poem by James Whitcomb Riley.
Without making many acquaintances, Whiskers, by reason of his hirsute
peculiarity, became known throughout the building, from the business
office on the ground floor to the composing-room on the top. When he
went into the latter one day and passed down the long aisle between the
long row of cases and type-setting machines, with a corrected proof
in his hand, a certain printer, who was “setting” up a clothing-house
advertisement, could not resist the temptation to give labial imitation
of the blowing of wind. The bygone joke concerning whiskers and the wind
was then current, and a score of compositors took up the whistle, so
that all varieties of breeze were soon being simulated simultaneously.
Whiskers coloured sightly, but, save a dignified straightening of his
shoulders, he showed no other sign that he was conscious of the rude
allusion to his copious beard.
Whiskers chose Tuesday for his day off.
It was on a certain Tuesday evening that one of the reporters came into
the exchange editor's room and casually remarked:
“I saw your anti-shaving friend, who sits at that desk, riding out to
the suburbs on a car to-day. He was all crushed up and carried a bouquet
of roses.”
“That settles it,” cried the editorial writer to the exchange editor,
with mock jubilation. “There can be no doubt the old man was leading a
double life. The bouquet means a woman in the case.”
“And his money goes for flowers and presents,” added the exchange
editor.
“Some of it, of course,” went on the editorial writer, “and the rest
he's saving to get married on. Who'd have thought it at his age?”
“Why, he's not over forty. It's only his whiskers that make him look
old. One can easily detect a sentimental vein in his composition.”
“That accounts for his fits of abstraction, too. So he's found favour in
some fair one's eyes. I wonder what she's like.”
“Young and pretty, I'll bet,” said the exchange editor. “He's impressed
her by his dignified aspect. No doubt she thinks he's nothing less than
an editor-in-chief.”
The next day Whiskers was taciturn, as his office associates now
recalled that he was wont to be after “his day off.” Doubtless his
thoughts dwelt upon his visits to his divinity. He did not respond to
their efforts to involve him in conversation.
He was observed upon his next day off to take a car for the suburbs and
to have a bouquet in his hand and a package under his arm. The theory
originated by the editorial writer had general acceptance. It was passed
from man to man in the office.
“Have you heard about the queer old duck with the whiskers, who writes
in the exchange room? He's engaged to a young and pretty girl up-town,
and eats at fifteen-cent soup-shops so that he can buy her flowers and
wine and things.”
“What! Old Whiskers in love! That's a good one!”
One day while Whiskers' pen was busily gliding across the paper, the
exchange editor broke the silence by asking him, in a careless tone:
“How was she, yesterday, Mr. Croydon?”
Whiskers looked up almost quickly, an expression of almost pained
surprise on his face.
“Who?” he inquired.
“Ah, you thought because you didn't tell us, it wouldn't out. But you've
been caught. I mean the lady to whom you take roses every week, of
course.”
Whiskers simply stared at the exchange editor, as if quite bewildered.
“Oh, pardon me,” said the exchange editor, somewhat abashed. “I didn't
mean to offend you. One's affairs of the heart are sacred, I know. But
we all guy each other about each other's amours here. We're hardened to
that sort of pleasantry.”
A look of enlightenment, a blush, a deep sigh, and an “Oh, I'm not
offended,” were the only manifestations made by Whiskers after the
exchange editor's apology.
It was inferred from his manner that he did not wish to make confidences
or receive jests about his love-affairs.
A time came when Whiskers seemed to have something constantly on his
mind. Not content with one day's vacation each week, he would go off for
periods of three or four hours on other days.
“Do you notice how queerly the old man behaves?” said the editorial
writer to the exchange editor thereupon. “Things are coming to a
crisis.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why, the wedding, of course.”
This inference received a show of confirmation afterward when Whiskers
had a private interview with the managing editor, received an order on
the cashier for all the money due him, and for a part of the managing
editor's salary as a loan, and quietly said to the exchange editor that
he would be away for a week or so. The editorial writer happened to be
at the cashier's window when Whiskers had his order cashed. So when the
editorial writer and the exchange editor compared notes a few minutes
later, the latter complimented the former upon the correctness of his
prediction that Whiskers' marriage was imminent.
“He didn't invite us,” said the exchange editor, “but then I suppose the
affair is to be a very quiet one, and we can't take offence at that. The
old man's not a bad lot, by any means. Let's do something to please him
and to flatter his bride. What do you say to raising a fund to buy them
a present, in the name of the staff?”
“I'm in for it,” said the editorial writer, producing a half-dollar.
They canvassed the office and found everybody willing to contribute. The
managing editor and the assistant editor-in-chief had gone home, but as
they had shown kindness to Whiskers, and were, in fact, the only two men
on the staff who knew anything about his private affairs, the exchange
editor took his chances and put in a dollar for each of them.
“And now, what shall we get--and where shall we send it?” said the
exchange editor.
“Not to his lodging-house, certainly. He'll probably be married at the
residence of his bride's parents, as the notices say. We'd better get it
quick, and rush it up there--wherever that is--somewhere up-town.”
“But say,” interposed the city editor, who was present at this
consultation, “maybe the ceremony has already come off. I saw the old
man giving in a notice for advertisement across the counter at the
business office an hour ago.”
“Well, we may be able to learn from that where the bride lives, anyhow,
and some one can go there and find out something definite about the
happy pair's present and future whereabouts,” suggested the editorial
writer.
“That's so,” said the city editor. “The notice is in the composing-room
by this time. I'll run up and find it.”
The city editor left the editorial writer and the exchange editor alone
together in the room, each sitting at their own desk.
“What shall we get with this money?” queried the former, touching the
bills and silver dumped upon his desk.
“Something to please the woman. That'll give Whiskers the most pleasure.
He evidently loves her deeply. These constant visits and gifts speak the
greatest devotion.”
“Of course, but what shall it be?”
The two were battling with this question when the city editor returned.
He came in and said quietly:
“I found the notice. At least, I suppose this is it. What is the old
man's full name?”
“Horace W. Croydon.”
“This is it, then,” said the city editor, standing with his back to the
door. “The notice reads: 'On March 3d, at the Arlington Hospital for
Incurables, Rachel, widow of the late Horace W. Croydon, Sr., in her
59th year. Funeral services at the residence of Charles--'”
“Why,” interrupted the editorial writer, in a hushed voice, “that is a
death notice.”
“His mother,” said the exchange editor. “The Hospital for
Incurables--that is where the flowers went.”
The editorial writer's glance dropped to the desk, where the money lay
for the intended gift. The exchange editor sat perfectly still, gazing
straight in front of him. The city editor walked softly to the window
and looked out.
XV. -- THE BAD BREAK OF TOBIT MCSTENGER
“I'm a bad man,” said Tobit McStenger, after three glasses of whiskey.
And he was. In making the declaration, he echoed the expression of the
community.
He looked it. Not only in the sneering mouth above the half-formed chin,
and in the lowering eyes of undecided colour beneath the receding brow,
but also in every shiftless attitude and movement of his great gaunt
body, and even in the torn coat and shapeless felt hat--both once black,
but both now a dirty gray--his aspect proclaimed him the preeminent
rowdy of his town.
When out of jail he was engaged in oyster opening at Couch's saloon, or
selling fresh fish, caught in the river, or vagrancy in the streets
of Brickville. He lived in a log house containing two rooms, by Muddy
Creek, an intermittent stream that flowed--sometimes--through a corner
of the town. He was a widower and had a son nine years old, little Tobe,
who went to school occasionally, but gave most of his day to carrying a
paper flour-sack around the town and begging cold victuals, in obedience
to paternal commands, and throwing stones at other boys, who called him
“Patches,” a nickname descended from his father.
Little Tobe's face was always black, from the dust of the bituminous
coal that he was compelled to steal at night from the railroad
companies' yard. His attire was in miniature what his father's was in
the large, as his character was in embryo what the elder Tobit's was in
complete development. With long, entangled hair, a thin, crafty face,
and stealthy eyes, he was a true type of malevolent gamin, all the more
uncanny for the crudity due to his semirustic environments.
Such were Tobit and little Tobe, the most conspicuous of the village
“characters” of Brickville, a Pennsylvania town deriving sustenance from
its brick-kiln, its railroads, and its contiguous farming interests.
It was town talk that Tobit McStenger was a hard father; drunk or sober,
he chastised little Tobe upon the slightest occasion.
“But,” said Tobit McStenger, after admitting his severity as a parent
before the bar in Couch's saloon, “let any one else lay a finger on that
kid! Just let 'em! They'll find out, jail or no jail, I'm ugly!” And he
went on to repeat for the thousandth time that when he was ugly he was a
bad man.
Whereupon the other loungers in Couch's saloon, “Honesty Tom Yerkes,”
the hauler, Sam Hatch, the bill-poster, and the rest, agreed that a
man's manner of governing his household was his own business.
Tobit McStenger had his word to say upon all village topics. When
in Couch's saloon one night he learned that the school directors had
decided to take the primary school from the tutorship of a woman and
to put a man over it as teacher, Tobit pricked up his ears and had many
words to say. He was working at the time, and he spoke in loud, coarse
tones, as he wielded his oyster-knife, having for an audience the usual
dozen barroom tarriers.
“I know what that means,” cried Tobit McStenger. “It means they ain't
satisfied with having our children ruled with kindness. It means Miss
Wiggins, who's kep' a good school, which I know all about, fer my son's
one of her scholars--it means she don't use the rod enough. They've made
up their minds to control the kids by force, and they went and hired a
man to lick book learnin' into 'em. Who is the feller, anyway?”
“Pap” Buckwalder read the answer to Tobit's question from the current
number of the Brickville _Weekly Gazette_.
“The new teacher is Aubrey Pilling, the adopted son of farmer Josiah
Pilling, of Blair Township. He has taught the school of that township
for three winters, and is a graduate of the Brickville Academy.”
Sam Hatch, standing by the stove, remembered him.
“Why, that's the backward fellow,” said he, “that the girls used to guy.
His hair and eyebrows is as white as tow, and when he'd blush his face
used to turn pink. He always walked in from the country, four miles,
every morning to school and back again at night. There ain't much
use getting him take a woman's place. He's about the same as a woman
hisself. He hardly talks above a whisper, and he's afraid to look a girl
in the face.”
“Ain't he the boy Josiah Pilling took out o' the Orphans' Home, here
about twenty years ago?” queried Pap Buckwalder.
“Yep,” replied Hatch. “I heerd somethin' about that when he went to the
'cademy here. He was took out of a home by a farmer, who gave him his
name 'cause the boy didn't know his own, nor no one else did, and so he
was brought up on the farm.”
“So that's the sort o' people they've put the education of our children
into the hands uv!” exclaimed Tobit McStenger. “Well, all I got to say
is, let him keep his hands off my boy Tobe, or he'll find out the kind
of a tough customer I am.”
Tobit McStenger, in the few weeks immediately following this change in
the primary school, remained continuously industrious, to the surprise
of all who knew him. As Tobit was an expeditious oyster-opener, Tony
Couch, the saloon-keeper who employed him, was much rejoiced. Tobit
toiled at oyster-opening and little Tobe became regular in his
attendance at school.
The new school-teacher, a broad, awkward, bashful youth, painfully
blond, came to town and accomplished that for which he had been called.
He brought discipline to the primary school, an achievement none
easier for the fact that many of his pupils were in their teens, and
incidentally he suspended Tobit McStenger the younger.
When little Tobe, glad of the enforced return to the liberties of his
begging days, brought home his soiled first reader and told his father
that the teacher had sent him from school with orders not to return
until he could learn to keep his face clean, the father became swollen
with an overflowing wrath. He swore frightfully, and started off,
vowing that he would “show the white-faced foundling how to treat decent
people's children.”
And he had two tall drinks of whiskey put on the slate against him at
Couch's and proceeded to carry out his threat.
It was a cold day in December. Pilling, the teacher, sat near the stove
in the little square school-room, listening to the irrepressible hum of
his restless pupils and the predominating monotonous sound of a small
girl's voice reciting multiplication tables.
“Three times three are nine,” she whined, drawlingly; “three times four
are twelve, three times--”
The little girl with the braided hair stopped short. A loud knock fell
upon the door.
A boy looked through the window, evidently saw the one who had knocked,
then cast a curious look at Pilling, the teacher. Pilling observed this,
and asked the boy:
“Who is it?”
After a moment of hesitation, the boy replied:
“It's old Patchy--I mean, Tobe McStenger's father.”
Pilling, whose bashfulness was manifest only in the presence of women,
had the utmost calmness before his pupils. He walked quietly to the door
and locked it.
McStenger, furious without, heard the sound of the bolt being thrust
into place, whereupon he began to kick at the door. Pilling turned
the chair facing his class and told the girl with the braided hair to
continue.
“Three times five are fifteen, three times six--”
A crashing sound was heard. McStenger had broken a window. Pilling
looked around, as if seeking some impromptu weapon. While he was doing
so, McStenger broke another window-pane with a club. Then McStenger went
away.
That evening, Pilling had Tobit McStenger arrested for malicious
mischief. The oyster-opener was held pending trial until January court.
He was then sentenced to thirty days more in the county jail. Meanwhile
little Tobe mounted a freight-train one day to steal a ride, and
Brickville has not seen or heard of him since. He enlisted in the great
army of vagabonds, doubtless. Perhaps some city swallowed him.
Tobit McStenger felt at home in jail. It was not a bad place of
residence during the coldest months. But for one defect, jail life would
have been quite enviable; it forced upon him abstinence from alcoholic
liquor.
Every period of thirty days has its termination, and Tobit McStenger
became a free man. He returned to his old life, opening oysters during
part of the time, idling and drinking during the other part. He made no
attempt to spoil the peace of Aubrey Pilling, and he only laughed when
he heard of the disappearance of Little Tobe.
Pilling, by his success in conducting the primary school, had won
the esteem of Brickville's citizens. His timidity had diminished, or,
rather, it had been discovered to be merely quietness, self-communion,
instead of timidity. He had shown himself less prudish than he had been
thought. Occasionally he drank whiskey or beer, which was looked upon as
a good sign in a man of his kind.
Tobit McStenger did not know this. He invariably evaded mention of
Pilling. People wondered what would happen when the two should meet.
For Tobit was known to be revengeful, and he was now, more than ever, in
speech and look, a bad man.
The expected and yet the unexpected happened one night in Couch's
saloon,--the scene of most of the eventful incidents in Tobit
McStenger's life since he had dawned upon Brickville. Tobit and Honesty
Yerkes, Pap Buckwalder, old Tony Couch himself, and half a score others
were making a conversational hubbub before the bar.