BERTY’S TRAMP
Berty was away out on the lonely road leading from the iron works to
the city.
Grandma had not been well all day, and Berty had gone to ask Bonny to
spend the night in the River Street house. Since the boy’s admission
into Roger’s office he had virtually lived in Roger’s house.
Not that he loved Margaretta and Roger more than he loved his
grandmother and Berty, but the Grand Avenue style of living was more in
accord with his aristocratic tastes than the plain ways of the house in
River Street. So the boy really had two homes.
Berty, who had been in the house with her grandmother all through the
morning, had enjoyed the long walk out to the iron works, and was now
enjoying the long walk home.
It was a perfect afternoon. “How I love the late summer,” murmured the
girl, and she gazed admiringly about her at the ripening grain fields,
the heavily foliaged trees, the tufts of goldenrod flowering beside the
dusty road.
Away off there in the distance was a moving cloud of dust coming
from the city. Nearer at hand, it resolved itself into a man who was
shuffling along in a lazy way, and kicking up very much more dust than
there was any necessity of doing.
Berty stared at him. She knew most of the citizens of Riverport by
sight, and whether she knew them by sight or not, she could tell by
their general appearance whether they belonged to the place.
This man was a stranger--a seedy, poor-looking man with a brown face,
and he was observing her as intently as she was observing him.
Arrived opposite her, he stopped. “Lady,” he said, in a whining voice,
“please give a poor sick man some money to buy medicine.”
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, promptly.
“An awful internal trouble, lady,” he said, laying his hand on his
side. “Intermittent pains come on every evening at this time.”
“You don’t look ill,” replied Berty, suspiciously. “Your face is as
bronzed as a sailor’s.”
“The doctors prescribed outdoor air, lady,” he went on, whiningly.
“I haven’t any money for you.”
The man, from his station in the road, looked back toward the city,
then forward in the direction of the iron works. There was not a soul
in sight, and as quick as a flash an angry sentence sprang to the
girl’s lips, “Let me by.”
“But, lady, I want some money,” he said, persistently, and he stood in
her way.
She surveyed him contemptuously. “You want to make me give you some,
but I tell you you couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t I, lady?” he replied, half-sneeringly, half-admiringly.
“No,” said Berty, promptly, “because, in the first place, I’d be so
mad that you couldn’t get it from me. You’re only a little man, and
I guess a gymnasium-trained girl like myself could knock you about
considerably. Then look here,” and, stepping back, she suddenly flashed
something long and sharp and steely from her head. “Do you see that
hat-pin? It would sting you like a wasp,” and she stabbed the air with
it.
The man snickered. “You’ve plenty of sand, but I guess I could get your
purse if I tried.”
“Oh, how angry you make me,” returned the girl, with a fiery glance.
“Now I can understand how one can let oneself be killed for an idea.
You might possibly overcome me, you might get my purse, but you
couldn’t kill the mad in me if you chopped me in a thousand little
pieces.”
“Lady,” said the man, teasingly, “I guess you’d give in before then,
though I’ve no doubt but what your temper would carry you considerable
far.”
“And suppose you got my purse,” said Berty, haughtily, “what good would
it do you? Wouldn’t I scream? I’ve got a voice like a steam-whistle;
and the iron works close in five minutes, and this road will be alive
with good honest workmen. They’d hunt you down like a rabbit.”
For the first time a shade of uneasiness passed over his face. But he
speedily became cool. “Good evening, lady, excuse me for frightening
you,” and, pulling at his battered hat, he started to pass on.
“Stop!” said Berty, commandingly, “who are you, and why did you come to
Riverport?”
He lazily propped himself against a tree by the roadside. “It was in my
line of march.”
“Are you a tramp?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I am.”
“Where were you born?”
“In New Hampshire.”
“You weren’t born a tramp?”
“Great Harry!” muttered the man, taking off his hat and pushing back
from his forehead the dark hair sprinkled with gray, “it seems a
hundred years since I was born. My father was a well-to-do farmer,
young lady, if you want to know, and he gave me a good education.”
“A good education,” repeated Berty, “and now you have sunk so low as to
stop women and beg for money.”
“Just that low,” he said, indifferently, “and from a greater height
than you think.”
“What was the height?” asked Berty, eagerly.
“I was once a physician in Boston,” he returned, with a miserable
remnant of pride.
“You a physician!” exclaimed Berty, “and now a tramp!”
“A tramp pure and simple.”
“What made you give up your profession?”
“Well, I was born lazy, and then I drank, and I drink, and I always
shall drink.”
“A drunkard!” murmured Berty, pityingly. “Poor fellow!”
The man looked at her curiously.
“How old are you?” she asked, suddenly.
“Forty-five.”
“Have you tried to reform?”
“Formerly--not now.”
“Oh, how queer people are,” said the girl, musingly. “How little I can
understand you. How little you can understand me. Now if I could only
get inside your mind, and know what you are thinking about.”
“I’m thinking about my supper, lady,” he said, flippantly; then, as she
looked carefully at him, he went on, carelessly, “Once I was young like
you. Now I don’t go in for sentiment. I feed and sleep. That’s all I
care about.”
“And do you do no work?”
“Not a stroke.”
“And you have no money?”
“Not a cent.”
“But how do you live?”
“Off good people like you,” he said, wheedlingly. “You’re going to give
me a hot supper, I guess.”
“Follow me,” said Berty, suddenly setting off toward the city, and the
man sauntered after her.
When they reached River Street, she opened the gate leading into the
yard and beckoned to him.
“I can’t take you in the house,” she said, in a low voice, as he
followed her. “My grandmother is ill, and then our house is very clean.”
“And I am very unclean,” he said, jocularly surveying himself, “though
I’m by no means as bad as an ash-heap tramp.”
“But I’ll put you into the shed,” continued Berty. “There are only a
few guinea-pigs there. They are quiet little things, and won’t hurt
you.”
“I hope you won’t give me husks for supper,” murmured the tramp.
Berty eyed him severely. His condition to her was too serious for
jesting, and she by no means approved of his attempts at humour.
“I’ll bring you out something to eat,” she said, “and if you want to
stay all night, I’ll drag you out a mattress.”
“I accept your offer with thankfulness, lady,” he replied.