It may interest the reader to learn that up to the date of this article
"I still live."
"Little Tommy Tucker."
There were but three persons in the car; a merchant, deep in the income
list of the "Traveller," an old lady with two bandboxes, a man in the
corner with his hat pulled over his eyes.
Tommy opened the door, peeped in, hesitated, looked into another car,
came back, gave his little fiddle a shove on his shoulder, and walked
in.
"Hi! Little Tommy Tucker
Plays for his supper,"
shouted the young exquisite lounging on the platform in tan-colored coat
and lavender kid gloves.
"O Kids, you're there, are you? Well, I'd rather play for it than loaf
for it, _I_ had," said Tommy, stoutly.
The merchant shot a careless glance over the top of his paper, at the
sound of this _petit dialogue_, and the old lady smiled benignly; the
man in the corner neither looked nor smiled.
Nobody would have thought, to look at that man in the corner, that he
was at that very moment deserting a wife and five children. Yet that is
precisely what he was doing.
A villain? O no, that is not the word. A brute? Not by any means. A
man, weak, unfortunate, discouraged, and selfish, as weak, unfortunate,
and discouraged people are apt to be; that was the amount of it. His
panoramas never paid him for the use of his halls. His travelling
tin-type saloon had trundled him into a sheriff's hands. His petroleum
speculations had crashed like a bubble. His black and gold sign, _J.
Harmon, Photographer_, had swung now for nearly a year over the
dentist's rooms, and he had had the patronage of precisely six old women
and three babies. He had drifted to the theatre in the evenings, he did
not care now to remember how many times,--the fellows asked him, and it
made him forget his troubles; the next morning his empty purse would
gape at him, and Annie's mouth would quiver. A man must have his glass
too, on Sundays, and--well, perhaps a little oftener. He had not always
been fit to go to work after it; and Annie's mouth would quiver. It will
be seen at once that it was exceedingly hard on a man that his wife's
mouth should quiver. "Confound it! Why couldn't she scold or cry? These
still women aggravated a fellow beyond reason."
Well, then the children had been sick; measles, whooping-cough,
scarlatina, mumps, he was sure he did not know what not; every one of
them from the baby up. There was medicine, and there were doctor's
bills, and there was sitting up with them at night,--their mother
usually did that. Then she must needs pale down herself, like a poorly
finished photograph; all her color and roundness and sparkle gone; and
if ever a man liked to have a pretty wife about, it was he. Moreover she
had a cough, and her shoulders had grown round, stooping so much over
the heavy baby, and her breath came short, and she had a way of being
tired. Then she never stirred out of the house,--he found out about that
one day; she had no bonnet, and her shawl had been cut up into blankets
for the crib. The children had stopped going to school. "They could not
buy the new arithmetic," their mother said, half under her breath.
Yesterday there was nothing for dinner but Johnny-cake, nor a large one
at that. To-morrow the saloon rents were due. Annie talked about pawning
one of the bureaus. Annie had had great purple rings under her eyes for
six weeks.
He would not bear the purple rings and quivering mouth any longer. He
hated the sight of her, for the sight stung him. He hated the corn-cake
and the untaught children. He hated the whole dreary, dragging, needy
home. The ruin of it dogged him like a ghost, and he should be the ruin
of it as long as he stayed in it. Once fairly rid of him, his scolding
and drinking, his wasting and failing, Annie would send the children to
work, and find ways to live. She had energy and invention, a plenty of
it in her young, fresh days, before he came across her life to drag her
down. Perhaps he should make a golden fortune and come back to her some
summer day with a silk dress and servants, and make it all up; in theory
this was about what he expected to do. But if his ill luck went westward
with him, and the silk dress never turned up, why, she would forget him,
and be better off, and that would be the end of it.
So here he was, ticketed and started, fairly bound for Colorado, sitting
with his hat over his eyes, and thinking about it.
"Hm-m. Asleep," pronounced Tommy, with his keen glance into the corner.
"Guess I'll wake him up."
He laid his cheek down on his little fiddle,--you don't know how Tommy
loved that little fiddle,--and struck up a gay, rollicking tune,--
"I care for nobody and nobody cares for me."
The man in the corner sat quite still. When it was over he shrugged his
shoulders.
"When folks are asleep they don't hist their shoulders, not as a general
thing," observed Tommy. "We'll try another."
Tommy tried another. Nobody knows what possessed the little fellow, the
little fellow himself least of all; but he tried this:--
"We've lived and loved together,
Through many changing years."
It was a new tune, and he wanted practice, perhaps.
The train jarred and started slowly; the gloved exquisite, waiting
hackmen, baggage-masters, coffee-counter, and station-walls slid back;
engine-house and prison towers, and labyrinths of tracks slipped by;
lumber and shipping took their place, with clear spaces between, where
sea and sky shone through. The speed of the train increased with a
sickening sway; old wharves shot past, with the green water sucking at
their piers; the city shifted by and out of sight.
"We've lived and loved together,"
played Tommy in a little plaintive wail,
"We've lived and loved--"
"Confound the boy!" Harmon pushed up his hat with a jerk, and looked out
of the window. The night was coming on. A dull sunset lay low on the
water, burning like a bale-fire through the snaky trail of smoke that
went writhing past the car windows. Against lonely signal-houses and
little deserted beaches the water was plashing drearily, and playing
monotonous bases to Tommy's wail:--
"Through many changing years,
Many changing years."
It was a nuisance, this music in the cars. Why didn't somebody stop it?
What did the child mean by playing that? They had left the city far
behind now. He wondered how far. He pushed up the window fiercely,
venting the passion of the music on the first thing that came in his
way, and thrust his head out to look back. Through the undulating smoke,
out in the pale glimmer from the sky, he could see a low, red tongue of
land, covered with the twinkle of lighted homes. Somewhere there, in
among the quivering warmth, was one--
What was that boy about now? Not "Home, sweet Home?" But that was what
Tommy was about.
They were lighting the lamps now in the car. Harmon looked at the
conductor's face, as the sickly yellow flare struck on it, with a
curious sensation. He wondered if he had a wife and five children; if he
ever thought of running away from them; what he would think of a man who
did; what most people would think; what she would think. She!--ah, she
had it all to find out yet.
"There's no place like home,"
said Tommy's little fiddle,
"O, no place like home."
Now this fiddle of Tommy's may have had a crack or so in it, and I
cannot assert that Tommy never struck a false note; but the man in the
corner was not fastidious as a musical critic; the sickly light was
flickering through the car, the quiver on the red flats was quite out of
sight, the train was shrieking away into the west,--the baleful, lonely
west,--which was dying fast now out there upon the sea, and it is a fact
that his hat went slowly down over his face again, and that his face
went slowly down upon his arm.
There, in the lighted home out upon the flats, that had drifted by
forever, she sat waiting now. It was about time for him to be in to
supper; she was beginning to wonder a little where he was; she was
keeping the coffee hot, and telling the children not to touch their
father's pickles; she had set the table and drawn the chairs; his pipe
lay filled for him upon the shelf over the stove. Her face in the light
was worn and white,--the dark rings very dark; she was trying to hush
the boys, teasing for their supper; begging them to wait a few minutes,
only a few minutes, he would surely be here then. She would put the baby
down presently, and stand at the window with her hands--Annie's hands
once were not so thin--raised to shut out the light,--watching,
watching.
The children would eat their supper; the table would stand untouched,
with his chair in its place; still she would go to the window, and stand
watching, watching. O, the long night that she must stand watching, and
the days, and the years!
"Sweet, sweet home,"
played Tommy.