"A WELL-MEANIN' MAN"
The western horizon vied with the autumn foliage as at last they turned
homeward. Their path led out upon the main road some distance above the
house, and, laden with the spoils that would greatly diminish the
squirrels' hoard for the coming winter, they sauntered along slowly,
from a sense of both weariness and leisure.
They soon reached the cottage of the lame old man who had fired such a
broadside of lurid words at Gregory, as he stood on the fence opposite.
With a crutch under one arm and leaning on his gate, Daddy Tuggar
seemed awaiting them, and secured their attention by the laconic
salutation, "Evenin'!"
"Why, Daddy," exclaimed Annie, coming quickly toward him. "I am real
glad to see you so spry and well. It seems to me that you are getting
young again;" and she shook the old man's hand heartily.
"Now don't praise my old graveyard of a body, Miss Annie. My sperit is
pert enough, but it's all buried up in this old clumsy, half-dead
carcass. The worms will close their mortgage on it purty soon."
"But they haven't a mortgage on your soul," said Annie, in a low tone.
"You remember what I said to you a few days ago."
"Now bless you, Miss Annie, but it takes you to put in a 'word in
season.' The Lord knows I'm a well-meanin' man, but I can't seem to get
much furder. I've had an awful 'fall from grace,' my wife says. I did
try to stop swearin', but that chap there--"
"Oh, excuse me," interrupted Annie. "Mr. Gregory, this is our friend
and neighbor Mr. Tuggar. I was under the impression that you were
acquainted," she added, with a mischievous look at her companion.
"We are. I have met this gentleman before," he replied, with a wry
face. "Pardon the interruption, Mr. Tuggar, and please go on with your
explanation."
"Mr. Gregory, I owe you a 'pology. I'm a well-meanin' man, and if I do
any one a wrong I'm willin' to own it up and do the square thing. But I
meant right by you and I meant right by John Walton when I thought you
was stealin' his apples. I couldn't hit yer with a stun and knock yer
off the fence, as I might a dozen years ago, so I took the next hardest
thing I could lay hands on. If I'd known that you was kinder one of the
family my words would have been rolls of butter."
"Well, Mr. Tuggar, it has turned out very well, for _I_ would rather
you had fired what you did than either stones or butter."
"Now my wife would say that that speech showed you was 'totally
depraved.' And this brings me back to my 'fall from grace.' Now, yer
see, to please my wife some and Miss Eulie more, I was tryin' cussed
hard to stop swearin'--"
"Didn't you try a little for my sake, too?" interrupted Annie.
"Lord bless you, child; I don't have to try when you're around, for I
don't think swearin'. Most folks rile me, and I get a-thinkin'
swearin', and then 'fore I know it busts right out. _You_ could take
the wickedest cuss livin' to heaven in spite of himself if you would
stay right by him all the time."
"I should 'rile' you, too, if I were with you long, for I get 'riled'
myself sometimes."
"Do you, now?" asked Mr. Tuggar, looking at her admiringly. "Well, I'm
mighty glad to hear it."
"O Daddy! glad to hear that I do wrong?"
"Can't help it, Miss Annie. I kinder like to know you're a little bit
of a sinner. 'Tain't often I meet with a sinner, and I kind o' like
'em. My wife says she's a 'great sinner,' but she means she's a great
saint. 'Twouldn't do for me to tell her she's a 'sinner.' Then Miss
Eulie says she's a 'great sinner,' and between you and me that's the
only fib I ever caught Miss Eulie in. Good Lord! there's no more sin in
Miss Eulie's heart than there is specks of dirt on the little white
ruff she wears about her neck that looks like the snow we had last
April around the white hyacinths. She's kind of a half-sperit anyhow.
Now your goodness, Miss Annie, is another kind. Your cheeks are so red,
and eyes so black, and arms so round and fat--I've seen 'em when you
was over here a-beatin' up good things for the old man--that you make
me think of red and pink posies. I kinder think you might be a little
bit of a sinner--just enough, you know, to make you understand how I
and him there can be mighty big ones, and not be too hard on us for it."
"Mr. Tuggar, you are the man of all others to plead my cause."
"Now look here, young gentleman, you must do yer own pleadin'. It would
be a 'sinful waste of time' though, as my wife would say--eh, Miss
Annie? I never had no luck at pleadin' but once, and that was the worst
luck of all."
Annie's face might well suggest "red posies" during the last remarks,
and its expression was divided between a frown and a laugh.
"But I want you to understand," continued Daddy Tuggar, straightening
himself up with dignity, and addressing Gregory, "that I'm not a mean
cuss. All who know me know I'm a well-meanin' man. I try to do as I'd
be done by. If I'm going through a man's field and find his bars down,
so the cattle would get in the corn, I'd put 'em up--"
"Yes, Daddy, that is what you always say," interrupted Annie; "but you
can't go through the fields any more and put up bars. You should try to
do the duties that belong to your present state."
"But I've got the sperit to put up a man's bars, and it's all the same
as if I did put 'em up," answered the old man, with some irritation.
"Miss Eulie and the rest of yer is allers sayin' we must have the
sperit of willingness to give up the hull world and suffer martyrdom on
what looks in the picture like a big gridiron. She says we must have
the sperit of them who was cold and hungry and the lions eat up and was
sawn in two pieces and had an awful time generally for the sake of the
Lord, and that's the way the Christians manage it nowadays. My wife
gets all the money she can and keeps it, but she says she has the
sperit to give up the hull world. I wish she'd give up enough of it to
keep me in good terbacker. Mighty few nice bits would the old man git
wasn't it for you and Miss Eulie. Then I watch the good people goin' to
church. 'Mazin' few out wet Sundays. But no doubt they've all got the
'sperit' to go. They would jist as lief be sawn in two pieces 'in
sperit' as not, if they can only sleep late in the mornin' and have a
good dinner and save their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes from gettin'
wet. It must be so, for the Lord gets mighty little worship out of the
church on rainy Sundays. If it wasn't for you and Miss Eulie I don't
know what would become of the old man and all the rest of the sick and
feeble foiks around here. I ask my wife why she doesn't go to see 'em
sometimes. She says she has the 'sperit to go,' but she hasn't time and
strength. So I have the 'sperit' to put up a man's bars while I sit
here and smoke, and what's more, Miss Annie, I did it as long as I was
able."
"You did indeed, Daddy, and, though unintentionally, you have given me
a good lesson. We little deserve to be mentioned with those Christians
who in olden times suffered the loss of all things, and life itself."
"Lord bless you, child, I didn't mean you. Whether you've got the
sperit to do a thing or not yer allers do it, and in a sweet, natteral
way, as if you couldn't help it. When my wife enters on a good work it
makes me think of a funeral. I'm 'mazin' glad you didn't live in old
times, 'cause the lions would have got you sure 'nuff. Though, if it
had to be, I would kinder liked to have been the lion:" and the old
man's eyes twinkled humorously, while Gregory laughed heartily.
"Oh, Daddy Tuggar!" exclaimed Annie, "that is the most awful compliment
I ever received. If you, with your spirit, were the only lion I had to
deal with, I should never become a martyr. You shall have some jelly
instead, and now I must go home in order to have it made before Sunday."
"Wait a moment," said Gregory. "You were about to tell us how I caused
you to 'fall from grace.'"
"So I was, so I was, and I've been goin' round Robin Hood's barn ever
since. Well, I'd been holdin' in on my swearin' a long time, 'cause I
promised Miss Eulie I'd stop if I could. My wife said I was in quite a
'hopeful state,' while I felt all the time as if I was sort of bottled
up and the cork might fly out any minute. Miss Eulie, she came and
rejoiced over me that mornin', and my wife she looked so solemn (she
allers does when she says she feels glad) that somehow I got nervous,
and then my wife went to the store and didn't get the kind of terbacker
I sent for, and I knew the cork was going to fly out. I was smokin' and
in a sort of a doze, when the first thing I knowed a big stun rolled
into the road, and there I saw a strange chap, as I thought, a stealin'
John Walton's apples and knockin' down the fence. If they'd a been my
apples I might have held in a little longer, but John Walton's--it was
like a dam givin' way."
"It was, indeed," said Gregory, significantly. "It was like several."
"I knowed my wife heard me, and if she'd come right out and said,
'You've made a cussed old fool of yourself,' I think I would have felt
better. I knowed she was goin' to speak about it and lament over it,
and I wanted her to do it right away; but she put it off, and kept me
on pins and needles for ever so long. At last she said with solemn joy,
'Thomas Tuggar, I told Miss Eulie I feared you was still in a state of
natur, and, alas! I am right; but how she'll mourn, how great will be
her disappointment, when she hears'; and then I fell into a 'state of
natur' agin. Now, Miss Annie, if the Lord, Miss Eulie, and you all
could only see I'm a well-meanin' man, and that I don't mean no
disrespect to anybody; that it's only one of my old, rough ways that I
learned from my father--and mother too, for that matter, I'm sorry to
say--and have followed so long that it's bred in the bone, it would
save a heap of worry. One must have some way of lettin' off steam. Now
my wife she purses up her mouth so tight you couldn't stick a pin in it
when she's riled. I often say to her, 'Do explode. Open your mouth and
let it all out at once.' But she says it is not becoming for such as
her ter 'explode.' But it will come out all the same, only it's like
one of yer cold northeast, drizzlin', fizzlin' rain-storms. And now
I've made a clean breast of it, I hope you'll kinder smooth matters
over with Miss Eulie; and I hope you, sir, will just think of what I
said as spoken to a stranger and not a friend of the family."
"Give me your hand, Mr. Tuggar. I hope we shall be the best of friends.
I am coming over to have a smoke with you, and see if I can't fill your
pipe with some tobacco that is like us both, 'in a state of natur.'"
A white-faced woman appeared at the door, and courtesying low to Miss
Walton, called, "Husband, it's too late for you to be out; I fear your
health will suffer."
"She's bound up in me, you see," said the old man, with a curious
grimace. "Nothing but the reading of my will will ever comfort her when
I die."
"Daddy, Daddy," said Annie, reproachfully, "have charity. Good-night; I
will send you something nice for to-morrow."
An amused smile lingered on Gregory's face as they pursued their way
homeward, now in the early twilight; but Annie's aspect was almost one
of sadness. After a little he said, "Well, he is one of the oddest
specimens of humanity I ever met."
She did not immediately reply, and he, looking at her, caught her
expression.
"Why is your face so clouded, Miss Annie?" he asked. "You are not given
to Mrs. Tuggar's style of 'solemn joy'?"
"What a perplexing mystery life is after all!" she replied, absently.
"I really think poor old Daddy Tuggar speaks truly. He is a
'well-meaning' man, but he and many others remind me of one not having
the slightest ear for music trying to catch a difficult harmony."
"Why is the harmony so difficult?" asked Gregory, bitterly.
"Perhaps it were better to ask, Why has humanity so disabled itself?"
"I do not think it matters much how you put the case. It amounts to the
same thing. Something is required of us beyond our strength. The idea
of punishing that old man for being what he is, when in the first place
he inherited evil from his parents, and then was taught it by precept
and example. I think he deserves more credit than blame."
"The trouble is, Mr. Gregory, evil carries its own punishment along
with it every day. But I admit that we are surrounded by mystery on
every side. Humanity, left to itself, is a hopeless problem. But one
thing is certain: we are not responsible for questions beyond our ken.
Moreover, many things that were complete mysteries to me as a child are
now plain, and I ever hope to be taught something new every day. You
and I at least have much to be grateful for in the fact that we neither
inherited evil nor were taught it in any such degree as our poor
neighbor."
"And you quietly prove, Miss Walton, by your last remark, that I am
much more worthy of blame than your poor old neighbor."
"Then I said more than I meant," she answered, eagerly. "It is not for
me to judge or condemn any one. The thought in my mind was how favored
we have been in our parentage--our start in existence, as it were."
"But suppose one loses that vantage-ground?"
"I do not wish to suppose anything of the kind."
"But one can lose it utterly."
"I fear some can and do. But why dwell on a subject so unutterably sad
and painful? You have not lost it, and, as I said before to-day, I will
not dwell upon the disagreeable any more than I can help."
"Your opinion of me is poor enough already, Miss Walton, so I, too,
will drop the subject."
They had now reached the house, and did ample justice to the supper
awaiting them.
Between meals people can be very sentimental, morbid, and tragical.
They can stare at life's deep mysteries and shudder or scoff, sigh or
rejoice, according to their moral conditions. They can even grow cold
with dread, as did Gregory, realizing that he had "lost his
vantage-ground," his good start in the endless career. "She is steering
across unknown seas to a peaceful, happy shore. I am drifting on those
same mysterious waters I know not whither," he thought. But a few
minutes after entering the cheerfully lighted dining-room he was giving
his whole soul to muffins.
These homely and ever-recurring duties and pleasures of life have no
doubt saved multitudes from madness. It would almost seem that they
have also been the innocent cause of the destruction of many. There are
times when the mind is almost evenly balanced between good and evil.
Some powerful appeal or startling providence has aroused the sleeping
spirit, or some vivifying truth has pierced the armor of indifference
or prejudice, and quivered like an arrow in the soul, and the man
remembers that he is a man, and not a brute that perishes. But just
then the dinner-bell sounds. After the several courses, any physician
can predict how the powers of that human organization must of necessity
be employed the next few hours, and the partially awakened soul is like
one who starts out of a doze and sleeps again. If the spiritual nature
had only become sufficiently aroused to realize the situation, _life_
might have been secured. Thought and feeling in some emergencies will
do more than the grandest pulpit eloquence quenched by a Sunday dinner.