THE MAN WITH THE EMPTY SLEEVE
I
TheDoctor closed the book with an angry gesture and handed it to me as I lay in my steamer chair, my eyes on the tumbling sea. He had read every line in it. So had P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, whose property it was, and who had announced himself only a moment before as heartily in sympathy with the pessimistic views of the author, especially in those chapters which described domestic life in America.
The Doctor, who has a wrist of steel and a set of fingers steady enough to adjust a chronometer, and who, though calm and silent as a stone god when over an operating table, is often as restless and outspoken as a boy when something away from it touches his heartstrings, turned to me and said:—
"There ought to be a law passed to keep these men out of the United States. Here's a Frenchman, now, who speaks no language but his own, and after spending a week at Newport, another at New York, two days at Niagara, and then rushing through the West on a 'Limited,' goes home to give his Impressions of America. Read that chapter on Manners," and he stretched a hand over my shoulder, turning the leaves quickly with his fingers. "You would think, to listen to these fellows, that all there is to a man is the cut of his coat or the way he takes his soup. Not a line about his being clean and square and alive and all a man,—just manners! Why, it is enough to make a cast-iron dog bite a blind man."
It would be a waste of time to criticise the Doctor for these irrelevant verbal explosives. Indefensible as they are, they are as much parts of his individuality as the deftness of his touch and the fearlessness of his methods are parts of his surgical training.
P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, looked at the Doctor with a slight lifting of his upper lip and a commiserating droop of the eyelid,—an expression indicating, of course, a consciousness of that superior birth and breeding which prevented the possibility of such outbreaks. It was a manner he sometimes assumed toward the Doctor, although they were good friends. P. Wooverman and the Doctor are fellow townsmen and members of the same set, and members, too, of the same club,—a most exclusive club of one hundred. The Doctor had gained admission, not because of his ancestors, etc. (see Log of the Mayflower), but because he had been the first and only American surgeon who had removed some very desirable portions of a gentleman's interior, had washed and ironed them and scalloped their edges, for all I know, and had then replaced them, without being obliged to sign the patient's death certificate the next day.
P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, on the other hand, had gained admission because of—well, Todd's birth and his position (he came of an old Salem family who did something in whale oil,—not fish or groceries, be it understood); his faultless attire, correct speech, and knowledge of manners and men; his ability to spend his summers in England and his winters in Nice; his extensive acquaintance among distinguished people,—the very most distinguished, I know, for Todd has told me so himself,—and—well, all these must certainly be considered sufficient qualifications to entitle any man to membership in almost any club in the world.
P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, I say, elevated his upper lip and drooped his eyelid, remarking with a slight Beacon Street accent:—
"I cawn't agree with you, my dear Doctor,"—there were often traces of the manners and the bearing of a member of the Upper House in Todd, especially when he talked to a man like the Doctor, who wore turned-down collars and detached cuffs, and who, to quote the distinguished Bostonian, "threw words about like a coal heaver,"—"I cawn't agree with you, I say. It isn't the obzervar that we should criticise; it is what he finds." P. Wooverman was speaking with his best accent. Somehow, the Doctor's bluntness made him over-accentuate it,—particularly when there were listeners about. "This French critic is a man of distinction and a member of the most excloosive circles in Europe. I have met him myself repeatedly, although I cawn't say I know him. We Americans are too sensitive, my dear Doctor. His book, to me, is the work of a keen obzervar who knows the world, and who sees how woefully lacking we are in some of the common civilities of life," and he smiled faintly at me, as if confident that I shared his opinion of the Doctor's own short-comings. "This Frenchman does not lay it on a bit too thick. Nothing is so mortifying to me as being obliged to travel with a party of Americans who are making their first tour abroad. And it is quite impossible to avoid them, for they all have money and can go where they please. I remember once coming from Basle to Paris, in a first-class carriage,—it was only larst summer,—with a fellow from Indiana or Michigan, or somewhere out there. He had a wife with him who looked like a cook, and a daughter about ten years old, who was a most objectionable young person. You could hear them talk all over the train. I shouldn't have minded it so much, but Lord Norton's harf-brother was with me,"—and P. Wooverman Shaw Todd glanced, as he spoke, at a thin lady with a smelling bottle and an air of reserve, who always sat with a maid beside her, to see if she were looking at him,—"and one of the best bred men in England, too, and a man who"——
"Now hold on, Todd," broke in the Doctor, upon whom neither the thin lady nor any other listener had made the slightest impression. "No glittering generalities with me. Just tell me in so many plain words what this man's vulgarity consisted of."
"Why, his manners, his dress, Doctor,—everything about him," retorted Todd.
"Just as I thought! All you think about is manners, only manners!" exploded the Doctor. "Your Westerner, no doubt, was a hard-fisted, weather-tanned farmer, who had worked all his life to get money enough to take his wife and child abroad. The wife had tended the dairy and no doubt milked ten cows, and in their old age they both wanted to see something of the world they had heard about. So off they go. If you had any common sense or anything that brought you in touch with your kind, Todd, and had met that man on his own level, instead of overawing him with your high-daddy airs, he would have told you that both the wife and he were determined that the little girl should have a better start in life than their own, and that this trip was part of her education. Do you know any other working people,"—and the Doctor faced him squarely,—"any Dutch, or French, or English, Esquimaux or Hottentots, who take their wives and children ten thousand miles to educate them? If I had my way with the shaping of the higher education of the country, the first thing I would teach a boy would be to learn to work, and with his hands, too. We have raised our heroes from the soil,—not from the easy-chairs of our clubs,"—and he looked at Todd with his eyebrows knotted tight. "Let the boy get down and smell the earth, and let him get down to the level of his kind, helping the weaker man all the time and never forgetting the other fellow. When he learns to do this he will begin to know what it is to be a man, and not a manikin."
When the Doctor is mounted on any one of his hobbies,—whether it is a new microbe, Wagner, or the rights of the working-man,—he is apt to take the bit in his teeth and clear fences. As he finished speaking, two or three of the occupants of contiguous chairs laid down their books to listen. The thin lady with the smelling bottle and the maid remarked in an undertone to another exclusive passenger on the other side of her, in diamonds and white ermine cape,—it was raining at the time,—that "one need not travel in a first-class carriage to find vulgar Americans," and she glanced from the Doctor to a group of young girls and young men who were laughing as heartily and as merrily, and perhaps as noisily, as if they were sitting on their own front porches at their Southern homes.
Another passenger—who turned out later to be a college professor—said casually, this time to me, that he thought good and bad manners were to be determined, not by externals, but by what lay underneath; that neither dress, language, nor habits fixed or marred the standard. "A high-class Turk, now," and he lowered his voice, "would be considered ill bred by some people, because in the seclusion of his own family he helps himself with his fingers from the common dish; and yet so punctiliously polite and courteous is he that he never sits down in his father's presence nor lights a cigarette without craving his permission."
After this the talk became general, the group taking sides; some supporting the outspoken Doctor in his blunt defense of his countrymen, others siding with the immaculately dressed Todd, so correct in his every appointment that he was never known, during the whole voyage, to wear a pair of socks that did not in color and design match his cravat.
The chief steward had given us seats at the end of one of the small tables. The Doctor sat under the porthole, and Todd and I had the chairs on either side of him. The two end seats—those on the aisle—were occupied by a girl of twenty-five, simply clad in a plain black dress with plainer linen collar and cuffs, and a young German. The girl would always arrive late, and would sink into her revolving chair with a languid movement, as if the voyage had told upon her. Often her face was pale and her eyes were heavy and red, as if from want of sleep. The young German—a Baron von Hoffbein, the passenger list said—was one of those self-possessed, good-natured, pink-cheeked young Teutons, with blue eyes, blond hair, and a tiny waxed mustache, a mere circumflex accent of a mustache, over his "o" of a mouth. His sponsors in baptism had doubtless sent him across the sea to chase the wild boar or the rude buffalo, with the ultimate design, perhaps, of founding a brewery in some Western city.
The manners of this young aristocrat toward the girl were an especial source of delight to Todd, who watched his every movement with the keenest interest. Whenever the baron approached the table he would hesitate a moment, as if in doubt as to which particular chair he should occupy, and, with an apologetic hand on his heart and a slight bow, drop into a seat immediately opposite hers. Then he would raise a long, thin arm aloft and snap his fingers to call a passing waiter. I noticed that he always ordered the same breakfast, beginning with cold sausage and ending with pancakes. During the repast the young girl opposite him would talk to him in a simple, straightforward way, quite as a sister would have done, and without the slightest trace of either coquetry or undue reserve.
When we were five days out, a third person occupied a seat at one side of the young woman. He was a man of perhaps sixty years of age, with big shoulders and big body, and a great round head covered with a mass of dull white hair which fell about his neck and forehead. The newcomer was dressed in a suit of gray cloth, much worn and badly cut, the coat collar, by reason of the misfit, being hunched up under his hair. This gave him the appearance of a man without a shirt collar, until a turn of his head revealed his clean starched linen and narrow black cravat. He looked like a plain, well-to-do manufacturer or contractor, one whose earlier years had been spent in the out of doors; for the weather had left its mark on his neck, where one can always look for signs of a man's manner of life. His was that of a man who had worn low-collared flannel shirts most of his days. He had, too, a look of determination, as if he had been accustomed to be obeyed. He was evidently an invalid, for his cheeks were sunken and pale, with the pallor that comes of long confinement.
Apart from these characteristics there was nothing specially remarkable about him except the two cavernous eye sockets, sunk in his head, the shaggy eyebrows arched above them, and the two eyes which blazed and flashed with the inward fire of black opals. As these rested first on one object and then on another, brightening or paling as he moved his head, I could not but think of the action of some alert searchlight gleaming out of a misty night.
As soon as he took his seat, the young woman, whose face for the first time since she had been on board had lost its look of anxiety and fatigue, leaned over him smilingly and began adjusting a napkin about his throat and pinning it to his coat. He smiled in response as she finished—a smile of singular sweetness—and held her hand until she regained her seat. They seemed as happy as children or as two lovers, laughing with each other, he now and then stopping to stroke her hand at some word which I could not hear. When, a moment after, the von Hoffbein took his accustomed seat, in full dress, too,—a red silk lining to his waistcoat, and a red silk handkerchief tucked in above it and worn liver-pad fashion,—the girl said simply, looking toward the man in gray, "My father, sir;" whereupon the young fellow shot up out of his chair, clicked his heels together, crooked his back, placed two fingers on his right eyebrow, and sat down again. The man in gray looked at him curiously and held out his hand, remarking that he was pleased to meet him.
Todd was also watching the group, for I heard him say to the Doctor: "These high-class Germans seldom forget themselves. The young baron saluted the old duffer with the bib as though he were his superior officer."
"Shouldn't wonder if he were," replied the Doctor, who had been looking intently over his soup spoon at the man in gray, and who was now summing up the circumflex accent, the red edges of the waistcoat, the liver-pad handkerchief, and the rest of von Hoffbein.
"You don't like him, evidently, my dear Doctor."
"You saw him first, Todd—you can have him. I prefer the old duffer, as you call him," answered the Doctor dryly, and put an end to the talk in that direction.
Soon the hum of voices filled the saloon, rising above the clatter of the dishes and the occasional popping of corks. The baron and the man in gray had entered into conversation almost at once, and could be distinctly heard from where we sat, particularly the older man, who was doubtless unconscious of the carrying power of his voice. Such words as "working classes," "the people," "democracy," "when I was in Germany," etc., intermingling with the high-keyed tones of the baron's broken English, were noticeable above the din; the young girl listening smilingly, her eyes on those of her father. Then I saw the gray man bend forward, and heard him say with great earnestness, and in a voice that could be heard by the occupants of all the tables near our own:—
"It is a great thing to be an American, sir. I never realized it until I saw how things were managed on the other side. It must take all the ambition out of a man not to be able to do what he wants to do and what he knows he can do better than anybody else, simply because somebody higher than he says he shan't. We have our periods of unrest, and our workers sometimes lose their heads, but we always come out right in the end. There is no place in the world where a man has such opportunities as in my country. All he wants is brains and some little horse sense,—the country will do the rest."
Our end of the table had stopped to listen; so had the occupants of the tables on either side; so had Todd, who was patting the Doctor's arm, his face beaming.
"Listen to him, Doctor! Hear that voice! How like a traveling American! There's one of your extrawd'nary clay-soiled sons of toil out on an educating tour: aren't you proud of him? Oh, it's too delicious!"
For once I agreed with Todd. The peculiar strident tones of the man in gray had jarred upon my nerves. I saw too, that one lady, with slightly elevated shoulder, had turned her back and was addressing her neighbor.
The Doctor had not taken his eyes from the gray man, and had not lost a word of his talk. As Todd finished speaking, the daughter, with all tenderness and with a pleased glance into her father's eyes, arose, and putting her hand in his helped him to his feet, the baron standing at "attention." As the American started to leave the table, and his big shaggy head and broad shoulders reached their full height, the Doctor leaned forward, craning his head eagerly. Then he turned to Todd, and in his crisp, incisive way said: "Todd, the matter with you is that you never see any further than your nose. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look at his empty sleeve; off at the shoulder, too!"
II
Inthe smoking-room that night a new and peculiar variety of passenger made his appearance, and his first one—to me—although we were then within two days of Sandy Hook. This individual wore a check suit of the latest London cut, big broad-soled Piccadilly shoes, and smoked a brierwood pipe which he constantly filled from a rubber pouch carried in his waistcoat pocket. When I first noticed him, he was sitting at a table with two Englishmen drinking brandy-and-sodas,—plural, not singular.
The Doctor, Todd, and I were at an adjoining table: the Doctor immersed in a scientific pamphlet, Todd sipping his crème de menthe, and I my coffee. Over in one corner were a group of drummers playing poker. They had not left the spot since we started, except at meal-time and at midnight, when Fritz, the smoking-room steward, had turned them out to air the room. Scattered about were other passengers—some reading, some playing checkers or backgammon, others asleep, among them the pink-cheeked von Hoffbein, who lay sprawled out on one of the leather-covered sofas, his thin legs spread apart like the letter A, as he emitted long-drawn organ tones, with only the nose stop pulled out.
The party of Englishmen, by reason of the unlimited number of brandy-and-sodas which their comrade in the check suit had ordered for them, were more or less noisy, laughing a good deal. They had attracted the attention of the whole room, many of the old-timers wondering how long it would be before the third officer would tap the check suit on the shoulder, and send it and him to bed under charge of a steward. The constant admonitions of his companions seemed to have had no effect upon the gentleman in question, for he suddenly launched out upon such topics as Colonial Policies and Governments and Taxation and Modern Fleets; addressing his remarks, not to his two friends, but to the room at large.
According to my own experience, the traveling Englishman is a quiet, well-bred, reticent man, brandy-and-soda proof (I have seen him drink a dozen of an evening without a droop of an eyelid); and if he has any positive convictions of the superiority of that section of the Anglo-Saxon race to which he belongs,—and he invariably has,—he keeps them to himself, certainly in the public smoking-room of a steamer filled with men of a dozen different nations. The outbreak, as well as the effect of the incentive, was therefore as unexpected as it was unusual.
The check-suit man, however, was not constructed along these lines. The spirit of old Hennessy was in his veins, the stored energy of many sodas pressed against his tongue, and an explosion was inevitable. No portion of these excitants, strange to say, had leaked into his legs, for outwardly he was as steady as an undertaker. He began again, his voice pitched in a high key:—
"Talk of coercing England! Why, we've got a hundred and forty-one ships of the line, within ten days' sail of New York, that could blow the bloody stuffin' out of every man Jack of 'em. And we don't care a brass farthing what Uncle Sam says about it, either."
His two friends tried to keep him quiet, but he broke out again on Colonization and American Treachery and Conquest of Cuba; and so, being desirous to read in peace, I nodded to the Doctor and Todd, picked up my book, and drew up a steamer chair on the deck outside, under one of the electric lights.
I had hardly settled myself in my seat when a great shout went up from the smoking-room that sent every one running down the deck, and jammed the portholes and doors of the room with curious faces. Then I heard a voice rise clear above the noise inside: "Not another word, sir; you don't know what you are talking about. We Americans don't rob people we give our lives to free."
I forced my way past the door, and stepped inside. The Englishman was being held down in his chair by his two friends. In his effort to break loose he had wormed himself out of his coat. Beside their table, close enough to put his hand on any one of them, stood the Doctor, a curious set expression on his face. Todd was outside the circle, standing on a sofa to get a better view.
Towering above the Englishman, his eyes burning, his shaggy hair about his face, his whole figure tense with indignation, was the man with the empty sleeve! Close behind him, cool, polite, straight as a gendarme, and with the look in his eye of a cat about to spring, stood the young baron. As I reached the centre of the mêlée, wondering what had been the provocation and who had struck the first blow, I saw the baron lean forward, and heard him say in a low voice to one of the Englishmen, "He is so old as to be his fadder; take me," and he tapped his chest meaningly with his fingers. Evidently he had not fenced at Heidelberg for nothing, if he did have pink cheeks and pipestem legs.
The old man turned and laid his hand on the baron's shoulder. "I thank you, sir, but I'll attend to this young man." His voice had lost all its rasping quality now. It was low and concentrated, like that of one accustomed to command. "Take your hands off him, gentlemen, if you please. I don't think he has so far lost his senses as to strike a man twice his age and with one arm. Now, sir, you will apologize to me, and to the room, and to your own friends, who must be heartily ashamed of your conduct."
At the bottom of almost every Anglo-Saxon is a bed rock of common sense that you reach through the shifting sands of prejudice with the probe of fair play. The young man in the check suit, who was now on his feet, looked the speaker straight in the eye, and, half drunk as he was, held out his hand. "I'm sorry, sir, I offended you. I was speaking to my friends here, and I did not know any Americans were present."
"Bravo!" yelled the Doctor. "What did I tell you Todd? That's the kind of stuff! Now, gentlemen, all together—three cheers for the man with the empty sleeve!"
Everybody broke out with another shout—all but Todd, who had not made the slightest response to the Doctor's invitation to loosen his legs and his lungs. He did not show the slightest emotion over the fracas, and, moreover, seemed to have become suddenly disgusted with the baron.
Then the Doctor grasped the young German by the hand, and said how glad he was to know him, and how delighted he would be if he would join them and "take something,"—all of which the young man accepted with a frank, pleased look on his face.
When the room had resumed its normal conditions, all three Englishmen having disappeared, the Doctor, whose enthusiasm over the incident had somehow paved the way for closer acquaintance, introduced me in the same informal way both to the baron and to the hero of the occasion, as "a brother American," and we all sat down beside the old man, his face lighting up with a smile as he made room for us. Then laying his hand on my knee, with the manner of an older man, he said: "I ought not to have given way, perhaps; but the truth is, I'm not accustomed to hear such things at home. I did not know until I got close to him that he had been drinking, or I might have let it pass. I suppose this kind of talk may always go on in the smoking-room of these steamers. I don't know, for it's my first trip abroad, and on the way out I was too ill to leave my berth. To-night is the first time I've been in here. It was bad for me, I suppose. I've been ill all"——
He stopped suddenly, caught his breath quickly, and his hand fell from my knee. For a moment he sat leaning forward, breathing heavily.
I sprang up, thinking he was about to faint. The baron started for a glass of water. The old man raised his hand.
"No, don't be alarmed, gentlemen; it is nothing. I am subject to these attacks; it will pass off in a moment," and he glanced around the room as if to assure himself that no one but ourselves had noticed it.
"The excitement was too much for you," the Doctor said gravely, in an undertone. His trained eye had caught the peculiar pallor of the face. "You must not excite yourself so."
"Yes, I know,—the heart," he said after a pause, speaking with short, indrawn breaths, and straightening himself slowly and painfully until he had regained his old erect position. After a little while he put his hand again on my knee, with an added graciousness in his manner, as if in apology for the shock he had given me. "It's passing off,—yes, I'm better now." Then, in a more cheerful tone, as if to change the subject, he added: "My steward tells me that we made four hundred and fifty-two miles yesterday. This makes my little girl happy. She's had an anxious summer, and I'm glad this part of it is over. Yes, she'sveryhappy to-day."
"You mean on account of your health?" I asked sympathetically; although I remembered afterward that I had not caught his meaning.
"Well, not so much that, for that can never be any better, but on account of our being so near home,—only two days more. I couldn't bear to leave her alone on ship-board, but it's all right now. You see, there are only two of us since her mother died." His voice fell, and for the first time I saw a shade of sadness cross his face. The Doctor saw it too, for there was a slight quaver in his voice when he said, as he rose, that his stateroom was No. 13, and he would be happy to be called upon at any time, day or night, whenever he could be of service; then he resumed his former seat under the light, and apparently his pamphlet, although I could see his eyes were constantly fixed on the pallid face.
The baron and I kept our seats, and I ordered three of something from Fritz, as further excuse for tarrying beside the invalid. I wanted to know something more of a man who was willing to fight the universe with one arm in defense of his country's good name, though I was still in the dark as to what had been the provocation. All I could gather from the young baron, in his broken English, was that the Englishman had maligned the motives of our government in helping the Cubans, and that the old man had flamed out, astounding the room with the power of his invective and thorough mastery of the subject, and compelling their admiration by the genuineness of his outburst.
"I see you have lost your arm," I began, hoping to get some further facts regarding himself.
"Yes, some years ago," he answered simply, but with a tone that implied he did not care to discuss either the cause or the incidents connected with its loss.
"An accident?" I asked. The empty sleeve seemed suddenly to have a peculiar fascination for me.
"Yes, partly," and, smiling gravely, he rose from his seat, saying that he must rejoin his daughter, who might be worrying. He bade the occupants of the room good-night, many of whom, including the baron and the Doctor, rose to their feet,—the baron saluting, and following the old man out, as if he had been his superior officer.
With the closing of the smoking-room door, P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, roused himself from his chair, walked toward the Doctor, and sat down beside him.
"Well! I must say that I'm glad that man's gone!" he burst out. "I have never seen anything more outrageous than this whole performance. This fire eater ought to travel about with a guardian. Suppose, now, my dear Doctor, that everybody went about with these absurd ideas,—what a place the world would be to live in! This is the worst American I have met yet. And see what an example; even the young baron lost his head, I am sorry to say. I heard the young Englishman's remark. It was, I admit, indiscreet, but no part of it was addressed to this very peculiar person; and it is just like that kind of an American, full of bombast and bluster, to feel offended. Besides, every word the young man said was true. There is a great deal of politics in this Cuban business,—you know it, and I know it. We have no men trained for colonial life, and we never shall have, so long as our better class keep aloof from politics. The island will be made a camping-ground for vulgar politicians—no question about it. Think, now, of sending that firebrand among those people. You can see by his very appearance that he has never done anything better than astonish the loungers about a country stove. As for all this fuss about his empty sleeve, no doubt some other fire eater put a bullet through it in defense of what such kind of people call their honor. It is too farcical for words, my dear Doctor,—too farcical for words," and P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, pulled his steamer cap over his eyes, jumped to his feet, and stalked out of the room.
The Doctor looked after Todd until he had disappeared. Then he turned to his pamphlet again. There was evidently no composite, explosive epithet deadly enough within reach at the moment, or there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he would have demolished Todd with it.
Todd's departure made another vacancy at our table, and a tall man, who had applauded the loudest at the apology of the Englishman, dropped into Todd's empty chair, addressing the Doctor as representing our party.
"I suppose you know who the old man is, don't you?"
"No."
"That's John Stedman, manager of the Union Iron Works of Parkinton, a manufacturing town in my State. He's one of the best iron men in the country. Fine old fellow, isn't he? He's been ill ever since his wife died, and I don't think he'll ever get over it. She had been sick for years, and he nursed her day and night. He wouldn't go to Congress, preferring to stay by her, and it almost broke his heart when she died. Poor old man,—don't look as if he was long for this world. I expected him to mop up the floor with that Englishman, sick as he is; and he would, if he hadn't apologized. I heard, too, what your friend who has just gone out said about Stedman not being the kind of a man to send to Cuba. I tell you, they might look the country over, and they couldn't find a better. That's been his strong hold, straightening out troubles of one kind or another. Everybody believes in him, and anybody takes his word. He's done a power of good in our State."
"In what way?" asked the Doctor.
"Oh, in settling strikes, for one thing. You see, he started from the scrap pile, and he knows the laboring man down to a dot, for he carried a dinner pail himself for ten years of his life. When the men are imposed upon he stands by 'em, and compels the manufacturers to deal square; and if they don't, he joins the men and fights it out with the bosses. If the men are wrong, and want what the furnaces can't give 'em,—and there's been a good deal of that lately,—he sails into the gangs, and, if nothing else will do, he gets a gun and joins the sheriffs. He was all through that last strike we had, three years ago, and it would be going on now but for John Stedman."
"But he seems to be a man of fine education," interrupted the Doctor, who was listening attentively.
"Yes, so he is,—learned it all at night schools. When he was a boy he used to fire the kilns, and they say you could always find him with a spelling-book in one hand and a chunk of wood in the other, reading nights by the light of the kiln fires."
"You say he went to Congress?" The Doctor's eyes were now fixed on the speaker.
"No, I said hewouldn't go. His wife was taken sick about that time, and when he found she wasn't going to get well,—she had lung trouble,—he told the committee that he wouldn't accept the nomination; and of course nomination meant election for him. He told 'em his wife had stuck by him all her life, had washed his flannel shirts for him and cooked his dinner, and that he was going to stick by her now she was down. But I tell you what he did do: he stumped the district for his opponent, because he said he was a better man than his own party put up,—and elected him, too. That was just like John Stedman. The heelers were pretty savage, but that made no difference to him.
"He's never recovered from his wife's death. That daughter with him is the only child he's got. She's been so afraid he'd die on board and have to be buried at sea that he's kept his berth just to please her. The doctor at home told him Carlsbad was his only chance, and the daughter begged so he made the trip. He was so sick when he went out that he took a coffin with him,—it's in the hold now. I heard him tell his daughter this morning that it was all right now, and he thought he'd get up. You see, there are only two days more, and the captain promised the daughter not to bury her father at sea when we were that close to land. Stedman smiled when he told me, but that's just like him; he's always been cool as a cucumber."
"How did he lose his arm?" I inquired. I had been strangely absorbed in what he had told me. "In the war?"
"No. He served two years, but that's not how he lost his arm. He lost it saving the lives of some of his men. I happened to be up at Parkinton at the time, buying some coke, and I saw him carried out. It was about ten years ago. He had invented a new furnace; 'most all the new wrinkles they've got at the Union Company Stedman made for 'em. When they got ready to draw the charge,—that's when the red-hot iron is about to flow out of the furnace, you know, the outlet got clogged. That's a bad thing to happen to a furnace; for if a chill should set in, the whole plant would be ruined. Then, again, it might explode and tear everything to pieces. Some of the men jumped into the pit with their crowbars, and began to jab away at the opening in the wrong place, and the metal started with a rush. Stedman hollered to 'em to stop; but they either didn't hear him or wouldn't mind. Then he jumped in among them, threw them out of the way, grabbed a crowbar, and fought the flow until they all got out safe. But the hot metal had about cooked his arm clear to the elbow before he let go."
The Doctor, with hands deep in his pockets, began pacing the floor. Then he stopped, and, looking down at me, said slowly, pointing off his fingers one after the other to keep count as he talked:—
"Tender and loyal to his wife—thoughtful of his child—facing death like a hero—a soldier and patriot. What is there in the make-up of a gentleman that this man hasn't got?
"Come! Let's go out and find that high-collared, silk-stockinged, sweet-scented Anglomaniac from Salem! By the Eternal, Todd's got to apologize!"
"TINCTER OV IRON"
Itwas in an old town in Connecticut. Marbles kept the shop. "Joseph Marbles, Shipwright and Blacksmith," the sign read.
I knew Joe. He had repaired one of the lighters used in carrying materials for the foundation of the lighthouse I was building. The town lay in the barren end of the State, where they raised rocks enough to make four stone fences to the acre. Joe always looked to me as if he had lived off the crop. The diet never affected his temper nor hardened his heart, so far as I could see. It was his body, his long, lean, lank body, that suggested the stone diet.
In his early days Joe had married a helpmate. She had lasted until the beginning of the third year, and then she had been carried to the cemetery on the hill, and another stone, and a new one, added to the general assortment. This matrimonial episode was his last.
This wife was a constant topic with Marbles. He would never speak of her as a part of his life, one who had shared his bed and board, and therefore entitled to his love and reverent remembrance. It was rather as an appendage to his household, a curiosity, a natural freak, as one would discuss the habits of a chimpanzee, and with a certain pity, too, for the poor creature whom he had housed, fed, poked at, humored, and then buried.
And yet with it all I could always see that nothing else in his life had made so profound an impression upon him as the companionship of this "poor creeter," and that underneath his sparsely covered ribs there still glowed a spot for the woman who had given him her youth.
He would say, "It wuz one ov them days when she wouldn't eat, or it was kind o' cur'us to watch her go on when she had one ov them tantrums." Sometimes he would recount some joke he had played upon her, rubbing his ribs in glee—holding his sides would have been a superfluous act and the statement here erroneous.
"That wuz when she fust come, yer know," he said to me one day, leaning against an old boat, his adze in his hand. "Her folks belonged over to Westerly. I never had seen much ov wimmen, and didn't know their ways. But I tell yer she wuz a queer 'un, allers imaginin' she wuz ailin', er had heart disease when she got out er breath runnin' upstairs, er as'mer, er lumbago, er somethin' else dreadful. She wuz the cur'usest critter too to take medicin' ye ever see. She never ailed none really 'cept when she broke her coller bone a-fallin' downstairs, and in the last sickness, the one that killed her, but she believed all the time she wuz, which was wuss. Every time the druggist would git out a new red card and stick it in his winder, with a cure fer cold, or chilblains, er croup, er e'sipelas, she'd go and buy it, an' out 'd cum ther cork, and she a-tastin' ov it 'fore she got hum. She used ter rub herself with St. Jiminy's intment, and soak her feet in sea-salt, and cover herself with plasters till yer couldn't rest. Why, ther cum a feller once who painted a yaller sign on ther whole side ov Buckley's barn—cure fer spiral meningeetius,—and she wuz nigh crazy till she had found out where ther pain ought ter be, and had clapped er plaster on her back and front, persuadin' herself she had it. That's how she bruk her coller bone, a-runnin' fer hot water to soak 'em off, they burnt so, and stumblin' over a kit ov tools I had brung hum to do a job around the house. After this she begun ter run down so, and git so thin and peaked, I begun to think she really wuz goin' ter be sick, after all, jest fer a change.
"When ther doctor come he sed it warn't nothin' but druggist's truck that ailed her, and he throwed what there wuz out er ther winder, and give her a tonic—Tincter ov Iron he called it. Well, yer never see a woman hug a thing as she did that bottle. It was a spoonful three times a day, and then she'd reach out fer it in ther night, vowin' it was doin' her a heap er good, and I a-gettin' ther bottle filled at Sarcy's ther druggist's, and payin' fifty cents every time he put er new cork in it. I tried ter reason with her, but it warn't no use; she would have it, and if she could have got outer bed and looked round at the spring crop of advertisements on ther fences, she would hev struck somethin' worse. So I let her run on until she tuk about seven dollars' wuth of Tincter, and then I dropped in ter Sarcy's. 'Sarcy,' sez I, 'can't ye wholesale this, er sell it by the quart? If the ole woman's coller bone don't get ter runnin' easy purty soon I'll be broke.'
"'Well,' he said, 'if I bought a dozen it might come cheaper, but it wuz a mighty pertic'ler medicine, and had ter be fixed jest so.'
"''Taint pizen, is it?' I sez, 'thet's got ter be fixed so all-fired kerful?' He 'lowed it warn't, and thet ye might take er barrel of it and it wouldn't kill yer, but all ther same it has ter be made mighty pertic'ler.
"'Well, iron's cheap enough,' I sez, 'and strengthenin' too. If it's ther Tincter thet costs so, don't put so much in.' Well, he laffed, and said ther warn't no real iron in it, only Tincter, kinder iron soakage like, same es er drawin' ov tea.
"Goin' home thet night I got ter thinkin'. I'd been round iron all my life and knowed its ways, but I hadn't struck no Tincter as I knowed ov. When she fell asleep I poured out a leetle in another bottle and slid it in my trousers pocket, an' next day, down ter ther shop, I tasted ov it and held it up ter ther light. It was kind er persimmony and dark-lookin', ez if it had rusty nails in it; and so thet night when I goes hum I sez ter her, 'Down ter ther other druggist's I kin git twice as much Tincter fer fifty cents as I kin at Sarcy's, and if yer don't mind I'll git it filled there.' Well, she never kicked a stroke, 'cept to say I'd better hurry, fer she hadn't had a spoonful sence daylight, and she wuz beginnin' ter feel faint. When the whistle blew I cum hum ter dinner, and sot the new bottle, about twice as big as the other one, beside her bed.
"'How's that?' I sez. 'It's a leetle grain darker and more muddy like, but the new druggist sez thet's the Tincter, and thet's what's doin' ov yer good.' Well, she never suspicioned; jest kept on, night and day, wrappin' herself round it every two er three hours, I gettin' it filled regerlar and she a-empt'in' ov it.
"'Bout four weeks arter that she begun to git around, and then she'd walk out ez fur ez ther shipyard fence, and then, begosh, she begun to flesh up so as you wouldn't know her. Now an' then she'd meet the doctor, and she'd say how she'd never a-lived but fer ther Tincter, and he'd laff and drive on. When she got real peart I brought her down to the shop one day, and I shows her an old paint keg thet I kep' rusty bolts in, and half full ov water.
"'Smell that,' I sez, and she smells it and cocks her eye.
"'Taste it,' I sez, and she tasted it, and give me a look. Then I dips a spoonful out in a glass, and I sez: 'It's most time to take yer medicine. I kin beat Gus Sarcy all holler makin' Tincter; every drop yer drunk fer a month come out er thet keg.'"
"FIVE MEALS FOR A DOLLAR"
TheLiterary Society of West Norrington, Vt., had invited me to lecture on a certain Tuesday night in February.
The Tuesday night had arrived. So had the train. So had the knock-kneed, bandy-legged hack—two front wheels bowed in, two hind wheels bowed out—and so had the lecturer.
West Norrington is built on a hill. At the foot are the station, a saw-mill, and a glue factory. On the top is a flat plateau holding the principal residences, printing-office, opera-house, confectionery store, druggist's, and hotel. Up the incline is a scattering of cigar-stores, butcher shops, real-estate agencies, and one lone restaurant. You know it is a restaurant by the pile of extra-dry oyster-shells in the window—oysterless for months—and the four oranges bunched together in a wire basket like a nest of pool balls. You know it also from the sign—
"Five meals for a dollar."
I saw this sign on my way up the hill, but it made no impression on my mind. I was bound for the hotel—the West Norrington Arms, the conductor called it; and as I had eaten nothing since seven o'clock, and it was then four, I was absorbed mentally in arranging a bill of fare. Broiled chicken, of course, I said to myself—always get delicious broiled chicken in the country—and a salad, and perhaps—you can't always tell, of course, what the cellars of these old New England taverns may contain—yes, perhaps a pint of any really good Burgundy, Pommard, or Beaune.
"West Norrington Arms" sounded well. There was a distinct flavor of exclusiveness and comfort about it, suggesting old side-boards, hand-polished tables, small bar with cut-glass decanters, Franklin stoves in the bedrooms, and the like. I could already see the luncheon served in my room, the bright wood fire lighting up the dimity curtains draping the high-post bedstead. Yes, I would order Pommard.
Here the front knees came together with a jerk. Then the driver pulled his legs out of a buffalo-robe, opened the door with a twist, and called out,—
"Nor'n't'n Arms."
I got out.
The first glance was not reassuring. It was perhaps more Greek than Colonial or Early English or Late Dutch. Four high wooden boxes, painted brown, were set up on end—Doric columns these—supporting a pediment of like material and color. Half-way up these supports hung a balcony, where the Fourth of July orator always stands when he addresses his fellow citizens. Old, of course, I said to myself—early part of this century. Not exactly moss-covered and inn-like, as I expected to find, but inside it's all right.
"Please take in that bag and fur overcoat." This to the driver, in a cheery tone.
The clerk was leaning over the counter, chewing a toothpick. Evidently he took me for a drummer, for he stowed the bag behind the desk, and hung the overcoat up on a nail in a side room opening out of the office, and within reach of his eye.
When I registered my name it made no perceptible change in his manner. He said, "Want supper?" with a tone in his voice that convinced me he had not heard a word of the Event which brought me to West Norrington—I being the Event.
"No, not now. I would like you to send to my room in half an hour a broiled chicken, some celery, and any vegetable which you can get ready—and be good enough to put a pint of Burgundy"——
I didn't get any further. Something in his manner attracted me. I had not looked at him with any degree of interest before. He had been merely a medium for trunk check, room key, and ice water—nothing more.
Now I did. I saw a young man—a mean-looking young man—with a narrow, squeezed face, two flat glass eyes sewed in with red cotton, and a disastrous complexion. His hair was brushed like a barber's, with a scooping curl over the forehead; his neck was long and thin—so long that his apple looked over his collar's edge. This collar ran down to a white shirt decorated with a gold pin, the whole terminating in a low-cut velvet vest.
"Supper at seven," he said.
This, too, came with a jerk.
"Yes, I know, but I haven't eaten anything since breakfast, and don't want to wait until"——
"Ain't nuthin' cooked 'tween meals. Supper at seven."
"Can't I get"——
"Yer can't get nuthin' until supper-time, and yer won't get no Burgundy then. Yer couldn't get a bottle in Norrington with a club. This town's prohibition. Want a room?" This last word was almost shouted in my ear.
"Yes—one with a wood fire." I kept my temper.
"Front!"—this to a boy half asleep on a bench. "Take this bag to No. 37, and turn on the steam. Your turn next"—and he handed the pen to a fresh arrival, who had walked up from the train.
No. 37 contained a full set of Michigan furniture, including a patent wash-stand that folded up to look like a bookcase, smelt slightly of varnish, and was as hot as a Pullman sleeper.
I threw up all the windows; came down and tackled the clerk again.
"Is there a restaurant near by?"
"Next block above. Nichols."
He never looked up—just kept on chewing the toothpick.
"Is there another hotel here?"
Even a worm will turn.
"No."
That settled it. I didn't know any inhabitant—not even a committeeman. It was the West Norrington Arms or the street.
So I started for Nichols. By that time I could have eaten the shingles off the church.
Nichols proved to be a one-and-a-half-story house with a glass door, a calico curtain, and a jingle bell. Inside was a cake shop, presided over by a thin woman in a gingham dress and black lace cap and wig. In the rear stood a marble-top table with iron legs. This made it a restaurant.
"Can you get me something to eat? Steak, ham and eggs—anything?" I had fallen in my desires.
She looked me all over. "Well, I'm 'mazin' sorry, but I guess you'll have to excuse us; we're just bakin', and this is our busy day. S'mother time we should like to, but to-day"——
I closed the door and was in the street again. I had no time for lengthy discussions that didn't lead to something tangible and eatable.
"Alone in London," I said to myself. "Lost in New York. Adrift in West Norrington. Plenty of money to buy, and nobody to sell. Everybody going about their business with full stomachs, happy, contented,—all with homes, and firesides, and ice chests, and things hanging to cellar rafters, hams and such like, and I a wanderer and hungry, an outcast, a tramp."
Then I thought some citizen might take me in. She was a rather amiable-looking old lady, with a kind, motherly face.
"Madam!" This time I took off my hat. Ah, the common law of hunger brings you down and humbles your pride. "Do you live here, madam?"
"Why, yes, sir," edging to the sidewalk.
"Madam, I am a stranger here, and very hungry. It's baking-day at Nichols. Do you know where I can get anything to eat?"
"Well, no, I can't rightly say," still eyeing me suspiciously. "Hungry, be ye? Well, that's too bad, and Nichols baking."
I corroborated all these statements, standing bare-headed, a wild idea running through my head that her heart would soften and she would take me home and set me down in a big chintz-covered rocking chair, near the geraniums in the windows, and have her daughter—a nice, fresh, rosy-cheeked girl in an apron—go out into the buttery and bring in white cheese, and big slices of bread, and some milk, and preserves, and a—— But the picture was never completed.
"Well," she said slowly, "if Nichols is baking, I guess ye'll hev to wait till suppertime."
Then like a sail to a drowning man there rose before me the sign down the hill near the station, "Five meals for a dollar."
I had the money. I had the appetite. I would eat them all at once, andnow.
In five minutes I was abreast of the extra-dry oyster-shells and the pool balls. Then I pushed open the door.
Inside there was a long room, bare of everything but a wooden counter, upon which stood a glass case filled with cigars; behind this was a row of shelves with jars of candy, and level with the lower shelf my eye caught a slouch hat. The hat covered the head of the proprietor. He was sitting on a stool, sorting out chewing-gum.
"Can I get something to eat?"
The hat rose until it stood six feet in the air, surmounting a round, good-natured face, ending in a chin whisker.
"Cert. What'll yer hev?"
Here at last was peace and comfort and food and things! I could hardly restrain myself.
"Anything. Steak, fried potatoes—what have you got?"
"Waal, I dunno. 'Tain't time yit for supper, but we kin fix ye somehow. Lemme see."
Then he pushed back a curtain that screened one half of the room, disclosing three square tables with white cloths and casters, and disappeared through a rear door.
"We got a steak," he said, dividing the curtains again, "but the potatoes is out."
"Any celery?"
"No. Guess can git ye some 'cross to ther grocery. Won't take a minit."
"All right. Could you"—and I lowered my voice—"could you get me a bottle of beer?"
"Yes—if you got a doctor's prescription."
"Couldyouwrite one?" I asked nervously.
"I'll try." And he laughed.
In two minutes he was back, carrying four bunches of celery and a paper box marked "Paraffine candles."
"What preserves have you?"
"Waal, any kind."
"Raspberry jam, or apricots?" I inquired, my spirits rising.
"We ain't got no rusberry, but we got peaches."
"Anything else?"
"Waal, no; come ter look 'em over, just peaches."
So he added a can to the celery and candles, and carried the whole to the rear.
While he was gone I leaned over the cigar-case and examined the stock. One box labeled "Bouquet" attracted my eye; each cigar had a little paper band around its middle. I remembered the name, and determined to smoke one after dinner if it took my last cent.
Then a third person took a hand in the feast. This was the hired girl, who came in with a tray. She wore an alpaca dress and a disgusted expression. It was evident that she resented my hunger as a personal affront—stopping everything to get supper two hours ahead of time! She didn't say this aloud, but I knew it all the same.
Then more tray, with a covered dish the size of a soap-cup, a few sprigs of celery out of the four bunches, and a preserve-dish, about the size of a butter pat, containing four pieces of peach swimming in their own juice.
In the soap-dish lay the steak. It was four inches in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick. I opened the paraffine candles, poured out half a glass, and demolished the celery and peaches. I didn't want to muss up the steak. I was afraid I might bend it, and spoil it for some one else.
Then an idea struck me: "Could she poach me some eggs?"
She supposed she could, if she could find the eggs; most everything was locked up this time of day.
I waited, and spread the mustard on the dry bread, and had more peaches and paraffine. When the eggs came they excited my sympathies. They were such innocent-looking things—pinched and shriveled up, as if they had fainted at sight of the hot water and died in great agony. The toast, too, on which they were coffined, had a cremated look. Even the hired girl saw this. She said it was a "leetle mite too much browned; she'd forgot it watchin' the eggs."
Here the street door opened, and a young woman entered and asked for two papers of chewing-gum.
She got them, but not until the proprietor had shot together the curtains screening off the candy store from the restaurant. The dignity and exclusiveness of the establishment required this.
When she was gone I poured out the rest of the paraffine, and called out through the closed curtains for a cigar.
"One of them bo-kets?" came the proprietor's voice in response.
"Yes, one of them."
He brought it himself, in his hand, just as it was, holding the mouth end between the thumb and forefinger.
"And now how much?"
He made a rapid accounting, overlooking the table, his eyes lighting on the several fragments: "Beer, ten cents; steak, ten; peaches, five; celery, three; eggs on toast, ten; one bo-ket, four." Then he paused a moment, as if he wanted to be entirely fair and square, and said, "Forty-two cents."