UNRELATED STORIES—RELATED
XXX
EPHRATA SYMONDS’S DOUBLE LIFE
I
Ephrata Symonds was a knave. Of that there was no doubt. It stuck out all over him. His face was a chart of wickedness, and it was his open boast that he had never done any good in his life, and, please the devil, he never intended doing any. He had married early in life (in a fit of absent-mindedness), but he had long since forsaken his wife and children.
“Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do”; but, to speak in a paradox, Satan never gave him any employment, for he was ever busy—at evil. It was when he was just turned fifty that he was elected a member of the Evil-doers’ Club. He soon became popular, and upon the incarceration of the president of the club, the trusted cashier of the Tyninth National Bank, Symonds was unanimously elected president in his place.
That he was the right man for the position he immediately proved by presenting the club with a fine new club-house, which he assured them was not his to give, or he would not have presented it. In the first six months of his presidency he eloped with two married women at once, and so managed the trip that neither suspected that she was not quite alone in his company. He deserted them both in the West, and returned to pose before his fellow club-members. He diverted to his use the little property of a friendless woman, and in many characteristic ways showed himself to be thoroughly bad.
It was at this period of his life that his death came, and his last words were: “I am thankful that no man is the better for my having lived.”
His fellow Evil-doers mourned his departure with sincerity. They felt that in losing such a thoroughly bad man they had suffered a loss which it would be impossible to repair. As the secretary feelingly put it, “Hell is the worse for having him.” “Yes,” said another; “he was admirably bad. And it is the more to his credit that he was bad in spite of adverse influences. His parents were pious people, and Ephrata had every temptation to lead a life of virtue; but in the face of all the obstacles that his father put in the way of his becoming vicious, he persevered, and yesterday I had the honor of telling his old mother that her son was undoubtedly the most wicked man in New York. It made quite an impression on her. We shall ne’er see his like again.”
The parlors of the Evil-doers’ Club were draped in black, and mock resolutions of sympathy were sent to his deserted wife.
II
Great was the chagrin of the members of the club when it began to be bruited among them that Symonds had been leading a double life; that his wickedness was but a cloak to hide his goodness. The rumors were at first pooh-poohed, but when it was remembered that every third week he had always absented himself from town, the story that he was really a good man began to wear an air of truth. Detectives were set to work, and the damning proofs of his deceitful goodness multiplied rapidly, and at last the facts came out, but only to the club-members. They felt that it would not be creditable to allow such scandalous stories to be repeated to the world at large, which would only too willingly point the finger of scorn at them on learning that their chief officer had, in spite of every lure, gone right. Some might even go so far as to insinuate that maybe other members were better than they seemed to be. No; Symonds’s disreputable goodness should continue to be as well cloaked as he had cloaked it while alive.
The story of his goodness is as follows: It seems that every third week of his life had been spent in Boston, and while there he had earned a large income as a life-insurance agent. It was his wont to spend this money in doing good. Nothing was known in the Hub of his private life. He lived at the Adams House, and cultivated an austerity of manner that repelled people; but by underhand means he contrived to ameliorate a deal of misery.
Having become convinced in his early youth that unostentatious benevolence was preferable to a life of good works blazoned forth to an admiring world, he had habituated himself to every form of vice, in order, under cover of it, to pursue unobserved the efforts he was to put forth for the good of his fellow-men. And he had well succeeded. When Elias Hapgood, who had for thirty years subsisted on the bounty of an unknown benefactor, read in the Boston “Herald” an account of the death of Ephrata Symonds, “the wickedest man in New York,” he breathed a prayer of thankfulness that the world was rid of such a man, little knowing that he was misjudging his best friend. And Elias was but one of scores that had been similarly benefited. Symonds’s charities had been literally endless and invariably anonymous. And now, after having, as it were, lived down his good works, it was a little hard that death should have torn from him the lifelong mask of deceit, and set him before his fellow-members for what he was—a thoroughly good man.
III
It was a special business meeting of the Evil-doers’ Club. The chairman rapped for order, and the secretary read the following resolutions:
“Whereas, It has pleased Nature to take from among us Ephrata Symonds, for some time our honored president;
“Whereas, We had always supposed him to be a man of the most exemplary wickedness, a man before whom all Evil-doers might well hide their diminished heads in despair of ever approaching his level of degradation;
“Whereas, His life had always seemed to us a perfectly unbroken and singularly consistent chain of crimes and enormities to be emulated by us all; and
“Whereas, It has lately come to be known that his wickedness was but a mask to hide a life of well-doing, occupied in its every third week with deeds of kindness and generosity;
“Therefore be it Resolved, That we, as members of this club, have been most shamefully imposed upon;
“Resolved, That we hereby express our contempt for a man who, with every incentive to be always bad, should have so far forgotten himself as to lead a third of a worthy life.”
The secretary had not finished reading the resolutions when a messenger brought in a letter which he handed to the chairman as the clock pointed to eight fifty-eight.
It ran in this fashion:
Fellow-Members: It is, by the time of reading this, probably plain to you that you have been taken in by me, and that, so far from my really having been a wicked person, I was a credit to my race and time.
True to my desire that to the rest of the world I should be accounted a bad man, I have caused to be delivered with this letter a box. It works its purpose at nine o’clock. Sit where you are and do not attempt to escape. The secret of my goodness rests, and shall rest, with you.
Yours insincerely, Ephrata Symonds.
As the chairman finished reading he glanced at the clock. It was on the stroke of nine! He seized the box, and with a wild cry attempted to throw it through the window, but it was too late. A whirring noise was heard, followed by a terrific explosion, that left of club-house and -members naught save a hole in the ground.
Symonds’s culpable goodness remained unknown to the world.
XXXI
A STRANGER TO LUCK
When I got off the train at Darbyville, which, as all will remember, is the junction of the L. M. & N. and O. P. & Q. railroads, and found that, owing to an accident, it would be an hour before the train came in on the latter road, I was vexed. Although ordinarily my own thoughts are agreeable companions, yet events of the past week, in which my good judgment had not borne a conspicuous part, made it likely that for the nonce these thoughts of mine would be more or less unpleasant, and so I cast about for some human nature to study.
At one end of the platform three or four farmers were seated upon trunks. They were alert-looking men, and, like me, were waiting for the train. As I neared them, one of their number, a tall, lanky, sharp-boned, knife-featured fellow, imperturbably good-natured-looking, and with an expression of more than ordinary intelligence in his eyes, left them and sauntered off down the road with long, irregular strides.
It was one of those calm, clear, dry days when sounds carry well, and although I did not join them, yet I heard every word of the conversation. Indeed, as their glances from time to time showed, they were not averse to having an auditor.
“It’s cur’us,” said one of them, a ruddy-faced man with a white beard, “how unlucky a man c’n be an’ yit manage to live.” His eyes followed the shambling figure that had just left them. “I’ll help myself to some of thet terbacker, Jed. Left mine to hum, an’ I have the teethache—awful.” This to a short, stout man with a smooth face, who had just taken a liberal mouthful of tobacco from a paper that he drew from his hip-pocket.
“He’p ’se’f!” said the one addressed. Then he added, “Meanin’ Seth, I s’pose?”
“Yes,” replied the other. “I b’lieve thet ef Seth was to hev anythin’ really fort’nit happen to him, it would throw him off his balance.”
“’N’ yit ther’ never was a feller thet better deserved good luck than Seth. Most obligin’ man I ever saw. Ain’t no fool, nuther,” remarked the third and last member of the group, a typical Uncle Sam in appearance, with prominent front teeth, and a habit of laughing dryly at everything that he or any one else said.
“He don’t suffer fer the actooal needs of life, doos he?” asked the stout man whom the others called Jed.
“No—oh, no,” answered Sam (for it turned out that so the typical Yankee was called). “No; he gits enough to eat and wear, but he never hez a cent to lay by, and never will.”
“Don’t drink, doos he?” asked Jed, who seemed to belong to a different town from the one wherein the others and Seth abode. His acquaintance with the one under discussion was evidently by no means intimate.
“No; he ain’t got no vices ’t I know of. Jes’ onlucky.”
“It’s s’prisin’ haow tantalizin’ly clus good fortin hez come to him—different times,” said the one who had asked for the tobacco, and whom the others called Silas.
“You’re right, Silas,” assented Sam. “He c’n come nearer to good luck ’thout techin’ it ’an any man I ever see.”
“Don’t seem to worrit him much,” said Jed. “He seems cheerful.”
“Don’t nothin’ worrit him,” Sam continued. “Most easy-goin’ man on the face of the airth. He don’t ask fer sympathy. He takes great doses of bad luck ’s ef ’twas good fer his health.”
“Never fergit,” said Silas, “the time when he bought a fine new milch Jarsey at auction fer five dollars. Why, he hed two offers fer her nex’ day, an’ I know one of ’em was forty dollars—”
“Well, naow I call that purty lucky,” interrupted Jed.
“Wait!” continued Silas, seating himself more comfortably on a trunk. “Seth he wouldn’t sell. Said he never did hev his fill of milk, an’ he was goin’ to keep her. Very nex’ day, b’ George! she choked on a turnip, an’ when he faound her she was cold. Man sympathized with him. ‘Too bad, Seth,’ says he; ‘ye ’r’ aout forty dollars.’ ‘Five’s all I figger it at,’ says Seth. ‘Didn’t keer to sell.’
“Closest call ’at fortune ever made him was time his uncle Ralzemon aout West died and left him $5000. Everybody was glad, fer every one likes Seth. I was with him when he got the letter f’om the lawyer sayin’ it was all in gold, an’ hed be’n expressed to him, thet bein’ one of the terms of the will. Mos’ shif’less way of sendin’ it, I thought,” declared Silas, compressing his lips. “‘What ye goin’ to do with it, Seth?’ says I. ‘Put it in the bank?’ ‘Ain’t got it yit,’ says he; ‘an’, what’s more, I never will.’ ‘Why d’ ye think so?’ says I. ‘On gin’al principles,’ says he, a-laafin’.
“Sure ’nough, a few days later it was printed in the paper thet a train aout in Wisconsin hed be’n held up by robbers. I was in the post-office when I saw it in the paper, an’ Seth was there too. ‘Bet ye a cooky thet my $5000 was on thet train,’ says he. ‘Won’t take ye,’ says I; ‘fer I’ll bet ye five dollars ’twas, myse’f.’ ‘I’ll take ye,’ says he. B’ George! he lost the five and the $5000 too, fer ’twas on the train, an’ they never could git a trace of it. The robbers hed took to the woods, an’ they never found ’em.”
“Well, I swan!” ejaculated Jed, chewing hard, and regarding with ominous look a knot-hole in the platform.
Silas continued: “I says, ‘I’m sorry fer ye, Seth.’ Says he: ‘I ain’t no poorer ’an I was before I heard he’d left it to me.’”
“He was aout the five dollars he bet, though,” said Jed.
“Wa’n’t, nuther,” said Silas, rather shamefacedly. “I told him thet the bet was off.”
“Why didn’t he sue the comp’ny?” asked Jed.
“’At’s what I advised him doin’, but he said ’twa’n’t no use.”
“I think I heard ’baout his havin’ a fortin left him at the time, but I thought it was f’om a cousin down in South America,” Jed went on, looking inquiringly at Sam.
“Heh, heh! thet was another time,” said Sam, with his dry little laugh. “Good nation! ef all the luck thet’s threatened to hit him hed done it, he’d be the richest man in this caounty. I tell ye, good luck’s allers a-sniffin’ at his heels, but he don’t never git bit. This time he got a letter f’om his cousin, tellin’ him he’d allers felt sorry he hed sech poor luck, an’ he’d made him sole heir of his estate, prob’ly wuth a couple o’ thousand dollars. He hed some oncurable disease, he wrote, an’ the doctors didn’t give him over three months to live—”
“S’pose he lived forever,” put in Jed, chuckling.
“No, sir; he died in good shape, an’ in fac’ he bettered his word, for he didn’t live two months f’om the time he wrote to Seth; but I’m blessed ef they didn’t find there was some claim against the estate thet et it all up. Well, sir, I never saw any one laugh so hard ez Seth when he heard the news. It struck him ez a dretful good joke.”
“He must hev a purty paowerful sense of the ridikerlus,” said Jed, dryly.
“Well, he hez,” assented Sam, rubbing his knees with his horny hands. “Ain’t no better comp’ny ’an Seth. Ain’t never daownhearted.”
After a moment’s silence Silas smiled, and, closing his eyes, pinched them between thumb and forefinger as if calling up some pleasing recollection. At last he said: “Ye know, Seth allers works by the day. He gin’ally has enough to do to keep him busy, an’ allers doos his work up slick, but he never hed stiddy employment, on’y once, an’ then it lasted on’y one day. ’Member that, Sam? Time he went to work at the Nutmeg State clock-shop?”
“Yes, yes,” laughed Sam, driving a loose nail into the platform with his heel.
“Stiddy employment fer a day, eh?” said Jed, grinning. “Thet’s ’baout ez stiddy ez my hired man, an’ he ain’t stiddy at all.”
“It was this way,” Silas went on. “Seth allers was purty slick at han’lin’ tools, an’ Zenas Jordan was foreman of the shop, an’ he offered Seth a place there at twelve dollars a week, which was purty good pay an’ more ’n Seth could make outside, ’thout it was hayin’-time. I met him on his way to work fust mornin’. ‘Well, luck’s with you this time, Seth,’ says I. ‘Sh!’ says he. ‘Don’t say thet, or I’ll lose my job sure. It’s jes better ’n nothin’, thet’s all. Don’t call it good luck’; an’ he laafed an’ went along a-whistlin’. B’ Gosht! ef the blamed ol’ shop didn’t burn daown thet very night, an’, ez ye know, they never rebuilt. Seth he come to me nex’ day, an’ he says, kinder reproachful: ‘You’d orter held yer tongue, Silas. I’d be’n hopin’ thet was a stroke er luck thet hed hit me by mistake, an’ I wasn’t goin’ to whisper its name for fear it’d reckernize me an’ leave me, and you hed to go an’ yell it aout when ye met me.’” And Silas laughed heartily at recollection of the whimsicality.
“Cur’us, ain’t it, what a grudge luck doos hev against some men?” remarked Jed, rubbing his smooth chin meditatively.
Far down the valley I heard the faint whistle of a locomotive.
“Las’ story they tell ’baout Seth ’s this,” Silas said, rising and stretching himself, and then leaning against the wall of the station. “He’s a very good judge o’ poultry, an’, in fac’, he gin’ally judges at the caounty fair every fall. Well, a man daown in Ansony told him he’d pay him ten dollars apiece for a couple of fine thoroughbred Plymouth Rock roosters. Seth knowed a man daown Smithfield way named Jones thet owned some full-blooded stock, but ez he on’y kep’ ’em fer home use he didn’t set a fancy price on ’em, an’ Seth knowed he could git ’em fer seventy-five cents or a dollar apiece. Well, it happened a day or two later he was engaged to do a day’s work fer this man Jones, an’ he went daown there. He see two all-fired fine roosters a-struttin’ raound the place, an’ he cal’lated to buy them; but fer some reason he didn’t say nothin’ ’baout it jes then to Jones, but went to work at choppin’ or sawin’ or whatever it was he was doin’.”
“Said nothin’, did he? Must ha’ sawed wood, then,” interrupted Jed, looking over at me and winking.
“Sure! Well, when it kem time fer dinner he hed got up a good appetite, an’ he was glad to set daown to table, fer Jones is a purty good feeder an’ likes to see people hev enough. Hed stewed chicken fer dinner, an’ Seth says he never enjoyed any so much in his life. After dinner he says, ‘By the way, Jones, what’ll ye take fer those two Plymouth Rock roosters ’t I saw this mornin’?’ Jones bust aout a-laafin’, an’ he says, ‘Ye kin take what’s left on ’em home in a basket an’ welcome!’ Blamed ef Seth hedn’t be’n eatin’ a dinner that cost him nigh on to twenty dollars.”
“Thet must hev riled him some,” remarked Jed.
“No, sir; he never seemed to realize the sitooation.”
XXXII
CUPID ON RUNNERS
Littlewood Phillips had been in love with Mildred Farrington for two years, ever since he first met her at the Hollowells’ card-party. He had no good reason to doubt that his love was returned, yet so fearful was he that he had misread her feelings that he had never hinted that she was more to him than any of the girls he met at the church sociables and card-parties in Newington.
So matters stood when a snowfall that brought sleighing in its wake visited Newington, and Littlewood became conscious of the fact that he had actually asked Miss Farrington to take a ride with him. Of course he must perforce bring matters to a crisis now.
The evening was soon at hand. A crescent moon shone in the west, and the stars were cold and scintillating. He walked to the livery-stable and asked for the cutter, and a few moments later he was driving a handsome chestnut to the house where his thought spent most of the time.
Miss Farrington kept him waiting a good half-hour, but he reflected that it was the privilege of her glorious sex, and it only made him love her the more. If she had come out and placed her dainty foot upon his neck he would have been overcome with rapture.
It was cold waiting, so he got out and hitched his horse and paced in front of her house, her faithful sentinel until death—if need be. Not that there was any reason to think that his services would be required, but it pleased his self-love to imagine himself dying for this lovely being of whom his tongue stood in such awe that it could scarce loose itself in her presence.
At last she appears. The restive horse slants his ears at her and paws the ground in admiration of her beauty, for Mildred was as pretty as regular features, a fair skin, and melting eyes could make her.
Littlewood handed her into the sleigh, stepped in himself, tucked in the robes, and chirruped to the horse.
That intelligent animal did not move. A flush of mortification overspread the face of the would-be amorous swain. A balky horse, and at the start! What chance would he have to deliver his precious message that was to make two hearts happy? He clicked again to the horse, but again the horse continued to stand still.
“You might unhitch him, Mr. Phillips. That would help,” said Mildred, in her sweet voice.
“Oh, yes—t-to be sure! I must have tied him. I mean I—er—I di—I think I did hitch—er—”
“There seems to have been a hitch somewhere,” she answered.
He stepped out of the sleigh and looked over his shoulder at her in a startled way. Could she mean anything? Was this encouragement? Oh, no! It was too soon. (Too soon, and he had been in love two years!) He unhitched the horse and once more placed himself beside his loved one.
The frosty night seemed to have set a seal upon her lips, for as they sped over the crunching snow and left the town behind them she was silent.
“I must have offended her. I’ve probably made a break of some kind,” said Littlewood to himself. “How unfortunate! But I must tell her to-night. It is now or never. She knows I never took anybody but my mother sleigh-riding before.”
Then began a process of nerving himself to the avowal. He ground his knees together until the bones ached. His breathing was feverish.
Finally he made bold to say: “Mildewed.” And then he stopped. He had never called her Mildred before. He had never called her Mildewed either, but that was accidental, and he hoped that she had not noticed the slip.
“I have something of the greatest importance to say to you.”
Did he imagine it, or did she nestle closer to him? He must have been mistaken, and to show that he was quite sure he edged away from her as much as the somewhat narrow confines of the sleigh would allow.
“What do you wish to say, Mr. Phillips?”
“Mr.” Phillips! Ah, then she was offended. To be sure, she had always called him that, but after his last remark it must have an added significance.
“I—er—do you like sleigh-riding?”
“Why, of course, or else I shouldn’t have come.”
Did she mean that as a slap at him? Was it only for the ride, and not for his company, that she had come? Oh, he could never make an avowal of love after that! He knew his place. This beautiful girl was not for a faint-hearted caitiff like himself.
“Nun—nun—no, to be sure not. I—er—thought that was why you came.”
Mildred turned her gazelle-like eyes upon him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”
That settled it. If she didn’t understand him when he talked of nothing in particular, he must be very blind in his utterance, and he could never trust his tongue to carry such a heavy freight as a declaration of love. No, there was nothing to do but postpone it.
Mildred drank in the beauty of the scenes, and wished that it were decorous for women to propose.
Under the influence of sweet surroundings, Mildred at last said pointedly: “Is it so that more people get engaged in winter than in summer?”
She blushed as she spoke. It was unmaidenly, but he was such a dear gump. Now he would declare himself. But she did not know the capabilities for self-repression of her two-year admirer.
He said to himself: “What a slip! What a delightful slip! If I were unprincipled I would take advantage of it and propose, but I would bitterly reproach myself forever, whatever her answer was.”
So he said in as matter-of-fact tone as he could master when his heart was beating his ribs like a frightened cageling: “I really can’t answer offhand, but I’ll look it up for you.”
“Do. Write a letter to the newspaper.”
Her tones were as musical as ever, but Littlewood thought he detected a sarcastic ring in them, and he thanked his stars that he had not yielded to his natural desire to propose at such an inauspicious time.
“What was that important thing you wanted to say?” asked Miss Farrington, after several minutes of silence, save for the hoofs and the runners and the bells.
“Oh, it wasn’t of any importance! I mean it will keep. I—er—I was thinking of something else.”
“I think you have gone far enough,” said she, innocently, looking over her shoulder in the direction of home. Maybe the return would loosen his obdurate tongue.
His heart stopped beating and lay a leaden thing in his breast. Had he, then, gone too far? What had he said? Oh, why had he come out with this lovely being, the mere sight of whom was enough to make one cast all restraint to the winds and declare in thunderous tones that he loved her?
“I think that we’d better go back,” he said, and turned so quickly that he nearly upset the sleigh. “Your mother will be anxious.”
“Yes; when one is accountable to one’s mother one has to remember time. I suppose it is different when one is accountable to a—”
“Father?” said Littlewood, asininely.
“No; that wasn’t the word I wanted.”
“A-a-aunt?”
Could Mildred love him if he gave many more such proofs of being an abject idiot?
“No; husband is what I want.”
Littlewood’s brain swam. He had been tempted once too often. This naïve girl had innocently played into his hands, and now the Rubicon must be crossed, even if its angry waters engulfed him.
“Pardon me, Miss—er—Mildred,”—he did not say Mildewed this time,—“if I twist your words into another meaning, but if you—er—want a husband—do you think I would do?”
A head nestled on his shoulder, a little hand was in his, and when he passed the Farrington mansion neither he nor she knew it.
XXXIII
MY TRUTHFUL BURGLAR
I had an experience with a burglar night before last. My family are all away, and I have been living alone in the house, a detached villa in New Jersey, for upward of a month. Several burglaries have occurred in the vicinity.
Night before last I was awakened about four o’clock by a noise made by a clicking door, and opening my eyes, I saw a smooth-faced, determined-looking man at my bedside. I did not cry out, nor hide under the bedclothes, nor do any of the conventional things that one does when a burglar comes to him.
I looked at him calmly for a moment, and then I said, “How d’ do?”
An expression of surprise passed over his intelligent features, but he said mechanically, “Pretty well, thank you. And you?”
“Oh, I’m as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Are you the burglar who has been doing this village?”
“I am,” said he, drawing up a chair and sitting down.
“Why don’t you deny it?” I asked. I wasn’t afraid. He amused me, this nonchalant burglar.
“Well, because I’m not ashamed of my profession, for one reason, and mainly because I was brought up by my father to tell the truth.”
“You tell the truth, and yet you are a burglar. How can you reconcile those facts?”
“They are not irreconcilable,” said he, taking a corn-cob pipe out of his pocket and filling it. “I am a burglar, and my father was one before me, but he was a perfectly honorable man. He never lied, and I never lie. I steal because that is my profession, but I make it a rule to tell the truth upon all occasions. Why, if the success of my venture to-night depended upon my lying to you, I’d immediately leave this place, as innocent of plunder as when I came in. Where’s the silver?”
“Top drawer of the sideboard.” There was a magnetism, a bonhomie, about the man that captivated me.
“Are you armed?” asked he, as he puffed at his pipe.
“If I had been I’d have winged you before this,” said I, laughing.
“I believe you, and I honor you for being perfectly frank with me.”
“Why, as to that, I’m not to be outdone in frankness by a thief.”
“That will make my task so much the easier. After I’ve finished this pipe I want you to give me your word that you’ll lie still until I’ve taken all I want.”
I admired the man’s nerve, and I said: “For the time being I consider you my guest, and, Spanish fashion, my house is at your disposal.”
“Don’t put it on that basis, or I will leave at once. This is no time for aping the Spanish.”
“You are right. But I tell you candidly that I would far rather have found out that you were a liar than a burglar. Your lies would not be likely to injure me, but I’ll be out just so much by what you take. I’d much rather you were a liar.”
“And I would not. If I steal, I do but take something that, to paraphrase Shakspere, was yours, is mine, and has been slave to thousands; but to lie would be to ‘lay perjury to my soul,’ and that I would not do, ‘no, not for Venice’!”
“I see you know Shakspere,” said I, punching my pillow so that I could be more comfortable. I was reading this odd fellow, and I believed that I could dissuade him from his purpose.
“Know Shakspere? I was an actor once.”
I felt that I had him, for I know actors better than he knew Shakspere.
“Did you ever play Hamlet?” I asked, sitting up in bed.
“I did; and I made such a hit that if it hadn’t been for the venality of the press and my sense of honor, I would have been adjudged one of the greatest Hamlets of the day.”
“Give me the soliloquy. I give you my word that ordinarily I’d rather be robbed than hear it, but I like your voice and I believe that you can do it justice.”
A self-satisfied smile illuminated his face. He laid down the pipe and gave me the soliloquy, and it wasn’t bad.
“Bully!” I said, when he had finished. “Why, man, you make an indifferent thief, else you would have decamped long ago; but the stage has lost an actor that would have in time compelled the unwilling admiration of the press.”
And so I jollied him, and he gave me the trial scene from “The Merchant of Venice,” and other selections, until dawn began to show in the east, when he picked up his bag and said, “It would be a shame to rob a white man like you.” Then he bade me good-by and left.
And I congratulated myself upon my knowledge of human nature, until I began to dress, when I found that the fellow had finished his burgling before I woke, and he has all my silver.
XXXIV
THE MAN WITHOUT A WATCH
Thomas Morley knew the value of promptitude. He was a young man on whom ninety-two seasons had poured benefits and adversities, although many of the latter he took to be the former, his temperament shedding sorrow as a duck does water, to use a castanean simile.
He was a born and bred New-Yorker, but at the time of which we write he had been living for the last ten or twelve months in Uxton, up among the hills of northwestern Connecticut, studying the natives; for he was a writer.
Having filled a portfolio with material for enough dialect stories to run one of the great magazines for a year, he determined to seek his matter in the metropolis, and to that end applied for a reportership on the New York “Courier-Journal,” in which paper many of his brightest things had appeared at remunerative rates.
As has been said, he knew the value of promptitude, so when, at eight o’clock one night, Farmer Phelps’s hired man handed him a letter from James Fitzgerald, managing editor of the “Courier-Journal,” asking him to come and see him in regard to a reportership as soon as possible, he made up his mind to take the train which left Winsonia, four miles distant, at six o’clock next morning. This would enable him to reach the office by half-past ten, and probably catch Mr. Fitzgerald on his arrival at his desk.
Next morning he arose at four, and when he left the house he had sixty minutes in which to walk four miles downhill—ample time, surely.
It was so ample that he would have had fifteen minutes to spare if the home clock had been right. As it was, he arrived at the station in time to see the train rapidly disappearing around a curve, on its way to New York. He laughed good-naturedly with the baggageman, and asked him when the next down train was due.
“Seven-thirty, sharp. You’ll not have to wait long.”
Seven-thirty. That would bring him into the presence of Mr. Fitzgerald at just about the time he arrived at his sanctum. “Better than to have to wait in a presumably stuffy room,” said he to himself, philosophically. He lit a cigar, and, as the air was bracing and he was fond of walking, he struck out into a five-mile-an-hour gait down the main street of Winsonia.
His footsteps led him farther than he had intended going, and when he reached the Baptist church at East Winsonia, he saw by its clock that it lacked but forty minutes of train-time, and he had four miles to make. He threw away the stump of his cigar, which had been out for some time, broke into a jog-trot, and, after covering a mile, he caught his second wind and mended his pace.
His fleetness would have served its turn had not a malicious breeze blown his hat over a high iron fence that surrounded a churchyard. By the time he had climbed the fence and recovered his hat he had consumed so many precious minutes that, although he sprinted the last mile, he arrived at the station only in time to see train No. 2 disappearing around that hateful curve.
The baggageman was standing on the platform, and he said:
“Ain’t once enough?”
“More than enough for most people,” said Thomas, whose rare good nature was proof against even such a remark at such a time.
The next train for New York was due at nine fifty-six. Being somewhat blown, he walked around the corner to a billiard-room, meaning to sit down and watch whatever game might be in progress.
“It may be,” soliloquized Thomas, “that Fitzgerald won’t reach the office until after lunch, and I’ll get there at half-past two, in time to see him when he’s feeling good.”
He met Ned Halloway at the billiard-room, and when Ned asked him to take a cue he consented. Billiards was a game in which he was apt to lose—himself, at any rate; yet to-day his mind was enough on the alert to enable him, after a time, to glance at the clock over the bar in the next room. It was forty-five minutes past eight.
They began another game. Later he looked again at the clock. A quarter of nine. After another game he looked up once more. “Fifteen minutes to ni—. Say, Ned, what’s the matter with that clock?” Ned looked at it, then at his watch. “Why, it’s stopped!”
“You settle—see you later.” And Thomas was gone like a shot.
This time he had the rare pleasure of noting how the rear car of a train grows rapidly smaller as it recedes. In a moment the train disappeared around the curve before mentioned.
“Say, Mr. Morley, you’ve time to miss the next, easy,” said the baggageman, dryly.
Thomas was vexed, but he said pleasantly: “When is it due?”
“Half-past two. Better wait here and make sure of it.”
“Oh, dry up! No; do the other thing; it’s on me.”
After this little duty had been performed, Thomas, with an irrelevancy of action that might have struck an observer as amusing, made his way to the Y.M.C.A. rooms to read the magazines.
“Let’s see,” said he; “I’ll get to his desk at seven. He’ll be hard at work, and, if he engages me, he may send me out on an assignment at once. Glad I missed the other trains.”
Thus was Thomas wont to soliloquize. At one o’clock he went to Conley’s Inn, and sat down to one of those dinners that attract drummers to a hotel. Necessarily, then, it was a good dinner, and one over which he lingered until nearly two. Then he went into the office and sat down.
The room was warm, and his dinner had made him drowsy. He decided to take a little nap. He had the faculty of waking when he pleased, and he willed to do so at fifteen minutes past two. It would be weakness for him to get to the station with too much time to spare, but this would give him a quarter-hour in which to go a half-mile.
His awakening faculty would seem to have been slightly out of order that day, however, and he did not arouse until twenty-nine minutes past two by the hotel clock.
Of course he did not make a fool of himself by trying to do a half-mile in sixty seconds; but he walked leisurely toward the station, intending to get his ticket and have that off his mind.
He laughed heartily at a corpulent fellow who darted by him, carrying a grip.
His laughter ceased, however, when, on turning the corner, he discerned the aforesaid fat man in the act of being assisted on to the platform of the last car by the brakeman, the train having acquired considerable momentum. Then he saw it disappear around a curve which was part of the road at that point. There were three explanations possible: either the train was behind time, or else his awakening faculty was in good repair, or the hotel clock was fourteen minutes fast. The latter proved to be the correct explanation of the somewhat vexing occurrence.
“Say, that’s a bad habit you have of missing trains,” said his friend the baggageman. “Goin’ to miss another—or do anything else?”
“No,” said Thomas, shortly.
He knew that the next train at five was the last. This would make it possible to reach Fitzgerald at half-past nine. “Right in the heat of the work. He’ll engage me to get rid of me,” laughed Thomas to himself. Then he continued: “I never heard of a man missing every train in a day, so I’ll risk calling on Laura before the next one starts.”
Miss Sedgwick, the one he called Laura, lived out of town near the railroad track, and two miles nearer New York than Winsonia station.
She was a captivating girl, and when Thomas was in her presence he never took heed of time. He was lucky enough to find her at home. She seemed glad to see him, and was much interested in his account of how near he had come to catching some trains that day; and as nothing is so engaging as a good listener, the minutes passed on pneumatic tires. When at last he took note of the hour, it was five o’clock.
“That clock isn’t right, is it?”
“Yes, sir. Father keeps it at railroad time. Mercy! you’ve lost your train again, haven’t you?”
“Laura, this time it’s bad. I won’t see him to-day, now, and to-morrow may not do. Let me go and kick myself.”
“I’m awfully sorry, Tom. I hope to-morrow won’t be too late.”
Thomas squeezed her hand and left her, feeling rather blue.
The railroad track was but a block away, and he walked over to it, not with suicidal intent, but just that he might tantalize himself with a view of the train as it sped by, which it should do in about a minute.
“At any rate,” said he, “it won’t be going around that dreadful curve.”
It was the last of December, and the sun had set. When he reached the track he saw, far away, a glimmer of the headlight of the five-o’clock express.
Nearer and nearer it came. A moment more and it would rush by like a meteor. But it didn’t. It slackened up at the very corner on which Thomas stood, to allow an official of the road to jump off.
Thomas was not slow, if he did miss trains now and then. He swung himself on to the smoker.
“Go’n’ far?” asked the brakeman.
“To New York,” was his reply.
“You’re in luck.”
“Well, I’ve not missed more than three or four trains in my life!” said Thomas; and it was strictly true.
Half-past nine to the minute found him outside of the editorial rooms of the “Courier-Journal.”
“Can I see Mr. Fitzgerald?” he asked of a boy who came in response to a knock.
“No, sir; he went out of town yesterday. Be back to-morrow at twelve.”
“Did you get my letter already?” asked Mr. Fitzgerald of Thomas Morley, when he came to his desk next morning and found that young man waiting for him.
“Yes, sir; and here I am.”
“Well, sir, I like your promptness, and I’ll give you the place of a man whom we had to discharge for being too slow. You seem to have what a reporter needs most of all—the ‘get there’ quality.”
“I didn’t allow any trains to pass me,” said Thomas, modestly.
XXXV
THE WRECK OF THE “CATAPULT”
BY CL-RK R-SS-LL
The sea, the sea, the open sea,
The blue, the fresh, the ever free.
Barry Cornwall.
If there be those who love not the sea, with its storms, its seaweed, its sharks and shrimps and ships, this is not the story for them, and they would best weigh anchor and steer for some tale written by a landlubber and full of green meadows and trees and such tommy-rot, for this is to be chock-a-block with nautical phrases.
And who am I, you ask? I am Joseph Inland, the tenth of that name. We have always lived and died here in Birmingham, and followed the trade of cutlers; but when I was a babe of one year father told mother ’twas time one member of the family followed the sea, wherever it went, and that he intended to make a sailor of me.
So before I was six I had heard of sloops and ferry-boats and belaying-pins and admirals and salt-junk, and longed to hear the wind whistling through the maintopgallantmast, and could say “boat-swain” as glibly as any sailor afloat. But father was in moderate circumstances; and so, much as he would have liked to, he could not afford to send me to sea when I was a boy, and that is why my one-and-twentieth birthday came and went and I had never been farther from Birmingham than my legs could carry me in a day; but you may be sure that I subscribed to the “Seaman’s Daily,” and through a friend who knew a sailor I had picked up such terms as “amidships,” “deck,” “boom,” “bilge-water,” “forecastle,” and the like, so that I was a seaman in everything save actual experience.
And in the amateur dramatic society of which I was a member I always played sailors’ parts, and did them so well that when we played “Hamlet” they changed the part of the grave-digger to that of a sailor for me, and I made a great hit in it. The one who played Hamlet didn’t like the change, as it interfered with his lines and his business with a skull, and he refused to come on at all in that act; but I sang a sea-song instead, and the newspaper came out and said that my singing was no worse than his acting would have been, which I thought pretty neat.
But enough of that. I was always fond of joking, and had nigh unto a score of comical sayings that I used to repeat to my friends when they would come to our house of an evening; but they didn’t often come. My father said I was as comical a lad as he ever knew, and would slap me on the back and roar that it was the funniest thing he had heard in a twelvemonth when I made one particular joke, the tenor of which I forget now. But all the jokes dealt with the sea.
Well, so much for my life up to my one-and-twentieth birthday. You have learned that if ever a body was fitted for a sea life, that body was mine.
By the time I was six-and-twenty I don’t believe there was a sea term that I did not have at my tongue’s end, and I always wore my trousers wide at the lower end, and kept a chew of tobacco in my mouth day and night, although after a time I failed to notice any taste in it.
It was a gladsome sight to see me go rolling to my work in the cutler’s shop (for I still followed the old trade), with a hearty “Ho, landsman! good mornin’ to ye!” to all I met, in true sailor fashion.
Our fare at home consisted of loblolly, ship’s-biscuit, salt-junk, and plum-duff, with water drawn from casks. My dear old mother used sometimes to wish for home-made bread and fresh meat and vegetables and pump water; and I remember, one winter, brother died of the scurvy; but I was better content than if he had died of some landsman’s complaint, and mother was glad to put up with anything, she was so proud that I was to be a seaman.
I had a carpenter construct my parents’ bedroom so that the whole floor could be rocked; and on stormy nights I would stay up and by a simple mechanism keep it a-rocking until poor old mother would be as sick as if she were in the Channel. But I never heard her murmur. She was fit for a sailor’s wife.
On such nights father never went to bed, but stayed down-stairs. There was little of the seaman’s spirit in the old man.
When I was one-and-thirty I had a rare chance to ship before the mast on a whaler sailing from Liverpool; but as business was pretty brisk at the shop, I decided to wait, and the offer was not renewed when she returned, three years later.
When I was forty dear mother entered her last port. The doctor, a blundering landlubber, fond of landsmen’s phrases, said she died of insufficient nutriment. Be that as it may or what it may, in her I lost one whose heart was always on my going to sea. Douse my top-lights if ever there was a craft that carried a stancher heart from barnacle to binnacle than did the old lady, and I had her buried in shrouds, with a cannon-ball at the foot of the coffin, as befitted the mother of one who was going to be a seaman.
After she died I became even more impatient to be off to sea, for there’s no air so pure as the sea air, no hearts so true as seamen’s hearts, no weed like seaweed, and no water that’s fit to drink save sea water; but business was pretty good, so, for the present, I decided to stay ashore; but I always read the shipping news with as much keenness as any sailor afloat.
And now I’ve come to the end of my yarn. I named it “The Wreck of the ‘Catapult’” because it had a salty savor. It was the name of one of my favorite Sunday-school books when I was a lad. Now I am an old man, threescore and ten, and have been alone in the world a score of years. Heaven denied me the blessing of children, but I have a grandson who is as hot for the sea as I was.
Ah, me! Next week I am going to apply for admission to the Sailors’ Home; for although circumstances have prevented my ever seeing the ocean or scenting its salty breezes, I have always been, and always shall be, at heart a British seaman.
Shiver my timbers!