“THERE HE STOOD, INDIFFERENT, BORED IF ANYTHING, SHIFTLESS.”
Along in midwinter our door-bell was rung one night, and there stood Peter. “Oh! did you come back? Too bad!” It slipped out before I had time to think. But Peter bore with me. He smiled reassurance. “I did not run away. The place burned down; we were sent back.”
It was true; I remembered. But the taint of whisky was on his breath. “You have been drinking again,” I fretted. “You spent your money for that—”
“No,” said he; “a man treated me.”
“And did you have to take whisky?”
There was no trace of resentment in his retort: “Well, now, what would he have said if I’d took milk?” It was as one humoring a child.
He went South on a waiter job. From St. Augustine he sent me a letter that ended: “Write me in care of the post-office; it is the custom of the town to get your letters there.” Likely it was the first time in his life that he had had a mail address. “This is a very nice place,” ran his comment on the old Spanish town, “but for business give me New York.”
The Wanderlust gripped Peter, and I heard from him next in the Southwest. For years letters came from him at long intervals, showing that he had not forgotten me. Once another tramp called on me with greeting from him and a request for shoes. When “business” next took Peter to New York and he called, I told him that I valued his acquaintance, but did not care for that of many more tramps. He knew the man at once.
“Oh,” he said, “isn’t he a rotter? I didn’t think he would do that.”They were tramping in Colorado, he explained, and one night the other man told him of his mother. Peter, in the intimacy of the camp-fire, spoke of me. The revelation of the other’s baseness was like the betrayal of some sacred rite. I would not have liked to be in the man’s place when next they met, if they ever did.
Some months passed, and then one day a message came from St. Joseph’s Home: “I guess I am up against it this time.” He did not want to trouble me, but would I come and say good-by? I went at once. Peter was dying, and he knew it. Sitting by his bed, my mind went back to our first meeting—perhaps his did too—and I said: “You have been real decent several times, Peter. You must have come of good people; don’t you want me to find them for you?” He didn’t seem to care very much, but at last he gave me the address in Boston of his only sister. But she had moved, and it was a long and toilsome task to find her. In the end, however, a friend located her for me. She was a poor Irish dressmaker, and Peter’s old father lived with her. She wrote in answer to my summons that they would come, if Peter wanted them very much, but that it would be a sacrifice. He had always been their great trial—a born tramp and idler.