“Yes, sir; my poor boy went last Thursday. He were all I had on earth, but he suffered so it seemed like a mercy to let him go. He were worried to the last about a debt he was owin’ of you. He said you had been clever to him, and would think hard ef he didn’t pay you. He wanted you to come and see him so he could explain as how he were took down with the rheumatizum, but that were no one to nuss him while I come for you. He had owin’ to him when he were took, about three dollars, which he have an account of in this little book. He told me with his last breath to cullect this money, and not to use a cent tell I had paid you, and if I didn’t git enough, to turn you over the book. I hev took in one dollar and tirty cents, and”—with the air of one who has fought the good fight—“here it is!” So saying, she ran her hand into a gash in the bombazine, which looked like a grievous wound, and pulled out one of those long cloth purses that always reminded me of the entrails of some unfortunate dead animal, and counted out the money. This she handed me with the book.
I ran my eye over the ruggedly kept accounts and found that each man owed from a dime up to fifty cents.
“Why, madam,” says I, “these accounts are not worth collecting.”
“That’s what he was afraid of,” says she, moving toward a bundle that lay upon the floor; “he told me if you said so, to give you this, and ask you to sell it if you could, and make your money. It’s all he had, sir, or me, either, and he wouldn’t die easy ’til I told him I wud do it! God knows”—and the tears rolled down her thin and hollow cheeks—“God knows it were a struggle to promise to give it up. He wore it, and his father before him. How many times it has covered ’em both! I had hoped to carry it to the end with me, and wrap my old body in it when I died. But it was all we had which was fine, and he wouldn’t rest ’til I told him I wud give it to you. Then he smiled as pert-like as a child, and kissed me, and says, ‘Now I am ready to go!’ He were a good boy, sir, as ever lived”—and she rocked her old body to and fro with her grief. Need I say that she had offered me the old dress-coat? That sacred garment, blessed with the memory of her son and his father, and which, rather than give up, she would willingly pluck either of the withered arms that hung at her sides from its socket!
I dropped my eyes to the account book again—for what purpose I am not ashamed that the reader may guess.
In a few moments I spoke:
“Madam, I was mistaken in the value of these accounts; most of the debtors on this book, I find upon a second look, are capitalists. The $11 worth of accounts will sell for $12 anywhere. Your son owed me $7. Leave the book with me; I will pay myself, and here is $5 balance which I hand to you. Your son was a good boy, and I feel honored that I can serve his mother.”
She folded the old coat up and departed.
I kept the book.
It was a simple record of Dobbs’s life. Here ran his expense list—a dreary trickle of “bacon” and “meal” and “rent,” enlivened only once with “sugar”; a saccharine suggestion that I am unable to account for, as it surely did not comport with either of the staples that formed the basis of his life. Probably, on some grand occasion, he and his mother ate it in the lump.