Chapter 7

“Just to illustrate,” said Welty, “I'll tell of a little conquest of my own. I use it because it is the first that comes to my mind, not that I'm given to bragging about my success in these matters. I suppose you've seen the opera at the ---- Theatre?”

The collegian ceased looking bored. Barry McGettigan sat perfectly, unnaturally still.

“And,” pursued Welty, “you've doubtless noticed the three girls who appear as the queen's maids of honour?”

The collegian looked somewhat concerned. Barry stopped breathing.

“Well,” continued Welty, “you mayn't believe it, for we've kept it really quiet, one of them girls is really dead gone on me.”

The collegian opened his mouth wide, and Barry began to nervously tap his hand upon the table.

“It's the one,” said Welty, “who wears the big blond wig. Her name's Emi--”

There was the noise of upsetting plates, bottles, and glasses, of a man's feet rapping up against the bottom of a table and his head thumping down against the floor. There was the sight of an agile youth leaping across an overturned table and alighting with one foot at each side of the prostrate form of an astonished man, whose gray whiskers were spattered with blood. There was the quick gathering of a crowd, an excited explanation on the part of the collegian, a slow recovery on the part of the man on the floor, and Barry McGettigan's vengeance was complete.

For, by one of those incredible coincidences that have the semblance of fatality, the football player's fist had reduced Melrose Welty's nose to a flatness which the nose of no imaginable Shandy ever has surpassed.

XIII. -- THE WHISTLE

She was the wife of a railway locomotive engineer, and the two lived in the newly built house to which he had taken her as a bride a year before.

Many other people in the country railroad town used to laugh at a thing which she had once said to a gossiping neighbour:

“I can tell the sound of the whistle on Tom's engine from all other whistles. Every afternoon when his train gets to the crossing at the planing-mill, I hear that whistle, and then I know it's time to get Tom's supper.”

The gossips found something humourous in the fact that the engineer's wife recognized the whistle of her husband's engine and knew by it when to begin to prepare his supper. So are the small manifestations of love and devotion regarded by coarse minds. You frequently observe this in the conduct of certain people at the theatre when tender sentiments are uttered upon the stage.

Perhaps the men were envious of the engineer. He had a prettier wife, they said, when he was not present, than was deserved by a mere freight engineer, very recently elevated from the post of fireman. Perhaps, also, the petty malevolence of the women was due to the wife's superior comeliness. Be that as it may, each afternoon at half-past four or thereabouts, when Tom's whistle was blown at the crossing by the planing-mill, loungers in the grocery store and wives in their kitchens smiled knowingly and said:

“Time to begin to get Tom's supper, now.”

But the engineer was careless and his wife was disdainful of their neighbours. She loved the sound of that whistle. In the earliest days of their married life it even sent the crimson to her cheeks. The engineer could make it as expressive as music. It began like a sudden glad cry; it died away lingeringly, tenderly. Virtually it said to one pair of ears:

“My darling, I have come back to you.”

Whenever the engineer pulled the rope for that particular signal, he pictured his wife arising from her work-basket in their little parlour with a thrill of pleasure and affection, and passing out to the kitchen.

She, likewise, at the signal, made a mental image of Tom, seated in the engine cab, his one hand fixed upon the shining lever, his eyes fixed upon the glistening tracks ahead.

At six o'clock, usually, supper was hot, and Tom arrived through the front gateway, glancing at the flower-bed in the centre of the diminutive grass plot, carrying his dinner-pail, having divested himself of his grimy, greasy blouse and overalls at the great repair shops, where his engine had already begun, with much panting, to spend the night.

In a small railroad town on the main line, one is continually hearing locomotive whistles. All the inhabitants know that one long moan of the steam is the signal of the train's swift approach; that two short shrieks of the whistle direct the trainmen to tighten the brakes; that four, given when the train is still, are intended for the flagman, who has gone away to the rear to warn back the next train, and that they tell him to return to his own train as it is about to start; that five whistles in succession announce a wreck and command the immediate attendance of the wreck crew.

In the town many cheeks blanch when those five long, ominous wails of the escaping steam cleave the air. A husband, a son, a father who has gone forth blithely in the morning, with his dinner-pail full, may be brought out of the wreck, mangled or dead. And until complete details are known there is a tremor in the whole community. Some hearts beat faster, others seem to stand still. People speak in hushed tones.

One afternoon, the engineer's wife, observing the altitude of the sun, looked at the clock and saw that the time was a few minutes before five.

Tom's whistle had not yet blown.

At five-fifteen came the sound of another whistle. It was prolonged and then repeated. The engineer's wife stood still and counted.

Five!

The most docile and apparently cheerful patient in the ---- Asylum for the Insane is a widow, still young, who spends the greater time of each day sewing and humming tunes softly to herself. Every afternoon at about half-past four she assumes a listening attitude, suddenly hears an inaudible whistle, smiles tenderly, starts up and places invisible dishes and impalpable viands upon an imaginary table, and then loses herself in a reverie which ends in slumber.

No striking clock is allowed within her hearing. It was long ago noticed that the stroke of five or any series of five similar sounds would cause her to moan piteously.

The people afar in the country town do not laugh now when they talk of Tom and the whistle which was shrieking madly as he and his engine plunged down the bank together on that day when the huge boulder rolled from the hillside stone quarry and lay upon the tracks, just on this side of the curve above the town.

XIV. -- WHISKERS

The facts about the man we called “Whiskers” linger in my mind, asking to be recorded, and though they do not make much of a story, I am tempted to unburden myself by putting them on paper. It was mentally noted as a sure thing by everybody who saw him go into the managing editor's room, to ask for a position on the staff of the paper, that if he should obtain a place and become a fixture in the office, he would be generally known as Whiskers within twenty-four hours after his instalment.

What tale he told the managing editor no one knew, but every one in the editorial rooms deduced later that it must have been something a trifle out of the common, for the managing editor, who had gone through the form of taking the names of three previous applicants that afternoon and telling them that he would let them know when a vacancy should occur on the staff, told the man whom we eventually christened Whiskers that he might come around the next day and write whatever he might choose to in the way of Sunday “specials,” comic verses, or editorial paragraphs, on the chance of their being accepted.

The next day the hairy-faced man took possession of a desk in the room occupied by the exchange editor and one of the editorial writers, and began to grind out “copy.”

He was a slim, figure, with what is commonly denominated a “slight stoop.” His trousers were none too long for his thin legs, his tightly fitting frock coat, threadbare, shiny, and unduly creased, was hardly of a fit for his slender body and his long arms. It was his face, however, that mostly individualized his appearance.

The face was pale, the outlines symmetrical, but rather feeble, and the countenance would have seemed rather lamblike but for the fact that it was framed with thick, long hair and a luxuriant beard, which caressed his waistcoat.

These made him impressive at first sight.

On the first day of his presence, he said little to the men with whom he shared his room in the office. On the second day he grew communicative and talked rather pompously to the exchange editor. He prated of his past achievements as a newspaper man in other cities. He had a cheerful way of talking in a voice that was high but not loud. His undaunted manner of uttering self-praise caused the exchange editor to wink at the editorial writer. It engendered, too, a small degree of dislike on the part of these worthies; and the exchange editor made it a point to watch for some of the new man's work in the paper, that he might be certain whether the new man's ability was equal to the new man's opinion of it.

The exchange editor found that it was not. The new man had been in the office four days before any of his contributions had gone through the process of creation, acceptance, and publication. Some verses and some alleged jokes were his first matter printed. They were below mediocrity. The exchange editor ceased to dislike the whiskered man and thereafter regarded him as quite harmless and mildly amusing.

This view of him was eventually accepted by every one who came to know him, and he was made the object of a good deal of gentle chaffing.

He earned probably $15 or $20 at space rates, a lamentably small amount for so intellectual looking a man, but a very large amount considering the quality of work turned out by him.

Doubtless he would not have made nearly so much had not the managing editor whispered something in the ears of the assistant editor-in-chief, whose duty it was to judge of the acceptability of editorial matter offered, the editor of the Sunday's supplement, and other members of the staff who might have occasion to “turn down” the new man's contributions, or to wink at the deficiencies in his work.

One day Whiskers, with many apologies and much embarrassment, asked the exchange editor to lend him a quarter, which request having been complied with, he put on his much rubbed high hat and hurried from the room.

“It's funny the old man's hard up so soon,” the exchange editor said to the editorial writer at the next desk, “It's only two days since pay-day.”

“Where does he sink his money?” asked the editorial writer. “His sleeping-room costs him only $3 a week, and, eating the way he does, at the cheapest hash-houses, his whole expenses can't be more than $8. No one ever sees him spend a cent. He must sink it away in a bank.”

“Hasn't he any relatives?”

“He never spoke of any, and he lives alone. Wotherspoon, who lodges where he does, says no one ever comes to see him.”

“He certainly doesn't spend money on clothes.”

“No; and he never drinks at his own expense.”

“He's probably leading a double life,” said the exchange editor, jestingly, as he plunged his scissors into a Western paper, to cut out a poem by James Whitcomb Riley.

Without making many acquaintances, Whiskers, by reason of his hirsute peculiarity, became known throughout the building, from the business office on the ground floor to the composing-room on the top. When he went into the latter one day and passed down the long aisle between the long row of cases and type-setting machines, with a corrected proof in his hand, a certain printer, who was “setting” up a clothing-house advertisement, could not resist the temptation to give labial imitation of the blowing of wind. The bygone joke concerning whiskers and the wind was then current, and a score of compositors took up the whistle, so that all varieties of breeze were soon being simulated simultaneously. Whiskers coloured sightly, but, save a dignified straightening of his shoulders, he showed no other sign that he was conscious of the rude allusion to his copious beard.

Whiskers chose Tuesday for his day off.

It was on a certain Tuesday evening that one of the reporters came into the exchange editor's room and casually remarked:

“I saw your anti-shaving friend, who sits at that desk, riding out to the suburbs on a car to-day. He was all crushed up and carried a bouquet of roses.”

“That settles it,” cried the editorial writer to the exchange editor, with mock jubilation. “There can be no doubt the old man was leading a double life. The bouquet means a woman in the case.”

“And his money goes for flowers and presents,” added the exchange editor.

“Some of it, of course,” went on the editorial writer, “and the rest he's saving to get married on. Who'd have thought it at his age?”

“Why, he's not over forty. It's only his whiskers that make him look old. One can easily detect a sentimental vein in his composition.”

“That accounts for his fits of abstraction, too. So he's found favour in some fair one's eyes. I wonder what she's like.”

“Young and pretty, I'll bet,” said the exchange editor. “He's impressed her by his dignified aspect. No doubt she thinks he's nothing less than an editor-in-chief.”

The next day Whiskers was taciturn, as his office associates now recalled that he was wont to be after “his day off.” Doubtless his thoughts dwelt upon his visits to his divinity. He did not respond to their efforts to involve him in conversation.

He was observed upon his next day off to take a car for the suburbs and to have a bouquet in his hand and a package under his arm. The theory originated by the editorial writer had general acceptance. It was passed from man to man in the office.

“Have you heard about the queer old duck with the whiskers, who writes in the exchange room? He's engaged to a young and pretty girl up-town, and eats at fifteen-cent soup-shops so that he can buy her flowers and wine and things.”

“What! Old Whiskers in love! That's a good one!”

One day while Whiskers' pen was busily gliding across the paper, the exchange editor broke the silence by asking him, in a careless tone:

“How was she, yesterday, Mr. Croydon?”

Whiskers looked up almost quickly, an expression of almost pained surprise on his face.

“Who?” he inquired.

“Ah, you thought because you didn't tell us, it wouldn't out. But you've been caught. I mean the lady to whom you take roses every week, of course.”

Whiskers simply stared at the exchange editor, as if quite bewildered.

“Oh, pardon me,” said the exchange editor, somewhat abashed. “I didn't mean to offend you. One's affairs of the heart are sacred, I know. But we all guy each other about each other's amours here. We're hardened to that sort of pleasantry.”

A look of enlightenment, a blush, a deep sigh, and an “Oh, I'm not offended,” were the only manifestations made by Whiskers after the exchange editor's apology.

It was inferred from his manner that he did not wish to make confidences or receive jests about his love-affairs.

A time came when Whiskers seemed to have something constantly on his mind. Not content with one day's vacation each week, he would go off for periods of three or four hours on other days.

“Do you notice how queerly the old man behaves?” said the editorial writer to the exchange editor thereupon. “Things are coming to a crisis.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Why, the wedding, of course.”

This inference received a show of confirmation afterward when Whiskers had a private interview with the managing editor, received an order on the cashier for all the money due him, and for a part of the managing editor's salary as a loan, and quietly said to the exchange editor that he would be away for a week or so. The editorial writer happened to be at the cashier's window when Whiskers had his order cashed. So when the editorial writer and the exchange editor compared notes a few minutes later, the latter complimented the former upon the correctness of his prediction that Whiskers' marriage was imminent.

“He didn't invite us,” said the exchange editor, “but then I suppose the affair is to be a very quiet one, and we can't take offence at that. The old man's not a bad lot, by any means. Let's do something to please him and to flatter his bride. What do you say to raising a fund to buy them a present, in the name of the staff?”

“I'm in for it,” said the editorial writer, producing a half-dollar.

They canvassed the office and found everybody willing to contribute. The managing editor and the assistant editor-in-chief had gone home, but as they had shown kindness to Whiskers, and were, in fact, the only two men on the staff who knew anything about his private affairs, the exchange editor took his chances and put in a dollar for each of them.

“And now, what shall we get--and where shall we send it?” said the exchange editor.

“Not to his lodging-house, certainly. He'll probably be married at the residence of his bride's parents, as the notices say. We'd better get it quick, and rush it up there--wherever that is--somewhere up-town.”

“But say,” interposed the city editor, who was present at this consultation, “maybe the ceremony has already come off. I saw the old man giving in a notice for advertisement across the counter at the business office an hour ago.”

“Well, we may be able to learn from that where the bride lives, anyhow, and some one can go there and find out something definite about the happy pair's present and future whereabouts,” suggested the editorial writer.

“That's so,” said the city editor. “The notice is in the composing-room by this time. I'll run up and find it.”

The city editor left the editorial writer and the exchange editor alone together in the room, each sitting at their own desk.

“What shall we get with this money?” queried the former, touching the bills and silver dumped upon his desk.

“Something to please the woman. That'll give Whiskers the most pleasure. He evidently loves her deeply. These constant visits and gifts speak the greatest devotion.”

“Of course, but what shall it be?”

The two were battling with this question when the city editor returned. He came in and said quietly:

“I found the notice. At least, I suppose this is it. What is the old man's full name?”

“Horace W. Croydon.”

“This is it, then,” said the city editor, standing with his back to the door. “The notice reads: 'On March 3d, at the Arlington Hospital for Incurables, Rachel, widow of the late Horace W. Croydon, Sr., in her 59th year. Funeral services at the residence of Charles--'”

“Why,” interrupted the editorial writer, in a hushed voice, “that is a death notice.”

“His mother,” said the exchange editor. “The Hospital for Incurables--that is where the flowers went.”

The editorial writer's glance dropped to the desk, where the money lay for the intended gift. The exchange editor sat perfectly still, gazing straight in front of him. The city editor walked softly to the window and looked out.

XV. -- THE BAD BREAK OF TOBIT MCSTENGER

“I'm a bad man,” said Tobit McStenger, after three glasses of whiskey. And he was. In making the declaration, he echoed the expression of the community.

He looked it. Not only in the sneering mouth above the half-formed chin, and in the lowering eyes of undecided colour beneath the receding brow, but also in every shiftless attitude and movement of his great gaunt body, and even in the torn coat and shapeless felt hat--both once black, but both now a dirty gray--his aspect proclaimed him the preeminent rowdy of his town.

When out of jail he was engaged in oyster opening at Couch's saloon, or selling fresh fish, caught in the river, or vagrancy in the streets of Brickville. He lived in a log house containing two rooms, by Muddy Creek, an intermittent stream that flowed--sometimes--through a corner of the town. He was a widower and had a son nine years old, little Tobe, who went to school occasionally, but gave most of his day to carrying a paper flour-sack around the town and begging cold victuals, in obedience to paternal commands, and throwing stones at other boys, who called him “Patches,” a nickname descended from his father.

Little Tobe's face was always black, from the dust of the bituminous coal that he was compelled to steal at night from the railroad companies' yard. His attire was in miniature what his father's was in the large, as his character was in embryo what the elder Tobit's was in complete development. With long, entangled hair, a thin, crafty face, and stealthy eyes, he was a true type of malevolent gamin, all the more uncanny for the crudity due to his semirustic environments.

Such were Tobit and little Tobe, the most conspicuous of the village “characters” of Brickville, a Pennsylvania town deriving sustenance from its brick-kiln, its railroads, and its contiguous farming interests.

It was town talk that Tobit McStenger was a hard father; drunk or sober, he chastised little Tobe upon the slightest occasion.

“But,” said Tobit McStenger, after admitting his severity as a parent before the bar in Couch's saloon, “let any one else lay a finger on that kid! Just let 'em! They'll find out, jail or no jail, I'm ugly!” And he went on to repeat for the thousandth time that when he was ugly he was a bad man.

Whereupon the other loungers in Couch's saloon, “Honesty Tom Yerkes,” the hauler, Sam Hatch, the bill-poster, and the rest, agreed that a man's manner of governing his household was his own business.

Tobit McStenger had his word to say upon all village topics. When in Couch's saloon one night he learned that the school directors had decided to take the primary school from the tutorship of a woman and to put a man over it as teacher, Tobit pricked up his ears and had many words to say. He was working at the time, and he spoke in loud, coarse tones, as he wielded his oyster-knife, having for an audience the usual dozen barroom tarriers.

“I know what that means,” cried Tobit McStenger. “It means they ain't satisfied with having our children ruled with kindness. It means Miss Wiggins, who's kep' a good school, which I know all about, fer my son's one of her scholars--it means she don't use the rod enough. They've made up their minds to control the kids by force, and they went and hired a man to lick book learnin' into 'em. Who is the feller, anyway?”

“Pap” Buckwalder read the answer to Tobit's question from the current number of the Brickville _Weekly Gazette_.

“The new teacher is Aubrey Pilling, the adopted son of farmer Josiah Pilling, of Blair Township. He has taught the school of that township for three winters, and is a graduate of the Brickville Academy.”

Sam Hatch, standing by the stove, remembered him.

“Why, that's the backward fellow,” said he, “that the girls used to guy. His hair and eyebrows is as white as tow, and when he'd blush his face used to turn pink. He always walked in from the country, four miles, every morning to school and back again at night. There ain't much use getting him take a woman's place. He's about the same as a woman hisself. He hardly talks above a whisper, and he's afraid to look a girl in the face.”

“Ain't he the boy Josiah Pilling took out o' the Orphans' Home, here about twenty years ago?” queried Pap Buckwalder.

“Yep,” replied Hatch. “I heerd somethin' about that when he went to the 'cademy here. He was took out of a home by a farmer, who gave him his name 'cause the boy didn't know his own, nor no one else did, and so he was brought up on the farm.”

“So that's the sort o' people they've put the education of our children into the hands uv!” exclaimed Tobit McStenger. “Well, all I got to say is, let him keep his hands off my boy Tobe, or he'll find out the kind of a tough customer I am.”