Tales From Bohemia by Robert Neilson Stephens

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"She fell forward on the track. When the man picked her up she was
unconscious. Clasping her in his arms, he set his teeth and fixed his eyes
on the lights of the town ahead and hurried forward.

"But before he reached the town, he found it was a dead body he was
carrying.

"You see she had kept up until the very last moment, in the hope of
reaching the town before dark.

"What the man did, how he felt when he discovered that her heart had ceased
to beat, there in the solitude upon the mountains, with the town in sight
at the foot of the slope in the gathering night, I can leave to the vivid
imaginations of you newspaper men. For four hours he mourned over her body
by the side of the track, and those in the train that passed could not see
him for the darkness.

"Then my pal took the body in his arms and started up the mountain, for the
track at that point passed through what they call a cut, and the hills rise
steep on each side of it. He had his prejudices against pauper burial, my
pal had, and he shrunk from going to the town and begging a grave for her.
He didn't need a doctor's certificate to tell him that life had gone
for ever from her fragile body. He knew that she had died of cold and
exhaustion.

"As he turned the base of the hill to begin to descend it, he saw in the
clouded moonlight a deserted railroad tool-house by the track. In front
of it lay a broken, rusty spade. He shouldered this and proceeded up the
mountain. It was a long walk, and he had to stop more than once to rest,
but he got to the top at last. There was a little clearing in the woods
here, where some one had camped. The ruins of a shanty still remained.

"My pal laid down the body of her who had been his wife, with the dead face
turned toward the sky, which was beginning to be cleared of its clouds.
Then he started to dig.

"It was a longer job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tired
and numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of the
mountain.

"He lifted up the body of that brave girl, he kissed the cold lips, and he
took off his coat and wrapped it carefully about the head, so that the face
would be protected from the earth. He stooped and laid the body in the
shallow grave, and he knelt down there and prayed.

"He filled the grave up with earth with the broken spade that he had used
in digging it. All these things required a long time. He didn't observe how
the night was passing, nor that the sky became clear and the stars shone
and the moon crossed the zenith and began to descend in the west. He
didn't notice that the stars began to pale. But he worked on until he had
finished, and then he stopped and prayed again.

"When he arose, his face was toward the east, and over the distant hilltops
he saw the purple of the dawn."

The outsider ceased to speak.

"What then?"

"That's all. My pal walked down the mountain, jumped upon the first
freight-train that passed, and has been a wanderer on the face of the earth
ever since."

There were various opinions expressed of this narrative. I quietly asked
the needy outsider as we left the club at sunrise:

"Will you tell me who your pal was--the man who buried his wife on the
mountain-top?"

There was contemptuous pity in the outsider's look as it dwelt a moment
upon me before he replied: "The man was myself."

And then he condescended to borrow a quarter from me.

VIII

TIME AND THE TOMBSTONE

Tommy McGuffy was growing old. The skin of his attenuated face was so
shrunk and so stretched from wrinkle to wrinkle that it seemed narrowly
to escape breaking. About the pointed chin and the cheekbones it had the
colour of faded brick.

Old Tommy had become so thin that he dared not venture to the top of the
hill above his native village of Rearward on a windy day.

His knees bent comically when he walked.

For some years the villagers had been counting the nephews and nieces to
whom the savings of the old retired dealer in dry-goods would eventually
descend.

Ten thousand dollars and a house and lot constituted a heritage worth
anticipating in Rearward.

The innocent old man was not upon terms of intimacy with his prospective
heirs. Having remained unmarried, his only close associates were two who
had been his companions in that remote period which had been his boyhood.
One of these, Jerry Hurley, was a childless widower, a very estimable
and highly respected man who owned two farms. The other, like himself a
bachelor, was Billy Skidmore, the sexton of the church, and, therefore, the
regulator of the town clock upon the steeple.

There came a great shock to Tommy one day. As old Mrs. Sparks said, Jerry
Hurley, "all sudden-like, just took a notion and died."

The wealth and standing of Jerry Hurley insured him an imposing funeral.
They laid his body beside that which had once been his wife in Rearward
cemetery. His heirs possessed his farm, and time went on--slowly as it
always does at Rearward. Tommy went frequently to Hurley's grave and
wondered when his heirs would erect a monument to his memory. It is
necessary that your grave be marked with a monument if you would stand high
in that still society that holds eternal assembly beneath the pines and
willows, where only the breezes speak, and they in subdued voices.

Years passed, and the grave of Tommy's old friend, Jerry, remained
unmarked. Jerry's relatives had postponed the duty so long that they had
grown callous to public opinion. Besides, they had other purposes to which
to apply Jerry's money. It was easy enough to avoid reproach; they had only
to refrain from visiting the graveyard.

"Jerry never deserved such treatment," Tommy would say to Billy the sexton,
as the two met to talk it over every sunny afternoon.

"It's an outrage, that's what it is!" Billy would reply, for the hundredth
time.

It was, in their eyes, an omission almost equal to that of baptism or that
of the funeral service.

One day, as Tommy was aiding himself along the main street of Rearward by
means of a hickory stick, a frightful thought came to him. He turned cold.

What if his own heirs should neglect to mark his own grave?

"I'll hurry home at once, and put the money for it in a stocking foot,"
thought Tommy, and his knees bent more than usually as he accelerated his
pace.

But as he tied a knot in the stocking, came the fear that even this money
might be misapplied; even his will might be ignored, through repeated
postponement and the law's indifference.

Who, save old Billy Skidmore, would care whether old Tommy McGuffy's last
resting-place were designated or not? Once let the worms begin operations
upon this antique morsel, what would it matter to Rearward folks where the
banquet was taking place?

Tommy now underwent a second attack of horror, from which he came
victorious, a gleeful smile momentarily lifting the dimness from his
excessively lachrymal eyes.

"I'll fix 'em," he said to himself. "I'll go to-day to Ricketts, the
marble-cutter, and order my own tombstone."

Three months thereafter, Ricketts, the marble-cutter, untied the knot in
the stocking that had been Billy's and deposited the contents in the local
savings-bank.

In the cemetery stood a monument very lofty and elaborate. Around it was an
iron fence. Within the enclosure there was no grave as yet.

"Here," said the monument, in deep-cut-letters, but bad English, "lies all
that remains of Thomas McGuffy, born in Rearward, November 11, 1820; died
----. Gone whither the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at
rest."

This supplementary information was framed in the words of Tommy's favourite
passage in his favourite hymn. His liking for this was mainly on account of
its tune.

He had left the date of his death to be inserted by the marble cutter after
its occurrence.

Rearward folks were amused at sight of the monument, and they ascribed the
placing of it there to the eccentricity of a taciturn old man.

Tommy seemed to derive much pleasure from visiting his tombstone on mild
days. He spent many hours contemplating it. He would enter the iron
enclosure, lock the gate after him, and sit upon the ground that was
intended some day to cover his body.

He was a familiar sight to people riding or walking past the
graveyard,--this thin old man leaning upon his cane, contentedly pondering
over the inscription on his own tombstone.

He undoubtedly found much innocent pleasure in it.

One afternoon, as he was so engaged, he was assailed by a new apprehension.

Suppose that Ricketts, the marble-cutter, should fail to inscribe the date
of his death in the space left vacant for it!

There was almost no likelihood of such an omission, but there was at least
a possibility of it.

He glanced across the cemetery to Jerry Hurley's unmarked mound, and
shuddered.

Then he thought laboriously.

When he left the cemetery in such time as to avoid a delay of his evening
meal and a consequent outburst of anger on the part of his old housekeeper,
he had taken a resolution.

"Threescore years and ten, says the Bible," he muttered to himself as he
walked homeward. "The scriptural lifetime'll do for me."

A week thereafter old Tommy gazed proudly upon the finished inscription.

"Died November 11, 1890," was the newest bit of biography there engraved.

"But it's two years and more till November 11, 1890," said a voice at his
side.

Tommy merely cast an indifferent look upon the speaker and walked off
without a word.

The whole village now thought that Tommy had become a monomaniac upon the
subject of his tombstone. Perhaps he had. No one has been able to learn
from his friend, Billy Skidmore, what thoughts he may have communicated to
the latter upon the matter.

Tommy now lived for no other apparent purpose than to visit his tombstone
daily. He no longer confined his walks thither to the pleasant days. He
went in weather most perilous to so old and frail a man.

One of his prospective heirs took sufficient interest in him to advise more
care of his health.

"I can easily keep alive till the time comes," returned the antique;
"there's only a year left."

Rapidly his hold upon life relaxed. A week before November 11, 1890, he
went to bed and stayed there. People began to speculate as to whether his
unique prediction--or I should say, his decree--would be fulfilled to the
very day.

Upon the fifth day of his illness Death threatened to come before the time
that had been set for receiving him.

"Isn't this the tenth?" the old man mumbled.

"No," said his housekeeper, who with one of his nieces, the doctor, and
Billy Skidmore, attended the ill man, "it's only the 9th."

"Then I must fight for two days more; the tombstone must not lie."

And he rallied so well that it seemed as if the tombstone would lie,
nevertheless, for Tommy was still alive at eleven-thirty on the night of
November 11. Moreover he had been in his senses when last awake, and there
was every likelihood that he would look at the clock whenever his eyes
should next open.

"He can't live till morning, that's sure," said the doctor.

"But, good Lord! you don't mean to say that he'll hold out till after
twelve o'clock," said Billy Skidmore, whose anxiety only had sustained him
in his grief at the approaching dissolution of his friend.

"Quite probably," replied the doctor.

"Good heavens! Tommy won't rest easy in his grave if he don't die on the
11th. The monument will be wrong."

"Oh, that won't matter," said the niece.

Billy looked at her in amazement. Was his old friend's sacred wish to
miscarry thus?

"Yes, 'twill matter," he said, in a loud whisper. "And if time won't wait
for Tommy of its own accord, we'll make it. When did he last see the
clock?"

"Half-past nine," said the housekeeper.

"Then we'll turn it back to ten," said Skidmore, acting as he spoke.

"But he may hear the town clock strike."

Billy said never a word, but plunged into his overcoat, threw on his hat,
and hurried on into the cold night.

"Ten minutes to midnight," he said, as he looked up at the town clock upon
the church steeple. "Can I skin up them ladders in time?"

Tommy awoke once before the last slumber. Billy was by his bedside, as were
the doctor, the housekeeper, and the niece. The old man's eyes sought the
clock.

"Eleven," he murmured. Then he was silent, for the town clock had begun to
strike. He counted the strokes--eleven. Then he smiled and tried to speak
again.

"Almost--live out--birthday--seventy--tombstone--all right."

He closed his eyes, and, inasmuch as the town clock furnishes the official
time for Rearward, the published report of Tommy McGuffy's going records
that he passed at twenty-five minutes after eleven P.M., November 11, 1890.

Very few people know that time turned back one hour and a half in order
that the reputation of Tommy McGuffy's tombstone for veracity might be
spotless in the eyes of future generations.

Billy Skidmore, the sexton, arranged to have Rearward time ready for the
sun when it rose upon the following morning.

IX

HE BELIEVED THEM

He was a bachelor, and he owned a little tobacco store in the suburbs.
All the labour, manual and mental, requisite to the continuance of the
establishment, however, was done by the ex-newsboy, to whom the old soldier
paid $4 per week and allowed free tobacco.

He had come into the neighbourhood from the interior of the state shortly
after the war, and for a time there were not ten houses within a block of
his shop. The shop is now the one architectural blemish in a long row of
handsome stores. Miles of streets have been built up around it.

The old soldier used to sit in an antique armchair in the rear of his shop,
smoking, from meal to meal.

"I l'arnt the habit in the army," he would say. "I never teched tobacker
till I went to the war."

People would look inquiringly at his empty sleeve.

"I got that at Gettysburg in the second day's fight," he would explain,
complacently.

He was often asked whether he was a member of the Grand Army of the
Republic.

"No; 'tain't worth while. I done my fightin' in '63 and '64--them times. I
don't care about doin' it over again in talk. Talk's cheap."

This made folks smile, for he was continually fighting his battles over
again in conversation. Every regular customer had been made acquainted with
the part that he had taken in each contest, where he had stood when he
received his wound, what regiment had the honour of possessing him, and how
promptly he had enlisted against the wishes of parents and sweetheart.

"Of course you get a pension," many would observe.

He would shake his head and answer, in a mild tone of a man consciously
repressing a pardonable pride.

"I never 'plied, and as long as the retail tobacker trade keeps up like
this, I reckon I won't make no pull on the gover'ment treash'ry."

And he would puff at his cigar vigorously, beam upon the group that
surrounded his chair, and start on one of his long trains of reminiscences.

He was an amiable old fellow, with gray hair carefully combed back from his
curved forehead, a florid countenance, boyish blue eyes, puffed cheeks, a
smooth chin, and very military-looking gray moustache. He was manifestly
a man who ate ample dinners and amply digested them. He would glance
contentedly downward at his broad, round body, and smilingly remark:

"I didn't have that girth in my fightin' days. I got it after the war was
over."

All who knew him admired him. He would tell with simple frankness how,
after distinguishing himself at Antietam, he chose to remain a private
rather than take the lieutenancy that was placed within his reach. He would
frequently say:

"I ain't none o' them that thinks the country belongs to the soldiers
because they saved it. No, sir! If they want the country as a reward,
where's the credit in savin' it?"

How could one help exclaiming: "What a really noble old man!"

Finally some of the young men who received daily inspiration from his
autobiographical narratives arranged a surprise for the old soldier. They
presented him with a finely framed picture of the battle of Gettysburg,
under which was the inscription:

"To a True Patriot. Who Fought and Suffered Not for Self-Interest or Glory,
but for Love of His Country."

This hung in his shop until the day of his death. Then his brother came
from his native village to attend to his burial. The brother stared at the
picture, inquired as to the meaning of the inscription, and then laughed
vociferously.

In the old soldier's trunk was found a faded newspaper that had been
published in his village in 1865. It contained an account of an accident
by which a grocer's clerk had lost his arm in a thrashing-machine. The
grocer's clerk and the old soldier were one person.

He had never seen a battle, but so often had he told his war stories that
in his last days he believed them.

X

A VAGRANT

On a July evening at dusk, two boys sat near the crest of a grass-grown
embankment by the railroad at the western side of a Pennsylvania town. They
talked in low tones of the sky's glow above where the sun had set beyond
the low hills across the river, and also of the stars, and of the moon,
which was over the housetop behind them. Then there was noise of insects
chirping in the grass and of steam escaping from the locomotive boilers in
the engine shed.

A rumble sounded as from the north, and in that direction a locomotive
headlight came into view. It neared as the rumble grew louder, and soon a
freight-train appeared. This rolled past at the foot of the embankment.

From between two grain cars leaped a man, and after him another. So rapidly
was the train moving that they seemed to be hurled from it. Both alighted
upon their feet. One tall and lithe, led the way up the embankment,
followed by the other, who was short and stocky.

"Bums," whispered one of the boys at the top of the embankment.

The tramps stood still when they reached the top. Even in the half-light it
could be seen that their clothes were ill-fitting, frayed, and torn. They
wore cast-off hats. The tall man, whose face was clean-cut and made a
pretence of being smooth-shaven, had a pliable one; the other was capped by
a dented derby.

"Here's yer town at last! And it looks like a very jay place at that," said
the short tramp to the tall one, casting his eyes toward the house roofs
eastward.

The boys sitting twenty feet away became silent and cautiously watched the
newcomers.

"Yep," replied the tall tramp, in a deep but serious and quiet voice, "and
right about here is the spot where I jumped on a freight-train fifteen
years ago, the night I ran away from home. That seems like yesterday,
though I've not been here since."

"Skipped a good home because the old lady brought you a new dad! You
wouldn't catch me being run out by no stepfather. Billy, you was rash."

"Mebby I was. But, on the dead, Pete, it was mostly jealousy. I thought my
mother couldn't care for me any more if she could take a second husband. My
sister thought so too, but she wasn't able to get away like me. Of course I
was strong. It was boyish pique that drove me away. I didn't fancy having
another man in my dead father's place, either. And I wanted to get around
and see the world a bit. After I'd gone I often wished I hadn't. I'd never
imagined how much I loved mother and sis. But I was tougher and prouder in
some ways than most kids. You can't understand that sort of thing, Pete.
And you can't guess how I feel, bein' back here for the first time in
fifteen years. Think of it, I was just fifteen when I came away. Why, I
spent half my life here, Petie!"

"Oh, I've read somewhere about that,--the way great men feel when they
visit their native town."

The short tramp took a clay pipe from his coat pocket and stuffed into it a
cigar-end fished from another pocket. Then he inquired:

"And now you're here, Billy, what are you go'n to do?"

"Only ask around what's become o' my folks, then go away. It won't take me
long."

"There'll be a through coal-train along in about an hour, 'cordin' to what
the flagmen told us at that last town. Will you be back in time to bounce
that?"

"Yes. We needn't stay here. There's little to be picked up in a place like
this."

"Then skin along and make your investigations. I'll sit here and smoke till
you come back. If you could pinch a bit of bread and meat, by the way, it
wouldn't hurt."

"I'll try," answered the tall tramp. "I'm goin' to ask the kids yonder,
first, if any o' my people still live here."

The tall tramp strode over to the two boys. His companion shambled down the
embankment to obtain, at the turntable near the locomotive shed across the
railroad, a red-hot cinder with which to light his pipe.

"Do you youngsters know people here by the name of Kershaw?" began the tall
tramp, standing beside the two boys.

Both remained sitting on the grass. One shook his head. The other said,
"No."

The tramp was silent for a moment. Then it occurred to him that his mother
had taken his stepfather's name and his sister might be married. Therefore
he asked:

"How about a family named Coates?"

"None here," replied one of the boys.

But the other said, "Coates? That's the name of Tommy Hackett's
grandmother."

The tramp drew and expelled a quick, audible breath.

"Then," he said, "this Mrs. Coates must be the mother of Tommy's mother. Do
you know what Tommy's mother's first name is?"

"I heard Tom call her Alice once."

The tramp's eyes glistened.

"And Mr. Coates?" he inquired.

"Oh, I never heard of him. I guess he died long ago."

"And Tommy Hackett's father, who's he?"

"He's the boss down at the freight station. Agent, I think they call him."

"Where does this Mrs. Coates live?"

"She lives with the Hacketts. Would you like to see the house? Me and Dick
has to go past it on the way home. We'll show you."

"Yes, I would like to see the house."

The boys arose, one of them rather sleepily. They led the way across the
railway company's lot, then along a sparsely built up street, and around
the corner into a more populous but quiet highway. At the corner was a
grocery and dry-goods store; beyond that were neat and airy two-story
houses, fronted by a yard closed in by iron fences. One of these houses had
a little piazza, on which sat two children. From the open half-door and
from two windows came light.

"That's Hackett's house," said one of the boys.

"Thanks, very much," replied the tramp, continuing to walk with them.

The boys looked surprised at his not stopping at the house, but they said
nothing.

At the next corner the tramp spoke up:

"I think I'll go back now. Good night, youngsters."

The boys trudged on, and the tramp retraced his steps. When he reached the
Hacketts' house, he paused at the gate. The children, a boy of eight and a
girl of six, looked at him curiously from the piazza.

"Are you Mr. Hackett's little boy and girl?" he asked.

The girl stepped back to the hall door and stood there. The boy looked up
at the tramp and answered, "Yes, sir."

"Is your mother in?"

"No, she's across the street at Mrs. Johnson's."

"Grandmother's in, though," continued the boy. "Would you like to see her?"

"No, no! Don't call her. I just wanted to see your mother."

"Do you know mamma?" inquired the girl.

"Well--no. I knew her brother, your uncle."

"We haven't any uncle--except Uncle George, and he's papa's brother," said
the boy.

"What! Not an uncle Will--Uncle Will Kershaw?"

"O--h, yes," assented the boy. "Did you know him before he died? That was a
long time ago."

The tramp made no other outward manifestation of his surprise than to be
silent and motionless for a time. Presently he said, in a trembling voice:

"Yes, before he died. Do you remember when he died?"

"Oh, no. That was when mamma was a girl. She and grandmother often talk
about it, though. Uncle Will started West, you know, when he was fifteen
years old. He was standing on a bridge out near Pittsburg one day, and he
saw a little girl fall into the river. He jumped in to save her, but he was
drowned, 'cause his head hit a stone and that stunned him. They didn't know
it was Uncle Will or who it was, at first, but mamma read about it in the
papers and Grandpa Coates went out to see if it wasn't Uncle Will. Grandpa
'dentified him and they brought him back here, but, what do you think, the
doctor wouldn't allow them to open his coffin, and so grandma and mamma
couldn't see him. He's buried up in the graveyard next Grandpa Kershaw, and
there's a little monument there that tells all about how he died trying to
save a little girl from drownin'. I can read it, but Mamie can't. She's my
little sister there."

The tramp had seated himself on the piazza step. He was looking vacantly
before him. He remained so until the boy, frightened at his silence, moved
further from him, toward the door. Then the tramp arose suddenly.

"Well," he said, huskily, "I won't wait to see your mamma. You needn't tell
her about me bein' here. But, say--could I just get a look at--at your
grandma, without her knowing anythin about it?"

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