Old Ebenezer Part 35

"I simply punished an over-bearing bully and my act was exaggerated."

"They always exaggerate such things in this country. But that's not what I wanted to ask you. It's this: Do you need any money? now don't feel hurt; do you need any, and, if you do, won't you let me lend it to you for a year or so without interest?"

"My dear fellow," said Lyman, "my affairs have prospered wonderfully of late. It's a singular position for me to be in, but I don't need money."

"I was in hopes you did. I told McElwin just now that your check would be good as long as I had any money at his bank, and it made him wink, but before I went out he acknowledged that you were about the truest sort of a man he ever ran against. You have educated us all. And now as to a more delicate matter. I don't know what Eva thinks of you, or what you think of her, but I believe that the old man would be willing to recognize the law as young Bostic administered it. But we won't talk about that, and I ought not to have mentioned it. Is Mr. Warren out there? I want to see him a moment."

He shook hands with Lyman and they parted friends. Shortly after Sawyer went out, Warren came running into the room. "Old Billy Fate is trying himself," he cried. "What do you think has happened? That fellow Sawyer has subscribed for fifty copies of the paper, for one year, and has paid for them in advance. He has put down uncles, aunts, cousins--but there's one thing about it I don't like. That fellow Jerry, Nancy's cousin, is a sort of tenth rate cousin to Sawyer, and he has put him down. Jerry Dabbs. Think of that poor girl becoming Nancy Dabbs. There ought to be a law against such outrages. And now he'll read your stuff and commit the odd phrases to memory and give them to her. I don't see how I can keep away from there for a week.

I'm going out there Friday. Well, after all, I guess it was better that you didn't drown that fellow. Fifty subscribers are not picked up every day. I don't know but sometimes it pays to let revenge go."

"It pays the heart," Lyman replied. "Did you ever think that when the heart was paid the whole world is out of debt?"

"I never thought of it, but I guess you are right. I met the express agent this morning and he tipped his hat to me. And it's all owing to you. Everybody is talking about you. Where are you going?" he asked as Lyman got up.

"One day, while walking about aimlessly," said Lyman, "I stopped in front of a house down the street not far from here, and saw a boy digging in the yard. At the window I saw the pale face of a man. He lay there to catch the last rays of the world, slowly fanning himself.

I asked the boy what he was doing and he said that he was digging a grave for his father. The pale face at the window haunted me. I made inquiry and found that a very poor family inhabited the house, and I have called there several times to talk with the man. I am going there now."

"I know, he's a fellow named Hillit. He's got consumption. I send him the paper free. Give him my regards, please, and tell him that I have put him down as a life subscriber."

"It won't be for long," said Lyman, as he turned away.

The sun had baked the ground and the strange child had suspended his labor, but heaps of earth beneath the bushes showed that he had continued his work as long as his rude spade was adequate to a disturbance of the soil. The boy looked up as the gate latch clicked, and stood surveying Lyman with his feet far apart and his hands in his pockets. Lyman spoke to him, and bringing a nail out of his pocket he held it out to the visitor as an offering of his hospitality. Lyman tossed him a piece of money; he caught it up and with a shout he disappeared in the shrubbery. The visitor's knock at the door was attended by a frail, tired woman. She stood with her hand on the door as if meekly to tell the comer that he had doubtless made a mistake in the house. He bowed and asked if she were Mrs. Hillit, and when she had nodded an acknowledgment, with no word, though her thin lips moved, he informed her that he desired to see her husband. She preceded him into the sick man's room.

"A gentleman wishes to see you," she said.

The sufferer turned his wasted face toward Lyman and asked him to sit down. Then followed a few words of explanation.

"I am very glad you came," said Hillit, speaking slowly and with effort. "We have been getting your paper for some time and it has been great company for us. The neighbors have been very kind, but when a man hangs on this way he wears everybody out."

The woman had left the room, and Lyman was relieved to find that she had not remained to hear her husband's hopeless words. "You ought not to feel that way," he said.

The consumptive withdrew his wistful gaze from the bar of sunlight that lay across the window sill, and looked at Lyman. "I am in a position to say what I think, and that's what I do think," he answered. "But I do hope it won't be much longer. I see by the paper that the farmers have been praying for rain. I have been praying for light, light, light--all the time praying for light. When a pa.s.sing cloud hides the sun my heart grows heavier, and when the night comes I feel the shadow of eternity resting cold upon me."

In reply to this Lyman could say nothing; he simply said: "You haven't lived here long, I understand."

"Not long. I came from the city to look for a place where I could die cheap. I lost my place--my brethren lost their place--we were swept away by the machine. I am a compositor."

"Oh, are you? Then I am more than glad I came."

"And I am more than glad to see you. I have seen you stop at the fence, and I managed one day to learn your name. You are making a name for yourself; I have read your work at night and there is sunlight in it. Ah, the old craft is gone," he said. "We sang like crickets, laughing at the idea that a frost might come in the shape of a machine to set type; we worked three days a week and spent our money, with no thought of the destroyer slowly forming fingers of steel under the lamp light. But the machine came. It was like the bursting of a sh.e.l.l, and our army, the most intelligent body of craftsmen ever known, was scattered over the face of the land. Once in a while I had a serious moment, and I kept up my life insurance, but what is to become of the other women and children the Lord only knows."

"The picturesque old philosopher known as the tramp printer is only a memory now," said Lyman. "I have seen him strolling along the road, sore of foot, stubble-faced, almost ragged, hungry, but with a cynical head full of contempt for the man of regular habits. I recall one particularly--Barney Caldwell."

"What?" cried Hillit, raising upon his elbows, "did you know old Barney? He was once foreman of an office in Cincinnati where I was a cub. He was comparatively young then, but they called him the old man.

And what a disciplinarian! He used to say, 'Boys, if you get drunk with me it is your own look out, and if you don't walk the chalk line that's my look out. Don't expect favors, because you happen to be a good fellow.' One day, he came into the office, and after starting to put on his ap.r.o.n he hesitated, and turning to a fellow named Hicks, he said: 'Charley, I've a notion to be a gentleman once more.' Then I heard a man standing near me say: 'There'll be a vacant foremanship in this office within five minutes. The old man is going to take to the road.' And he did. He resigned his position and walked out. Life was worth living in those days, Mr. Lyman."

Just at this moment Mrs. Hillit appeared at the door. "The young lady who brought the flowers has come again," she said. Lyman looked up and his heart leaped, for, in the hall-way, stood Eva with her hands full of roses. She turned pale at seeing him, but with the color returning she came forward and held out her hand. Hillit's wasted eye, slow in movement but quick in conception, divined the meaning of the changing color of her face, and when his wife had brought a vase for the roses, he said: "I hope you two will talk just as if I wasn't here. And I won't be here long, you know."

"William," his wife spoke up, turning from the table whereon she had placed the young woman's contribution, "you promised me that you wouldn't talk that way any more."

"I forgot this time," he replied.

"Mr. Lyman," said Eva, "I want to thank you again for the book. I have read it twice, and I hope you won't think I gush when I say it is charming. One idea was uppermost in my mind as I read it--that I had never before heard the beating of so many hearts; and the atmosphere is so sweet that, more than once, I fancied that the paper must have been scented."

"Oh, come now," Lyman cried, "you are guying me."

"It does sound like it, I admit, but really I am not. And I don't bring you my opinion alone. Last night I induced father to read a chapter. He read chapter after chapter, and when I asked him what he thought, he simply said, 'Beautiful.' Wasn't that a conquest?"

"It was a great kindness."

"But why should you be surprised? Haven't you worked year after year and now should a just reward come as an astonishment?"

"It's all luck," said the consumptive, looking at his thin hands lying on the counterpane. "If a man has luck early in life, he's likely to pay for it later; and if he has bad luck till along toward middle life, the chances are that he will pick up. I had my luck early; I sang my song and finished it." His wife looked at him beseechingly. "I'm not complaining," he added. "It's no more than just. You and the young lady were speaking about a book, Mr. Lyman.

How long did it take you to write it?"

"It seems now that I had to live it," Lyman answered. "The actual work did not take long, but the dreams, the night-mares, were continued year after year. To be condemned to write a conscientious book is a severe trial, almost a cruel punishment, and I am not surprised that the critics, sentenced to read it, should look upon it as an additional pain thrust into their lives."

The talk wandered into the discussion of books in general. The young woman told of the great libraries she had visited abroad. The printer had helped to set up a Bible and he gave an amusing account of the mistakes that had crept into the proof-sheets. A careless fellow had made one of the Prophets stricken with grip instead of grief, and another one had the type declare that Moses lifted up the sea serpent in the wilderness. The bar of sunlight pa.s.sed beyond the window ledge and the sick man fell into silence. Eva rose to go. Lyman said that he would walk a part of the way with her. She smiled but said nothing. They bade the invalid and his wife good-bye and pa.s.sed out into the shaded thoroughfare. A man stared at them, but a woman pa.s.sed with merely a glance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: the b.u.t.ter churn]

"Even in a village a wonder wears away after awhile," said Lyman.

"Yes," she laughed, "our strange relationship has almost ceased to be an oddity."

They turned into a lane. He helped her across a rivulet and felt her hand grow warm in his grasp. She looked up at him and his blood tingled. He felt a sense of gladness and then remembered that she had praised his book. It was a victory to know that it had broken through her father's hauberk of prejudice. He spoke of Sawyer. She had heard of his narrow escape from drowning; indeed, he had called at the house.

"He did not hesitate to acknowledge everything," she said, "and I never liked him half so well as I did today."

"But you couldn't like him well enough to marry him," Lyman was weak enough to say.

"Oh, no; I liked him because he acknowledged your generosity," she frankly confessed. Lyman had weaknesses, and one of them was an under-appraisal of self. At times and in some men this is a virtue, but more often it is a crime committed against one's own chance of prosperity. The people's candidate is the man who loudest avows his fitness for the office.

"You remember last Sunday as you were driving away from the church--"

he said.

"Yes--" she answered, walking close beside him.

"I thought I saw your mother reprimand you for urging her to stay."

"Yes. She was half inclined to yield and she was really scolding herself for her weakness."

"You went away without congratulating the preacher."

"That was thoughtless. We have sent him a letter of congratulation."

"How stately your house looks from here; how cool and restful."

"I used to take great pride in the fact that I lived there, as I looked at the humbler homes scattered about, but I haven't been so foolishly proud since I came to know you."