Tales from Bohemia Part 17

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 gra.s.s 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 alt.i.tude 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 a.s.sumes a listening att.i.tude, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sistant 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 pa.s.sed 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, could not resist the temptation to give l.a.b.i.al 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 a.s.sociates 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 pa.s.sed 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.