Part 19

He grew dirty, unkempt, and dull-witted. Disease bent and twisted him hideously. When he was too sick to work, he went to the poor-house, and came back weak and pale to sit much in the sun on the south side of the building like a sick dog. When he is lying about the street drunk, little boys poke sticks at him and flee with terror before him when he wakes to blind rage and stumbles after them. It is hard to realise that this disgusting, inhuman-looking creature is the Red Martin of twenty years ago, who, in his long grey frock coat, patent leather shoes, white hat and black tie, walked serenely up the steps of the bank the day it failed, tapped on the door-pane with his revolver barrel, and, when a man came to answer, made him open, and backed out with his revolver in one hand and his diamonds and money in the other. He does not recall in any vague way the Red Martin who gave the town a month's smile when he said, after losing all his money on election, that he had learned never to bet on anything that could talk, or had less than four legs. That Red Martin has been dead these many years; perhaps he was no more worthy than this one who hangs on to life, and bears the name and the disgrace that his dead youth made inevitable.

How strange it is that a man should wreck himself, and blight those of his own blood as this man has done! He knew what we all know about life and its rules. He had been told, as we all are told in a thousand ways, that bad conduct brings sorrow to the world, and that pain and wretchedness are the only rewards of that behaviour which men call sin. And yet there he is, sitting on his hunkers near the stable, with God's stamp of failure all over his broken, battered body--put there by Red Martin's own hands. But George Kirwin, who often thinks with a kindlier spirit than others, says we are Red Martin's partners in iniquity, for we all lived here with him, maintaining a town that tolerated gambling and debauchery, and that, in some way, we shall each of us suffer as Red has suffered, insomuch as each has had his share in a neighbour's shame.

We tell George that he is getting old, though he is still on the bright side of forty, because he likes to come down town of evenings and hold a parliament with Henry Larmy and Dan Gregg and Colonel Morrison. Sometimes they hold it in the office and settle important affairs. A month ago they settled the immortality of the soul, and the other night, returning to their former subject, the question came up: "What will become of Red Martin when he goes to Heaven?" Dan contended that the poor fellow is carrying around his own little blowpipe hell as he goes through life. George Kirwin maintained that Red Martin will enter the next world with the soul that died when his body began to live in wickedness; that there must have been some imperishable good in him as a boy, and that Heaven, or whatever we decide to call the next world, must be full of men and women like Red Martin--some more respectable than he--whose hell will be the unmasking of their real selves in the world where we "shall know as we are known." While we were sitting in judgment on poor Red Martin, in toddled Simon Mehronay, who is visiting in town from New York in the company of the vestal virgin who had, as he expressed it, snatched him as a brand from the burning. Mehronay has been gone from town nearly twenty years, and until they told him he did not know how Red Martin had fallen. When he heard it, Mehronay sighed and tears came into his dear old eyes, as he put his hand on Colonel Morrison's arm and said:

"Poor Red! Poor Red! A decent, brave, big-hearted chap! Why, he's taken whisky away from me a dozen times! He's won my money from me to keep it over Saturday night. Why, I'm no better than he is! Only they've caught Red, and they haven't caught me. And when we stand before the judgment-seat, I can tell a damnsight more good things about Red than he can about me. I'm going out to find him and get him a square meal."

And so, while we were debating, Mehronay went down the Jericho road looking for the man who was lying there, beaten and bruised and waiting for the Samaritan.

XIX

"Thirty"

In the afternoon, between two and three o'clock, the messenger boy from the telegraph office brings over the final sheet of the day's report of the Associated Press. Always at the end is the signature "Thirty." That tells us that the report is closed for the day. Just why "Thirty" should be used to indicate the close of the day's work no one seems to know. It is the custom. They do so in telegraph offices all over the country, and in the newspaper business "Thirty" stands so significantly for the end that whenever a printer or a reporter dies his associates generally feel called upon to have a floral emblem made with that figure in the centre. It is therefore entirely proper that these sketches of life in a country town, seen through a reporter's eyes, should close with that symbolic word. But how to close? That is the question.

Sitting here by the office window, with the smell of ink in one's nostrils, with the steady monotonous clatter of the linotypes in the ears, and the whirring of the shafting from the press-room in the basement throbbing through one's nerves, with the very material realisation of the office around one; we feel that only a small part of it, and of the life about it, has been set down in these sketches. Passing the office window every moment is someone with a story that should be told. Every human life, if one could know it well and translate it into language, has in it the making of a great story. It is because we are blind that we pass men and women around us, heedless of the tragic quality of their lives. If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, of joys, of base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own, which he thinks so peculiarly isolated from the web of life, how much kinder, how much gentler he would be! And how much richer life would be for all of us! Life is dull to no one; but life seems dull to those dull persons who think life is dull for others, and who see only the drab and grey shades in the woof that is woven about them.

Here in our town are ten thousand people, and yet these sketches have told of less than two score of them. In the town are thousands of others quite as interesting as these of whom we have written. A few minutes ago Jim Bolton rode by on his hack. There is no reason why others should be advertised of men and Jim left out; for Jim is the proudest man in town.

He came here when the town was young, and was president of the Anti-Horse-Thief League in the days before it became an emeritus institution, when it was a power in politics and named the Sheriff as a matter of right and of course. Jim has never let the fact that he kept a livery-stable and drove a hack interfere with his position as leading citizen. He keeps a livery-stable, because that is his business, and he drives a hack because he cannot trust such a valuable piece of property in the hands of the boy. But when the street fair is to be put on, or the baseball team financed, or when the Baptist Church needs a new roof, or the petitions are to be circulated for a bond election, Jim Bolton gets down from his hack, puts on his crystal slipper and is the Cinderella of the occasion. That is why, when young men go in Jim's hack to take young women to parties and dances, they always invite Jim in to sit by the fire and get warm while the girls are primping. That is why, when young Ben Mercer, just home from five years at Harvard, offered Jim a "tip" over the usual twenty-five-cent fare, Jim quietly took off his coat and whipped young Ben where he stood--and the town lined up for an hour, each man eager for the privilege of contributing ten cents to the popular subscription to pay old Jim's fine and costs in police-court.

Following Jim Bolton on his hack past the office window came Bill Harrison, once extra brakeman on the Dry Creek Branch, just promoted to be conductor on the main line, and so full of vainglory in his exalted position that he wears his brass buttons on freight trains. Bill's wife signs his pay-check and doles out his cigar money, a quarter at a time, and when he asks for a dollar, she looks at him as if she suspected him of leading a double life. It is her ambition to live in Topeka, for "there are so many conductors in Topeka," she says, "that society is not so mixed"--as it is in our town, where she complains that the switchmen and the firemen and the student-brakemen dominate society. Once a cigar salesman from Kansas City got on Bill's train and offered a lead dollar for fare.

"I can't take this," protested Bill, emphasising the "I," because his job was new.

"Well, then, you might just turn that one over to the company," responded the drummer.

And when the head-brakeman told it in the yards, Bill had to fuss with his wife for two days to get money for a box of cigars to stop the trouble.

As these lines were being written, Miss Littleton came into the office with a notice for the Missionary Society. She has been teaching school in town for thirty years and is not so cheerful as she was once. For a long time the board has considered dismissing her; but it continues to change her around from building to building and from room to room, and to keep her out of sheer pity; and she knows it. There is tragedy enough in her story to fill a book. Yet she looks as humdrum as you please, and smiles so gaily as she puts down her notice, that one thinks perhaps she is trying to dispel the impression that she is cross and impatient with children.

On the other side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and when he sees a man, Silas thinks only of the evil that man has done. Silas knows all men's weaknesses, forgets their strength, and looking down from the window hates his fellow-creatures for the wrong they have done him, or the wickedness that he knows of them. He has never given our reporters a kindly item of news since he was turned down, but if there is a discreditable story on any citizen going around we hear it first from Silas, and if we do not print it he says we have taken hush money. If we have to print it, he says we are stirring up strife. Seeing him over there, looking down on the town which to him is accursed, we have often thought how weary God must be looking at the world and knowing so much better than Silas the weakness and iniquity of men. Sometimes we have wondered if sin is really as important as Silas thinks it is, for with Silas sin is a blot that effaces a man's soul. But maybe God sees sin only as a blemish that men may overcome. Perhaps God is not so discouraged with us as Silas is. But life is a puzzle at most.

[Illustration: Counting the liars and scoundrels and double-dealers and villains who pass]

Last night Aaron Marlin died. He had lived for ninety years in this world, and had seen much and suffered much, and has died as a child turns to sleep. It was quiet and still at his home among the elms as he lay in his coffin. The mourners spoke in low and solemn tones, and the blinds were drawn as if death were shy. As he lay there in the great hush that was over the house, there passed before it on the sidewalk two who spoke as low as the mourners, though they were oblivious to the house of death. They trod slowly, and a great calm was on their souls. One of the scribes who sets down these lines stood in the shadow of the doorway pine-tree and saw the lovers passing; he felt the silence and the sorrow behind the door he was about to enter; and there he stood wondering--between Death and Love--the End and the Beginning of God's great mystery of Life. Now, with the sense of that great mystery upon him, with all of this pied skein of life about him, he puts down his pen, and looks out of the window as the thread winds down the street.

For "Thirty" is in for the day.

THE END