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A Tramp

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 7, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 39.

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A Tramp

By Rose Terry Cook

THAT is just it. I was a tramp! In the light of to-day I hate to admit it, but I must. I had been a machinist, with a pretty, gentle wife, good wages, a pleasant home; and then the hard times came. Hard enough they were to millions beside me, but I did not think of them. I had more means than many others I knew—food, if it was coarse; fire enough for warmth; but what I wanted, cried out for, raged that I could not get, was delicate living and luxuries for Annie, for she was dying. I know now nothing could have saved her. Her disease was incurable. But one day when I went down to the Charleston steamer the day she sailed, to adjust some little matter in the machinery that they thought out of gear, I saw the wife of one of the firm for whom I worked up-town brought on board to go to Florida for the winter.
She looked a little like Annie; her eyes were clear and gray too, and her face wan and sweet. She was wrapped in soft shawls, and lying back in a chair carried by two servants. A kind-faced nurse was with her, and her husband beside her. I had a glimpse at her stateroom as I passed through the cabin, for they were arranging it so that she might be settled before the rest of the passengers came aboard. It was like a nest, crowded with comfort. If I could have stolen that fur-lined cloak and that swing chair, I would have done it; as it was, I swore.
What had this woman done to have all, and my patient wife to have nothing? I kept thinking of all this, brooding day and night as wages grew lower and work less, and Annie faded away. She was a good woman, that wife of mine, and not a bit afraid to die; but she was afraid to leave me in the furious bitterness of my condition then.
One day I came home and found her paler than ever. I had brought her an orange, but she could not taste it. I sat down by the lounge, and she put her thin, white hands in mine.
“Frank,” she said in a whisper, “when I am dead, try to be good; try to know God. I couldn’t talk about it, dear; but I have prayed. God is good, Frank. I know it. I am going home.”
I could not bear this. I did not believe in it. God good, and Annie dying while that other woman was saved by the money I had as good a right to have as Jim Lawrence! I knew afterward that all the luxuries he lavished on his wife were as useless as the coarse shawl and common food I gave mine. She died before Annie, and away from him.
I stooped down to kiss my wife and stop her from such talk. Her lips were cold; her hot hand grew chill in mine; her great gray eyes looked at me with one bright look of love, and then closed. Annie had gone away.
Well, why should I work after that? I went to hear communist harangues, and learned the stale old story that property was robbery. Why was Mr. Lawrence rich and I poor? It was an outrage! Society owed me a living, and I would have it as well as he. I did not stop to consider that he was once poorer than I, and had worked successfully for his money, or to ask why society owed me a living. I took the specious arguments of demagogs for what they were on the surface. They suited my fury against man and my ignorance of God too well not to be adopted. It was May when the Iridion Works closed, but I had not worked there for two months. I had lived on what few dollars I had left after Annie was buried, and now and then I got a porter’s job, for I was as strong as a horse. Still, I always expected to go back to the works if the worst came to the worst; and when they closed up for want of orders, I felt as if I had nothing to stay in the city for; and like a great many others, I made up my mind that since I was born into the world, it should give me a free living. I went on the tramp.
I can’t say I liked it at first. It was a great while before I could sleep well in a barn, or under an old musty haystack. But I had grit enough left to persist; and the lazy life, the fresh air, the trees, and grass, and creatures, all so different from the grimy shop and dirty streets, did seem amazing pleasant. I suppose living this sort of life changed me inwardly, too. I got to feel more like a wild beast. I liked to see women shut and lock the door when they saw me come into the yard, and hand out the food I asked for through the window. How I used to scare them! I don’t wonder. I was big, dirty, ragged, and full of bad thoughts that showed out in my face and ran over at my lips. I would not have stopped at knocking down any man who came across my way, but they generally let me alone. After a while I got a revolver. It was never loaded, but it was just as good to frighten women with, and many a one fetched me warm food and drink when I let them see it. I did like to see them turn white and shiver. I was so angry with everything, that I liked to terrify and hurt everybody I could. “Hateful, and hating one another”—that is about as near my state then as I can tell it.
So I tramped all summer. I did not think often about Annie. I didn’t like to, for good enough reasons. By September I had got way up into Vermont, among the hills, and began to think I must work back to the city, when one day I stopped at an old red farmhouse between Tyson and Ludlow to get some dinner.
There was a little sort of stoop built out under the roof of the ell part, and the kitchen door opened into it. There was a row of bright milkpans standing against the wall, to sun, and a bunch or two of herbs hanging up by the door. A great yellow cat ran away when it saw me, and eyed me from under a bench in the woodshed. It was a poor place enough, but looked thrifty and comfortable. I knocked, and a young woman opened the door directly. I never saw such a steady face. Her eyes were brown, and looked straight at you like a robin’s. Her mouth was as pure and clean as a child’s, and her firm cheeks showed a healthy, even color of pink. Her hair was so tidy, so shining, her calico gown and check apron so perfectly neat, that she seemed somehow as if she was just new, every way. I did not say anything at once, for I felt so dirty and so bad the minute I looked at her.
“Well!” she said, in a cool sort of voice, “do you want anybody?”
“I want something to eat,” said I gruffly.
“We never give to tramps,” she answered, without any change of tone.
“I have got to have it!” said I, as crossly as I could.
“We have nothing for you,” said she, quite unmoved.
“Come, hurry up! I’ve got to have my dinner, and you’d better get it for me pretty quick,” I called out with an oath, taking out my pistol and handling it as a threat. Her eyes grew a little darker at that, and she smiled. She was not scared a mite. She only said, very quietly,
“If any man will not work, neither should he eat.”
“That may be your opinion, miss, but it isn’t mine. The world owes me a living, and I’m bound to have it,” I growled back.
“How so?” she answered. “What have you done for the world to put it in your debt?”
I couldn’t answer this question. It was like a blow in the face. So I swore again, and demanded some dinner.
“I shall not give you any,” she said, quite as calmly as ever. “If you were sick, or feeble, or crippled, helpless in any way, it would be different; but you are a strong, likely man, and you can earn your living just as well as I can.”
I looked at her slight, straight figure.
“Do you work for a living?” I asked.
“Yes; I have worked ever since I was six years old. I was bound out then, and I worked at whip-braiding. I haven’t any relations—any near ones I mean; there is nobody to take care of me. I have to work, and I am glad I can.”
I swore a very common oath, calling on God to punish me if I would stand that if I were she.
Her face flushed.
“Don’t do that again!” she said. “If you want to be lost, call upon Satan; he hears such requests gladly. God is your Father. He does not like to punish you even if you ask Him. He’d ever so much rather forgive you.”
I never was so taken back.
“Look here,” I said, after a moment, “don’t you think it’s outrageous that a pretty-behaved girl like you should be working for a living when there’s thousands of women no better than you be rolling in their carriages?”
“No. God put me here, and them there. He knows best.”
“Well, you seem to think God knows a good deal. I claim to know some things myself, and I believe folks all have equal rights.”
“Do you?” she said. “So do I—some rights—rights to get ready to die, and to serve God while we live.”
She stepped out of the door, and picked up a red leaf from the grass.
“Can you make such a leaf as that?” she asked, holding it out to me.
Why, I knew I couldn’t; and so did she.
“Till you can, I expect you had better believe God knows more than you do.”
I turned and went out into the yard. I couldn’t stand her talk, but I could not get away from it.
I never seemed so mean to myself before. Here was I, strong, healthy, even a skilled workman, tramping about the country begging! I never had called it begging before, but I knew now what it was, for I seemed to look out of her eyes.
About God—well, if there was a God, He must know more than I did, or He couldn’t be God. Perhaps I had made a mistake after all.
Jim Lawrence must be a rich man because he had more brains than I, with the same chances; and who was to blame about the brains?
I sat down by a little pond there was near, and fell to thinking, when all of a sudden I looked down into the water, and saw—a tramp—a big, dirty, ragged tramp!
Horrible! It was I!
I wondered that the girl had spoken to me at all, and then I thought what Annie would have said to see me like that.
The blood seemed to come to my head. I tried to be honest inside, and look things square in the eye. I could not help seeing how little good I had done myself by leaving work. I used to be a good-looking sort of fellow when I was cleaned up for a Sunday, not like this great brute staring up at me out of the still water.
I couldn’t do much that minute, but I could wash my face, and I did.
It was just a beginning, you see. Then I got up on my feet and tramped off toward Ludlow. An old woman a mile further on gave me some bread and milk, because I asked for it civilly, I suppose. By night I had got on to the station next below Ludlow; and seeing some hands at work loading up a freight-car, I put in and helped. One of them gave me my supper for that, and let me sleep in a barn. It did seem better than begging.
The next day, I sold my revolver, and got a jacket; and before long got a place on the freight line, where I could work my passage back to the city. I could get a lodging there, I knew, for I had two dollars left after buying the jacket.
I found the Iridion Works shut up still, but I hunted out Mr. Lawrence. I told him all about it—all but that girl—and he gave my hand such a grip!
“My wife’s gone too,” he said; and then he sort of choked. Somehow, for all he was a rich man with a great house, and I a poor tramp, there seemed to be something we had together.
I remembered his wife’s great sad eyes, and her tired face. Money hadn’t saved her after all, and his business kept him to home; he didn’t have hold of her hand when she died.
Well, he sort of cleared his throat then, and he said:
“I’m just going to dinner, Reed. Come around to my office on Front Street in the morning, and I’ll find you a job.”
And he said it so hearty like, I knew he meant it.
He was as good as his word. I got work from him right off. And after a while, when I could buy decent clothes, I took to going to meeting; for I could not get what that girl said, when I swore, out of my head.
I have got a Bible, too. I know Annie would like that; but I had to shut it up quick one day when it opened at a sentence about “the horrible pit and the miry clay.” I had been there myself, you see! — Rose Terry Cook.