Tales from Bohemia Part 19

"So that's the sort o' people they've put the education of our children into the hands uv!" exclaimed Tobit McStenger. "Well, all I got to say is, let him keep his hands off my boy Tobe, or he'll find out the kind of a tough customer I am."

Tobit McStenger, in the few weeks immediately following this change in the primary school, remained continuously industrious, to the surprise of all who knew him. As Tobit was an expeditious oyster-opener, Tony Couch, the saloon-keeper who employed him, was much rejoiced. Tobit toiled at oyster-opening and little Tobe became regular in his attendance at school.

The new school-teacher, a broad, awkward, bashful youth, painfully blond, came to town and accomplished that for which he had been called.

He brought discipline to the primary school, an achievement none easier for the fact that many of his pupils were in their teens, and incidentally he suspended Tobit McStenger the younger.

When little Tobe, glad of the enforced return to the liberties of his begging days, brought home his soiled first reader and told his father that the teacher had sent him from school with orders not to return until he could learn to keep his face clean, the father became swollen with an overflowing wrath. He swore frightfully, and started off, vowing that he would "show the white-faced foundling how to treat decent people's children."

And he had two tall drinks of whiskey put on the slate against him at Couch's and proceeded to carry out his threat.

It was a cold day in December. Pilling, the teacher, sat near the stove in the little square school-room, listening to the irrepressible hum of his restless pupils and the predominating monotonous sound of a small girl's voice reciting multiplication tables.

"Three times three are nine," she whined, drawlingly; "three times four are twelve, three times--"

The little girl with the braided hair stopped short. A loud knock fell upon the door.

A boy looked through the window, evidently saw the one who had knocked, then cast a curious look at Pilling, the teacher. Pilling observed this, and asked the boy:

"Who is it?"

After a moment of hesitation, the boy replied:

"It's old Patchy--I mean, Tobe McStenger's father."

Pilling, whose bashfulness was manifest only in the presence of women, had the utmost calmness before his pupils. He walked quietly to the door and locked it.

McStenger, furious without, heard the sound of the bolt being thrust into place, whereupon he began to kick at the door. Pilling turned the chair facing his cla.s.s and told the girl with the braided hair to continue.

"Three times five are fifteen, three times six--"

A cras.h.i.+ng sound was heard. McStenger had broken a window. Pilling looked around, as if seeking some impromptu weapon. While he was doing so, McStenger broke another window-pane with a club. Then McStenger went away.

That evening, Pilling had Tobit McStenger arrested for malicious mischief. The oyster-opener was held pending trial until January court.

He was then sentenced to thirty days more in the county jail. Meanwhile little Tobe mounted a freight-train one day to steal a ride, and Brickville has not seen or heard of him since. He enlisted in the great army of vagabonds, doubtless. Perhaps some city swallowed him.

Tobit McStenger felt at home in jail. It was not a bad place of residence during the coldest months. But for one defect, jail life would have been quite enviable; it forced upon him abstinence from alcoholic liquor.

Every period of thirty days has its termination, and Tobit McStenger became a free man. He returned to his old life, opening oysters during part of the time, idling and drinking during the other part. He made no attempt to spoil the peace of Aubrey Pilling, and he only laughed when he heard of the disappearance of Little Tobe.

Pilling, by his success in conducting the primary school, had won the esteem of Brickville's citizens. His timidity had diminished, or, rather, it had been discovered to be merely quietness, self-communion, instead of timidity. He had shown himself less prudish than he had been thought. Occasionally he drank whiskey or beer, which was looked upon as a good sign in a man of his kind.

Tobit McStenger did not know this. He invariably evaded mention of Pilling. People wondered what would happen when the two should meet.

For Tobit was known to be revengeful, and he was now, more than ever, in speech and look, a bad man.

The expected and yet the unexpected happened one night in Couch's saloon,--the scene of most of the eventful incidents in Tobit McStenger's life since he had dawned upon Brickville. Tobit and Honesty Yerkes, Pap Buckwalder, old Tony Couch himself, and half a score others were making a conversational hubbub before the bar.

In walked Aubrey Pilling. He came quietly to an unoccupied spot at the end of the bar and ordered a gla.s.s of beer, without looking at the other drinkers. Some one nudged Tobit McStenger and pointed toward the white-haired young pedagogue. The noise of talk broke off abruptly.

McStenger placed his back against the bar, resting his elbows upon it, and turned a scornful gaze toward Pilling, who had taken one draught from his gla.s.s of beer.

"Say, Tony," began McStenger, in his big, growling voice, "who's your ladylike customer? Oh, it's him, is it? Well, he needn't be skeered of me. I don't mix up with folks o' his sort. You see, people could only expect to be insulted through their children by fellows of his birth--"

"Hush, Mack!" whispered Tony Couch, whose sense of deportment advised him that McStenger was treading forbidden ground. Pilling had not looked up. He stood quietly at some distance from the others, intent upon his gla.s.s of beer on the bar before him, perfectly still.

But McStenger went on, more loudly than before:

"By fellows, as I said, who came from orphans' homes, and never knew who their parents was, and whose mothers may have been G.o.d knows what--"

Pilling, without turning, had lifted his gla.s.s. With an easy motion he had tossed its remaining contents of beer into the face of Tobit McStenger. The latter drew back from the splash of the liquid as if stung. Then, with a loud cry of rage, he leaped toward Pilling. The teacher turned and faced him.

McStenger clapped one huge hand against Pilling's neck, and in an instant thereafter his long, bony fingers were pressing upon the teacher's throat, in what had the looks of a fatal clutch. But Pilling, with both his arms, violently forced McStenger from him. The teacher took breath and McStenger reached for a whiskey decanter. The others in the saloon looked on with eager interest, fearing to come between such formidable combatants. Tony Couch ran out in search of the town's only policeman. McStenger advanced toward the teacher.

Pilling was farm bred. He had chopped down trees with his right arm alone in his time. Pilling thrust forth his arm with unexpected suddenness. Upon the floor, six feet behind his antagonist, was a cuspidor with jagged edges.

And Tobit McStenger slept with his fathers.

The jury acquitted the teacher on the plea of self-defense. The loungers in Couch's saloon judiciously said that it was a very bad break for Tobit McStenger to have made.

XVI. -- THE SCARS

My friend the tune-maker has often unintentionally amused his acquaintances by the gravity with which he attributes significance to the most trivial occurrences.

He turns the most thoughtless speeches, uttered in jest, into prophecies.

"Very well," he used to say to us at a cafe table, "you may laugh. But it's astonis.h.i.+ng how things turn out sometimes."

"As for instance?" some one would inquire.

"Never mind. But I could give an instance if I wished to do so."

One evening, over a third bottle, he grew unusually communicative.

"Just to ill.u.s.trate how things happen," he began, speaking so as to be audible above the din of the cafe to the rest of us around the table, "I'll tell you about a man I know. One February morning, about eight years ago, he was hurrying to catch a train. There was ice on the sidewalks and people had to walk cautiously or ride. As he was turning a corner he saw by a clock that he had only five minutes in which to reach the station, three blocks away. An instant later he saw a shapely figure in soft furs suddenly describe a forward movement and drop in a heap to the sidewalk, ten feet in front of him. A melodious light soprano scream arose from the heap. A divinely turned ankle in a quite human black stocking was momentarily visible. He was by the side of the ma.s.s of furs and skirts in three steps.

"He caught the pretty girl under the arms and elevated her to a standing posture. She recovered her breath and her self-possession promptly and glowed upon him with the brightest of smiles. He had never before seen her.

"'Oh, thank you,' she said; adding, with the unconscious exaggeration of a schoolgirl, 'You've saved my life.'

"Realizing the absurdity of this speech, she blushed. Whereupon her rescuer, feeling that the situation warranted him in turning the matter to jest, replied:

"'That being the case, according to the rules of romance, I ought to marry you, like all the men who rescue the heroines in stories.'

"'Oh,' she answered, quickly, 'this isn't in a novel; it's real life.'

"'Yes; besides which, I see by the clock over there I have only four minutes in which to catch a train. Good morning.'