The Umbrella Man

The Umbrella Man

IT was an insolent day. There are days which,
to imaginative minds, at least, possess strangely
human qualities. Their atmospheres predispose peo-
ple to crime or virtue, to the calm of good will, to
sneaking vice, or fierce, unprovoked aggression. The
day was of the last description. A beast, or a human
being in whose veins coursed undisciplined blood,
might, as involuntarily as the boughs of trees lash
before storms, perform wild and wicked deeds after
inhaling that hot air, evil with the sweat of sin-
evoked toil, with nitrogen stored from festering sores
of nature and the loathsome emanations of suffering
life.

It had not rained for weeks, but the humidity was
great. The clouds of dust which arose beneath the
man's feet had a horrible damp stickiness. His face
and hands were grimy, as were his shoes, his cheap,
ready-made suit, and his straw hat. However, the
man felt a pride in his clothes, for they were at least
the garb of freedom. He had come out of prison the
day before, and had scorned the suit proffered him
by the officials. He had given it away, and bought
a new one with a goodly part of his small stock of
money. This suit was of a small-checked pattern.
Nobody could tell from it that the wearer had just
left jail. He had been there for several years for
one of the minor offenses against the law. His term
would probably have been shorter, but the judge
had been careless, and he had no friends. Stebbins
had never been the sort to make many friends,
although he had never cherished animosity toward
any human being. Even some injustice in his sen-
tence had not caused him to feel any rancor.

During his stay in the prison he had not been
really unhappy. He had accepted the inevitable --
the yoke of the strong for the weak -- with a patience
which brought almost a sense of enjoyment. But,
now that he was free, he had suddenly become alert,
watchful of chances for his betterment. From being
a mere kenneled creature he had become as a
hound on the scent, the keenest on earth -- that of
self-interest. He was changed, while yet living, from
a being outside the world to one with the world
before him. He felt young, although he was a
middle-aged, almost elderly man. He had in his
pocket only a few dollars. He might have had more
had he not purchased the checked suit and had he
not given much away. There was another man whose
term would be up in a week, and he had a sickly
wife and several children. Stebbins, partly from
native kindness and generosity, partly from a senti-
ment which almost amounted to superstition, had
given him of his slender store. He had been de-
prived of his freedom because of money; he said to
himself that his return to it should be heralded by the
music of it scattered abroad for the good of another.

Now and then as he walked Stebbins removed his
new straw hat, wiped his forehead with a stiff new
handkerchief, looked with some concern at the grime
left upon it, then felt anxiously of his short crop
of grizzled hair. He would be glad when it grew
only a little, for it was at present a telltale to obser-
vant eyes. Also now and then he took from another
pocket a small mirror which he had just purchased,
and scrutinized his face. Every time he did so he
rubbed his cheeks violently, then viewed with satis-
faction the hard glow which replaced the yellow
prison pallor. Every now and then, too, he remem-
bered to throw his shoulders back, hold his chin
high, and swing out his right leg more freely. At
such times he almost swaggered, he became fairly
insolent with his new sense of freedom. He felt
himself the equal if not the peer of all creation.
Whenever a carriage or a motor-car passed him on the
country road he assumed, with the skill of an actor,
the air of a business man hastening to an important
engagement. However, always his mind was work-
ing over a hard problem. He knew that his store of
money was scanty, that it would not last long even
with the strictest economy; he had no friends; a
prison record is sure to leak out when a man seeks
a job. He was facing the problem of bare existence.

Although the day was so hot, it was late summer;
soon would come the frost and the winter. He wished
to live to enjoy his freedom, and all he had for assets
was that freedom; which was paradoxical, for it
did not signify the ability to obtain work, which
was the power of life. Outside the stone wall of the
prison he was now inclosed by a subtle, intangible,
yet infinitely more unyielding one -- the prejudice
of his kind against the released prisoner. He was
to all intents and purposes a prisoner still, for all his
spurts of swagger and the youthful leap of his pulses,
and while he did not admit that to himself, yet
always, since he had the hard sense of the land of
his birth -- New England -- he pondered that problem
of existence. He felt instinctively that it would be
a useless proceeding for him to approach any human
being for employment. He knew that even the
freedom, which he realized through all his senses
like an essential perfume, could not yet overpower
the reek of the prison. As he walked through the
clogging dust he thought of one after another whom
he had known before he had gone out of the world
of free men and had bent his back under the hand of
the law. There were, of course, people in his little
native village, people who had been friends and
neighbors, but there were none who had ever loved
him sufficiently for him to conquer his resolve to
never ask aid of them. He had no relatives except
cousins more or less removed, and they would have
nothing to do with him.

There had been a woman whom he had meant to
marry, and he had been sure that she would marry
him; but after he had been a year in prison the
news had come to him in a roundabout fashion that
she had married another suitor. Even had she re-
mained single he could not have approached her,
least of all for aid. Then, too, through all his term
she had made no sign, there had been no letter, no
message; and he had received at first letters and
flowers and messages from sentimental women.
There had been nothing from her. He had accepted
nothing, with the curious patience, carrying an odd
pleasure with it, which had come to him when the
prison door first closed upon him. He had not for-
gotten her, but he had not consciously mourned
her. His loss, his ruin, had been so tremendous that
she had been swallowed up in it. When one's
whole system needs to be steeled to trouble and pain,
single pricks lose importance. He thought of her
that day without any sense of sadness. He imagined
her in a pretty, well-ordered home with her husband
and children. Perhaps she had grown stout. She
had been a slender woman. He tried idly to imagine
how she would look stout, then by the sequence of
self-preservation the imagination of stoutness in an-
other led to the problem of keeping the covering
of flesh and fatness upon his own bones. The ques-
tion now was not of the woman; she had passed
out of his life. The question was of the keeping that
life itself, the life which involved everything else,
in a hard world, which would remorselessly as a steel
trap grudge him life and snap upon him, now he was
become its prey.

He walked and walked, and it was high noon, and
he was hungry. He had in his pocket a small loaf
of bread and two frankfurters, and he heard the
splashing ripple of a brook. At that juncture the
road was bordered by thick woodland. He followed,
pushing his way through the trees and undergrowth,
the sound of the brook, and sat down in a cool,
green solitude with a sigh of relief. He bent over
the clear run, made a cup of his hand, and drank,
then he fell to eating. Close beside him grew some
wintergreen, and when he had finished his bread and
frankfurters he began plucking the glossy, aromatic
leaves and chewing them automatically. The savor
reached his palate, and his memory awakened before
it as before a pleasant tingling of a spur. As a boy
how he had loved this little green low-growing plant!
It had been one of the luxuries of his youth. Now,
as he tasted it, joy and pathos stirred in his very
soul. What a wonder youth had been, what a
splendor, what an immensity to be rejoiced over
and regretted! The man lounging beside the brook,
chewing wintergreen leaves, seemed to realize anti-
podes. He lived for the moment in the past, and
the immutable future, which might contain the past
in the revolution of time. He smiled, and his face
fell into boyish, almost childish, contours. He
plucked another glossy leaf with his hard, veinous
old hands. His hands would not change to suit his
mood, but his limbs relaxed like those of a boy. He
stared at the brook gurgling past in brown ripples,
shot with dim prismatic lights, showing here clear
green water lines, here inky depths, and he thought
of the possibility of trout. He wished for fishing-
tackle.

Then suddenly out of a mass of green looked two
girls, with wide, startled eyes, and rounded mouths
of terror which gave vent to screams. There was a
scuttling, then silence. The man wondered why
the girls were so silly, why they ran. He did not
dream of the possibility of their terror of him. He
ate another wintergreen leaf, and thought of the
woman he had expected to marry when he was ar-
rested and imprisoned. She did not go back to his
childish memories. He had met her when first youth
had passed, and yet, somehow, the savor of the
wintergreen leaves brought her face before him. It
is strange how the excitement of one sense will some-
times act as stimulant for the awakening of another.
Now the sense of taste brought into full activity
that of sight. He saw the woman just as she had
looked when he had last seen her. She had not been
pretty, but she was exceedingly dainty, and pos-
sessed of a certain elegance of carriage which at-
tracted. He saw quite distinctly her small, irregu-
lar face and the satin-smooth coils of dark hair
around her head; he saw her slender, dusky hands
with the well-cared-for nails and the too prominent
veins; he saw the gleam of the diamond which he
had given her. She had sent it to him just after his
arrest, and he had returned it. He wondered idly
whether she still owned it and wore it, and what her
husband thought of it. He speculated childishly --
somehow imprisonment had encouraged the return
of childish speculations -- as to whether the woman's
husband had given her a larger and costlier diamond
than his, and he felt a pang of jealousy. He re-
fused to see another diamond than his own upon
that slender, dark hand. He saw her in a black silk
gown which had been her best. There had been
some red about it, and a glitter of jet. He had
thought it a magnificent gown, and the woman in it
like a princess. He could see her leaning back, in
her long slim grace, in a corner of a sofa, and the
soft dark folds starry with jet sweeping over her
knees and just allowing a glimpse of one little foot.
Her feet had been charming, very small and highly
arched. Then he remembered that that evening
they had been to a concert in the town hall, and
that afterward they had partaken of an oyster stew
in a little restaurant. Then back his mind traveled
to the problem of his own existence, his food and
shelter and clothes. He dismissed the woman from
his thought. He was concerned now with the primal
conditions of life itself. How was he to eat when
his little stock of money was gone? He sat staring
at the brook; he chewed wintergreen leaves no
longer. Instead he drew from his pocket an old
pipe and a paper of tobacco. He filled his pipe
with care -- tobacco was precious; then he began to
smoke, but his face now looked old and brooding
through the rank blue vapor. Winter was coming,
and he had not a shelter. He had not money enough
to keep him long from starvation. He knew not
how to obtain employment. He thought vaguely of
wood-piles, of cutting winter fuel for people. His
mind traveled in a trite strain of reasoning. Some-
how wood-piles seemed the only available tasks for
men of his sort.

Presently he finished his filled pipe, and arose
with an air of decision. He went at a brisk pace
out of the wood and was upon the road again. He
progressed like a man with definite business in view
until he reached a house. It was a large white
farm-house with many outbuildings. It looked most
promising. He approached the side door, and a
dog sprang from around a corner and barked, but
he spoke, and the dog's tail became eloquent. He
was patting the dog, when the door opened and a
man stood looking at him. Immediately the taint
of the prison became evident. He had not cringed
before the dog, but he did cringe before the man
who lived in that fine white house, and who had
never known what it was to be deprived of liberty.
He hung his head, he mumbled. The house-owner,
who was older than he, was slightly deaf. He
looked him over curtly. The end of it was he was
ordered off the premises, and went; but the dog
trailed, wagging at his heels, and had to be roughly
called back. The thought of the dog comforted
Stebbins as he went on his way. He had always
liked animals. It was something, now he was past
a hand-shake, to have the friendly wag of a dog's
tail.

The next house was an ornate little cottage with
bay-windows, through which could be seen the flower
patterns of lace draperies; the Virginia creeper
which grew over the house walls was turning crim-
son in places. Stebbins went around to the back
door and knocked, but nobody came. He waited
a long time, for he had spied a great pile of uncut
wood. Finally he slunk around to the front door.
As he went he suddenly reflected upon his state of
mind in days gone by; if he could have known that
the time would come when he, Joseph Stebbins,
would feel culpable at approaching any front door!
He touched the electric bell and stood close to the
door, so that he might not be discovered from the
windows. Presently the door opened the length
of a chain, and a fair girlish head appeared. She
was one of the girls who had been terrified by him
in the woods, but that he did not know. Now again
her eyes dilated and her pretty mouth rounded!
She gave a little cry and slammed the door in his
face, and he heard excited voices. Then he saw two
pale, pretty faces, the faces of the two girls who had
come upon him in the wood, peering at him around
a corner of the lace in the bay-window, and he under-
stood what it meant -- that he was an object of ter-
ror to them. Directly he experienced such a sense
of mortal insult as he had never known, not even
when the law had taken hold of him. He held his
head high and went away, his very soul boiling with
a sort of shamed rage. "Those two girls are afraid
of me," he kept saying to himself. His knees shook
with the horror of it. This terror of him seemed the
hardest thing to bear in a hard life. He returned
to his green nook beside the brook and sat down
again. He thought for the moment no more of wood-
piles, of his life. He thought about those two young
girls who had been afraid of him. He had never had
an impulse to harm any living thing. A curious
hatred toward these living things who had accused
him of such an impulse came over him. He laughed
sardonically. He wished that they would again
come and peer at him through the bushes; he would
make a threatening motion for the pleasure of seeing
the silly things scuttle away.

After a while he put it all out of mind, and again
returned to his problem. He lay beside the brook
and pondered, and finally fell asleep in the hot air,
which increased in venom, until the rattle of thun-
der awoke him. It was very dark -- a strange, livid
darkness. "A thunder-storm," he muttered, and
then he thought of his new clothes -- what a mis-
fortune it would be to have them soaked. He arose
and pushed through the thicket around him into a
cart path, and it was then that he saw the thing
which proved to be the stepping-stone toward his
humble fortunes. It was only a small silk umbrella
with a handle tipped with pearl. He seized upon it
with joy, for it meant the salvation of his precious
clothes. He opened it and held it over his head,
although the rain had not yet begun. One rib of
the umbrella was broken, but it was still serviceable.
He hastened along the cart path; he did not know
why, only the need for motion, to reach protection
from the storm, was upon him; and yet what pro-
tection could be ahead of him in that woodland
path? Afterward he grew to think of it as a blind
instinct which led him on.

He had not gone far, not more than half a mile,
when he saw something unexpected -- a small un-
tenanted house. He gave vent to a little cry of joy,
which had in it something child-like and pathetic,
and pushed open the door and entered. It was
nothing but a tiny, unfinished shack, with one room
and a small one opening from it. There was no
ceiling; overhead was the tent-like slant of the
roof, but it was tight. The dusty floor was quite
dry. There was one rickety chair. Stebbins, after
looking into the other room to make sure that the
place was empty, sat down, and a wonderful wave
of content and self-respect came over him. The
poor human snail had found his shell; he had a
habitation, a roof of shelter. The little dim place
immediately assumed an aspect of home. The rain
came down in torrents, the thunder crashed, the
place was filled with blinding blue lights. Stebbins
filled his pipe more lavishly this time, tilted his
chair against the wall, smoked, and gazed about
him with pitiful content. It was really so little,
but to him it was so much. He nodded with satis-
faction at the discovery of a fireplace and a rusty
cooking-stove.

He sat and smoked until the storm passed over.
The rainfall had been very heavy, there had been
hail, but the poor little house had not failed of per-
fect shelter. A fairly cold wind from the northwest
blew through the door. The hail had brought about
a change of atmosphere. The burning heat was
gone. The night would be cool, even chilly.

Stebbins got up and examined the stove and the
pipe. They were rusty, but appeared trustworthy.
He went out and presently returned with some fuel
which he had found unwet in a thick growth of
wood. He laid a fire handily and lit it. The little
stove burned well, with no smoke. Stebbins looked
at it, and was perfectly happy. He had found other
treasures outside -- a small vegetable-garden in which
were potatoes and some corn. A man had squatted
in this little shack for years, and had raised his own
garden-truck. He had died only a few weeks ago,
and his furniture had been pre-empted with the ex-
ception of the stove, the chair, a tilting lounge in
the small room, and a few old iron pots and frying-
pans. Stebbins gathered corn, dug potatoes, and
put them on the stove to cook, then he hurried out
to the village store and bought a few slices of bacon,
half a dozen eggs, a quarter of a pound of cheap tea,
and some salt. When he re-entered the house he
looked as he had not for years. He was beaming.
"Come, this is a palace," he said to himself, and
chuckled with pure joy. He had come out of the
awful empty spaces of homeless life into home. He
was a man who had naturally strong domestic in-
stincts. If he had spent the best years of his life
in a home instead of a prison, the finest in him would
have been developed. As it was, this was not even
now too late. When he had cooked his bacon and
eggs and brewed his tea, when the vegetables were
done and he was seated upon the rickety chair, with
his supper spread before him on an old board propped
on sticks, he was supremely happy. He ate with a
relish which seemed to reach his soul. He was at
home, and eating, literally, at his own board. As
he ate he glanced from time to time at the two win-
dows, with broken panes of glass and curtainless.
He was not afraid -- that was nonsense; he had
never been a cowardly man, but he felt the need of
curtains or something before his windows to shut
out the broad vast face of nature, or perhaps prying
human eyes. Somebody might espy the light in the
house and wonder. He had a candle stuck in an old
bottle by way of illumination. Still, although he
would have preferred to have curtains before those
windows full of the blank stare of night, he WAS
supremely happy.

After he had finished his supper he looked long-
ingly at his pipe. He hesitated for a second, for he
realized the necessity of saving his precious tobacco;
then he became reckless: such enormous good for-
tune as a home must mean more to follow; it must
be the first of a series of happy things. He filled
his pipe and smoked. Then he went to bed on the
old couch in the other room, and slept like a child
until the sun shone through the trees in flickering
lines. Then he rose, went out to the brook which
ran near the house, splashed himself with water,
returned to the house, cooked the remnant of the
eggs and bacon, and ate his breakfast with the same
exultant peace with which he had eaten his supper
the night before. Then he sat down in the doorway
upon the sunken sill and fell again to considering
his main problem. He did not smoke. His tobacco
was nearly exhausted and he was no longer reckless.
His head was not turned now by the feeling that
he was at home. He considered soberly as to the
probable owner of the house and whether he would
be allowed to remain its tenant. Very soon, how-
ever, his doubt concerning that was set at rest. He
saw a disturbance of the shadows cast by the thick
boughs over the cart path by a long outreach of
darker shadow which he knew at once for that of a
man. He sat upright, and his face at first assumed
a defiant, then a pleading expression, like that of a
child who desires to retain possession of some dear
thing. His heart beat hard as he watched the ad-
vance of the shadow. It was slow, as if cast by an
old man. The man was old and very stout, sup-
porting one lopping side by a stick, who presently
followed the herald of his shadow. He looked like
a farmer. Stebbins rose as he approached; the two
men stood staring at each other.

"Who be you, neighbor?" inquired the new-
comer.

The voice essayed a roughness, but only achieved
a tentative friendliness. Stebbins hesitated for a
second; a suspicious look came into the farmer's
misty blue eyes. Then Stebbins, mindful of his
prison record and fiercely covetous of his new home,
gave another name. The name of his maternal
grandfather seemed suddenly to loom up in printed
characters before his eyes, and he gave it glibly.
"David Anderson," he said, and he did not realize
a lie. Suddenly the name seemed his own. Surely
old David Anderson, who had been a good man,
would not grudge the gift of his unstained name to
replace the stained one of his grandson. "David
Anderson," he replied, and looked the other man
in the face unflinchingly.

"Where do ye hail from?" inquired the farmer;
and the new David Anderson gave unhesitatingly
the name of the old David Anderson's birth and
life and death place -- that of a little village in New
Hampshire.

"What do you do for your living?" was the next
question, and the new David Anderson had an in-
spiration. His eyes had lit upon the umbrella which
he had found the night before.

"Umbrellas," he replied, laconically, and the
other man nodded. Men with sheaves of umbrellas,
mended or in need of mending, had always been
familiar features for him.

Then David assumed the initiative; possessed
of an honorable business as well as home, he grew
bold. "Any objection to my staying here?" he
asked.

The other man eyed him sharply. "Smoke
much?" he inquired.

"Smoke a pipe sometimes."

"Careful with your matches?"

David nodded.

"That's all I think about," said the farmer.
"These woods is apt to catch fire jest when I'm
about ready to cut. The man that squatted here
before -- he died about a month ago -- didn't smoke.
He was careful, he was."

"I'll be real careful," said David, humbly and
anxiously.

"I dun'no' as I have any objections to your stay-
ing, then," said the farmer. "Somebody has always
squat here. A man built this shack about twenty
year ago, and he lived here till he died. Then
t'other feller he came along. Reckon he must have
had a little money; didn't work at nothin'! Raised
some garden-truck and kept a few chickens. I took
them home after he died. You can have them now
if you want to take care of them. He rigged up
that little chicken-coop back there."

"I'll take care of them," answered David, fer-
vently.

"Well, you can come over by and by and get 'em.
There's nine hens and a rooster. They lay pretty
well. I ain't no use for 'em. I've got all the hens
of my own I want to bother with."

"All right," said David. He looked blissful.

The farmer stared past him into the house. He
spied the solitary umbrella. He grew facetious.
"Guess the umbrellas was all mended up where
you come from if you've got down to one," said he.

David nodded. It was tragically true, that guess.

"Well, our umbrella got turned last week," said
the farmer. "I'll give you a job to start on. You
can stay here as long as you want if you're careful
about your matches." Again he looked into the
house. "Guess some boys have been helpin' them-
selves to the furniture, most of it," he observed.
"Guess my wife can spare ye another chair, and
there's an old table out in the corn-house better
than that one you've rigged up, and I guess she'll
give ye some old bedding so you can be comfortable.

Got any money?"

"A little."

"I don't want any pay for things, and my wife
won't; didn't mean that; was wonderin' whether
ye had anything to buy vittles with."

"Reckon I can manage till I get some work,"
replied David, a trifle stiffly. He was a man who
had never lived at another than the state's expense.

"Don't want ye to be too short, that's all," said
the other, a little apologetically.

"I shall be all right. There are corn and potatoes
in the garden, anyway."

"So there be, and one of them hens had better
be eat. She don't lay. She'll need a good deal of
b'ilin'. You can have all the wood you want to
pick up, but I don't want any cut. You mind that
or there'll be trouble."

"I won't cut a stick."

"Mind ye don't. Folks call me an easy mark,
and I guess myself I am easy up to a certain point,
and cuttin' my wood is one of them points. Roof
didn't leak in that shower last night, did it?"

"Not a bit."

"Didn't s'pose it would. The other feller was
handy, and he kept tinkerin' all the time. Well,
I'll be goin'; you can stay here and welcome if
you're careful about matches and don't cut my wood.
Come over for them hens any time you want to.
I'll let my hired man drive you back in the wagon."

"Much obliged," said David, with an inflection
that was almost tearful.

"You're welcome," said the other, and ambled
away.

The new David Anderson, the good old grand-
father revived in his unfortunate, perhaps graceless
grandson, reseated himself on the door-step and
watched the bulky, receding figure of his visitor
through a pleasant blur of tears, which made the
broad, rounded shoulders and the halting columns of
legs dance. This David Anderson had almost for-
gotten that there was unpaid kindness in the whole
world, and it seemed to him as if he had seen angels
walking up and down. He sat for a while doing
nothing except realizing happiness of the present
and of the future. He gazed at the green spread
of forest boughs, and saw in pleased anticipation
their red and gold tints of autumn; also in pleased
anticipation their snowy and icy mail of winter,
and himself, the unmailed, defenseless human crea-
ture, housed and sheltered, sitting before his
own fire. This last happy outlook aroused him.
If all this was to be, he must be up and doing.
He got up, entered the house, and examined the
broken umbrella which was his sole stock in trade.
David was a handy man. He at once knew that
he was capable of putting it in perfect repair.
Strangely enough, for his sense of right and wrong
was not blunted, he had no compunction whatever
in keeping this umbrella, although he was reasonably
certain that it belonged to one of the two young
girls who had been so terrified by him. He had a con-
viction that this monstrous terror of theirs, which
had hurt him more than many apparently crueler
things, made them quits.

After he had washed his dishes in the brook, and
left them in the sun to dry, he went to the village
store and purchased a few simple things necessary
for umbrella-mending. Both on his way to the store
and back he kept his eyes open. He realized that
his capital depended largely upon chance and good
luck. He considered that he had extraordinary
good luck when he returned with three more umbrel-
las. He had discovered one propped against the
counter of the store, turned inside out. He had in-
quired to whom it belonged, and had been answered
to anybody who wanted it. David had seized upon
it with secret glee. Then, unheard-of good fortune,
he had found two more umbrellas on his way home;
one was in an ash-can, the other blowing along like
a belated bat beside the trolley track. It began to
seem to David as if the earth might be strewn with
abandoned umbrellas. Before he began his work
he went to the farmer's and returned in triumph,
driven in the farm-wagon, with his cackling hens
and quite a load of household furniture, besides
some bread and pies. The farmer's wife was one of
those who are able to give, and make receiving
greater than giving. She had looked at David,
who was older than she, with the eyes of a mother,
and his pride had melted away, and he had held out
his hands for her benefits, like a child who has no
compunctions about receiving gifts because he knows
that they are his right of childhood.

Henceforth David prospered -- in a humble way,
it is true, still he prospered. He journeyed about
the country, umbrellas over his shoulder, little bag
of tools in hand, and reaped an income more than
sufficient for his simple wants. His hair had grown,
and also his beard. Nobody suspected his history.
He met the young girls whom he had terrified on
the road often, and they did not know him. He
did not, during the winter, travel very far afield.
Night always found him at home, warm, well fed,
content, and at peace. Sometimes the old farmer
on whose land he lived dropped in of an evening
and they had a game of checkers. The old man was
a checker expert. He played with unusual skill,
but David made for himself a little code of honor.
He would never beat the old man, even if he were
able, oftener than once out of three evenings. He
made coffee on these convivial occasions. He made
very good coffee, and they sipped as they moved
the men and kings, and the old man chuckled, and
David beamed with peaceful happiness.

But the next spring, when he began to realize that
he had mended for a while all the umbrellas in the
vicinity and that his trade was flagging, he set his
precious little home in order, barricaded door and
windows, and set forth for farther fields. He was
lucky, as he had been from the start. He found
plenty of employment, and slept comfortably enough
in barns, and now and then in the open. He had
traveled by slow stages for several weeks before he
entered a village whose familiar look gave him a
shock. It was not his native village, but near it.
In his younger life he had often journeyed there.
It was a little shopping emporium, almost a city.
He recognized building after building. Now and
then he thought he saw a face which he had once
known, and he was thankful that there was hardly
any possibility of any one recognizing him. He had
grown gaunt and thin since those far-off days; he
wore a beard, grizzled, as was his hair. In those
days he had not been an umbrella man. Sometimes
the humor of the situation struck him. What would
he have said, he the spruce, plump, head-in-the-air
young man, if anybody had told him that it would
come to pass that he would be an umbrella man lurk-
ing humbly in search of a job around the back doors
of houses? He would laugh softly to himself as he
trudged along, and the laugh would be without the
slightest bitterness. His lot had been so infinitely
worse, and he had such a happy nature, yielding
sweetly to the inevitable, that he saw now only
cause for amusement.

He had been in that vicinity about three weeks
when one day he met the woman. He knew her
at once, although she was greatly changed. She
had grown stout, although, poor soul! it seemed as
if there had been no reason for it. She was not
unwieldy, but she was stout, and all the contours of
earlier life had disappeared beneath layers of flesh.
Her hair was not gray, but the bright brown had
faded, and she wore it tightly strained back from
her seamed forehead, although it was thin. One had
only to look at her hair to realize that she was a
woman who had given up, who no longer cared.
She was humbly clad in a blue-cotton wrapper, she
wore a dingy black hat, and she carried a tin pail
half full of raspberries. When the man and woman
met they stopped with a sort of shock, and each
changed face grew like the other in its pallor. She
recognized him and he her, but along with that
recognition was awakened a fierce desire to keep it
secret. His prison record loomed up before the
man, the woman's past loomed up before her. She
had possibly not been guilty of much, but her life
was nothing to waken pride in her. She felt shamed
before this man whom she had loved, and who felt
shamed before her. However, after a second the
silence was broken. The man recovered his self-
possession first.

He spoke casually.

"Nice day," said he.

The woman nodded.

"Been berrying?" inquired David. The woman
nodded again.

David looked scrutinizingly at her pail. "I saw
better berries real thick a piece back," said he.

The woman murmured something. In spite of
herself, a tear trickled over her fat, weather-beaten
cheek. David saw the tear, and something warm
and glorious like sunlight seemed to waken within
him. He felt such tenderness and pity for this
poor feminine thing who had not the strength
to keep the tears back, and was so pitiably shorn
of youth and grace, that he himself expanded. He
had heard in the town something of her history.
She had made a dreadful marriage, tragedy and
suspicion had entered her life, and the direst poverty.
However, he had not known that she was in the vi-
cinity. Somebody had told him she was out West.

"Living here?" he inquired.

"Working for my board at a house back there,"
she muttered. She did not tell him that she had
come as a female "hobo" in a freight-car from the
Western town where she had been finally stranded.
"Mrs. White sent me out for berries," she added.
"She keeps boarders, and there were no berries in
the market this morning."

"Come back with me and I will show you where
I saw the berries real thick," said David.

He turned himself about, and she followed a little
behind, the female failure in the dust cast by the
male. Neither spoke until David stopped and
pointed to some bushes where the fruit hung thick
on bending, slender branches.

"Here," said David. Both fell to work. David
picked handfuls of berries and cast them gaily into
the pail. "What is your name?" he asked, in an
undertone.

"Jane Waters," she replied, readily. Her hus-
band's name had been Waters, or the man who had
called himself her husband, and her own middle
name was Jane. The first was Sara. David remem-
bered at once. "She is taking her own middle name
and the name of the man she married," he thought.
Then he asked, plucking berries, with his eyes averted:

"Married?"

"No," said the woman, flushing deeply.

David's next question betrayed him. "Husband
dead?"

"I haven't any husband," she replied, like the
Samaritan woman.

She had married a man already provided with
another wife, although she had not known it. The
man was not dead, but she spoke the entire miser-
able truth when she replied as she did. David as-
sumed that he was dead. He felt a throb of relief,
of which he was ashamed, but he could not down it.
He did not know what it was that was so alive and
triumphant within him: love, or pity, or the natural
instinct of the decent male to shelter and protect.
Whatever it was, it was dominant.

"Do you have to work hard?" he asked.

"Pretty hard, I guess. I expect to."

"And you don't get any pay?"

"That's all right; I don't expect to get any,"
said she, and there was bitterness in her voice.

In spite of her stoutness she was not as strong as
the man. She was not at all strong, and, moreover,
the constant presence of a sense of injury at the
hands of life filled her very soul with a subtle poison,
to her weakening vitality. She was a child hurt and
worried and bewildered, although she was to the
average eye a stout, able-bodied, middle-aged wom-
an; but David had not the average eye, and he
saw her as she really was, not as she seemed. There
had always been about her a little weakness and
dependency which had appealed to him. Now they
seemed fairly to cry out to him like the despairing
voices of the children whom he had never had, and
he knew he loved her as he had never loved her be-
fore, with a love which had budded and flowered
and fruited and survived absence and starvation.
He spoke abruptly.

"I've about got my business done in these parts,"
said he. "I've got quite a little money, and I've
got a little house, not much, but mighty snug, back
where I come from. There's a garden. It's in the
woods. Not much passing nor going on."

The woman was looking at him with incredulous,
pitiful eyes like a dog's. "I hate much goin' on,"
she whispered.

"Suppose," said David, "you take those berries
home and pack up your things. Got much?"

"All I've got will go in my bag."

"Well, pack up; tell the madam where you live
that you're sorry, but you're worn out --"

"God knows I am," cried the woman, with sudden
force, "worn out!"

"Well, you tell her that, and say you've got an-
other chance, and --"

"What do you mean?" cried the woman, and she
hung upon his words like a drowning thing.

"Mean? Why, what I mean is this. You pack
your bag and come to the parson's back there, that
white house."

"I know --"

"In the mean time I'll see about getting a license,
and --"

Suddenly the woman set her pail down and
clutched him by both hands. "Say you are not
married," she demanded; "say it, swear it!"

"Yes, I do swear it," said David. "You are the
only woman I ever asked to marry me. I can sup-
port you. We sha'n't be rolling in riches, but we
can be comfortable, and -- I rather guess I can make
you happy."

"You didn't say what your name was," said the
woman.

"David Anderson."

The woman looked at him with a strange ex-
pression, the expression of one who loves and re-
spects, even reveres, the isolation and secrecy of
another soul. She understood, down to the depths
of her being she understood. She had lived a hard
life, she had her faults, but she was fine enough to
comprehend and hold sacred another personality.
She was very pale, but she smiled. Then she turned
to go.

"How long will it take you?" asked David.

"About an hour."

"All right. I will meet you in front of the par-
son's house in an hour. We will go back by train.
I have money enough."

"I'd just as soon walk." The woman spoke with
the utmost humility of love and trust. She had
not even asked where the man lived. All her life
she had followed him with her soul, and it would
go hard if her poor feet could not keep pace with
her soul.

"No, it is too far; we will take the train. One
goes at half past four."

At half past four the couple, made man and wife,
were on the train speeding toward the little home
in the woods. The woman had frizzled her thin
hair pathetically and ridiculously over her temples;
on her left hand gleamed a white diamond. She had
kept it hidden; she had almost starved rather than
part with it. She gazed out of the window at the
flying landscape, and her thin lips were curved in a
charming smile. The man sat beside her, staring
straight ahead as if at happy visions.

They lived together afterward in the little house
in the woods, and were happy with a strange crys-
tallized happiness at which they would have mocked
in their youth, but which they now recognized as the
essential of all happiness upon earth. And always
the woman knew what she knew about her husband,
and the man knew about his wife, and each recog-
nized the other as old lover and sweetheart come
together at last, but always each kept the knowledge
from the other with an infinite tenderness of deli-
cacy which was as a perfumed garment veiling the
innermost sacredness of love.

-THE END-
Mary E Wilkins Freeman's short story: The Umbrella Man

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