The Tinker

I

OFTEN, after his eldest daughter had turned fifteen and after Lenny had taken the care of a dozen horses to himself, my grandfather spent that chore period between rising and breakfast in his workshop.

One morning, cheerful from some minor victory over the stubborn gears of a model hay-hoist, he came tardily into his dining room to find among the members of his household a little man with a face and bald crown quite red from recent scrubbings. He had gone no further than this in his examination of the stranger when John Dunn, the hired man, said: ‘I told him if he’d clean out the stables we’d give him his breakfast. He cleaned ’em out, so I brung him in. I found him sleepin’ in the straw stack.’

This announcement struck deep to the heart of a secret grievance. My grandparents had both been reared within the strict observances of a small religious sect which set great store by the literal application of the Scriptures to everyday life. Thus, because in Matthew there is a verse that reads ‘Give to him that asketh thee,’ there was in my grandfather’s house a room called the Tramp Room. No vagabond who, in accordance with the Scriptures, ‘asked’ for lodging had ever been turned away. But though in this way my grandfather fulfilled the letter of his religious law, he did it with bad grace. He had nothing but contempt and suspicion for men who went drifting aimlessly through life, maintaining a parasitic existence at the expense of their fellows. When an especially viciouslooking tramp arrived to ask for food and shelter, my grandfather, had he followed his true impulses, would have said briefly, ‘I have no use for drones here.’ But the surliest vagrant who ever begged for a meal could, by simply ‘asking,’ close my grandfather’s lips, shackle his impulses, and win a night’s rest in a feather bed.

He sometimes wished that he might come upon an able-bodied tramp who had crawled into the haymow or straw stack and slept there without asking. On such an occasion, he felt he might, without evading his convictions, compensate for a few of the impositions a long line of Tramp Room guests had thrust upon him. But not once in the years of his farming had any tramp, so he said, come within fifty miles of his kitchen without asking for something or other. They were born that way. He supposed they even asked for things in their sleep. Now, after all the years of this grudge, a vagabond had slept in the straw stack without Scriptural protection; and John Dunn had brought the fellow in to breakfast.

My grandfather gave his hired man one brief, eloquent look, and, without glancing again at the tramp, went glumly to his place at the table.

II

With the exception of Uncle George, who at the age of two slept as long as he wished, the members of the household were all assembled. Along one side of the table sat Dunn and Nettie and the guest. They faced Miriam and Lenny, Nan and Gracie.

My grandfather kept his eyes stubbornly upon his food. His mood expanded and hung above the table like a chilling mist. An unnatural calm ensued, from which at last came Dunn’s voice, saying to the stranger, ‘One thing sure, you ain’t used to sleeping in straw stacks. The way you was burrowed in there like a gopher, I wonder you was n’t smothered to death.’

‘Gracious!’ my grandmother exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you come to the door? I’d have given you a bed.’

‘Good God, Laura!’ The thought was so explosive that my grandfather bit sharply on a piece of bread, uncertain whether the words had burst inside his mind or whether he had actually pronounced them. His eyes shifted to his wife. He saw her face pleasant and unruffled. No, he had n’t said them.

The tramp began to talk. It had been late. The house was dark. Did n’t want to wake anybody up. Saw the straw stack. Thought no one would care. . . .

There was something in the plodding, patient voice that found its way around my grandfather’s grudge and touched his interest. The word ‘house’ came to him without its h, and the speaker had an unobtrusive way of putting accents where they did n’t belong. My grandfather fell to wondering in what section of the country such talk was native, and the stranger went on. . . . Was n’t much used to sleeping outdoors. Owned a horse and wagon until a month or so before. On foot, towns seemed far apart. . . .

From across the table Lenny asked: ‘You had a horse? What happened to it?’ Horses were the axis of Lenny’s world. It was of his own choosing that he fed and groomed a stableful of them each morning.

The man answered: ‘It got old like its driver, boy. More sense than a human, that horse had.’

What, wondered my grandfather, was a tramp doing with a horse and wagon? The thought trailed off into another silence, during the course of which my grandmother observed two things of interest about her guest. The first was the way in which he turned now and again toward Gracie and closed one eye solemnly; whereupon the little girl would wriggle and grin and look very pleased and embarrassed. ‘He must like children,’ thought my grandmother, and at once her heart warmed toward him; for she belonged to that uncritical school of practical philosophers who assume that ‘if a man likes dogs and children, he must be all right.’ Her second observation concerned the persistency with which her guest called for the pepper. The eggs on his plate were scarcely recognizable beneath a coating of the stuff, and still he asked for more and proceeded to rain it down upon his potatoes. She expected him to choke. But he devoured his stinging fare with every appearance of relish and without so much as a noticeable watering of the eyes.

The hired man recalled a neglected duty. ‘Guess I forgot to say his name. It’s Kent. Harry Kent.’

‘Kent.’ My grandmother searched her memory for people of that name, so that she might ask her guest if he had come, by chance, out of the same family. But she could think of no Kents, so she substituted, ‘It’s an English-sounding name.’

‘Yes, ma’am. I was born and grew up in England.’

‘ Mercy on us,’said my grandmother, by which she meant only ‘How interesting.’ ‘What a ways you are from home!’

‘Oh, I ’m home. I’m home anywhere and everywhere. It’s forty years since I come from England.’

John Dunn spoke again. ‘He ain’t a tramp. He’s got a whole knapsack of tools along with him. He’s a tinker.'

My grandfather exploded. ‘ A tinker! Why did n’t you say so in the first place?’ Tinkering was something he could understand, appreciate, and even respect. It made every difference in the world to him whether a man drifted about tinkering or whether he simply drifted about.

The hired man launched into some explanation, in which he was cut short by the stranger, who said emphatically: ‘Not tinker — clock maker! I’m a tinker, too, if you like; but my trade’s clock maker, and has been all my life.’

My grandfather’s glumness vanished like a wisp of smoke. He looked squarely at the clock maker and saw a plain, good-natured face without much strength in it. The nose was wholly undistinguished. The straight, thin lips added nothing, unless, as is sometimes said, a wide mouth indicates a generous nature. There was no aggressiveness to the chin. Thin gray hair fringed the edges of a weathered bald head.

‘I’m something of a tinker myself,’ my grandfather said, ‘though I don’t know anything about clocks.’

He found himself looking into two pale eyes, round and frank with the sort of frankness that recalled to him the eyes of his children. In this moment of exchanged gazes there passed between the two men a mutual acceptance such as sometimes springs up when strangers chance to discover interests and abilities in common.

My grandfather smiled and turned to his wife. ‘Laura, that old clock of yours — maybe Mr. Kent could put it to rights for you.’

III

The old clock had come to Illinois from a homestead in Pennsylvania. Eleven years before, it had stopped, — on a Tuesday, as my grandmother was fond of recalling, — and since that time its tall cherry case had been gathering dust in a storeroom.

Shortly after breakfast three men and a boy brought this timepiece from its long retirement and carried it to the workshop. For four days, exclusive of a Sunday that intervened, Harry Kent buried himself in a work of repair and reconstruction. Before these days had passed, he had fallen so unobtrusively into the schedule of the household that it was difficult for those living there to believe he had not been among them for a long time.

There was something about the tinker that everyone liked. Interest consolidated and settled on the workshop. But the little man was no great talker. He was ill at ease with words. He seemed afflicted with some condition of intellect that made it impossible for him to put together a connected narrative. He might say, ‘One day in Cleveland,’ or, ‘When I was a boy,’but, when he had arrived thus at the point of a story, words receded from him and left him speechless. At such times one could almost follow the course of a story in his face — some reminiscence with which his tongue refused to keep pace. Then he would grow embarrassed, and squirm and fidget, redfaced, like a boy who in the course of a Decoration Day programme forgets a line from ‘Barbara Frietchie.’ In the end, the tinker always abandoned his struggle with a resigned shrug and turned back to his work, leaving his hearers suspended at the brink of a story that would never be told.

Only a few facts from his life came out now and then in the course of his casual talk, which, when he was n’t trying to get on with a narrative, seemed easy and natural enough. He was sixty-four years old. He had never gone to school, but had taught himself to read and write. For nine years he had driven a horse and wagon from town to town, looking for clocks to mend and doing odd jobs of any mechanical sort. One day his horse went lame. He realized that the animal had grown too old for travel, so he paid a man to end its life, and continued his own on foot. He did n’t like roving and he did n’t dislike it. It was just a habit, he supposed. . . .

At noon on the fifth day of his labor, the tinker arrived at the dinner table with the news that the clock was finished. ‘It’s a fine old clock,’ he said. ‘They don’t make them like that these days. All it needs now is to be carried in the house.’

This announcement stirred up considerable commotion. So much attention had been turned on the workshop that feeling around the dining table rose to something of a holiday pitch. As soon as the meal was over, the repaired clock, its case shining like dull wine from recent polishing, was brought in and stationed in a corner. As it stood there calmly telling off the minutes that it had lost count of a decade before, the room filled with confused words and laughter. To the smaller children it was as though their mother were having a birthday, for their father kept saying: ‘Well, there you are, Laura. How long is it you’ve been wanting your clock fixed?’ And their mother, looking pleased and flushed as she always did when she received a present, replied: ‘Oh, a long, long time. Ever since it stopped on that Tuesday.’

IV

My grandmother moved close in front of the timepiece and stood looking at its plain, square face. Then she reached out slowly and opened the door behind which were suspended two weights that gave momentum to the hands. There came to her out of this door the scent of oil and polish, long closed and mellowed within cherry walls. She sniffed at it, and like a magic vapor it raised before her a dim image of a winding staircase in an old Pennsylvania house.

On this staircase there sat a little girl whose feelings were hurt and who was crying. The scene was blurred and indistinct like a picture in a stereopticon which has not been brought to focus. She tried to clarify it, and out of its misty spaces came Uncle Matt. He pulled the little girl’s hair and laughed and gave her peppermints. And then the picture cleared and she found herself reliving an incident buried and unrecalled for more than thirty years.

It is Sunday afternoon. She is in the house playing hide and seek. The miller’s boy is counting off, with his face buried in his hands. Her sisters run out of the room. She runs too. She is breathless and greatly excited. She must hide. He will catch her — where shall she hide? She is passing the clock. Ah, the clock, the clock! She can reach the latch by stretching. She opens the door and climbs inside. There is a smell of oil and polish. High above her head are the works, dim in the shadow behind the face. The miller’s boy must n’t find her. Not until he gives up and shouts, ‘Free!’ She reaches out and tugs at the door. It closes and latches with a sharp click. . . .

It is very dark. Darker than night. But the miller’s boy will come and call to her. She waits. He does n’t come. But her sisters — they will come and find her pretty soon. A long time passes. No one comes. She feels over the inside of the door. There is no latch on the inside. She can’t get out. No one will come to find her. They have all forgotten her. She will never get out again. The darkness is full of hard, swinging things that strike her on the head. It is terrible. She screams. She pounds at the door. At last it opens. She is lifted out — and spanked. . . .

Yes, that was it. My grandmother remembered now. That was why she sat on the winding staircase and cried. And that was why Uncle Matt pulled her hair and laughed and gave her peppermints.

Standing before the old clock, my grandmother sighed and closed the door. It had been a moment’s return to the actual feelings and emotions of childhood. And for this pleasant wizardry she turned to thank the little tinker.

‘ I don’t know how I’ve done without it all these years. The new clock in the parlor never took its place, somehow.’

‘No such clocks made these days,’ the tinker repeated. ‘It’ll go right on running now, I don’t know how long. Only it might need a little regulating. I don’t know, but it might,’

’Then why don’t you stay and regulate it? Must you be somewhere at a definite time?’

‘Oh no, it ain’t that. I never have to be anywhere at a definite time. Only I’ve stayed here so long now. I’ve been here five days already.’

With one short gesture, my grandmother brushed these regrets from consideration. ‘Fiddlesticks,’ she said.

V

The old clock, it turned out, needed no regulating. ‘That’s what comes of doing your work too well,’said my grandfather to the tinker.

And because he liked the mildmannered little man, and because he had a great respect for his mechanical skill, he added, ‘But why don’t you stay here and try farming for a change? A change of trades once in a while will do anybody good.’

Then Harry Kent, convinced that the help he could render on a farm would compensate for his keep, decided to forsake his calling for a week or two.

He was too little used to heavy labor to help in the fields, my grandfather thought, so a regular share of the chores was allotted to him, and for the rest he was left to pursue his own devices. Most of his time he spent sitting cross-legged on the back porch, whittling and scraping at a small block of seasoned wood. In this occupation he was encouraged by the presence and patient interest of Gracie. For it was understood that the block of wood was in process of becoming a doll, and the doll was to be her own.

Wood carving, the tinker explained, was a kind of side line with him. He carved out ‘all sorts of things’ and offered them for sale as he went about looking for broken clocks. During the week before his arrival at the farm, he had been in Dixon, where a fair was being held. It was surprising, he said, how people bought his dolls. His knapsack was empty of them, so my grandmother was forced to waive her judgment of the tinker’s artistic gifts until the figure in process should reach completion.

In the meantime she smiled indulgently upon the oddly mated pair who spent their hours on her back porch.

‘You seem to like children so well,’she observed, ‘I’m surprised you never settled down and raised a family.’

‘I did once, ma’am. Back in England when I was young. I have a little girl back there. Just the size of yours, when I saw her last. But that was a long time ago. . . .’ He had arrived once more at a story for which he could find no adequate words. He was only able to repeat: ‘Just the size of Gracie when I saw her last. That’s the way I remember her.’

The discovery of Harry Kent’s paternity increased the warmth of my grandmother’s feeling for him. She fell to imagining all manner of domestic tragedies that might have pried him from a happy fireside and sent him out a wanderer upon the earth, never to see again a little daughter whom he loved. She found it all very touching. And thereafter when she noticed a grave or melancholy expression on the tinker’s face — probably caused by some difficulty with his carving — she attributed it promptly to some sharp memory from a bitter past.

She grew solicitous for his welfare. The quantities of pepper he consumed at each meal alarmed her for his health’s sake. She spoke to him about it, and was rewarded with a solemn eulogy on the spice.

‘Pepper,’ he told her, ‘is a fine tonic. There’s none better in the world. Pepper livens up the stummick and warms the liver. And it’s a fine blood medicine, pepper is.’

My grandmother saw that she had trod upon a favorite appetite. She withdrew her objections to pepper. But on the following day she discovered an even more peculiar quality of the tinker’s palate. Returning to her kitchen from some errand out of doors, she found the air heavy with the odor of steaming vinegar, and Harry Kent smacking his lips over an empty tumbler.

’It just come to me sudden,’he explained, ‘that I’d like a drink of vinegar. I hope you don’t care, my using some out of your jug.’

‘But your stomach! No stomach can survive vinegar by the glassful.’

‘Oh, the stummick, ma’am! The stummick is all the better for vinegar. The stummick needs it. Especially if it’s mulled — and has a little sugar added.’

To this my grandmother could find no reply except that she’d never heard the like — so she let it go at that.

VI

On Saturday my grandparents drove to Old Town to ‘lay in’ provisions for another week. Harry Kent accompanied them. It was his plan to look for a clock to mend, and he said: ‘If I ain’t at the General Store by four o’clock, why don’t wait for me. I’ll finish my job and walk back to the farm.’

The appointed hour brought no tinker to the store, so they returned home without him. They thought nothing of his absence from the supper table. Even when nine o’clock came my grandfather said he supposed Kent had run into a good job and decided to stay in town to finish it. So the family went to bed.

My grandmother was a light sleeper. About midnight she was awakened by the sound of boisterous singing. It came from the road in front of the house. There was not much tune to it, and what little there was seemed unable to contain its unintelligible words. The song stopped without coming to an end. In the hush that followed, my grandmother heard steps on the graveled path that led around the house. She woke her husband, and said, ‘I’m afraid old Ned Barkley has one of his crazy spells again. It sounds like him, out there snooping around the house.'

They got out of bed and moved to the window. Crossing through the dark shadows of a mulberry tree was a man who walked with a peculiar zigzagging gait.

‘Ned never gets dangerous,’ my grandfather remembered. ‘I ’ll go down and see what I can do with him.’

The man stood still and began to sing again.

‘’Appy ’Arry, ’Appy ’Arry,
That’s my nyme . .

‘Why, it’s our tinker!’ my grandfather said. Deep in his cups, Harry Kent had returned to the cockney of his youth.

‘. . . That’s ’oo I am, that’s ’oo I am,
Tyke ’Appy and ’Arry and put ’em in one,
And you ’ave ’Appy ’Arry
And that’s my nyme!’

The song stopped. The tinker broke into a clumsy jig, lost his footing, and sprawled down upon the ground.

‘Drunk! ’ said my grandmother. The word thrust out sharp, brittle points into the darkness. There was no human weakness that she rated as more despicable than drunkenness. She was, in point of this conviction, a little in advance of the intolerance for strong liquor drummed up out of the intensive propaganda of the Anti-Saloon Movement. Her aversion to excessive drinking dated back to a period in her girlhood when, as she put it, she had watched one of her own cousins drink a good farm right out from under the feet of his wife and children. She knew, she said, what the Demon Rum would do to people if he got a chance. The very sight of a drunk man, the dirty thing, was enough to make her sick. And if there was one thing she would never tolerate in her house, not for a minute, it was drunkenness. . . .

These convictions had nothing to do with the several gallons of grape and elderberry and dandelion wine that she ’put up’ each year for judicious use. Nor did they interfere with the homemade ale or ‘store’ beer that was served traditionally at threshing time. It was all a matter of temperance, my grandmother maintained, and temperance consisted in knowing where to draw the line. This line she drew indelibly and with such militant aggressiveness that at times it bore a figurative resemblance to that famous line along which General Grant proposed to fight it out if it took all summer.

My grandfather thought of these things as he looked down from his bedroom window upon the disorganized person of the tinker. To him drunkenness was always foolish and often reprehensible, but it was something he could forgive readily provided he liked the person who was guilty of it. Now he felt a wave of sympathy for the tinker, for he knew what feelings must even then be stirring in his wife’s breast. He knew, too, that out of these feelings would come a Duty, and this made him impatient; because, while this Duty would be of his wife’s invention, it was he who would be asked to discharge it.

My grandmother said nothing for a time. She was still searching for adequate words when Harry Kent came tottering to his feet again. He started toward the rear of the house, but veered off in a ragged semicircle. He took new bearings and tried again. But his feet insisted upon a course of their own. He gave them their way, then, and arrived at length at the woodshed. Entering this structure, he closed the door resoundingly behind him.

VII

‘Well!’ So much feeling was expended in this simple word that my grandmother had to draw new breath before she went on. ‘So that’s his story! No wonder he’s been so closemouthed about it!’

My grandfather said nothing.

‘It’s clear enough now why a man of his ability should turn out a nobody. We find him in the straw stack, give him work and a place to stay — and this is the thanks he gives us. And after all the fuss he’s made over Gracie, too. I don’t know when I’ve ever misjudged a person as much as this before.’

My grandfather coughed discreetly. It was too dark to see his wife’s face clearly, but he was sure that a familiar air of determination had straightened the comers of her mouth a trifle. He had come to recognize these straightened mouth corners for what they were worth; and their worth in terms of unwavering conviction was considerable.

‘You know as well as I do,’ she went on, ‘that we can’t have a thing like this going on here. You may as well put a stop to it now as later. After all, it was you who invited him to stay after the clock was regulated.’

‘I’m chilly,’ said my grandfather, and he went back to bed.

His wife followed him. For a time they lay there without further words. ‘Why is it,’ she asked then, ‘that a man will make such a hog of himself? Even if it weren’t sure ruination, you’d think he’d have a little pride.’

My grandfather yawned and sounded very sleepy as he replied, ‘I don’t know. Maybe he got in bad company to-night.’ The idea appealed to him. He forgot his sleepiness to enlarge upon it. ‘Come to think of it, a drunkard rarely acts as crazy as Kent did. It’s the man who rarely drinks more than he can manage who sings and falls around that way. Take Kent here — I don’t think he’s used to it. I don’t think he’s a habitual drunkard. In fact —’

‘Nonsense! He and his pepper and his vinegar. I don’t know how I can have been so blind. . . . Well, it’s your duty to see that he does n’t stay here any longer.’

There it was. He knew that was coming. And the children — they’d be brought into it next. He said: ‘I can’t see any sense in making such a fuss about it. He’ll be moving on in a few days, anyway. Tinkers never stay long in one place.’

‘And for good reason, it seems. I’m surprised that you take such an attitude. You might think of the children. A fine example for Lenny.’

‘Oh, the children. . . . They probably did n’t even wake up. They won’t know anything about it if we don’t tell them.’

There was another silence then, after which my grandmother ended the discussion by saying quietly: ‘Very well. If you won’t speak to him, I will.’

VIII

Sometime during the remainder of the night Harry Kent recovered his senses and went quietly up to his room. He appeared in the kitchen next morning as my grandmother was busy at her stove. She had expected to see him blear-eyed and surly and disheveled, as she thought a man ought to look after a night of disgraceful abandon. But the tinker was fresh and cheerful. His clothing was carefully brushed. He wore a clean white shirt. ‘Morning, ma’am,’ he said, and went to the sink. He began to wash his face, dipping up double handfuls of water and blowing vigorously into them. This, his habitual method of washing, produced gurgling noises so suggestive of marine animals that my grandmother had once remarked, ‘To hear our tinker wash his face is almost as good as a trip to the seaside.’

On this morning, these aquatic blowings brought vividly to her mind the Harry Kent whom she had learned to like and respect during the week past. And as these remembrances flooded her thoughts, the sound of his drunken singing, the sight of him sprawled on the ground beneath her window, faded into the unreality of a bad dream. An illusion of two tinkers arose suddenly before her — the one pleasant and industrious and likable, the other a good-for-nothing drunkard. It was very confusing. The speech she had rehearsed faltered on her lips.

But even in this moment of forbearance she was able to detect Temptation — a temptation to avoid her Duty. For if removing the spectacle of a drunkard front the eyes of one’s children was not a Duty, it was hard to say what was. . . .

Still, as she watched the little tinker at his ablutions this temptation grew to alarming proportions. My grandmother found her weakness grave enough to demand a justification. So, postponing the remarks that she had prepared for craven ears, she set out to search for one. This search led her shortly to the tinker’s appetite for pepper and vinegar. Might this not represent a struggle against the shackles of his curse? What if he choked himself with vinegar and singed his throat with pepper in an attempt to still the cravings of the Demon Rum? She had heard of such things. And certainly it was difficult to know when one should avoid evil and its appearances, and when a helping hand should be extended to a struggling soul. . . .

My grandmother perceived, then, that she needed time for further thought.

All through breakfast and the hours that followed it, through a long, reverberating sermon in the church, and through the noon meal, she kept stirring at her problem. And, through these same hours, my grandfather watched the struggle that reflected itself on his wife’s face. He saw the corners of her mouth alternately straighten to firmness and soften out again, and he fell to speculating on the nature of her final decision. It became a kind of guessing game. By dint of concentrating on it, the question as to whether Harry Kent would be asked to leave the farm, or whether he would be allowed to stay as long as he wished, expanded to an issue of great moment.

When he saw the corners of his wife’s mouth straighten, he thought, ‘Well, he’s done for,’ and experienced a regret and disappointment out of all proportion to his real liking for the tinker. And when he saw determination fade from her face and thought, ‘Saved again!’ he felt a relief that would have been no greater had Harry Kent been rescued from some grave danger. My grandfather knew that these feelings were distorted and magnified, but, instead of deflating them to normal proportions, he prodded and encouraged them; for he enjoyed the excitement and suspense in which they plunged him.

IX

On fine Sunday afternoons, it was customary for those who lived on my grandfather’s farm to disport themselves — within the limits of Sabbath restraint — on a lawn that lay beneath the shade of two huge pine trees. So, on that Sunday with which this story is concerned, my grandfather carried from the house a rocking-chair for his wife and a rocking-chair and Bible for himself. He derived unfailing pleasure from reliving the conquests and vanquishments of Israel, from basking in the clear, exultant music of the Psalms, or from inspiring himself anew with the philosophy of the New Testament. It was a pleasure he reserved appropriately for the vacant hours of Sunday afternoon. So on this day he sat thumbing leisurely at the pages, waiting for some phrase to leap up, seize his interest, and draw him into a story. But the phrase did not appear, for his real interest lay in the tinker, and his eyes kept wandering from the Bible to take new bearings from his wife’s face.

She was sitting very near him with her eyes lowered on the turf. And she was rocking not at all, which he considered a bad sign.

Harry Kent was seated at the base of one of the pine trees, his back resting against the trunk. He was intent on his carving, and at last the block of wood in which he had invested so much time and patience had taken the shape of a little human figure. It was almost completed. Aware of this fact, Gracie had placed herself directly in front of her friend, the better to absorb each scrape and twist that his knife point made. She was flushed with eagerness, an emotion that showed itself also in strained attention and an unusual silence broken by such recurring words as ’Is it done now?’ ‘How soon will it be done?’

Considerable time dragged by in this way. My grandfather grew restive in the suspense of it, and looked for something with which to break the silence. Browsing through the book of John, he came upon the words: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.’ These struck him with inspired fitness, so — starting a few lines above them to disguise his motive — he began to read aloud. There was nothing unusual in this; he often shared favorite passages with any audience that happened to be within the range of his voice. When he had passed the object of his reading he paused to note its effect upon his wife. Raising his eyes, he met a cool, level gaze that stripped his strategy quite bare and somehow raised the imputation that even the Devil can quote Scripture to his own uses.

’Now I’ve made things worse,’ my grandfather thought. ‘I might have known better. He’ll get his walking papers, all right.’

Silence came upon them again. At length the tinker looked up from his work and asked, as though he had just thought of it, ‘Was I noisy last night?’

My grandmother stiffened in her chair. ‘It wasn’t the noise we objected to.’

Harry Kent looked relieved. ‘I’m glad of that. Sometimes people tell me I’m a mite noisy when I’ve had a drop too much.’ He began to whistle and returned to his carving.

My grandmother said, ‘It seems a great pity that such a fine clock maker as you should take to drink.’

The tinker blushed and replied modestly: ‘Thank you, ma’am. But I ain’t so fine — there’s lots better clock makers than me.’

My grandmother’s time of indecision wound to an end. She knew suddenly that her Duty lay along the lines of salvation. ‘They say,’ she stated, ‘that there are cures for that.’

Harry Kent approached the information uncertainly. ‘Cures for havin’ drink, you mean?’

‘So they say.’

He puckered his face and thought about it. ‘It ain’t a cure for havin’ it I’d want, ma’am. It’s a cure for not havin’ it!’ He laughed, and beamed at her with engaging frankness.

Something leaped and turned over in my grandfather’s chest. Had the fellow no tact at all? Could n’t he see from her face? Now if he’d only open up and tell a sad story about how hard life had used him . . .

But Harry Kent chose instead to enlarge upon his unorthodox theme. ‘Drink’s not for most folks. Drink’s for them that’s all alone, and them that has something to forget about.’ He paused, and concluded with real emotion, ‘Why, ma’am, drink’s the best friend I’ve had for twenty years!’

X

It took a little time for my grandmother to absorb the full significance of this confession. The idea of a man going willfully through life arm in arm with the Demon Rum was overwhelming.

My grandfather saw the blank amazement on her face, heard a faint gasp. Well, it was all over. This was the end. . . . Slowly his eyes turned to the tinker, but he saw only his little daughter Gracie. She had come to her feet and was jigging up and down, a small wooden figure clutched in both hands. ‘Is it really done, now? Is it mine?’

‘It’s done. Yes, it’s for you.’

The child wheeled and ran to her mother. ‘Look what Harry made! It’s mine! Harry made it!’

My grandmother found the little figure thrust into her hands. She glanced at it tentatively, and her eyes caught on it. For a long time she sat looking at it, while her husband saw such mixed emotions appear on her face that he could make nothing of them. At length she said, without looking up: ‘You told me once about your little girl back in England. Is this . . . ?’

‘That’s her,’ the tinker replied. ‘That’s the way she looked when I saw her last. . . . Oh, I make all sorts of things, but this is what I make the most. It always sells the best, too. . . .It’s just like I remember her.’

His face was alight with an inspired self-assurance — the face of an artist, eager for any criticism provided only that it be favorable.

My grandfather left his chair to bend over his wife’s shoulder. He saw the figure of a little girl. She was holding a doll in her arms, her face turned down to it. There was life in the sweep of the whittled lines — in the hair that spilled across one shoulder, in the dress folds and fingers, in an apron askew. One stocking, escaped from its fastener, was coiled down around an ankle. Even the laces of the shoes were there, all carved from a block of wood.

The tinker received the praise for which he waited. ‘I’ve seen a good deal of wood carving in my time,’ said my grandfather, ‘but never anything to match this. You’re a real artist, Kent.’

My grandmother’s mind had filled with those domestic tragedies which she had earlier invented to account for the tinker’s separation from his little daughter. The old clock was there, too — the long desire its repairing had fulfilled, the childhood memories it renewed for her.

As she gazed at the little image, it seemed, somehow, to raise one of its small whittled hands and wipe the sin of its maker from her conscience. She could not explain it. She knew only, with a sense of swift relief, that her Duty had discharged itself unspoken, and left her with no impulses save those of human kindliness.

She looked up to meet the eyes of Harry Kent and said, ‘It’s wonderful.’