Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1887 — GERTY’S TRAMP. [ARTICLE]

GERTY’S TRAMP.

BY NATHAN D. URNER.

I. I hardly think that Gerty’s Tramp, as we called him, would have been tolerated around our place for a week, save for the all-powerful protection which she persisted in according him. But, as it was, we gradually grew accustomed to him, and when he suddenly developed professional skill as a tinsmith—as ho did one day by the merest accident —in sealing up tomato cans, preserve jars, and the like, besides tinkering the kitchen ware, he became of real use (o us, and at last recognized as a fixture at The Maples, as my snug villa on the Hudson was called. His name was Ichabod Flotsam, as ne told Gerty soon after being taken under her wing. After that we mostly called him Ike, except the little girl herself, who always addressed him or spoke of him as Ichabod with much seriousness of manner. Gerty, I would say, in passing, is our only child; a precocious, old-womanish, wise little maid of twelve summers, but with the ways and manners of many an experienced housewife of thrice her years, and whose slightest wish is mostly law with both her mother and myself. On the summer evening when Ichabod Flotsam first shambled up to our gate, begging for food and employment in a thin, far-away voice, he was the most unattractive specimen of the genus tramp, of the listless, knock-kneed, bow-backed, furtive-eyed variety, it had ever been our misfortune to meet. We gave him plenty to eat and a place in the bam to sleep. Thereafter, as he grew fixed upon us, I had a cot rigged up for him in a disused tool-room over the coach-house, and in a short time his lugubrious personality became almost as familiar and twice as homely as the pump or the clothes-wires. “Ichabod has been very saving of his Assets, and not without a purpose,” said she, gravely. “He is about to send to Pittsburgh for a carpet-bag containing valuable papers. The Demon of Debt compelled his leaving it there last spring. He has also written and mailed an Epistle, whose address he concealed from even Me.” The carpet-bag arrived by express in due course of time. Thereafter, for a week or more, according to Gerty, Ichabod’s leisure hours were employed in reading and rereading the letters which it contained. “The documents must be of Vast and Mysterious import, ” said Gerty one day. “Ichabod has twice admitted me to his Apartment while he reads them. They are all in one handwriting, which I judge must be a Female’s. I think a Crisis must be at Hand.”

On the following afternoon a letter came for Ichabod, in my care. It was in a fashionable envelope, and the address was in a woman's hand. That evening he asked leave to go on the following morning to G , to remain perhaps till Thursday. I readily granted it, at the same time paying him a few dollars owing to him, and expressed the hope that his letter had brought him good news. “I ain’t sure yet if it’s good or bad, sir,” said he; “but it’s made an appointment with a —a certain party I’m very desirous of meeting.” He left for G on foot at an early hour in the morning, and I myself quitted home shortly after, intending to .pass the day with a friend at H , the river landing, which was about as far to the north of us as was G , the railroad town to the west—a trifle over six miles. In the middle of the day, during my absence, my wife and daughter were visited by a comely, bright-eyed, business-like lady, who had driven from H in a hired coach, and who rather astonished them by saying: “I am Selina Graves, a near relative of the young man, Ichabod Flotsam, whom you have been kindly employing for some time past. I had an appointment to meet him at the steamboat landing this morning, but he was not there. I drove right here, thinking he might be sick.” “There must be some mistake about the place of meeting,” said my wife. “Ichabod set out this morning for the railroad station at G , to meet some one from whom he received a letter yesterday.” “Dear me, how unfortunate!” said Miss •Graves; “though maybe it was my fault—writing one thing and meaning another. I could almost vow that I appointed to meet him at the river, instead of the railroad. Hut I must drive after him, poor fellow! How far is it to G , pray? and have you some one who will direct the hackman •which road to take?” “Certainly. It is only about the same distance you have already driven,” said my wife. “Hut will you not take off your things and rest a little?” Tne osier was politely declined, though the visitor seemed suddenly overcome, and applied her handkerchief to her eyes. “Ichabod has had a terribly hard time of it,” said she, recovering; “and I made so certain of seeing him at once that this disappointment is very trying. Pray,' bear with me a little, madam.” And then, suddenly starting up, she exclaimed: “By the way, my cou-in was 'to bring with him a number of letters which he has lately received, and, fiom what I remember of his forgetfulness, he has as like as not forgotten them. I wish I could be certain. They are very important as affecting us both. Indeed, without them I hardly think I can effect the delicate task

of reconciliation—between him and others that has brought me here.” “Ichabod took nothing with him but his Walking Stick, ma'am,” interposed Gerty. “The letters make such a large Package that he could not have put them in Ins pocket without Betraying their presence. Besides, he would have told Me, for I am his Guardian.” Miss Graves, not being familiar with our daughter’s unique style, at first stared, and then laughed. “Do take me to his room at once,” she cried, impulsively, “that I may carry the letters to him, if he has forgotten them!” My wife hesitated. But she had been rather prepossessed by her visitor, and finally directed Gerty to conduct Miss Graves to Ichabod’s room. This was accordingly done, the lady stopping on her way to the coach-house to tell her hackman to find out the proper road to G , for which she would be ready to set out in a few moments. Upon reaching Ichabod’s room she, according to Gerty, had rummaged the young man’s carpet-bag in a very summary manner, possessed herself of the letters, and then sprung hastily into the hack and driven off, without so much as a “Thank you” or “Good-by” for my wife.

This was the story they had for me when I reached home that evening. Ichabod relumed on Thursday morning, having passed two days and nights in anxious waiting at the G tavern, and looking distressed and haggard. My wife found him in the family sittingroom. He was leaning his head in his hands wearily on the table, as if exhausted from a long journey or despiaring over some mystery he would not reveal to us. She told me of his return at once. “You do not look as if your visit had been altogether satisfactory, Ichabod,” said I, after we had all given him kindly greeting. “No, sir,” he faltered, twisting his finger in his hat-band in a nervous way he had. “I—l didn’t meet the—the party I expected to see.” “Bet someone has been here looking for you in your absence, “I said; and forthwith began to tell him the story of Miss Graves’ visit. He listened wide-mouthed, with a stunned, dazed expression, until I came to tell of the visitor’s demand for his letters, and of Gerty conducting her to his room, when he interrupted me with an inarticulate cry, as though stifling, but managed to exclaim: “The letters, sir! you—you didn’t give ’em to her?” Nothing was left me but to reply in the affirmative. “Tricked again!” almost howled the young man, tearing his hair with savage fury. “Tricked again, and by that beautiful fiend! Oh, fool that I’ve been!” He staggered wTdly out of the house, but fainted away before he could cross the grounds. With a feeling of deep commiseration, I had him conveyed to his room and sent for the physician. The doctor looked grave, and predicted a fever, which soon set in. We made the patient as comfortable as possible, furnishing his room with whatever could be spared, and inducing the coachman and gardener to take turns at nursing him—though Gerty insisted on superintending everything pertaining to the sick chamber—and in a few days Ichabod was convalescent, though very feeble.

11. As our patient began to mend he seemed quite proud of the transformation that had been effected in his room, and to find himself installed there in any easy chair before a pleasant grate-stove which had been provided, for it was November now, and the mountain airs were raw and chilly. He was sitting thus by the fire, with his sad eyes taking in the landscape, when Gerty and I called to see him on a certain morning he had set as the occasion upon which he would tell us his history. “I’m so weak, sir,” said he at last, “that I’ll have to tell my story by fits and starts, I reckon. My father is still in business in Buffalo, and he must be mighty rich by this time. Leastwise, he’s always been a foremost manufacturer of tin and japanned ware—right at the top of the heap—and I never knew him to waste anything on himself or his household. My mother died when I was a baby, and I’m an only child. I never was smart, and, not having had much kindness, grew up from being a dull, slow-motioned boy, to being a rather dreamy, dumb-headed young man, when my father, after putting me through the tin-shops, took me into his factory office. I’m not sure whether I was a natural-born fool, or if the queer, lost kind of feeling that now and then took hold of my head was due to an accident that befell me when I was a little shaver, when I came mighty near being drowned, and was only fetched back to life at the last moment. My father took the natural-bom view of it. Anyway, he was tearing hard on me. He used to cuff me around to his heart’s content whenever anything went wrong, and was nevertired complimenting me with such such epithets as ‘Jackass,’ ‘Land Tortoise,’ ‘Small Hopes,’ and the like. I suppose he was about right. Anything like mathematics was always a knotty puzzle for me, and I was unable to touch the accounts without botching ’em. “At last my father gave up trying to make a clerk of me, and sent me out as a traveling agent to solicit orders among the country towns. At this sort of thing I succeeded much better. The open-air exercise of traveling from place to place, by boat, car, buggy, or wagon, agreed with me first-rate. My head got more settled, and, as I was gentle and unassuming, I mostly made friends of the country folks. Indeed, I did so well at the start that even the governor said in my hearing after my return that ‘there might be some go in that lunkhead son of his, after all;” at which I'really began to feel encouraged. “But about this time there came to live with us Selina Graves. She was a distant cousin of mine, suddenly left without parents or friends in a far-away down-East village. My father took it into his head to befriend her, with the idea that she might in time take the drudging-place of old Mrs. Lump, our housekeeper, who was growing more rheumatic and useless every day. But, shrewd as the governor was, he was out in his calculations for once in his life, at least. | “Selina was a very handsome and spirited woman, and Bhe possessed even more force of character than good looks. The old man was soon as helplessly under her thumb as I was. lustrad of taking Mrs. Lump’s placo. Selina hired another servant, besides retaining tne old woman, and soon installed herself as the capricious mistress of the establishment. f

“My father rebelled at first, but finally gave in to her in everything. As for me, I was overjoyed with the change from the outset. We began to enjoy the good things of life, like other well-to-do people. In a few months Selina and I were secretly engaged to be married—secretly, you know, because the governor didn’t seem to relish our taking up with each other. But that brief period was the only happiness I have ever known. Selina pretended to return my passion as well as she knew how—she isn’t of the warm or clinging sort, by the way—while I—oh! I can’t tell you how I loved her.” Here the narrator paused, and looked more intently out on the river, as though to concentrate his thoughts. “Don’t try to tell us, Ichabod, don't try,” said Gerty, in her most solemn'and owlish vein of emphasis. “Such sentiments are Sacred, and should be cloistered in inmost Silence.” “Thank you, Miss Gertrude,” said Flotsam, gratefully. “Well, as I was a-saying, things went on this way for a good many months, during which I made several business trips, only to hurry back to love and joy. I could often see that the governor didn't like it. He never made any decided objections, however, save to grow cross and restless when Selina and I were much together. Still, I don’t think he ever imagined there was any actual engagement between us.

“At last I set out on the most extensive trip I had yet taken. Here all my new misfortunes began. All the wickedness came out in this way. “My father had a mortal horror of paying out ready cash where it could be avoided. Therefore, I was accustomed to paying my traveling expenses with orders for small amounts drawn by him on dealers owing him money in the towns and villages through which I passed, the same being carried to their credit on our books at the time the orders or drafts were given to me just before setting out. On this last trip I had given to me as many as fifteen of these orders. They wero in various amounts, ranging from five to twenty-five dollars. On the night before I left home they were handed to me by my father in our parlor in a sealed package, as was his custom, and the next morning 1 set out, intending not to break the package till I should require to make use of the orders. Everything went smoothly till I was passing through Vermont, having made use of nearly all the orders, when I was seized for forgery, my father himself having telegraphed for my arrest. Four of the drafts had found their way back to him, and been pronounced forgeries. “I was carried back to the New r York town where the fraudulent orders had been cashed, and cast into prison. Being perfectly innocent of crime, I of course asserted as much indignantly, but was fully committed for trial. Then a gentleman I had never seen before —but who must have been acting for my father, I have since thought--became bail for me, and soon after my release urged me to flee to some foreign country, and never return. I angrily refused. Then, far from quitting the country, I set out for home at all speed. “My father was reported sick in bed when I appeared at the office, where the bookkeeper and others gave me the cold shoulder and huffed me generally, as though making no question of my guilt. Then I hurried to the house. Selina received me in the parlor with embraces and tears. She professed entire belief in my innocence, but besought me not to go up stairs to mv father, whom she represented as being still furious against me and obdurate in his conviction of my guilt. She begged me to fly, promising to communicate with me regularly as I should pass from place to place, to send me money, and likewise to plead constantly wiih my father in my behalf. She overcame me with her tears, her kisses, and her seemingly agonized solicitude lest I should again be carried off to prison, which, she said, would break her heart. In a weak and evil hour I consented to become a fugitive. “Then before my departure she begged me

to return all the love-letters she had ever written me, for we had corresponded almost daily during my long absences. Now, in some of her letters to me, Selina had mixed up her expressions of endearment with certain speculations upon the benefit that would come to us in the event of my father’s death (‘the old ogre’s death,’ as she once or twice put it,) in a way that had shocked me not a little, and which I had only been able to explain away by considering them as mere thoughtless words on her part, springing out of a natural impatience at our being so crossed and hampered in our desires. However, I could not have complied with her request just at that moment, had I wished, for the letters were in my valise, which I had left at the station. “She then exacted a promise that I would send them to her from the first halting place in my wanderings, gave pie the few dollars she had in her purse, and separated from me in an apparent agony of tears. “But, as I was skulking out by a back way, old Mrs. Lump slipped something into my hand and whispered in my ear: ‘ I overheard all that passed between ye in the parlor, Don’t trust the sly miux, Ichabod, an’ never send her back no letters nor nothin’.’ I hardly understood her until I was on board a Western train, when I opened the package she had given me—it contained fifty dollars, like as not all her savings, poor soul!—and fell to thinking over what she had whispered. From that time I was filled with doubts and fears regarding Selina, sometimes fancying her loving and sincere, and again suspecting her of treachery and double-dealing. The old giddiness came back to my head, and hardly ever left it, making me unfit for steady work. But I stopped at nearly all the towns between Buffalo and Pittsburgh, making hard but vain attempts to get work at my trade; and, soon after arriving at a cheap tavern in Pittsburgh, broken down and penniless, I fell ill wiih a fever, and was carted off to a charity hospital. “When discharged, I was very weak, and the chronic roaring in my ears had given place to a stupid, vacant feeling that still further incapacitated me. Selina had at first written regularly, sending me small sums, and always urging me to return her those letters; but now she wrote no more, and all my appeals failed to elicit a response. Moreover, cold weather was setting in, no work could be had, and the city streets were filling up with tramps of all sorts, good and bad* poor men really wishing work but unable to get it, and the lazy, mean lot who even prefer tramping to honest labor. My scanty luggage was kept by a tavern-keeper for the two days’ board I had had before falling sick. “Ah, sir! ah, Miss Gertrude; there is little more to tell that would interest without disgusting you. I became a tramp, and

passed a terrible winter, roaming from place to place in the West and Southwest, sometimes in jail as a vagrant, sometimes begging, least-times working, .but always tramping, tramping on, sleeping anywhere and nowhere, with half-a-meal to-day and no meal to-morrow, in a dreary round of daily misery such as no one who has never tried it can ever imagine. In the spring I resolved to make my way East again. I managed to steal enough rides on freighttrains to carry me from Memphis to Philadelphia. But they were so hard on tramps there that I started for Buffalo on foot. It was on my way there that I stopped at your gate, and you took me in—God bless you all! As I began to pick up strength my head got steadier, and I even began to hope that Selina had remained true to me, after all. I wrote to her, and at the same time sent to Pittsburgh for my letters, as you know. My intention was to return them to her, if she should convince me of her good faith. The rest you know. Her letter, making an appointment to meet me at G , was only a trick to get me out of the way while 6he came to The Maples by river, instead of rail, to obtain the coveted letters; for without them she would not have dared to complete her designs.”

Ichabod had for some time been speaking in a very weak voice, and now, as he concluded, the tears were trickling, while he ground his teeth in imgptent rage. “But what were her designs?” I asked. For answer, he handed me the newspaper he had been holding, and pointed to a marked item for Gerty and me to read. It was the notice of his father’s marriage with Selina Graves, at a date only two days after her surreptitious visit to The Maples. “I wish you had just one of those forged papers still,” I exclaimed, “together with a remnant of Selina’s writing.” “Why, I have both!” said Ichabod. “But what can you w’ant with them?” “Give them to me, and I will tell you.” Under his directions Gerty investigated the rifled carpet-bag, and took from between the lining and the leather two papers, which she handed to me. “How did you chance to retain this draft, if fraudulent?” I asked. “It was the only one of the forgeries never innocently used,” said Ichabod. “As it got loose in my pocket, the detectives missed it when they searched me. Why do you ask, sir?” “Simply because I am something of an expert in these matters,” I replied, “and I am convinced that the same haud wrote the name affixed to it and these other names (of the same person) which appear in this letter. Truly, Ichabod, Selina’s letters to you could have compromised her in more ways than one! Her criminality equals her perfidy!” That evening, after turning the matter over in my mind, I wrote a long letter to Icbabod’s father, briefly summing up the details that had been given me, and boldly offering my deductions as to the author of the poor young man’s wrongs and misfortunes. Indeed, my zeal carried me so far that I mailed this forthwith, without consulting Ichabod. I did not speak of it, indeed, till the second day following, when I was able to show him his father’s letter in reply. The letter was brief and business-like, but not without an undeicurrent of deep feeling. Its concluding sentence was as follows:

“My wife and I start eastward by tonight’s express, and will take the liberty of meeting my son at your place early the next morning, when, if he dares to confront my wife (as she avers he will not do), and shows me the papers substantiating the charges you have presented, I will engage to avenge his wrongs, and make amends for his sufferings by every means in my power.” Ichabod received this intelligence at first with much excitement, but soon settled into an apathetic condition that I could not understand. “Perhaps I was hasty in acting without consulting you,” said I. “Oh, no, sir!” said he. “It’s all one in the end. You are very kind.” The next morning, soon after breakfast, Mr. Flotsam, accompanied by his new wife, arrived from G . He was a fiorid, hard-faced old man, on perhaps the shady side of sixty, whose personal resemblance to his son was not striking, though perceptible. He handed his wife out of the hack with much politeness, though it was evident that a coolness had already come between them; while the woman’s comely face wore a look of anxiety which not even her effrontery, which was considerable, could wholly conceal. She greeted my wife and daughter with a cordiality that was not returned, and said, lightly: “To think of all this fuss about those foolish letters of mine that I was so anxious to burn, ma’am!” “You didn’t say you wanted them for that purpose, or you wouldn’t have got them!” said my wife, tartly. “However, will you not have breakfast?” “Certainly not, though many thanks to you, ma’am,” interposed Mr. Flo sam, with a stern glance at his wife. “Will you conduct us to Ichabod, sir?” he added, turning to me. We all set out together across the grounds, but were intercepted by the coachman with the startling intelligence that Ichabod had unaccountably disappeared. The man had helped him to dress an hour before, and had left him sitting at the window, looking moodily out over the water, but had shortly afterward returned to find the room empty. Ich ibod had put on his hat and shoes and wandered out. The coachman and gardener had since been looking for him without avail. “Why, the poor fellow was hardly able to stand alone!” I cried, pushing forwaid, followed by the rest. We stood irresolute for a moment in the tenantless room, when Mrs. Flotsam turning triumphantly to her husband, exclaimed with indecent exultation: “There, Benjamin ! did I not tell you the worthless fellow would not dare to face me with his absurd charges? My wife jgave her a look, Gerty drew back from her with open contempi, while Mr. Flotsam merely opened the window, and looked out upon the crisp, autumnal morning. , “There is a man down there by the river making signs to us,” said he at last. It was the gardener beckoning us to go to him. We lost no time in obeying, Tom, the coachman, hurrying on before. “I’m afraid there’s no good of looking any further for Ichabod, sir—leastvise not above water,” said one of the men, as he came up; and he exhibited Ichabod’s hat and coat which he had just found at the river’s edge, while aIBO pointing to some tracks in the sand, as of some one who had deliberately walked out into the depths. A dead silence ensued, for there was I room for but one inference.

Then Gerty began to cry, and Mr. Flotsam turned his face toward the rocks, as though to master some unusual agitation. When he seemed to have somewhat recovered I joined him, ventured upon a few words of explanation, and slipped into his hand the letter and the forged order, which I had kept in my possession. He thrust them in his pocket without examination, pressed my hand, and we all went slowly back to the house. My wife was trying to console Gerty, whose grief was excessive. Selina had kept her eyes lowered all the way up from the strand, and now got into the hack, which was still at the door. Mr. Flotsam took me apart and said in a low voice: “Sir, if you will be so good as to use every means to recover the—the body, and send it to me, I will pav all expenses, besides esteeming it a great favor.”

I was giving him my promise to comply with his wish, when Selina’s shrill voice was heard exclaiming impatiently from the coach: “Come, Benjamin! We shall be too late for the train!” He wheeled upon her with a face convulsed with sudden fury and disgust, and raised his walking-stick menacingly. But he managed to control himself, and only gasped out, in a hoarse, choking voice: “Proceed to the station alone, madam; I shall be more circumspect in my choice of company hereafter.” I shall never forget the startled look that suddenly leaped into that woman’s face—a look betokening the sudden realization of what she had staked and what she had lost. “What—do—you—mean, Benjamin?” “This, madam: I shall delay my departure from G for the noon express, which will enable you to reach home three hours before me. You’ve the world before you. Don’t let me find you there on my return.” The last words were pronounced with a slow, threatening intensity. She fell back out of view as though he had struck her, the driver, at a signal from the now childless old man, whipped up his team, and the intriguante disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again by the man she had cheated and desolated, as I afterward learned. Mr. Flotsam declined the offer of my coach. As ho set off on foot down the wild mountain road, leaning heavily on his cane, and with a rounder back and weaker step than before, I could not help commiserating him deeply, little as he may have deserved it. Ichabod’s body never was found, and there has therefore always remained a sort of mystery connected with his fate. Indeed, my wile, on this account, sometimes inclines to the opinion that Gerty’s Tramp was not so honest and guileless as he seemed; though Gerty herself is never at a loss to defend the memory of her luckless protege. “I, for one, can fully Appreciate Ichabod’s conflicting Emotions,” she will say. “He was inspired by a Sublime Forgiveness that would not permit him to Destroy the Babylonianess who had wronged him. And perhaps it is Best for All that he has set out on the Long Tramp which must find an ending at the Gates of Bliss.”