Story of a Worthless Fellow

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1980, 19 March 1906, Page 6

Story of a Worthless Fellow

By /OHM K. AAFTERT.

IP THESE are any sufficient reasons why a married man should go into < army, LouisTappan had them. Hit fire years of married life bad been a cumulative failure and he knew it. iWhat was more important, however, hie young wife knew and charged the whole score of their mutual disappointment to him. Their one child. •now a teething- baby, hid not their chafed spirits nor brought together their wandering ht-arts. Mrs. iTappan waa a good little woman, so good that she neither sympathized with nor understood Louis' puerile .ways, his passions- for excitement, his slavery to habits that were neither necessary to her happiness nor warranted by his slender means, even in the days when he earned a good salary es bookkeeper for the Buena Vista bank. Her father owned the little town where they livad, but he was one of those stern infn who, having made their own way in the world, would discourage and resent the icita thai they should give aid to others in the Ssiht for independenee or wealth. When Louis married Luey Herding he admitted to himself that the old bank president was "a groueh," but in those days his self-confidence was not shaken by the prospect of working out a way for himself and Lucy. For a year he carried out his good resolutions, and even won a measure of Mr. Harding's crabbed regard. During thai year the young people were fairly happy. The entering wedge of misery came when it dawned on Lucy that Louis didn't have any religion and couldn't "get" any. When he heard that she "had him prayed for" he lost his temper and they had their first quarrel. After that his descent was rapid. They drifted further and further apart. The boy (he was only 23) lost his grip on good resolves and slid along the smooth and winsome current of his old, free habits. The row with Harding didn't come till the second year, but after that Louis' place in his fa-ther=in-law's bank became precarious. The old man warned, threatened and even persecuted him in the mistaken belief that he could scare the young husband back into the narrow path. But Louis didn't scare worth a cent. Long before the baby came he was in debt, neck and crop. His wife was getting morose and quarrelsome, and his creditors were beginning to talk about "going to the old man." Even that didn't move the rascal. He began to think that he was the martyr of an unhappy, marriage, that Lucy didn't ■understand him and that her father was determined to break up a union that he had never approved. When a man gets to coddling himself with such assurances he's in a bad Way. And Louis was in a bad way even before the grocer, who was a deacon in Harding's church, made what Louis called "a holler" about his bill. That settled the young man with Papa Harding. A month's notice, a fchreat of starvation and a mumbled imprecation were what the bookkeeper got with his next pay envelope. Af t*r he was out of hi* position he made A few feeble efforts to find work; he made a trip to Chicago, and in a weak l«*«y determined to take his wife and snake a home for himself elsewhere. But somehow the world seemed to have suddenly grown very narrow and sf&ish. His comrades of dissipated days and nights couldn't help him further *han to "hope the old man will come round all right," and buy another Brink. Harding didn't come round. He ignored his son-in-law when they met t>u the street, and only when the child {was born did he insist on taking charge tot Lucy. After she was taken to the •Earding home Louis* heart began to fail him. #He discovered that he waa *ond and apt to grow fonder of the lehild—a boy. Broken in spirit and poekei, he swore he'd mend his ways and find work. But there was none. He went to Chicago, met an old companion, forgot his* troubles for a night and a day and came to his dreary aenses in the blue, ill-fiUtaff uniform ot • '•rookie." • ? He had a vague idea that h* Would "win his way" as a soldier in the war Hfhieh had just begun; visions of com-

Ag home a stern and famous officer—" taptain at least—crowded hia boyish nind, and -with his. hopes there rainglad, stinging sweet, the sense that at last he might have brought home to Lucy and her people a realization of tha fact that he was not all bad. He even imagined the old "grouch" pitying him, and in the thought was the grim satisfaction that now at least h* had martyred himself. He swore softty to himself that he would never drink nor gamble again, and when he left for Chickamauga with his regiment he had not fallen from graoe. A ''scribbled note on a postal cainl telling Lucy that he was "gone into the army" was all they heard about him at Buena Vista for three years after that. The Hardings read all the war news with eager curiosity at first, hoping to get some news of Louis, but their interest waned again and again, to be faintly renewed with the actual beginning of the fight. But there was not a word about Louis, not even his name among the wounded, sick or dead, much leas notice of his gallantry or promotion. Not until the Cuban and earlier Philippine campaigns had dwindled down into intermittent skirmishes in far parts of the islands did there come a hint that he was yet on earth. Then just a line in the list of "dead from disease:" "Tappan, private company K, Tw«Dp ty-third infantry; dysentery." And there ended the career of Louis Tappan, the worthless young man of Buena Vista. • * * The station agent at Culver, ten miles below Buena Vista on the Louisville & Nashville, 6aw the last train "hesitate" at hie door, and was getting out his key to lock up when a well-dressed, swarthy young man with a small bag dropped off the rear coaoh and approached him. "This is Culver, isn't it?" "Yes, sir." "Do you know where Mrs. Tappaas, Mrs. Louis Tappan, lives?" "Don't live here, leas>twayi not in town. I know 'em all. No Tappan* and nothing like that name round here. I'm pretty sure." "Moved here from Buena Vista," suggested the stranger, wistfully; "moved up about a year ago." "Oh, hold on! Tappan—oh, hername ain't Tappan no more. She's married to Bill Chesebrough. They was married at Buena Vista a year ago, and come up here to live. Sure I—" The stranger coughed a few times, looked up and down the tracks, and then: "Her first husband, Patten, latfen —" "Tappan," murmured the uneasy visitor. "Tappan, he died in the Philippines. He was a no-good bum and deserted her and the kid, so she ups and marries Bill Chesebrough. Bill is rich, owns all them quarries over to Hopeton. I'll show you where they live; take you right past,th<> A ,vt r." "No-ou," umaed the visitor, half aloud, and fumbling in his pocket, "I guess I won't go up; I—what did you say her first name was, Lucy?" "Yes, that's her. She was Miss Lucy Harding, daughter of old 'Skinflint' Harding, down to Buena Vista, richer'n hell and meaner still. He—" "Yes, I know," was the interruption, "but you're going past the house, her house?" "Yep." "Would you mind stepping in with this?" handing over a photograph. "It's a picture of Tappan for the boy, his boy. You see, we, Tappan and I, were in the same regiment, and when he got sick, he a-sked met the boy, you know; h ; > daddy's picture. I promised to give it to him." "Oh, the Tappan kid; the ona by her first husband, hje—" "Yes, that's the one. How is he? Does he look like —" "Oh, that one died the first week they come here, diphtheria got him. He just—" Butthe newcomer was out of earshot before the station agent could finish. Down the tracks he went toward the tast, walking like a fury, with his head down and his little bag swinging in the dim light of the yard lamps till the night swallowed him. The station agent whistled a note of wonder, looked at the photograph he yet held in his hand, saw it was of a young soldier standing bravely at salute, and turned it over. On the back was written: "For Louis Tappan's little boy." ' The station agent shovtd it into his overcoat pocket. "I'll bet that chap was a bug," he mused, as he walked toward Chesebrough's house, "but I guess I'd better give the picture to Mrs. Chest)—. N-o-o-00, come to think of it, I guess I'd better not. Tappan is dead, the kid is dead and old Bill Chesebrough is jealous as an old maid." He tore the photograph into small bits after another look and flicked the pieees into the air ns he walked homewards. —Chicago Record-Herald. Crab a and Pouched Ess«. Toast rather thin slices of bread a nice brown; butter slightly and cover with half an inch of crab meat; place in the oven and heat thoroughly. Have some eggs nicely poached in rings, one for each slice. Lift from the water onto the crab meat and serve very hot. — Washington Star. A Matrimonial Bn«r*~**tlort. London newspaper men are afraid that American women journalist* are going to crowd them out of business. Why, asks the Chicago Record-Herald, don't they execute a coup by marrying the lady journalists? fteaatsK Foed O** Way. Shiploads of potatoes are arriving at New York from Ireland, Scotland and Belgium. Evidently, says the Chicago Record-Herald, all the world doesn't propose to get all its food from Uncle Sam all the time.