The Falling of a Leaf

E had always been an errant coward, and he was intensely human under the surface, and his blue eyes were uncommonly fine; otherwise he seemed a fair type of the average tramp. No piece of his ragged clothing fitted him: his shoes were not mates; he wore a yard of hempen cord for a belt; he wore his battered black felt hat wrong side out to make the rim stay up. His unkempt hair and beard were of the brown chest nut burrs. He didn’t remember a father or a mother; if he had ever been named he had forgotten it—when it became necessary for him to have a name he used Breamer because he thought it sounded good. As a child he had been cuffed about by older people in cavernlike alleys; as a boy and a man he had been a wanderer. Always he traveled alone, shunning the society of other tramps; and he carried a tiny bag of asafoetida suspended from his neck to keep away illness.

When the spring was turning into summer, he began to move northward; Florida’s sun had become entirely too warm for him, and there were mosquitoes. It was in a little town that nestled among the foothills of Tennessee’s mountains that he made bold to call at the home of an old-fashioned minister-doctor for the purpose of finding out whether there was anything serious connected with his cough, shortness of breath, fever in the afternoons and sweating at nights. The minister-doctor was plain. He advised the tramp that he could live four months by going high into the big hills and staying there—provided he could get a daily diet of milk and eggs; he also solemnly advised him to make peace with the hereafter.

Breamer thanked the practitioner and set his worried face toward the piled up, dim-blue mountains that formed the eastern horizon. He was a coward, and he wanted every day of life he could get. The hereafter was a thing he hadn’t thought of much; and now that he was forced to think of it he was afraid. There was something terrible, something not to be understood, something black and mysterious about it. He realized his littleness and his utter unimportance as he had never realized it before.

“Me goin’,” he said to himself, “matters no more’n a leaf fallin’ to the ground.”

He wanted to go to the highest mountain, for that meant more days of life to him. The mountain folk directed him to Clingman’s Peak, an elevation that afforded a view of five counties.

At mid-afternoon of a fine day in late July he reached the summit and looked down into the lakes of fleecy clouds in the coves below. His uncouth and uneducated spirit leaped within him at the magnificence of the view, he tried to throw out his chest, and his fine blue eyes sparkled. There was something like holiness up here above the world and its madness, above everything.

“Damn!” said Breamer.

“What?” came a voice from the scrubby laurel behind him.

The tramp turned slowly. He saw a well-dressed youth of eighteen, whose intelligent face bore lines of sadness and loneliness.

“I dunno,” muttered Breamer.

“I think I understand,” smiled the youth. His voice had a musical Southern accent that was very engaging. “All this below. I felt it, too, when I first came up here. I’m not calloused to it, you understand, but—but I have other things to think about. I’m mighty lonesome, you know. I’ve been up here four weeks—”

“For your health, same as me!” Breamer interrupted. “I’ve got four months; how long’ve you got?” He tapped his chest significantly.

The other’s eyes widened. “I—I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve got a little hut out on the crest of the mountain a hundred yards, and I’ve got plenty of things to eat. I go down and buy food from the mountain people about every ten days; if you’re hungry, I’ll give you something to eat. Are you? You look it.”

“Got any eggs and milk?” asked Breamer. “The doctor said I must eat eggs and milk. How the devil am I to get eggs and milk! I’m a damned tramp, y’ know. I was so bad scared I never thought o’ how I was goin’ to eat; I just started for the hills, a lettin’ the future take care of itself, as I’ve always done.”

“I’ve got eggs.”

“Please lead the way, Bo. Excuse me for callin’ you ‘Bo.’ I’m used to callin’ anybody that. It’s a road name.” Breamer smiled a little. The two of them, so widely different—as different as the East is from the West, went to the hut. The Southerner apologized for the poorness of his temporary home, and the tramp said it was all right. Breamer ate for the first time that day.

Charley Abbott felt a great sympathy for this derelict the stream of life had thrown at his feet. He gave Breamer his hut, and built for himself a low shelter of hemlock boughs; he gave Breamer a blanket and a few articles of clothing, and he furnished Breamer food. In spite of the high, dry air, the tramp continued to fail rapidly in health. He began to ask young Abbott questions about the other life. Abbott, deeply touched, told Breamer all he knew to tell; then the derelict began to square himself with the hereafter—the black and mysterious hereafter. It was heartbreaking, it was pitiful. His going mattered so little to anybody except himself; it mattered no more than the falling of a leaf.

Why had he lived? He had not asked to come into the world; he had not asked for the responsibility of keeping the immortal spark in the house of clay. He felt rebellious for a while; then he listened to Charley Abbott’s gentle persuasion and resigned himself with a certain vague hopefulness. To him Abbott was a god; he worshipped Abbott; no other person, in all his life, had even been a friend to him.

One afternoon in August Breamer missed his youthful friend. He searched over the crest of the great peak, and failed to find the boy. Breamer walked with a cane now; he limped down the western side of the mountain, during the sunset hour, and found Abbott sitting on a stone, with his head bent to his hands. He went closer and saw lying beside the youth the photograph of a very lovely middle-aged woman, and she was smiling.

Breamer picked up the photograph and looked at it with his fine, hollow blue eyes. He knew little of Abbott’s world, or of the ages of women; but he knew this woman was one beloved by his friend, and therefore she was a creature divine. He leaned forward and touched the boy on the shoulder. Abbott looked around quickly, startled; then he smiled faintly and looked toward the golden summer sun.

“Sweetheart?” inquired the tramp.

“Mother,” answered the youth. “Infinitely better than any sweetheart, or anybody else. You’ll agree with me there, of course.”

“I don’t know, Charley.”

“You don’t know!” surprisedly.

“I don’t know nothin’ about ’em. I never had none, Charley. But they must be somethin’ elegant to have. Lots o’ time I’ve wished I had one. I mightn’t ’a’ been a coward like I’ve always been; and I mightn’t been the nothin’ that I am. They sure love a feller, don’t they, Charley?”

“They’d die for you, go to the end of the world for you, even suffer ages of torment for you!” Abbott went to his feet and faced the haggard Breamer. “They’d do anything for you! Oh, you’ve missed the most of life!”

“Is it fair?” breathed the tramp.

“Is what fair?” Abbott wanted to know.

“You’ve had one, and I didn’t. I ain’t wishin’ you didn’t have none, y’ understand; I’m just askin’ is it fair for one not to have any and an other to have one. Is it?”

“I—I don’t know,” and Abbott shook his head.

“But I ain’t goin' to question nothin’,” muttered Breamer. “I’ve done squared myself with the future, and I want to keep square with it. Anyhow, I reckon it’s better now that I ain’t got one. If I had one. I’d have to die and leave her. Charley, you’re sure, are you, that I’ve got forgiveness for not bein’ anything at all in the world?”

“Lord yes!” cried the boy; and he turned his saddened eyes toward the half of the sun that remained above the horizon.

“I’m glad to hear you say that. Charley. Because you’re educated, and you know what you’re talkin' about. It makes a difference. Don't it? It sure does. Say, Charley, I’m sorry for you. Because when you go you’ll have to leave her. You never told me what was the matter with you. How long do you expect to live, Charley?"

Abbott turned his gaze downward. “I must ask your pardon, old man,” he said deprecatingly. “I deceived you—rather, I allowed you to deceive yourself. I didn’t come to the mountains for my health. I came here to keep out of the Georgia State Penitentiary—the law wants me, and I’m in hiding! And I’m not guilty, either. But the circumstances would convict me if I were caught, and I can’t risk being caught. I wouldn’t mind it so much if I could get letters from home; but the authorities are watching the mails—”

He broke off abruptly. A glad light flitted across the tramp’s face; he was glad the one friend of his life was not doomed to die as he was.

“What was it you was accused o’ doin’?” he inquired, looking toward young Abbott with idolatrous eyes.

“Killing a man, that’s all!” He shrugged his slender shoulders. “It was like this:

“There was only my mother and me. Among the things my father left us there was a silver-mounted revolver, which we treasured much. One night a thief entered our home and carried away this revolver and a diamond ring and a purse with a little money in it.

“Now there was in my town, living not far from us—we lived in North Atlanta—a certain rich man whom I have always hated because he swindled my father out of a fine tract of cotton lands when I was a child. The thief who stole the silver-mounted revolver, guided by a mean Fate, entered the house of the rich man on the same night, was surprised, killed the rich man and left the weapon lying beside him. I learned of it barely in time to get away. I knew I didn’t dare to stay there and let the law catch me; I knew I couldn’t risk standing trial with that evidence against me. And so I came here, and that is all.”

“It’s enough,” muttered Breamer. “And so she don’t know where you’re at! And I’ll bet you she’s worried nearly to death about you. Charley, I think I’d better go down to Atlanta and tell her you’re all right. Don’t you think I had?”

The youth straightened, and his nether lip jerked a trifle.

“How I thank you for that!” he cried; and it sounded loud in the stillness of the everlasting hills. “But you couldn’t. You’re too weak, my good friend. You’d never make it. If I had money to pay your railroad fare—but I haven’t—I’m pretty close to broke. After the interest in the thing has died down—next summer, perhaps—I can steal in home and see her.”

“I believe I could make it,” Breamer declared.

“No!” Abbott’s eyes took in the tramp’s thin figure, his hollow cheeks, his haggardness. “No! Tramps are beaten and cuffed, and it’s a rather long journey to Atlanta. But I’m grateful to you. I assure you I’m grateful to you.”

The sun had entirely hidden itself. Breamer looked toward the lakes of shadows that were fast gathering in the coves below.

“It’s getting late, Charley,” he said. “It’s a good half a mile to the top. Hadn’t we better go?”

“Yes, we’d better go.”

Together they went to the summit.

An hour later the full moon came up. When it had almost reached its zenith the tramp rose from his bed of poles and stole to the doorway of the hut. He could hear Charley Abbott’s deep breathing, and he knew the lad was sound asleep. Breamer went soundlessly to the shelter of green branches, and there stood looking down upon the saddened boyish face. Beside Abbott lay the picture of his mother; Breamer stooped and took it up with both hands. In the light of the moon the two faces seemed much alike, somehow. Again Breamer’s fine, hollow blue eyes shone with the light of idolatry. A moment later he thrust the photograph inside the shirt Charley had given him; went back to the hut for his hat and the cane he had come to use; then he made his way toward the foot of the mountain men call Clingman’s Peak.

He was going to Atlanta. He could find her by the picture—he could be sure that way. He was going to tell her that Charley was all right. What did it matter if he shortened his days by this extremely hard undertaking? His going was no more than the falling of a leaf. Charley had said that he was square with the hereafter, and Charley knew! He felt good in his heart.

Breamer was twenty days on the journey to Atlanta. Trainmen seemed more watchful and more opposed to accommodating tramps than ever. All the cunning that used to win him long rides now was futile. When he slipped from the side of a car loaded with machinery to the ground in the outskirts of Atlanta, he was so weak that he fainted. It was broad daylight when he came to. He crawled to a narrow ditch filled with muddy water and bathed his face and hands, that he might appear a little more respectful to Charley’s mother; then he moved slowly toward North Atlanta.

It proved to be a more difficult search than he had thought. She found him the next day at almost sundown. He had stopped against a gatepost of granite, and was peering up a gravel walk that led to a broad verandah beyond a setting of gnarled trees that hid the upper part of a fine old house. Things were dim; they swam before his eyes; he felt that he must fall, that he must die without accomplishing the one mission of his worthless life. He clutched the granite post with both hands and leaned his face against it. It was then that the little old gray woman came down and caught him by an arm.

He knew her instantly. “It’s you!” he muttered hoarsely. “At last, it’s you—and Charley’s all right, ma’am! Yes, ma’am. He’s up in Tennessee—hidin’ on top of a big mountain—named Clingman’s Peak. And he’s—all right!”

“Thank God!” happily. “You’re ill! Come—let me help you to the house; a doctor lives next door, and we’ll call him in to see you.”

She helped him to a comfortable chair on the verandah, and sent a servant for the doctor who lived next door.

And while they were waiting for the physician, Breamer told her, a few words at a time, of his life, of his illness, of his meeting with her son. The woman went pale as a full realization of what he had done broke up on her mind. She knew that he had shortened his little lease of life much; that he was very near to the iron door of death, where all men are equal, where the billionaire is a pauper. Impulsively, lovingly, gratefully, she bent and pressed her lips to his grimy forehead. Breamer’s spirit fluttered up in response, and a joy too great to be understood filled his heart. What a reward it was! The one kiss he had ever known! Oh, if he could do something else for her—if he could give back her boy to her—if he would swear a lie with his dying breath he could do it! But that would destroy his peace with the hereafter!

Charley’s mother took one of his hands and caressed it. There was a quick step on the gravel walk, and a moment later a tall, gray man appeared at his side.

“Too late, old sawbones—I’m all in,” gasped Breamer. “Listen. A few months ago—I stole a pistol from this house—and killed a man—in another house! I—come—back to—confess. Hold up—my right hand—there! I swear it, so—help—me—God!”

Breamer’s spirit went out to eternity a perjured soul for the sake of that which he had never had. A maple leaf as yellow as gold fluttered downward and lay still in Breamer’s limp, open right hand; but neither the woman nor the doctor saw anything unusual in that; the leaves were always falling.