The Old Tobacco Shop

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH MR. HANLON MAKES A GREAT IMPRESSION

Freddie found no one in the Tobacco Shop, so he knocked on the door of the back room, and it was instantly opened by Mr. Littleback himself; but a Mr. Littleback so resplendent that Freddie hardly knew him.

The suit of clothes which Mr. Littleback wore was beyond any doubt a brand new suit. The ground color of it was a rich mauve, if you know what that is; not exactly purple, nor violet, but somewhere in between; and up and down and across were stripes of brown, making good-sized squares all over him; it was extremely beautiful. His collar was a high white collar, very stiff, and it held up his chin in front like a whitewashed fence. His necktie was of a pale-blue satin, with little pink roses painted on it, yes sir, painted! mind you, by hand! It was not one of those troublesome things that come in a single long piece and take you hours before the glass to twist and turn over and under before you can get them to look like a necktie; no indeed; it was far better than that; it was tied already, by somebody who could do it better than you ever could, and when you bought it, all you had to do was to put it on; fasten those two rubber bands behind with a hook, and there you were; perfect. As to hair, the hand of the barber was yet upon him; his hair, parted on one side, was of a slickness which his own soap never could have accomplished; on the wide side, it lay flat down over his forehead, and there gave a sudden curl backward, like the curve of a hairpin, but much more graceful; it is only the most studious barbers who ever learn to do it just right. There were creases down the arms of Mr. Toby's coat and down the front of his trouser-legs. A yellow silk handkerchief showed itself, not boldly, but quietly, from his breast pocket.

As he let Freddie in, and in doing so turned his back to Aunt Amanda, she screamed and cried out:

"Toby! Look behind you! Merciful heavens!"

Freddie, in the midst of his admiration of the magnificent creature, saw him whirl about and look behind himself in alarm. His aunt pointed at his coat and said sternly, "Come here."

Freddie saw on the back of Mr. Toby's coat, near the bottom, as he whirled about, a little square white tag.

Mr. Toby backed up to his aunt, and stood before her, trying to look at his back over his shoulder, while she took her scissors and clipped the threads by which the white tag was sewed to the back of his coat. She held up the tag; it had numbers printed and written on it.

"Now ain't that just like you, Toby Littleback," she said, "going out with your tag on your back, with your size on it and your height and age, too, for all I know, for anybody to see that you've got on a splittin' brand new suit right out o' the shop. If you'd 'a' gone out with that on your back, I'd 'a' died with shame right here in this chair. Ain't you even able to dress yourself?"

"By crickets, that would 'a' been bad," said Toby, considerably upset. "However, you caught it in time, so there ain't no use cryin' over it. Good-bye, Aunt; come along, Freddie, or we'll be late."

"Ain't you goin' to wear a hat?" said Aunt Amanda. "I declare the man's so excited he don't know what he's doing."

"Blamed if I didn't come near going without a hat," said Toby. "Here she is."

He produced his hat from a cupboard in the room, and put it on. It would have been a pity indeed for him to have gone without it. It was a white derby; yes, a white derby. It was the kind of a hat which was known in that city as a "pinochle"; pronounced "pea-knuckle" by all well-informed boys. With the mauve suit and the hand-painted necktie and the whitewashed fence, the white derby set him off to perfection, especially as he wore it a little towards the back of his head, so as to show the loveliest part of the plastered curl of his hair on the forehead. Aunt Amanda could not restrain her admiration.

"You'll do now," she said. "I don't know that I ever seen you look so genteel before."

Toby, in the embarrassment of being considered genteel, put his hands in his trousers pockets.

"Take them hands out of your pockets," said Aunt Amanda sharply, and he took them out in a hurry.

"Now, Freddie," she said, "come here a minute, and I'll set you to rights."

Freddie stood before her knee, not very willingly, and she buttoned his jacket from top to bottom, and put his cap squarely on his head.

"Now you'd better be off," she said.

"Good-bye, Aunt, and I wish you were going too," said Toby, his hand on the door-knob.

"Good-bye, Freddie," said she.

"Good-bye," said Freddie.

"Good-bye what?" said she.

"Aunt Amanda," said he.

When they were out in the street, and she heard Toby lock the shop door behind him, she took out her handkerchief and blew her nose; her cold was evidently worse, because she blew her nose several times; and then, tucking her handkerchief away in her dress, she put her head down on her arm on the table, and cried.

The first thing Freddie did, as they went up the street, was to put his cap back again on the back of his head, and the next thing he did was to unbutton every button of his jacket, from top to bottom.

The little hunchback was in a great hurry, and he dragged the Little Boy along by the hand so fast that he could hardly keep up. As they hurried along, several naughty boys, observing Mr. Toby's white derby hat, called after him, very rudely, "Pea-knuckle! pea-knuckle!" But Mr. Toby paid no attention, and dragged Freddie along faster than ever.

"We don't want to miss any of it," said Mr. Toby. "Hurry up, boy."

They did not have far to go; only four or five "squares." They stopped before a great grimy brick building with a great wide entrance-way.

"Here we are," said Toby.

"What does that say up there?" said Freddie.

"Gaunt Street Theatre," said Toby. "Hurry up."

Freddie hung back before a signboard on which was a picture of a slender man dressed up in white clothing, very tight, with red and black squares on it; he was leaning against a table; his head and face were a dead white, except for red eyebrows, and a red spot in each cheek, and he had no hair, but a smooth dead-white skin from his forehead to the back of his neck. The peculiar thing was, that his head was on the table beside him, and not on his neck. Freddie pointed to the writing underneath the picture, and said:

"What does that say?"

"Hanlon's Superba," said Toby, pulling him along. "Hurry up! We'll be late."

Mr. Littleback went to a little window in the wall, inside the entrance-way, and spoke to a man in there, and evidently asked permission to go in, and evidently got it; and they did go in, up a flight of stairs, and found themselves suddenly among thousands and thousands of people, as it seemed, all sitting in chairs facing the same way, in a vast house lit up by gas light so that it was almost as bright as day; and Toby and Freddie sat down in the very front row of these people, and looked down over a railing in front of them on the heads of thousands and thousands, as it seemed, of other people, all sitting in chairs facing the same way. Everybody was facing towards a straight wall at the other side of the house, which had pictures painted on it. At the foot of this wall, in a kind of trench, there was a man at a piano, and there were other men with fiddles big and little, and still others with brass things, and they were all playing a tremendous tune together, but just after Toby and Freddie had sat down, they stopped playing and Toby nudged Freddie with his elbow, and said:

"Now, then, young feller, what do you think of this, eh? Just you wait! Keep your eye on that curtain!"

He had no sooner said this than somewhere in the house somebody gave a piercing whistle between his fingers, and in a minute there was such a racket that it was impossible to talk. There must have been people above them, and they must certainly have all been boys; for from up there Freddie heard a clapping of hands and a stamping of feet, all in a regular time, which spread to the whole house, and in the midst of it the boys up there began to shout and call and whistle, and in a few minutes there was such a hubbub as only boys could make, with whistling between the fingers leading the riot. Toby nudged Freddie again with his elbow, and to Freddie's surprise began to clap his hands and stamp his feet with the rest; and as Freddie thought he ought to be polite, he clapped his hands, too, though he did not know very well what it was all about.

Suddenly the men in the trench at the foot of the painted wall struck up again, and that quieted the other noise for a moment; but only for a moment; someone whistled through his fingers, and in an instant those fiddlers might as well have been sawing away at their fiddles out at the Park, for all you could hear them; and right in the midst of it all, while Freddie was trying to shout the word "Peanuts" into Toby's ear, suddenly the lights went out and you could have heard a pin drop.

"Now then! now then!" whispered Mr. Toby, in great excitement. "Now you'll see! Watch the curtain! It's going up!"

From down there in that dark trench came the sound of a soft twittery kind of music, and at the same time the painted wall that Freddie had been looking at was rising! going up! And it went on up and up out of sight into the ceiling, and there behind it, in a dim light, there behind it, mysterious and fearsome and delicious, – Well, there behind it was Fairyland. Just Fairyland.

I can't describe it to you. Freddie never forgot it. If you haven't seen Hanlon's Superba, in some old Gaunt Street Theatre or other, on a Saturday afternoon, with the galleries wild with boys, you have not lived. When Freddie tried to tell his mother and his father about it that night, it was such a whirling mass of wonders and glories that they could not make head nor tail of it. It is useless to speak of the Fairy Queen in her glittering white, coming to the rescue in the nick of time with her diamond sceptre, or of the horrible demons, or the trouble and excitement they made for everybody, or of the beautiful young lady who – and such leapings and twistings and climbings and tumblings as no mere human beings with bones in them could ever have performed – it is no use; it is best not to try to describe it. But there was one part which, although it may seem to you the most unlikely thing in the world, really had a good deal to do with Freddie afterwards. There was the same man whose picture he had seen outside on the signboard; and he could climb straight walls and leap through high windows and tumble across floors in a way which passed belief; but there was one thing he could not do; he could not talk; he never spoke a word from beginning to end. Once, after having escaped from a parcel of wicked red imps, he sat down, tired out and starved to death, before a table loaded with food, and he commenced to make a hearty meal; but just as he was about to sample each plate it disappeared, vanished, completely out of sight, right under his nose. His distress was pitiable, and Freddie thought it cruel of everybody to laugh, as everybody did. On his plate were sausages, and he nearly got them; but just as he thought he had them, they actually jumped off the table and ran along the floor and up the wall; and the poor man had to climb the wall after them, which he did like a cat, and even then he never came up with them; he was terribly disappointed; and to finish off his miseries, at last a wicked creature with a sword came up behind him, as he was leaning his head down on the table in despair, and cut off his head before your very eyes; really and truly cut it off; there was no doubt about it; the head was on the table and the poor man was in the chair; Freddie was terrified, and clutched Mr. Toby's arm. But when the wicked murderer had gone away, back popped the head onto the dead man's neck, his eyes opened, he grinned from ear to ear, and there he was on his feet, skipping and tumbling, as lively as ever; and at that Freddie and all the others in the house roared and shouted and clapped their hands.

"Is that Mr. Hanlon?" whispered Freddie into Mr. Toby's ear.

"Reckon it is," said Toby, too excited himself to pay much attention to Freddie.

But it could not last forever. Even the peanuts, which Toby bought for Freddie between the first and second acts, were all gone, and the curtain was down for the last time, and the crowd crushed through the doors, and Mr. Toby put on his white derby hat.

They were in the street, and the speechless Mr. Hanlon was a thing of the past. Freddie did not believe that he would ever see that dumb and loose-headed man again; but in that he was mistaken, as you shall see.

Toby left him at the corner near his father's house.

"What I say is," said Toby, "three cheers for our growing-up party!"

"Yes," said Freddie, "and three cheers for Mr. Hanlon!"

CHAPTER V

THE CHINAMAN'S HEAD

For a long time afterwards, Freddie dreamed at night of a hunchbacked man whose head came off and popped on again, and wicked red demons who chased a poor man with a white face who tried to cry for help and could not speak a word, and of a Chinaman's head without a body, smoking a long clay pipe. In the daytime, he thought a good deal about the people he was now acquainted with: Mr. Toby with his white derby hat, Aunt Amanda swallowing pins, the sailorman from China, Mr. Punch and his father, Mr. Hanlon with his head on the table, the Churchwarden smoking his churchwarden pipe, and the two old Codgers, one so sly and the other so beggarly; but that which occupied his mind more than anything else was the Chinaman's head on Mr. Toby's shelf.

Freddie was older now, and as time went on it might be thought that he would have grown accustomed to all these strange things; but he had not; far from it; he thought about them more and more, and most of all about the Chinaman's head and the magic tobacco. He really could not get that Chinaman's head out of his mind. Here was magic just within reach of your hand, and you were told that you mustn't touch it. You might as well have Aladdin's lamp in your bureau drawer, and be told to keep away from the bureau; even parents ought to know better than to expect such a thing. Anyway, what harm could just one or two little whiffs do? You needn't smoke a whole pipeful, if you didn't want to. However, Mr. Toby would not be pleased, and Freddie did not intend to do anything to displease Mr. Toby. Still, it did seem a pity, with such a chance right over your head – Oh, well, he would think no more about it; he fixed his mind on other things; he thought especially about a hymn they sang nearly every Sunday in Sunday-school; it was a great help; he knew it by heart, and it went like this:

He resolved he would never think about the magic tobacco again; he went to sleep saying over to himself, "Yield not to temptation," and dreamed all night about the Chinaman's head, and thought about it all the next day.

In order to get it out of his mind, he called on Aunt Amanda. It was late in the afternoon; he sat on his hassock and watched Aunt Amanda sewing. Mr. Toby was in the shop, waiting on customers. Freddie watched for a long time, and then said:

"What are you doing?"

"Basting," said Aunt Amanda.

"I thought that was what you did to a turkey," said Freddie.

"So it is," said Aunt Amanda.

"That isn't a turkey," said Freddie.

"No," said Aunt Amanda, "you baste a turkey with gravy."

"That isn't gravy," said Freddie.

"It's different," said Aunt Amanda. "You see, I have to sew this up with needle and thread, and – "

"You sew up a turkey with needle and thread, too," said Freddie.

"But that's different," said Aunt Amanda. "You couldn't baste a turkey with needle and thread, and you couldn't baste dress-goods with gravy – "

"Why not?" said Freddie.

"Well," said Aunt Amanda, "well, you see, they don't do it that way; it's different; it ain't the same thing at all; it's like this; when you baste a turkey – "

"Have you ever had any children?" said Freddie.

Aunt Amanda put her hand to her heart suddenly, as if she had received a shot there, and caught her breath; then she looked out of the window, and then round at the wax flowers on the table, and then at the door, and she really seemed to be thinking of running away. But she was too lame to do that, and she at last clasped her fingers together tight in her lap, and looked hard at Freddie. He was gazing at her calmly, waiting for information.

"No," said Aunt Amanda, "I have never – had – any – children."

"Why not?" said Freddie.

"I have – never – been married," said Aunt Amanda.

Freddie thought about this for a moment.

"Didn't anybody ever want you?" said he.

"No," said she, "nobody – ever – wanted – me."

Freddie was puzzled.

"But you're nice," said he.

"That ain't enough," said Aunt Amanda.

"What else do you have to be?"

"You have to be pretty."

"Weren't you ever pretty?"

"I thought – so – once, but – but – I must have been mistaken. I guess I never was."

Freddie thought it over, and announced his decision seriously.

"I would want you, anyway."

Aunt Amanda stretched out a trembling hand to him and ran her fingers through his hair; then she threw both her arms around him and pressed him against her knee. He was much annoyed. He was afraid she might be going to kiss him; but she did not; instead, she pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose.

"How many children were there that you didn't have?" said Freddie, to change the subject. Aunt Amanda did not understand this at first, but she finally saw what he meant. What did he mean? you may say. What he meant was – well, it is perfectly clear, but it is hard to explain. Anyway, Aunt Amanda understood him. "Three," said she. "Bobby was the oldest, and Jenny next, and James was the littlest one."

"Did they all go to school?"

"Oh dear no. Only Bobby. And once he played hookey, and was gone all day, and didn't come home until after dark, all muddy. I was terribly worried. He was a very mischievous boy, but he was his – mother's – own – "

"Did he play marbles for keeps?"

"Yes, but he went to Sunday-school just as regular, and liked it, and – "

"He liked it?"

"Yes, of course, and he always took good care of Jenny – . She had little yellow curls. They went to Sunday-school together hand in hand, and he didn't even mind her carrying her dolly with her; she wouldn't go without it. He was so careful of her at street-crossings. She loved her dollies. She used to pretend that James was one of them."

"Did James like that?"

"Not very well, but he put up with it for quite a few minutes at a time. He couldn't be still very long. But he was pretty lonesome when Jenny had the measles."

"I've had the chicken-pox. Did Bobby know how to mind his P's and Q's?"

"He didn't mind anybody very well. Once I had a note from his teacher, and it said – "

But Freddie never learned what sin Bobby had committed in school; for at that moment the shop door opened, and Mr. Toby thrust in his head and said:

"Just got to get around to the barber-shop right away this minute; can't put it off no longer. Won't be gone twenty minutes. Freddie!"

"Yes, sir," said Freddie, standing up.

"Do you think you could look after the shop for twenty minutes, while I'm gone?"

Now Freddie did not know it, but this was in fact the most important question that had ever been put to him in his life. Everything depended on his answer; if he said no, we might as well stop this story right here; if he said yes —

"Yes, sir," said Freddie.

"All right. If anybody comes in, just tell 'em to wait."

Freddie left Aunt Amanda, sitting very still, and gazing out of the window, with her hands folded in her lap, and followed Mr. Toby into the shop.

"All right, sonny," said Mr. Toby, "make yourself comfortable. I'll be back in a jiffy. If anybody comes in, you tell 'em to wait." And with that he went out of the door and up the street. Freddie was left alone in the shop.

Everything was very quiet now, for it was beginning to be twilight, and all the people seemed to be indoors. He knew he ought to be going home, but he had promised to mind the shop, and it would never do to leave before Mr. Toby came back. The street door and the door to Aunt Amanda's room were both closed. He sat down on the chair by the front window and looked out across the bull-dog's head. He thought of Bobby and his little sister in Sunday-school, and that led him to think of the hymn that did him so much good:

He sang that tune to himself for a while, and he found himself singing other tunes, and finally one which began:

Tobacco! There was a world of tobacco on those shelves. Smoking tobacco, and churchwarden pipes. He strolled around behind the counter, and let down the back of the show-case. There were the churchwarden pipes; he selected one and took it out. It tasted cold and clammy when he put it in his mouth, and he wondered what it would taste like with tobacco in it. He brought the little ladder and got up on it, facing the shelves, and to his surprise he found himself looking directly into the slanting eyes of the porcelain Chinaman's head. He stood there gazing thoughtfully into those eyes, and singing to himself the verse which was always such a help to him:

It was growing a little darker now, and he could not examine the Chinaman's head very well without bringing it closer. He took the head in his hands, lifted it from the shelf, got down off the ladder, and sat down on the floor with his back against the counter; and while he was doing this he hummed to himself the next part of his tune:

He put the head on his knees, and took off the Chinaman's little round cap, which proved to be in fact a lid. He put his hand inside and drew out a good fistful of absolutely black tobacco, fine and powdery like coal-dust; he held it to his nose, and it smelt very sweet, in fact much like brown sugar. He wondered if it would taste like brown sugar through the pipe-stem; and humming quietly to himself, "Each vict'ry will help you," he poured the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. He was disappointed, on sucking in through the pipe-stem, to find that there was no brown-sugar taste at all. Of course, the only way to give tobacco any taste was to light it; he reached up and got a match off the counter behind him, and sitting down again struck the match on the floor. It made a very pretty glow in the twilight, and he watched it as it burned away in his fingers; it would be burnt out in another second, so, humming to himself those ever-helpful words, "Yield not to temptation," he put the pipe in his mouth and touched the lighted match to the tobacco.

It is painful to have to tell these things, but it can't be helped; for the consequences were so strange, and so important to Freddie and his friends, that —

Anyway, he lit the pipe and drew in a long breath through the stem. He nearly choked to death. Smoke got into his nose and his eyes and his throat, and he coughed and coughed; but he remembered the words, "Fight manfully onward," and he determined that he would not give up so soon. He stopped coughing and pulled again at the pipe; this time he did not swallow the smoke, but blew it out of his mouth as he had seen it done a thousand times. He gave another pull, and blew the smoke out again; it did indeed taste like brown sugar; it was extremely pleasant; he puffed again and again. He was astonished that he could have produced so much smoke in a few whiffs; there was quite a cloud over his head. He gave another puff, and when he blew out the smoke the white cloud above him was so thick that he could not see through it. It began to settle down on him. He put the Chinaman's head on the floor, and looked up into this cloud.