Tandy - Page 2

on the arm. "Drink is not
the only thing to which I am addicted," he said. "There
is something else. I am a lover and have not found my
thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough
to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction
inevitable, you see. There are few who understand
that."

The stranger became silent and seemed overcome with
sadness, but another blast from the whistle of the
passenger engine aroused him. "I have not lost faith. I
proclaim that. I have only been brought to the place
where I know my faith will not be realized," he
declared hoarsely. He looked hard at the child and
began to address her, paying no more attention to the
father. "There is a woman coming," he said, and his
voice was now sharp and earnest. "I have missed her,
you see. She did not come in my time. You may be the
woman. It would be like fate to let me stand in her
presence once, on such an evening as this, when I have
destroyed myself with drink and she is as yet only a
child."

The shoulders of the stranger shook violently, and when
he tried to roll a cigarette the paper fell from his
trembling fingers. He grew angry and scolded. "They
think it's easy to be a woman, to be loved, but I know
better," he declared. Again he turned to the child. "I
understand," he cried. "Perhaps of all men I alone
understand."

His glance again wandered away to the darkened street.
"I know about her, although she has never crossed my
path," he said softly. "I know about her struggles and
her defeats. It is because of her defeats that she is
to me the lovely one. Out of her defeats has been born
a new quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call it
Tandy. I made up the name when I was a true dreamer and
before my body became vile. It is the quality of being
strong to be loved. It is something men need from women
and that they do not get."

The stranger arose and stood before Tom Hard. His body
rocked back and forth and he seemed about to fall, but
instead he dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and
raised the hands of the little girl to his drunken
lips. He kissed them ecstatically. "Be Tandy, little
one," he pleaded. "Dare to be strong and courageous.
That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to
dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman.
Be Tandy."

The stranger arose and staggered off down the street.
A day or two later he got aboard a train and returned
to his home in Cleveland. On the summer evening, after
the talk before the hotel, Tom Hard took the girl child
to the house of a relative where she had been