Golden Stories
V >> Various >> Golden Stories"I think you are a very good and kind man, Mr. Levy," she said solemnly.
"I'm afraid not, little missie," I told her; "but there are some a good
deal worse; and some of them have an inkling of what may be in that box,
if I'm not mistaken. They've been inquiring after it."
"Oh!" She started. "There were two horrid men who seemed to be watching
me when I came in here. I half thought I remembered one of them: an old
man with a stoop. I believe I must have seen him aboard my father's
ship. I felt rather nervous--because it's such a dark alley." She looked
anxiously at the door.
"It is a bit dark," I agreed. "Would you feel safer if I saw you to a
main thoroughfare?"
"I should feel _quite_ safe then," she declared, and she smiled like a
child does. "I really don't know _how_ to thank you enough for your
goodness to me."
I called Isaac to look after the shop, and put on my hat and walked off
with her. She was a bright little creature to talk to, and when she was
excited she looked very pretty. I found that she was going to walk all
the way, so I said that I would see her right to her road. She seemed
pleased to have my company, and jabbered nineteen to the dozen. It was
such a change to have someone to talk to, she said, because they had
moved and knew nobody here. She told me that she tried to earn money by
teaching music and by painting. I said that I was badly in want of a few
little sketches, and she promised to bring some for me to look at.
"I would ask you to accept them," she said, with a flush, "if we weren't
so poor."
"If it weren't for that," I said, "I should ask you to have some tea
before I leave you, without fear that you would be too proud to accept.
It would be a pleasure to me. Will you?" We were just outside a good
place, and I stopped.
"It is very kind of you," she said, "but I don't think--I suppose I _am_
foolishly proud." She laughed an uneasy laugh.
"You mustn't let your pride spoil my pleasure," I told her, and grinned
at myself for talking like a book. "You can repay me when you find your
fortune, if you insist; but I hope you won't."
She looked up at me quickly.
"No," she said. "I couldn't treat your kindness like that. Thank you,
Mr. Levy."
So we went in, and I ordered tea and chicken and cakes. The poor little
thing was positively hungry, I could see; and when she mentioned her
mother the tears came into her eyes. I understood what she was thinking,
and I had some meat patties put up in a package. When I left her at the
corner of her road I put the package into her hands, and boarded a 'bus
with a run before she had time to object. She shook her head at me when
I was on top of the 'bus; but when I took off my hat she waved her hand,
and laughed as if she was a great mind to cry. It's hard for an old
woman and a young girl when they're left like that.
I had the corners of that ditty-box off as soon as Isaac had gone for
the night. The lid was double, as she had said. Between the two boards I
found a portrait of an elderly woman--her mother, no doubt--and three
photos of herself; two in short frocks and one with her hair in a plait
when she was about seventeen. She looked stouter and jollier then, poor
girl. There was one other thing: a half sheet of note-paper. "Memo in
case of accident. Money up chimney in best bedroom. Geo. Markby, sixth
of April, 1897."
I started to change my clothes to go there and tell them; but just as I
had taken off my waistcoat I altered my mind. The money wouldn't be in
the rooms where they lived then, but in their old house; and that was
probably occupied by someone else now, and even if the money was still
there she would not be able to get it. It was no use raising her hopes,
just to disappoint her. I would try to get the money before I spoke, I
decided.
She came at eleven the next morning, and timidly produced a few little
sketches, mostly copies of things. I'd like to say that they were good,
but I can't. It was just schoolgirl painting, nothing else. She wanted
to give me some, but I wouldn't hear of that. She had sold a few for
eighteenpence apiece, she said. I said that I wanted four to frame for
ships' cabins, and I'd give twelve-and-six for them, and that would
leave me a fair margin. I was afraid to offer more, for fear she would
suspect me; and as it was she was dubious.
"You're sure you _will_ get a profit?" she asked.
"You ask anyone round here about me," I said. "They'll soon tell you
that I look out sharp for that. They'll look very nice when they're
framed; and I make a good bit out of the frames, you see. Now about this
ditty-box. I've got on the track of one that might turn out right; but
there's a difficulty that I'd like to put to you. Suppose that there's
no money in it, only a clue to where your father hid it. Wouldn't that
be likely to be somewhere where you can't get at it? On board his ship,
for example? Or in your old house?
"If it's in the house," she said, "I could get in. At least it was empty
a week ago. Mother heard from an old neighbor. But perhaps it would be
better to get someone else to go, and say that they wanted to look at
the house?" She glanced at me doubtfully.
"You mean me?" She nodded slowly. "You are afraid that I might keep some
of it?"
She stared at me in sheer amazement.
"Why, of course not!" she cried. "I was only thinking that it was a long
way to ask you to go; and that I must not impose on your kindness."
"Give me the address," I said, "in case I should want it any time."
She gave me an address in Andeville. Then I changed the subject. I
walked part of the way home with her. Then I had my dinner and went off
to Andeville.
It was about an hour by train. By the time that I had found the agent
and got the key it was growing dusk. I was some time arguing with him,
because he wanted to send a man with me to lock up afterward. "We've had
tramps get in several times," he explained, "and they've done a lot of
damage; torn up the flooring and such senseless mischief." It occurred
to me directly that the tramps were some of the men who had come after
the ditty-box.
I persuaded him at last that I'd lock up all right and he let me go
alone. I soon spotted what would be the best bedroom. I fumbled up the
chimney and lit a match or two, and found a heavy canvas bag and a
smaller one that rustled like notes. I was just looking for the last
time when I heard soft steps behind me. I glanced round and saw two men
before the match flickered out. The light caught the face of the
foremost. It was the old man with the goat's beard. Then I was struck on
the head and knocked senseless.
It was about six when I came to and lit another match and looked at my
watch. The bags were gone, of course. I never saw them again or the two
men. It was as well for them I didn't!
It was no use telling the agent or anybody. I never thought about that,
only what I was to do about the girl and her mother. I didn't think very
much about the mother, if you come to that. It seemed to me that I'd
made a mess of it and lost their money, and I couldn't bear to think of
the girl's disappointment. What upset me most was that I knew she'd
believe every word of my story, and never dream that I'd taken the money
myself, as some people would. She was such a trusting little thing,
and--well, I may as well own up that I liked her. If I hadn't been
fifteen years older than she was, and felt sure that she'd never look at
a Jew--and a much rougher chap then than I am now--I should have had
serious thoughts of courting her. And so--well, I knew that a hundred
pounds was what they hoped for; and it didn't make very much odds to me.
I took out the paper that night and put in twenty five-pound notes, and
did it up again. A bit of folly that you wouldn't have suspected me of,
eh? Then you think me a bigger fool than most people do! At the same
time, it was only fair and honest. I'd had her money and lost it, you
see.
I was going to take the chest to their lodgings in a cab the next
morning, but she called in early to ask if I had found it. I had an
unhappy sort of feeling when I saw her come smiling into the shop,
thinking that she wouldn't need to come any more. It's queer how a man
feels over a little slip of a girl when he's knocked about all over the
world and known hundreds of women and thought nothing of them!
I'd carried it down into this room, and I took her in and showed it.
Her delight was pretty to see. She fidgeted about at my elbow like a
child while I was taking the corners off; and when she saw the notes she
danced and clapped her hands; and when I gave them to her she sat down
and hugged them and laughed and cried.
"If you knew how poor we've been!" she said, wiping her eyes. "How
lonely and worried and miserable! Your kindness has been the only nice
thing ever since father died. Twenty times five! That's a hundred.
They're real notes aren't they? I haven't seen one for ages."
"They're real enough," I told her. "I'll give you gold for them, if you
like."
"I'd rather have their very selves," she said with a laugh. She studied
one carefully; and suddenly she dropped them with a cry and sprang to
her feet. Her face had gone white.
"Mr. Levy!" she cried. "Oh, Mr. Levy! _You put them there!_"
I told her a lie right out; and I'm not ashamed of it. I was a hard man
of business, I said; and a Jew; and she was a silly sentimental child,
or she'd never take such an idea into her head; and she needn't suppose
I kept my shop for charity, and she'd know better when she was older.
She heard me out. Then she put her hand on my shoulder.
"Dear kind friend," she said, "father died in May this year. The note
that I looked at was dated in June!" And I stood and stared at her like
a fool. I suppose I looked a bit cut up, for she stroked my arm gently.
"You dear, good fellow!" she said. She seemed to have grown from a child
into a woman in a few minutes. "I can't take them, but it will help me
to be a better girl, to have known someone like you!"
"Like me!" I said, and laughed. "I'm just--just a rough, money-grubbing
Jew. That's all I am."
She shook her head like mad.
"You may say what you like," she told me; "but you can't alter what I
think. You're good--good--good!"
Then I told her just what had happened.
"So, you see, you owe me nothing," I wound up.
She wiped her eyes and took hold of me by the sleeve.
"I will tell you what I owe you," she said. "Food when I was hungry;
kindness when I was wretched; your time, your care--yes, and the risk of
your life. If you had had your way you would have given me all that
money. You--Mr. Levy, you say that it is just a matter of business. What
profit did you expect to make?"
"I expected--to make you happy," I said; and she looked up at me
suddenly; and I saw what I saw. "Little girl!" I cried. "May I try? In
another way."
I held out my arms, and she dropped into them.
"My profits!" I said.
"Oh!" she cried. "I hope so. I will try--try--try!"
Mr. Levy offered me a fresh cigar and took another himself.
"It's a class of profit that's difficult to estimate," he remarked. "I
had a difficulty with Isaac over the matter. You see he has 5 per cent.
over the business that he introduces, but that was only meant for small
transactions, I argued. He argued that there were no profits at all; not
meaning any disrespect to her, but holding that there was no money in
it; or, if there was, it was a loss because I'd have to keep her, and
nobody knew how a wife would turn out. She held much the same, except
that she was sure she was going to turn out good; but she thought I
ought to find some plan of doing something for Isaac. We settled it that
way. He wanted to get married, so I gave him a rise and let them have
the rooms over the shop to live in; and there they are now."
"And how do you reckon the profits yourself?" I asked.
"Well," he said "in these last eight years I've cleared forty thousand
pounds, though you wouldn't think it in this little shop. I reckon that
I cleared a good bit more over that ditty-box. Come round to my house
one evening, and I'll introduce you to her."
IV
THE YELLOW CAT
An Idyll of the Summer
By ANNIE E.P. SEARING
THE minister of Blue Mountain Church, and the minister's wife, were
enjoying their first autumn fire, and the presence of the cat on the
hearth between them.
"He came home this afternoon," the minister's wife was saying, "while I
was picking those last peppers in the garden, and he jumped on my
shoulder and purred against my ear as unconcernedly as if he'd only been
for a stroll in the lower pasture, instead of gone for three months--the
little wretch!"
"It does seem extraordinary"--the minister unbent his long legs and
recrossed them carefully, in order to remove his foot from the way of
the tawny back where it stretched out in blissful elongation--"very
extraordinary, that an animal could lead that sort of double life,
disappearing completely when summer comes and returning promptly with
the fall. I daresay it's a reversion to the old hunting instinct. No
doubt we could find him if we knew how to trail him on the mountains."
"The strangest thing about it is that this year and last he came back
fat and sleek--always before, you know, he has been so gaunt and starved
looking in the fall." She leaned over and stroked the cat under his
chin; he purred deeply in response, and looked up into her eyes, his own
like wells of unfathomed speech. "I have an eerie feeling," she said,
"that if he could talk he'd have great things to tell."
The minister laughed, and puffed away at his corncob pipe. "Tales of the
chase, my dear, of hecatombs of field-mice and squirrels!"
But she shook her head. "Not this summer--that cat has spent these last
two summers with human beings who have treated him as a kind of
fetich--just as we do!" As she rubbed his ear she murmured regretfully:
"To think of all you've heard and seen and done, and you can't tell us
one thing!"
The Yellow Cat's eyes narrowed to mere slits of black across two amber
agates; then he shook his ears free, yawned, and gave himself up to
closed lids and dreams. If he could have told it all, just as it
happened, not one word of it could those good souls have
comprehended--and this was the way of it.
It was near the close of a June day when the cat made his entrance into
that hidden life of the summers from which his exits had been as sudden,
though less dramatic. In the heart of the hills, where a mountain
torrent has fretted its way for miles through a rocky gorge, there is a
place where the cleft widens into a miniature valley, and the stream
slips along quietly between banks of moss before it plunges again on its
riotous path down the mountain. Here the charcoal-burners, half a
century ago, had made a clearing, and left their dome-shaped stone kiln
to cover itself with the green velvet and lace of lichen and vine. The
man who was stooping over the water, cleaning trout for his supper, had
found it so and made it his own one time in his wandering quest for
solitude. The kiln now boasted a chimney, a door, and one wide window
that looked away over the stream's next plunge, over other mountains and
valleys to far horizons of the world of men. This was the hermitage to
which he brought his fagged-out nerves from the cormorant city that
feeds on the blood and brains of humans. Here through the brief truce of
summer he found time to fish and hunt enough for his daily wants, time
to read, to write, time to dream and to smoke his evening pipe, to think
long thoughts, and more blessed than all--to sleep! When autumn came he
would go back with renewed life and a pile of manuscript to feed to his
hungry cormorant. He was chewing the cud of contentment as he bent to
his fish cleaning, when, glancing to one side where the fire, between
stones, was awaiting his frying-pan, he caught sight among the bushes of
two gleaming eyes, and then the sleek back and lashing tail of the
Yellow Cat. The man, being a cat lover was versed in their ways, so for
a time he paid no attention, then began to talk softly.
"If you'd come out of that," he said, as he scraped the scales, "and not
sit there watching me like a Comanche Indian, I'd invite you to supper!"
Whether it was the tone of his voice or the smell of the fish that
conquered, the tawny creature was suddenly across the open with a rush
and on the stooping shoulders. That was the beginning of the
companionship that lasted until fall. The next season brought the animal
as unexpectedly, and they took up the old relation where it had left off
the previous summer. They trudged together through miles of forest,
sometimes the cat on the man's shoulder, but often making side
excursions on his own account and coming back with the proud burden of
bird or tiny beast. Together they watched the days decline in red and
gold glory from the ledge where the stream drops over the next height,
or when it rained, companioned each other by the hearth in the hut.
There was between them that satisfying and intimate communion of
inarticulate speech only possible between man and beast.
There came a day when the man sat hour after hour over his writing,
letting the hills call in vain. The cat slept himself out, and when paws
in the ink and tracks over the paper proved of no avail, he jumped down
and marched himself haughtily off through the door and across the
clearing to the forest, tail in air. Late that afternoon the man was
arrested midway of a thought rounding into phrase by the sudden
darkness. There was a fierce rush of wind, as if some giant had sighed
and roused himself. The door of the hut slammed shut and the blast from
the window scattered the papers about the floor. As he went to pull down
the sash the cat sprang in, shaking from his feet the drops of rain
already slanting in a white sheet across the little valley. At the same
moment there was a "halloo" outside, and a woman burst open the door,
turning quickly to shut out behind her the onrush of the shower and the
biting cold of the wind. She stood shaking the drops from her hair, and
then she looked into the astonished face of the man and laughed.
She was as slim and straight as a young poplar, clad in white
shirt-waist and khaki Turkish trousers with gaiters laced to the knee.
Her hair was blown about in a red-gold snarl, and her eyes looked out as
unabashed as a boy's. The two stared at each other for a time in
silence, and finally it was the woman who spoke first.
"This isn't exactly what I call a warm welcome--not just what the cat
led me to expect! It was really the cat who brought me--I met him over
on Slide Mountain--he fled and I pursued, and now here we are!"
She made a hasty survey of the hut, and then of its owner, putting her
head on one side as she looked about her with a quick, bird-like
movement, he still staring in stupefaction.
"Of course you detest having me here, but you won't put me out in the
rain, again, will you?"
At once he was his courteous self. With the same motion he dumped the
astonished cat from the cushioned chair by the writing table, and drew
it forward to the fire. Then he threw on a fresh stick of pine that
flared up in a bright blaze, and with deferring gentleness took the
sweater that hung from her shoulders and hung it to dry over a section
of tree-trunk that served as a chimney seat.
"You are as welcome to my hut as any princess to her palace," he smiled
on her, "indeed, it is yours while you choose to stay in it!"
"Don't you think," she made reply, as he drew another chair up opposite
to her, "that under the circumstances we might dispense with fine
speeches? It is hardly, I suppose, what one would call a usual
situation, is it?"
He looked at her as she stretched her small feet comfortably to the
blaze, her face quite unconcerned.
"No," he acquiesced, "it certainly is not usual--or I should hate
it--the 'usual' is what I fly from!"
She threw back her head, clasping her hands behind it as she laughed.
She seemed to luxuriate as frankly in the heat and the dryness as the
cat between them.
"And I"--she turned the comprehension of her eyes upon him--"I cross the
ocean every year in the same flight!"
The storm drove leaves and flying branches against the window, while
they sat, for what seemed a long time, in contented silence. He found
himself as openly absorbing her charm as if she had been a tree or a
mountain sunset, while she was making further tours of inspection with
her eyes about the room.
"It is entirely adorable," she smiled at him, "but it piques my
curiosity!'
"Ask all the questions you wish--no secrets here."
"Then what, if you please, is the object I see swung aloft there in the
dome?"
"My canvas hammock which I lower at night to climb into and go to bed,
and pull up in the daytime to clear the decks."
"And the big earthen pot in the fireplace--it has gruesome suggestions
of the 'Forty Thieves!'"
"Only a sort of perpetual hot-water tank. The fire never quite goes out
on this domestic hearth, and proves a very acceptable companion at this
high altitude. There is always the kettle on the crane, as you see it
there, but limitless hot water is the fine art of housekeeping--but,
perhaps you don't know the joy there is to be found in the fine art of
housekeeping?"
"No, I do not," her eyes took on a whimsical expression, "but I'd like
to learn--anything in the way of a new joy! In the way of small joys I
am already quite a connoisseur, indeed I might call myself a collector
in that line--of _bibelot_ editions, you understand, for thus far I seem
to have been unable to acquire any of the larger specimens! Would you be
willing to take me on as a pupil in housekeeping?"
"It would add to my employment a crowning joy--not a _bibelot_!"
"Pinchbeck fine speeches again," she shrugged. "Do you stop here all the
long summer quite alone?"
"All the 'short summer,'" he corrected, "save for the society of the
cat, who dropped down last year from nowhere. He must have approved of
the accommodations, for he has chosen me, you see, a second time for a
summer resort."
"Yes--I think he was trying to protest about you being his exclusive
find, when I invited myself to follow him down the mountain--leading and
eluding are so much alike, one is often mistaken, is it not so?"
She was sitting forward now, chin in hands, elbows on her knees, gazing
into the flames where a red banner waved above the back log. When she
turned to him again the westering sun had broken through the clouds and
was sending a flare of rosy light in at the window. Studying her face
more fully, he saw that she was years--fully ten years--older than he
had supposed. The boyish grace that sat so lightly was after all the
audacious ease of a woman of the world, sure of herself.
"I, too, am living the hermit life for the summer. I am the happy
possessor of a throat that demands an annual mountain-cure. Switzerland
with its perpetual spectacular note gets on my nerves, so last year we
found this region--I and my two faithful old servitors. Do you know the
abandoned tannery in the West Branch Clove? That has been fitted up for
our use, and there we live the simple life as I am able to attain
it--but you have so far outdone me that you have filled my soul with
discontent!"
"Alas," said the man, "you have served me the very same trick! I could
almost wish--"
"That I had not come!"
"Say, rather, that you would come again!"
She stood up and reached for her sweater, waiting for him to open the
door. The round of the little valley was a glittering green bowl filled
with pink cloud scuds. They stepped out into a jubilant world washed
clean and freshly smiling. She put out her hand in good-bye.
"I almost think I shall come again! If you were a person with whom one
could be solitary--who knows!"
When she appeared the next time she found him by the noise of his
chopping. They climbed to the top of the moss-covered boulder that hangs
poised over the ledge where the stream leaps into the abyss. Below them
the hills rolled in an infinite recession of leaf-clad peaks to the sky
line, where they melted to a blur of bluish-green mist.
"Oh, these mountains of America!" she cried, "their greenness is a thing
of dreams to us who know only bare icy and alps!"
"Far lovelier," he said, "to look down upon than to look up to, I think.
To be a part of the height comes pretty near to being happy, for the
moment."
She turned from the view to study her companion. The lines in the
corners of his kind, tired eyes, the lean, strong figure, hair graying
about the temples. He grew a little impatient under it before she spoke.
"Do you know," she said slowly, "I am going to like you! To like you
immensely--and to trust you!"
"Thank you, I shall try to be worthy"--even his derision was gentle--"I
seem to remember having been trusted before by members of your sex--even
liked a little, though not perhaps 'immensely'! At any rate this
certainly promises to be an experience quite by itself!"