"Fact! I can prove it." He patted his breast pocket mysteriously. "Ten
thousand right there."
"Gracious sakes alive! How dare you carry so much money?"
"I'm mighty glad o' the chance." He grinned.
They walked on almost in silence, with only a word now and then. She
seemed to be thinking deeply, and he didn't want to disturb her. It was a
delicious spring hour. The snow was all gone, even under the hedges. The
roads were warm and brown. The red sun was flooding the valley with a
misty, rich-colored light, and against the orange and gold of the sky the
hills stood in Tyrian purple. Wagons were rattling along the road. Men on
the farms in the edge of the village could be heard whistling at their
work. A discordant jangle of a neighboring farmer's supper-bell announced
that it was time "to turn out."
Sanford was almost as gay as a lover. He seemed to be on the point of
regaining his old place in his wife's respect. Somehow the possession of
the package of money in his pocket seemed to make him more worthy of her,
to put him more on an equality with her.
As they reached the little one-story square cottage he sat down on the
porch, where the red light fell warmly, and romped with the children,
while his wife went in and took off her things. She "kept a girl" now,
so that the work of getting supper did not devolve entirely upon her. She
came out soon to call them all to the supper-table in the little kitchen
back of the sitting-room.
The children were wild with delight to have "poppa" back, and the meal
was the merriest they had had for a long time. The doors and windows were
open, and the spring evening air came in, laden with the sweet,
suggestive smell of bare ground. The alert chuckle of an occasional robin
could be heard.
Mrs. Sanford looked up from her tea. "There's one thing I don't like,
Jim, and that's the way that money comes. You didn't--you didn't really
earn it."
"Oh, don't worry yourself about that. That's the way things go. It's just
luck."
"Well, I can't see it just that way. It seems to me just--like gambling.
You win, but--but somebody else must lose."
"Oh well, look a-here; if you go to lookin' too sharp into things like
that, you'll find a good 'eal of any business like gamblin'."
She said no more, but her face remained clouded. On the way down to the
store they met Lincoln.
"Come down to the store, Link, and bring Joe. I want to talk with yeh."
Lincoln stared, but said, "All right." Then added, as the others walked
away, "Well, that feller ain't got no cheek t' talk to me like that--more
cheek 'n a gov'ment mule!"
Jim took a seat near the door, and watched his wife as she went about the
store. She employed two clerks now, while she attended to the books and
the cash. He thought how different she was, and he liked (and, in a way,
feared) her cool, business-like manner, her self-possession, and her
smileless conversation with a drummer who came in. Jim was puzzled. He
didn't quite understand the peculiar effect his wife's manner had upon
him.
Outside, word had passed around that Jim had got back and that something
was in the wind, and the fellows began to drop in. When McPhail came in
and said, "Hello!" in his hearty way, Sanford went over to his wife and
said:
"Say, Nell, I can't stand this. I'm goin' to get rid o' this money right
off, now!"
"Very well; just as you please."
"Gents," he began, turning his back to the counter and smiling blandly on
them, one thumb in his vest pocket, "any o' you fellers got anything
against the Lumber County Bank--any certificates of deposit, or notes?"
Two or three nodded, and McPhail said, humorously, slapping his pocket,
"I always go loaded."
"Produce your paper, gents," continued Sanford, with a dramatic whang of
a leathern wallet down into his palm. "I'm buying up all paper on the
bank."
It was a superb stroke. The fellows whistled and stared and swore at one
another. This was coming down on them. Link was dumb with amazement as he
received sixteen hundred and fifty dollars in crisp, new bills.
"Andrew, it's your turn next." Sanford's tone was actually patronizing as
he faced McPhail.
"I was jokin'. I ain't got my certificate here."
"Don't matter--don't matter. Here's fifteen hundred dollars. Just give us
a receipt, and bring the certif. any time. I want to get rid o' this
stuff right now."
"Say, Jim, we'd like to know jest--jest where this windfall comes from,"
said Vance, as he took his share.
"Comes from the copper country," was all he ever said about it.
"I don't see where he invested," Link said. "Wasn't a scratch of a pen to
show that he invested anything while he was in the bank. Guess that's
where our money went."
"Well, I ain't squealin'," said Vance. "I'm glad to get out of it without
asking any questions. I'll tell yeh one thing, though," he added, as they
stood outside the door; "we'd 'a' never smelt of our money again if it
hadn't 'a' been f'r that woman in there. She'd 'a' paid it alone if Jim
hadn't 'a' made this strike, whereas he never 'd 'a'--Well, all right.
We're out of it."
It was one of the greatest moments of Sanford's life. He expanded in it.
He was as pleasantly aware of the glances of his wife as he used to be
when, as a clerk, he saw her pass and look in at the window where he sat
dreaming over his ledger.
As for her, she was going over the whole situation from this new
standpoint. He had been weak, he had fallen in her estimation, and yet,
as he stood there, so boyish in his exultation, the father of her
children, she loved him with a touch of maternal tenderness and hope, and
her heart throbbed in an unconscious, swift determination to do him good.
She no longer deceived herself. She was his equal--in some ways his
superior. Her love had friendship in it, but less of sex, and no
adoration.
As she blew out the lights, stepped out on the walk, and turned the key
in the lock, he said, "Well, Nellie, you won't have to do that any more."
"No; I won't have to, but I guess I'll keep on just the same, Jim."
"Keep on? What for?"
"Well, I rather like it."
"But you don't need to--"
"I like being my own boss," she said. "I've done a lot o' figuring, Jim,
these last three years, and it's kind o' broadened me, I hope. I can't go
back where I was. I'm a better woman than I was before, and I hope and
believe that I'm better able to be a real mother to my children."
Jim looked up at the moon filling the warm, moist air with a
transfiguring light that fell in a luminous mist on the distant hills. "I
know one thing, Nellie; I'm a better man than I was before, and it's all
owin' to you."
His voice trembled a little, and the sympathetic tears came into her
eyes. She didn't speak at once--she couldn't. At last she stopped him by
a touch on the arm.
"Jim, I want a partner in my store. Let us begin again, right here. I
can't say that I'll ever feel just as I did once--I don't know as it's
right to. I looked up to you too much. I expected too much of you, too.
Let's begin again, as equal partners." She held out her hand, as one man
to another. He took it wonderingly.
"All right, Nell; I'll do it."
Then, as he put his arm around her, she held up her lips to be kissed.
"And we'll be happy again--happy as we deserve, I s'pose," she said, with
a smile and a sigh.
"It's almost like getting married again, Nell--for me."
As they walked off up the sidewalk in the soft moonlight, their arms were
interlocked.
They loitered like a couple of lovers.
The End.