Miss Jane had gone out. She had taken her purple parasol with her to
Stuyvesant Square, where the sun this March afternoon glistened on its
faded fringe, and sent the saucy brown sparrows to doze and preen their
wings in the bare branches of the trees, Miss Jane finding protection
for her frail person back of the iron fence on a hard bench, its thin,
cast-iron arms polished by the weary, the worthless, and the poor.
Sometimes she sat in the corner, looking out upon the passing life of
the street, though she much preferred the bench beside the straggling
geraniums and begonias when the sun shone. She had taken with her as
well, secreted in the depths of her black silk reticule, a small volume
of Lowell’s verses--some of them she knew by heart, and those she did
not helped her to forget her cough.
There were a lot of things tucked away for safe-keeping in that
reticule of Miss Jane’s: Old addresses of cheaper seamstresses which
might some day be needed, a spool of sewing silk and a needle, in case
of accidents; her name and address written plainly by Miss Ann; three
old prescriptions that, alas! were always being renewed, and clippings
from the New York _Observer_ on sermons she had missed, stuck to
licorice drops--all these did not hinder her thin fingers from finding
a hidden cracker for the sparrows, which she fed them in tiny bits
under the alcoholic eye of a well-to-do Tammany policeman with park
manners, who always saluted her respectfully.
Miss Jane was so reticent in public that she rarely opened her lips,
total strangers like car-conductors and new church-sextons being an
unavoidable exception. She took up but little space in the world, and
was of no more hinderance to others than her own shadow--and yet she
was a woman, had once been a girl, and once a baby. There is a degree
of modesty which becomes conspicuous. It is almost impossible to
conceive that Miss Jane had ever loved; that she had ever laughed, or
felt the pain of happiness; that coquetry had once peeped mischievously
from the corners of her eyes, playing hide-and-seek with her smile--a
smile that once had made more than one young man’s heart beat the
faster--all that was dry and dead.
There were other withered leaves in the park.
And so Miss Jane had gone out. In fact, there was nobody left in the
house but Miss Ann, Ebner Ford, Matilda, and the cat, Moses having
crossed the ferry to his savings-bank in Brooklyn, a suburb noted for
its savings.
Ebner Ford waited until Miss Jane had timidly passed his door on her
way out. Then he hurriedly shaved, put on his best suit of clothes,
selected a fresh white tie, doused some of his wife’s lavender perfume
on a clean handkerchief, and leaped up the stairs to Miss Ann’s door,
which she had unfortunately left ajar.
She was darning her sister’s stockings when he knocked, and had barely
time to hide them and seize her knitting before he thrust his head in
with an ingratiating grin.
“Got so pesky lonesome down-stairs, thought I’d just come up and cheer
you up,” he blurted out, unheeding her embarrassment. “Hope I’m not
intrudin’--Emma’s gone with girlie to a show. Grand day, ain’t it, Miss
Moulton?”
He had safely gained the centre of the room, an old trick with him in
business interviews; doors marked “Private” or “No admission” had no
terrors for Ford.
Miss Ann had sprung out of her chair by her sewing-table and stood
helpless before him, flushed.
“And so you were left alone, Mr. Ford,” she said bravely, with
dignified resignation.
“That’s about the size of it,” he laughed, selecting the sofa, and
crossing his long legs, his head thrown back at his ease, as she
reseated herself before him. “I’m not much on goin’ to shows,” he
declared. “Seen too much of ’em. There wa’n’t a troupe that come to our
town when I was a boy but what I’d tag after ’em and see ’em perform.
Since I’ve had so many business cares I’ve kinder gotten out of goin’
to the theatre. S’pose you’re pretty crazy about ’em, Miss Moulton,
ain’t you? Most women are.”
“I’ve never been to the theatre,” confessed Miss Ann quietly, her eyes
upon her knitting.
He shot forward with a surprised smile, gripping his bony knees with
his long hands.
“Well, say, that beats me!” he cried.
“Neither my mother nor my father approved of the theatre; my sister and
I have never gone,” she added simply. “We were brought up differently,
I suppose.”
“You ain’t missed such an awful lot,” he returned, by way of
consolation. “I’ve seen some shows where you got your money’s worth;
then, again, I’ve seen ’em that wa’n’t worth twenty-five cents--your pa
and ma didn’t have nothin’ agin the circus, did they?”
Miss Ann looked at him, with pinched lips and a hesitant smile.
“Perhaps we’d better not discuss it,” said she. “I’m afraid our views
are so different, you see. To be frank with you, Mr. Ford, the people
of the stage have never attracted me--when you consider their lives,
their--their----”
“Don’t you tell Emma,” he intervened, paused, and added confidentially:
“But I knew an actress once--finest little woman you ever see, Miss
Moulton.”
The needles in her frail, active hands flew nervously.
“Wished I could remember her name--hold on, I got it. Nell Little.
‘Little Nell,’ I used to call her. Come up with a show from Troy and
took sick at the Eagle House. Had a small dog with her, I remember--one
er them shiverin’, tinklin’, black-and-tans. Nell thought an awful lot
of that little cuss. Seems he’d saved her life once in a smash-up on
the Delaware and Lackawanna; led them that was searchin’ for her into
a burnin’ sleeper. Well, when she took sick at the Eagle House, and
the rest of ’em had to leave her--no, hold on, I’m gettin’ ahead of my
story.”
The trembling needles dropped a stitch.
“It was Ed Stimson that come to me--that’s it. Ed bought the Eagle
House from old Bill Williams’s widder, and Ed and me was pretty close
pardners in them days. ‘Ebner,’ says he, ‘Doc Rand claims number nine’s
got the pneumonia. She’s been out of her head since daylight. She’s
been askin’ for you. Guess you’re elected, Eb.’”
He rambled on, unconscious that every word he uttered was far from
welcome to his listener, who sat before him helpless, dazed, and
indignant, unable to stem the tide of his worldly narrative. He
enlightened her to the fact that he and Little Nell had had supper
together only two days before in an oyster-parlor of a friend of his.
He insisted that she had taken a shine to him from the first, and that
now that she was ill and penniless in the Eagle House, the only decent
thing he could do was to pay the doctor and her board bill, dilating
on the detail that he was human and incapable of seeing any woman in
distress, without coming to her aid like a gentleman, and ended this
remarkable résumé by flinging himself back on the sofa with a satisfied
smile, stretching his lean jaws in a yawn, as if the incident was only
one of many in his wide experience.
“Warm, ain’t it--for March?” he declared, breaking the awkward silence
that ensued.
Miss Ann agreed that it was, the needles slowing down to their normal
speed.
“It ain’t a mite too warm for me,” he remarked, displaying a thick and
drooping sock above his cracked patent-leather shoes. “Warm weather
means plenty of business in the laundry line, Miss Moulton. A feller
can get along all right in cold weather, but take it in collar-meltin’
time and clean shirts are a necessity. Ever stop to think how many
percales and fancy madrases are spoiled by cheap wringers? Chewed to
holes ’fore the iron touches ’em.”
Miss Ann laid her knitting in her lap in forced attention. Something
far graver than his visit had worried her to-day, a question of money,
a discouraging letter from her brother, which she had kept from her
sister, not having the heart to tell her that some property she had
counted on to relieve their present modest income had turned out a
failure.
“I don’t mind tellin’ you, Miss Moulton, a little secret,” continued
Ford, “seein’ we’re old friends and neighbors. It’s sort of lettin’ the
cat out of the bag,” he added thoughtfully, “but I’ve been thinkin’
it over, neighbor; besides, I don’t know anybody I’d rather help than
you,” he declared, as he fished in his pocket and drew out a square
chunk of dark rubber.
“That’s pure Para,” he announced gravely, holding it up for her
inspection. “Take a good look at it, Miss Moulton; you don’t often see
it. It ain’t worth its weight in gold, but it’s close to it when it
comes to wringers. It’s them cheap rollers that does the dirty work.
If you was to know what they’re made of, I presume likely you wouldn’t
care to wear the clothes they come through. It’s the sulphur in ’em
that does the stainin’.”
Again his long hand fumbled in his pocket; this time it drew out a
folded paper with a mechanical drawing, a model of a clothes-wringer,
which he spread out flat on his knees.
“There she is,” he declared with conviction. “Looks pretty neat, don’t
it? That there layer of pure Para on the rollers does the trick, and
them two extra cog-wheels on the speed-accelerator keeps her movin’,
I kin tell you. Saves time! One turn of that crank’s worth ten of any
other household wringer on the market. Can’t jam, can’t squeeze, can’t
rust, every nut, screw, and rivet in it galvanized. Even pressure on
anything from a lady’s handkerchief to a baby’s bib. Got any idea,
friend, what it costs delivered to sufferin’ humanity? Four dollars.
Got any idea what it makes?”
“I haven’t an idea,” confessed Miss Ann, looking up, relieved at the
sudden and cleanly change in the conversation, and, despite herself,
becoming more and more interested.
“’Course you haven’t, Miss Moulton. Be a little surprised, wouldn’t
you, if I was to tell you that old Mrs. Miggs, one of our stockholders,
doubled her income; that she’s got already a couple of thousand dollars
laid aside for a rainy day that she’d never had if I hadn’t come to her
in a friendly way. I don’t know as if I’ve ever seen a woman happier.
Her mortgage on her house in Yonkers all paid up, nice little new home
for herself and niece, and a tidy little sum in the bank--a sum that’s
growin’ daily, friend, without so much as liftin’ her little finger.
As our head canvasser on the road wrote me yesterday, a man of over
twenty years’ experience sellin’ wringers--‘You needn’t worry no more,’
he writes, ‘about the Household Gem holdin’ her own; I’m averagin’ two
gross a week right here in Elmira. I could sell three if I had ’em.’
Hold on. I’ve got it, if I ain’t mistaken.” He whipped out the letter
and read it aloud, including its postscript.
“You should see the pleased faces on Mondays--women who have never
had an easy wash-day before in their lives. The new ad: ‘Let baby do
the work,’ catches ’em. Hoping your folks are well,
“Yours successfully,
“E. P. REDMOND,
“_Managing Salesman of The United Family
Laundry Association, Limited_.”
He thrust the letter back in his pocket and waited for its effect,
beating a tattoo on the arm of the sofa, and though Miss Ann did not
reply, the nervous way she dropped her stitches assured him he had made
an impression.
“Anybody, my friend, with a little ready money, can double it,” he
resumed persuasively. “Just as sure as two and two makes four. Take
Mrs. Miggs, for instance. Six months ago she was skimpin’ along as
usual--always ailin’, too--worry done that, as I told her, worry; not
knowin’ how she was goin’ to end one month and begin another. Lookin’
sallower’n a peck of mustard--no appetite--worry--and what for? Kept
what little money she had in her bank, afraid to invest a dollar of it
in anything. Let it lay there in cold storage without givin’ her a cent
of interest. Spendin’ little by little her capital without a dollar of
it free to make another. ’Twa’n’t right, and I told her so plainly.
It’s all she had, she told me. It’ll be all you’ll ever get, I told
her, if you keep on leaving it in jail. Any dollar, my dear friend,
that ain’t worth more than a dollar, that can’t make a cent for itself,
is a pretty shiftless greenback, and ought to be ashamed to look its
owner in the face. Give every dollar a show. That’s common sense, ain’t
it?”
He shot out a frayed cuff and slapped his knee soundly.
“I ain’t the kind to believe in speculatin’, ’specially for women.
They wa’n’t never made to handle the heavy risks that men are. They
ain’t capable of shoulderin’ the enormous responsibilities that we have
to. How many women have come to me, beggin’ me to invest their money
in speculations that I’ve refused. Funny, ain’t it, how some women
like to gamble? That’s all speculatin’ is--gamblin’. Gamblin’s agin
my principles, friend, and always was. There ain’t no righteousness
in gamblin’. It’s an ungodly sin, worse vice’n the liquor habit.
Our gains, says the Bible, is to be measured by the sweat of our
brows. Honest business means hard toil and sound judgment. Why, I’ve
seen times when if it hadn’t been for my sound judgment--business
acumen, they call it--I’d been a ruined man. Sellin’ honest goods
ain’t got nothin’ to do with gamblin’. Sellin’ somethin’ that folks
need--honestly made and honestly sold; that folks who have paid for
it and used it swear by. An article that enters the home circle as a
helpin’ hand; that makes the home happier, and keeps the doctor from
the door. No more backaches for mother; a child can turn the handle of
the Gem. The accelerator tends to that. Easy as a fish-reel, friction
down to the minimum. Any wonder that it sells? As our Southern agent
wrote us the other day: ‘It wrings out the dollars, as easy as it does
a heavy day’s wash.’”
He laughed softly.
“Yes; it’s given the wringer trade a tough blow--patents all covered.
There ain’t an inch of it they kin imitate. When men like Hiram
Sudwell, president of the National Mangle Company, come sniffin’ round
to buy,” he chuckled. “‘Sudwell,’ I says to him, ‘you ain’t got money
enough if you was to pile it as high as the ceilin’ to buy the Gem.’ He
sorter laughed. He knowed there wa’n’t no use.
“‘Couldn’t you let me in a little on the ground floor?’ says he.
‘How about lettin’ me have ten thousand shares of your preferred? If
it’s a go here’s my check for it,’ says he. I let him talk. I see he
was lookin’ kind er down in the mouth. Bimeby he begun to coax an’
whine. ‘See here,’ says he, ‘there ain’t no use ’n our hemmin’ and
hawin’ round the bush. I’m plain-spoken. The Gem’s a gold mine, and
you know it. Tell you what I’ll do,’ says he; ‘if you’ll let me have
ten thousand spot cash, I’ll throw in five hundred of the Mangle’s
preferred just to show there’s no hard feelin’.’ ‘Sudwell,’ says I, ‘we
ain’t sellin’ stock to rival companies. First thing you know you’d want
more. Next thing we’d know you’d have us out in the cold....’”
Miss Ann had risen. She laid her knitting with a trembling hand in
her work-basket, went over to the window and stood there gazing
out, struggling with herself over a decision so stupendous to that
conservative little woman, that every quivering nerve in her was strung
to its utmost. As she stood by the window she seemed to be praying.
Suddenly she turned to him, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes
downcast, one small foot slightly advanced toward a step that even then
made her tremble, her mind filled with doubt, that forerunner of hasty
decision.
“I’m going to speak to you very frankly,” she said, in a voice whose
strange weakness belied its courage. “My sister, as you know, is ill.
She has been ill nearly all her life, Mr. Ford. We are neither of us
young; what little money is ours I have always tried to manage for the
best. It is I who have always taken the responsibility of this, and it
is I who must continue to do it. I have no one to come to, either for
counsel or advice, neither for protection. I tell you this frankly, for
I want you to feel it and understand it. Had my sister and I all that
is rightly due us, we should be in far different circumstances.”
She raised her eyes bravely.
“My sister needs comforts, I mean real comforts, Mr. Ford, comforts I
have not dared risk the giving. A purer air than New York, long summers
in some pleasant country place, more luxuries than I feel we can afford
and live within our means, and people around her who would take her
mind from herself. You may not realize it, but far from growing better,
she is growing worse. I, who am constantly with her, see it only too
plainly. Her extreme weakness at times frightens me. Now what I feel is
this----”
Ford started, his shrewd eyes alert to her slightest word or gesture.
“If it were possible to invest safely, as you say, even the small
amount that I could dare give you--it is so serious, Mr. Ford, you
_must_ understand just how I feel. If I were to give you this--and
anything should happen to it----”
Ebner Ford sprang to his feet.
“Can you doubt it,” he exclaimed earnestly, “in the face of plain
figgers? You don’t suppose, my dear friend, I’d lead you into a risk,
do you?”
“I don’t believe you would, sir,” said she. “That would be too cruel.”
He drove his thumbs into his armholes, and for a moment stood in
thought, tapping his fancy waistcoat with his long, bony fingers.
“Suppose I let you have a thousand shares?” he said with a benign
smile. “Think what it would mean to you. No more worryin’ over little
things; you’ll have money enough then to have some peace of mind.”
“I’ve had so little,” she said with a saddened smile, “that it would
be most welcome, I assure you. How much are the shares?” she asked
timidly. “I know so little about such matters.”
“Preferred?” he questioned briskly, elevating his eyebrows. “They pay
you considerable more, you know, than the common stock.”
“I’d like the best;” said she, “that is, if I can afford it.”
“That’s right,” said he. “It always pays to git the best. The best
always pays in the end. There wa’n’t never yit a couple of cheap things
worth one good one. I’d like to see yer git the best--somethin’ you’d
be proud of ownin’, like our gilt-edged preferred.” He rammed his long
hands in his trousers pockets, and for some seconds paced slowly before
her, lost in thought. “Let’s see--let’s see,” he muttered.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said suddenly. “Let us say fifteen
hundred shares preferred. I’ll waive what they’re worth to-day. I’ll
let you have ’em at par, my friend, at ten dollars a share, cash.
That’ll make it an even fifteen thousand dollars. You deserve it, Miss
Moulton, if ever any woman did,” he cried magnanimously. “I’d give a
good deal to see old Hiram Sudwell in your shoes right now.”
“But fifteen thousand dollars,” gasped the little spinster, “is half of
all we’ve got in the world, Mr. Ford!”
“I see,” said he gravely.
She started to speak, but he waved his hand.
“Hold on,” he resumed cheerfully, “We’ll do better than that,” and
again he paced before her. “I’m the last man in the world to ask
anybody to put all their eggs in the same basket. Suppose we say half
that amount?” He saw her hesitate, nervously fingering the long, thin
gold chain that circled her neck, and which all her life had served her
as guardian of her mother’s watch.
“I say half,” said he, breaking the silence. “Why, you’ll think nothin’
of buyin’ the rest of that fifteen hundred with what you’ll make on
that half.”
“And you advise it?” she ventured. He assured her without speaking, his
expression one of kindly approval, unvarnished, without a vestige of a
doubt. “That would be seven thousand, five hundred dollars, wouldn’t
it?” she inquired, still struggling with herself.
“There ain’t no use of my advisin’ less to you,” he declared. “It
wouldn’t be worth your botherin’ about. I’d like to see you happy--real
happy. You needn’t thank me now, but you’ll thank me some day, my
friend. You won’t never regret it.”
“I--I feel so alone--so helpless,” she returned, “as if I really ought
to think it all seriously over; would you mind letting me do that? I’d
feel better, I think.”
“That’s just what Mrs. Miggs said to me. Now look at her. Do you
suppose Mrs. Miggs has ever regretted it? Her little nest-egg beginnin’
from the very day she bought her shares; woke up the next mornin’
knowin’ her troubles were over. Took her little niece straight down to
Stewart’s and bought her a new outfit from head to toe. Suppose she’d
er waited? I want to see you happy, friend. I want that there happiness
to begin _now_--_to-day_.” He put forth his hand to her, forcing her
own small hand into its grasp, where it lay as frightened as a wren
with a broken wing.
“Perhaps, then, I’d better decide,” she breathed, with a beating heart,
gazing at the floor.
“That’s right!” he cried. “That’s the right kind of talk. I know sich
matters are hard to think over, and decide. But we’ve done the thinkin’
and we’ve done the decidin’, ain’t we? And all them gnawin’ little
doubts is over.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him quickly, and withdrawing her hand,
a strange new courage in her eyes. “I _have_ decided, Mr. Ford. I will
take the seven thousand five hundred dollars’ worth of shares.”
In precisely seven minutes by Ebner Ford’s watch Miss Ann Moulton
became the sole possessor of seven hundred and fifty shares of the
Household Gem, preferred, and its receipt, and before the ink was
fairly dry on her check it was tucked in Ford’s portfolio next to a
five-dollar bill that his stepdaughter had loaned him that morning.
He had feared the sister’s return. He had had experience with two
women deciding together. It was while he was engaged in exploiting the
millions contained in a vast hen industry in the Far West destined to
supply half the eggs to the world--at bottom prices--the army of A No.
1 Leghorn layers being fed on imitation corn made by a secret process,
producing the best cold-storage egg on the market.
He had hardly reached his room before Miss Jane’s key opened the front
door. He stood screened back of his own ajar, listening to her as she
wearily climbed the stairs, her purple parasol aiding her, stopping on
the landings for breath. It still lacked twenty minutes before his bank
in Union Square closed at three. In less than fifteen he had handed
over to its silent but astonished receiving teller, for deposit, a
check for more money than he had ever had to his credit in his life.
This done, he walked briskly over to the Everitt House, and through
a swing-door smelling of lemons and old Bourbon sours, feeling a
good deal richer than Hiram Sudwell, and of much more importance in
the world than the President of the United States. The bartender
noticed the change in him at a glance. He seemed younger, more at his
ease. There was already a certain indescribable air of geniality and
prosperity about his customer that sent the bartender’s quick hand
over the bottle of “ordinary” and on to the “special,” hesitated, and
settled over the neck of the decanter of “private stock,” which he
produced with a clean doily and a smile of welcome.
“Warm for March--ain’t it?” remarked Ford, pouring out for himself a
stiff drink.
“It sure is a grand day,” returned the bartender. “Ain’t seen you
around lately, mister--er--busy, I suppose, as usual--well, that’s the
way to be.”
“Busy,” declared Ford. “Ain’t had time to eat.”
Then he paid for his drink, recounted the fifty dollars in new bills
he had drawn, called a cab and went off to Koster & Bial’s, where he
managed to secure, late as it was for the matinée, his favorite seat at
a front-row table.
It was only when Miss Jane reached her room and learned the story from
her sister’s lips that she realized their great good fortune. For some
moments Miss Ann held her in her arms, petting her like a child.
“I felt it was for the best, dear,” she kept repeating. They both wept
a little; all the worry was over now, her sister assured her. Miss
Jane seemed dazed. She could not fully realize it. She sat on the edge
of her bed, smiling through the tears, smoothing Miss Ann’s hand.
Then they set about making plans for the summer. They decided on Lake
Mohonk. Finally, exhausted as she was, Miss Jane went to bed, Miss Ann
waiting until she fell asleep before straightening out their meagre
accounts of the week before, some of whose items had frightened her,
especially the druggist’s bill which had come in the morning’s mail
with that hopeless letter from her brother. They were nothing now--new
hope, new courage had entered her heart.