THE WALLET.
"Did you sleep?"
"Like a top!"
"Bad dreams?" and Dr. Wright felt the pulse of the healthy looking
patient, who, with the help of Gwen, had donned a very becoming boudoir
cap and negligée, two articles of clothing that she had brought to camp
in spite of the jeerings of her sisters, who did not see how they could
be used. Helen had not had an illness since she was a child and had her
tonsils out, and certainly a camp was no place to sport a filmy lace cap
and a negligée of pale blue silk and lace.
"It is almost worth while having a sn--having a sprained ankle just to
prove to my sisters that I was wise in bringing this cap and sacque,"
she had laughingly told Gwen, who was assisting her. "I bet snake bite
is going to come popping out of my mouth, willy nilly," she said to
herself. "I almost gave it away that time."
Gwen, who loved pretty things and scented from afar the admiration Dr.
Wright was beginning to hold for Helen, considered it very wise to have
brought the dainty garments. She could not help thinking, with something
akin to bitterness, of her own yellow cotton night gowns that Aunt Mandy
considered superfluous articles of clothing; and of the coarse, gray
flannel bed-sacque she had worn the summer before when she had caught
the measles from Josh; and of how she must have looked when the old
country doctor came to see her.
The tent was tidy and sweet when George Wright entered to see how his
patient fared. Gwen had spread the steamer rugs over the cots and had
even placed a bunch of honeysuckle on the little table at Helen's
bedside. She had had to purloin the table from Miss Somerville's cabin,
but that lady was willing to give up more than a table for her favorite
young cousin.
Helen blushed a little when the young man asked her if she had had any
bad dreams. The fact was she had had very pleasant dreams in which he
had largely figured. She had dreamed that Josephus had turned into
Pegasus and that, as she flew along on his shapely back, she had met Dr.
Wright floating by on a white cloud and he had wanted to feel her pulse.
She had put out her hand and as he felt her pulse, he had jumped from
the white cloud square onto the back of Pegasus, and together they rode
through the air, the winged horse looking kindly on them with much the
benevolent expression of Josephus.
"No, my dreams were pleasant," she smiled.
Dr. Wright certainly took a long time to feel any one's pulse, but the
truth was that he had forgotten to count, so taken up he was with the
fact that pale blue was quite as becoming to Helen as gray with a dash
of scarlet. I think if he had felt his own pulse, he would have been
astonished at how far from normal his heart beats were at that moment.
"I have brought you the wallet from the Devil's Gorge. Here it is for
you to open!"
"Oh, Dr. Wright! Is that where you were going when Gwen saw you so early
this morning?"
"Yes!"
"I think you are very good to take that tramp for Gwen," she said,
taking the bulky wallet in her hand.
"I didn't take it for Gwen, but for you." Gwen had left the tent for a
moment.
"But you would have done it for Gwen, I am sure."
"Yes, of course, but perhaps not on an empty stomach," laughed the
doctor. "But why don't you open the pocketbook?"
"Because it is Gwen's! She must be the one to open it."
"But you are not sure it is hers. I brought it for you to have the
pleasure of opening it."
"Yes, I am sure it is hers, and I'd take more pleasure in seeing her
open it than doing it myself."
Just then Gwen returned with a pitcher of fresh water. Helen held up the
wallet and said:
"Did you ever see this before?"
Gwen turned pale and her steady little hands, that could usually carry a
brimming cup of coffee safely to its destination without once slopping
over, shook so that she spilled the water from the pitcher.
"Oh, Miss Helen! Where did you find it?"
"Never mind now where we found it! You open it and see if you can
identify it," said Helen kindly. She realized that Gwen was to have
excitement enough in opening this wallet of her father's, lost as it had
been for five years, without having to picture, as she would surely do,
his death, the fall from the cliff and this pocketbook slipping from his
coat and lodging in the tree.
The wallet was evidently an expensive one: alligator skin lined with
Russian leather. The silver clasp was rusty and Gwen's trembling hands
could hardly force the sliding catch, but Helen motioned for Dr. Wright
not to assist her. She felt, somehow, that the girl would rather do it
all herself. They were silent while the little English girl fumbled the
lock and finally sprung it. The wallet was stuffed full of papers and
letters. In one compartment was some silver, several gold pieces and
some English coins. The papers were yellow with age, but so stout was
the alligator skin that the many rains that must have fallen during the
five years the wallet had been wedged in that scrub oak's branches, had
not wet them nor defaced them.
"Be very careful, Gwen, there may be all kinds of precious documents in
there," exclaimed Helen, as some of the papers floated to the floor of
the tent and some fluttered to her own cot.
Gwen had sunk to the floor in a little heap and was sobbing.
"I can remember so well how my father used to open up this pocketbook
and pore over these letters. I was never allowed to touch it. He kept
his money in it and receipts and things."
"Look, here is a receipt for one thousand dollars in cash payment for
land!" exclaimed Helen, as a yellow slip of paper fell on her coverlet.
The paper was written in a bold black hand so that any one might read
it:
Received payment from St. John Brownell for 100 acres of land at
Greendale, Albemarle County, Va. $1,000 in cash.
(Signed) ABNER DEAN.
The signature was in violet ink and very shaky. Helen recognized it as
old Dean's writing, as when he sent up any produce to the camp from his
store at Greendale, it had been her duty to go over the bill which
invariably accompanied the goods.
"Why, Gwen, Gwen! That old wretch has cheated you out of your land! Do
you know, he handed over to Father, for money he owed him, land that did
not belong to him, and this minute our camp is built on your property?"
Helen was very much excited, and as for Gwen,--she was pale and
trembling. "I'd like to get up out of this bed and go horse-whip
him----"
"Please, can I do it for you?" from the doctor. "But wouldn't it be
better to get a lawyer to take the matter up and have the thing legally
adjusted?"
"We-e-ll, ye-s! Maybe---- But I'd certainly like to make that old man
suffer some. Wouldn't you, Gwen?" But the little English girl was so
busy sorting the papers that had fallen from her father's old wallet
that she did not hear.
"What is that in the back of the pocketbook where the other fastening
is?" asked the doctor.
"Money and more money! Why, Gwen, look at the bills!"
Helen was right. In a neat and orderly manner in yet another closed
compartment of the wallet were placed greenbacks and yellowbacks of high
denominations. The girls feverishly counted out $1,500.
"No wonder it was so fat! We had better not say anything about having
all this money in camp. It ought to be in the bank, Gwen, as it might be
stolen from you. Dr. Wright will deposit it for you in Richmond and you
can draw on it as you need."
Gwen handed over the bills to the young man without a moment's delay.
"Wait now, let's count it again to make sure, and I will give you a
receipt for the amount."
"Oh, that's not necessary, is it, Miss Helen?"
"Certainly not!" And then Helen blushed to think how short a time had
elapsed since she had expressed all kinds of doubts about the honesty of
this man, because, forsooth, he had been given power of attorney over a
paltry $83.59! Here she was advising this little mountain waif to hand
over to Dr. Wright what seemed to them a large fortune without even a
receipt.
George Wright smiled and quietly wrote a receipt for the amount.
"It would be safer to let me carry this money for you because it might
get out that you have it, and it would be easier to get it from you than
me. I will deposit it at the Virginia Trust Co. in Richmond, and will
send you the bank book immediately. You can invest it or not as you see
fit. It would bring in forty-five dollars a year if you put it in the
savings bank."
"Oh, that would be enough for me to go to school on and even be a
boarder at school! But I want some of it to buy a new mule for Aunt
Mandy. Josephus is so old and feeble."
"You had better not tell Josh you think so," laughed the doctor. "But
will you be contented, child, just to stay on in the mountains for the
rest of your life?"
"This is the only home I have. Where else can I go?"
"You can go wherever we are," cried Helen impulsively, and Dr. Wright's
admiration for her was increased if possible.
"Oh, Miss Helen, you are so good! But Aunt Mandy needs me and maybe if I
stay here I can make Josh wash, even in the winter time."
"Well, maybe you can," said the doctor kindly, "and it is a great thing
to be needed and to see some chance of improving your fellow man. You
could, with economy, get yourself through college on this money."
"And then, of course, you own the land our camp is built on,"
remembered Helen. "That is a thousand dollars more."
"But I don't want that," exclaimed Gwen. "It has been so wonderful to
have all of you here and so good to me."
"But, my dear child, the land belongs to you and this Abner Dean will
have to be the one to suffer, not you or the Carters. If you will let
me, I will consult a lawyer in Richmond and have him take hold of the
matter. Don't you find a deed of some sort among those papers?"
There was no deed among the papers and, in fact, one never was found.
The mystery was never solved how such an intelligent man as St. John
Brownell evidently was had contented himself with a mere receipt for the
$1,000 paid Abner Dean. He was perhaps suffering so with the nervous
complaint which finally caused his death, that he had accepted the
simplest method which presented itself to establish himself in a place
where he hoped to find some peace.
While Helen was confined to her couch with the spurious sprained ankle,
she helped Gwen unravel the story of her life from the letters found in
the wonderful wallet. It was not such an extraordinary story, after all.
St. John Brownell was of good family and education but evidently of
small means, being the younger son of one of the many daughters of an
impoverished earl. He had married young, come to America, and taken up
teaching as a profession. His wife had died and then had come on him the
strange malady that had caused him so much agony. Cities were hateful to
him and he had decided that his small patrimony would serve best in some
locality where the living was very inexpensive. Helen gathered from some
of the letters that this patrimony amounted to about $3,000. He seemed
to have arrived in the mountains with that much money in cash. He had
bought the one hundred acres of land on the side of the mountain, hoping
to improve it, possibly by going into Albemarle pippins. Gwen thought he
had perhaps put his money into cash expecting to place it in a bank in
Virginia; but as his malady gained on him all money dealings became very
hateful and irksome to him, and he had evidently procrastinated until
he had become in the habit of just carrying that roll of money around
with him.
Gwen could recall nothing of her mother, but she remembered being in a
kindergarten in New York and of course remembered coming to Virginia,
and her father's every characteristic was as fresh in her mind as though
he had died only yesterday. The poor man had never been too miserable to
be anything but gentle and loving to his little daughter, and he had
spared no pains in teaching her, so that at nine years, her age when he
had died, Gwen had been quite as well educated as many a child of
twelve.
"Aren't you going to write to some of your father's family, Gwen?" asked
Helen, who had become so absorbed in the research that she felt like a
full-fledged detective.
"I think not," and Gwen shook her head sadly. "He must have gone
completely out of their lives. I can't remember his getting any letters
after we came to Virginia. Some day, maybe, I can make enough money to
go to England, and then I will hunt them up and peep at them through
the shutters, and if they look kind and nice, I'll make myself known to
them."
"Perhaps you are right. They may be all kinds of pills and they might
come over here and take you back with them whether you wanted to go or
not. And you might have to live in stuffy chambers in London and never
see the mountains any more."
"Dreadful! That would kill me!"
And so Gwen went on living with kind Aunt Mandy, little by little
cleaning up that good woman until she became reconciled to water and
almost fond of it.
George Wright consulted a lawyer friend who took Gwen's affairs in hand
and by skillful management brought old Abner Dean to the realization
that it would be best for him to execute a deed to the land bought by
St. John Brownell, arranging it so Gwen would own the property without
any string tied to it. He was forced to pay the money to Mr. Carter, and
then the girls, having unwittingly built on Gwen's land, rented it from
her. Land had increased twofold in value since the Englishman had made
his purchase, and the timber had grown so there was every indication
that by careful management Gwen would have a good deal more money to add
to her bank account.
Before Dr. Wright went back to Richmond, he told Helen he had killed the
snake, if not the one who had taken a nip out of her tendon Achilles, at
least one just as good or just as bad, whichever way she chose to look
at it.
"Poor old snake!" exclaimed Helen. "He shouldn't have been punished for
acting according to his nature. I am the one that should have been
punished, because I hope I acted not according to my nature."
"Well, haven't you been punished?"
Helen said nothing. She felt in her heart that she had not been punished
at all but had been favored, in that through that rattlesnake she had
gained a real friend in the young doctor.