Here is the tale that is told about Hugh Evans, who was a commercial
traveler in drapery wares, going forth on his journeys on Mondays and
coming home on Fridays. The tale tells how on a Friday night Hugh sat at
the table in the kitchen of his house, which is in Parson's Green. He
had before him coins of gold, silver, and copper, and also bills of his
debts; and upon each bill he placed certain monies in accordance with
the sum marked thereon. Having fixed the residue of his coins and having
seen that he held ten pounds, his mind was filled with such bliss that
he said within himself: "A nice little amount indeed. Brisk are
affairs."
"Millie," he addressed his wife, "look over them and add them together."
"Wait till I'm done," was the answer. "The irons are all hotted up."
Hugh chided her. "You are not interested in my saving. You don't care.
It's nothing to you. Forward, as I call."
"If I sit down," Millie offered, "I feel I shall never get up again and
the irons are hotted and what I think is a shame to waste gas like this
the price it is."
"Why didn't you say so at the first opportunity? Be quick then. I shan't
allow the cash to lay here."
Duly Millie observed her husband's order, and what time she proved that
which Hugh had done, she was admonished that she had spent too much on
this and that.
"I'm doing all I can not to be extravagant," she whimpered. "I don't buy
a thing for my back." Her short upper lip curled above her broken teeth
and trembled; she wept.
"But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in
hand. Next quarter less you need and more you have. Less gass and
electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm weather. The more
I save."
Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized
Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows.
If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got
the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under
his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person,
to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang
hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons.
Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. "Keep him
securely," he counseled her. "Tell nobody we stock so much cash."
Millie put the note between the folds of a Paisley shawl, which was
precious to her inasmuch as it had been her mother's, and she wrapped a
blanket over the shawl and placed it in a cupboard. But on Friday she
could not remember where she had hidden the note; "never mind," she
consoled herself, "it will occur to me all of a sudden."
As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted:
"Got the money all tightly?"
"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."
"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper
money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in
a mass would be fifty pounds.
"With ordinary luck, and I'm sure you desire it because you're always at
it, it will," Millie agreed.
"No luck about it. No stop to me. We've nothing to purchase. And you
don't. At home you are, with food and clothes and a ceyling above you.
Kings don't want many more."
"Yes," said Millie. "No."
Weeks passed and Millie was concerned that she could not find the note,
tried she never so hard. At the side of her bed she entreated to be led
to it, and in the day she often paused and closing her eyes prayed:
"Almighty Father, bring it to me."
The last Friday of the quarter Hugh divided his money in lots, and it
was that he had eleven pounds over his debts. "Eleven soferens now," he
cried to his wife. "That's grand! Makes twenty-one the first six months
of the wedded life."
"It reflects great credit on you," said Millie, concealing her
unhappiness.
"Another eighty and I'd have an agency. Start a factory, p'raps. There's
John Daniel. He purchases an house. Ten hands he has working gents'
shirts for him."
Millie turned away her face and demanded from God strength with which to
acquaint her husband of her misfortune. What she asked for was granted
unto her at her husband's amorous moment of the Sabbath morning.
Hugh's passion deadened, and in his agony he sweated.
"They're gone! Every soferen," he cried. "They can't all have gone. The
whole ten." He opened his eyes widely. "Woe is me. Dear me. Dear me."
Until day dimmed and night grayed did they two search, neither of them
eating and neither of them discovering the treasure.
Therefore Hugh had not peace nor quietness. Grief he uttered with his
tongue, arms, and feet, and it was in the crease of his garments. He
sought sympathy and instruction from those with whom he traded. "All the
steam is gone out of me," he wailed. One shopkeeper advised him: "Has it
slipped under the lino?" Another said: "Any mice in the house? Money has
been found in their holes." The third said: "Sure the wife hasn't spent
it on dress. You know what ladies are." These hints and more Hugh wrote
down on paper, and he mused in this wise: "An old liar is the wench. For
why I wedded the English? Right was mam fach; senseless they are. Crying
she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny?
What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three
shillings--soferen--five pennies--half a penny--ticket railway. Hie
backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before
I peep once again."
He pried in every drawer and cupboard, and in the night he arose and
inquired into the clothes his wife had left off; and he pushed his
fingers into the holes of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped
in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie.
"If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he
said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let
him go. Reduce expenses at once."
Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate
little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and
there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though
there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are
leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if
she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the
soferens and buy one or two."
The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his
fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle.
While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not
give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to
stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many
nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated
to deal with him he whined his loss, making it greater than it was, and
expressing: "The interest alone is very big."
By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two
years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him
to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his
clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead.
"You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar."
"What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as
I was?"
Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a
penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the
least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys
for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him
at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the
platform on the Day of David the Saint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s
Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts.
He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might
cry out his intention.
"No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the
shops."
Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed
costly blouses.
"That's plenty at two guineas," Hugh said of one.
"It's a Paris model," said Millie.
"Nothing in her. Nothing."
"Not much material, I grant," Millie observed. "The style is fashionable
and they charge a lot."
"I like to see you in her," said Hugh. "Take in the points and make her
with an odd length of silk."
When the blouse was finished, Hugh took it to a man at whose shop trade
the poorest sort of middle-class women, saying: "I can let you have a
line like this at thirty-five and six a dozen."
"I'll try three twelves," said the man.
Then Hugh went into the City and fetched up Japanese silk, and lace, and
large white buttons; and Millie sewed with her might.
Hugh thrived, and his success was noised among the London Welsh. The
preacher of Kingsend Chapel visited him.
"Not been in the Temple you have, Mistar Eevanss, almost since you were
spliced," he said. "Don't say the wife makes you go to the capel of the
English."
"Busy am I making money."
"News that is to me, Mistar Eevanss. Much welcome there is for you with
us."
In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled
woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and
hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes. These women and girls were under
the hand of Millie, who kept count of their comings and goings and the
work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material
they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task. Millie
labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband's. She and
Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or
workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was "The French
Model Blouse Co. Manageress--Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste."
Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper.
In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh.
For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of
him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto
his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm.
I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound
note fell on the ground. "Well, I never!" she cried in her dismay. "It
was there all the time."
Hugh seized the note from her hand.
"You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these
years we had no interest in him."