Jack and the Check Book.
by John Kendrick Bangs.
I
Once upon a time a great many years ago there lived a poor woman who, having invested all her savings in mining shares, was soon brought to penury and want. She had bought her modest little home and all there was in it on the instalment plan, and here she was, upon a certain beautiful morning in late spring, absolutely penniless, and three days off, staring her in the face, were payments due on the piano, the kitchen range and even on the house itself. Moreover, the winter had been a bitter one. Four times had the water-pipes frozen and burst, and a plumber"s bill of appalling magnitude had come in the morning"s mail, with the stern admonition stamped in red letters at the bottom:
LONG PAST DUE.
PLEASE REMIT.
The unhappy woman was at her wit"s ends to know what to do. She had tried to sell her shares in "Amalgamated War-whoop," only to find that that once promising company had pa.s.sed into the hands of a receiver, and that there was an a.s.sessment, amounting to four times their face value, due on the shares, so that every possible purchaser to whom she applied refused to take the stock off her hands unless she paid them five dollars a share for the service and would guarantee them against the chance of further loss. All other means of raising the necessary funds--and she had tried them all--proved equally futile. The savings-banks would not lend her a penny on a house of which the parlor floor alone was clear of obligation, and the threat of the piano people to remove that instrument if the March instalment, now a month over-due, was not immediately forthcoming rendered that both unsalable and valueless as security for a loan.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
She sat, the perfect picture of hopeless despair, in her rocking-chair, gazing moodily out of the window, thinking dreadful thoughts, and, it may be, contemplating the alternative of suicide or marriage with the village magnate, a miserable villain whom everybody detested, and who, everybody knew very well, had been instrumental in the ruin of her deceased husband, a once prosperous haberdasher. But on a sudden her look of despair faded wholly away and a great light of happiness illumined her eyes, as up the garden path, whistling merrily as he strode along, came her son Jack, a lad of fifteen, the comfort and solace of her lonely days.
"Dear boy!" she murmured softly to herself as he waved his hand at her, "he is the only thing I have left that there isn"t something due on."
The boy, entering the room, still whistling, flung his cap up on the table and kissed his mother affectionately.
"Well, mother," he said, joyously, "our troubles are over at last."
Her face beamed an eager inquiry. The sudden, overwhelming happiness of the news itself deprived her of the power of speech for a moment, and then with difficulty she gasped out the words:
"Then you have secured a place with steady wages, my son?"
Her heart beat wildly as she awaited the answer.
"No, mother," he replied, promptly. "The only position open to me was that of private secretary to old Jonas Bilkins, my father"s enemy, and when he found out that I was my father"s son he fired me out of his office."
"No wonder!" muttered the woman. "He didn"t dare let you have access to his private papers. He knows that every penny he calls his own belongs by right to us, and once you got hold of his letter-files and secret doc.u.ments you could prove it."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"So he said, mother dear," said the boy. "He was brutally frank about it, and when I told him what I thought of him, and advised him to pick out a nice, comfortable jail to spend his declining years in, he threw his check-book at my head."
"The miserable villain!" groaned the old lady. "Did it hit you?"
"No, indeed," laughed Jack. "My baseball training helped me out there. I caught it on the fly and have brought it home with me. Meanwhile, I have sold the cow."
"You have?" cried the delighted mother, clasping him warmly in her arms.
"Yes," said Jack, proudly. "We need not go hungry to-day, mother. I swapped her off for a pot of beans."
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BEANS SCATTERED IN EVERY DIRECTION]
An awful, despairing silence followed this announcement. The old lady loved her son beyond everything in the world, but this was too much even for a mother"s love. The idea that a first-cla.s.s Jersey cow worth not less than forty-five dollars regarded merely as raw material for the table, and not taking into account her value as a producer of rich, creamy milk, should have been bartered for a miserable pot of beans, and doubtless pickled beans at that, was the last straw of misfortune that broke the back of the Camel of Maternal Patience, and with certain phrases of a forceful nature she seized the pot from her son"s trembling hand and flung it with such impetus against the garden wall that it was shattered into countless fragments, and the beans scattered in every direction. After this attack of rage she took to her bed, weeping bitterly. Jack too, stunned by his kind mother"s wrath, retired to his little cot in the attic, and sought relief from his troubles and the gnawing pangs of hunger in sleep.
But lo and behold! the following morning a strange thing had happened.
Jack, upon waking early, found his once sunny window obscured by a heavy growth of leaves, and on dressing rapidly and going into the garden to see what had caused this strange condition of affairs, was surprised to find a splendid bean-stalk sprung up during the night, and, what was still more wonderful, still springing, moving rapidly upward like the escalator he had once seen upon the elevated railway in New York when with his father he had visited that wonderful city to inspect the spring and autumn styles for the haberdashery.
He gazed at it in wondering amazement, and then the silence was broken.
"All aboard for Ogreville!" cried a squeaky little voice from behind one of the branches. "Step lively, please! All aboard!"
Jack, nothing loath for a new experience, immediately seated himself astride one of the rapidly rising tendrils, and soon found himself soaring in the upper air, far, far above the earth, upon what he came subsequently to call his "Aero-Bean."
"Well, we have you at last," said the squeaky little voice from behind the leaves, pleasantly. "You may not remember it, my lad, but you once gave up your strap on a subway train to a tired-looking woman and she has never forgotten your kindness. It so happens that she was Queen of the Fairies, and later on she became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United States Fairy Corporation of Wall Street. You are now about to receive your reward. You have Major Bilkins"s check-book with you?"
"Yes," said Jack. "He threw it at me yesterday, and I"ve had it ever since."
"Good!" said the squeaky little voice. "What is the old man"s balance?"
"Three million five hundred and seventy-five thousand four hundred and fifty-seven dollars," said Jack, reading off the figures slowly, and gasping at the thought of anybody"s having so much money as that on hand.
"H"m!" said the squeaky little voice. "It is rather less than I had thought. However, we can fix that without much trouble. Zeros are cheap. Just add six of them to that balance."
"Do you mean add or affix?" asked Jack.
"Affix is what I should have said," replied the squeaky little voice.
"Get out your fountain pen and tag "em on."
Jack immediately obeyed.
"Now what does it come to?" asked the little voice.
"Three trillion five hundred and seventy-five billion four hundred and fifty-seven million dollars," stammered Jack, his eyes bulging with amazement.
"That"s better," laughed the little voice. "Thus you see, my boy, how easy it is to make much out of a little if you only know how. Three and a half trillions is a pretty tidy bit of pocket-money for a boy of your age. So be careful how you use it, my son. Use it wisely, and all will be well with you."
As the voice spoke these words the growing stalk came to a sudden stop, and the voice added:
"Ogreville! Last stop! All out!"
The boy stepped off the stalk, and found himself in a magnificently broad and fertile country. Great fields of waving grain, numberless pasturages filled with prize cattle of all sorts, surrounded him on every hand. Trees heavily laden with rare fruits bordered the highways, and everything everywhere bore unmistakable evidences of a rare prosperity.
"Phe-e-ew!" whistled Jack, blinking with joy at all he saw before him.
"This looks like the land of milk and honey all right. And only twenty minutes by bean-car from New York! What a chance for corner lots, and an easy suburb for business men!"
The lad wandered along for a while, rejoicing in all the beauties of the wondrous scene, when, coming to a turn in the magnificently laid road, he perceived not far ahead of him a splendidly built castle, much resembling a famous city hotel he had once pa.s.sed on a sight-seeing coach, and, remembering on a sudden that he had had no breakfast, he walked boldly up to the main entrance and knocked on the ma.s.sive bronze door. A beautiful young girl about his own age answered the summons.
"I don"t know if this is a hotel," said Jack, politely, "but if it is, might I get a bite here?"
"I fear you might if my stepfather should happen to see you," replied the girl with a shudder, her face mantling with a deep luscious red, the like of which Jack had never seen anywhere save on the petal of a rose or the cheek of a cherry.
The silvery tones of her voice thrilled him.