"And so you"re rich," said Verna, "awfully, immensely, disgustingly rich, and you"ve been masquerading all this afternoon as a charming pauper!"
"I don"t think I said charming," I remarked.
"But I say it," said Verna, "because, really you know, you"re awfully nice, and I like you, and I"m glad from the bottom of my heart that you are rich!"
"Thank you," I said, "I"m glad, too."
"Now we must go down and meet your boat," said Verna. "See, there it is, coming in--though I still think it was cheeky of you to tell them to land uninvited."
"Oh, let them wait!" I said.
"No, no, we must go and meet them," said Verna, "and I"m going to ask that glorious old fox with the yellow beard whether it"s all true or not!"
"You can"t believe it yet?" I said.
"You"ve only yourself to thank for it," she said. "I got used to you as one thing--and here you are, under my eyes, turning out another."
I could not resist saying "Fancy!" though she did not seem to perceive any humour in my exclamation of it, and took it as a matter of course. Besides, she had risen now, and bade me follow her down the stairs.
It was really fine to see the men salute me as we walked down to the boat, and the darkies" teeth shining at the sight of me (for I"m a believer in the coloured sailor) and old Neilsen grinning respectfully in the stern-sheets.
"Neilsen," I said, "tell this young lady my name!"
"Mr. ffrench, sir," he answered, considerably astonished at the question.
"Little f or big F, Neilsen?"
"Little f, sir," said Neilsen.
"There, doubter!" I said to Verna.
She had her hand on my arm and was smiling down at the men from the little stone pier on which we stood.
"Fyles," she said, "you must land and dine with us to-night, not only because I want you to, but because you ought to meet my father."
"About when?" I asked.
"Seven-thirty," she answered; and then, in a lower voice, so that the men below might not hear: "Our fairy tale is coming true, isn"t it, Fyles?"
"Right to the end," I said.
"There were two ends," she said. "Mine and yours."
"Oh, mine," I said; "that is, if you"ll live up to your part of it!"
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Throw over the Beast and be my Princess," I said, trying to talk lightly, though my voice betrayed me.
"Perhaps I will," she answered.
"Perhaps!" I repeated. "That isn"t any answer at all."
"Yes, then!" she said quickly, and, disengaging her hand from my arm, ran back a few steps.
"I hear Papa"s wheels," she cried over her shoulder, "and, don"t forget, Fyles, dinner at seven-thirty!"
THE GOLDEN CASTAWAYS
All I did was to pull him out by the seat of the trousers. The fat old thing had gone out in the dark to the end of the yacht"s boat- boom, and was trying to worry in the dinghy with his toe, when plump he dropped into a six-knot ebb tide. Of course, if I hadn"t happened along in a launch, he might have drowned, but, as for anything heroic on my part--why, the very notion is preposterous.
The whole affair only lasted half a minute, and in five he was aboard his yacht and drinking hot Scotch in a plush dressing-gown.
It was natural that his wife and daughter should be frightened, and natural, too, I suppose, that when they had finished crying over him they should cry over me. He had taken a chance with the East River, and it had been the turn of a hair whether he floated down the current a dead grocer full of brine, or stood in that cabin, a live one full of grog. Oh, no! I am not saying a word against THEM. But as for Grossensteck himself, he ought really to have known better, and it makes me flush even now to recall his monstrous perversion of the truth. He called me a hero to my face.
He invented details to which my dry clothes gave the lie direct.
He threw fits of grat.i.tude. His family were theatrically commanded to regard me well, so that my countenance might be forever imprinted on their hearts; and they, poor devils, in a seventh heaven to have him back safe and sound in their midst, regarded and regarded, and imprinted and imprinted, till I felt like a perfect a.s.s masquerading as a Hobson.
It was all I could do to tear myself away. Grossensteck clung to me. Mrs. Grossensteck clung to me. Teresa--that was the daughter-- Teresa, too, clung to me. I had to give my address. I had to take theirs. Medals were spoken of; gold watches with inscriptions; a common purse, on which I was requested to confer the favour of drawing for the term of my natural life. I departed in a blaze of glory, and though I could not but see the ridiculous side of the affair (I mean as far as I was concerned), I was moved by so affecting a family scene, and glad, indeed, to think that the old fellow had been spared to his wife and daughter. I had even a pang of envy, for I could not but contrast myself with Grossensteck, and wondered if there were two human beings in the world who would have cared a snap whether I lived or died. Of course, that was just a pa.s.sing mood, for, as a matter of fact, I am a man with many friends, and I knew some would feel rather miserable were I to make a hole in salt.w.a.ter. But, you see, I had just had a story refused by Schoonmaker"s Magazine, a good story, too, and that always gives me a sinking feeling--to think that after all these years I am still on the borderland of failure, and can never be sure of acceptance, even by the second-cla.s.s periodicals for which I write. However, in a day or two, I managed to unload "The Case against Phillpots" on somebody else, and off I started for the New Jersey coast with a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket, and no end of plans for a long autumn holiday.
I never gave another thought to Grossensteck until one morning, as I was sitting on the veranda of my boarding-house, the postman appeared and requested me to sign for a registered package. I opened it with some trepidation, for I had caught that fateful name written crosswise in the corner and began at once to apprehend the worst. I think I have as much a.s.surance as any man, but it took all I had and more, too, when I unwrapped a gold medal the thickness and shape of an enormous checker, and deciphered the following inscription:
Presented to Hugo Dundonald Esquire for having With signal heroism, gallantry and presence of mind rescued On the night of June third, 1900 the life of Hermann Grossensteck from The dark and treacherous waters of the East River.
The thing was as thick as two silver dollars, laid the one on the other, and gold--solid, ringing, ma.s.sy gold--all the way through; and it was a.s.sociated with a blue satin ribbon, besides, which was to serve for sporting it on my manly bosom. I set it on the rail and laughed--laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks--while the other boarders crowded about me; handed it from hand to hand; grew excited to think that they had a hero in their midst; and put down my explanation to the proverbial modesty of the brave.
Blended with my amus.e.m.e.nt were some qualms at the intrinsic value of the medal, for it could scarcely have cost less than three or four hundred dollars, and it worried me to think that Grossensteck must have drawn so lavishly on his savings. It had not occurred to me, either before or then, that he was rich; somehow, in the bare cabin of the schooner, I had received no such impression of his means. I had not even realised that the vessel was his own, taking it for granted that it had been hired, all standing, for a week or two with the put-by economies of a year. His home address ought to have set me right, but I had not taken the trouble to read it, slipping it into my pocket-book more to oblige him than with any idea of following up the acquaintance. It was one of the boarders that enlightened me.
"Grossensteck!" he exclaimed; "why, that"s the great cheap grocer of New York, the Park & Tilford of the lower orders! There are greenbacks in his rotten tea, you know, and places to leave your baby while you buy his sanded sugar, and if you save eighty tags of his syrup you get a silver spoon you wouldn"t be found dead with! Oh, everybody knows Grossensteck!"
"Well, I pulled the great cheap grocer out of the East River," I said. "There was certainly a greenback in that tea," and I took another look at my medal, and began to laugh all over again.
"There"s no reason why you should ever have another grocery bill,"
said the boarder. "That is, if flavour cuts no figure with you, and you"d rather eat condemned army stores than not!"
I sat down and wrote a letter of thanks. It was rather a nice letter, for I could not but feel pleased at the old fellow"s grat.i.tude, even if it were a trifle overdone, and, when all"s said, it was undoubtedly a fault on the right side. I disclaimed the heroism, and bantered him good-naturedly about the medal, which, of course, I said I would value tremendously and wear on appropriate occasions. I wondered at the time what occasion could be appropriate to decorate one"s self with a gold saucer covered with lies--but, naturally, I didn"t go into that to HIM. When you accept a solid chunk of gold you might as well be handsome about it, and I piled it on about his being long spared to his family and to a world that wouldn"t know how to get along without him.
Yes, it was a stunning letter, and I"ve often had the pleasure of reading it since in a splendid frame below my photograph.
I had been a month or more in New York, and December was already well advanced before I looked up my Grossenstecks, which I did one late afternoon as I happened to be pa.s.sing in their direction. It was a house of forbidding splendour, on the Fifth Avenue side of Central Park, and, as I trod its marble halls, I could not but repeat to myself: "Behold, the grocer"s dream!" But I could make no criticism of my reception by Mrs. Grossensteck and Teresa, whom I found at home and delighted to see me. Mrs. Grossensteck was a stout, jolly, motherly woman, common, of course,--but, if you can understand what I mean,--common in a nice way, and honest and unpretentious and likable. Teresa, whom I had scarcely noticed on the night of the accident, was a charmingly pretty girl of eighteen, very chic and gay, with pleasant manners and a contagious laugh. She had arrived at obviously the turn of the Grossensteck fortunes, and might, in refinement and everything else, have belonged to another clay. How often one sees that in America, the land above others of social contrast, where, in the same family, there are often three separate degrees of caste.
Well, to get along with my visit. I liked them and they liked me, and I returned later the same evening to dine and meet papa. I found him as impa.s.sionedly grateful as before, and with a tale that trespa.s.sed even further on the incredible, and after dinner we all sat around a log fire and talked ourselves into a sort of intimacy. They were wonderfully good people, and though we hadn"t a word in common, nor an idea, we somehow managed to hit it off, as one often can with those who are unaffectedly frank and simple.
I had to cry over the death of little Hermann in the steerage (when they had first come to America twenty years ago), and how Grossensteck had sneaked gingersnaps from the slop-baskets of the saloon.
"The little teffil never knew where they come from," said Grossensteck, "and so what matters it?"
"That"s Papa"s name in the slums," said Teresa. "Uncle Gingersnaps, because at all his stores they give away so many for nothing."