Money Magic Part 32

She turned him aside from this by saying: "I reckon New York is a great deal bigger than Chicago. Mr. Moss says it makes any other town seem like a county seat. I'm dead leery of it. I want to see it, but it just naturally locoes me to think of it."

"'Tis the only place to spend money--so the boys tell me. I've never been there but once, and then only for three days. I went on to get a man when I was sheriff in San Juan. I saw it then mostly as a wonderful fine swamp to lose a thief in."

"Did you get your man?" she asked, with formal interest.

"I did so--and nearly died for want of sleep on the way home; he was a desprit character, was black Hosay; but I linked him to me arm and tuck chances."

Once she had listened to these stories with eager interest; now they were but empty boasting--so deeply inwrought was her soul with matters that more nearly concerned her woman's need and woman's nature. The potency of gold!--could any magic be greater? They lived like folk in a flying palace (with books and papers, easy-chairs and card-tables), eating carefully cooked meals, served by attendants as considerate and as constant as those at their own fireside. The broad windows gave streaming panorama of town and country, hill and river, and the young wife accepted it all with the haughty air of one who is wearied with splendor, but inwardly the knowledge that it all came to Haney (as to her) unearned troubled her. Luck was his G.o.d, but she, while accepting from him these marvellous, shining gifts, had another G.o.d--one derived from her Saxon ancestors, one to whom luxury was akin to harlotry.

They left the train at Albany and went to the best hotel in the city to spend the night. "To-morrow I'll see if I can find anybody who knows where the old dad is," said Haney. "'Tis too late, and I'm too weary to do it to-night."

Bertha was tired, too--mentally wearied, and glad of a chance to be alone. She went at once to her room, leaving the Captain and Lucius busy with the Troy directory.

Haney set about his search next day with the eager zeal of a lad. He took an almost childish pleasure in displaying his good-fortune. Through Lucius he hired an auto-car as good as the one he had left in Chicago, and together he and Bertha rode into his native town, up into the bleak, brick-paved ward through which he had roamed when a cub. It had changed, of course, as all things American must, but it was so much the same, after all, that he could point out the alleys where he used to toss pennies and play cards and fight. Every corner was historic to him.

"Phil O'Brien used to keep saloon here--and I've earned many a dime sweepin' out for his barkeeper. I was never a drunken lad," he gravely said; "I don't know why--I had all the chance there was. I've been moderate of drink all me life. No, I won't say that--I'll say I tuck it as it came, with no fear and no favor. When playin', I always let it alone--it spiled me nerve--I let the other felly do the drinkin'."

Some of the signs were unchanged, and he sent Lucius in to ask the proprietor of the "Hoosac Market" to step out; and when he appeared, a plump man with close-clipped gray hair and smoothly shaven face, he shouted, "'Tis old Otto--just the man I nade. Howdy, Otto Siegel?"

Siegel shaded his eyes and looked up at Haney. "You haff the edventege off me alretty."

"I'm Mart Haney--you remember Mart Haney."

Siegel grasped the situation. "Sure! Vy, how you va.s.s dis dime, eh!

Vell, vell--you gome pack in style, ain't it? Your daughter--yes?"

"My wife," said Haney.

Siegel raised a fat arm, which a dirty blue undershirt imperfectly draped, and Bertha shook hands with curt politeness. "Vell, vell, Mart, you must haff struck a cold-mine by now, hah?"

"That's what."

"Vell, vell! and I licked you fer hookin' apples off me vonce--aind dot right?"

Mart grinned. "I reckon that's so. I said I'd cut you in two when I grew up; all boys say such things, but I reckon your whalin' did me good. But what I want to know is this, can you tell me where to find the old man?"

"Your fader? He's in Brooklyn--so I heart. I don't know. My, my! he'll be clad to see you--"

"You don't know his address?"

"No, I heart he was livin' mit your sister Kate."

"Donahue's in a saloon, I reckon."

"Always. He tondt know nodding else. You can fint him in the directory--Chon Donahue, barkeep."

"All right. Much obleeged." Haney looked around. "I don't suppose any of the boys are livin' here now?"

"Von or two. Chake Schmidt iss a boliceman, Harry Sullivan iss in te vater-vorks department, ant a few oders. Mostly dey are scattered; some are teadt--many are teadt," he added, on second thought.

"Well, good-luck," and Haney reached down to shake hands again, and the machine began to whiz. "Tell all the boys 'How.'"

For half an hour they ran about the streets at his direction, while he talked on about his youthful joys and sorrows. "You wouldn't suppose a lad could have any fun in such a place as this," he said, musingly, "but I did. I was a careless, go-divil pup, and had a power of friends, and these alleys and bare brick walls were the only play-ground we had. You can't cheat a boy--he's goin' to have a good time if he has three grains of corn in his belly and a place to sleep when he's tired. I was all right till me old dad started to put me into the factory to work; then I broke loose. I could work for an hour or two as hard as anny one; but a whole long day--not for Mart! Right there I decided to emigrate and grow up with the Injuns."

Bertha listened to his musing comment with a new light upon his life.

She had little cause for the feeling of disgust which came to her while studying the scenes of his boyhood--her own childhood had been almost as humble, almost as cheerless--and yet she could not prevent a sinking at the heart. The gambler, so picturesque in his wickedness, was becoming commonplace. He rose from such petty conditions, after all.

Thus far the question of his family relations had not troubled her very much, for, aside from the chance coming of Charles, she had had little opportunity of knowing anything about the Haneys, and they had seemed a very long way off; but now, as she was rushing down upon New York City, with the promise of not only finding the father, but of taking him back with them to live, she began to doubt. His character was of the greatest importance, in view of his taking a seat beside their fire.

It was singular, it was bewildering, this change in her estimate of Marshall Haney. The deeper he sank in reminiscent meditation the farther he withdrew from the bold and splendid freebooter he had once seemed to her. She was now unjust to him for he was still capable of what his kind call "standing pat." The rough-and-ready borderman was still housed under the same thatch of hair with the sentimental old Irishman, and yet it would have sorely puzzled the keenest observer to discover the relationship of that handsome, rather serious-browed, richly clothed young woman and her big, elderly, garrulous companion. Bertha was not easy to cla.s.sify, in herself, for she gave out an air of reserve not readily accounted for. She looked to be the well-clothed, carefully reared American girl, but her gestures, the silent, unsmiling way in which she received what was said to her--something indefinably alert and self-masterful without being self-conscious--gave her a mysterious charm.

She was profoundly absorbed in the great, historic river on her right, and yet she did not cry out as other girls of her age would have done.

She read her folder and kept vigilant eyes upon all the pa.s.sing points of interest--even as Haney rumbled on about Charles and his father and Kate--more than half distraught by the vague recollections she had of her school histories and geographies. How little she knew! "I must buckle down to some kind of study," she repeatedly said to herself, as if it helped her to a more inflexible resolution.

Soon the mighty city and its fabled sea-sh.o.r.e began to scare her soul with vague alarms and exultations. Manhattan was as remote to her as London, and as splendidly alien as Paris. It was, indeed, both London and Paris to her. Its millions of people appalled her. How could so many folk live in one place?

Again the magic power of money bucklered her. It was good to think that they were to go to the best hotels, and that she had no need to trouble herself about anything, for Lucius settled everything. He telegraphed for rooms, he a.s.sembled all their baggage and tipped their porters: and when they rushed into the long tunnel in Harlem he was free to take the Captain by the arm and help him to the forward end of the car ready to alight, leaving Bertha to follow without so much as a satchel to burden her arm. Haney had accepted Lucius' a.s.surance that the Park Palace was the smart hostelry, and to this they drove as to some unknown inn in a foreign capital.

It was gorgeous enough to belong in the tale of Aladdin's lamp--a palace, in very truth, with entrance-hall in keeping with the glittering, roaring Avenue through which they drove, and which was to Bertha quite as strange as a boulevard in Berlin would have been. Lucius conducted them into the reception-room with an air of proprietorship, and soon had waiters, maids and bell-boys "jumping." His management was masterful. He knew just what time to give each man, and just how much to say concerning his master and mistress. He conveyed to the clerk that while Captain Haney didn't want any foolish display, he liked things comfortable round him, and the colored man's tone, as he spoke that word "comfortable," was far-reaching in effect. The best available places were put at his command.

Bertha accepted it all with cold impa.s.sivity; it was only a little higher gloss, a little more glitter than they had suffered in Chicago; and she was getting used to seeing men in braid and b.u.t.tons "hustle"

when she came near. The suite of rooms to which they were conducted looked out on Fifth Avenue, as Lucius proudly explained; and from their windows he designated some of the houses of the millionaires who receive the homage of the less rich (and of the very poor) which only n.o.bility can command in Europe. Bertha betrayed no eager interest in these notables, but she was very deeply impressed by the far-famed Avenue, which was already thickening with the daily five-o'clock parade of carriages, auto-cars, and pedestrians.

Lucius explained this custom, and said: "If you'd like to go out I'll get a car."

"Let's do it!" she exclaimed to Haney.

"Sure! get one. These smell-wagons must have been invented for cripples like me."

Bertha took that ride in the spirit of one who never expects to do it again, and so deeply did the city print itself upon her memory that she was able to recall years afterwards a hundred of its glittering points, angles, and facets. She felt herself up-borne by money. Without Haney's bank-book she would have been merely one of those minute insects who timidly sought to cross the street, and yet philosophers marvel at the race men make for gold! So long as silken parasols and automobiles mad with pride are keenly enjoyed, so long will Americans--and all others who have them not--struggle for them; for they are not only the signs of distinction and luxury, they are delights. A private car is not merely display; it is comfort. To have a suite of rooms at the Park Palace is not all show; it makes for homely ease, cleanliness, repose. And these people riding imperiously to and fro in Fifth Avenue buy not merely diamonds, but well-cooked food, warm and shining raiment, and freedom from the scramble on the pave.

Some understanding of all this was beating home to Bertha's head and heart. She had as yet no keen desire for the glitter of wealth, but its grateful shelter, its power to defend and nurture, were qualities which had begun to make its lure almost irresistible. Haney liked the auto-car, not for its red and gold (which delighted Lucius), but for its handiness in taking him about the city. It saved him from climbing in and out of a high car door; it was swifter and safer than a carriage; therefore, he was ready to purchase its speed and convenience. He cared little for the sensation he would create in riding up to his sister's door in Brooklyn, though he chuckled mightily at the thought of what his old dad would say; and as they claimed a place among the millionaires he broke into a sly smile. "If ever a bog-trotter landed at Castle Garden, me father was wan o' them. I can remember the hat he wore. 'Twas a 'stovepipe,' sure enough. It had no rim at all at all! It was fuzzy as a cat. If he didn't have a green vest it was a wonder. He took me to see a play once just to show me how he did look. He was onto his own curves, was old dad. I hope he's livin' yet. I'd like to take him up the Avenue in this car and hear the speel he'd put up."

Bertha was in growing uneasiness, and when alone at the close of her wonderful ride through this marvellous city, so clean, so vast, so packed with stores of all things rich and beautiful, she went to her room in a blur of doubt. Now that an unspoken, half-formed resolution to free herself was in her mind, she realized that every extravagance like this ride, these gorgeous rooms, sank her deeper into helpless indebtedness to Marshall Haney. And this knowledge now took away the keen edge of her delight, making her food bitter and her pillow hot.

In the midst of her troubled thinking, Lucius knocked at the door to ask: "Will you go down to dinner or shall I have it sent up?"

"Oh no, I'll go down."

"They dress for dinner, ma'am."

"Do they? What'll I wear?"

He considered a moment. "Any light silk--semi-dress will do. I'll send a maid in to help you."

"No, I don't need a maid. They're a nuisance," she quickly answered.

Lucius' att.i.tude towards her was more than respectful--it was paternal; for she made no more secret of her early condition than Haney, and the colored man enjoyed serving them. He seemed perfectly happy in advising, cautioning, directing them, and was deeply impressed with their powers of adaptability--was, in truth, developing a genuine affection for them both. He was a lonely little man, Bertha had learned, with no near kin in the States, and the fact that he came from an Island in the sea made him less of a "n.i.g.g.e.r" to the Captain, who had the usual amount of prejudice against both black and red men.