My Neighbors Part 20

"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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion 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 b.i.t.c.h. 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 l.u.s.ter 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-cla.s.s 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 j.a.panese silk, and lace, and large white b.u.t.tons; 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 b.u.t.tons and hook-and-eyes and to make b.u.t.ton-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 pa.s.sed 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."

XIII

PROFIT AND GLORY

By serving in shops, by drinking himself drunk, and by shamming good fortune, Jacob Griffiths gave testimony to the miseries and joys of life, and at the age of fifty-six he fell back in his bed at his lodging-house in Clapham, suffered, drew up his crippled knees and died.

On the morrow his brother Simon hastened to the house; and as he neared the place he looked up and beheld his sisters Annie and Jane fach also hurrying thither. Presently they three saw one another as with a single eye, wherefore they slackened their pace and walked with seemliness to the door. Jacob's body was on a narrow, disordered bed, and in the state of its deliverance: its eyes were aghast and its hands were clenched in deathful pangs.

Then Simon bowed his trunk and lifted his silk hat and his umbrella in the manner of a preacher giving a blessing.

"Of us family it can be claimed," he p.r.o.nounced, "that even the Angel do not break us. We must all cross Jordan. Some go with boats and bridges.