A TALE OF TWO MISERS

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 97, 16 December 1904, Page 2

A TALE OF TWO MISERS

By Edgar Fawcett. } ICOPT-UOHT. 1801.1 *■ V * I ...->.'•-' CHAPTER I, i About seventy-five years ago in New I York the people who kept their private carriages could almost have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Hence, when old Myndherst Van Doren drove out in his cumbrous vehicle, with , a hammer-cloth and yellow wheels, people .-would stare and wink at one another in high diversion and dismay. Surely such luxury was almost without precei dent in the peaceful and unostentatious j little seaport town of 1815. But what i made it all the odder and funnier was the fact that for many past years old i Van Doren had been accounted the most miserly of men. He had a wide j house facing on the Battery, in "which ! he lived entirely alone except for two j eld servants, a man and his wife. Van Doren had once had a wife himself, but I that was years back, when he j had just entered the shipping • business on South street, from j which he had long ago brought away a j handsome fortune. "Two hundred thou- ; sand dollars if a cent," old Peter Van J Zandt, fellow-merchant, had declared { him possessed of on his retirement, and ; the enormity of such a fortune thrilled, at that period, all who heard of its being possibly owned by any one single man. It was still whispered that young Mrs. Van Doren had died of a broken heart, her husband having treated her with sternest parsimony and neglect. He had a sister, too, and she had married against his will a southern gentle,man of literary tastes and precarious income. Though Ralph Stanfield's birth and social rank had both been excellent, the brother of Martha Van Doren had never pardoned what he chose to denounce as her gross misalliance. He had known nothing of her for many years, and at the time our little chronicle opens he had received the card of a young man who announced

himself as his nephew, Alfred Stanfield. On the day that he sought to visit his uncle, Stanfield was met by old Samuel, the servant, with a sad but firm announcement that Mr. Van Doren could not be seen. Then the young man had written his kinsman quite a long letter in -wbich he told of his orphanage, his poverty and his desire to win some sort of clerkship here in New York. The letter was not answered. After three weeks of waiting Stanfield began to grind his teeth with wrath at his uncle's heartless behavior and to say of that gentleman the very bitterest things. He said these things to a person whom he had not mentioned in his letter. Tha^ person was his young wife, Martha, whom he had married just before shaking the dust of Charleston from his feet. Their union had been an elopement, and they were now living on a somewhat slender legacy which Martha had inherited when a child. Her father and several relatives were all furious at her for having married Stanfield. They admitted that he was a gentleman, but declared that his family was broken down, and that a daughter of the haughty house of Kollaston should never have chosen so ineligible a lord. These Rallastons were then what we call leading people in Charleston, which at that time was a town filled with fashionable pretension. But Martha had made her choice, and thouffh she felt sure that it would always be sneenngly regarded by her kindred as an imprudence alike desperate and unpardonable she soothed her perturbed soul with thoughts of how she had won the husband of her maidenly choice. Trouble now seemed lowering in gloomiest threat over the fortunes of the young pair. Before long Martha's legacy would be spent to its last dollar. As it was she and Stanfield were living in rather inferior apartments on Catharine street. What was to be done? They had come from Charleston with the hope Of ultimately and perhaps promptly winning Van Doren over. Bnt here, as it were, the old fellow invisibly scoffed, at them, f ortressed in such impregnable manner against their approaches that he might as well have been the emperor of China once and for all- ' "They told you he drove abroad in his own carriage," said Martha, one day. "If I were you, Alfred, I'd just stop it and insist on speaking with him." Those words of his wife, as afterwards remembered by Stanfield, were fraught with a qupejr prophetic humor. For a few days after the strange occasion came to him of indeed "stopping" Mr. Van Doren's carriage. It all happened like a flash, as such things are so wont to "happen. One morning Stanfield was strolling on ,Broadway whfen he saw the clumsy though somewhat" aristocratic conveyance of -lis uncle come trtmneling along past Hector street. He had no idea who owned the vehicle with its cockaded driver and two ponderous roans, though he had seen it several times before during previous strolls.' Already, however, he had heard, as we know, that his ricla uncle committed the monrtrous New York extraratfMice of driving ont in IM* owjp eo^ T4eu. w-uin, tfr: •mt - '-\ - *- v * '* : . '

tidings had drifted to him that Myndherst Van Doren would ' never hr.ye dreamed of setting up for hin^sclf this private equipage if he had not become a martyr tq rheumatism. "Not g-oT.it, , not a bit of it," Stanfield's informant had added; "he'a altogether too plain a liver for that." And cow, as the slow, massive . ear* riagc passed him,Stanfield glanced within it and discerned, though somewhat faintly, a thin, hard-faced man leaning agamst its back cushions. Just after this glimpse of his unknown uncle had been offered him he started as he perceived a large dray, drawn by two mad- * dened runaway horses, come dashing- np the street. At first there seemed no danger to Mr. Van Doren's carriage, though the coachman brought it to an abrupt standstill and watched the hurrying bulk with anxious eyes. As it • sped nearer, however, the headlong regularity of its progress changed. The driver was gone, having rashly -jumped from his seat some little time ago. The horses now began a plunging course and several other wagons narrowly escaped collision. Not so Mr. Van Doren's vehicle. Towards that the wild creatures now swerved, and in : another instant they were rearing furiously ;;nd yet still galloping onward, with their own wheels locked in the heavy yellow ones. It was a horrible moment fbr Stanfield. Young, strong, with urgently humane impulses, he saw the carriage of the old man violently overturned a nd the coachman flung from his box. There is no doubt that he now acted with a splendid promptness and courage, for in a trice he had darted, fleet of foot, after the whole hurtled comminglement of horses and woodwork. The Van Doren team had not yet taken fright and were pulling stolidly against their terrified brothers. This gave Stanfield a chance, and he leaped with great daring and nimbleness upon the shafts of the dragging coach. Still greater was his act in springing thence upon the dray itself. He happened to have a large clasp-knife in his pocket, -a memento of a shooting trip in the South Carolina wilderness, taken but a short time before his romantic marriage. He remembered afterwards that while .getting- himself over the dashboard of the dray, and clinging to it with one Ivmd as he cut the traces with the other, it flashed through his mind how he was almost giving his life one chance out of twenty. But a few lunges of that stout steel blade so far unf ettered the furious horses that within the next twenty seconds they had quite rid themselves of every restriction, and were scampering BpWws -witlx a. new and l-ion-d liberty. Stanfield felt dazed after his magnificent work. Still clinging to the dashboard, with the knife in his hand, he fancied himself for the first time in his sturdy young life on the verge of a positive swoon. Then somebody caught him and he opened his eyes without realizing that he had closed them. A crowd had collected, and plaudits rang to him from every side. •'The most heroic thing I ever saw," said a man who had the speech and appearance of a gentleman. "I'm proud */> shake hands with you, sir. Perhaps V.lv don't know whom you saved from a horrible death," he continued, while holding Stanfield's hand. "It's Mr. Van Doren, the retired shipping merchant." "Van Doren?" faltered Stanfield, who now began to feel himself again, his brief faintness vanishing as a scrap of mist is blown away from a ruggedhillside. "Do you mean Mr. Myr\dherst Van Doren?" "Yes," said another voice, before the gentleman could*"" respond. "Here he comes, now. It's a wonder he wasn't killed by the carriage upsetting as it did." Nothing could more clearly have expressed the provincialism of New York at that period than what now followed from another member of the throng: "Oh, he's so gouty, or rheumatic, or whatever it is, that he keeps his carriage all padded inside, just like a baby's." "Hush! here he comes," murmured the gentleman, and soon Mr. Van Doren moved up to Stanfield with an extended hand. His rheumatism made him limp a little, but he had sustained no injury. His greeting of the young man who had certainly saved his life was civil, but by no means gracious. The face which his nephew looked upon, rising clean shaved and sharp-featured from its ample stock, was almost frigid and lifeless enough to have been carved from some sort of grayish marble. "I thank you, young sir— l thank you very much, very much." He was holding Stanfield's hand while he thus spoke, but on a sudden dropped it and fumbled in a side pocket of his coat, which was cut like the evening "swallow-tail" coat of the present. Soon he produced a wallet and drew from it a card, which he handed Stanfield. "There!" And then he stared fixedly at his preserver for an instant, ■ finally giving a helpless little shrug of the shoulders and disclosing a shattered pair of spectacles which he had thus far kept in his drooped left hand. "I can't see anybody very well without these," he pursued. "But I'll be able to look at you better if you'll call upon me. Come to-morrow ai> eleven o'clock in the morning, will you? I'm a little shaken up, you know, though I ain't hurt." He said this with a sort of generally challenging grin to the crowd — an expression which his nephew no sooner saw than he greatly disliked? And then he was helped away by some ! one who knew well enough to offer him an arm; though he had no actual j friend in New York, throughout whose l limited community his wealth and his avarice had both quite notoriously tranI spired. * ' Stanfield moved away in another* c\i- • rection. He began to feel a little stiff • in certain mußcles and realized, now > that it was- all over, the. tremendous • risk which he had run. The dispersing y assemblage called gay words after him, j half gratulatory, half satiric. Some i voices assured him that he was iij, for t "a thousand dollars, »sUret ?' 6a th^ morri row, and others mockingly doubted I I such an amount ol guerdon, while at t' ; tbe earn? f-Jme nibd:---' *tei? cynic dis*

J trust of "old Van Doren" with tones ot respect for his darmtleiss young savior. "Just like the selfish old miser,'* was the last comment that Stanfield h-ftard. "Bui perhaps this handsome young chap is rich himself and don't want any reward." "Don't., want any reward!" thong-lit the hero of-the tdur, as he remembered his own and Martha's dwindling purse. "What would they say if they knew he was my mother's brother? I wonder what he wiU say when hO hears. . And fie never even asked me my 'name. • WeH,.we_-, we shall see to-morrow what we shall see." When he reached home and began his story to Martha, she broke into little cries pf horror and alarm. .Before he had finished she was at his feet, kissing his hand and gazing up with wilU wist* fulness into his face. "And you're not. the least bit injured?" she at length exclaimed. "o_4 you noble, glorious Alfredl But I'E_ angry at you," she broke off, rising; ••yon should never have put your life into such navftd peril— never!" Whilo _.he wept and trembled at the deed he had done, Stanfield threw his arms abou^her and kissed each ivory lid of her sweet gray eyes, each dimple at the corners of her arched pink lips. "Think, Martha," he said, "think what may come of it! There he was, my actual uncle Myndherst, and I never dreamed of such a thing! Miser or no miser, he'll be forced to help us now. Not that I want his money. Oh, no, it . isn t that. But by lifting a finger be can get me something to do, There's the joyful part of it; there's where the very hand of Providence itself seems to have been stretched forth in our behalf — yours and mine!" "Oh, it does look as though pur troubles were over," said Martha, wiping her eyes. "But then, Alfred, to think of your doing so awfully reckless a thing! Promise me you'll nevdr think of risking your dear life like that again — ndt even to get millions and millions." "I won't," he laughed, once more kissing her. "I'll draw the line as re-j^i-ds my future deed of valor precisely ut one million." With great punctuality Stanfield presented himself the next morning at his uncle's house in State street. Tbe building had by no means a cheerful look as he rapped with the bright brass i knocker on the white-painted door. Its blinds were tightly closed, and it seemed to drouse in an apathy of oblivion. But tliis was -not liis first ascent of that slim-railed stoop; he was prepared for j the sallow, stooping butler, who presently admitted him without a word, but with an air of having expected him. Soon he was shown into a parlor so dark that he almost stumbled against a small but heavy mahogany table on which was a "friendship's keepsake," in crimson-and-gold binding, and one or two enormous, grinning, rose-lipped conch shells. After a little while old Samuel made it lighter, and then Mr. Van Doren came into the room. It is possible that the old man had never treated anyone more cordially in all his hard, austere life than he now treated Stanfield. "You did a very fine thing, sir," he said; ' ; 3 t ou saved my life beyond a doubt. Yes I grant it, you see, I (frant it." Then he rubbed one hand against the other as though, in spite of gratitude, iie wera washing away from them all material obligation of a remunerative kind, and, with his shrewd, beady eyes ambushed below their gray slants of shaggy eyebrow, he glanced round him at the threadbare carpets, the mir- - rors in their tarnished frames and the haircloth furniture whose edges here and there betrayed the tawny buckram below them. " But he doubtless descried none of these -or other signs, all glaring enough to attest his own avarice. He was very probably refreshing his memory concerning the little "busi-ness-lil^e offer" which he had resolved to make this handsome, stalwart young gentleman in the way of recognition and recompense. But Stanfield had now made up his mind to speak, and promptly did so. He told Myndherst Van Doren who he was, and at length added: "Not, sir, until I had been the means of your rescue did I learn of our relationship/ You did not ask me for my, name, nor did your servant seek it i of me this morning. But since I have already made this name known to you { in my efforts to gain your kindly notice j I feel sure that 'Alfred Stanfield' will : not strike so very unf amiliarly on your | j ears." \ ! As he finished speaking the young man placed a card, which bore his present i address, on the shell-adorned table near i which he sat. He did not proffer it to

Van Doren, though perhaps if he had done so that gentleman would have hurled it aside in disdain, for his nephew- had scarcely ended before he rose, pale and tremulous with wrath. "I seel I see!" he exclaimed. "It's all . a trick, a miserable trick! Your mother threw herself away on a penniless lover, and now you're watched your chance to steal into my good graces— to get mbney^ froth me— the money I've made by hard work, sir, and mean to keep with a tight hand, I can tell you!" At this, point the speaker agitatedly 7ose. "Samuel!" he called. ** 'Samuel!" in a shrill, falsetto voice; and the old serv-* act^^gJx^bad^totejjL gong £*>» the __V-

! rr>"".i, now reappeared with strange promptitude. •Show this— this t^rson to the door!' fumed Van Doren. ihen, wrathfully, to his nephew: "Your scheme has miscarried, sir— completely miscai'ied!" and, hurrying to a pair of heavy fokl-ing-doors, which were partly divided, ' he passedthrough the aperture, closing • it behind him an instant later in noisy ■ and savage fashion. Stanfield, as he quitted the house, laughed aloud a laugh of the . heartiest scorn. ".Was there ever such an old beast?" he said to his wife after reaehi ing home and telling her how he had been treated. 1 "No -wonder he a*sted to nay poor i mother as he did. Upon, my word, when I think his conduct over in its true contemptible colors, I wonder that ever his age and kinship prevented me from giving him the soundest of thrashings." But before evening all had changed. Myndherst Van Doren presented himself at the lodgings of Stanfield that afternoon and harshly begged his nephew's pardon. He performed this duty With much awkwardness, but emphatically he performed it nevertheless. "Of course you saved my life," he said, "and I played a very shabby part to you this morning in speaking as I did. I beg you to forgive an old man' for letting his bitter tongue run away with him. I know I'm crabbed and surly and all that. What you said about being my nephew surprised me a good deal, but I don't mean that such surprise was the slightest excuse. Now, there; will you be kind enough to accept my apology and — and*—h ere the <;ld man seemed hesitating how to conclude his peaceable overtures, and then, with a sudden curt briskness, concluded — "agree that you and I shall turn over an entirely new leaf?" Flushed and stern, Stanfield had listened, and here he glanced at Martha, who was not far away, and who gave him a little nod suggesting propitiation. Van Doren's hand was now slightly lifted. His nephew gnawed his lips for a moment and then went forward and took it. "1 will do as you say, sir," he replied, "and I promise, that the new leaf shall not be soiled by any misconduct of my own." Martha, who had been secretly quivering with nervous dread, here" struck in a gentle laugh, arid said, as she joined her husband's side: "Please let me be counted in, too, for all Alfred's friends are mine, and if you will receive him as your real nephew at last you must- let me become your real niece besides. " This little speech was given with much grace and winsomeness, but it seemingly had no effect upon Van Doren. His manner grew, indeed, somewhat grimmer, now that his apology had been made and accepted. After having seated himself at the request of his host, he bluntly said: "I'm not going to beat round the bush— what's the use? I've got a pretty fair pile of money 'that it took me a lot of time and trouble to make. I shouldn't be surprised if I'm what people would call a miser. I let 'em talk as they choose. Now, of course it isn't going to be very pleasant for a man who's as fond of his dollars as I am to give you many of 'em down. I won't do anything of that kind. I can't and I won't." Here Stanfield and his wife exchanged glances, and the eyes of the former seemed to say: "Oh. the unspeakable old skinflint!" I "But I'll tell you what 1 will do," ! Van Doren soon resumed, with a keen : though side-long look at his nephew, i "I'lHeave you all I've got when I'm done ] with it. That oughtn't to be so long, j either. I'll reach sixty-eight my next birthday. My father died at fifty -six and both my brothers went at ages under thirty." He now gave a husky little laugh, about as joyless as the turning of a rusted key in its lock. "So, you see, the chances are against your waiting very long. I'll send for a lawyer to-morrow, and by next Thursday the will can be fully drawn up. 1 intended giving it all to charities, but instead of that I'll leave every dime of it to the nephew that saved my life_at the , risk of his own. Now, what do you think of this arrangement? Does it ] satisfy you? Because if doesn't," fin- I ished Van Doren, rising, "I'm afraid i it's, altogether the best I can do." I His own face had soured as he j watched the expression wrought by j these words on the face of his nephew, i But Stanfield's reply, though very frank, was quite free from ill feeling. "Naturally," came his answer, "Ido not wish to concern myself with any compact that bears relation to your death. Still, if you are willing to make me your heir, I can but thank you for having so decided, and yet," he continued, "I would ask you, sir, for some immediate help. Our needs are growing urgent, though they are not at all excessive. My wife and I could live oh a very moderate annuity. If you would consent to aid us with a certain monthly sum I could, perhkps — indeed, most probably — succeed in getting a clerkship here in New York that would swell the amount donated until it became an actual competence." "M-m-yes, yes," muttered Van Doren, stroking his bare, sharp, shaven chin. "You want, in other words, more than - / I'm willing to give. I thought my terms very fair — very fair," and he looked both Stanfield and Martha full in the eyes, for a moment, -with a gaze that seemed to both of them positively vulpine. But thfc young wife, whatever may have been her furtive repulsion, now drew nearer to the obdurate old man ; and addressed him w'th a simple and . lovely eloquence of pleading. She spoke of their marriage and the deep mutual love that had caused it; of Alfred's great willingness to v *.'k, and of her own eager desire to fill their little home with happiness and thrift. There were tears of entreaty in her voice, though none in her tenderly beseeching eyes. Dut possibly i. light whs there that somehow crept, with whatever faintness; down into the sullen gloom of that unnatural heart. Before the interview was over Martha, and not her husband, had gained a-v victory. Stanfield wa* tp iymT9 f Ytiyfoing at bi» uopte'l ■

dcrth, and meahwhlle, until that highly uncertain event occurred; he was" to get a small monthly allowance. But besides this, as Van Doren gravely concoded before his departure, efforts would be used towards securing for his nephew the desired mercantile clerkship. ' That last promise, like the former one, was laithfully carried out. The old man, in spite of his detested stinginess, retained a certain distinct business influence. He recommended Stanfield to a firm of some importance, and here, in a prim office overlooking the throngs ofmasts at the docks of Water street, Martha's husband soon found . himself seated before a ledger-laden desk. It was tiresome work; he had, 'as the phrase goes, a head for figures, and by nature he was not one to whom the giddy pleasures of cities offered tempting lures. But it began gradually to bore him with increasing keenness that he could not gratify in the cautious and conservative atmosphere of Messrs. Van Veckten & Co. his longings for quickly acquired riches. . "~ "I despise money merely in itself," he would say to Martha. "But what it will bring — ah! that's another affair! Think! you and I might go round the world together, arm in arm, as it were, if that old fellow would Only consent to let us!" "And so we shall, some day, no doubt," whispered Martha, with lips against his cheek. ' 'Hush, rf he said, almost pushing her away from him. "I hate- to count on anyone's death — even his." ' 'Yes; you're right, dear," said Martha, • "Forgive me." ' Nevertheless he did count on his \ uncle's death, harshly as it first went j against his nature to do so. During the I next five years two children were born ■ ! to Martha and himself, a boy and a girl. The little family had just enough to I supply its wants and not a dime more. I Martha, with her babies and her domes- ! tic cares, kept up her spirits in blithest j fashion. But the change in Alfred worried her. She saw that his office work was growing a more and more leu den task to him, and that the yearning for ; Myndherst Van Doren to die had become : like a cancer that slowly eats deeper > and deeper into the flesh. J When their first child was born they 1 brought it tp the old miser, but he caressed it in only a languid and perfunctory way. The truth was he could caress nothing with any real pleasure ; save dollars, and these he actually did .; fondle and slip through his fingers in their most captivating golden form, jfor Stanfield, w_io "ao-w swd -then. -wKxaXH. meet the old butler, had it directly^from Samuel himself, one day, that there was a pot of actual gold coin in the cabinet of the library upstairs, and that here, very often, instead of reading any of the books on the adjacent shelves — books which he had long ago ceased from the horrible extravagance of purchasing — he would sit crouchingly beside his green-shaded lamp for hours and hours of an evening, arranging the gold pieces into piles of a certain height, making of these piles medallions, and then altering the latter with a slow but incessant variance until his freakish manipulations reminded you of nothing so much as the sluggish revolution of a kaleidoscope. Talk like this keenly interested Stanfield. Now and then he would refer to Samuel's gossipy confidence during talks with his wife. As time went on the cit.y pushed itself up past tracts of land that but yesterday, as might be said, were open country. The Stanfields moved their place of residence to one further uptown, though cheaper and more modest than that which they had formerly held. Martha protested a little at this. "There's no use, Alfred," she said, "in our reducing expenses. We don't want to save, you know." By this time they had got into the way of speaking quite freely to one another regarding Van Doren's expected demise. "No," he replied, "not to saye — of course not. But money is money, my dear, and we need not squander it." ''Squander it!" faltered Martha. She could not understand the change in ! her husband. He had lost a good deal j of his old bonhomie. He was given to | fits of brooding that puzzled her, and I sometimes he would start from one of I these and suddenly ask her how much a ; certain grocer's bill had been or just i what amount she had paid for young Alfred's last pair of shoes, for -young Gertrude's newest dozen of hose. At last poor, gentle Martha waked up and gave her lord a grand scolding. He listened to it very patiently, and told her (with a sort of dazed smile which she somehow detested) that he had* thought so much of money lately as to find himself caring about it, watching its % expenditure in a really peculiar way. | "You think altogether ipo much on the subject of money," said Martha, with reproachful heat. "Are we. not quite comfortable as we are? And if a certain thing doesn't happen, within the next five years or so, why on earth should you care? For a good while yet we can send the children to public schools. That certainly is far better than not educating them at all. We've no reason to bother ourselves about money —none in the least. Of course, you might have advanced yourself more with. Van Veckten & Co. Now, Alfred, I don't mean to say anything unpleasant, but you know, dear, that you yourself told me, not long ago, you'd got to be a sort of machine there in Water street, neither caring for promotion nor using an effort to secure it." "True," replied Stanfield, "I must pull myself together. I must show them what I'm worth and demand a better salary. " But he did neither. He was always waiting, waiting for his uncle to die. The Van Veckten firm found no fault with him, but they had got to regard him in the light of a merely plodding and unambitious worker. Perhaps they suspected the truth— that old Van Doren had made him his heir, and that he had seen the old miser's will, and that he realized how any hour might make him rich. As it was* r they trusted him WW

•I pletely, gave him certain work to do, a^d satisfied themselves that he did it with a certain stolid apathy. He was not useless to them. He was in a w^y 1 quite useful. But his emp__/ers had tt** . s_nse of abilities partially dormant.^ '