A TALE OF TWO MISERS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 98, 20 December 1904, Page 2

A TALE OF TWO MISERS.

9y Edgar Pawcett. lOOPYIUGHT, 180 LV \ ■ ■ ' . __ ■ CHAPTERJU. " ~~ T ~" And so another five years went on. Myndherst Yap. Doren was now seventy eight. There seemed no change in his bodily vigor, however. Rheumatism attacked "Mm at certain periods, but never so severely that he was unable to walk. Now and then he could not leave the house, but such periods of immurement were rare. As for driving out, he had given up" keeping a carriage since his perilous accident. "He is waiting for a dead man's shoes," Martha would think of her husband. 'There is that fortune coming to him and he cannot keep his mind from it. All his old vigor of character has gone from him. He might have done so much for himself during these ten years, but this wretched suspense has crept like a poison through all his nerves." The children, as they grew older, were sent to a public school. New York had now greatened in an eastward direction, and the Stanfield home was in Essex street, but a stone's throw from East Broadway. Stanfield was n fitfully affectionate father and by no means a good one. His children feared him more than they loved him. At times he would overwhelm them with kindness, but they never knew just wher his intense irritability would break forth. Martha, as the next decade began, strove to console herself with the expectation that Van Doren's fortune might now at any moment become theirs. Discovering that her husband was placated by such words as: "Oh, tomorrow we may be wealthy," she used them with an increasing abandonment * of good breeding. It was like doubling and tripling the doses of opium for a pain-stung patient. Formerly the mode <»f consolement that she now used •vould have seemed to her brutal and in the most shameless, taste. But to-day,

and through a series of morrows, the vulgarity of the process clad itself in callousness. Their very children go\ into the habit of saying aloud and fear- . lessly: "Any day we may be rich;" or: . "When Uncle Myndherst dies we shallhave thousands and thousands of dollars." But the years dragged themselves ! along and still Uncle Myndherst did not die. " One day, however, the head of the Van Veckten firm died, and as there was no successor of the name, and as the two partners were well along in years, the firm underwent dissolution. This was a blow to Martha, for she feared that her husband would refuse to seek other employment now that a certain long-delayed event seemed 6n the verge of happening, and in that case his mental state would surely not profit by the change. She was right; he merely said she must "get along without any salary after this. It can't be so very long now." Still it would be very hard to get on without the salary, Martha concluded, even if only for a year or six months. And so in secret she went down to the old State-street house and begged Van Doren to increase the allowance he was making them. He refused with an ireful sneer. He looked, indeed, the typical miser that day, with his bent form clad in a faded, ragged dressing-gown and the shabbiest of little black skullcaps'on his bald head. Poor Martha went away heavy-heart-ed. Whatwas tobe done? The children must npt be brought up like paui pers, though already thiey were not on a social level with other children of like parentage and position. But soon there dawned a way out of the difficulty, though scarcely one that might be said to beam, with relief. Old Samuel suddenly died, and his wife, stricken by the shock of his loss, hardly survived him a month. Van Doren was now quite alone, and at times markedly feeble. He consented that Stanfield and his family should come and live with him in State street, which they at length did. To wring from the old man money enough for even a frugal household wherewithal was hard work enough; and as for Tiis consent that a single yard of new carpeting, a single pint of ..new paint should repair in his abode the augmenting blemishes of time, this was an achievement beyond human suasion. Dignity and distinction had been ciphers before now in the Stanfield family circle, but now they were worse than titon-existent — they had been brought to life again in "the sense of travesty and parody. It got about that this dismal minage had been formed, and pitiless jests ensued. Luckily. Martha heard none of them. Perhaps if Stanfield had heard them he would not have greatly cared. Martha's life had now become a martyrdom. She blessed the public school for iis wholesome helping mt her boy and her girl. They both became far more her children than their father's. All that was sweetest in the womanly wisdom and hardihood of her character she lavished upoi# these two. Again and again she found herself hoping that the bright, innocent faces of Alfred ant Gertrude would move the mulish tenuei ty of their great uncle. But no; V;. Doren doled <mt Just s-> tan-' 1 - '•;

meals there in State street were almost like those in some private prison where five convicts daily assembled at the board. Everybody's clothes gTew rusty and pathetic. The bigr house, though kept passably clean, assumed an aspect of dingier desuetude. ■ * ........ As for Stanfield, his features, his walk, his voice had all notably altered. Though Unconscious of it his ,drawn countenance betrayed a look of constant mingled weariness and expectancy. To his wife he was like a man whom some • stealthy insanity keeps enslaving with subtle and threatening thraldom. Often he would show by his eyes a hungry eagerness which was like nothing so much as that of an eavesdropper crouched at the keyhole of a door when he hopes to hear tidings of tremendous import. "And now to Martha a new and distressing quality became manifest in his behavior. This was a seeming sym- . pathy with his uncle's deplorable meanness. As the months amassed themselves into years he showed a tendency to talk with Van Doren on the subject of investments in bonds and mortgages and rents. All day he would either aimlessly wander the streets or else hold converse with his kinsman of just this coldly mercenary kind. In vain Martha remonstrated. In vain she tried to rouse him from the intoxication of his hard materialism. He would soften towards her for a few minutes. "Don't get out of patience with me," hfe would say. "In a little while now you'll find me such a different man. He can't last much longer. Don't you see? He hardly eats any- ' thing, as it is. He scarcely ever even stirs out of doors. Why, it's touch-and-go with him; a fool could see that." Martha would shudder. "Touch-and-go!" and he was now long past eighty. Stanfield himself had become a middleaged man, she, his wife, was no longer young; the children were ceasing to be children. . One day, in his eighty-fourth year, Van Doren was taken violently ill. It was winter, and many cases of pneumon>a( "inflammation of the lungs," they still called it then, in the year 1830) had broken out, and proved fatal. Against his will a physician was summoned, and the verdict given his nephew was against his living twenty-four hours longer. Martha attended him with all the skill of a trained nurse. At this time her husband's conduct horrified her. He hung about the door of the sick Chamber, with that eager look accentuated in his wan face. There was one day when it seemed as if Van Doren might at any instant breathe his last. During this period fits of delirium assailed him, m which- he, raved of money, money, nothing except money. • On the morrow he was surprisingly better. Soon afterwards he began to recover, and within a fortnight his health was more vigorous than before the seizure occurred. For days afterwards it- tortured Martha to observe her husband's face. "And this," she thought, "was the strong, clear-headed, high-principled man I'married. Whoever first said that money was a curse hit on the most pregnant of truths." * The.years went on. At eighty-eight Van-Doren was feeble, bowed Jn figure, very dim of sight, and yet mentally as keen and alert as he had ever been. Perhaps he hugged his money a little closer and made those, about him a little more discomforted in consequence. Martha felt only too acutely now the ghastly contagion that her husband had caught. He still waited, but his waiting had become a hideous mockery. What could he do with the money now, even if he survived his uncle? Nothing except hoard it as Van Doren was doing. He had grown old before his time; he was prematurely wrinkled, and into his features had crept a stringency Of pallor, a covert fierceness, which meant insatiable greed. Night after night he now did what to his wife was a revolting thing. The game of solitaire which Van Doren had been wont to play with his gold coins had now become a game in which his -nephew joined. They would sit to-

gether for hours and move the little yellow piles to. and fro on the table before them in some curious manner which they alone understood. They would laugh and joke together as this queer amusement progressed. Stanfield's laugh had grown cracked and thin like bis uncle's. Martha would turn sick as she watched them sometimes through a crevice in the doorway. She kept her boy and girl from witnessing the sight. They both loved her and obeyed her least wish. It was.horrible to her that they should see their father so depraved, as this. x If it had not been for her children Martha; often told herself that she would go mad. There was just food enough to eat and no more. Tbelhouse was sinking to ruin; in one room the j plaster had fallen from the ceiling, in another the paper was hanging loose on the walls. . — Not till Ms ninety-fifth year did Myndherst Van Doren die, ard then they found him dead in his bed one morning , with a sort of scowl on his withered! face, as thougb>he had paid ' the debt of nature in; te|ty reluctance. Stanfield could scarcely conceal the strange wildness of hfe -Joy*..' ; Thjere was ' I nouseinstriving*6:keeptb.etntt(hof his I exultation from Alfred and Gertrude., 1 They were now adults; they read their

'I > father but too clearly in the pathos of , his monomania. ' * After the funeral Martha went to her husband and said: "Now, Alfred, things will change. We can live as other people live. Your long waiting has ended. Let us begin at once." 'Begin— what?" he and turned away from her. Then lie suddenly veered round again and shot out these words; each one stabbing her to the soul as she heard them: ■>&> "I've got used to the waiting now. I find I love money just as he did. I don't want to spend it, and I won't. We can go on as we've gone on for so long. After all I'm his nephew, ever*" inch oi me. It isn'tswhat money will bring; it's what the mere having and holding il will bring. I like that best. I've grown,^in all these years, Martha, tc like that best. You needn't argue with me. It^will do no good. I've got it at last, and I mean to keep it — tight, tight, tight!" He laughed and lifted one hand in the air, clinching it as though his fingers closed on some viewless money, bagi Martha turned from biin, shocked tc the soul. . Th^t night she brought her .son to the door of a big, dim room, where his father sat beside a table under the light of a green-shaded lamp. Now and then

there came a faint, hollow, clicking sound, as his pale, wasted fingers moved and paused. The lamp rays glittered at times on the little yellow cubes of spin. It seemed almost as if he were flaying that same weird game again with the ghost of his dead uncle, for at intervals he would raise his haggard syes and stare across the small circuit 5f the tables, where stood an empty 3hair. "Look, my son — look, my darling Alfred," Martha whispered. "This is what money can do with a soul that irifts. into loving it too welL Qnce your father was young and handsome and full of goodness, like yourself. See him now. Is it not too terrible? Tf it were not for you— for you and CJertmde— this thing would be my death. But I live for you. I live in the hope that you will wipe away this sorrow of mine. You must wait, my boy, as he waited, but differently and with a far wiser, nobler spirit. Promise me that you will wait in this way, Alfred!" The. young man threw his arms about his mother's neck and murmured to her certain words of cheer, which ended thus: .. "Thanks to you, my mother, I shall never be what he has become, though I should wait just as long as he waited — yes, and even longer, still!" "My darling! my consolation! my hope!" Martha murmured back. They turned away slowly #nd softly, while that faint clicking sound went on •in the big, dim room below the dreamy lamp and the ravaged face that it lighted. ■ [the END.]