My Brave and Gallant Gentleman Part 33

"Yes!--very high,--sky-high! You see, I shall have to pay that old Jew-rascal a.s.sistant of mine at least two and a half dollars for his share, so that it will not leave very much for the master-mind that engineered the project."

She turned her eyes on me to ascertain if I were funning or in earnest, but my face betrayed nothing but the greatest seriousness.

She counted out her grocery money and I gave her a receipt. Then she laid three ten dollar bills on the counter to pay for the piano moving.

"Thank you!" I said, as I walked round the counter to a little box which was nailed on the wall near the door; a box which the Rev.

William Auld had put up with my permission on the occasion of his last visit, a box which I never saw a logger pa.s.s without patronising if he noticed it. On the outside, it bore the words:--"Sick Children's Aid."

I folded the notes and inserted them in the aperture on top.

Miss Grant watched me closely all the while.

When I got back behind the counter, she went over to the box and read the label. She opened her purse, with calm deliberation, and poured all it contained into her hand. She then inserted the coins, one by one, in the opening of the box and, with honours still even, if not in her favour, she sailed out of the store.

I was annoyed and chagrined at the turn of events, yet, when I came to consider her side of the argument, I could not blame her altogether for the stand she had taken.

I put up her order in no very pleasant frame of mind.

When I saw her and her chaperon row out from the wharf into the Bay, I carried over the groceries, piecemeal, and placed them in a shady place on their veranda. I then turned back to the house and prepared my evening meal.

When the sun had gone down and darkness had crept over Golden Crescent, I returned to my hammock and my reading, setting a small oil lamp on the window ledge behind me. It was agreeably cool then and all was peace and harmony.

From where I lay, I could cast my eyes over the land and seascapes now and again. I commanded a good view of the house across the creek. The kitchen lamp was alight there and I could see figures pa.s.sing backward and forward.

Suddenly an extra light travelled from the kitchen to the front parlour and, soon after, a ripple of music floated on the evening air.

I listened. How I listened!--like a famished cougar at the sound of a deer.

The music was sweet, delicious, full of fantastic melody. It was the light, airy music of Sullivan; and not a halt, not even a falter did the player make as she tripped and waltzed through the opera. One picture after another rose before me and dissolved into still others, as the old, haunting tunes caught my ears, floating from that open window.

I could see the lady under the soft glow of the lamp, sitting at the piano, smiling and all absorbed,--the light gleaming gold on her coils of luxuriant hair.

After a time the mood of the pianist changed. She drifted into the deeper, the more sombre, more impressive "Kamennoi-Ostrow" of Rubinstein. She played it softly, so softly, yet so expressively sadly, that I was drawn by its alluring to leave my veranda and cross over the wooden bridge, in order to be nearer and to hear better.

Quietly, but quite openly, I took the path by the house, on to the edge of the cliffs, where I could hear every note, every shade of expression; where I could follow the story:--the Russian setting, the summer evening, the beautiful lady, the pealing of the bells calling the wors.h.i.+ppers to the chapel for midnight ma.s.s; the whispered conversations, the organ in solemn chant, the priests intoning the service, the farewell, and, lastly, the lingering chords of the organ fading into the deep silence of slumber.

Just as I was about to sit down, I descried the solitary, shadowy outline of a figure seated a few yards away.

It was Jake,--poor, old, lonely, battle-scarred Jake. His head was in his hands and he was gazing out to sea as if he were dreaming.

I walked over to him and sat by his side. His blue eyes were filled with tears, tears that had not dimmed his eyes for years and years; tears in the eyes of that old Klondike tough, calloused by privation and leather-hided by hard drinking; tears, and at music which he did not understand any more than that it was something outside of his body altogether, outside of the material world, something that spoke only to the soul of him.

I did not speak,--I dared not speak, for the moment was too sacred.

So we two sat thus, knowing of each other's presence, yet ignoring it, and listening, all absorbed, entranced, almost hypnotised by the subtleties of the most charming of all gifts, the perfect interpretation of a work of art.

We listened on and on,--after the chilly night wind had come up from the sea, for we did not know of its coming until the music ceased and the light faded away from the parlour of the house behind us.

"Gee!" exclaimed Jake at last, spitting his mouthful of tobacco over into the water and wiping his eyes with his coat sleeve, "but that dope pulls a gink's socks off,--you bet.

"Guess, if a no-gooder like me had of heard that stuff oftener when he was a kid, he wouldn't be such a no-gooder;--eh! George."

I followed Jake to his boat and, somewhere out of the darkness, Mike the dog appeared and tailed off behind us.

I accompanied the old fellow to his shack, for this love of music in him was a new phase of his temperament to me and somehow my heart went out to him in his loneliness, in his apparent heart-hunger for something he could hardly hope to find.

We talked together for a long time, and as we talked I noticed that Jake made no effort to start his usual drinking bout, although Mike the dog reminded him of his neglect as plainly as dog could, by tugging at his trousers and going over to the whisky keg and whimpering.

This sudden temperance in Jake surprised me more than a little.

I noticed also that the bra.s.s-bound chest still lay under Jake's bunk.

Several times I had been going to speak to him about that trunk and its contents, and the questionable security of a shack like his, but I had always evaded the subject at the last minute as being one in which I was not concerned.

But that night everything was different somehow.

"Look here, Jake," I said, in one of the quiet spells, "don't you think this old shack of yours isn't a very safe place to keep your money in?"

"How do you mean?" he asked suspiciously.

"There are lots of strange boats put in here of a night; some of them containing beach-combers who do not care who they rob or what they do so long as they get a haul. Besides, the loggers are not all angels and they generally pay you a visit every time they come in. Some of the worst of them might get wind that you keep all your savings here and might take a fancy to some of it."

"Guess all I got wouldn't pay the cost of panning," grunted Jake.

"They ain't goin' to b.u.t.t in on me. Anyway,--I got a pair of good mits left yet."

"Yes!--that is all right, Jake, but nowadays a man does not require to run the risk. The banks are ready and willing to take that responsibility, and to pay for the privilege, too. The few dollars I have are safely banked in Vancouver."

"Banks be d.a.m.ned!" growled Jake. "I ain't got no faith in banks,--no siree. First stake I made went into a bank, Goodall-Towser Trust Co.

of 'Frisco. 'Four per cent interest guaranteed,' it said on the front of the bank book they gave me. That book was all they ever gave me; all I ever saw of my five thousand bucks. I thought because it said 'Trust' on the window, it was right as rain. I ain't trustin' 'Trust'

any more.

"I raised Cain in that Trust outfit. Started shootin' up. Didn't kill anything, but got three months in the coop. Lost my five thousand plunks and got three months in the pen, all because I put my dough in the bank.

"Banks be d.a.m.ned, George. Not for mine,--no siree."

Jake puffed his pipe reflectively, after his long tirade.

"That's all very well, but there are good banks nowadays and good Trust Companies, too, although I prefer regular chartered banks every time.

Those banks are practically guaranteed by the country and the wealthiest men in Canada use them. Why!--Mr. Horsfal has thousands in the Commercial Bank of Canada now. Here is the bank book,--see for yourself! I send in a deposit every week for him."

Jake was impressed, but not unduly. He suddenly switched.

"Say, George,--who told you I had any dough?"

"Oh! I knew you had, Jake. Everybody in Golden Crescent knows. But, to be honest, the minister told me,--in the hope that I would be able to induce you to place it in safety somewhere."

Jake became confident, a most unusual condition for him.

"Well, George,--I can trust you,--you're straight. I got something near ten thousand bucks in that bra.s.s chest. I don't need it, but still I ain't givin' it away. I had to grub d.a.m.ned hard to get it.

It's kind o' good to know you ain't ever likely to be a candidate for some Old Men's Home."