Chapter 2

The mother kissed her in reply and patted the girl's shoulder. “There _is_ somebody,” she sighed to herself. “And they've made up again”--and a prayer trembled on her lips.

Her joy now became contagious. The expressman noticed it; so did Mrs. Skitson and the storekeeper. So did Mr. Taylor, who stopped his wagon and leaned half out to shake her hand.

“You do look wholesome this morning, and no mistake, Miss Abbie” (he always called her so). “Don't forget what I told you--lots more where that come from”--and he drove on muttering to himself: “Ain't no finer woman in Taylorsville than Abbie Todd.”

Keep & Co. letters arrived now by almost every mail. With these came a daily stock-list printed on tissue-paper, giving the sales on the exchange. Rock Creek was still holding its own between 13 and 15. “From my brokers,” she would say with a smile to Maria, falling into the ways of the rich.

One of these letters, marked “Private and confidential,” she took to Maria. It was in the writer's own hand and signed by the senior member of the firm. Literally translated into uncommercial language by that female financier, it meant that Miss Todd, “_on notice from Keep & Co_.” should write her name at the bottom of the transfer blank on the back of the certificate and mail it to them. This done they would buy her another ten shares of stock, using her certificate as additional margin. There was no question that Rock Creek would sell at forty before the month ended, and they did not want her to be “left” when the “melon was cut.”

Another and a newer and a more vibrant song now rose to her lips. Forty for Rock Creek meant four--six--yes, eight hundred dollars--with two hundred to Mr. Taylor! Yes! Six hundred clear! The scrap of paper in her bosom was no longer a receipt for money paid, but an Aladdin's lamp producing untold wealth.

That night the music burst from her lips before she had taken off her cloak and hat.

“You made six hundred dollars, Abbie! _You!_” cried the mother, with a note of wonder in her voice.

Then the whole story came out; her mother's arms about her, the pale cheek touching her own, tears of joy streaming from both their eyes. First Maria's luck, then that of her fellow-clerks; then the letters, one after another, spread out upon her lap, the lamp held close, so the dim eyes could read the easier--down to the stake-money of two hundred dollars.

“And who gave you that, child? Miss Furgusson?” The mother's heart was still fluttering. After all, the sun was shining.

“No; Mr. Taylor.”

The mother put her hands to her head.

“_Hiram!_ You ain't never borrowed any money of Hiram, have you?” she cried in an agonized voice.

“But, Mother dear, he forced it upon me. He came--”

“Yes, that's what he did to me. Give it back to him, child, now, 'fore you sleep. Don't wait a minute. Borrowed two hundred dollars of Hiram--and my child, too! Oh, it can't be! It can't be!”

The mother dropped into a chair and rocked herself to and fro. The girl started to explain, to protest, to comfort her with promises; then she crossed to where her mother was sitting, and stood patient until the paroxysm should pass. A sudden fright now possessed her; these attacks were coming on oftener; was her mother's mind failing? Was there anything serious? Perhaps it would have been better not to tell her at all.

The mother motioned Abbie to a chair.

“Sit down, child, and listen to me. I ain't crazy; I ain't out of my head--I'm only skeered.”

“But, Mother dear, I can get the money any day I want it. All I've got to do is to telephone them and a check comes the next day.”

“Yes, I know--I know.” She was still trembling, her voice hardly audible. “But that ain't what skeers me; it's Hiram. He done the same thing to me last December. Come in here and laid the bills on that table behind you and begged me to take 'em; he'd heard about the mortgage; he wanted to fix the house up, too. I put my hands behind my back and got close to the wall there. I couldn't touch it, and he begged and begged, and then he went away. Next he went to the school-house, and you know what he did. That's why you got the post-office.”

A light broke in upon the girl. “And you've known him before?”

“Yes, forty years ago. He loved me and I loved him. We had bad luck, and my father got into trouble. He and Hiram's father were friend's; been boys together, and Hiram's father loaned him money. I don't know how much--I never knew, but considerable money. My father couldn't pay, and then come bad blood. The week before Hiram and I were to be called in church they struck each other, and when Hiram took my father's part his father drove him out of his house, and Hiram hadn't nothing, and went West; and I never heard from him nor saw him till the day he come in here last fall. Don't you see, child, you got to take him back his money?”

Abbie squared her shoulders. The blood of the Puritan was in her eyes. This was a fight for home and freedom. Her flintlock was between the cracks of her log cabin. The old mother, with the other women and children, lay huddled together in the far corners. This was no time for surrender!

“No!” she cried in a firm voice. “I won't give it back, not till I get good and ready. Mr. Taylor loaned me that two hundred dollars to make money with, and he won't get it again till I do.” She wondered at her courage, but it seemed the only way to save her mother from herself. “What happened forty years ago has nothing to do with what's happening to-day.”

The look in the girl's eyes; her courage; the ring of independence in her voice, the sureness and confidence of her words, began to have their effect. The Genie of the Lamp was at work: the life-giving power of Gold was being pumped from her own into the poor old woman's poverty-shrunken veins.

“And you don't think, child, that it will bring you trouble?”

“Bring trouble!” No!

The cabin was saved; the enemy was in retreat. She could sing once more! “It will bring nothing but joy and freedom, you precious old Mother! Do you know what I'm going to do?”

“What, child?”

“I'm going to pay off the mortgage, every cent of it.”

She said “I” now; it had been “we” all the years before: Keep rubbing, dear old Genie. “Then I'll fix up the house and paint it, and get you some nice clothes, and a new cook stove that isn't all rusted out----”

“You won't resign, will you, Abbie--and leave me?” the mother exclaimed. The chill of possible desertion suddenly crept over her, (The Genie is often unmindful of others, especially the poor.)

“Leave you! What, now? You darling Mother. As to resigning, I may later. But I'm going to Boston when I get my vacation and stay a week with Maria, and go to the opera if I never do another thing. Oh! just you wait, Mother, you and I will lead a different life after this.”

“And you think, Abbie, you'll make more than six hundred dollars?” Already the mother's veins were expanding--wonderful elixir, this Extract of Gold.

“Six hundred! Why, if the stock goes to what they call par--and that's where they all go, so Maria says--I'll have--have--two thousand, less Mr. Taylor's two hundred--I'll have eighteen hundred dollars!” The little fellow in her bosom was rubbing away now with all his might. She could hear his heart beat against her own.

*****

It was nearly midnight when the two went to bed. Stick after stick had been thrown on the fire; the logs had flamed and crackled in sympathy with their own joyous feelings, and had then fallen into piled-up coals, each heap a castle of delight, rosy in the glow of freshly enkindled hopes.

And the song in her heart never ceased. Day by day a fresh note was added; everything she touched; everything she saw was transformed. The old tumble-down house with its propped-up furniture and makeshift carpets seemed to have become already the place she planned it to be. There would be vines over the door and a new summer kitchen at the back'; and there would be a porch where her mother could sit, flowers all about her--her dear mother, bent no longer, but fresh and rosy in her new clothes, smiling at her as she came up the garden path.

And what delight it was just to breathe the air! Never had her step been so light, or her daily walk to the dingy office--dingy no longer--so bracing. And the out-of-doors--the sky and drifting clouds; the low hills, bleak in the winter's gloom--what changes had come over them? Was it the first blush of the coming spring that had softened their lines, or had her eyes been blind to all their beauty? Oh! Marvellous elixir that makes hopes certainty and gilds each cloud!

*****

One morning a man waiting for a letter from an absent son heard the telephone ring, and saw Abbie drop her letters and catch up the receiver:

“Yes, I'm Miss Todd.--Oh! Mr. Keep? Yes.--Yes--I've got it here.” Her face grew deathly white. “What! Selling at twelve!” The man feared she was about to fall. “I thought you told me... A big slump! Well, I don't want to lose if... Yes, I'll mail it right away... Reach you by the 9.10 to-morrow.”

“I hope you ain't got any bad news, have you?” the man asked in a sympathetic voice.

“No,” she answered in a choking voice, as she handed him his letter; then she turned her back and took the certificate from her bosom.

“Selling at twelve,” she kept saying to herself; “perhaps at ten; perhaps at five. Would it go lower? Suppose it went down to nothing. What could she say to her mother? How would she pay Mr. Taylor?” Her breath came short; a dull sense of some impending calamity took possession of her. Everything seemed slipping from her grasp.

An hour passed--two. In the interim she had indorsed the certificate and had dropped it into the open mouth of the night-bag. Again the bell sounded.

“Yes,” she answered in a faint voice; her shoulder was against the wall now for support.

She was ready for the blow; all her life they had come this way.

“Sold your twenty at ten. Mail you check for $190 on receipt of certificate.”

Abbie clutched her bosom as if for relief, but there came no answering throb. The little devil was gone, and the lamp with him.

“And is it all over, Abbie?” asked her mother, as she drew her shawl closer about her head. One stick of wood must last them till bedtime now.

“Yes--all.” The girl lay crouched at her feet sobbing, her head in her mother's lap.

“Can you pay Hiram?”

“I have paid him in full. I gave him Mr. Keep's check and ten dollars of my pay--paid him this morning. He wouldn't take any interest.”

“Oh, that's good--that's good, child!” she crooned.

There came a long pause, during which the two women sat motionless, the mother looking into the smouldering coals. She had but few tears left none for disappointments like these.

“And we have got to keep on as we have?”

“Yes.” The reply was barely audible.

The mother lifted her thin, worn hand, and laid it on Abbie's head.

“Well, child,” she said slowly, “you can thank God for one thing. _You had your dream_; ain't many even had that.”