United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
“It was the policeman kept guard,” said Philip. “I was there only as a
burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience,
or else I knew my own unworthiness.” There was a long pause. As both
of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the
Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the “Grizzly Bear,”
and people were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with
a look of so complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare
of such savage hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to
last for many years.
At last Helen said: “Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew
in a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up
at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to
the lady's window, and she lifted him in and kissed him--because he had
dared to climb.”
Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She
was delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
“At any moment,” Philip said, “I may know whether I owe two hundred
and twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am
worth about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at
the exact place where you last spoke--AFTER I know whether I am going to
jail, or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars.”
Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
“I knew that was it!” she cried. “You don't like my money. I was afraid
you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long
as you don't dislike me.”
What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with
a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: “Combine is announced,
shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?”
That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message
three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own
sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter
of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound
note. He pushed the boy from him.
“Run!” he commanded. “Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!”
He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned
or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence,
Helen said: “Is it good news?”
“That depends entirely upon you,” replied Philip soberly. “Indeed, all
my future life depends upon what you are going to say next.”
Helen breathed deeply and happily.
“And--what am I going to say?”
“How can I know that?” demanded Philip. “Am I a mind reader?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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