Ainslee's Magazine/The Very Bottom of Her Purse

by Anne Warner

 

THE VERY BOTTOM
OF HER PURSE

By Anne Warner

OF course Arline’s family thought that she knew more than she did, or they never would have trusted her to take Betty and go so far away so all alone. To be sure, there were no very near or dear ones to have taught her certain elementary facts in life, but there were uncles and aunts who thought some one else must have surely done so, and a guardian who gave no thought to anything, but supposed, as a matter of course, that everybody in the world who had money knew all there was to know about it. Under such circumstances, it was considered quite safe and proper and charming and cheerful that Arline, who was seven-and-twenty, should take Betty, who was seven, and trusting, and go across the water to live indefinitely.

So they went.

 

It was about eight months later that the trouble came, and it was terrible enough when it did come. For there is no trouble more difficult to deal with than that which befell poor Arline and Betty.

It was a June evening, and the June roses were blooming on the Thousand Year Rose-bush, in the garden below, and even on Betty’s cheeks as they nestled in the lace on her mother’s gown while the evening prayer was said.

“Lieber Gott, mach mich fromm dass ich su dir in Himmel komm. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Que le bon Dieu nous bénisse”—so it was that the cosmopolitan Betty habitually terminated her day.

“Now, kiss me, my baby,” said the mother, when she had done, and the little one turned her sweet lips upward and the kiss was fondly given and received.

“Good night, darling.”

“Good night, mama. Are you going to play the piano?”

“Not to-night, dear.”

“You won't write and get tired for my picnic to-morrow?”

“No, surely not.”

Betty turned her face into her pillow with a sigh of utter content, and Arline went into the next room and sat down by the window.

There were no roses on her cheeks; nothing but a sort of pale shadow—the shadow that grows during sleepless nights. She clasped her lands in her lap and gazed out at the boulevard and the wandering crowd of evening promenaders, with unseeing eyes, and then, after awhile, she rose and went to her desk, took out her purse, opened it, and looked thoughtfully at the twenty-mark gold piece within. How little and lonely and helpless and hapless that one small bit of money did appear! And it was all that she had in the world.

For awhile she stared at the coin, and then she laid the purse gently down and went back to the window. It is so curious to be very, very far away from home and to have no money. No money. No money. She murmured the two words over and over to herself. And there was Betty in the other room, too. This was Monday. The board was paid until Thursday, and the governess till next Monday, and then what? She sat down and thought.

“It is nine weeks since I wrote. If there was any money there they would surely have sent it before now. The letter couldn’t have been lost, for I registered it, and letters of credit cannot be lost, either. They must have failed. If they have failed I haven’t a cent in the world. And Betty! And Betty!”

It was the hundredth—the thousandth—yes, the ten thousandth time that she had said those same words to herself during the past three weeks. At first slowly and altogether unbelieving; then with wondering fear; then faster and faster, more fearfully and more fearfully. Until now they had gone through her brain like water over a mill-race and given her no peace by day or night. Poverty had threatened, and now poverty had come. The bottom of her purse had been there then; now it was here.

The maid came up with the evening's mail, and interrupted her silence With the knock that always made hope flame up so fiercely. But the instant after hope sank down again, for there was no communication from the London bankers.

So she went to bed, and somewhere between then and dawn a few stray dream-fairies closed her tired, frightened eyes for a few stray minutes—a very few, but those few sadly needed.

With the morning Betty woke and, seeing the sunshine, cried out with joy over the splendid promise of her picnic.

“I want two horses to my carriage,” she said, throwing her arms around the neck of her white-faced mother. “I don’t want to go in a cab.”

Arline smiled. She was good at smiling, and the smile was brave and sweet, for she was as good at being brave and sweet as she was at smiling.

“You shall have two horses, pet,” she said, and took the purse with its gold piece and went out, accompanied by the gaily hopping Betty, to order the two-horse carriage.

It would cost seven marks.

“Is that much?” Betty asked as they left the stable.

“A good deal,” smiled her mother, looking up at the blue sky and wondering if the dear God was really behind the clouds, and, if so, if He was giving any special thought to Betty just then.

They went next to invite two or three friends to share the splendor of the two horses with them, and also to order the cakes. It is a curious fact that in small German towns, when you drive out to a restaurant for tea, the proprietor is not at all offended at your bringing your own refreshments with you. Indeed, the cakes are so invariably brought that he is surprised if any one expects to buy them of him.

When they returned to the house there was only one letter waiting there, and it was not from the bank. It was from a man whose picture hung in their parlor up-stairs—a man with heavy eyebrows, and a cigarette in his hand. Betty had seen him twice in her life, but she remembered him mainly through the medium of her doll, which he had given to her in Paris and christened Arlette, in spite of her desire to name it for her mother. I am afraid that there had been other visits when Betty was in bed and asleep; also when Betty was in Germany, and her mother in England; at any rate, there had been something which altered Arline’s expression and caused her to suggest the cat and the garden, to the end that she might be alone to read the letter.

Betty accepted the suggestion, and her mother went up-stairs to their bedroom and threw herself upon the couch and read:

It strikes me as such utter rot [thus ran the letter directly it got itself well started]. I get more out of patience whenever I think of it. You don’t belong there alone, and you don’t know enough to take care of yourself, not to speak of Betty. You know where you do belong—you belong on my knee. I’ve told you so a dozen times, but you never will allow me to prove it to you. If you’d just let me take hold of you once and set you there, and take all your bothers and troubles and throw them behind you, or behind me, or behind us—I particularly suggest “behind us”—you’d be perfectly reconciled to the situation forever after. You don’t know how eminently right it would feel to have my arm around your waist. You think it wouldn’t do, but if you’d just try it! It’s such a beastly shame that you won't. It makes me mad clear through whenever I think of it. I try not to think of it, and then I think of it more than ever.

Do you know that you are ruining my disposition? I am becoming morose. Another six months and I shall be out of all running socially. I merely growl when I don’t want what they pass me at dinner-parties now. I should think you would feel badly over wrecking such a popular fellow as I used to be. I feel terribly over being wrecked, I assure you. And I was so happy, too, up to that day of the Grand Prix.

Lester wants me to go yachting with him, and I half want to go, because it was he who introduced us, and I half want to plunge overboard when I get there because he did introduce us. If I do plunge overboard and you read about it in the Paris Herald, will you feel bad, I wonder? Remburne wants me to go out to India with him, too. Tiger-hunting or some such beastly (pardon me—it wasn’t meant) racket. Perhaps I’ll go. But I’m so uncertain.

I keep thinking that perhaps you'll break your neck, or that some misfortune will break your spirit, or that some kind fate will bring you to your knees—no, my knees—some way, and, of course, in such a case I want the knees to be nearer than India.

Do you know what I did the other night? The bishop had me down there for Sunday, and after service he took me around to his hospital and showed me all they’d done this year. Of course I gave him a check, because I always pay my board wherever I go, and as it was rather a big one he was much pleased, and confided to me how he was planning to build a new wing for crippled children on the garden side, and how he had money enough to break ground for it this coming autumn. Well, when he was done, and they all had gone up to get ready for the next thing, I went back to the church alone, went to the pew where I sat by you that one service, and took a vow that if misfortune—just a small, agreeable, but especially urgent misfortune—might come upon you and so overwhelm you that you would have to turn to me, I would build the whole thing myself and thank God every day of my life into the bargain. And I’ll do it, too. If only the Fates will be bad to you and good to me! But you are so frightfully independent, so abominably stiff-necked, so atrociously unreasonable. I do really think you are the most trying woman I ever met—also the sweetest and most lovable. Heavens, if you only guessed how much I want you, or how good I'd be to you! But it’s no use telling you anything. You'll keep on living in that hole of a place, doing no good to any one, just as any thin, homely, tame creature might live, and I—oh, I'll go to India and drown myself in tigers! Yes, I will. Good-by.

Arline, finishing, shut her eyes and lay still, thinking.

“I suppose it would be very nice for the poor little crippled children,” she said at last slowly, and then she went in and locked up the letter in her tin box, and looked rather shamefacedly at the picture hanging on the wall.

Betty’s picnic that afternoon was a great success, and they drove to Hildesia and plunged into such excesses there that Arline brought home one mark and ten pfennigs—almost thirty cents—and she knew that her end was close at hand.

When Betty was in bed she sat down by the window again and thought a long while. One doesn’t like to sell oneself to a man whom one has known only eight months, even if he did propose the third day and has kept right on ever since. But when the man has always had a sort of effect that makes one’s heart beat even to think of—and when his eyes are different from all the other eyes in the world—and when it will help crippled children—and when there isn’t any money unless—and when there is Betty—and when he went into the church and prayed like that——

She took up her pen at last and wrote:

I have your letter, and although I wish you hadn’t prayed for me to have misfortune, still it has come, and I guess the poor sick children will get their building.

I wrote for a new letter of credit nine weeks ago, and I registered the letter, so it couldn’t have been lost, but they must have failed, for it has never come, and Betty and I have only a mark left to-night. You can see that I have got to marry you. It is awful to have to do it this way, but if you don’t mind, and will telegraph me ten pounds right off, I won’t mind either. If you don’t want to, or if you have gone yachting, I must do something with my diamonds. I don’t at all know what to do or how to do it, but it’s what people abroad always have to do, and I know I can find out.

I do love you, you know, only you did frighten me so that time you kissed me, and I hope you'll never do it so quick again. I don’t like the way you order me about, either, but if you'll only send the ten pounds quick, I'll try not to mind, and it will always be lovely to think of the poor little crippled children.

Yours from now on (if you want me),

Arline.

She folded it and sealed it and enclosed it in one to the bankers, begging them to forward it at once, and if the gentleman had left London, to please let her know at such and such an address by return mail.

And then she went herself and posted it.

The next morning the post brought an American wedding invitation, which was, of course, overweight, and took forty pfennigs out of the pitiful little purse. There was no other mail until noon, when a postal arrived from Scotland, with something written on the face side, where you may write for the same country but not for any foreign country; so Arline paid twenty-five pfennigs for the information that a traveling friend had arrived safely and found rainy weather.

So now she had forty-five pfennigs

In the afternoon there came a circular in which the wrapper stuck to the enclosure, thus making it a sealed parcel, and she paid forty pfennigs on that.

Leaving five pfennigs in the purse.

“Are you sick, dear mama?” said Betty, coming in from her walk with a big bunch of wild flowers.

“No,” said Arline, with her brave smile, “only rather tired.”

“Can I have some money for some cakes?”

There was a pause. The dear little face looking earnestly at her mama’s saw a strange helplessness there that was unfathomable.

Arline’s heart was shutting and opening in a pain that made her speechless. If he was gone to the North Sea! If no one would give her any money for her diamonds!

Betty turned and ran into the room.

“What are you doing?” Arline cried then, finding speech in her fear that she had frightened the child to tears.

“I’m opening my cat!” Betty cried. She didn’t refer to the cat in the garden, but to a tin cat, hitherto held sacred and regarded in the light of a savings-bank. The next moment Betty was back, pouring the contents of the cat into her mother’s lap.

“I suppose you've forgetted to go to your bank,” she explained, with a little laugh, “so you'll have to take mine.”

The great tears welled up in her mother’s eyes.

“That I should have brought her to this!” she thought. “Oh, my God in heaven! If he has gone to the North Sea, or to India!”

Betty kissed her. “Don’t mind taking it, mama,” she said tenderly. “I don't cry when you give me money. I just say ‘Thank you.’” And then she kissed her mother again and ran away.

That night Arline did not sleep at all. The letter must have reached London, she knew, but when would the answer reach her? And if had gone to the North Sea or to India? All the next morning she lay on her bed quite ill with miserable anxiety.

“I don’t ever want to be independent again,” she thought, with choking sobs. “Oh, dear! If he prayed for misfortune to come to me, he ought to have stayed near to help when it did come.”

Betty was out with the governess. Down-stairs Freda was flirting with the butcher's vigorously that you boy so vigorously you could hear them two flights above.

Then the bell rang. Arline’s heart came violently up in her throat. Somehow she knew that it was her doom that had arrived in some shape.

Freda came up presently with the telegram. Her cap was awry and she looked flushed, but Arline had no eyes for anything but that folded bit of paper. At any rate, there was nothing to pay on it.

She broke the seal with trembling fingers. She could hardly see to read at first—the words danced and dazzled so oddly—and then it was all plain.

So glad you have gone sane at last. Am telegraphing fifty pounds. Wish it was myself. Am taking the noon boat. Can’t you come to Hanover and be there to eat breakfast with me when I get in? You must.

She sank back on her pillow. Oh, the infinite, blessed relief of it all!

She rang for the lady of the house. “I wish you'd lend me forty marks, fräulein,” she said, smiling. “I want to go to Hanover this afternoon, and I don’t want to fuss with going to the bank until I come back to-morrow.”

Fräulein at once brought her the forty marks, and when Betty came in she was presented with five at once.

“You can get what you like,” Arline said, kissing her gaily. “I’m going to go to visit the Tante Majorin to-night, and when I come back you can show me what you’ve bought with your money.”

The money-order came just after lunch. The sun was shining outdoors, and the swallows were whirling in the sky. Oh, but life was a beautiful thing! And there were the little sick children who would owe so much to her. And there was everything! There was even that big man—oh!

Arline slipped into her traveling-suit and pongee coat and departed, and the next morning, when she returned, the man who had given Betty the doll came back with her.

Betty was surprised and delighted to see him again. She remembered him very well indeed, only she had not known that he was anywhere in the neighborhood just then. And he had brought her a ring—almost exactly like her mama’s new one.

“Did you give that one to mama, too,” she asked, comparing them.

“Yes,” said the man, “I did. I’m a very generous fellow.”

Arline went up-stairs to lay her hat aside, and when she went into the little parlor she saw a number of letters there, one from the bankers in London.

The man and Betty, coming up to see why she did not return, found her staring at it as if petrified.

“What is the trouble now?” the man asked, with an anxious note in his voice.

Arline gave him the letter, and he read:

Dear Madam: We have forwarded the letter as per request, and beg to state that the gentleman is still in London.

We also wish to inform you that a letter of credit for one thousand pounds, made out in your name, was received by us on the sixteenth of last month, but as you told us to hold same until you sent your new address we have adhered to your order. Please notify us when you wish same forwarded.

Very respectfully,
Blank, Blank & Co.

The man threw back his head and roared.

Arline was looking so very curiously, oddly pink. .

And then, to Betty’s great astonishment, the man seized her mother in his arms and kissed her violently, while she cried out about her hair, about her comb, and something vague about Betty herself,

“I only prayed for an agreeable little misfortune,” he laughed, “and surely I had my prayer most literally answered. You can’t back out now, you know, you can’t back out now.”

“I don’t—want to—back out,” panted Arline, trying to get one hand to her head; “but, oh!—oh, please promise me never, never to tell them at home!”

“I shall tell any one I want to,” declared the man. “You don’t belong to yourself any more—you belong to me. Don’t she, Betty?”

“No, she belongs to me,” said Betty.

“Not at all,” said the man; “she belongs to me, and you do, too—from now on. Don’t forget that, puss.”

And somehow Betty was pleased, and liked him in spite of his contradicting her. For Betty was feminine, too—like her mother.