CHAPTER EIGHT
In which the Miser's past history is touched upon; which shows how his solitude is again invaded, and how he makes a new friend.
"There isn't any mystery about him, so far as I know," said the Reporter, who was seated as usual upon the carriage block. The Candy Wagon continued to act as a magnet for him, and in season and out his genial presence confronted the Candy Man.
If his emphasis upon the pronoun was noticed, it was ignored. The mystery was, the Candy Man replied, how with such a face he could be a miser.
"Oh, he's a bit nutty, of course. My grandmother says his money came to him unexpectedly and the shock was too much for him. They say he has a notion he is holding it in trust. He is rational enough in every other way, a shrewd investor, in fact. His uncle, General Waite, who left him the money, was a connection of my grandmother's."
"The Miser is a cousin then?"
"Not on your tintype, my friend. Old Knight was a nephew of the general's wife, you see."
"And there were no other heirs?" asked the Candy Man.
"There was an own nephew, I have heard, who mysteriously disappeared shortly before the general's death. I have heard my grandmother mention it, but it was long before my day. Why are you interested?"
Even to himself the Candy Man could not quite explain his interest in this sad and lonely man, except that, as he had told Miss Bentley in their first and only conversation, he had a habit of getting interested in people. For example, in the house where he roomed there was a young couple who just now engaged his sympathies. The husband, a teacher in the Boys' High School, had been ill with typhoid, and the little wife's anxious face haunted the Candy Man. The husband was recovering, but of course the long illness had overtaxed their small resources, and—But, oh dear! weren't there hundreds of such cases? What was the good of thinking about it! Yet suppose there were a Fairy Godmother Society?
The Candy Man was a foolish dreamer, and his favourite dream in these days was of some time sitting beside the Little Red Chimney hearth, and discussing the Fairy Godmother Society with Miss Bentley. These bright dreams, however, were interspersed by moments of extreme depression, in which he cursed the day upon which he had become a Candy Man; moments when the horrified surprise in the eyes of Miss Bentley as she recognised him, rose up to torment him.
It was in one of these that the Reporter had presented himself this time, and when he was gone the Candy Man returned to his gloom. Having nothing else to do just then he opened the shabby book with the funny name, and looked at the crimson flower. Through the stain of the flower he read:
"If a person is fearful and abject, what else is necessary but to apply for permission to bury him as if he were dead."
The book had come into his possession by a curious chance not long before, and he treasured it, not so much for its sturdy philosophy, as because it was in some sort a link to the shadowy past of his early childhood.
The adjectives "fearful" and "abject" brought him up short. What manner of man was he to be so quickly overwhelmed by difficulties? As for being a Candy Man, did he not owe to this despised position his good fortune in meeting Miss Bentley at all?
Somewhere about eight o'clock the next evening, being Sunday, he might have been seen strolling by the house of the Little Red Chimney. That particular architectural feature had lost its identity in the shades of evening, but he was indulging the characteristic desire of a lover to gaze at his lady's window under the kindly cover of the night.
The blind was drawn within a few inches of the sill, but these inches allowed him a glimpse of a blazing fire, and while he lingered a shadow flitted across the curtain in its direction, and then another, until in his mind's eye he beheld Margaret Elizabeth and Uncle Bob seated beside the hearth. For aught he knew, it might be Augustus McAllister making an evening call, but the Candy Man was just then too determinedly optimistic to harbour such an idea.
The Miser
As he passed on he was occupied in trying to picture to himself her ladyship sitting before her fire, but that familiar little grey hat, which was so entirely inappropriate, would persist, in spite of all he could do, in getting into the picture. Only once, when curling plumes took its place, had he seen her without it, and though for an instant he would succeed in removing it, presto! before he knew it, there it was again, jammed down anyhow on her bright hair.
With odds in favour of the hat, the struggle came to a sudden pause at sight of a tall figure leaning heavily and in evident pain against one of the ornamental iron fences which prevailed along this street. At once proffering his assistance, he recognised Mr. Knight, the Miser.
It was plain the sufferer would have preferred to decline help. It would soon pass. It was nothing. He had had such attacks before. He spoke brokenly, adding, "I thank you," in a tone of dismissal.
The Candy Man showed himself to be, when occasion demanded, a masterful person. Without arguing the point, he supported the Miser with a firm arm and began to urge him in the direction of his home. Mr. Knight, half fainting as he was, submitted without a word until his door was reached; then, there being no response to his companion's vigorous ring, he murmured something about the servants having gone, and began to fumble in his pocket.
The Candy Man, taking the latch key from his trembling fingers, opened the door, and ignoring the evident expectation conveyed in his renewed thanks, continued to assert authority, supporting the invalid into his library. "I shall not leave you alone until you are relieved," he said.
Again Mr. Knight submitted to his captor's will, and lying back in his arm-chair directed him to the restorative that was prescribed for these seizures. When it had been administered he lay quiet with closed eyes.
The Candy Man now turned his attention to the fire, which had burned low, coaxing it skilfully out of its sullen apathy. He was brushing up tidily, when Mr. Knight, to whose face the colour was returning, spoke.
"You are very kind," he said, adding as the Candy Man felt his pulse and nodded his satisfaction, "are you a physician?"
"No," was the smiling answer. "Merely something of a nurse. My father was an invalid for some years."
The sick man said "Ah!" his eyes resting, perhaps a little wistfully, upon the vigorous young fellow before him. "Don't let me keep you," he added. "I am quite relieved, and my housekeeper will return very shortly from church."
Instead of leaving him the Candy Man sat down. "I have nothing to do this evening, Mr. Knight, and unless you turn me out forcibly I mean to stay with you till some member of your household comes in."
"I fear my strength is hardly equal to turning you out," the Miser replied with a smile. "You are most kind." Then after a pause he added apologetically: "Will you kindly tell me your name? Your face is familiar, but my memory is at fault."
"My name is Reynolds, Robert Reynolds, and I am at present conducting a candy wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner. That is where you have seen me." He had no mind to sail under false colours again.
The sick man's "Indeed!" was spoken with careful courtesy, but his surprise was plain enough.
The Candy Man leaned forward, an arm on his crossed knee; his eyes met those of the older man frankly. "It is not my chosen profession," he said. "I happened to be free to follow any chance impulse, and the opportunity offered to help in this way a friend in need. It may have been foolish. I am alone in the world, and entirely unacquainted here. I should not care for the permanent job, but there's more in it than you would suppose. More enjoyment, I mean."
"I recall now you mentioned the Little Red Chimney," said Mr. Knight.
The Candy Man grew red. Why had he been so imprudent? The Miser's memory certainly might be worse.
"And now I know why your face is so familiar," the invalid went on. "I sat opposite to you in the car going to the park one Sunday morning. My physician prescribes fresh air. And later I saw you with that bright-faced young girl, Miss Bentley. You were talking together in the pavilion near the river. You both seemed exceedingly merry. I envied you. I seemed to realise how old and lonely I am. I think I envied you her friendship."
"Your impression is natural," answered the Candy Man, "but the truth is I do not know Miss Bentley. We met unexpectedly in the pavilion that morning. I did not at the time realise it, I was unpardonably dense, but she took me for some one else. On the occasion of the accident that foggy evening—you perhaps remember it—I overheard the name she gave to the conductor. Well, it seems she had no idea she was talking to a Candy Man that morning in the park, and I should have known it."
The Miser leaned his head on a thin hand, and certainly there was nothing sordid, nothing mean, in the eyes which looked so kindly at his companion. It was not perhaps a strong face, nor yet quite a weak one; rather it indicated an over-sensitive, brooding nature. "You will not always be a Candy Man," he said. "I have made Miss Bentley's acquaintance recently. She is friendliness itself."
At this moment a grey slip of a woman, with a prayer-book in her hand, entered, and was presented as Mrs. Sampson, the housekeeper. The Candy Man rose to go, but Mr. Knight seemed now in no haste to release him.
"I should be glad to see you again, if some evening you have nothing better to do," he said. "You may perhaps be interested in some of my treasures." He glanced about the room. "You say you too are alone in the world?"
"Quite," the Candy Man answered. "Everyone I know has some relative, or at least an hereditary friend, but owing to the peculiar circumstances of my life, I have none. I do not mean I am friendless, you understand. I have some school and college friends, good ones. It is in background I am particularly lacking," he concluded.
"I have allowed my friends to slip away from me," confessed the Miser. "It was the force of circumstances in my case, too, though I brought it upon myself. I have been justly misunderstood."
"'Justly misunderstood.'" The Candy Man repeated the words to himself as he walked home in the frosty night. They were strange words, but he did not believe them irrational.