“Do not fear,” she said gently. “It is really my own, and he gave it to me himself, almost thirty years ago. He was hardly thirty years old himself then. You see, my husband had been so fortunate as to do him a kindness. It was he who had it first. When he died it came to me, and now for the second time in my life I am using it. I knew you belonged. I saw the sign. Will you help me find my boy?”
“Did your ladyship know he is he’e, in San Flancisco?”
If she had not already dissipated any doubt in his mind, her evident relief blew the last shred away now. “Haven’t you such a thing as a telephone somewhere?” cried Rebecca Winter. “Time is precious. Can’t you speak to him—have him come here?”
It appeared that there was a telephone, and in a moment she was put into communication by the shopkeeper. He stood in an attitude of deep respect while she talked. He heard with unsmiling attention her first Chinese words; he listened as she returned to English, speaking very quietly, but with a controlled earnestness, explaining that she was Archibald Winter’s widow, giving dates and places, in nowise alluding to the service which had won the charm about her neck. Yet as he listened, insensibly the Chinaman grew certain that she had spoken the truth. Presently she turned to him. “He wishes to speak to you,” she said, and went back to the shop. She sighed as one sighs from whose heart a great burden rolls. “To find him here, and still grateful!” she was thinking. “What wonderful good fortune!”
She sat down, and her face grew dreamy. She was no longer thinking of Archie. Her vision was on another face, another scene, a time of peril, when almost against her reason her instinctive woman’s recoil of pity for a fellow-creature in danger of unthinkable torture had been so intense that she had more than acquiesced in her husband’s plan of risking both their lives to save him; she had impelled him to it; she had overcome his terror of the risks on her account. “It is only death we have to fear, at worst,” she had argued. “We have the means to escape in a second, both of us, from anything else; and if we run away and leave this poor wretch, who hasn’t done anything but love his country, just as we love ours, and be too civilized for his trifling, ornery, pusillanimous country-people to understand, to get slashed to pieces by their horrible ling-ling—whatever they call it—Archibald Winter, don’t you reckon we shall have nightmares as long as we live?”
Thirty years ago—yet it seemed like yesterday. Distinctly she could hear her husband’s voice; it had not come back to her with such reality for years; it was more real than the cries of the street outside; and her heart was beating faster for his words: “Becky, there never was a woman like you! You could make a dead man hop up and fight, bless you!”
“Your ladyship”—it was the shopkeeper back again; he had lived in England, and he offered the most respectful western title of his knowledge—“your ladyship may be chee’ful. All will be done of the best. The young gentleman will be back fo’ to-night. If your ladyship will now letu’n to the hotel.”
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Mrs. Winter bowed slightly; she was quite her self-possessed self again. “I will go certainly,” she said, “but I shall hope to see you, also, to-night; and meanwhile, will you accept, as a token from a friend who trusts you, this?” She took a little gem-encrusted watch from her fob and handed it to him. Her manner was that of a queen who rewards her general. And she left him bowing low. She entered the motor-car. It was no longer a lone motor. Another car steamed and snorted near by, in which sat the amiable banker from Iowa, his wife and Janet Smith.