Keeping up Appearances CHAPTER 15.
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After parting with his young friend, Mr. Lewis walked thoughtfully along, his mind fixed upon the information or rather suggestion he had received about Annetta's piano. He remembered that when he remarked on the fact of the instrument being removed upstairs, she did not reply in an open, frank manner — but seemed rather disposed not to say anything on the subject. He did not notice it at the time, for it was only an indifferent matter; but now it was looked at as an incident of some importance. Thus turning over in his thoughts the subject of his relation to Annetta, he passed along, when some object in the window of a shop caught his eye. He looked at it for a moment, and thinking that it would make a neat little present for his sister, went in with the intention of purchasing it. He found the shop quite full of customers, and was obliged to wait some minutes before anyone was at leisure to attend to him. One and another came in, and he gradually gave way and made room for them, until he found himself far back in the shop, and near to where a middle-aged man, who appeared to be the owner, was attending to a lady dressed in deep mourning. He supposed her making some purchases — but became aware that this was not so, by hearing the man say, rather indifferently,
"I will give you twelve shillings apiece for the capes, and four shillings apiece for the collars."
"But that is scarcely a third of their value," returned the lady, in a disappointed tone.
The moment the voice of the lady reached the ear of Mr. Lewis, he startled, and then listened eagerly.
"I can buy as many as I can shake a stick at for that price. They are offered to us every day," said the man.
"Not such work as this, I am sure," returned the lady. "Just look at it, sir. Examine it carefully. I am certain you have nothing in your shop that is superior. I have over and over again paid from two to three pounds for an article of much poorer quality."
"I know all about it," returned the man, half rudely. "What you bought was French needle-work."
"I will defy any one to tell the difference between this and the finest French work," said the lady.
"I could tell it across the shop; and so can anyone else who has seen French goods. There is no comparison."
"But surely you will pay more than the mere trifle you have offered?"
"Not a penny more."
"I am sorry," returned the lady sadly. "It is the work of a poor girl who is dying of consumption. I am selling it for her out of mere charity. But at the prices you offer, I don't see that her labor will keep her out of the workhouse."
"I am sorry. But I can't give any more. I can buy cart loads at the prices I have named."
"You will have to take them, I suppose," said the lady, with much disappointment in her tone, tossing towards the man the capes and collars she had been offering for sale.
"How many are there?" he asked. And he counted them over; "five capes and five collars; five twelves are sixty, and five fours make twenty. They come to four pounds."
The man stepped back to a desk for the money, and the lady, without looking around from the counter, leaned her face upon her hand, while her whole attitude exhibited despondency. Lewis, who had heard the whole of the conversation that had passed between her and the shop-keeper, remained standing where he was, until she had received the money for the needle-work. She then turned quickly, and her eyes rested upon the young man.
"Mr. Lewis!" she quickly ejaculated, the color leaving her cheeks. But, instantly, her self-possession came back. The sadness that was upon her countenance was chased away by a bright smile, and she said,
"This is the last place in which I should have expected to encounter you. I did not know that you visited shops devoted exclusively to the sale of ladies' goods."
"Nor am I in the habit of doing so," the young man replied, "but I saw something in the windows that pleased my fancy, and I came in to buy it for my sister; but the shop is so full that I see no chance of being attended to."
"I have just been engaged in rather an unusual and rather an unpleasant business," Annetta said.
"So I would suppose. I was pushed up close to where you were sitting and heard you bargaining."
"And a hard bargain it has turned out," replied Annetta, speaking with a slight sadness of tone that manifested itself in spite of her. "A poor girl who used to sew for us, is in a decline, and is now so weak as to be unable to leave her room. She has no one to depend upon, and endeavors to support herself by fine needle-work. I have undertaken to sell this work for her. But they have given me almost nothing for it.
I ought to have received at least ten pounds for what has brought only four. The poor girl will be disappointed and discouraged. It will not pay what she owes for boarding. I must add something myself to the pittance received."
"In such a good work let me participate," said Lewis with a glow of generous feeling, taking from his purse a sovereign and placing it in the hand of Annetta. "Add this to what you have, and give it to the poor girl."
Annetta received the coin — but turned her head partly away to conceal the burning blush with which her face was instantly covered.
Both then retired from the shop, and Lewis walked with Annetta home, more than once expressing the pleasure he felt at having discovered her in the performance of so good a work, and more than once half resolved to utter a tenderer sentiment in her ears than he had yet permitted himself to speak. On parting with her, at her door, he returned to Broadway, and went on farther up on some business.
The occurrence which we have mentioned, with the actor in it, formed the subject of his thought as he walked along. Up to the moment of parting with Annetta, not a doubt in regard to her had crossed his mind. He did not forget, it is true, the equivocal position in which her mother stood; but his mind exonerated the daughter from a guilty participation in anything that might be wrong. The act of benevolence in which he had found her engaged, and the real sympathy she appeared to feel in the poor sick girl, showed her to possess great goodness of heart; and this, united with her intelligence, her personal beauty, and other qualities for which he had admired her, seemed to make her, in the eyes of the young man, a lovely embodiment of all the virtues and graces he could hope to obtain. But after leaving her at her own home — old doubts and old questions came back into his mind, and once more deeply disturbed it.
After his errand in town had been performed, he returned by the way of the Bowery, and passing down, a very elegant service of silverware in the window of a jewelry shop attracted his attention. He was so well pleased with the set, that he felt a desire to know the price, and stepped into the shop to ask what it was. A little old man, with a shrewd visage, small, twinkling black eyes, and a quick, prompt manner, was behind the counter.
"What do you ask for that service of silverware in the window?" said Lewis.
"Oh! Ah! Yes! That is a splendid set." As the man thus responded to his question, he went to the window, and took therefrom the various articles of which the service was composed, and displayed them on the glass show case.
"It certainly is very beautiful. What is your price for it?"
"Eighty pounds, which is very cheap, I could not sell it for anything like that price, if it were entirely new; but it has been slightly used, though not enough for any eye but a very experienced one indeed, to detect — you, for instance, could not tell that it was not entirely new. The style is perfectly modern, and the workmanship exquisite. It did not cost, originally, a penny less than one hundred and forty pounds; in fact, that is what the lady from whom I purchased it, said, was the sum her husband paid. It is a great bargain, sir. You will not meet another like it."
"Is this solid silver?" asked Lewis, taking up a large and elegantly wrought waiter.
"Oh, yes! Every ounce silver."
"It certainly is a splendid piece of silverware."
"Magnificent! The metal is of the finest quality, worth the highest price in the market."
"How came the owner to part with it?" asked Lewis.
The little man shrugged his shoulders, drew up one side of his face, and half closed one eye, while something resembling a smile lit up his countenance.
"The old story," he said — "broken merchant — poor widow."
"Ah! That's the history, is it?"
"Yes. You remember Mr. Laurie, the importer, who used to do business in Maiden Lane?"
"I do."
"This was his silverware. I bought it from his widow."
"Are you certain?"
"Why not? His daughter came here and asked me to go to the house and see it, and I went."
"Where do they live?"
The man gave the street and the number.
"His widow is poor, then," remarked Lewis.
"She ought to be, although she lives in a very fine house, and in great style. But it won't last long, to my thinking. How can it, if it has to be kept up in this way? I hardly suppose there is much more silverware to sell, although the young lady said something about a new and costly service they had just bought, and their desire to get this "old stuff" out of the way. Ha! Ha! No doubt they would like to have some more of this "old stuff". Ha! Ha!"
Lewis stopped to hear no more — but turned abruptly away from the jeweler, and left his shop. The man looked after him with surprise and disappointment pictured in his wrinkled face.
"Moses, you talk too much! Your tongue will be your ruin yet. Keep your own counsel — keep your own counsel; why can't you?" Thus the Jew talked to himself, reprovingly, as he slowly returned the service of silverware to the window.
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