Nothing but Money! CHAPTER 18.
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A dead calm followed this scene of contention between Lydia and her husband. One week, two weeks, glided away, and, sure enough, Adam had not heard the word moneyissuing from the lips of his wife — nor, in fact, many other words. She moved about, when he was at home, in a silent, gliding, ghost-like way, that struck him as unnatural. When he spoke to her, she usually answered without looking at him. If her eyes rested in his, their expression caused an uneasy feeling to creep through his mind.
"We'll see how long this will last," expressed Adam's thought and purpose. "A thing worth having, is worth asking for." So, money was not offered to Lydia.
One day, early in the third week of this new order of things, as Mr. Guyton sat in his counting-room, talking with a merchant on business, a black man came in, and handed him a note.
"Good morning, Abe," said the merchant, recognizing, in a kind way, the black man.
"Good mornin', Massa Williams," returned the negro, respectfully.
"What's this?" asked Mr. Guyton, knitting his brows, and speaking sharply. He had opened the note, and read —
"Due Abe for white-washing — $5.
Lydia Guyton."
"Missus guv it to me, sir. I'se done de whitewashin'."
"Didn't she pay you?" demanded Guyton, not clearly understanding what the due-bill meant, and exposing to the merchant-friend more than he found at all pleasant to think about afterwards.
"Oh, no, Massa' Guyton. She say, take dat to Massa, and he'll pay. The whitewashing all done fust-rate, Massa Guyton!"
"Why didn't you wait until I came home this evening? What did you call here for?" said Mr. Guyton, as he drew out his pocket-book. He was excessively annoyed, and had not sufficient control of mind to hide his feelings.
"Missus say, go to de store!" Abe's white teeth glistened, as he stood smiling and apologetic.
The five dollars were paid, and Abe retired; but, scarcely had he passed into the street, when a stout countryman entered, and presented another piece of paper. Mr. Guyton caught at it in a nervous way.
"Due John Thomas — $10, for milk and cream.
"Lydia Guyton."
"Who told you to bring this here?" asked Guyton, roughly.
"Your good lady, sir," replied the man, respectfully.
"Henry, pay this, and take a receipt to date," said Mr. Guyton, looking round at the clerk; and he turned from the man with a most ungracious air. But, before the broken thread of business conversation had been fairly taken up, one of his house-servants entered the counting-room.
"What do you want, Hannah?" said Mr. Guyton, knitting his just relaxed brows.
"Mrs. Guyton said ye'd give me my money," replied the girl, handing him a folded note. The contents were —
"Due Hannah, one month s wages — $6
Lydia Guyton."
Couldn't you have waited until I got home?" angrily demanded the merchant!
"No, sir. I'm to send it to Ireland; and it must go the day. I towld her yestherday that I'd need it, and she said, very well. An today she gev me this to bring till yez, sir."
"Outrageous!"muttered Guyton to himself. "What does she mean? Then handing the due-bill over his shoulder, he said —
"Henry, pay this, also!" As the girl, after getting her money, was retiring, Guyton called out, "Hannah!"
"Sir." The woman's voice was not over respectful.
"Next time you want money, wait until I come home."
"Maybe, if you didn't keep the mistress so closed up!"
"Silence! How dare you!" Guyton broke in angrily upon the servant's impudent retort.
"Och! An' yez may scream silence all you care; but you had'nt try wit me, Musther Guyton. The leddy hadn't any money, and she towld me to come here. No mighty harm done, I reckon."
And with this speech, the free-tongued Irish woman, who had seen enough of Guyton in the family to despise him, flung herself out of the counting-room, and made quick exit from the store.
"Well, if that doesn't beat the Old Boy himself!" said Adam Guyton, his face flushed with shame and anger. But the play was not over yet. A shabbily dressed boy came shuffling into the counting-room a few minutes afterwards, and standing in front of Mr. Guyton, commenced operations on an old pocket in his trousers, whose heterogeneous contents were half removed before the object of his search was found. Guyton felt nervous. Was here "another cursed due-bill?" We give the words he uttered in thought. Even so; for scarcely had the question formed itself, when out came a crumpled piece of paper, which the boy held towards him, saying —
"My mother told me to give you this, and you'd pay it!"
"What is it?" Guyton caught the slip of paper from he boy's hand, and glanced at the single line written thereon —
"Due Aunty Green — 64 cents.
Lydia Guyton."
"Here! Take this back to your mother, and don't dare to show your face in my store again." Guyton lost his temper completely. This was the last feather!
"Good day," said the merchant with whom he had been in conference. "I'll drop in again, and talk over that matter."
"Good day," was returned, coldly, and the merchant retired. But the boy remained standing, with the due-bill in his hand.
"Didn't I tell you to be off?" And Guyton advanced upon the lad with a threatening look. The little fellow, however, stood his ground.
"Go, I say!"
"Mother said you'd pay me sixty-four cents. Mrs. Guyton wrote it down on the paper!"
"I shall not pay it; so off with you this instant!" Two angry spots burned on the lad's cheeks, and his eyes flashed like diamonds. Moving back, until he stood in the counting-room door, and in a safe position for retreat, he screamed out —
"Stingy old beast! Cheat a poor woman out of sixty-four cents!" and then ran off at full speed.
Catching up his hat, Mr. Guyton left the store in a hurried manner, and proceeded homeward. Stalking into the room where his wife sat with two or three of the children, he said, in a rough, angry voice — "What's the meaning of all this? — ha!"
"Meaning of what?" asked Mrs. Guyton, without evincing any surprise at her husband's manner.
"You know well enough!" stormed the excited man. "Don't put on that weak pretense!"
Lydia dropped her eyes from his face, and pursued quietly, and with a steady hand, the work on which she was engaged.
"Did you hear me?" The heavy foot of Mr. Guyton jarred the floor, as often in times gone by; the effect was the same as if his wife had been a statue. There was no response.
"Lydia!!" The voice was pitched to a lower key, and to a different modulation.
"Well." She paused in her work, and looked up.
"Why did you send them people to me for money?"
"It was due them." The dead level of Mrs. Guyton's tone and manner baffled her husband.
"Don't do it again! I won't have Tom, Dick and Harry, running to the store after money. I'm surprised at you! And as for Hannah, the insolent huzzy can't stay in this house another day."
Mrs. Guyton dropped her eyes upon the sewing in her lap, and the needle-hand, which had been suspended in the air, moved on again — stitch, stitch, stitch.
"Why didn't you tell me you were out of money?" Mrs. Guyton gave her husband a look so full of a strange, half-understood significance, that his breath stood still for a moment. Drawing out his purse, and taking therefrom bank bills to the amount of forty dollars, he gave them a twist in his fingers, and then threw them across the room towards his wife. They fell on the floor, several feet from where she was sitting. She did not glance towards them, nor pause in her sewing. Guyton, as he tossed her the money, turned away, and left the room.
On the next morning, while Mr. Guyton sat with the same merchant who had witnessed his mortification on the day before, in the midst of a closely driven bargain on both sides — a girl, wearing a sun-bonnet, and having a checkered apron over a faded calico dress, came into the counting-room, and said —
"Is Mr. Guyton in?"
"That's my name. What do you want?"
The girl opened her hand, in which she held a narrow, folded strip of paper.
"Mrs. Guyton told me to give you this, and said you'd pay it."
An angry heart-beat, sent the blood in red stains to the face of Adam Guyton. He took the slip of paper, and read —
"Due Mrs. Winter, for butter and eggs, $7.41.
Lydia Guyton."
"This is beyond endurance! What does the woman mean?" exclaimed Guyton, losing command of himself, and betraying, in the sentence, a glimpse of the skeleton that was in his house. Then adding, impatiently, as he looked towards a clerk —
"Pay it, Henry!"
"See here, girl!" he said, roughly, as the person who had brought the due-bill was about retiring with the money, "don't bring any more of them things here. My house is the place."
"You needn't be so huffy about it!" retorted the girl, whose rough contact with life in the markets had made her quick-tongued and independent. "A person has a right to ask for their own anywhere. Mrs. Guyton said to come here."
"Off! Off!" And the humiliated merchant waved his hand.
"So touchy!" ejaculated the market girl, as she moved back, and glided through the door.
Amused glances passed from clerk to clerk, as they looked after her, retiring, with a jaunty air, through the store. Ten minutes later, and another due bill, for a trifling sum, came in; and before dinner time three more were presented. Guyton was boiling over when he reached home at two o'clock, his dining hour.
"What did you do with the money I gave you yesterday?" he demanded, stalking into the presence of his wife, and thus interrogating her before all the children.
"I received none," was the cold, indifferent answer. "What? I gave you forty dollars yesterday!" Lydia merely shook her head, and murmured passively, "You are mistaken."
"Didn't I throw you some bank bills yesterday, in this very room?"
"Did you?"
"Certainly I did. Where are they?"
"Perhaps you'll find them on the floor — right where you threw them; they never came into my possession," was the impassive answer of Lydia.
"What! You don't mean to say that you left forty dollars lying on the floor to be stolen by servants, or swept into the fire?"
"No, I didn't do anything of the kind. If so foolish an act took place — the folly may lie at your door; it certainly does not at mine."
Circumvented, Adam Guyton! This weak woman is proving too strong for you.
"Didn't you see the money when I threw it towards you?"
"Yes."
"Well! Why didn't you take it?"
"I'm neither a dog nor a beggar, Adam Guyton! If you wish me to disburse the family expenses, place the means, in a decent way, at my disposal."
"But where are the forty dollars?" Ah! Here was the pinch! And Guyton began to look about the floor. "Henry! Did you see anything of the money?" addressing his oldest boy.
"No, sir," was promptly answered; and then, with the eager scent of a hound, this money-loving child began hunting about the room. The sofa was dragged from the wall; edges of the carpet pulled up here and there; tables and chairs moved from their places; and search made even in the ash-pan of the grate. But, to no good purpose.
"There's no use in looking," growled the unhappy man. "Of course the money's gone! swept into the fire, or the street. It beats everything I've yet seen! No more value is placed on money in this house, than if it were so much dirt!"
"I've found it!" cried young Henry, who had continued to prowl about, moved by his avaricious instinct, after all the rest had abandoned the search as idle. And he held up the little twisted roll of bills, that, by some strange chance, had lodged in an out-of-the-way corner of the room, behind a piece of furniture.
A stranger would have thought, by the joy which instantly made radiant the face of Guyton, that this sum of money was all he possessed in the world. Catching the bills from Henry's hand, he opened and counted them over in an eager, nervous manner.
"Are they all there, father?" asked the boy.
"Yes, my son; fortunately. Such outrageous indifference beats everything!"
Mrs. Guyton had shown no interest in the hurried disorderly search, which had ended in finding the lost bills, and gave no sign of pleasure at their recovery.
"Here!" said her husband, now thrusting the money almost into her face.
"Do you see it now?"
But Mrs. Guyton did not move a hand.
"Why don't you take it?" was demanded, in a tone of authority.
"I've told you before, that I'm neither a dog nor a beggar, Adam Guyton!"
The look that flashed out upon Guyton from the suddenly lifted eyes of his wife, caused him to move back a step or two. The voice was cold and steady; but the eyes had a gleam in them that caused a creeping chill to run along his nerves. He stood, holding out the money for a little while, and then, seeing no movement on the part of his wife, gave it a safe lodgment in his pocket-book.
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