A Philanthropist

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Publié le	08 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	15
Langue	English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: A Philanthropist Author: Josephine Daskam Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23366] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILANTHROPIST ***

Produced by David Widger

A PHILANTHROPIST

By Josephine Daskam Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons

"I suspected him from the first," said Miss Gould, with some irritation, to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile of the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy movements. "He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom—" "I do not know Tom?" hazarded the lodger. "No. I don't know whether I ever mentioned him to you. He came twice to the League, and we were really quite hopeful about him, and the third time he asked to have the meeting at his house. We thought it a great sign—the best of si ns, in fact. So as a reat favor we went there instead of meetin at the

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"I should certainly marry her to reform her," he said to the birch log that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again. He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid and ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by stifled cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from the lower part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the man who served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment, he decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the noise came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful winding staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top of the cellar stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific. Half-way down the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable scene below him with interest and amazement. The cemented floor was literally covered with neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a tide under the efforts of a large red-faced man who, with the regularity of a machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in the face of Miss Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and flung them on the floor. From the woodhouse near the cellar muffled shouts were heard through a storm of blows on the door. From the rattling of this door, and the fact that the red-faced man aimed every third stick at it, the observer might readily conclude that some one desirous of leaving the woodhouse was locked within it. For a moment the spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise was deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of settled rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of wood; the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box, invariably checked by a fierce brandishing of the stick just taken from the lessening pile, were at once startling and fascinating, inasmuch as she was methodically waved back just as her knees had unbent for the trial, and as methodically essayed her escape again, alternately rising with dignity and sinking back in terror. The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and terror shifted to relief. "Oh, Mr. Welles!" she gasped. Her lodger girded up his robe de chambre with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of birch and hickory. A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned to find Miss Gould offering a coil of clothes-rope with which to bind the conquered, whom conflict had sobered, for he made no resistance. "What do you mean by such idiotic actions?" the squire of dames demanded, as he freed the maddened Henry from his durance vile in the woodhouse and confronted the red-faced man, who had not uttered a word. He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould and a triumphant smile at Henry before replying. Then, disdaining the lady's righteous indignation and the hired man's threatening gestures, he faced the gentleman in the scarlet robe and spoke as man to man. "Gov'nor," he said with somewhat thickened speech, "I come here an' I

asked for a meal. An' she tol' me would I work fer it? An' I said yes. An' she come into this ol' vault of a suller, an' she pointed to that ol' heap o' wood, an' she tol' me ter move it over ter that corner. An' I done so fer half an hour. An' I says to that blitherin' fool over there, who was workin' in that ol' wood-house, what the devil did she care w'ich corner the darned stuff was in? An' he says that she didn't care a hang, but that she'd tell the next man that come along to move it back to where I got it from; he said 'twas a matter er principle with her not to give a man a bite fer nothin'! So I shut him in his ol' house, an' w'en she come down I gave her a piece of my mind. I don't mind a little work, mister, but when it come to shufflin' kind-lin's round in this ol' tomb fer half an hour an' makin' a fool o' myself fer nothin', I got my back up. My time ain't so vallyble to me as 'tis to some, gov'nor, but it's worth a damn sight more'n that!" Miss Gould's lodger shuddered as he remembered the quarter he had surreptitiously bestowed upon the man, and the withering scorn that would be his portion were the weakness known. He smiled as he recalled the scene in the cellar when he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs and returned to soothe Henry, who regretted that he had left one timber of the woodhouse upon another. "Though I'm bound to say, Mr. Welles, that I see how he felt. I've often felt like a fool explainin' how they was to move that wood back an' forth. It does seem strange that Miss Gould has to do it that way. Give 'em some-thin' an' let 'em go, I say!" It was precisely his own view—but how fundamentally immoral the position was he knew so well! He recalled Miss Gould's lectures on the subject, miracles of eloquence and irrefutably correct in deductions that interested him not nearly so much as the lecturer. "So firm, so positive, so wholesome!" he would murmur to himself in tacit apology for the instructive hours spent before their common ground, the great fireplace in the central hall. He never sat there without remembering their first interview: her resentment at an absolutely inexcusable intrusion slowly melting before his exquisite appreciation of every line and corner of the old colonial homestead; her reserve waning at every touch of his irresistible courtesy, till, to her own open amazement, she rose to conduct this connoisseur in antiquities through the rooms whose delights he had perfectly foreseen, he assured her, from the modelling of the front porch; her utter and instantaneous refusal to consider for a second his proposal to lodge a stranger in half of her father's house; and the naïve and conscientious struggle with her principles when, with a logic none the less forcible because it was so gracefully developed, he convinced her that her plain duty lay along the lines of his choice. For as a philanthropist what could she do? Here were placed in her hands means she could not in conscience overlook. Rapidly translating his dollars into converts, he juggled them before her dazzled eyes; he even hinted delicately at Duty, with that exact conception of the requirements of the stern daughter felt by none so keenly as those who systematically avoid her. His good genius prompted him to refer casually to soup-kitchens. Now soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss Gould's heart; toward the

establishment of a soup-kitchen she had looked since the day when her father's death had left her the double legacy of his worldly goods and his unworldly philanthropy. Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers, riotous no more, but seated temperately each before his steaming bowl, rose to her delighted eyes; she saw in fancy the daughters and nieces of the reformed in smiles and white aprons ladling the nutritious and attractive compound, earning thus an honest wage; she saw a neatly balanced account-book and a triumphant report; she saw herself the respected and deprecatory idol of a millennial village. She wavered, hesitated, and was lost. That very evening saw the establishment of a second ménage in the north side of the house, and though a swift regret chilled her manner for weeks, she found herself little by little growing interested in her lodger, and conscious of an increasing desire to benefit him, an irritated longing to influence him for good, to turn him from the butterfly whims of a pretended invalid to an appreciation of the responsibilities of life. For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her nothing less than horrible. Each day that added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms, and in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new sting in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all her life. She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she was forced to be grateful to that providential generosity that caused new wickedness and ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil she had cleared; for if one reform had been sufficient she would long since have been obliged to leave the little village for larger fields. She had ministered to the starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle and dissolute quaked before her. And yet here in her own household, across her hall, lived the epitome of uselessness, indolence, selfishness, and—she was forced to admit it—charm. What corresponded to a sense of humor in her caught at the discrepancy and worried over it. What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented, handsome, deferential—but persistently amused at her, irrevocably indolent, hopelessly selfish. With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with open disfavor. "A habit picked up in England," he had assured her, when, with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across her smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New England villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she had planned went

unspoken that day. But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the continual visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in self-defence her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons saw her lodger across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and plum-cake by the shining kettle. If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter tea-service —velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out wine in her great-grandfather's long-necked decanter, and, with what she considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest's desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous quality in her conversation that forced a subdued chuckle now and then from her listener. She confided most of her schemes to him, sometimes unconsciously, and grew to depend more than she knew upon his common sense and experience; for, though openly cynical of her works, he would give her what she often realized to be the best of practical advice, and his amusing generalities, though to her mind insults to humanity, had been so bitterly proved true that she looked fearfully to see his lightest adverse prophecy fulfilled. After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as to the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to her ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture according to his degree of appreciation of "Rabbi ben Ezra" was unfortunately known to her lodger before she could with any verisimilitude produce the book, and he was wary of committing himself. The exquisite effrontery with which she finally brought out her gray-green volume was only equalled by the forbearing courtesy with which he welcomed both it and her. Nor did he offer any other comment on her opening the book at a well-worn page than an apologetic removal to the only chair in the room more comfortable than the one he was at the time occupying. He listened in silence to her intelligent if somewhat sonorous rendering of selected portions of "Saul," thanking her politely at the close, and only stipulating that he should be allowed to return the favor by a reading from one of his own favorite poets. With a shocked remembrance of certain yellow-covered volumes she had often cleared away from the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the poet in question were English. On his hearty affirmative she resigned herself with no little interest to the opportunity of seeing her way more clearly into this baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of the second reading—for she had brought the "Rabbi" forward at last, "Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!" she had intoned; and, fixing her eye sternly on the butterfly in white flannels, she had asked him with a telling emphasis what that meant to him? With the sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned forward, sipped his tea,