Читать книгу The Story That the Keg Told Me, and The Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much - W. H. H. Murray - Страница 16

"Some lone miser visiting his store

Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts, it o'er."

—Goldsmith.

"Well, one day, a few weeks after, a man came into the shop and asked the master: 'Have you a good, strong keg for sale?' And he put the question in such an earnest, half-spiteful, and half-suspicious way, that I fairly started within my hoops, and opened my eyes wide to take a good look at him; and a very peculiar man I saw, too, I assure you. He was quite a young-looking man, not more than forty years of age; of good height and strongly built. He was a gentleman, evidently, although his face was darkly tanned and his clothes were old and threadbare. His mouth was rather small than large. His lips were thin and had a look of being tightly drawn over the teeth—at least it seemed so to me. His chin was very long, and was joined at the base to large, strong jaws. His hair was brownish-black, and not over-abundant; indeed, I am not sure that he had not even then begun to grow slightly bald. But the remarkable feature of his face was his eyes. They were blue-grey in color, smallish in size, and set in deep under the arch of the eyebrows. How hard and steel-like they were, and restless as a rat's! And what an intense look of suspicion there was in them,—a half-scared, defiant look, as if their owner felt every one to be his enemy, against whom he must stand on his guard, and whom he might at any instant have to fight and kill. Ah, what eyes they were! and how they came and went to and from your face, and shot their glances at you and into you—ay, and through you, too. I grew to know them well afterward, and to know what the strange, wild light in them meant; but of that by and by.

"'Have you got a good, strong keg to sell, I say?' he shouted to my master, who was hammering away at a barrel so that he had not heard the man enter, much less his question. 'A good, stout keg?' said my master, as he turned around and looked squarely at the questioner. 'I should say that I had, Mr. Roberts; do you want one?' 'Yes,' returned the other, 'I do, but I want a strong one,—strong, do you hear?'—and he took a step toward my master as if he meant to strike him. 'Strong enough to hold the devil himself if he were in it, or a sinner's hope of heaven, either, if you like that better,' and he sneered the sentence out as if the blessed hope of Paradise were fit only to point a fool's joke.

"'Well, I don't know much about the devil, Mr. Roberts,' rejoined my master,—'not so much as you do, it may be; and as to one's hope of heaven, I don't build kegs to keep that in; but there's a keg,'—and my master tapped me with his mallet until I rang clear as a bell—'that I made with my own hands, from the best of stuff, and I said to the boys when I finished it that it would last till the Day of Judgment; and I verily believe it will, if white oak staves and steel hoops can last that long.'

"'I didn't ask you anything about the Day of Judgment, or anything else the long-winded parsons talk about and frighten their cowardly followers with,' snarled the other. 'All I want is a good, strong keg—strong as can be made of wood and iron—and if that keg is what you say it is, I want it and will take it, if you won't cheat me at the bargain, as I dare say you would like to do; what is your price, eh?' Well, the price was set, the money paid with a muttered protest, and Mr. Roberts hoisted me up under his arm and hastened with me out of the shop.

"Well, you can imagine that I felt very anxious about myself, and wondered as I was being hurried along where I was being taken, and what use I was to be put to; but I made up my mind to do my duty and hold whatever my new master should give to my trust, so that my maker might not hear ill of me; but I little thought what was to befall me, or what I should have to bear as the years went round. For I have seen dreadful sights in my time, and beheld things too awful to relate. For I have seen the undoing of a man, and the wreck of a human soul!

"Well, as I was saying, my new master hurried me along without stopping to speak to any one, although we passed many, and I noticed that no one of all we passed spoke to him, but looked at him coldly or wonderingly, and that he, whenever we were about to meet any one, whether man, woman, or child, only clutched me the more tightly and hurried on the faster. At last we came to a common-looking sort of a house, set back from the road, with a very high fence built clear around it, and a heavy padlock on the gate, and great, strong, wooden shutters at every window. Into this my master entered and set me down carefully upon the floor. This done, he went back to the door and locked it, and drew two large iron bolts or bars across it, securing them most carefully in the sockets. He then went to every window and examined them to see if each was fastened. He carefully examined every room and closet, even looking into the ash-hole and the oven in the chimney. Then lighting a candle he went down into the cellar, and after that up into the attic, carrying the candle in one hand and a great club or bludgeon in the other.

"By this time I had made up my mind that I had fallen into the hands of a maniac, and that my new master was insane. Leastwise I did not know what to make of him, or what was to be the upshot of his strange ways. After a while he came back to the room where he had left me, and took me up and set me on the table; and starting the upper hoop proceeded to take out one of my heads. At this I was thoroughly frightened, and kept my eyes on him wherever he went, as I wanted to see what his strange conduct meant, and what he would do next. When he had taken one of my heads out, he went to an old drawer under the cupboard and got a large sheepskin, with the wool closely clipped; and with a pair of large shears proceeded to fit me with a lining of it. I must say that he did it with remarkable cleverness, and that when he was done with me I was lined as well as any tailor could have lined me. But what it all meant I couldn't guess; and so I watched and waited. For you will admit that no keg was ever treated as he was treating me, and that I had good reason to be surprised.

"After he had done lining me with the soft skin he seemed more easy, and less nervous, and he put his hands inside of me and examined his work and was evidently pleased with it; for he rubbed his hands together, and his eyes glistened, and he said to himself: 'There! I call that a pretty good fit; I don't think old Tim, the tailor, would have done it better.' And then he laughed to himself and rubbed his hands together again as if he had said a very funny thing. By this time it was well on toward night, and he kindled a fire in the fireplace—a very small fire it was, only a little, thin blaze made of three or four short sticks which looked as if they had been picked up in the roadway, and a handful or two of chips. But small as the blaze was he managed to heat a little kettle of water by it and cook a cup of tea, which he placed upon an old board table alongside of a loaf of bread, and then he sat down by the table and began to eat the bread and drink the tea. And this was all the supper he had, and I thought it very strange that so large a man should be content with such a supper; but I grew used to the sight afterward, and ceased to wonder, as you will when you know the cause of his frugality."

After he had done eating, he wrapped the remainder of the bread carefully in a piece of paper, and put it away with the little tea-kettle in the cupboard. And then he went to the door and re-examined the bolts, and looked closely at all the shutters, while I stood and wondered what his strange actions meant, and why he was so anxious that the doors and windows should all be fastened so tightly; for the neighborhood was a good one, and the people law-abiding, so much so that the doors of half the houses in the village were never locked at nights, even from one year's end to another.

When he had done all this, he brought the club or bludgeon that I had seen him carry up stairs with him when he went up into the attic, and laid it on the table beside me, and also a large, thick knife, with a strong, horn handle, which he had taken from the mantelpiece where it had been lying; and then he went to the ash-hole in the chimney, and brought the ash-pail, which was full of ashes; and he went to the cupboard, and brought an old, earthen jar; and from under the bed he fetched a bag; and from a chamber overhead he brought a small box; and from the cellar he returned with a sack, all damp with earth. All the while I kept my eyes well open, you may believe, wondering what it all meant, and what there was in the pail and the jar and the box and the bag and the sack. Well, when he had these all side by side near the table, he sat down, and out of the ash-pail he took a small pot, and having blown the ashes off it with great care, he turned it bottom upward on the table, and—merciful heaven! what do you think was in it?

Dollars! Gold Dollars!

Then he took the bag; and untied the cord that held the mouth, and emptied it upon the table, and it, too, was full of dollars—gold dollars! And then, one after the other, he opened the jar and the box and the sack, and out of each and all he poured a great stream of bright golden dollars! Oh, what a pile of them there was! What a heap they made! How they gleamed and glistened! How they jingled and rang! How they rattled and clinked as he poured them down upon the dark boards! And how his eyes gleamed in their deep sockets as they saw the golden stream, and how the thin lips drew apart as the dollars flowed out, until his teeth showed their line of white back of them, and his hands shook and trembled as if palsied.

It was a dreadful sight to see him sit down, and leaning over the table, run his hands under the yellow heap and lift the pieces up so that the bright bits flowed over and out of his hollow palms and ran down through his parted fingers in shining streams. And then to hear him laugh as he played with the glistening coin! How mirthless his laughter was—hard and sharp and ringing like the metallic ring of the dollars itself. Oh, it was dreadful to think that a human soul could love money so. And he did love it—wildly, madly love it,—love it with all the strength of his strong nature. And this he did not disguise nor deny to himself: but admitted it, and gloried in it, too, with a most wicked and blasphemous glorying, as the Arch Fiend himself is said to glory in his own sin.

He would take a dollar up and look at it as a father might at the face of his favorite child, and pat it with his palm, and smooth the surface of it with a fingertip as if it could feel a caress. Ah me, 'twas dreadful! And then he would take a piece up and talk to it, and say coaxingly, "Thou art better than a wife;" and to another, "Thou art sweeter than a child;" and to another yet, "Thou art dearer than father or mother." And to the great pile of shining gold he would say, as he leaned over it, "O my beauties! the parsons may say what they please, but you are better than a far-off heaven." Ah, such blasphemy as I heard that night! How the sweet and blessed things of human life were derided, and the things that are divine and holy sneered at!

At last he fell to counting them, and by the way he did it I knew he had done it often; done it so many times that he counted as men do things by habit,—mechanically. He would say, "One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,—GOOD! One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,—GOOD!" And so go on, faster and faster, until his breath was gone; and then he would catch it again, and start anew. "One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,—GOOD!" Oh, it was awful to think of an immortal being loving MONEY so!

For a long time he counted on; counted until his hands shook, and the sweat stood thick on his forehead, and his eyes gleamed and glowed as if he were mad. And perhaps he was mad,—as all men are who live for gain, and whose hearts are fired with the awful lust for gold. So he counted on. And when he had counted all,—even to the very last,—the old dark boarded table was covered thick with little piles of tens; and he arose with a jump like a maniac, and stood above the table and shouted until the old house rang again,—

"Sixteen Thousand, Six Hundred and Sixty-six DOLLARS! Sixteen Thousand, Six Hundred and Sixty-six DOLLARS!"

Well, after a while he sobered down and became quiet, and began to pick the dollars up and pack them away inside of me,—carefully, one by one, as a mother might lay her children in their beds to sleep,—and this he kept on doing until the last shining coin had been taken from the table, and I was full to the very brim. Then he put my head in its place, and drove the upper hoop on snug, and put me in the bed, and the great knife under his pillow, and, blowing out the light, lay down beside me, and, putting one arm across me as if I were a child, fell asleep. And over the old house in which the miser lay clasping me to his heart, I knew the stars were shining; and beyond the stars, with eyes that never slept, I knew that the great God was looking down upon him and me.