CHAPTER XXVI THE SAINTED BEGGAR

An afterthought had a tendency to dim the little French girl’s hopes. Angelo, she remembered, had called her on the phone the day before.

He had, he assured her, nothing of importance to say. “And that,” she told herself now, “means no letter. And yet, he may have forgotten. Ah, well, we’ll hope. And I shall not go there until evening. That will give the mailman one more day to do his bit.”

She called to mind the things Angelo had told her. He and his companions were very close to the bottom. His precious treasures, rugs and all, must soon go. They were living from hand to mouth. Dan Baker had been earning a little, three or four dollars a day. “Doing impersonation.” That is what the old trouper had called it, whatever that might mean. Swen had hopes of earning something soon. How? He did not know. As for himself, he had found nothing. He had even offered to sell books on drama at a book store; but they would not have him.
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“Sell books.” She sat staring at the wall now. “Who would buy them?”

She was thinking of blue-eyed Merry and of her last visit to the basement shop. “It is hard,” the brave little Irish girl had said to her. “For days and days no one has entered the shop. And we need money so badly.

“But we have hopes,” she had added quickly. “The holiday season is coming. Perhaps those who cannot buy costly presents will come to our shop and buy mended ones that are cheap.”

“I am sure of it,” Jeanne had said.

“And see!” Merry had cried, pointing at the marble falcon with the broken beak, that rested on the shelf above her desk. “See! He is still looking toward the sky. All will be well.”
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“Oh, little girl with your smiling Irish eyes,” Jeanne had cried, throwing both arms about her, “How I love you! Some day I’ll be rich. Then I shall give you a falcon all made of gold and he shall be looking toward the sky.”

Now as she sat alone in her room, she thought again of the marble falcon, and murmured, “I wonder if the falcon told the truth. I wonder if all will be well? Truly, in such times as these it is necessary to have great faith if one is to be brave.”

She threw herself into her dances that day with abandon. By the time she had done the last wild whirl she had worked herself up to such heights that she felt sure that a change for the better would come.

“It is as if I were preparing for some great event,” she told herself, “a trial of my skill that will mean great success or terrible defeat!”

But as she went toward the studio she was given a shock that came near to breaking her poor little heart.

She had rounded a corner when a sudden rush of wind seized her and all but threw her against a beggar who, tin cup in hand, stood against the wall.
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The sight of the beggar caused her to halt. There was, she remembered, a dime in her side coat pocket.

She looked again at the beggar, then thrust her hand deep for the dime. The beggar seemed pitifully, hopelessly forlorn. His battered hat was drooping with snow. His long gray hair was powdered with it. The hand that held the cup was blue with cold. In a sad and forlorn world he seemed the saddest and most forlorn being of all.

She had the dime between her fingers and was about to draw it forth when another look at the old man made her start. A second look was needed before she could be convinced that her eyes had not deceived her. Then, with a sound in her throat suspiciously like a sob, she dropped the dime back in her pocket and hastened away on the wings of the wind, as if she had seen a ghost.

“Impersonations,” she whispered to herself, as a chill shook her from head to foot. “Impersonation. He called it that. He would do even this for his friends!”
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The beggar standing there in the storm was none other than Dan Baker.

“I’ll call Kay King,” she said to herself, with another shudder. “I’ll call him to-night. I’ll tell him he may have those bags. And when he brings me the money I shall give it to Dan Baker. And he must accept it, every dollar.”

She found Angelo at the studio when she arrived. No one else was there. Swen, he explained, had gone out on some sort of work. Dan Baker was doing his “impersonations.” Again Jeanne shuddered at that word.

Angelo had greeted her with the warm affection characteristic of his race. Now he led her to a place beside the fire.

After that neither seemed to find words for small talk. Each was busy with thoughts that could not well be expressed. Angelo, too, hailed from a warm and sunny clime. This wild storm, ushering in winter so early in the year, had sobered his usually buoyant soul.

After a time she asked him about the letter.

“A letter?” he asked, seeming puzzled. “Did you expect a letter to come here?”
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“Perhaps I did not tell you.” She nodded toward the corner where the three pigskin bags stood. “When I wrote the letter to my friend, I gave him this address.”

“I see. Well, there has been no letter.”

“I suppose,” she said dully, “that I may as well turn the bags back to Kay King and get the money.”

“Must you?” He looked at her sharply.

“I think I must. I’ll call him on the phone now.”

Before she could put this plan into execution, Swen came bursting into the room. He wore no cap. His hair was filled with snow. His face was red with the cold. But his spirits were buoyant.

“Had a whale of a time,” he shouted boisterously. “And see! I have three whole dollars! To-night we feast.”

Petite Jeanne heaved a sigh of relief. There was money in the house. Now she need not call Kay King, at least not until morning.

“A day of grace,” she told herself.
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It was some time later that, chancing to catch a glimpse of the talented young musician’s hand, she saw with a shock that they were covered with blisters.

“He has been shoveling snow in the street,” she told herself. An added ache came to her overburdened heart.

Dan Baker came in a moment later. Beating the snow from his hat, he threw it into a corner. Having shaken the snow from his hair, he advanced to greet Jeanne.

“He doesn’t know I saw him,” she thought, as she looked straight into his transparent blue eyes. “I am so glad.”

At first he seemed too tired for talk. Taking a place before the fire, he appeared to fall into a dreamy reverie.

At last, rousing himself, he drew from his pocket a coin that shone in the dim light. It was a gold piece, one of those rare two-dollar-and-a-half pieces. Jeanne started at the sight of it. How had he come by it? Had some one, mistaking it for a penny, dropped it in his cup?

Still looking at the coin, Dan Baker spoke one word: “Gold.”
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His weary old eyes took on an unwonted brightness. “That reminds me. Once I was down on my luck as an actor. That was in Colorado.” He paused and his eyes appeared to grow misty with recollection.

“He’s off again,” Jeanne told herself. “But how wonderful!” Her eyes grew dim with tears. “How marvelous to be able to forget all that is sordid, cold and mean, all the heartaches of the present in one’s dreams of an unreal but charming past.”

“As I was about to say,” Dan Baker made a fresh start, “I was no longer an actor. No one wished me to act. So, securing pick, a pan and a burro—or was it two burros?”

“Oh!” murmured Petite Jeanne. “Just as you were to do in our play.”

“Just as he is to do,” Angelo corrected stoutly.
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“Yes, yes,” Dan Baker broke in, like a child whose story has been interrupted. “But the burros. There were two, I am sure. Well, I recall the jingle of picks and shovels, pots and pans as we traveled up Bear Creek Canyon in Colorado—beautiful, wonderful Colorado, where the snow-capped mountains are reflected in tiny lakes whose waters are blue-black.

“Three days we traveled. Three nights I slept by a burned out camp fire on the banks of a madly rushing stream.

“From time to time I caught the gleam of a golden speck in the sand at the river’s bottom.

“But the gold,” I told myself, “is higher up. And so it was.”

He paused to poke at the fire. As his eyes reflected the gleam of the fire the little French girl knew that he was not in the heart of a great, sordid and selfish city, but far, far away, prodding a camp fire in beautiful Colorado where snow-capped mountains are reflected in tiny lakes whose waters are a deep blue-black. And she was glad.

“Gold,” he began once more. “Ah, yes. There was gold. You would be surprised.

“I built a cabin, all of logs save the floor. That was of fragrant fir and spruce boughs.
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“One day as I panned the sand I came upon a brownish object that seemed to be an ancient copper kettle turned upside down and half buried in the sand.

“‘Aha!’ I cried, ‘A relic of the past. Some Forty-niner must have passed this way and left his kettle.’

“I struck it lightly with the side of my pick. Naturally I expected it to give off a hollow sound. No hollow sound came; only a dull thud, as if I had struck a rock.

“Instantly my heart beat wildly. I had made a great discovery—how great I could only guess.

“Quickly I drew my sheath knife. Using this as a chisel, and a stone as a hammer, I cut off a chip of this yellow boulder.

“Imagine my joy when it came off gleaming like yellow fire.

“‘Gold!’ I cried. ‘A boulder of pure gold!’

“Then I fell suddenly silent. What if some one had heard me?

“I tried to pry the boulder from the sand. It would not budge. Gold is heavy. Do you know how heavy?
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“Darkness was falling. The curtain of night would hide my treasure. I returned to my cabin, fried a supply of bacon, baked corn-cakes over hot coals, and enjoyed a regal repast. And why not? Was I not rich as any king?”

Once more the beloved wanderer prodded the fire. As he did so a dramatic look of gray despair overspread his face.

“I slept well that night. Awakened sometime before dawn by the dull roar of thunder, I looked out on a world of inky blackness.

“‘Going to rain,’ I thought. Then I crawled back between the blankets.

“Not for long. To the occasional roar of thunder was added a more terrifying sound. An endless, ever increasing roar came echoing down the canyon.

“Knowing its meaning, I wrenched my cabin door from its hinges, and then awaited the worst.
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“I had not long to wait. As if by magic I felt my door, my life saving raft, lifted beneath me by a raging torrent and go spinning round and round. We were on our way, riding the flood of a cloudburst.

“Well—” He paused to reflect. “I landed in a fellow’s cornfield. He wanted to charge me for the corn my raft broke down. I wouldn’t stand for that, so I went down to Denver and joined a troupe that was playing Ten Nights in a Bar Room. For a man that never drank, I claim I had a pretty good line.”

“But that gold?” put in Swen.

“Oh! The gold? Sure. Yes, the gold!” For a moment the old man seemed bewildered. Then a bright smile lighted his wrinkled face.

“Gold, my son, is heavy. That flood moved half the mountainside. And when it was over, where was my golden boulder? At the bottom of it all, to be sure.”

“That story,” said Petite Jeanne, “sounds almost true.”

“True?” He beamed on her his old, gracious smile. “Of course it’s true. At least, I did once play a part in Ten Nights in a Bar Room—a mighty fine line, too, for a man who never drank a quart of whisky in his whole life.”
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After that, Dan Baker sat for a time staring at the glittering bit of gold, the smallest coin of our realm. When he spoke again it was to the coin alone. “You came to me by chance. What for? To buy stale bread, and butter made from cocoanut oil, and a soup bone? Tell me. Shall it be this, or shall it be sirloin steak, a pie and a big pot of coffee with real cream?”

As Petite Jeanne looked and listened, she seemed to see him once again, standing half buried in snow, a tin cup frozen to his benumbed fingers. She was about to speak, to utter words of wise counsel, when with a suddenness that caused them all to start, there came a loud knock at the door.