Lost Treasure

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Title:     Lost Treasure
Author: Caradoc Evans [More Titles by Evans]

Here is the tale that is told about Hugh Evans, who was a commercial traveler in drapery wares, going forth on his journeys on Mondays and coming home on Fridays. The tale tells how on a Friday night Hugh sat at the table in the kitchen of his house, which is in Parson's Green. He had before him coins of gold, silver, and copper, and also bills of his debts; and upon each bill he placed certain monies in accordance with the sum marked thereon. Having fixed the residue of his coins and having seen that he held ten pounds, his mind was filled with such bliss that he said within himself: "A nice little amount indeed. Brisk are affairs."

"Millie," he addressed his wife, "look over them and add them together."

"Wait till I'm done," was the answer. "The irons are all hotted up."

Hugh chided her. "You are not interested in my saving. You don't care. It's nothing to you. Forward, as I call."

"If I sit down," Millie offered, "I feel I shall never get up again and the irons are hotted and what I think is a shame to waste gas like this the price it is."

"Why didn't you say so at the first opportunity? Be quick then. I shan't allow the cash to lay here."

Duly Millie observed her husband's order, and what time she proved that which Hugh had done, she was admonished that she had spent too much on this and that.

"I'm doing all I can not to be extravagant," she whimpered. "I don't buy a thing for my back." Her short upper lip curled above her broken teeth and trembled; she wept.

"But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in hand. Next quarter less you need and more you have. Less gass and electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm weather. The more I save."

Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows. If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person, to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons.

Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. "Keep him securely," he counseled her. "Tell nobody we stock so much cash."

Millie put the note between the folds of a Paisley shawl, which was precious to her inasmuch as it had been her mother's, and she wrapped a blanket over the shawl and placed it in a cupboard. But on Friday she could not remember where she had hidden the note; "never mind," she consoled herself, "it will occur to me all of a sudden."

As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted: "Got the money all tightly?"

"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."

"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in a mass would be fifty pounds.

"With ordinary luck, and I'm sure you desire it because you're always at it, it will," Millie agreed.

"No luck about it. No stop to me. We've nothing to purchase. And you don't. At home you are, with food and clothes and a ceyling above you. Kings don't want many more."

"Yes," said Millie. "No."

Weeks passed and Millie was concerned that she could not find the note, tried she never so hard. At the side of her bed she entreated to be led to it, and in the day she often paused and closing her eyes prayed: "Almighty Father, bring it to me."

The last Friday of the quarter Hugh divided his money in lots, and it was that he had eleven pounds over his debts. "Eleven soferens now," he cried to his wife. "That's grand! Makes twenty-one the first six months of the wedded life."

"It reflects great credit on you," said Millie, concealing her unhappiness.

"Another eighty and I'd have an agency. Start a factory, p'raps. There's John Daniel. He purchases an house. Ten hands he has working gents' shirts for him."

Millie turned away her face and demanded from God strength with which to acquaint her husband of her misfortune. What she asked for was granted unto her at her husband's amorous moment of the Sabbath morning.

Hugh's passion deadened, and in his agony he sweated.

"They're gone! Every soferen," he cried. "They can't all have gone. The whole ten." He opened his eyes widely. "Woe is me. Dear me. Dear me."

Until day dimmed and night grayed did they two search, neither of them eating and neither of them discovering the treasure.

Therefore Hugh had not peace nor quietness. Grief he uttered with his tongue, arms, and feet, and it was in the crease of his garments. He sought sympathy and instruction from those with whom he traded. "All the steam is gone out of me," he wailed. One shopkeeper advised him: "Has it slipped under the lino?" Another said: "Any mice in the house? Money has been found in their holes." The third said: "Sure the wife hasn't spent it on dress. You know what ladies are." These hints and more Hugh wrote down on paper, and he mused in this wise: "An old liar is the wench. For why I wedded the English? Right was mam fach; senseless they are. Crying she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny? What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three shillings--soferen--five pennies--half a penny--ticket railway. Hie backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before I peep once again."

He pried in every drawer and cupboard, and in the night he arose and inquired into the clothes his wife had left off; and he pushed his fingers into the holes of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie.

"If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let him go. Reduce expenses at once."

Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the soferens and buy one or two."

The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle. While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated to deal with him he whined his loss, making it greater than it was, and expressing: "The interest alone is very big."

By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead.

"You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar."

"What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as I was?"

Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the platform on the Day of David the Saint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts.

He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might cry out his intention.

"No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the shops."

Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed costly blouses.

"That's plenty at two guineas," Hugh said of one.

"It's a Paris model," said Millie.

"Nothing in her. Nothing."

"Not much material, I grant," Millie observed. "The style is fashionable and they charge a lot."

"I like to see you in her," said Hugh. "Take in the points and make her with an odd length of silk."

When the blouse was finished, Hugh took it to a man at whose shop trade the poorest sort of middle-class women, saying: "I can let you have a line like this at thirty-five and six a dozen."

"I'll try three twelves," said the man.

Then Hugh went into the City and fetched up Japanese silk, and lace, and large white buttons; and Millie sewed with her might.

Hugh thrived, and his success was noised among the London Welsh. The preacher of Kingsend Chapel visited him.

"Not been in the Temple you have, Mistar Eevanss, almost since you were spliced," he said. "Don't say the wife makes you go to the capel of the English."

"Busy am I making money."

"News that is to me, Mistar Eevanss. Much welcome there is for you with us."

In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes. These women and girls were under the hand of Millie, who kept count of their comings and goings and the work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task. Millie labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband's. She and Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was "The French Model Blouse Co. Manageress--Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste."

Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper. In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh.

For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm. I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound note fell on the ground. "Well, I never!" she cried in her dismay. "It was there all the time."

Hugh seized the note from her hand.

"You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these years we had no interest in him."

[The end]
Caradoc Evans's short story: Lost Treasure

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