Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1914 — TASTE FOR ADORNMENT [ARTICLE]

TASTE FOR ADORNMENT

By FRANK M. O'BRIEN*

(Copyright) ’ Late in the afternoon ot the day that Henry Elton received from the chief bookkeeper a confirmation of his own idea that he had completed his first million, he, Mr. Elton, remembered that he had forgotten something. "It was just twenty years ago today," he said to one of his partners — and the partner pricked up his ears as if expecting orchestral accompani-ment—-‘‘that I left Farmerstown. “It was a day just like this down in Maine, spring in the air, but not so much hellish noise. I haven't been back there since.” “Village turn out to say farewell to young hero?” asked Mr. Henderson, who was the floor member of the brokerage firm and who from experience on the exchange made it a habit to omit superfluous language. "Nothing like that,” replied Elton. "Those who wished I’d make a fortune were those to whom my parents owed bills when they died, just a few weeks before. “The only on-the-level farewell I got was from Mary Sarre, the neighbor’s daughter. She 'was all of fifteen. I was only seventeen myself; only thirty-seven now, and an old man. And so she’s thirty-five, if she’s alive." “Were you strong for her?” inquired Mr. Henderson. It was his coarse way. . ’ He never minced words, even in calling on customers for more margin. “I think I was,” said Elton. “Why haven’t you married her?” pursued the blunt partner "I haven’t had time,” said Elton sharply. “I don’t know whether she’d marry me. I don’t even know that she’s alive. Probably if 1 1 saw her coming this minute I’d run, screaming! “But if I had gone back in ten years and married her I probably would be better off. What have I got now? A million, according to the books; an apartment with a man servant who is a constant reproach; an automobile whose real owner, the chauffeur, won’t let me jiggle the carburetor, and a case of occasional jumps, which the doctor calls the warning of nervous breakdown.” "That million might have come slight appeal to the lady,” said Henderson, “if she is still free and as attractive as of yore. What was her juvenile idea of a triumphal return?” “She asked me,” said Elton slowly and reflectively, "to come back honest and buy her the brooch in the general store.” “Ah, a taste for adornment,” commented Henderson. “Nbthing beyond your present means, I trust.” “A plain little cameo thing,” laughed Elton, “with two faces on it and a square gold band around it. I think old Baxter wanted $8.75 for it; said the gold was 18-carat. We used to look at it almost every day.

“I think,” continued Elton after a pause, “that I’ll go to Europe. The 'market IS dull and I’m tired." “You’d better go to Maine," said Henderson. “Perhaps your chauffeur ■would consent to drive you there.” * Four, days later Elton entered Farmerstown in six-cylinder triumph. No one seemed to know him and he was glad of it The old church was there, and the old store, with a new garage squatting beside It. Baxter's had not progressed much. Elton went in, bought three apples and asked to see collar buttons. While he trifled with the buttons he scanned the show case. He had in his pocket a solitaire worthy of an assistant rajah’s bride, but he knew the value of the dramatic and he felt that if—well, if he wanted to say anything Important the brooch would be a help. The brooch was there and it was still $8.75. Elton bought it. “I wonder," mused Elton as his car sped toward the house of James Sane, “just how long that brooch was in the store and how much the loss on it was at compound interest”.. Elton was spared the embarrassment of asking for Mary Sarre. She was coming out of the gate as he neared her father’s house. He saw two things at a glance; that she was unmarried and very poor. He might have been able to tell you why he knew she was poor, but the art of learning -at a glance whether a person one has not seen in twenty years is married or not is an art that cannot be described—at least not here. Nor did he, when the car stopped beside her, need to bring into play any of the Small, polite conversation he had prepared in the fear that he might find her some one whom he hardly knew. For to him she was just the same as when he had left her, or as nearly the same as twenty hard years can leave a woman. She had aged, but not as he had. Where his lines had formed hard and grim hers were only gentle. Her father was still living, she told him, but an invalid, and for ten years ahe had done her best to keep them both, captaining his little village carpenny,/business and eking out with her roses and hens. Bui there was no note of complaint in her story. And, at the end of an hour, he understood what she had tried to make pHtn to him in the first five minutes.

She would not leave her father. She had looked at the solitaire, as she might have looked at some new rose, beautiful, but exotic, and she had flushed warmly when he brought the brooch to view. For the brooch meant something to her; some part of the twenty years ago. But she would not take it. "I can’t marry you, Henry,” she said. “You are too deep in your interests and (this with a trace of gentle irony) I am too deep in mine. I.f you were poor it might be different. "If I have you I must have you all and always, and my place is here. A rich man could not be happy here and a poor man would have to work — work with his hands. “Besides," she continued, *T would want you first to make sure that you are sure.” Eltofi saw that to repeat his pleadings would be useless. “If you should change your mind —" he began. . x “If you should change yours,” she said with a smile when his sentence halted, “come back.” And so he went away? A week later, on his way to the pier where lay the steamer that was to take him abroad, Elton stopped for a moment at the great shop where he had bought the solitaire. “Lock it up for me," he said to the renowned Mr. Gunn, head of the gem department, “and while I’m abroad get me a duplicate of this brooch —the finest you can. I’ll be back,” he said as he hurried out, “in about six weeks.” He was back in New York in a month, summoned by a cable from Henderson, who made it as mild as he could under the circumstanqps; the said circumstances being that Partner No. 3, head of the bond department, had culminated some secret little* excursions into the home and haunts of the very highest finance by wrecking The firm 'of Henderson Co., and blowing off the peak df his own inadequate head. When the last penny had been wrung from every asset, beginning with the seat on the exchange and ending with Elton’s motor car, there remained to each living partner just $422.37. Elton spent the 37 cents on a telegram to Mary Sarre. “May I come back?" it read. He knew that the newspapers had told her of the smash. Then he said good-by to Henderson. “If we only had a hundred thousand,” said Henderson sadly, “we might start all over again. Good luck, old 1 man.’’- /

Elton waited in his diemantled apartment for Mary’s answer, his luggage packed and ready. The answer came quickly: "Yes, if you # can be content Did you save the brooch?” Elton laughed. He had forgotten the brod'ch and the duplicate and the solitaire as well. • He would get the brooch on the way to the train, and if the price of the duplicate should be tod high for his slender purse he could turn back the diamond. He knew that she had no great longing for that costly ring. ——— “I suppose, Mr, Elton, you have come about your duplicate,” said the jewel master. I have just been showing it to Mr. Morrah and telling him about our luck in finding it at the Kansley sale. We- got it for $2,000, and as you have been a very good customer the commission will be only five per cent” "I didn’t expect to pay nearly so great a price as that” said the stunned Elton. “If you wish," said Mr. Gunn almost eagerly, “we 'prill dispose of it and without loss to you. To be frank, Mr. Morran is rather keen about it It is ene of the few examples of six-teenth-century cameo work in which the artist was able to use the real oriental sardonyx of the ancients. "He undoubtedly obtained the stone by using a part of a cameo of the third century or earlier.”

Elton looked at his watch. Traih time was not far off. "Sell it to Mr. Morran,” he said. “Get the best price you can for me and keep your commission. And if you’ll let me have my own brooch and the ring I’ll be going." Gunn disappeared into the private room. He was gone an unreasonably tong time, it seemed to Elton. 'T hopeyou don’t mind the liberty I took in allowing Mr. Hunt to examine it," he said on his return. "He is Mr. Morran’s expert, you know. They are in the private room now." "No harm done,” said Elton. “Mr. Morran is a man of quick action,” continued Gunn, a bit nervously, "and i’ll have to be as blunt db he is. He will give you SIOO,OOO for the cameo and not ask you anything about its wanderings from the time it left the Vienna musedm in 1740. "I, thought,” said the hazy Mr. Elton, with a note of suspicion in Iris voice, "that Mr. Morran’s figure was around $2,200." "For the copy, yes," said Gunn, "but SIOO,OOO for this, the Rona gem, the most perfect small cameo of the first century before Christ!” And he held up the brooch from Baxter's store! Elton stepped to the window. Out in the sunlit street a pretty Italian girl walked lithely along. A pair of live chickens • swung from her brown hand. Between her dark lips she held the long stem of a red rose. “Tell Mr. Morran,” said Mr. Elton to Mr. Gunn, "that I have promised the Rona cameo to another connoisseurone who has been waiting for it more than twenty years!"