Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [62]
He looked at her, his face quivering, and for the first time in her life she pitied him. “You’ll do that?” he whispered.
She nodded. “I promise.”
“Then you shall have the money tomorrow. And it’ll just be between you and me, Annie. Nobody else will know.”
She smiled gratefully. “And I promise you will have your honor back—whether your son is dead or alive.”
The next morning Frank Aysgarth was seen walking down the street for the first time in over a year. The neighbors ran to the door to watch him pass, noticing his white hair and hesitant step, wondering out loud what he did with himself all alone with Annie atop Aysgarth Hill.
“For all his money and success he’s nobbut an old man now,” they said, disappointed.
And Sally Morris, older and more bitter, leaned from her doorway and yelled after him, “I’m surprised y’dare show yer face around here after what Josh did. And making our Sammy run off with him like that. It’s you and your rich ways that corrupted my lad, Frank Aysgarth, and God will never forgive you for it.”
The neighbors sucked in their breath in alarm as he stumbled and almost fell, but then he righted himself and stepped quickly along the street, staring straight in front of him as though he had never heard a thing.
Two hours later they saw him come back up the street again and disappear homeward up Aysgarth’s Hill. A while later Annie Aysgarth hurried past and this time all the heads were turning, wondering what she was up to in such a hurry. And they were even more surprised when the following week a cab came to take Annie and all her boxes and baggage to the railway station, and Bertie Aysgarth and his wife and bairns moved into Ivy Cottage to take care of the old man.
CHAPTER 14
Lai Tsin was puzzled. In the six days since he had found the girl she had not spoken another word. She was as trusting as the child; when he brought her food and said “eat this,” she ate; when he said “follow me,” she followed; when he said “wait here,” she waited. And he knew if he failed to return she would wait forever. She showed no curiosity about her circumstances nor the plight of the other two hundred and fifty thousand homeless camping out in the city’s parks. She simply sat with the child in her lap, staring into space, suspended in time.
He sighed feelingly. It was a dilemma. He had taken responsibility for her as he would a person wounded in battle, afraid she had gone crazy from shock and her injuries. But he could not go on looking after her. He was a poor Celestial with many problems of his own. And she was an American lady.
“Lady?” he said, leaning toward her, careful not to touch her, for that would have been impertinent and above his station. “Lady?” he repeated. Her sapphire eyes swiveled uncomprehendingly toward him. He could tell she was waiting for him to say what she should do next and he sighed again. “You must stay here with the other refugee American ladies,” he said, taking five dollars from the secret pocket under his smock and putting it in her lap. “Good-bye, lady,” he called, hoisting his straw pannier onto his shoulder, but she did not answer.
He and the child walked a few yards, then he turned to look at her. A big tear slid down her cheek. He stared doubtfully at her. The tears spilling from her eyes were big and shiny as crystals and there was an air of utter loneliness about her that struck a painful chord in his memory.
He walked back again and said, “All this time you not cry, and now you cry. Why?”
She shook her head. The big crystal tears flowed even faster, like a long-dry river after rain. “I thought you were my friend,” she whispered desolately, “and now you are leaving me.”
“It is not possible to be friends. I am a lowly Celestial, a poor Chinese, and you”—he looked at her cheap dress, her shawl, her rough boots—“you are a lady.”
She rubbed her eyes with her fists, trying to stem the tears, and he noticed the blue shadows beneath her eyes, the fragile pallor