Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

KAIN. He went into the house and reappeared, bearing a photograph much tattered at the edge and yellow with age; this he placed in the hands of Gurfy. At sight of it the pipe tilted up sharply between the teeth of the gardener and a shower of white ashes fluttered down upon his lap. It lay there unheeded. “T see you know him,” said Kain. “Know him?” repeated Joe Gurfy. “ Man alive, this is him that built the house you're living in!” The first breath of the evening wind went whispering through the climbing vine, and perhaps it was the touch of this chill air which made Kain shiver. He brought out a pipe with a bowl as black as that of Joe Gurfy and began to smoke rapidly. ‘Very interesting,” he said. ‘“ The very man who built this house! Think of it!”’ “The very man,” affirmed Joe Gurfy. “ David Cameron himself; God rest him!” A silence, during which Kain smoked so furiously that his face was only faintly dis- cernible through the blue-white cloud. “So he’s dead,” he asked, his voice a little hoarse. ‘The man who built this house is dead?” “This twenty years gone,” answered Joe Gurfy. ‘“ Yes, he’s dead, right enough.” “ Well,” said Kain, “I’m sorry for that. It’s a comfortable little place, and it’s too bad that he didn’t live to enjoy it.” “ Ah, man,” replied Joe Gurfy, “ if that was all he lost; if that was all David Cam- eron lost!”’ And he shook his head. “ Lost more than this?” asked Kain, and though his voice did not raise there was a ring in it like steel striking lightly against steel. “More than this? Aye, a thousand times more! Honor and money and place; and a bit of a son, and the finest woman to wife that ever I’ve seen. Such a girl as it done your eye good to sit looking at her, as I tell Alice many atime. I says: ‘ There was never no such airs to Margaret Cameron,’ says I, when one of them high-headed young fillies goes past me. ‘ There was never no such airs to Margaret Cameron,’ says I, ‘but she was a plain woman, and a sweet woman, and so, God rest her, too!’ says I.” 491 “The wife of Cameron died also?” quer- ied Kain. * Like as not by this. She wasn’t the kind to live through the shame of it. No, it ate into the heart of her, and if she lived afterward, she was dead all the time inside; dead all the time after that first day.” He removed the pipe from his mouth with a shaking hand and sat a while in pro- found contemplation. The seriousness of his theme dignified him. He was like a seer considering the fallen glories of a past age. “Whatever else David Cameron did,” said Kain, “ he built his house well.” “Didn’t he, now!” answered Gurfy. “There was a time when it was one of the finest houses in town. Yes, sir!” “ The finest in town?” said Kain. ‘ Sure- ly not as fine as any of those houses on the Heights.”’ The gardener looked up with a scowl to the bright array of mansions which soared up above Albemarle Heights. “There was no houses on Albemarle Heights in them days,” he said, ‘‘ and the town didn’t run no farther out than Wash- ington Avenue. Maybe that sounds queer to you that’s seen the city as it is now. No, sir. In David Cameron’s days folks would come half across the town to see his house—and maybe catch a sight of Mar- garet Cameron in the garden here. Oh, sir, I’ve stood by her side when I planted that red rose that’s now so big—and she patted the ground around the stem with her own hands! No, sir. In Cameron’s day this was a fine place, and if he was living now his house would be up there on the Heights; and one that’s up there would be no house at all, maybe!” ‘This sounds like a story,” suggested Kain. ‘ Whose house do you mean?” Joe Gurfy regarded Kain with a wistful eye of both caution and eagerness. Then he said: “ Ain’t it a free country? Ain’t a man got a right to talk?” “Tf it’s a secret,” said Kain, “I’m sure that I have no desire to pry.” “Secret be damned!” exploded Gurfy. “The house I mean is Charles Stirling’s house. His side of the story is told often enough. Why shouldn’t Cameron’s get a hearing?” CORMIE OOOKS ,EOIA)