The $30,000 Bequest E-Book

Mark Twain

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 437

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside-unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere. Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred-a handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.

Leseprobe

The $30,000 Bequest

The $30,000 BequestTHE $30,000 BEQUESTA DOG’S TALEWAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?A CURE FOR THE BLUESTHE CURIOUS BOOKTHE CALIFORNIAN’S TALEA HELPLESS SITUATIONA TELEPHONIC CONVERSATIONEDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALETHE FIVE BOONS OF LIFETHE FIRST WRITING-MACHINESITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTERITALIAN WITH GRAMMARA BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHYHOW TO TELL A STORYTHE WOUNDED SOLDIERTHE GOLDEN ARMGENERAL WASHINGTON’S NEGRO BODY-SERVANTWIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE “TWO-YEAR-OLDS”AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAINREVIEWS OF NEW BOOKSA LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURYAMENDED OBITUARIESA MONUMENT TO ADAMA HUMANE WORD FROM SATANINTRODUCTION TO “THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH”FOR TO SEE THE TOWNDIALOGUE 17ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLSPOST-MORTEM POETRY (1)THE DANGER OF LYING IN BEDPORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM IIICOMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAITDOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?EXTRACTS FROM ADAM’S DIARYKEEP OFF THE GRASSEVE’S DIARYEXTRACT FROM ADAM’S DIARYAT EVE’S GRAVECopyright

The $30,000 Bequest

Mark Twain

THE $30,000 BEQUEST

CHAPTER ILakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside—unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere.Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred—a handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although—like himself—a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she did, after her marriage—child as she was, aged only nineteen—was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it—twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin’s first year’s wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living.Earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family. She had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; and she was a pleased and happy woman. Happy in her husband, happy in her children, and the husband and the children were happy in her. It is at this point that this history begins.The youngest girl, Clytemnestra—called Clytie for short—was eleven; her sister, Gwendolen—called Gwen for short—was thirteen; nice girls, and comely. The names betray the latent romance-tinge in the parental blood, the parents’ names indicate that the tinge was an inheritance. It was an affectionate family, hence all four of its members had pet names, Saladin’s was a curious and unsexing one—Sally; and so was Electra’s—Aleck. All day long Sally was a good and diligent book-keeper and salesman; all day long Aleck was a good and faithful mother and housewife, and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the cozy living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams, comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient castles.CHAPTER IINow came great news! Stunning news—joyous news, in fact. It came from a neighboring state, where the family’s only surviving relative lived. It was Sally’s relative—a sort of vague and indefinite uncle or second or third cousin by the name of Tilbury Foster, seventy and a bachelor, reputed well off and corresponding sour and crusty. Sally had tried to make up to him once, by letter, in a bygone time, and had not made that mistake again. Tilbury now wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its malignant work. The bequest would be found in his will, and would be paid over. PROVIDED, that Sally should be able to prove to the executors that he hadTaken no notice of the gift by spoken word or by letter, had made no inquiries concerning the moribund’s progress toward the everlasting tropics, and had not attended the funeral.As soon as Aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous emotions created by the letter, she sent to the relative’s habitat and subscribed for the local paper.Man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it, right in the face of the prohibition.For the rest of the day Sally made havoc and confusion with his books, and Aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up a flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she had intended to do with it. For both were dreaming. “Thir-ty thousand dollars!”All day long the music of those inspiring words sang through those people’s heads.From his marriage-day forth, Aleck’s grip had been upon the purse, and Sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander a dime on non-necessities. “Thir-ty thousand dollars!” the song went on and on. A vast sum, an unthinkable sum!All day long Aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, Sally in planning how to spend it.There was no romance-reading that night. The children took themselves away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, and strangely unentertaining. The good-night kisses might as well have been impressed upon vacancy, for all the response they got; the parents were not aware of the kisses, and the children had been gone an hour before their absence was noticed. Two pencils had been busy during that hour—note-making; in the way of plans. It was Sally who broke the stillness at last. He said, with exultation: “Ah, it’ll be grand, Aleck! Out of the first thousand we’ll have a horse and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe for winter.”Aleck responded with decision and composure— “Out of thecapital? Nothing of the kind. Not if it was a million!”Sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face. “Oh, Aleck!” he said, reproachfully. “We’ve always worked so hard and been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem—”He did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication had touched her. She said, with gentle persuasiveness: “We must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise. Out of the income from it—” “That will answer, that will answer, Aleck! How dear and good you are! There will be a noble income and if we can spend that—” “Notallof it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it. That is, a reasonable part. But the whole of the capital—every penny of it—must be put right to work, and kept at it. You see the reasonableness of that, don’t you?” “Why, ye-s. Yes, of course. But we’ll have to wait so long. Six months before the first interest falls due.” “Yes—maybe longer.” “Longer, Aleck? Why? Don’t they pay half-yearly?” “ Thatkind of an investment—yes; but I sha’n’t invest in that way.” “What way, then?” “For big returns.” “Big. That’s good. Go on, Aleck. What is it?” “Coal. The new mines. Cannel. I mean to put in ten thousand. Ground floor. When we organize, we’ll get three shares for one.” “By George, but it sounds good, Aleck! Then the shares will be worth—how much? And when?” “About a year. They’ll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be worth thirty thousand. I know all about it; the advertisement is in the Cincinnati paper here.” “Land, thirty thousand for ten—in a year! Let’s jam in the whole capital and pull out ninety! I’ll write and subscribe right now—tomorrow it maybe too late.”He was flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put him back in his chair. She said: “Don’t lose your head so.Wemustn’t subscribe till we’ve got the money; don’t you know that?”Sally’s excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not wholly appeased. “Why, Aleck, we’llhaveit, you know—and so soon, too. He’s probably out of his troubles before this; it’s a hundred to nothing he’s selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. Now, I think—”Aleck shuddered, and said: “Howcanyou, Sally! Don’t talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous.” “Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like,Idon’t care for his outfit, I was only just talking. Can’t you let a person talk?” “But why should youwantto talk in that dreadful way? How would you like to have people talk so aboutyou, and you not cold yet?” “Not likely to be, foronewhile, I reckon, if my last act was giving away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it. But never mind about Tilbury, Aleck, let’s talk about something worldly. It does seem to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty. What’s the objection?” “All the eggs in one basket—that’s the objection.” “All right, if you say so. What about the other twenty? What do you mean to do with that?” “There is no hurry; I am going to look around before I do anything with it.” “All right, if your mind’s made up,” sighed Sally. He was deep in thought awhile, then he said: “There’ll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year from now. We can spend that, can’t we, Aleck?”Aleck shook her head. “No, dear,” she said, “it won’t sell high till we’ve had the first semi-annual dividend. You can spend part of that.” “Shucks, onlythat—and a whole year to wait! Confound it, I—” “Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared in three months—it’s quite within the possibilities.” “Oh, jolly! oh, thanks!” and Sally jumped up and kissed his wife in gratitude. “It’ll be three thousand—three whole thousand! how much of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!—do, dear, that’s a good fellow.”Aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance—a thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. This new access of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling another grant—a couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she meant to clear within a year of the twenty which still remained of the bequest. The happy tears sprang to Sally’s eyes, and he said: “Oh, I want to hug you!” And he did it. Then he got his notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure. “Horse—buggy—cutter—lap-robe—patent-leathers—dog—plug-hat— church-pew—stem-winder—new teeth—say, Aleck!” “Well?” “Ciphering away, aren’t you? That’s right. Have you got the twenty thousand invested yet?” “No, there’s no hurry about that; I must look around first, and think.” “But you are ciphering; what’s it about?” “Why, I have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out of the coal, haven’t I?” “Scott, what a head! I never thought of that. How are you getting along? Where have you arrived?” “Not very far—two years or three. I’ve turned it over twice; once in oil and once in wheat.” “Why, Aleck, it’s splendid! How does it aggregate?” “I think—well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty thousand clear, though it will probably be more.” “My! isn’t it wonderful? By gracious! luck has come our way at last, after all the hard sledding. Aleck!” “Well?” “I’m going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries—what real right have we care for expenses!” “You couldn’t do a nobler thing, dear; and it’s just like your generous nature, you unselfish boy.”The praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just enough to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself, since but for her he should never have had the money.Then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and left the candle burning in the parlor. They did not remember until they were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn; he said they could afford it, if it was a thousand. But Aleck went down and put it out.A good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had had time to get cold.CHAPTER IIIThe little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury’s village and arrive on Saturday. Tilbury’s letter had started on Friday, more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that week’s issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next output. Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not. It was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. The pair could hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome diversion. We have seen that they had that. The woman was piling up fortunes right along, the man was spending them—spending all his wife would give him a chance at, at any rate.At last the Saturday came, and theWeekly Sagamorearrived. Mrs. Eversly Bennett was present. She was the Presbyterian parson’s wife, and was working the Fosters for a charity. Talk now died a sudden death—on the Foster side. Mrs. Bennett presently discovered that her hosts were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and indignant, and went away. The moment she was out of the house, Aleck eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and Sally’s swept the columns for the death-notices. Disappointment! Tilbury was not anywhere mentioned. Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the motions. She pulled herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness: “Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and—” “Damn his treacherous hide, I wish—” “Sally! For shame!” “I don’t care!” retorted the angry man. “It’s the wayyoufeel, and if you weren’t so immorally pious you’d be honest and say so.”Aleck said, with wounded dignity: “I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. There is no such thing as immoral piety.”Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to save his case by changing the form of it—as if changing the form while retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate. He said: “I didn’t mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn’t really mean immoral piety, I only meant—meant—well, conventional piety, you know; er—shop piety; the—the—why,youknow what I mean. Aleck—the—well, where you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient policy, petrified custom, loyalty to—to—hang it, I can’t find the right words, butyouknow what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn’t any harm in it. I’ll try again. You see, it’s this way. If a person—” “You have said quite enough,” said Aleck, coldly; “let the subject be dropped.” “I’m willing,” fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from his forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. Then, musingly, he apologized to himself. “I certainly held threes—I knowit—but I drew and didn’t fill. That’s where I’m so often weak in the game. If I had stood pat—but I didn’t. I never do. I don’t know enough.”Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. Aleck forgave him with her eyes.The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a stretch. The couple took up the puzzle of the absence of Tilbury’s death-notice. They discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully, but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be—and without doubt was—that Tilbury was not dead. There was something sad about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and had to be put up with. They were agreed as to that. To Sally it seemed a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind, in fact—and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other.The pair must wait for next week’s paper—Tilbury had evidently postponed. That was their thought and their decision. So they put the subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as they could.Now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury all the time. Tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had died to schedule. He was dead more than four days now and used to it; entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week’sSagamore, too, and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little village rag like theSagamore. On this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived from Hostetter’s Ladies and Gents Ice-Cream Parlors, and the stickful of rather chilly regret over Tilbury’s translation got crowded out to make room for the editor’s frantic gratitude.On its way to the standing-galley Tilbury’s notice got pied. Otherwise it would have gone into some future edition, forweekly Sagamoresdo not waste “live” matter, and in their galleys “live” matter is immortal, unless a pi accident intervenes. But a thing that gets pied is dead, and for such there is no resurrection; its chance of seeing print is gone, forever and ever. And so, let Tilbury like it or not, let him rave in his grave to his fill, no matter—no mention of his death would ever see the light in theWeekly Sagamore.CHAPTER IVFive weeks drifted tediously along. TheSagamorearrived regularly on the Saturdays, but never once contained a mention of Tilbury Foster. Sally’s patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully: “Damn his livers, he’s immortal!”Aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity: “How would you feel if you were suddenly cut off just after such an awful remark had escaped out of you?”Without sufficient reflection Sally responded: “I’d feel I was lucky I hadn’t got caught with itinme.”Pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of any rational thing to say he flung that out. Then he stole a base—as he called it—that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayed in his wife’s discussion-mortar.Six months came and went. TheSagamorewas still silent about Tilbury. Meantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler—that is, a hint that he would like to know. Aleck had ignored the hints. Sally now resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. So he squarely proposed to disguise himself and go to Tilbury’s village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects. Aleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision. She said: “What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! You have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into the fire. You’ll stay right where you are!” “Why, Aleck, I could do it and not be found out—I’m certain of it.” “Sally Foster, don’t you know you would have to inquire around?” “Of course, but what of it? Nobody would suspect who I was.” “Oh, listen to the man! Some day you’ve got to prove to the executors that you never inquired. What then?”He had forgotten that detail. He didn’t reply; there wasn’t anything to say. Aleck added: “Now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don’t ever meddle with it again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don’t you know it’s a trap? He is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. Well, he is going to be disappointed—at least while I am on deck. Sally!” “Well?” “As long as you live, if it’s a hundred years, don’t you ever make an inquiry. Promise!” “All right,” with a sigh and reluctantly.Then Aleck softened and said: “Don’t be impatient. We are prospering; we can wait; there is no hurry. Our small dead-certain income increases all the time; and as to futures, I have not made a mistake yet—they are piling up by the thousands and tens of thousands. There is not another family in the state with such prospects as ours. Already we are beginning to roll in eventual wealth. You know that, don’t you?” “Yes, Aleck, it’s certainly so.” “Then be grateful for what God is doing for us and stop worrying. You do not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without His special help and guidance, do you?”Hesitatingly, “N-no, I suppose not.” Then, with feeling and admiration, “And yet, when it comes to judiciousness in watering a stock or putting up a hand to skin Wall Street I don’t give in thatyouneed any outside amateur help, if I do wish I—” “Oh,doshut up! I know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence, poor boy, but you can’t seem to open your mouth without letting out things to make a person shudder. You keep me in constant dread. For you and for all of us. Once I had no fear of the thunder, but now when I hear it I—”Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. The sight of this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. And he was in earnest, and sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make up for it.And so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter, resolving to do what should seem best. It was easy topromisereform; indeed he had already promised it. But would that do any real good, any permanent good? No, it would be but temporary—he knew his weakness, and confessed it to himself with sorrow—he could not keep the promise. Something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it. At cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house.At a subsequent time he relapsed.What miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are acquired—both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us. If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn the accident into a habit; and a month’s dallying with whiskey—but we all know these commonplace facts.The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit—how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies—oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dream life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can’t quite tell which is which, any more.By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for theWall Street Pointer. With an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays. Sally was lost in admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets. He was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. He noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there—she was always long on the others. Her policy was quite sane and simple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futures was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take chances, but in the case of the other, “margin her no margins”—she wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar’s worth, and have the stock transferred on the books.It took but a very few months to educate Aleck’s imagination and Sally’s. Each day’s training added something to the spread and effectiveness of the two machines. As a consequence, Aleck made imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it, and Sally’s competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the strain put upon it, right along. In the beginning, Aleck had given the coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had been loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by nine months. But that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financial fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice. These aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginary ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred per cent. profit on its back!It was a great day for the pair of Fosters. They were speechless for joy. Also speechless for another reason: after much watching of the market, Aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyer on a “margin,” using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequest in this risk. In her mind’s eye she had seen it climb, point by point—always with a chance that the market would break—until at last her anxieties were too great for further endurance—she being new to the margin business and unhardened, as yet—and she gave her imaginary broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell. She said forty thousand dollars’ profit was enough. The sale was made on the very day that the coal venture had returned with its rich freight. As I have said, the couple were speechless, they sat dazed and blissful that night, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundred thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. Yet so it was.It was the last time that ever Aleck was afraid of a margin; at least afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extent that this first experience in that line had done.Indeed it was a memorable night. Gradually the realization that they were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they began to place the money. If we could have looked out through the eyes of these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. And we should have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the stove-pipe hat, and so on.From that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw only the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to Aleck and Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did not worry about the imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort Sally’s reckless retort: “What of it? We can afford it.”Before the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich, they had decided that they must celebrate. They must give a party—that was the idea. But how to explain it—to the daughters and the neighbors? They could not expose the fact that they were rich. Sally was willing, even anxious, to do it; but Aleck kept her head and would not allow it. She said that although the money was as good as in, it would be as well to wait until it was actually in. On that policy she took her stand, and would not budge. The great secret must be kept, she said—kept from the daughters and everybody else.The pair were puzzled. They must celebrate, they were determined to celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could they celebrate? No birthdays were due for three months. Tilbury wasn’t available, evidently he was going to live forever; what the nationcouldthey celebrate? That was Sally’s way of putting it; and he was getting impatient, too, and harassed. But at last he hit it—just by sheer inspiration, as it seemed to him—and all their troubles were gone in a moment; they would celebrate the Discovery of America. A splendid idea!Aleck was almost too proud of Sally for words—she saidshenever would have thought of it. But Sally, although he was bursting with delight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let on, and said it wasn’t really anything, anybody could have done it. Whereat Aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said: “Oh, certainly! Anybody could—oh, anybody! Hosannah Dilkins, for instance! Or maybe Adelbert Peanut—oh,dear—yes! Well, I’d like to see them try it, that’s all. Dear-me-suz, if they could think of the discovery of a forty-acre island it’s more thanIbelieve they could; and as for the whole continent, why, Sally Foster, you know perfectly well it would strain the livers and lights out of them andthenthey couldn’t!”The dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made her over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentle crime, and forgivable for its source’s sake.CHAPTER VThe celebration went off well. The friends were all present, both the young and the old. Among the young were Flossie and Gracie Peanut and their brother Adelbert, who was a rising young journeyman tinner, also Hosannah Dilkins, Jr., journeyman plasterer, just out of his apprenticeship. For many months Adelbert and Hosannah had been showing interest in Gwendolen and Clytemnestra Foster, and the parents of the girls had noticed this with private satisfaction. But they suddenly realized now that that feeling had passed. They recognized that the changed financial conditions had raised up a social bar between their daughters and the young mechanics. The daughters could now look higher—and must. Yes, must. They need marry nothing below the grade of lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma would take care of this; there must be no mesalliances.However, these thinkings and projects of theirs were private, and did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow upon the celebration. What showed upon the surface was a serene and lofty contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of deportment which compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder of the company. All noticed it and all commented upon it, but none was able to divine the secret of it. It was a marvel and a mystery. Three several persons remarked, without suspecting what clever shots they were making: “It’s as if they’d come into property.”That was just it, indeed.Most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, of a solemn sort and untactful—a lecture calculated to defeat its own purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said mothers would have further damaged the business by requesting the young mechanics to discontinue their attentions. But this mother was different. She was practical. She said nothing to any of the young people concerned, nor to any one else except Sally. He listened to her and understood; understood and admired. He said: “I get the idea. Instead of finding fault with the samples on view, thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, you merely offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave nature to take her course. It’s wisdom, Aleck, solid wisdom, and sound as a nut. Who’s your fish? Have you nominated him yet?”No, she hadn’t. They must look the market over—which they did. To start with, they considered and discussed Brandish, rising young lawyer, and Fulton, rising young dentist. Sally must invite them to dinner. But not right away; there was no hurry, Aleck said. Keep an eye on the pair, and wait; nothing would be lost by going slowly in so important a matter.It turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three weeks Aleck made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of the same quality. She and Sally were in the clouds that evening. For the first time they introduced champagne at dinner. Not real champagne, but plenty real enough for the amount of imagination expended on it. It was Sally that did it, and Aleck weakly submitted. At bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up Son of Temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a W. C. T. U., with all that that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness. But there it was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work. They had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it. More than four hundred thousand dollars to the good. They took up the matrimonial matter again. Neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion, they were out of the running. Disqualified. They discussed the son of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker. But finally, as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think, and go cautiously and sure.Luck came their way again. Aleck, ever watchful saw a great and risky chance, and took a daring flyer. A time of trembling, of doubt, of awful uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute ruin and nothing short of it. Then came the result, and Aleck, faint with joy, could hardly control her voice when she said: “The suspense is over, Sally—and we are worth a cold million!”Sally wept for gratitude, and said: “Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. It’s a case for Veuve Cliquot!” and he got out a pint of spruce-beer and made sacrifice, he saying “Damn the expense,” and she rebuking him gently with reproachful but humid and happy eyes.They shelved the pork-packer’s son and the banker’s son, and sat down to consider the Governor’s son and the son of the Congressman.CHAPTER VIIt were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the Foster fictitious finances took from this time forth. It was marvelous, it was dizzying, it was dazzling. Everything Aleck touched turned to fairy gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. Millions upon millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thundering along, still its vast volume increased. Five millions—ten millions—twenty—thirty—was there never to be an end?Two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated Fosters scarcely noticing the flight of time. They were now worth three hundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, the millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast as they could tally them off, almost. The three hundred double itself—then doubled again—and yet again—and yet once more.Twenty-four hundred millions!The business was getting a little confused. It was necessary to take an account of stock, and straighten it out. The Fosters knew it, they felt it, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to do it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without a break when once it was begun. A ten-hours’ job; and where couldtheyfind ten leisure hours in a bunch? Sally was selling pins and sugar and calico all day and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes and sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for the daughters were being saved up for high society. The Fosters knew there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. Both were ashamed to name it; each waited for the other to do it. Finally Sally said: “Somebody’s got to give in. It’s up to me. Consider that I’ve named it—never mind pronouncing it out aloud.”Aleck colored, but was grateful. Without further remark, they fell. Fell, and—broke the Sabbath. For that was their only free ten-hour stretch. It was but another step in the downward path. Others would follow. Vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely undermine the moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession.They pulled down the shades and broke the Sabbath. With hard and patient labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. And a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! Starting with the Railway Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph, and all the rest, and winding up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft, and Shady Privileges in the Post-office Department.Twenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in Good Things, gilt-edged and interest-bearing. Income, $120,000,000 a year. Aleck fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said: “Is it enough?” “It is, Aleck.” “What shall we do?” “Stand pat.” “Retire from business?” “That’s it.” “I am agreed. The good work is finished; we will take a long rest and enjoy the money.” “Good! Aleck!” “Yes, dear?” “How much of the income can we spend?” “The whole of it.”It seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs. He did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech.After that, they broke the Sabbaths right along as fast as they turned up. It is the first wrong step that counts. Every Sunday they put in the whole day, after morning service, on inventions—inventions of ways to spend the money. They got to continuing this delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. Only at first. Later the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into “sundries,” thus becoming entirely—but safely—undescriptive. For Sally was crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously and most uncomfortably to the family expenses—in tallow candles. For a while Aleck was worried. Then, after a little, she ceased to worry, for the occasion of it was gone. She was pained, she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. It is ever thus. Vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles. But now they—but let us not dwell upon it. From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. How easy it is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward course!Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters’ splendid financial march. The fictitious brick dwelling had given place to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home—and so on and so on. Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader, finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted mists—and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and power, hailing from all the world’s capitals, foreign and domestic.This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably remote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land of High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy. As a rule they spent a part of every Sabbath—after morning service—in this sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdling around in their private yacht. Six days of sordid and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventh in Fairyland—such had been their program and their habit.In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old—plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical. They stuck loyally to the little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and spiritual energies. But in their dream life they obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies might change. Aleck’s fancies were not very capricious, and not frequent, but Sally’s scattered a good deal. Aleck, in her dream life, went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large official titles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows; and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals and more candles. But these excursions were a nothing to Sally’s. His dream life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious part along with the rest. He worked his religions hard, and changed them with his shirt.The liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began early in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their advancing fortunes. In time they became truly enormous. Aleck built a university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; also a Rowton hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, Sally said, “It was a cold day when she didn’t ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade unreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat Confucianism for counterfeit Christianity.”This rude and unfeeling language hurt Aleck to the heart, and she went from the presence crying. That spectacle went to his own heart, and in his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind words back. She had uttered no syllable of reproach—and that cut him. Not one suggestion that he look at his own record—and she could have made, oh, so many, and such blistering ones! Her generous silence brought a swift revenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned before him a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had been leading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as he sat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in humiliation. Look at her life—how fair it was, and tending ever upward; and look at his own—how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities, how selfish, how empty, how ignoble! And its trend—never upward, but downward, ever downward!He instituted comparisons between her record and his own. He had found fault with her—so he mused—he! And what could he say for himself? When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. When she was building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When she was projecting her noble Society for the Purifying of the Sex, what was he doing? Ah, what, indeed! When she and the W. C. T. U. and the Woman with the Hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal bottle from the land, what was he doing? Getting drunk three times a day. When she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully welcomed and blest in papal Rome and decorated with the Golden Rose which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.He stopped. He could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. He rose up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should be revealed, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, he would go and tell her All.And that is what he did. He told her All; and wept upon her bosom; wept, and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness. It was a profound shock, and she staggered under the blow, but he was her own, the core of her heart, the blessing of her eyes, her all in all, she could deny him nothing, and she forgave him. She felt that he could never again be quite to her what he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not reform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her own, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? She said she was his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in.CHAPTER VIIOne Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summer seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awning of the after-deck. There was silence, for each was busy with his own thoughts. These seasons of silence had insensibly been growing more and more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning. Sally’s terrible revelation had done its work; Aleck had tried hard to drive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and the shame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. She could see now (on Sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated and repulsive Thing. She could not close her eyes to this, and in these days she no longer looked at him, Sundays, when she could help it.But she—was she herself without blemish? Alas, she knew she was not. She was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably toward him, and many a pang it was costing her.She was breaking the compact, and concealing it from him. Under strong temptation she had gone into business again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of all the railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on a margin, and she was now trembling, every Sabbath hour, lest through some chance word of hers he find it out. In her misery and remorse for this treachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity; she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and contented, and never suspecting. Never suspecting—trusting her with a perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a possible calamity of so devastating a— “ Say—Aleck?”The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. She was grateful to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, and she answered, with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone: “Yes, dear.” “Do you know, Aleck, I think we are making a mistake—that is, you are. I mean about the marriage business.” He sat up, fat and froggy and benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest. “Consider—it’s more than five years. You’ve continued the same policy from the start: with every rise, always holding on for five points higher. Always when I think we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead, and I undergo another disappointment.Ithink you are too hard to please. Some day we’ll get left. First, we turned down the dentist and the lawyer. That was all right—it was sound. Next, we turned down the banker’s son and the pork-butcher’s heir—right again, and sound. Next, we turned down the Congressman’s son and the Governor’s—right as a trivet, I confess it. Next the Senator’s son and the son of the Vice-President of the United States—perfectly right, there’s no permanency about those little distinctions. Then you went for the aristocracy; and I thought we had struck oil at last—yes. We would make a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage, venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day’s work since, and then! why, then the marriages, of course. But no, along comes a pair of real aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds. It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then, what a procession! You turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes.Now, Aleck, cash in!—you’ve played the limit. You’ve got a job lot of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears. They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don’t delay any longer, don’t keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave the girls to choose!”Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and she said, as calmly as she could: “Sally, what would you say to—royalty?”Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes. “By George!” he said, fervently, “Aleck, youaregreat—the greatest woman in the whole earth! I can’t ever learn the whole size of you. I can’t ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I’ve been considering myself qualified to criticize your game.I!Why, if I had stopped to think, I’d have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve. Now, dear heart, I’m all red-hot impatience—tell me about it!”The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with exultation. “Land!” he said, “it’s a stunning catch! He’s got a gambling-hall, and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral—all his very own. And all gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest little property in Europe; and that graveyard—it’s the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted;yes, sir, and the free-list suspended, too,allthe time. There isn’t much land in the principality, but there’s enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside. It’s asovereignty—that’s the main thing;land’snothing. There’s plenty land, Sahara’s drugged with it.”Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said: “Think of it, Sally—it is a family that has never married outside the Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit upon thrones!” “True as you live, Aleck—and bear scepters, too; and handle them as naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick. It’s a grand catch, Aleck. He’s corralled, is he? Can’t get away? You didn’t take him on a margin?” “No. Trust me for that. He’s not a liability, he’s an asset. So is the other one.” “Who is it, Aleck?” “His Royal Highness Sigismund-Siegfried-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg Blutwurst, Hereditary Grand Duke of Katzenyammer.” “No! You can’t mean it!” “It’s as true as I’m sitting here, I give you my word,” she answered.His cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying: “How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It’s one of the oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient German principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal estate when Bismarck got done trimming them. I know that farm, I’ve been there. It’s got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. Standing army. Infantry and cavalry. Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it’s been a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I am happy now. Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all. When is it to be?” “Next Sunday.” “Good. And we’ll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style that’s going. It’s properly due to the royal quality of the parties of the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it’s the morganatic.” “What do they call it that for, Sally?” “I don’t know; but anyway it’s royal, and royal only.” “Then we will insist upon it. More—I will compel it. It is morganatic marriage or none.” “That settles it!” said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight. “And it will be the very first in America. Aleck, it will make Newport sick.”