The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER IV

  Five weeks drifted tediously along. The _Sagamore _arrived regularlyon 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 anawful remark had escaped out of you?"

  Without sufficient reflection Sally responded:

  "I'd feel I was lucky I hadn't got caught with it _in_ me."

  Pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of anyrational thing to say he flung that out. Then he stole a base--as hecalled it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayedin his wife's discussion-mortar.

  Six months came and went. The _Sagamore _was still silent about Tilbury.Meantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hintthat he would like to know. Aleck had ignored the hints. Sally nowresolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. So he squarely proposedto disguise himself and go to Tilbury's village and surreptitiously findout as to the prospects. Aleck put her foot on the dangerous projectwith energy and decision. She said:

  "What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! You have to bewatched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking intothe 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 executorsthat you never inquired. What then?"

  He had forgotten that detail. He didn't reply; there wasn't anything tosay. Aleck added:

  "Now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle withit again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don't you know it's a trap? Heis on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. Well, he isgoing 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 aninquiry. 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 andtens of thousands. There is not another family in the state with suchprospects 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 donot believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without Hisspecial 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 puttingup a hand to skin Wall Street I don't give in that _you _need anyoutside amateur help, if I do wish I--"

  "Oh, _do_ shut 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 outthings to make a person shudder. You keep me in constant dread. For youand for all of us. Once I had no fear of the thunder, but now when Ihear it I--"

  Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. The sightof this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and pettedher and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himselfand remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. And he was in earnest, andsorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could makeup for it.

  And so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter,resolving to do what should seem best. It was easy to _promise _reform;indeed he had already promised it. But would that do any real good, anypermanent 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. Atcost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling byshilling, 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 areacquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us.If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights insuccession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turnthe accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey--but weall know these commonplace facts.

  The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what aluxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment,how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves withtheir beguiling fantasies--oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dreamlife and our material life become so intermingled and so fused togetherthat we can't quite tell which is which, any more.

  By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the _Wall StreetPointer_. With an eye single to finance she studied these as diligentlyall the week as she studied her Bible Sundays. Sally was lost inadmiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius andjudgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of thesecurities of both the material and spiritual markets. He was proud ofher nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud ofher conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. He noted thatshe never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courageshe often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the linethere--she was always long on the others. Her policy was quite sane andsimple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futureswas for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was forinvestment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and takechances, but in the case of the other, "margin her no margins"--shewanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar's worth, and have the stocktransferred on the books.

  It took but a very few months to educate Aleck's imagination andSally's. Each day's training added something to the spread andeffectiveness of the two machines. As a consequence, Aleck madeimaginary 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 thestrain put upon it, right along. In the beginning, Aleck had given thecoal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had beenloath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by ninemonths. But that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financialfancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice. Theseaids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginaryten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred percent. profit on its back!

  It was a great day for the pair of Fosters. They were speechless forjoy. Also speechless for another reason: after much watching of themarket, Aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyeron a "margin," using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequestin this risk. In her mind's eye she had seen it climb, point bypoint--always with a chance that the market would break--until at lasther anxieties were too great for further endurance--she being new tothe margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she gave her imaginarybroker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell. She said fortythousand dollars' profit was enough. The sale was made on the very daythat the coal venture had returned with its rich freight. As I havesaid, the couple were speechless, they sat dazed and blissful thatnight, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundredthousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. Yet so it was.

  It was the last time that ever Aleck was afraid of a margin; at leastafraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extentthat this first experience in that line had done.

  Indeed it was a memorable night. Gradually the realization that theywere rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they beganto place the mone
y. If we could have looked out through the eyes ofthese dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden housedisappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of ittake its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier growdown from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpetturn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seenthe plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner withisinglass windows take position and spread awe around. And we shouldhave seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, thestove-pipe hat, and so on.

  From that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw onlythe same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to Aleckand Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did not worry about theimaginary 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--thatwas 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 wellto wait until it was actually in. On that policy she took her stand, andwould not budge. The great secret must be kept, she said--kept from thedaughters and everybody else.

  The pair were puzzled. They must celebrate, they were determined tocelebrate, 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 nation _could _theycelebrate? That was Sally's way of putting it; and he was gettingimpatient, too, and harassed. But at last he hit it--just by sheerinspiration, as it seemed to him--and all their troubles were gone in amoment; they would celebrate the Discovery of America. A splendid idea!

  Aleck was almost too proud of Sally for words--she said _she _neverwould have thought of it. But Sally, although he was bursting withdelight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to leton, 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, forinstance! Or maybe Adelbert Peanut--oh, _dear_--yes! Well, I'd like tosee them try it, that's all. Dear-me-suz, if they could think of thediscovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _I_ believe they could;and as for the whole continent, why, Sally Foster, you know perfectlywell it would strain the livers and lights out of them and _then_ theycouldn't!"

  The dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made herover-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentlecrime, and forgivable for its source's sake.