by Mark Twain
“Not likely to be, for one while, 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, only that—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 out 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 to 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.
3
The 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 the Weekly Sagamore arrived. 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 way you feel, 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, you know what I mean. Aleck—the—well, where you put up the 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, but you know 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 know it—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 unnecessarily 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’s Sagamore, 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 the Sagamore. On this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry water-ice 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, for Weekly Sagamores do 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 the Weekly Sagamore.
4
Five weeks drifted tediously along. The Sagamore arrived 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 gave 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 it in me.”
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 getting brayed in 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 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 the 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 that you need any outside 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 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 to promise reform; 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 whisky—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 for a Chicago daily and for the Wall 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 the immense fact, the overwhelming fact, 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 a 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 recherché, 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.
