CHAPTER III
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 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, 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 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’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 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, 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.
CHAPTER IV
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 give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy
solemnity:
“How would you feel if you were suddenly cut out 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 being brayed in his wife’s discussionmortar.
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 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 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 dram 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 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
percent 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 recherch’e, 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 laprobe,
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 nation could they 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 said
she never 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 than I believe 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 and then they 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 sak.
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