CHAPTER V
THE 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 m’esalliances.
However, these thinkings and projects of their 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 is 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 nonsuccess
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 sprucebeer
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 VI
IT 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 could they find 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 s’eance 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 Fairlyand—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 blas’e 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 revealing, 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.
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