The $30,000 Bequest, Mark Twain [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

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 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 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 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 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 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 sake.