The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain (top 5 ebook reader TXT) 📖

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