The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  It were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the Fosterfictitious finances took from this time forth. It was marvelous, itwas dizzying, it was dazzling. Everything Aleck touched turned to fairygold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. Millions uponmillions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thunderingalong, still its vast volume increased. Five millions--tenmillions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end?

  Two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated Fostersscarcely noticing the flight of time. They were now worth threehundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of everyprodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, themillions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast asthey could tally them off, almost. The three hundred double itself--thendoubled again--and yet again--and yet once more.

  Twenty-four hundred millions!

  The business was getting a little confused. It was necessary to take anaccount of stock, and straighten it out. The Fosters knew it, they feltit, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to doit properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish withouta 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 andcalico all day and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes andsweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, forthe daughters were being saved up for high society. The Fosters knewthere was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. Both were ashamedto 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 namedit--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-hourstretch. It was but another step in the downward path. Others wouldfollow. Vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely underminethe moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession.

  They pulled down the shades and broke the Sabbath. With hard and patientlabor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. And a long-drawnprocession of formidable names it was! Starting with the RailwaySystems, 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. Aleckfetched 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 andenjoy 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. Hedid not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech.

  After that, they broke the Sabbaths right along as fast as they turnedup. It is the first wrong step that counts. Every Sunday they put in thewhole day, after morning service, on inventions--inventions of ways tospend the money. They got to continuing this delicious dissipation untilpast midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon greatcharities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums uponmatters to which (at first) he gave definite names. Only at first. Laterthe names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into"sundries," thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive. For Sallywas crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously and mostuncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles. For a whileAleck was worried. Then, after a little, she ceased to worry, forthe occasion of it was gone. She was pained, she was grieved, she wasashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally wastaking 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 andbone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have beentrusted 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; thensoap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. How easy itis to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downwardcourse!

  Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters'splendid financial march. The fictitious brick dwelling had given placeto an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in timethis one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so onand so on. Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader,finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these lattergreat days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in asumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon anoble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tintedmists--and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palaceswarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame andpower, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic.

  This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurablyremote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land ofHigh Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy. As a rulethey spent a part of every Sabbath--after morning service--in thissumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdlingaround in their private yacht. Six days of sordid and plodding fact lifeat home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventhin Fairyland--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 thelittle Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interestsand stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental andspiritual energies. But in their dream life they obeyed the invitationsof their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fanciesmight change. Aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and notfrequent, but Sally's scattered a good deal. Aleck, in her dream life,went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large officialtitles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows;and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals andmore candles. But these excursions were a nothing to Sally's. His dreamlife was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he keptevery part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religiouspart along with the rest. He worked his religions hard, and changed themwith his shirt.

  The liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began earlyin their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with theiradvancing fortunes. In time they became truly enormous. Aleck builta university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; also a Rowtonhotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; andonce, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, Sally said, "It wasa cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of missionaries to persuadeunreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat Confucianism forcounterfeit Christianity."

  This rude and unfeeling language hurt Aleck to the heart, and she wentfrom the presence crying. That spectacle went to his own heart, and inhis pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind wordsback. She had uttered no syllable of reproach--and that cut him. Not onesuggestion that he look at his own record--and she could have made, oh,so many, and such blistering ones! Her generous silence brought a swiftrevenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned beforehim a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had beenleading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as hesat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped inhumiliation. 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 e
mpty, how ignoble! And its trend--never upward, butdownward, ever downward!

  He instituted comparisons between her record and his own. He had foundfault 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 blasemultimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it;losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain ofthe admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building herfirst university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gayand dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods,multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. When she wasbuilding her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When shewas projecting her noble Society for the Purifying of the Sex, what washe doing? Ah, what, indeed! When she and the W. C. T. U. and the Womanwith the Hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatalbottle from the land, what was he doing? Getting drunk three times aday. When she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefullywelcomed and blest in papal Rome and decorated with the Golden Rosewhich she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? Breaking the bankat Monte Carlo.

  He stopped. He could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. He roseup, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should berevealed, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, hewould 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, andshe 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 herwhat he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and notreform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not herown, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? She said she washis serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in.