The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

by
Mark Twain
(Samuel L. Clemens)


Contents:
The $30,000 Bequest
A Dog's Tale
Was It Heaven? Or Hell?
A Cure for the Blues
The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant
The Californian's Tale
A Helpless Situation
A Telephonic Conversation
Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale
The Five Boons of Life
The First Writing-machines
Italian without a Master
Italian with Grammar
A Burlesque Biography
How to Tell a Story
General Washington's Negro Body-servant
Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds"
An Entertaining Article
A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
Amended Obituaries
A Monument to Adam
A Humane Word from Satan
Introduction to "The New Guide of the
Conversation in Portuguese and English"
Advice to Little Girls
Post-mortem Poetry
The Danger of Lying in Bed
Portrait of King William III
Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
Extracts from Adam's Diary
Eve's Diary




THE $30,000 BEQUEST


CHAPTER I


Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants,
and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church
accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far
West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the
Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was
unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and
his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere.

Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only
high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five
years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years;
he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year,
and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years;
from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome
figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.

His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself
--a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing
she did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen
--was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay
down the cash for it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune.
Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there,
got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay
her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin's first year's wage
she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second,
a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth.
His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children
had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred
a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been
married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable
two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid
half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later
she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning
its living.

Earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought
another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant
people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and
furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family.
She had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred
dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace;
and she was a pleased and happy woman. Happy in her husband, happy in
her children, and the husband and the children were happy in her.
It is at this point that this history begins.

The youngest girl, Clytemnestra--called Clytie for short
--was eleven; her sister, Gwendolen--called Gwen for short
--was thirteen; nice girls, and comely. The names betray the latent
romance-tinge in the parental blood, the parents' names indicate
that the tinge was an inheritance. It was an affectionate family,
hence all four of its members had pet names, Saladin's was a curious
and unsexing one--Sally; and so was Electra's--Aleck. All day
long Sally was a good and diligent book-keeper and salesman;
all day long Aleck was a good and faithful mother and housewife,
and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the cozy
living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in
another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams,
comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the
flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient castles.



CHAPTER II


Now came great news! Stunning news--joyous news, in fact.
It came from a neighboring state, where the family's only surviving
relative lived. It was Sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite
uncle or second or third cousin by the name of Tilbury Foster,
seventy and a bachelor, reputed well off and corresponding sour
and crusty. Sally had tried to make up to him once, by letter,
in a bygone time, and had not made that mistake again. Tilbury now
wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him
thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money
had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished
to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its
malignant work. The bequest would be found in his will, and would
be paid over. PROVIDED, that Sally should be able to prove to the
executors that he had TAKEN NO NOTICE OF THE GIFT BY SPOKEN WORD OR
BY LETTER, HAD MADE NO INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE MORIBUND'S PROGRESS
TOWARD THE EVERLASTING TROPICS, AND HAD NOT ATTENDED THE FUNERAL.

As soon as Aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous
emotions created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat
and subscribed for the local paper.

Man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention
the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some
ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it
and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for
the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it,
right in the face of the prohibition.

For the rest of the day Sally made havoc and confusion with his books,
and Aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up
a flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she
had intended to do with it. For both were dreaming.

"Thir-ty thousand dollars!"

All day long the music of those inspiring words sang through
those people's heads.

From his marriage-day forth, Aleck's grip had been upon the purse,
and Sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander
a dime on non-necessities.

"Thir-ty thousand dollars!" the song went on and on. A vast sum,
an unthinkable sum!

All day long Aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it,
Sally in planning how to spend it.

There was no romance-reading that night. The children took
themselves away early, for their parents were silent, distraught,
and strangely unentertaining. The good-night kisses might as well
have been impressed upon vacancy, for all the response they got;
the parents were not aware of the kisses, and the children had
been gone an hour before their absence was noticed. Two pencils
had been busy during that hour--note-making; in the way of plans.
It was Sally who broke the stillness at last. He said, with exultation:

"Ah, it'll be grand, Aleck! Out of the first thousand we'll have
a horse and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe
for winter."

Aleck responded with decision and composure--

"Out of the CAPITAL? Nothing of the kind. Not if it was a million!"

Sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face.

"Oh, Aleck!" he said, reproachfully. "We've always worked so hard
and been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--"

He did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication
had touched her. She said, with gentle persuasiveness:

"We must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise.
Out of the income from it--"

"That will answer, that will answer, Aleck! How dear and good you are!
There will be a noble income and if we can spend that--"

"Not ALL of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it.
That is, a reasonable part. But the whole of the capital
--every penny of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it.
You see the reasonableness of that, don't you?"

"Why, ye-s. Yes, of course. But we'll have to wait so long.
Six months before the first interest falls due."

"Yes--maybe longer."

"Longer, Aleck? Why? Don't they pay half-yearly?"

"THAT kind of an investment--yes; but I sha'n't invest in that way."

"What way, then?"

"For big returns."

"Big. That's good. Go on, Aleck. What is it?"

"Coal. The new mines. Cannel. I mean to put in ten thousand.
Ground floor. When we organize, we'll get three shares for one."

"By George, but it sounds good, Aleck! Then the shares will be worth
--how much? And when?"

"About a year. They'll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be
worth thirty thousand. I know all about it; the advertisement
is in the Cincinnati paper here."

"Land, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! Let's jam in the whole
capital and pull out ninety! I'll write and subscribe right now
--tomorrow it maybe too late."

He was flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put
him back in his chair. She said:

"Don't lose your head so. WE mustn't subscribe till we've got
the money; don't you know that?"

Sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not
wholly appeased.

"Why, Aleck, we'll HAVE it, you know--and so soon, too. He's probably
out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's
selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. Now, I think--"

Aleck shuddered, and said:

"How CAN you, Sally! Don't talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous."

"Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _I_ don't care for his outfit,
I was only just talking. Can't you let a person talk?"

"But why should you WANT to talk in that dreadful way? How would
you like to have people talk so about YOU, and you not cold yet?"

"Not likely to be, for ONE while, I reckon, if my last act was
giving away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it.
But never mind about Tilbury, Aleck, let's talk about something worldly.
It does seem to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty.
What's the objection?"

"All the eggs in one basket--that's the objection."

"All right, if you say so. What about the other twenty?
What do you mean to do with that?"

"There is no hurry; I am going to look around before I do anything
with it."

"All right, if your mind's made up," signed Sally. He was deep
in thought awhile, then he said:

"There'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year
from now. We can spend that, can we, Aleck?"

Aleck shook her head.

"No, dear," she said, "it won't sell high till we've had the first
semi-annual dividend. You can spend part of that."

"Shucks, only THAT--and a whole year to wait! Confound it, I--"

"Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared in three months
--it's quite within the possibilities."

"Oh, jolly! oh, thanks!" and Sally jumped up and kissed his wife
in gratitude. "It'll be three thousand--three whole thousand!
how much of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!--do, dear,
that's a good fellow."

Aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and
conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance
--a thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen times and even
in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness.
This new access of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite
beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain
herself she had made her darling another grant--a couple
of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she meant to clear
within a year of the twenty which still remained of the bequest.
The happy tears sprang to Sally's eyes, and he said:

"Oh, I want to hug you!" And he did it. Then he got his
notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase,
the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure.
"Horse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat
--church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--SAY, Aleck!"

"Well?"

"Ciphering away, aren't you? That's right. Have you got the twenty
thousand invested yet?"

"No, there's no hurry about that; I must look around first,
and think."

"But you are ciphering; what's it about?"

"Why, I have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out
of the coal, haven't I?"

"Scott, what a head! I never thought of that. How are you
getting along? Where have you arrived?"

"Not very far--two years or three. I've turned it over twice;
once in oil and once in wheat."

"Why, Aleck, it's splendid! How does it aggregate?"

"I think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty
thousand clear, though it will probably be more."

"My! isn't it wonderful? By gracious! luck has come our way at last,
after all the hard sledding, Aleck!"

"Well?"

"I'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries
--what real right have we care for expenses!"

"You couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your
generous nature, you unselfish boy."

The praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just
enough to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself,
since but for her he should never have had the money.

Then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot
and left the candle burning in the parlor. They did not remember
until they were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn;
he said they could afford it, if it was a thousand. But Aleck went
down and put it out.

A good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would
turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it
had had time to get cold.



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 discussion-mortar.

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 dream life and our material life
become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite
tell which is which, any more.