The Gilded Age, Complete

M >> Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner >> The Gilded Age, Complete


Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station,
where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection.
At first he was full of vengeance on the company. He would sue it. He
would make it pay roundly. But then it occurred to him that he did not
know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight
against a railway corporation was about the most hopeless in the world.
He then thought he would seek out that conductor, lie in wait for him at
some station, and thrash him, or get thrashed himself.

But as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a
gentleman exactly. Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such
a fellow as that conductor on the letter's own plane? And when he came
to this point, he began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much
like a fool. He didn't regret striking the fellow--he hoped he had left
a mark on him. But, after all, was that the best way? Here was he,
Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar
conductor, about a woman he had never seen before. Why should he have
put himself in such a ridiculous position? Wasn't it enough to have
offered the lady his seat, to have rescued her from an accident, perhaps
from death? Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, "Sir, your
conduct is brutal, I shall report you." The passengers, who saw the
affair, might have joined in a report against the conductor, and he might
really have accomplished something. And, now! Philip looked at leis
torn clothes, and thought with disgust of his haste in getting into a
fight with such an autocrat.

At the little station where Philip waited for the next train, he met a
man--who turned out to be a justice of the peace in that neighborhood,
and told him his adventure. He was a kindly sort of man, and seemed very
much interested.

"Dum 'em," said he, when he had heard the story.

"Do you think any thing can be done, sir?"

"Wal, I guess tain't no use. I hain't a mite of doubt of every word you
say. But suin's no use. The railroad company owns all these people
along here, and the judges on the bench too. Spiled your clothes! Wal,
'least said's soonest mended.' You haint no chance with the company."

When next morning, he read the humorous account in the Patriot and
Clarion, he saw still more clearly what chance he would have had before
the public in a fight with the railroad company.

Still Philip's conscience told him that it was his plain duty to carry
the matter into the courts, even with the certainty of defeat.
He confessed that neither he nor any citizen had a right to consult his
own feelings or conscience in a case where a law of the land had been
violated before his own eyes. He confessed that every citizen's first
duty in such case is to put aside his own business and devote his time
and his best efforts to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished;
and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as
a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians
of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its
execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he
was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the
absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the
individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the
rest of the people.

The result of this little adventure was that Philip did not reach Ilium
till daylight the next morning, when he descended sleepy and sore, from a
way train, and looked about him. Ilium was in a narrow mountain gorge,
through which a rapid stream ran. It consisted of the plank platform on
which he stood, a wooden house, half painted, with a dirty piazza
(unroofed) in front, and a sign board hung on a slanting pole--bearing
the legend, "Hotel. P. Dusenheimer," a sawmill further down the stream,
a blacksmith-shop, and a store, and three or four unpainted dwellings of
the slab variety.

As Philip approached the hotel he saw what appeared to be a wild beast
crouching on the piazza. It did not stir, however, and he soon found
that it was only a stuffed skin. This cheerful invitation to the tavern
was the remains of a huge panther which had been killed in the region a
few weeks before. Philip examined his ugly visage and strong crooked
fore-arm, as he was waiting admittance, having pounded upon the door.

"Yait a bit. I'll shoost--put on my trowsers," shouted a voice from the
window, and the door was soon opened by the yawning landlord.

"Morgen! Didn't hear d' drain oncet. Dem boys geeps me up zo spate.
Gom right in."

Philip was shown into a dirty bar-room. It was a small room, with a
stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand, for the benefit
of the "spitters," a bar across one end--a mere counter with a sliding
glass-case behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels,
and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and
black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human
pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like
women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of
their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing
their hands to the spectators meanwhile.

As Philip did not desire a room at that hour, he was invited to wash
himself at the nasty sink, a feat somewhat easier than drying his face,
for the towel that hung in a roller over the sink was evidently as much a
fixture as the sink itself, and belonged, like the suspended brush and
comb, to the traveling public. Philip managed to complete his toilet by
the use of his pocket-handkerchief, and declining the hospitality of the
landlord, implied in the remark, "You won'd dake notin'?" he went into
the open air to wait for breakfast.

The country he saw was wild but not picturesque. The mountain before him
might be eight hundred feet high, and was only a portion of a long
unbroken range, savagely wooded, which followed the stream. Behind the
hotel, and across the brawling brook, was another level-topped, wooded
range exactly like it. Ilium itself, seen at a glance, was old enough to
be dilapidated, and if it had gained anything by being made a wood and
water station of the new railroad, it was only a new sort of grime and
rawness. P. Dusenheimer, standing in the door of his uninviting
groggery, when the trains stopped for water; never received from the
traveling public any patronage except facetious remarks upon his personal
appearance. Perhaps a thousand times he had heard the remark, "Ilium
fuit," followed in most instances by a hail to himself as "AEneas," with
the inquiry "Where is old Anchises?" At first he had replied, "Dere
ain't no such man;" but irritated by its senseless repetition, he had
latterly dropped into the formula of, "You be dam."

Philip was recalled from the contemplation of Ilium by the rolling and
growling of the gong within the hotel, the din and clamor increasing till
the house was apparently unable to contain it; when it burst out of the
front door and informed the world that breakfast was on the table.

The dining room was long, low and narrow, and a narrow table extended its
whole length. Upon this was spread a cloth which from appearance might
have been as long in use as the towel in the barroom. Upon the table was
the usual service, the heavy, much nicked stone ware, the row of plated
and rusty castors, the sugar bowls with the zinc tea-spoons sticking up
in them, the piles of yellow biscuits, the discouraged-looking plates of
butter. The landlord waited, and Philip was pleased to observe the
change in his manner. In the barroom he was the conciliatory landlord.
Standing behind his guests at table, he had an air of peremptory
patronage, and the voice in which he shot out the inquiry, as he seized
Philip's plate, "Beefsteak or liver?" quite took away Philip's power of
choice. He begged for a glass of milk, after trying that green hued
compound called coffee, and made his breakfast out of that and some hard
crackers which seemed to have been imported into Ilium before the
introduction of the iron horse, and to have withstood a ten years siege
of regular boarders, Greeks and others.

The land that Philip had come to look at was at least five miles distant
from Ilium station. A corner of it touched the railroad, but the rest
was pretty much an unbroken wilderness, eight or ten thousand acres of
rough country, most of it such a mountain range as he saw at Ilium.

His first step was to hire three woodsmen to accompany him. By their
help he built a log hut, and established a camp on the land, and then
began his explorations, mapping down his survey as he went along, noting
the timber, and the lay of the land, and making superficial observations
as to the prospect of coal.

The landlord at Ilium endeavored to persuade Philip to hire the services
of a witch-hazel professor of that region, who could walk over the land
with his wand and tell him infallibly whether it contained coal, and
exactly where the strata ran. But Philip preferred to trust to his own
study of the country, and his knowledge of the geological formation.
He spent a month in traveling over the land and making calculations;
and made up his mind that a fine vein of coal ran through the mountain
about a mile from the railroad, and that the place to run in a tunnel was
half way towards its summit.

Acting with his usual promptness, Philip, with the consent of Mr. Bolton,
broke ground there at once, and, before snow came, had some rude
buildings up, and was ready for active operations in the spring. It was
true that there were no outcroppings of coal at the place, and the people
at Ilium said he "mought as well dig for plug terbaccer there;" but
Philip had great faith in the uniformity of nature's operations in ages
past, and he had no doubt that he should strike at this spot the rich
vein that had made the fortune of the Golden Briar Company.




CHAPTER XXX.

Once more Louise had good news from her Washington--Senator Dilworthy was
going to sell the Tennessee Land to the government! Louise told Laura in
confidence. She had told her parents, too, and also several bosom
friends; but all of these people had simply looked sad when they heard
the news, except Laura. Laura's face suddenly brightened under it--only
for an instant, it is true, but poor Louise was grateful for even that
fleeting ray of encouragement. When next Laura was alone, she fell into
a train of thought something like this:

"If the Senator has really taken hold of this matter, I may look for that
invitation to his house at, any moment. I am perishing to go! I do long
to know whether I am only simply a large-sized pigmy among these pigmies
here, who tumble over so easily when one strikes them, or whether I am
really--." Her thoughts drifted into other channels, for a season.
Then she continued:--"He said I could be useful in the great cause of
philanthropy, and help in the blessed work of uplifting the poor and the
ignorant, if he found it feasible to take hold of our Land. Well, that
is neither here nor there; what I want, is to go to Washington and find
out what I am. I want money, too; and if one may judge by what she
hears, there are chances there for a--." For a fascinating woman, she
was going to say, perhaps, but she did not.

Along in the fall the invitation came, sure enough. It came officially
through brother Washington, the private Secretary, who appended a
postscript that was brimming with delight over the prospect of seeing the
Duchess again. He said it would be happiness enough to look upon her
face once more--it would be almost too much happiness when to it was
added the fact that she would bring messages with her that were fresh
from Louise's lips.

In Washington's letter were several important enclosures. For instance,
there was the Senator's check for $2,000--"to buy suitable clothing in
New York with!" It was a loan to be refunded when the Land was sold.
Two thousand--this was fine indeed. Louise's father was called rich, but
Laura doubted if Louise had ever had $400 worth of new clothing at one
time in her life. With the check came two through tickets--good on the
railroad from Hawkeye to Washington via New York--and they were
"dead-head" tickets, too, which had been given to Senator Dilworthy by
the railway companies. Senators and representatives were paid thousands
of dollars by the government for traveling expenses, but they always
traveled "deadhead" both ways, and then did as any honorable, high-minded
men would naturally do--declined to receive the mileage tendered them by
the government. The Senator had plenty of railway passes, and could.
easily spare two to Laura--one for herself and one for a male escort.
Washington suggested that she get some old friend of the family to come
with her, and said the Senator would "deadhead" him home again as soon as
he had grown tired, of the sights of the capital. Laura thought the
thing over. At first she was pleased with the idea, but presently she
began to feel differently about it. Finally she said, "No, our staid,
steady-going Hawkeye friends' notions and mine differ about some things
--they respect me, now, and I respect them--better leave it so--I will go
alone; I am not afraid to travel by myself." And so communing with
herself, she left the house for an afternoon walk.

Almost at the door she met Col. Sellers. She told him about her
invitation to Washington.

"Bless me!" said the Colonel. "I have about made up my mind to go there
myself. You see we've got to get another appropriation through, and the
Company want me to come east and put it through Congress. Harry's there,
and he'll do what he can, of course; and Harry's a good fellow and always
does the very best he knows how, but then he's young--rather young for
some parts of such work, you know--and besides he talks too much, talks a
good deal too much; and sometimes he appears to be a little bit
visionary, too, I think the worst thing in the world for a business man.
A man like that always exposes his cards, sooner or later. This sort of
thing wants an old, quiet, steady hand--wants an old cool head, you know,
that knows men, through and through, and is used to large operations.
I'm expecting my salary, and also some dividends from the company, and if
they get along in time, I'll go along with you Laura--take you under my
wing--you mustn't travel alone. Lord I wish I had the money right now.
--But there'll be plenty soon--plenty."

Laura reasoned with herself that if the kindly, simple-hearted Colonel
was going anyhow, what could she gain by traveling alone and throwing
away his company? So she told him she accepted his offer gladly,
gratefully. She said it would be the greatest of favors if he would go
with her and protect her--not at his own expense as far as railway fares
were concerned, of course; she could not expect him to put himself to so
much trouble for her and pay his fare besides. But he wouldn't hear of
her paying his fare--it would be only a pleasure to him to serve her.
Laura insisted on furnishing the tickets; and finally, when argument
failed, she said the tickets cost neither her nor any one else a cent
--she had two of them--she needed but one--and if he would not take the
other she would not go with him. That settled the matter. He took the
ticket. Laura was glad that she had the check for new clothing, for she
felt very certain of being able to get the Colonel to borrow a little of
the money to pay hotel bills with, here and there.

She wrote Washington to look for her and Col. Sellers toward the end of
November; and at about the time set the two travelers arrived safe in the
capital of the nation, sure enough.




CHAPTER XXXI


She, the gracious lady, yet no paines did spare
To doe him ease, or doe him remedy:
Many restoratives of vertues rare
And costly cordialles she did apply,
To mitigate his stubborne malady.
Spenser's Faerie Queens.

Mr. Henry Brierly was exceedingly busy in New York, so he wrote Col.
Sellers, but he would drop everything and go to Washington.

The Colonel believed that Harry was the prince of lobbyists, a little too
sanguine, may be, and given to speculation, but, then, he knew everybody;
the Columbus River navigation scheme was, got through almost entirely by
his aid. He was needed now to help through another scheme, a benevolent
scheme in which Col. Sellers, through the Hawkinses, had a deep interest.

"I don't care, you know," he wrote to Harry, "so much about the niggroes.
But if the government will buy this land, it will set up the Hawkins
family--make Laura an heiress--and I shouldn't wonder if Beriah Sellers
would set up his carriage again. Dilworthy looks at it different,
of course. He's all for philanthropy, for benefiting the colored race.
There's old Balsam, was in the Interior--used to be the Rev. Orson Balsam
of Iowa--he's made the riffle on the Injun; great Injun pacificator and
land dealer. Balaam'a got the Injun to himself, and I suppose that
Senator Dilworthy feels that there is nothing left him but the colored
man. I do reckon he is the best friend the colored man has got in
Washington."

Though Harry was in a hurry to reach Washington, he stopped in
Philadelphia; and prolonged his visit day after day, greatly to the
detriment of his business both in New York and Washington. The society
at the Bolton's might have been a valid excuse for neglecting business
much more important than his. Philip was there; he was a partner with
Mr. Bolton now in the new coal venture, concerning which there was much
to be arranged in preparation for the Spring work, and Philip lingered
week after week in the hospitable house. Alice was making a winter
visit. Ruth only went to town twice a week to attend lectures, and the
household was quite to Mr. Bolton's taste, for he liked the cheer of
company and something going on evenings. Harry was cordially asked to
bring his traveling-bag there, and he did not need urging to do so.
Not even the thought of seeing Laura at the capital made him restless in
the society of the two young ladies; two birds in hand are worth one in
the bush certainly.

Philip was at home--he sometimes wished he were not so much so. He felt
that too much or not enough was taken for granted. Ruth had met him,
when he first came, with a cordial frankness, and her manner continued
entirely unrestrained. She neither sought his company nor avoided it,
and this perfectly level treatment irritated him more than any other
could have done. It was impossible to advance much in love-making with
one who offered no obstacles, had no concealments and no embarrassments,
and whom any approach to sentimentality would be quite likely to set into
a fit of laughter.

"Why, Phil," she would say, "what puts you in the dumps to day? You are
as solemn as the upper bench in Meeting. I shall have to call Alice to
raise your spirits; my presence seems to depress you."

"It's not your presence, but your absence when you are present," began
Philip, dolefully, with the idea that he was saying a rather deep thing.
"But you won't understand me."

"No, I confess I cannot. If you really are so low, as to think I am
absent when I am present, it's a frightful case of aberration; I shall
ask father to bring out Dr. Jackson. Does Alice appear to be present
when she is absent?"

"Alice has some human feeling, anyway. She cares for something besides
musty books and dry bones. I think, Ruth, when I die," said Philip,
intending to be very grim and sarcastic, "I'll leave you my skeleton.
You might like that."

"It might be more cheerful than you are at times," Ruth replied with a
laugh. "But you mustn't do it without consulting Alice. She might not.
like it."

"I don't know why you should bring Alice up on every occasion. Do you
think I am in love with her?"

"Bless you, no. It never entered my head. Are you? The thought of
Philip Sterling in love is too comical. I thought you were only in love
with the Ilium coal mine, which you and father talk about half the time."

This is a specimen of Philip's wooing. Confound the girl, he would say
to himself, why does she never tease Harry and that young Shepley who
comes here?

How differently Alice treated him. She at least never mocked him, and it
was a relief to talk with one who had some sympathy with him. And he did
talk to her, by the hour, about Ruth. The blundering fellow poured all
his doubts and anxieties into her ear, as if she had been the impassive
occupant of one of those little wooden confessionals in the Cathedral on
Logan Square. Has, a confessor, if she is young and pretty, any feeling?
Does it mend the matter by calling her your sister?

Philip called Alice his good sister, and talked to her about love and
marriage, meaning Ruth, as if sisters could by no possibility have any
personal concern in such things. Did Ruth ever speak of him? Did she
think Ruth cared for him? Did Ruth care for anybody at Fallkill? Did
she care for anything except her profession? And so on.

Alice was loyal to Ruth, and if she knew anything she did not betray her
friend. She did not, at any rate, give Philip too much encouragement.
What woman, under the circumstances, would?

"I can tell you one thing, Philip," she said, "if ever Ruth Bolton loves,
it will be with her whole soul, in a depth of passion that will sweep
everything before it and surprise even herself."

A remark that did not much console Philip, who imagined that only some
grand heroism could unlock the sweetness of such a heart; and Philip
feared that he wasn't a hero. He did not know out of what materials a
woman can construct a hero, when she is in the creative mood.

Harry skipped into this society with his usual lightness and gaiety.
His good nature was inexhaustible, and though he liked to relate his own
exploits, he had a little tact in adapting himself to the tastes of his
hearers. He was not long in finding out that Alice liked to hear about
Philip, and Harry launched out into the career of his friend in the West,
with a prodigality of invention that would have astonished the chief
actor. He was the most generous fellow in the world, and picturesque
conversation was the one thing in which he never was bankrupt. With Mr.
Bolton he was the serious man of business, enjoying the confidence of
many of the monied men in New York, whom Mr. Bolton knew, and engaged
with them in railway schemes and government contracts. Philip, who had
so long known Harry, never could make up his mind that Harry did not
himself believe that he was a chief actor in all these large operations
of which he talked so much.

Harry did not neglect to endeavor to make himself agreeable to Mrs.
Bolton, by paying great attention to the children, and by professing the
warmest interest in the Friends' faith. It always seemed to him the most
peaceful religion; he thought it must be much easier to live by an
internal light than by a lot of outward rules; he had a dear Quaker aunt
in Providence of whom Mrs. Bolton constantly reminded him. He insisted
upon going with Mrs. Bolton and the children to the Friends Meeting on
First Day, when Ruth and Alice and Philip, "world's people," went to a
church in town, and he sat through the hour of silence with his hat on,
in most exemplary patience. In short, this amazing actor succeeded so
well with Mrs. Bolton, that she said to Philip one day,

"Thy friend, Henry Brierly, appears to be a very worldly minded young
man. Does he believe in anything?"

"Oh, yes," said Philip laughing, "he believes in more things than any
other person I ever saw."

To Ruth, Harry seemed to be very congenial. He was never moody for one
thing, but lent himself with alacrity to whatever her fancy was. He was
gay or grave as the need might be. No one apparently could enter more
fully into her plans for an independent career.

"My father," said Harry, "was bred a physician, and practiced a little
before he went into Wall street. I always had a leaning to the study.
There was a skeleton hanging in the closet of my father's study when I
was a boy, that I used to dress up in old clothes. Oh, I got quite
familiar with the human frame."

"You must have," said Philip. "Was that where you learned to play the
bones? He is a master of those musical instruments, Ruth; he plays well
enough to go on the stage."

"Philip hates science of any kind, and steady application," retorted
Harry. He didn't fancy Philip's banter, and when the latter had gone
out, and Ruth asked,

"Why don't you take up medicine, Mr. Brierly?"

Harry said, "I have it in mind. I believe I would begin attending
lectures this winter if it weren't for being wanted in Washington. But
medicine is particularly women's province."