The Gilded Age, Complete

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


Midsummer arrived: Philip could report to Mr. Bolton only progress, and
this was not a cheerful message for him to send to Philadelphia in reply
to inquiries that he thought became more and more anxious. Philip
himself was a prey to the constant fear that the money would give out
before the coal was struck.

At this time Harry was summoned to New York, to attend the trial of Laura
Hawkins. It was possible that Philip would have to go also, her lawyer
wrote, but they hoped for a postponement. There was important evidence
that they could not yet obtain, and he hoped the judge would not force
them to a trial unprepared. There were many reasons for a delay, reasons
which of course are never mentioned, but which it would seem that a New
York judge sometimes must understand, when he grants a postponement upon
a motion that seems to the public altogether inadequate.

Harry went, but he soon came back. The trial was put off. Every week we
can gain, said the learned counsel, Braham, improves our chances. The
popular rage never lasts long.




CHAPTER XLIX.

"We've struck it!"

This was the announcement at the tent door that woke Philip out of a
sound sleep at dead of night, and shook all the sleepiness out of him in
a trice.

"What! Where is it? When? Coal? Let me see it. What quality is it?"
were some of the rapid questions that Philip poured out as he hurriedly
dressed. "Harry, wake up, my boy, the coal train is coming. Struck it,
eh? Let's see?"

The foreman put down his lantern, and handed Philip a black lump. There
was no mistake about it, it was the hard, shining anthracite, and its
freshly fractured surface, glistened in the light like polished steel.
Diamond never shone with such lustre in the eyes of Philip.

Harry was exuberant, but Philip's natural caution found expression in his
next remark.

"Now, Roberts, you are sure about this?"

"What--sure that it's coal?"

"O, no, sure that it's the main vein."

"Well, yes. We took it to be that"

"Did you from the first?"

"I can't say we did at first. No, we didn't. Most of the indications
were there, but not all of them, not all of them. So we thought we'd
prospect a bit."

"Well?"

"It was tolerable thick, and looked as if it might be the vein--looked as
if it ought to be the vein. Then we went down on it a little. Looked
better all the time."

"When did you strike it?"

"About ten o'clock."

"Then you've been prospecting about four hours."

"Yes, been sinking on it something over four hours."

"I'm afraid you couldn't go down very far in four hours--could you?"

"O yes--it's a good deal broke up, nothing but picking and gadding
stuff."

"Well, it does look encouraging, sure enough--but then the lacking
indications--"

"I'd rather we had them, Mr. Sterling, but I've seen more than one good
permanent mine struck without 'em in my time."

"Well, that is encouraging too."

"Yes, there was the Union, the Alabama and the Black Mohawk--all good,
sound mines, you know--all just exactly like this one when we first
struck them."

"Well, I begin to feel a good deal more easy. I guess we've really got
it. I remember hearing them tell about the Black Mohawk."

"I'm free to say that I believe it, and the men all think so too. They
are all old hands at this business."

"Come Harry, let's go up and look at it, just for the comfort of it,"
said Philip. They came back in the course of an hour, satisfied and
happy.

There was no more sleep for them that night. They lit their pipes, put a
specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of
thought and conversation.

"Of course," said Harry, "there will have to be a branch track built, and
a 'switch-back' up the hill."

"Yes, there will be no trouble about getting the money for that now. We
could sell-out tomorrow for a handsome sum. That sort of coal doesn't go
begging within a mile of a rail-road. I wonder if Mr. Bolton' would
rather sell out or work it?"

"Oh, work it," says Harry, "probably the whole mountain is coal now
you've got to it."

"Possibly it might not be much of a vein after all," suggested Philip.

"Possibly it is; I'll bet it's forty feet thick. I told you. I knew the
sort of thing as soon as I put my eyes on it."

Philip's next thought was to write to his friends and announce their good
fortune. To Mr. Bolton he wrote a short, business letter, as calm as he
could make it. They had found coal of excellent quality, but they could
not yet tell with absolute certainty what the vein was. The prospecting
was still going on. Philip also wrote to Ruth; but though this letter
may have glowed, it was not with the heat of burning anthracite. He
needed no artificial heat to warm his pen and kindle his ardor when he
sat down to write to Ruth. But it must be confessed that the words never
flowed so easily before, and he ran on for an hour disporting in all the
extravagance of his imagination. When Ruth read it, she doubted if the
fellow had not gone out of his senses. And it was not until she reached
the postscript that she discovered the cause of the exhilaration.
"P. S.--We have found coal."

The news couldn't have come to Mr. Bolton in better time. He had never
been so sorely pressed. A dozen schemes which he had in hand, any one
of which might turn up a fortune, all languished, and each needed just
a little more, money to save that which had been invested. He hadn't
a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the
wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no
marketable value above the incumbrance on it.

He had come home that day early, unusually dejected.

"I am afraid," he said to his wife, "that we shall have to give up our
house. I don't care for myself, but for thee and the children."

"That will be the least of misfortunes," said Mrs. Bolton, cheerfully,
"if thee can clear thyself from debt and anxiety, which is wearing thee
out, we can live any where. Thee knows we were never happier than when
we were in a much humbler home."

"The truth is, Margaret, that affair of Bigler and Small's has come on me
just when I couldn't stand another ounce. They have made another failure
of it. I might have known they would; and the sharpers, or fools, I
don't know which, have contrived to involve me for three times as much as
the first obligation. The security is in my hands, but it is good for
nothing to me. I have not the money to do anything with the contract."

Ruth heard this dismal news without great surprise. She had long felt
that they were living on a volcano, that might go in to active operation
at any hour. Inheriting from her father an active brain and the courage
to undertake new things, she had little of his sanguine temperament which
blinds one to difficulties and possible failures. She had little
confidence in the many schemes which had been about to lift her father
out of all his embarrassments and into great wealth, ever since she was
a child; as she grew older, she rather wondered that they were as
prosperous as they seemed to be, and that they did not all go to smash
amid so many brilliant projects. She was nothing but a woman, and did
not know how much of the business prosperity of the world is only a
bubble of credit and speculation, one scheme helping to float another
which is no better than it, and the whole liable to come to naught and
confusion as soon as the busy brain that conceived them ceases its power
to devise, or when some accident produces a sudden panic.

"Perhaps, I shall be the stay of the family, yet," said Ruth, with an
approach to gaiety; "When we move into a little house in town, will thee
let me put a little sign on the door: DR. RUTH BOLTON?"

"Mrs. Dr. Longstreet, thee knows, has a great income."

"Who will pay for the sign, Ruth?" asked Mr. Bolton.

A servant entered with the afternoon mail from the office. Mr. Bolton
took his letters listlessly, dreading to open them. He knew well what
they contained, new difficulties, more urgent demands fox money.

"Oh, here is one from Philip. Poor fellow. I shall feel his
disappointment as much as my own bad luck. It is hard to bear when one
is young."

He opened the letter and read. As he read his face lightened, and he
fetched such a sigh of relief, that Mrs. Bolton and Ruth both exclaimed.

"Read that," he cried, "Philip has found coal!"

The world was changed in a moment. One little sentence had done it.
There was no more trouble. Philip had found coal. That meant relief.
That meant fortune. A great weight was taken off, and the spirits of the
whole household rose magically. Good Money! beautiful demon of Money,
what an enchanter thou art! Ruth felt that she was of less consequence
in the household, now that Philip had found Coal, and perhaps she was not
sorry to feel so.

Mr. Bolton was ten years younger the next morning. He went into the
city, and showed his letter on change. It was the sort of news his
friends were quite willing to listen to. They took a new interest in
him. If it was confirmed, Bolton would come right up again. There would
be no difficulty about his getting all the money he wanted. The money
market did not seem to be half so tight as it was the day before.
Mr. Bolton spent a very pleasant day in his office, and went home
revolving some new plans, and the execution of some projects he had long
been prevented from entering upon by the lack of money.

The day had been spent by Philip in no less excitement. By daylight,
with Philip's letters to the mail, word had gone down to Ilium that coal
had been found, and very early a crowd of eager spectators had come up to
see for themselves.

The "prospecting" continued day and night for upwards of a week, and
during the first four or five days the indications grew more and more
promising, and the telegrams and letters kept Mr. Bolton duly posted.
But at last a change came, and the promises began to fail with alarming
rapidity. In the end it was demonstrated without the possibility of a
doubt that the great "find" was nothing but a worthless seam.

Philip was cast down, all the more so because he had been so foolish as
to send the news to Philadelphia before he knew what he was writing
about. And now he must contradict it. "It turns out to be only a mere
seam," he wrote, "but we look upon it as an indication of better further
in."

Alas! Mr. Bolton's affairs could not wait for "indications." The future
might have a great deal in store, but the present was black and hopeless.
It was doubtful if any sacrifice could save him from ruin. Yet sacrifice
he must make, and that instantly, in the hope of saving something from
the wreck of his fortune.

His lovely country home must go. That would bring the most ready money.
The house that he had built with loving thought for each one of his
family, as he planned its luxurious apartments and adorned it; the
grounds that he had laid out, with so much delight in following the
tastes of his wife, with whom the country, the cultivation of rare trees
and flowers, the care of garden and lawn and conservatories were a
passion almost; this home, which he had hoped his children would enjoy
long after he had done with it, must go.

The family bore the sacrifice better than he did. They declared in fact
--women are such hypocrites--that they quite enjoyed the city (it was in
August) after living so long in the country, that it was a thousand tunes
more convenient in every respect; Mrs. Bolton said it was a relief from
the worry of a large establishment, and Ruth reminded her father that she
should have had to come to town anyway before long.

Mr. Bolton was relieved, exactly as a water-logged ship is lightened by
throwing overboard the most valuable portion of the cargo--but the leak
was not stopped. Indeed his credit was injured instead of helped by the
prudent step he had taken. It was regarded as a sure evidence of his
embarrassment, and it was much more difficult for him to obtain help than
if he had, instead of retrenching, launched into some new speculation.

Philip was greatly troubled, and exaggerated his own share in the
bringing about of the calamity.

"You must not look at it so!" Mr. Bolton wrote him. "You have neither
helped nor hindered--but you know you may help by and by. It would have
all happened just so, if we had never begun to dig that hole. That is
only a drop. Work away. I still have hope that something will occur to
relieve me. At any rate we must not give up the mine, so long as we have
any show."

Alas! the relief did not come. New misfortunes came instead. When the
extent of the Bigler swindle was disclosed there was no more hope that
Mr. Bolton could extricate himself, and he had, as an honest man, no
resource except to surrender all his property for the benefit of his
creditors.

The Autumn came and found Philip working with diminished force but still
with hope. He had again and again been encouraged by good "indications,"
but he had again and again been disappointed. He could not go on much
longer, and almost everybody except himself had thought it was useless to
go on as long as he had been doing.

When the news came of Mr. Bolton's failure, of course the work stopped.
The men were discharged, the tools were housed, the hopeful noise of
pickman and driver ceased, and the mining camp had that desolate and
mournful aspect which always hovers over a frustrated enterprise.

Philip sat down amid the ruins, and almost wished he were buried in them.
How distant Ruth was now from him, now, when she might need him most.
How changed was all the Philadelphia world, which had hitherto stood for
the exemplification of happiness and prosperity.

He still had faith that there was coal in that mountain. He made
a picture of himself living there a hermit in a shanty by the tunnel,
digging away with solitary pick and wheelbarrow, day after day and year
after year, until he grew gray and aged, and was known in all that region
as the old man of the mountain. Perhaps some day--he felt it must be so
some day--he should strike coal. But what if he did? Who would be alive
to care for it then? What would he care for it then? No, a man wants
riches in his youth, when the world is fresh to him. He wondered why
Providence could not have reversed the usual process, and let the
majority of men begin with wealth and gradually spend it, and die poor
when they no longer needed it.

Harry went back to the city. It was evident that his services were no
longer needed. Indeed, he had letters from his uncle, which he did not
read to Philip, desiring him to go to San Francisco to look after some
government contracts in the harbor there.

Philip had to look about him for something to do; he was like Adam;
the world was all before him whereto choose. He made, before he went
elsewhere, a somewhat painful visit to Philadelphia, painful but yet not
without its sweetnesses. The family had never shown him so much
affection before; they all seemed to think his disappointment of more
importance than their own misfortune. And there was that in Ruth's
manner--in what she gave him and what she withheld--that would have made
a hero of a very much less promising character than Philip Sterling.

Among the assets of the Bolton property, the Ilium tract was sold, and
Philip bought it in at the vendue, for a song, for no one cared to even
undertake the mortgage on it except himself. He went away the owner of
it, and had ample time before he reached home in November, to calculate
how much poorer he was by possessing it.




CHAPTER L.

It is impossible for the historian, with even the best intentions,
to control events or compel the persons of his narrative to act wisely
or to be successful. It is easy to see how things might have been better
managed; a very little change here and there would have made a very,
different history of this one now in hand.

If Philip had adopted some regular profession, even some trade, he might
now be a prosperous editor or a conscientious plumber, or an honest
lawyer, and have borrowed money at the saving's bank and built a cottage,
and be now furnishing it for the occupancy of Ruth and himself. Instead
of this, with only a smattering of civil engineering, he is at his
mother's house, fretting and fuming over his ill-luck, and the hardness
and, dishonesty of men, and thinking of nothing but how to get the coal
out of the Ilium hills.

If Senator Dilworthy had not made that visit to Hawkeye, the Hawkins
family and Col. Sellers would not now be dancing attendance upon
Congress, and endeavoring to tempt that immaculate body into one of those
appropriations, for the benefit of its members, which the members find it
so difficult to explain to their constituents; and Laura would not be
lying in the Tombs, awaiting her trial for murder, and doing her best,
by the help of able counsel, to corrupt the pure fountain of criminal
procedure in New York.

If Henry Brierly had been blown up on the first Mississippi steamboat he
set foot on, as the chances were that he would be, he and Col. Sellers
never would have gone into the Columbus Navigation scheme, and probably
never into the East Tennessee Land scheme, and he would not now be
detained in New York from very important business operations on the
Pacific coast, for the sole purpose of giving evidence to convict of
murder the only woman he ever loved half as much as he loves himself.
If Mr. Bolton had said the little word "no" to Mr. Bigler, Alice Montague
might now be spending the winter in Philadelphia, and Philip also
(waiting to resume his mining operations in the spring); and Ruth would
not be an assistant in a Philadelphia hospital, taxing her strength with
arduous routine duties, day by day, in order to lighten a little the
burdens that weigh upon her unfortunate family.

It is altogether a bad business. An honest historian, who had progressed
thus far, and traced everything to such a condition of disaster and
suspension, might well be justified in ending his narrative and writing
--"after this the deluge." His only consolation would be in the reflection
that he was not responsible for either characters or events.

And the most annoying thought is that a little money, judiciously
applied, would relieve the burdens and anxieties of most of these people;
but affairs seem to be so arranged that money is most difficult to get
when people need it most.

A little of what Mr. Bolton has weakly given to unworthy people would now
establish his family in a sort of comfort, and relieve Ruth of the
excessive toil for which she inherited no adequate physical vigor.
A little money would make a prince of Col. Sellers; and a little more
would calm the anxiety of Washington Hawkins about Laura, for however the
trial ended, he could feel sure of extricating her in the end. And if
Philip had a little money he could unlock the stone door in the mountain
whence would issue a stream of shining riches. It needs a golden wand to
strike that rock. If the Knobs University bill could only go through,
what a change would be wrought in the condition of most of the persons in
this history. Even Philip himself would feel the good effects of it;
for Harry would have something and Col. Sellers would have something;
and have not both these cautious people expressed a determination to take
an interest in the Ilium mine when they catch their larks?

Philip could not resist the inclination to pay a visit to Fallkill. He
had not been at the Montague's since the time he saw Ruth there, and he
wanted to consult the Squire about an occupation. He was determined now
to waste no more time in waiting on Providence, but to go to work at
something, if it were nothing better, than teaching in the Fallkill
Seminary, or digging clams on Hingham beach. Perhaps he could read law
in Squire Montague's office while earning his bread as a teacher in the
Seminary.

It was not altogether Philip's fault, let us own, that he was in this
position. There are many young men like him in American society, of his
age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been
educated for nothing and have let themselves drift, in the hope that they
will find somehow, and by some sudden turn of good luck, the golden road
to fortune. He was not idle or lazy, he had energy and a disposition to
carve his own way. But he was born into a time when all young men of his
age caught the fever of speculation, and expected to get on in the world
by the omission of some of the regular processes which have been
appointed from of old. And examples were not wanting to encourage him.
He saw people, all around him, poor yesterday, rich to-day, who had come
into sudden opulence by some means which they could not have classified
among any of the regular occupations of life. A war would give such a
fellow a career and very likely fame. He might have been a "railroad
man," or a politician, or a land speculator, or one of those mysterious
people who travel free on all rail-roads and steamboats, and are
continually crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, driven day and night
about nobody knows what, and make a great deal of money by so doing.
Probably, at last, he sometimes thought with a whimsical smile, he should
end by being an insurance agent, and asking people to insure their lives
for his benefit.

Possibly Philip did not think how much the attractions of Fallkill were
increased by the presence of Alice there. He had known her so long, she
had somehow grown into his life by habit, that he would expect the
pleasure of her society without thinking mach about it. Latterly he
never thought of her without thinking of Ruth, and if he gave the subject
any attention, it was probably in an undefined consciousness that, he had
her sympathy in his love, and that she was always willing to hear him
talk about it. If he ever wondered that Alice herself was not in love
and never spoke of the possibility of her own marriage, it was a
transient thought for love did not seem necessary, exactly, to one so
calm and evenly balanced and with so many resources in her herself.

Whatever her thoughts may have been they were unknown to Philip, as they
are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and
carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to
bear it alone, she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a
self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining,
have no conception. Have not these big babies with beards filled all
literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It
is always the gentle sex which is hard and cruel and fickle and
implacable.

"Do you think you would be contented to live in Fallkill, and attend the
county Court?" asked Alice, when Philip had opened the budget of his new
programme.

"Perhaps not always," said Philip, "I might go and practice in Boston
maybe, or go to Chicago."

"Or you might get elected to Congress."

Philip looked at Alice to see if she was in earnest and not chaffing him.
Her face was quite sober. Alice was one of those patriotic women in the
rural districts, who think men are still selected for Congress on account
of qualifications for the office.

"No," said Philip, "the chances are that a man cannot get into congress
now without resorting to arts and means that should render hint unfit to
go there; of course there are exceptions; but do you know that I could
not go into politics if I were a lawyer, without losing standing somewhat
in my profession, and without raising at least a suspicion of my
intentions and unselfishness? Why, it is telegraphed all over the
country and commented on as something wonderful if a congressman votes
honestly and unselfishly and refuses to take advantage of his position to
steal from the government."

"But," insisted Alice, "I should think it a noble ambition to go to
congress, if it is so bad, and help reform it. I don't believe it is as
corrupt as the English parliament used to be, if there is any truth in
the novels, and I suppose that is reformed."

"I'm sure I don't know where the reform is to begin. I've seen a
perfectly capable, honest man, time and again, run against an illiterate
trickster, and get beaten. I suppose if the people wanted decent members
of congress they would elect them. Perhaps," continued Philip with a
smile, "the women will have to vote."

"Well, I should be willing to, if it were a necessity, just as I would go
to war and do what I could, if the country couldn't be saved otherwise,"
said Alice, with a spirit that surprised Philip, well as he thought he
knew her. "If I were a young gentleman in these times--"

Philip laughed outright. "It's just what Ruth used to say, 'if she were
a man.' I wonder if all the young ladies are contemplating a change of
sex."

"No, only a changed sex," retorted Alice; "we contemplate for the most
part young men who don't care for anything they ought to care for."