The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

I could do a deal worse. No, now, let that luggage alone; I'll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do? All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington. Lord I'm glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to look at you. Bless you, they won't know you, you've grown so. Folks all well, I suppose? That's goodglad to hear that. We're always going to run down and see them, but I'm into so many operations, and they're not things a man feels like trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep putting it off. Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it's the country to pile up wealth in! Here we arehere's where the Sellers dynasty hangs out. Hump it on the door-step, Jerrythe blackest niggro in the State, Washington, but got a good heartmighty likely boy, is Jerry. And now I suppose you've got to have ten cents, Jerry. That's all rightwhen a man works for mewhen a manin the other pocket, I reckonwhen a man why, where the mischief as that portmonnaie!when awell now that's oddOh, now I remember, must have left it at the bank; and b'George I've left my check-book, tooPolly says I ought to have a nursewell, no matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you've gotah, thanks. Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time. Pretty fair jokepretty fair. Here he is, Polly! Washington's come, children! come now, don't eat him upfinish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I've had a chance to put him into a good thing I've done it, and done it pretty cheerfully, too. I put him into that sugar speculationwhat a grand thing that was, if we hadn't held on too long!"

True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them; and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to lose before, for Sellers's sale of their mule crop that year in New Orleans had been a great financial success. If he had kept out of sugar and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stonethat is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden eggwhich is but a figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan'l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into banishment.

Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other's waists.

The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service. The Colonel's "stovepipe" hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other people's clothes. It was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers said:

"Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at homejust consider yourself under your own shingles my boy I'll have a fire going, in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let's have things cheerful just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you'd been lost a century and we'd found you again!"

By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.

The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel's voice worked its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life. Bye and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres.

A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stovethese things constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the housebut there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in company the rest of the way home.

"Remarkable clock!" said Sellers, and got up and wound it. "I've been offeredwell, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, 'Come, now, Colonel, name your priceI must have that clock!' But my goodness I'd as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying tosilence in the courtnow, she's begun to strike! You can't talk against heryou have to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say. Ah well, as I was saying, whenshe's beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenah, that's all.Yes, as I was saying to old Judge go it, old girl, don't mind me.Now how is that?isn't that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She'll strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping,you'll see. There ain't another clock like that in Christendom."

Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the clock "buckled down to her work" as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:

"It belonged to his grandmother."

The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at the moment:)

"Indeed!"

"Yes, it did, didn't it father!" exclaimed one of the twins. "She was my great-grandmotherand George's too; wasn't she, father! You never saw her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis! Sis has seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deefshe's dead, now. Aint she, father!"

All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel of information about deceasednobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any waybut the head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own against the field:

"It's our clock, nowand it's got wheels inside of it, and a thing that flutters every time she strikesdon't it, father! Great-grandmother died before hardly any of us was bornshe was an Old-School Baptist and had warts all over heryou ask father if she didn't. She had an uncle once that was bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn't our uncle, I don't know what he was to ussome kin or another I reckonfather's seen him a thousand timeshain't you, father! We used to have a calf that et apples and just chawed up dishrags like nothing, and if you stay here you'll see lots of funeralswon't he, Sis! Did you ever see a house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry"

But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He began to tell about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital ina speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with him aboutand soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the cold entirely. He was nearly as close to the stove as he could get, and yet he could not persuade himself, that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass' door was still gently and serenely glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove, and the consequence was, he tripped the supporting poker and the stove-door tumbled to the floor. And then there was a revelationthere was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow-candle! The poor youth blushed and felt as if he must die with shame. But the Colonel was only disconcerted for a momenthe straightway found his voice again:

"A little idea of my own, Washingtonone of the greatest things in the world! You must write and tell your father about itdon't forget that, now. I have been reading up some European Scientific reportsfriend of mine, Count Fugier, sent them to mesends me all sorts of things from Parishe thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came to the conclusion that it was a nonconductor or something like that, and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless you I saw in a moment what was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!no more slow torture and certain death for me, sir. What you want is the appearance of heat, not the heat itselfthat's the idea. Well how to do it was the next thing. I just put my head, to work, pegged away, a couple of days,