It had been a bad winter, somehow,
for the firm of Pennybacker, Bigler and Small.
These celebrated contractors usually made more money
during the session of the legislature at Harrisburg
than upon all their summer work, and this winter had
been unfruitful. It was unaccountable to Bigler.
“You see, Mr. Bolton,”
he said, and Philip was present at the conversation,
“it puts us all out. It looks as if politics
was played out. We’d counted on the year
of Simon’s re-election. And, now, he’s
reelected, and I’ve yet to see the first man
who’s the better for it.”
“You don’t mean to say,”
asked Philip, “that he went in without paying
anything?”
“Not a cent, not a dash cent,
as I can hear,” repeated Mr. Bigler, indignantly.
“I call it a swindle on the state. How
it was done gets me. I never saw such a tight
time for money in Harrisburg.”
“Were there no combinations,
no railroad jobs, no mining schemes put through in
connection with the election?
“Not that I knew,” said
Bigler, shaking his head in disgust. “In
fact it was openly said, that there was no money in
the election. It’s perfectly unheard of.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Philip,
“it was effected on what the insurance companies
call the ‘endowment,’ or the ‘paid
up’ plan, by which a policy is secured after
a certain time without further payment.”
“You think then,” said
Mr. Bolton smiling, “that a liberal and sagacious
politician might own a legislature after a time, and
not be bothered with keeping up his payments?”
“Whatever it is,” interrupted
Mr. Bigler, “it’s devilish ingenious and
goes ahead of my calculations; it’s cleaned me
out, when I thought we had a dead sure thing.
I tell you what it is, gentlemen, I shall go in for
reform. Things have got pretty mixed when a legislature
will give away a United States senatorship.”
It was melancholy, but Mr. Bigler
was not a man to be crushed by one misfortune, or
to lose his confidence in human nature, on one exhibition
of apparent honesty. He was already on his feet
again, or would be if Mr. Bolton could tide him over
shoal water for ninety days.
“We’ve got something with
money in it,” he explained to Mr. Bolton, “got
hold of it by good luck. We’ve got the
entire contract for Dobson’s Patent Pavement
for the city of Mobile. See here.”
Mr. Bigler made some figures; contract
so; much, cost of work and materials so much, profits
so much. At the end of three months the city
would owe the company three hundred and seventy-five
thousand dollars-two hundred thousand of that would
be profits. The whole job was worth at least
a million to the company it might be more.
There could be no mistake in these figures; here
was the contract, Mr. Bolton knew what materials were
worth and what the labor would cost.
Mr. Bolton knew perfectly well from
sore experience that there was always a mistake in
figures when Bigler or Small made them, and he knew
that he ought to send the fellow about his business.
Instead of that, he let him talk.
They only wanted to raise fifty thousand
dollars to carry on the contract that expended
they would have city bonds. Mr. Bolton said he
hadn’t the money. But Bigler could raise
it on his name. Mr. Bolton said he had no right
to put his family to that risk. But the entire
contract could be assigned to him the security
was ample it was a fortune to him if it
was forfeited. Besides Mr. Bigler had been unfortunate,
he didn’t know where to look for the necessaries
of life for his family. If he could only have
one more chance, he was sure he could right himself.
He begged for it.
And Mr. Bolton yielded. He could
never refuse such appeals. If he had befriended
a man once and been cheated by him, that man appeared
to have a claim upon him forever. He shrank,
however, from telling his wife what he had done on
this occasion, for he knew that if any person was more
odious than Small to his family it was Bigler.
“Philip tells me,” Mrs.
Bolton said that evening, “that the man Bigler
has been with thee again to-day. I hope thee
will have nothing more to do with him.”
“He has been very unfortunate,”
replied Mr. Bolton, uneasily.
“He is always unfortunate, and
he is always getting thee into trouble. But thee
didn’t listen to him again?”
“Well, mother, his family is
in want, and I lent him my name but I took
ample security. The worst that can happen will
be a little inconvenience.”
Mrs. Bolton looked grave and anxious,
but she did not complain or remonstrate; she knew
what a “little inconvenience” meant, but
she knew there was no help for it. If Mr. Bolton
had been on his way to market to buy a dinner for
his family with the only dollar he had in the world
in his pocket, he would have given it to a chance
beggar who asked him for it. Mrs. Bolton only
asked (and the question showed that she was no mere
provident than her husband where her heart was interested),
“But has thee provided money
for Philip to use in opening the coal mine?”
“Yes, I have set apart as much
as it ought to cost to open the mine, as much as we
can afford to lose if no coal is found. Philip
has the control of it, as equal partner in the venture,
deducting the capital invested. He has great
confidence in his success, and I hope for his sake
he won’t be disappointed.”
Philip could not but feel that he
was treated very much like one of the Bolton-family by
all except Ruth. His mother, when he went home
after his recovery from his accident, had affected
to be very jealous of Mrs. Bolton, about whom and
Ruth she asked a thousand questions an
affectation of jealousy which no doubt concealed a
real heartache, which comes to every mother when her
son goes out into the world and forms new ties.
And to Mrs. Sterling; a widow, living on a small income
in a remote Massachusetts village, Philadelphia was
a city of many splendors. All its inhabitants
seemed highly favored, dwelling in ease and surrounded
by superior advantages. Some of her neighbors
had relations living in Philadelphia, and it seemed
to them somehow a guarantee of respectability to have
relations in Philadelphia. Mrs. Sterling was
not sorry to have Philip make his way among such well-to-do
people, and she was sure that no good fortune could
be too good for his deserts.
“So, sir,” said Ruth,
when Philip came from New York, “you have been
assisting in a pretty tragedy. I saw your name
in the papers. Is this woman a specimen of your
western friends?”
“My only assistance,”
replied Philip, a little annoyed, was in trying to
keep Harry out of a bad scrape, and I failed after
all. He walked into her trap, and he has been
punished for it. I’m going to take him
up to Ilium to see if he won’t work steadily
at one thing, and quit his nonsense.”
“Is she as beautiful as the newspapers say she
is?”
“I don’t know, she has a kind of beauty she
is not like ’
“Not like Alice?”
“Well, she is brilliant; she
was called the handsomest woman in Washington dashing,
you know, and sarcastic and witty. Ruth, do you
believe a woman ever becomes a devil?”
“Men do, and I don’t know why women shouldn’t.
But I never saw one.”
“Well, Laura Hawkins comes very
near it. But it is dreadful to think of her
fate.”
“Why, do you suppose they will
hang a woman? Do you suppose they will be so
barbarous as that?”
“I wasn’t thinking of
that it’s doubtful if a New York jury
would find a woman guilty of any such crime.
But to think of her life if she is acquitted.”
“It is dreadful,” said
Ruth, thoughtfully, “but the worst of it is that
you men do not want women educated to do anything,
to be able to earn an honest living by their own exertions.
They are educated as if they were always to be petted
and supported, and there was never to be any such
thing as misfortune. I suppose, now, that you
would all choose to have me stay idly at home, and
give up my profession.”
“Oh, no,” said Philip,
earnestly, “I respect your resolution.
But, Ruth, do you think you would be happier or do
more good in following your profession than in having
a home of your own?”
“What is to hinder having a home of my, own?”
“Nothing, perhaps, only you
never would be in it you would be away day
and night, if you had any practice; and what sort of
a home would that make for your husband?”
“What sort of a home is it for
the wife whose husband is always away riding about
in his doctor’s gig?”
“Ah, you know that is not fair.
The woman makes the home.”
Philip and Ruth often had this sort
of discussion, to which Philip was always trying to
give a personal turn. He was now about to go
to Ilium for the season, and he did not like to go
without some assurance from Ruth that she might perhaps
love him some day; when he was worthy of it, and when
he could offer her something better than a partnership
in his poverty.
“I should work with a great
deal better heart, Ruth,” he said the morning
he was taking leave, “if I knew you cared for
me a little.”
Ruth was looking down; the color came
faintly to her cheeks, and she hesitated. She
needn’t be looking down, he thought, for she
was ever so much shorter than tall Philip.
“It’s not much of a place,
Ilium,” Philip went on, as if a little geographical
remark would fit in here as well as anything else,
“and I shall have plenty of time to think over
the responsibility I have taken, and ”
his observation did not seem to be coming out any where.
But Ruth looked up, and there was
a light in her eyes that quickened Phil’s pulse.
She took his hand, and said with serious sweetness:
“Thee mustn’t lose heart,
Philip.” And then she added, in another
mood, “Thee knows I graduate in the summer and
shall have my diploma. And if any thing happens mines
explode sometimes thee can send for me.
Farewell.”
The opening of the Ilium coal mine
was begun with energy, but without many omens of success.
Philip was running a tunnel into the breast of the
mountain, in faith that the coal stratum ran there
as it ought to. How far he must go in he believed
he knew, but no one could tell exactly. Some
of the miners said that they should probably go through
the mountain, and that the hole could be used for
a railway tunnel. The mining camp was a busy
place at any rate. Quite a settlement of board
and log shanties had gone up, with a blacksmith shop,
a small machine shop, and a temporary store for supplying
the wants of the workmen. Philip and Harry pitched
a commodious tent, and lived in the full enjoyment
of the free life.
There is no difficulty in digging
a bole in the ground, if you have money enough to
pay for the digging, but those who try this sort of
work are always surprised at the large amount of money
necessary to make a small hole. The earth is
never willing to yield one product, hidden in her
bosom, without an equivalent for it. And when
a person asks of her coal, she is quite apt to require
gold in exchange.
It was exciting work for all concerned
in it. As the tunnel advanced into the rock
every day promised to be the golden day. This
very blast might disclose the treasure.
The work went on week after week,
and at length during the night as well as the daytime.
Gangs relieved each other, and the tunnel was every
hour, inch by inch and foot by foot, crawling into
the mountain. Philip was on the stretch of hope
and excitement. Every pay day he saw his funds
melting away, and still there was only the faintest
show of what the miners call “signs.”
The life suited Harry, whose buoyant
hopefulness was never disturbed. He made endless
calculations, which nobody could understand, of the
probable position of the vein. He stood about
among the workmen with the busiest air. When
he was down at Ilium he called himself the engineer
of the works, and he used to spend hours smoking his
pipe with the Dutch landlord on the hotel porch, and
astonishing the idlers there with the stories of his
railroad operations in Missouri. He talked with
the landlord, too, about enlarging his hotel, and
about buying some village lots, in the prospect of
a rise, when the mine was opened. He taught the
Dutchman how to mix a great many cooling drinks for
the summer time, and had a bill at the hotel, the
growing length of which Mr. Dusenheimer contemplated
with pleasant anticipations. Mr. Brierly was
a very useful and cheering person wherever he went.
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.