"They say if money goes before, all ways do lie open."
"I call this kind, boys," said Mr. Gilead P. Beck, welcoming his
visitors, Captain Ladds and Jack Dunquerque; "I call this friendly. I
asked myself last night, 'Will those boys come to see me, or will they
let the ragged Yankee slide?' And here you are."
"Change," said Ladds the monosyllabic, looking round. "Gold looking
up?"
There is a certain suite of rooms in the Langham Hotel--there may be a
hundred such suites known to the travellers who have explored that
mighty hostelry--originally designed for foreign princes, ambassadors,
or those wandering kings whom our hospitality sends to an inn. The
suite occupied by Mr. Beck consisted of a large reception-room, a
smaller apartment occupied by himself, and a bedroom. The rooms were
furnished in supposed accordance with the tastes of their princely
occupants, that is to say, with solid magnificence. Mr. Beck had been
in England no more than a week, and as he had not yet begun to buy
anything, the rooms were without those splendid decorations of
pictures, plate, and objects of art generally, with which he
subsequently adorned them. They looked heavy and rather cheerless. A
fire was burning on the hearth, and Mr. Beck was standing before it
with an unlighted cigar in his lips. Apparently he had already
presented some letters of introduction, for there were a few cards of
invitation on the mantelshelf. He was dressed in a black frock-coat,
as a gentleman should be, and he wore it buttoned up, so that his tall
stature and thin figure were shown off to full advantage. He wore a
plain black ribbon by way of necktie, and was modest in the way of
studs. Jack Dunquerque noticed that he wore no jewelry of any kind,
which he thought unusual in a man of unlimited credit, a new man whose
fortune was not two years old. He was an unmistakable American. His
chin was now close shaven, and without the traditional tuft; but he
had the bright restless eye, the long spare form, the obstinately
straight hair, the thin flexible mouth with mobile lips, the
delicately shaped chin, and the long neck which seem points
characteristic with our Transatlantic brethren. His grave face lit up
with a smile of pleasure when he saw Jack Dunquerque. It was a
thoughtful face; it had lines in it, such as might have been caused by
the buffets of Fate; but his eyes were kindly. As for his speech, it
preserved the nasal drawl of his New England birthplace; he spoke
slowly, as if feeling for the right words, and his pronunciation was
that of a man sprung from the ranks. Let us say at once that we do not
attempt to reproduce by an affected spelling, save occasionally, the
Doric of the New England speech. He was a typical man of the Eastern
Estate--self-reliant, courageous, independent, somewhat prejudiced,
roughly educated, ready for any employment and ashamed of none, and
withal brave as an Elizabethan buccaneer, sensitive as a Victorian
lady, sympathetic as--as Henry Longfellow.
"There is change, sir"--he addressed himself to Ladds--"in most things
human. The high tides and the low tides keep us fresh. Else we should
be as stagnant as a Connecticut gospel-grinder in his village
location."
"This is high tide, I see," said Jack, laughing. "I hope that American
high tides last longer than ours."
"I am hopeful, Mr. Dunquerque, that they air of a more abiding
disposition. If you should be curious, gentlemen, to know my history
since I left you in San Francisco, I will tell you it from the
beginning. You remember that blessed inseck, the Golden Butterfly?"
"In the little box," said Ladds. "I asked you after his welfare last
night."
Jack began to blush.
"Before you begin," he interposed, "we ought to tell you that since we
came home we have written a book, we two, about our travels."
"Is that so?" asked Mr. Beck, with some natural reverence for the
author of a book.
"And we have put you into it, with an account of Empire City."
"Me--as I was--in rags and without even a gun?"
"Yes; not a flattering likeness, but a true one."
"And the lucky shot, is that there too?"
"Some of it is there," said Ladds. "Jack would not have the whole
story published. Looked ostentatious."
"Gentlemen, I shall buy that book. I shall take five hundred copies of
that book for my people in the Dominion. Just as I was, you say--no
boots but moccasins; not a dollar nor a cent; running for bare life
before a Grisly. Gentlemen, that book will raise me in the estimation
of my fellow-countrymen. And if you will allow me the privilege, I
shall say it was written by two friends of mine."
Jack breathed freely. He was afraid Mr. Beck might have resented the
intrusion of his ragged personality. An Englishman certainly would.
Mr. Beck seemed to think that the contrast between present broadcloth
and past rags reflected the highest credit on himself.
This part of the work, indeed, which the critics declared to be wildly
improbable, was the only portion read by Mr. Beck. And just as he
persisted in giving Jack the sole credit of his rescue--perhaps
because in his mental confusion he never even heard the second shot
which finished the bear--so he steadfastly regarded Jack as the sole
author of this stirring chapter, which was Ladd's masterpiece, and was
grateful accordingly.
"And now," he went on, "I must show you the critter himself, the
Golden Bug."
There was standing in a corner, where it would be least likely to
receive any rude shocks or collisions, a small heavy iron safe. This
he unlocked, and brought forth with great care a glass case which
exactly fitted the safe. The frame of the case was made of golden
rods; along the lower part of the front pane, in letters of gold, was
the legend:
"If this Golden Butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck."
"Your poetry, Mr. Dunquerque," said Mr. Beck, pointing to the distich
with pride. "Your own composition, sir, and my motto."
Within the case was the Butterfly itself, but glorified. The bottom of
the glass box was a thick sheet of pure gold, on which was fixed a
rose, the leaves, flower, and stalk worked in dull gold. Not a fine
work of art, perhaps, but a reasonably good rose, as good as that
Papal rose they show in the Cluny Hotel. The Butterfly was poised upon
the rose by means of thin gold wire, which passed round the strip of
quartz which formed the body. The ends were firmly welded into the
leaves of the flower, and when the case was moved the insect vibrated
as if he was in reality alive.
"There! Look at it, gentlemen. That is the inseck which has made the
fortune of Gilead P. Beck."
He addressed himself to both, but his eye rested on Jack with a look
which showed that he regarded the young man with something more than
friendliness. The man who fired that shot, the young fellow who saved
him from a cruel death, was his David, the beloved of his soul.
Ladds looked at it curiously, as if expecting some manifestation of
the supernatural.
"Is it a medium?" he asked. "Does it rap, or answer questions, or tell
the card you are thinking of? Shall you exhibit the thing in the
Egyptian Hall as a freak of Nature?"
"No, sir, I shall not. But I will tell you what I did, if you will let
me replace him in his box, where he sits and works for Me. No harm
will come to him there, unless an airthquake happens. Sit down,
general, and you too, Mr. Dunquerque. Here is a box of cigars, which
ought to be good, and you will call for your own drink."
It was but twelve o'clock, and therefore early for revivers of any
sort. Finally, Mr. Beck ordered champagne.
"That drink," he said, "as you get it here, is a compound calculated
to inspirit Job in the thick of his misfortunes. But if there is any
other single thing you prefer, and it is to be had in this almighty
city, name that thing and you shall have it."
Then he began:
"I went off, after I left you, by the Pacific Railway--not the first
time I travelled up and down that line--and I landed in New York. Mr.
Colquhoun gave me a rig out, and you, sir,"--he nodded to Jack--"you,
sir, gave me the stamps to pay the ticket."
Jack, accused of this act of benevolence, naturally blushed a guilty
acknowledgment.
Mr. Gilead P. Beck made no reference to the gift either then or at any
subsequent period. Nor did he ever offer to repay it, even when he
discovered the slenderness of Jack's resources. That showed that he
was a sensitive and sympathetic man. To offer a small sum of money in
repayment of a free gift from an extraordinarily rich man to a very
poor one is not a delicate thing to do. Therefore this gentleman of
the backwoods abstained from doing it.
"New York City," he continued, "is not the village I should recommend
to a man without dollars in his pocket. London, where there is an
institootion, or a charity, or a hospital, or a workhouse, or a
hot-soup boiler in every street, is the city for that gentleman. Fiji,
p'r'aps, for one who has a yearning after bananas and black
civilisation. But not New York. No, gentlemen; if you go to New York,
let it be when you've made your pile, and not before. Then you will
find out that there air thirty theatres in the city, with lovely and
accomplished actresses in each, and you can walk into Delmonico's as
if the place belonged to you. But for men down on their luck, New York
is a cruel place.
"I left that city, and I made my way North. I wanted to see the old
folks I left behind long ago in Lexington; I found them dead, and I
was sorry. Then I went farther North. P'r'aps I was driven by the
yellow toy hanging at my back. Anyhow, it was only six weeks after I
left you that I found myself in the city of Limerick on Lake Ontario.
"You do not know the city of Limerick, I dare say. It was not famous,
nor was it pretty. In fact, gentlemen, it was the durndest misbegotten
location built around a swamp that ever called itself a city. There
were a few delooded farmers trying to persuade themselves that things
would look up; there were a few down-hearted settlers wondering why
they ever came there, and how they would get out again; and there were
a few log-houses in a row which called themselves a street.
"I got there, and I stayed there. Their carpenter was dead, and I am a
handy man; so I took his place. Then I made a few dollars doing chores
around."
"What are chores?"
"All sorts. The clocks were out of repair; the handles were coming off
the pails; the chairs were without legs; the pump-handle crank; the
very bell-rope in the meetin' house was broken. You never saw such a
helpless lot. I did not stay among them because I loved them, but
because I saw things."
"Ghosts?" asked Ladds, with an eye to the supernatural.
"No, sir. That was what they thought I saw when I went prowling around
by myself of an evening. They thought too that I was mad when I began
to buy the land. You could buy it for nothing; a dollar an acre; half
a dollar an acre; anything an acre. I've mended a cart-wheel for a
five-acre lot of swamp. They laughed at me. The children used to cry
out when I passed along, 'There goes mad Beck.' But I bought all I
could, and my only regret was that I couldn't buy up the hull
township--clear off men, women, and children, and start fresh. Some
more champagne, Mr. Dunquerque."
"What was the Golden Butterfly doing all this time?" asked Ladds.
"That faithful inseck, sir, was hanging around my neck, as when you
were first introduced to him. He was whisperin' and eggin' me on,
because he was bound to fulfil the old squaw's prophecy. Without my
knowing it, sir, that prodigy of the world, who is as alive as you are
at this moment, will go on whisperin' till such time as the rope's
played out and the smash comes. Then he'll be silent again."
He spoke with a solemn earnestness which impressed his hearers. They
looked at the fire-proof safe with a feeling that at any moment the
metallic insect might open the door, fly forth, and, after hovering
round the room, light at Mr. Beck's ear, and begin to whisper words of
counsel. Did not Mohammed have a pigeon? and did not Louis Napoleon at
Boulogne have an eagle? Why should not Mr. Beck have a butterfly.
"The citizens of Limerick, gentlemen, in that dismal part of Canada
where they bewail their miserable lives, air not a people who have
eyes to see, ears to hear, or brains to understand. I saw that they
were walking--no, sleeping--over fields of incalculable wealth, and
they never suspected. They smoked their pipes and ate their pork. But
they never saw and they never suspected. Between whiles they praised
the Lord for sending them a fool like me, something to talk about, and
somebody to laugh at. They wanted to know what was in the little box;
they sent children to peep in at my window of an evening and report
what I was doing. They reported that I was always doing the same
thing; always with a map of Limerick City and its picturesque and
interestin' suburbs, staking out the ground and reckoning up my acres.
That's what I did at night. And in the morning I looked about me, and
wondered where I should begin."
"What did you see when you looked about?"
"I saw, sir, a barren bog. If it had been a land as fertile as the
land of Canaan, that would not have made my heart to bound as it did
bound when I looked across that swamp; for I never was a tiller or a
lover of the soil. A barren bog it was. The barrenest, boggiest part
of it all was my claim; when the natives spoke of it they called it
Beck's Farm, and then the poor critturs squirmed in their chairs and
laughed. Yes, they laughed. Beck's Farm, they said. It was the only
thing they had to laugh about. Wal, up and down the face of that
almighty bog there ran creeks, and after rainy weather the water stood
about on the morasses. Plenty of water, but a curious thing, none of
it fit to drink. No living thing except man would set his lips to that
brackish, bad-smelling water. And that wasn't all; sometimes a thick
black slime rose to the surface of the marsh and lay there an inch
thick; sometimes you came upon patches of 'gum-beds,' as they called
them, where the ground was like tar, and smelt strong. That is what I
saw when I looked around, sir. And to think that those poor mean pork
raisers saw it all the same as I did and never suspected! Only cursed
the gifts of the Lord when they weren't laughing at Beck's Farm."
"And you found--what? Gold?"
"No. I found what I expected. And that was better than gold. Mind, I
say nothing against gold. Gold has made many a pretty little
fortune----"
"Little!"
"Little, sir. There's no big fortunes made out of gold. Though many a
pretty villa-location, with a tidy flower-garden up and down the
States, is built out of the gold-mines. Diamonds again. One or two men
likes the name of diamonds; but not many. There's the disadvantage
about gold and diamonds that you have to dig for them, and to dig
durned hard, and to dig by yourself mostly. Americans do not love
digging. Like the young gentleman in the parable, they cannot dig, and
to beg they air ashamed. It is the only occupation that they air
ashamed of. Then there's iron, and there's coals; but you've got to
dig for them. Lord! Lord! This great airth holds a hundred things
covered up for them who know how to look and do not mind digging. But,
gentlemen, the greatest gift the airth has to bestow she gave to
me--abundant, spontaneous, etarnal, without bottom, and free."
"And that is----"
"It is ILE."
Mr. Beck paused a moment. His face was lit with a real and genuine
enthusiasm, a pious appreciation of the choicer blessings of life;
those, namely, which enable a man to sit down and enjoy the proceeds
of other men's labour. No provision has been made in the prayer-book
of any Church for the expression of this kind of thankfulness. Yet
surely there ought to be somewhere a clause for the rich. No more
blissful repose can fall upon the soul than, after long years of
labour and failure, to sit down and enjoy the fruits of other men's
labour. A Form of Thanksgiving for publishers, managers of theatres,
owners of coal-mines, and such gentlemen as Mr. Gilead P. Beck, might
surely be introduced into our Ritual with advantage. It would
naturally be accompanied by incense.
"It is Ile, sir."
He opened another bottle of champagne and took a glass.
"Ile. Gold you have to dig, to pick, to wash. Gold means rheumatism
and a bent back. Ile flows, and you become suddenly rich. You make all
the loafers around fill your pails for you. And then your bankers tell
you how many millions of dollars you are worth."
"Millions!" repeated Jack. "The word sounds very rich and luxurious."
"It is so, sir. There's nothing like it in the Old Country. England is
a beautiful place, and London is a beautiful city. You've got many
blessin's in this beautiful city. If you haven't got Joe Tweed, you've
got----"
"Hush!" said Jack; "it's libellous to give names."
"And if you haven't got Erie stock and your whiskey-rings, you've got
your foreign bonds to take your surplus cash. No, gentlemen; London is
not, in some respects, much behind New York. But one thing this
country has not got, and that is--Ile.
"It is nearly a year since I made up my mind to begin my well. I
_knew_ it was there, because I'd been in Pennsylvania and learned
the signs; it was only the question whether I should strike it, and
where. The neighbours thought I was digging for water, and figured
around with their superior intellecks, because they were certain the
water would be brackish. Then they got tired of watching, and I worked
on. Boring a well is not quite the sort of work a man would select for
a pleasant and variegated occupation. I reckon it's monotonous; but I
worked on. I knew what was coming; I thought o' that Indian squaw, and
I always had my Golden Butterfly tied in a box at my back. I bored and
I bored. Day after day I bored. In that lonely miasmatic bog I bored
all day and best part of the night. For nothing came, and sometimes
qualms crossed my mind that perhaps there would never be anything. But
always there was the gummy mud, smelling of what I knew was below, to
lead me on.
"It was the ninth day, and noon. I had a shanty called the farmhouse,
about a hundred yards from my well. And there I was taking my dinner.
To you two young English aristocrats----"
"Ladds' Cocoa, the only perfect fragrance."
"Shut up, Ladds," growled Jack; "don't interrupt."
"I say, to you two young aristocrats a farmer's dinner in that
township would not sound luxurious. Mine consisted, on that day and
all days, of cold boiled pork and bread."
"Ah, yah!" said Jack Dunquerque, who had a proud stomach.
"Yes, sir, my own remark every day when I sat down to that simple
banquet. But when you are hungry you must eat, murmur though you will
for Egyptian flesh-pots. Cold pork was my dinner, with bread. And the
watter to wash it down with was brackish. In those days, gentlemen, I
said no grace. It didn't seem to me that the most straight-walking
Christian was expected to be more than tolerably thankful for cold
pork. My gratitude was so moderate that it wasn't worth offering."
"And while you were eating the pork," said Ladds, "the Golden
Butterfly flew down the shaft by himself, and struck oil of his own
accord."
"No, sir; for once you are wrong. That most beautiful creation of
Nature in her sweetest mood--she must have got up with the sun on a
fine summer morning--was reposing in his box round my neck as usual.
He did not go down the shaft at all. Nobody went down. But something
came up--up like a fountain, up like the bubbling over of the airth's
eternal teapot; a black muddy jet of stuff. Great sun! I think I see
it now."
He paused and sighed.
"It was nearly all Ile, pure and unadulterated, from the world's
workshop. Would you believe it, gentlemen? There were not enough
bar'ls, not by hundreds, in the neighbourhood all round Limerick City,
to catch that Ile. It flowed in a stream three feet down the creek; it
was carried away into the lake and lost; it ran free and uninterrupted
for three days and three nights. We saved what we could. The
neighbours brought their pails, their buckets, their basins, their
kettles; there was not a utensil of any kind that was not filled with
Ile, from the pig's trough to the child's pap-bowl. Not one. It ran
and it ran. When the first flow subsided we calculated that seven
million bar'ls had been wasted and lost. Seven millions! I am a
Christian man, and grateful to the Butterfly, but I sometimes repine
when I think of that wasted Ile. Every bar'l worth nine dollars at
least, and most likely ten. Sixty-three millions of dollars. Twelve
millions of pounds sterling lost in three days for want of a few
coopers. Did you ever think, Mr. Dunquerque, what you could do with
twelve millions sterling?"
"I never did," said Jack. "My imagination never got beyond thousands."
"With twelve millions I might have bought up the daily press of
England, and made you all republicans in a month. I might have made
the Panama Canal; I might have bought Palesteen and sent the Jews
back; I might have given America fifty ironclads; I might have put Don
Carlos on the throne of Spain. But it warn't to be. Providence wants
no rivals, meddling and messing. That was why the Ile ran away and was
lost while I ate the cold boiled pork. Perhaps it's an interestin'
fact that I never liked cold boiled pork before, and I have hated it
ever since.
"The great spurt subsided, and we went to work in earnest. That well
has continued to yield five hundred bar'ls daily. That is four
thousand five hundred dollars in my pocket every four and twenty
hours."
"Do you mean that your income is nine hundred pounds a day?" asked
Jack.
"I do, sir. You go your pile on that. It is more, but I do not know
how much more. Perhaps it's twice as much. There are wells of mine
sunk all over the place; the swamp is covered with Gilead P. Beck's
derricks. The township of Limerick has become the city of
Rockoleaville--my name, that was--and a virtuous and industrious
population are all engaged morning, noon, and night in fillin' my
pails. There's twenty-five bars, I believe, at this moment. There are
three meetin'-houses and two daily papers, and there air fifteen
lawyers."
"It seems better than Cocoa Nibs," said Ladds.
"But the oil may run dry."
"It _has_ run dry in Pennsylvania. That is so, and I do not deny
it. But Ile will not run dry in Rockoleaville. I have been thinking
over the geological problem, and I have solved it, all by myself."
"What is this world, gentlemen?"
"A round ball," said Jack, with the promptitude of a Board schoolboy
and the profundity of a Woolwich cadet.
"Sir, it is like a great orange. It has its outer rind, what they call
the crust. Get through that crust and what do you find?"
"More crust," replied Ladds, who was not a competition-wallah.
"Did you ever eat pumpkin-pie, sir?" Mr. Beck replied, _more
Socratico_, by asking another question. "And if you did, was your
pie all crust? Inside that pie, sir, was pumpkin, apple, and juice. So
inside the rind of the earth there may be all sorts of things: gold
and iron, lava, diamonds, coals; but the juice, the pie-juice, is Ile.
You tap the rind and you get the Ile. This Ile will run, I calculate,
for five thousand and fifty-two years, if they don't sinfully waste
it, at an annual consumption of eighteen million bar'ls. Now that's a
low estimate when you consider the progress of civilisation. When it
is all gone, perhaps before, this poor old airth will crack up like an
empty egg."
This was an entirely new view of geology, and it required time for Mr.
Beck's hearers to grasp the truth thus presented to their minds. They
were silent.
"At Rockoleaville," he went on, "I've got the pipe straight into the
middle of the pie, and right through the crust. There's no mistake
about that main shaft. Other mines may give out, but my Ile will run
for ever."
"Then we may congratulate you," said Jack, "on the possession of a
boundless fortune."
"You may, sir."
"And what do you intend to do?"
"For the present I shall stay in London. I like your great city. Here
I get invited to dinner and dancin', because I am an American and
rich. There they won't have a man who is not thoroughbred. Your friend
Mrs. Cassilis asks me to her house--a first-rater. A New York lady
turns up her pretty nose at a man who's struck Ile. 'Shoddy,' she
says, and then she takes no more notice. Shoddy it may be. Rough my
manners may be. But I don't pretend to anything, and the stamps air
real."
"We always thought ourselves exclusive," said Jack.
"Did you, sir? Wall----" He stopped, as if he had intended to say
something unpleasantly true. "I shall live in London for the present.
I've got a big income, and I don't rightly know what to do with it.
But I shall find out some time.
"That was a lovely young thing with Mrs. Cassilis the other night," he
went on meditatively. "A young thing that a man can worship for her
beauty while she is young, and her goodness all her life. Not like an
American gal. Ours are prettier, but they look as if they would blow
away. And their voices are not so full. Miss Fleming is flesh and
blood. Don't blush, Mr. Dunquerque, because it does you credit."
Jack did blush, and they took their departure.
"Mr. Dunquerque," whispered Gilead P. Beck when Ladds was through the
door, "think of what I told you; what is mine is yours. Remember that.
If I can do anything for you, let me know. And come to see me. It does
me good to look at your face. Come here as often as you can."
Jack laughed and escaped.