RICH MEN’S QUARRELS.
My father was himself again. He was clothed in his right mind once
more. He even appeared to have forgotten that I had emptied the
bottle the day before, and treated me as kindly as though nothing had
occurred to mar the unity which had always subsisted between us. My
mother seemed to be quite happy, too; and, while I was at work in the
garden, she told me she had talked till daylight with him, after his
return from Colonel Wimpleton’s. He had bitterly bewailed his error,
and solemnly promised not to taste another drop of liquor. He was
conscious that he had lost his twenty-four hundred dollars by getting
intoxicated, and he had very little hope of ever seeing it again.
More than this, my mother had explained my conduct to him, and he
was satisfied with it. The night visit of Waddie, and the colonel’s
unreasonable harshness to him, had probably done more to convince him
than any words of my mother. He had lost his situation, and had been
treated with gross injustice, for the great man would not accept his
explanation of the blow he had given his son.
“Wolf,” said my father, after he had granted me permission to accept
Major Toppleton’s offer, “I am afraid we shall soon be in trouble all
round.”
“I hope not.”
“If I had the money to pay off the mortgage on the house, I should not
care so much. As it is, I may lose even the thousand dollars I have
paid on it. The colonel will foreclose on me at once, and people here
will not dare to bid when it is put up at auction, if he tells them not
to do so.”
“I heard you say you had an offer of thirty-five hundred dollars for
the place.”
“So I had; Bingham offered that for it.”
“I would go to him, and take the offer at once.”
“What, sell the place?”
“Yes; you can pay off the mortgage, and then have fifteen hundred
left.”
“That’s a good idea,” replied my father. “But I don’t know that Bingham
will give thirty-five hundred now.”
“I would try him, at any rate. I think we had better move out of
Centreport.”
“Perhaps it would be as well, after what has happened,” said he, in
deep thought. “I will see what can be done.”
My father hastened to the village to see Bingham, and soon after I
pulled across the lake to report for duty to Major Toppleton. I was
shown into his elegant library; but I found the magnate of Middleport
in violent wrath.
“I have called, sir, to say that I will accept the offer you were so
kind as to make to me yesterday,” I began, with the utmost deference.
“Very well, boy, I am a man of honor, which cannot be said of every
man who lives on the other side of the lake,”--by which, of course, he
meant Colonel Wimpleton,--“and I will keep my agreement; but if the
business were to be done over again, I wouldn’t have anything to do
with a person from Centreport.”
“I’m sorry you think so hard of us, sir,” I ventured to reply. “I
will do the very best I can for you; and I hope we shall not live in
Centreport much longer.”
“Well, I don’t know that I need to blame you for what Wimpleton does.
He is a mean man, and his soul is smaller than a mosquito’s. This
morning the old rascal sent his agent over here to offer the engineer
of my flour mills twenty dollars a month more than he is getting now.
The villain was paid up to last night, and left without giving me any
notice, and my mills are all stopped.”
Major Toppleton walked the library in a violent rage, and I waited for
further developments before I dared to speak.
“He hired my engineer away from me, I’m told, because I employed you,”
added the magnate, pausing before me.
“I’m very sorry I made any trouble,” I answered, diffidently.
“You didn’t make it. I only wonder how Wimpleton was my friend for so
many years. He omits no opportunity to stab me when he gets a chance.
I suppose he is gloating over it now because no smoke rises from my
mills.”
“Do you want an engineer, sir?” I had the audacity to ask at this
opportune moment.
“Of course I do. Wimpleton sent over for mine solely to vex me, and I
would give a thousand dollars to be even with him this moment.”
“I can run the engine of your mills,” I replied.
“You?”
“Yes, sir; I have run the Centreport mills for a week at a time.”
“But I want you on the dummy.”
“I will bring you an engineer, then, in an hour. What wages will you
give, sir?”
“I will give the same that Wimpleton pays the man he stole from
me--eighty dollars a month, and engage him for a year.”
“I will have him here in one hour, sir.”
“But who is he?”
“My father, sir.”
“Oh, ho!”
“Colonel Wimpleton discharged him before daylight this morning.”
“Then I am to take a man whom Wimpleton has discharged, and pay him
twenty dollars more than he was having before.”
“He discharged my father in order to punish him,” I replied; and then I
told him the sequel to the story I had related the day before.
“Very good! Excellent! I will help Wimpleton punish your father by
giving him eighty dollars a month, which is twenty dollars more than
any engineer ought to have. Go for him at once.”
I never pulled across the lake so quickly before as I did then. I found
my father at home; he had just returned from his visit to Bingham.
“Back so soon, Wolf?” said he; and he looked quite sad.
“Yes, sir. Did you see Bingham?”
“I did; but it’s too late. He has heard of the quarrel, and won’t buy
the house at any price. It will go hard with me, I’m afraid.”
“Never mind, father. It will come out right in the end, I know.”
“What did you come back for?”
“Major Toppleton wants you, and will engage you for a year, at eighty
dollars a month,” I replied, with proper enthusiasm.
“Eighty dollars!”
I explained what Colonel Wimpleton had done, and what Major Toppleton
wished to do.
“He wants you right off, this minute,” I added.
“I’m all ready.”
“When rich men quarrel, poor men ought to profit by it, if they can do
so honestly,” I suggested.
“The colonel will be the maddest man this side of the north pole, when
he hears of my good fortune,” said my father.
“I dare say he will, for it appears that he has only discharged you to
open the way to a much better position.”
“Exactly so!” exclaimed my father, delighted with the situation. “If
rich men will be fools, we cannot help it, as you say, Wolf.”
My father took the bundle of old clothes he had just brought from the
mill; and we went down to the wharf, where we embarked in the skiff for
the other side of the lake.
“If you could only sell the place, father, we might move over to
Middleport at once,” said I, pulling with all my might at the oars.
“I don’t think I can do it. By this time everybody knows that the
colonel has quarrelled with me, and no one will run the risk of
offending him by buying it,” replied my father. “I hope Mortimer will
catch Christy, and get back part of my money, if not the whole of it.”
We landed in Middleport, and hastened to the mansion of the major. He
was ever so much better humored than when I had called upon him before.
He had evidently considered the nature of the victory he had won over
his powerful rival, for he had certainly cheated the colonel out of his
revenge upon my father, and practically nullified his punishment. He
appeared to be duly comforted.
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Penniman,” said he, graciously, as my father
bowed low to him.
“I am very grateful to you for your kind offer, sir, and I accept it
thankfully,” replied my father.
“I wish to see the smoke rising from the chimney of the mill at once,”
added the major, briskly. “I want Wimpleton to understand that he can’t
shut me up. Go to the mill, and get up steam as fast as you can;
and the more smoke you make, the better, for that will be my sign of
triumph.”
“I’ll fire up at once,” replied my father, leaving the room, and
hastening to his work.
Young and inexperienced as I was, I could not help feeling sad at this
exhibition of malignity on the part of the rich man of Middleport.
The colonel had taken the opportunity afforded by the dismissal of my
father to strike his rival in a tender place. It was mean; but such
was the character of the dealings between them, when they had any. The
major rubbed his hands with delight, and paced the library under the
exhilaration of the moment. It was a pity that these men, with such
vast means of doing good within their grasp, should quarrel with each
other, and debase and demoralize a whole neighborhood by their actions.
“Well, Mr. Penniman, I suppose you are ready to go to work,” said the
major, pausing before me after a time.
Mr. Penniman! I felt an inch taller to have a handle applied to my name
by such a magnificent man.
“Yes, sir; I am waiting for orders.”
“I suppose you think that dummy isn’t much of an engine,” he added,
with a very pleasant smile upon his face.
“I think it works very well, sir.”
“I dare say you do; but I want to say, a thing like that is not the
height of our ambition,” he continued, rubbing his hands under the
influence of some undeveloped idea.
“I’m sure I shouldn’t wish for anything better than the dummy.”
“It answers very well to begin with; but I have a regular locomotive
and two cars in process of building, and I shall have them on the track
this fall.”
“Is it a big locomotive?” I asked, curiously.
“No, it’s a small one; and it will be the prettiest plaything you ever
saw. I’m determined that the Toppleton Institute shall be the most
popular one in the country.”
“I suppose Colonel Wimpleton will do something to offset this movement
on your part,” I suggested.
“What can he do?” asked the major, anxiously. “Have you heard of
anything?”
“No, sir. I only know they feel very bad about the Lake Shore Railroad
over there.”
“They will feel worse before we get through with it,” replied the
magnate, shaking his head. “What can they do? They can’t build a
railroad, the country is so rough. We can keep ahead of them now. But
I want that dummy in motion. You must run it every half hour for the
rest of the day between Middleport and Spangleport. Carry everybody who
wishes to ride. I want the Centreport people to see it, and to know
that we are alive on this side.”
“Will the students be with me?” I inquired.
“This afternoon, when they are dismissed from the school-room, they
will be. I will send you a conductor. Let me see; Higgins is too sick
to study, and just sick enough to play. He shall run with you. Now keep
her going, as though you meant business.”
“I will, sir; I will put her through by daylight,” I replied, as I left
the library.