The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [216]
Washington had heard little of this. The first reference to Laura’s trial had brought the old dejection to his face again, and he stood gazing out of the window at nothing, lost in reverie.
There was a knock—the postman handed in a letter. It was from Obedstown, East Tennessee, and was for Washington. He opened it. There was a note saying that enclosed he would please find a bill for the current year’s taxes on the 75,000 acres of Tennessee Land belonging to the estate of Silas Hawkins, deceased, and added that the money must be paid within sixty days or the land would be sold at public auction for the taxes, as provided by law. The bill was for $180—something more than twice the market value of the land, perhaps.
Washington hesitated. Doubts flitted through his mind. The old instinct came upon him to cling to the land just a little longer and give it one more chance. He walked the floor feverishly, his mind tortured by indecision. Presently he stopped, took out his pocket book and counted his money. Two hundred and thirty dollars—it was all he had in the world.
“One hundred and eighty . . . . . . . from two hundred and thirty,” he said to himself. “Fifty left . . . . . . It is enough to get me home . . . . . . . Shall I do it, or shall I not? . . . . . . . I wish I had somebody to decide for me.”
The pocket book lay open in his hand, with Louise’s small letter in view. His eye fell upon that, and it decided him.
“It shall go for taxes,” he said, “and never tempt me or mine any more!”
He opened the window and stood there tearing the tax bill to bits and watching the breeze waft them away, till all were gone.
“The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!” he said. “Let us go.”
The baggage wagon had arrived; five minutes later the two friends were mounted upon their luggage in it, and rattling off toward the station, the Colonel endeavoring to sing “Homeward Bound,” a song whose words he knew, but whose tune, as he rendered it, was a trial to auditors.
CHAPTER 62
Gedi kanadiben tsannawa.
—La xalog, la xamaih mi-x-ul nu qiza u quïal gih, u quïal agab?
RABINAL-ACHI.
Philip Sterling’s circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was considerably beyond where the coal vein should pass (according to all his calculations) if there were a coal vein there; and so, every foot that the tunnel now progressed seemed to carry it further away from the object of the search.
Sometimes he ventured to hope that he had made a mistake in estimating the direction which the vein should naturally take after crossing the valley and entering the hill. Upon such occasions he would go into the nearest mine on the vein he was hunting for, and once more get the bearings of the deposit and mark out its probable course; but the result was the same every time; his tunnel had manifestly pierced beyond the natural point of junction; and then his spirits fell a little lower. His men had already lost faith, and he often overheard them saying it was perfectly plain that there was no coal in the hill.
Foremen and laborers from neighboring mines, and no end of experienced loafers from the village, visited the tunnel from time to time, and their verdicts were always the same and always disheartening—“No coal in that hill.” Now and then Philip would sit down and think it all over and wonder what the mystery meant; then he would go into the tunnel and ask