The Brick Moon and Other Stories Part 26

"It is now Wednesday. Let us start Sat.u.r.day for Memphis, take a cheap boat to New Orleans, go thence to Vera Cruz by steamer, explore the ground, buy the houses if we like, and return by the time we can do without fires next spring. Our board will cost less than it would here, for it is there the beef comes from. And the thousand dollars will pay the fares both ways."

The women, with one voice, cried, "And the children?"

"Oh yes," cried the eager adventurer. "I had forgotten the children. Well, they are all well, are they not?"

Yes; all were well.

"Then we will take them with us as far as Yellow Springs, in Ohio, and leave them for the fall and winter terms at Antioch College. They will be enough better taught than they are at the Kydd School, and they will get no scarlet fever. n.o.body is ever sick there. They will be better cared for than my children are when they are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles nearer to us than if they were here. The little ones can go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy, and the oldest can go to college. How many are there, Felix?"

Felix said there were twenty-nine.

"Well," said the arithmetical George, "it is the cheapest place I ever knew. Why, their Seniors get along for three hundred dollars a year, and squeeze more out of life than I do out of twenty thousand. The little ones won't cost at that rate. A hundred and fifty dollars for twenty-nine children; how much is that, Polly?"

"Forty-three hundred and fifty dollars, of course,"

said she.

"I thought so. Well, don't you see, we shall save that in wages to these servants we are boarding here, of whom there are eleven, who cost us, say, six dollars a week; that is, sixty-six dollars for twenty weeks is thirteen hundred and twenty dollars. We won't buy any clothes, but live on the old ones, and make the children wear their big brothers' and sisters'. There's a saving of thirty-seven hundred dollars for thirty-seven of us.

Why, we shall make money! I tell you what, if you'll do it, I'll pay all the bills till we come home. If you like, you shall then each pay me three-quarters of your last winter's accounts, and I'll charge any difference to profit and loss. But I shall make by the bargain."

The women doubted if they could be ready. But it proved they could. Still they did not start Sat.u.r.day; they started Monday, in two palace-cars. They left the children, all delighted with the change, at Antioch on Wednesday--a little tempted to spend the winter there themselves; but, this temptation well resisted, they sped on to Mexico.

CHAPTER III

FULFILMENT

Such a tranquil three days on the Mississippi, which was as an autumn flood, and revealed himself as indeed King of Waters! Such delightful three days in hospitable New Orleans! Might it not be possible to tarry even here? "No," cried the inexorable George.

"We have put our hand to the plough. Who will turn back?" Two days of abject wretchedness on the Gulf of Mexico. "Why were we born? Why did we not die before we left solid land?" And then the light-house at Vera Cruz.

"Lo, land! and all was well."

What a splendid city! Why had n.o.body told them of this queen on the sea-sh.o.r.e? Red and white towers, cupolas, battlements! It was all like a story-book.

When they landed, to be sure, it was not quite so big a place as they had fancied from all this show; but for this they did not care. To land--that was enough. Had they landed on a sand-spit, they would have been in heaven. No more swaying to and fro as they lay in bed, no more stumbling to and fro as they walked. They refused the amazed Mexicans who wanted them to ride to the hotel. To walk steadily was in itself a luxury.

And then it was not long before the men had selected the little caravan of horses and mules which were to carry them on their expedition of discovery. Some valley of paradise, where a man could change his climate from midwinter to midsummer by a journey of a mile. Did the consul happen to have heard of any such valley?

Had he heard of them? He had heard of fifty.

He had not, indeed, heard of much else. How could he help hearing of them?

Could the consul, then, recommend one or two valleys which might be for sale? Or was it, perhaps, impossible to buy a foothold in such an Eden?

For sale! There was nothing in the country, so far as the friend knew to whom the consul presented them, which was not for sale. Anywhere in Queretaro; or why should they not go to the Baxio? No; that was too flat and too far off. There were pretty places round Xalapa.

Oh, plenty of plantations for sale. But they need not go so far. Anywhere on the rise of Chiquihiti.

Was the friend quite sure that there were no plumbers in the regions he named?

"Never a plumber in Mexico."

Any life-insurance men?

"Not one." The prudent friend did not add, "Risk too high."

Were the public schools graded schools or district schools?

"Not a public school in six provinces."

Would the neighbors be offended if we do not call?

"Cut your throats if you did."

Did the friend think there would be many tramps?

The friend seemed more doubtful here, but suggested that the occasional use of a six-shooter reduced the number, and gave a certain reputation to the premises where it was employed which diminished much tramping afterward, and said that the law did not object to this method.

They returned to a dinner of fish, for which Vera Cruz is celebrated. "If what the man says be true," said Ingham, "we must be very near heaven."

It was now in November. Oh, the glory of that ride, as they left Vera Cruz and through a wilderness of color jogged slowly on to their new paradise!

"Through Eden four glad couples took their way."

Higher and higher. This wonder and that. Not a blade of gra.s.s such as they ever saw before, not a chirping cricket such as they ever heard before; a hundred bright-winged birds, and not one that they had ever seen before. Higher and higher. Trees, skies, clouds, flowers, beasts, birds, insects, all new and all lovely.

The final purchase was of one small plantation, with a house large enough for a little army, yet without a stair. Oranges, lemons, pomegranates, mangoes, bananas, pine-apples, coffee, sugar--what did not ripen in those perennial gardens? Half a mile above there were two smaller houses belonging to the same estate; half a mile above, another was purchased easily. This was too cold to stay in in November, but in June and July and August the temperature would be sixty-six, without change.

They sent back the mules. A telegram from Vera Cruz brought from Boston, in fifteen days, the best books in the world, the best piano in the world, a few boxes of colors for the artists, a few reams of paper, and a few dozen of pencils for the men. And then began four months of blessed life. Never a gas-bill nor a water-leak, never a crack in the furnace nor a man to put in coal, never a request to speak for the benefit of the Fenians, never the necessity of attending at a primary meeting.

The ladies found in their walks these gentle Mexican children, simple, happy, civil, and with the strange idea that the object for which life is given is that men may live. They came home with new wealth untold every day-- of ipomoea, convolvulus, pa.s.sion-flowers, and orchids.

The gentlemen brought back every day a new species, even a new genus,--a new ill.u.s.tration of evolution, or a new mystery to be accounted for by the law of natural selection. Night was all sleep; day was all life.

Digestion waited upon appet.i.te; appet.i.te waited upon exercise; exercise waited upon study; study waited upon conversation; conversation waited upon love. Could it be that November was over? Can life run by so fast? Can it be that Christmas has come? Can we let life go by so fast? Is it possible that it is the end of January? We cannot let life go so fast. Really, is this St.

Valentine's Day! When ever did life go so fast?

And with the 1st of March the mules were ordered, and they moved to the next higher level. The men and women walked. And there, on the grade of a new climate, they began on a new botany, on new discoveries, and happy life found new forms as they began again.

So sped April and so sped May. Life had its battles,--oh yes, because it was life. But they were not the pettiest of battles. They were not the battles of prisoners shut up, to keep out the weather, in cells fifteen feet square. They fought, if they fought, with G.o.d's air in their veins, and G.o.d's warm suns.h.i.+ne around them, and G.o.d's blue sky above them. So they did what they could, as they wrote and read and drew and painted, as they walked and ran and swam and rode and drove, as they encouraged this peon boy and taught that peon girl, smoothed this old woman's pillow and listened to that old man's story, as they a.n.a.lyzed these wonderful flowers, as they tasted these wonderful fruits, as they climbed these wonderful mountains, or, at night, as they pointed the telescope through this cloudless and stainless sky.

With all their might they lived. And they were so many, and there were so many round them to whom their coming was a new life, that they lived in love, and every day drank in of the infinite elixir.

But June came. The mules are sent for again. Again they walked a quarter of a mile. And here in the little whitewashed cottage, with only a selection from the books below, with two guitars and a flute in place of the piano,--here they made ready for three weeks of June.

Only three weeks; for on the 29th was the Commencement at Antioch, and Jane and Walter and Florence were to take their degrees. There would need five days from Vera Cruz to reach them. And so this summer was to be spent in the North with them, before October should bring all the children and the parents to the land of the open sky. Three busy weeks between the 1st and the 22d, in which all the pictures must be finished, Ingham's novel must be revised, Haliburton's articles completed, the new invention for measuring power must be gauged and tested, the dried flowers must be mounted and packed, the preserved fruits must be divided for the Northern friends. Three happy weeks of life eventful, but life without crowding, and, above all, without interruption.

"Think of it," cried Felix, as they took their last walk among the lava crags, the door-bell has not rung all this last winter.'"

"'This happy old king On his gate he did swing, Because there was never a door-bell to ring.'"

This was Julia's impromptu reply.

CHAPTER IV