This is Section eighteen of The Gilded Age. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Gilded Age, A Tale of to Day by Mark Twain and C. D. Warner, Chapter eighteen. Eight years have passed since the death of mister Hawkins. Eight years are not many in the life of a nation or the history of a state, but they may be years of destiny that shall fix the current of the century. Following. Such years were those that
followed the Little Scrimmage on Lexington Common. Such years were those that followed the double shotted demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter. History is never done with inquiring of these years, and summoning witnesses about them, and trying to
understand their significance. The eight years in America from eighteen sixty to eighteen sixty eight uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short
of two or three generations. As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of providence, the life of the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race. But who can say, in the broader view and the more intelligent weight of values, that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not seem more significant than the
overturning of any human institution whatever. When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama. What capacity she has of purity, tenderness, goodness, What capacities of vileness,
bitterness and evil nature? Must needs be lavish with the mother and creator of men and center in her all the possibilities of life, and a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple, or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine. There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising much, nor of falling much, and of whom a conventional life saves
from any special development of character. But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the power of fascination, a power that may indeed exist without beauty. She had will and pride, and courage and ambition, and she was left to be very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little object on which to
discipline themselves. The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul, none of those about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything unusual or romantic or strange. Those were troublous days in Hawkeye, as well as in most other Missouri towns, days of confusion, when between Unionist and Confederate occupations, sudden maraudings and bushwhackings and raids, individuals escaped observation or comment in actions that
would have filled the town with scandal and quiet times. Fortunately, we only need to deal with Laura's life at this period historically, and look back upon such portions of it as will serve to reveal the woman as he was. At the time of the arrival of mister Harry Brierly
in Hawkeye. The Hawkins family were settled there and had a hard enough struggle with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with their own family pride, and the large expectations they secretly cherished of a fortune in the knobs of East Tennessee. How pinched they were, perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole support. Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away occasionally by some tremendous speculation,
from which he invariably returned to General Boswell's office. As poor as he went, he was the inventor of No one knew how many useless contrivances which were not worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning to no purpose, until he was now a man of
about thirty, without a profession or a permanent occupation. A tall, brown haired, dreamy person of the best intents and a frailist resolution, probably However, the eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the coming of enormous wealth. He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war and was not
wanting encourage. But he would have been a better soldier if he had been less engaged in contrivances for circumventing the enemy by strategy unknown to the books. It happened to him to be captured in one of his self appointed expeditions, but the federal colonel released him after a short examination, satisfied that he could most injure the Confederate forces opposed to the Unionists by returning him to his regiment. Colonel Sellars was, of course a prominent man during the war.
He was captain of the Home Guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when on the strength of a rumor, he executed a flank movement and fortified Stone's Landing, a place which no one unacquainted with the country would be likely to find. Dad, said the colonel afterwards. The landing is the key to Upper Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured. If other places had been defended as well as that was,
the result would have been different. Sir. The Colonel had his own theories about war, as he had in other things. If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said, the South never would have been conquered, for what would there have been to conquer. Mister jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the Confederate Army, but Colonel Sellers said no, his duty was
at home, and he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo, which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri and the city of Saint Louis itself. His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly missiles, attach it to a balloon, and then let it sail away over the hostile camp and explode at the right
moment when the time fuse burned out. He intended to use this invention in the capture of Saint Louis, exploding his torpedoes over the city and reigning destruction upon it until the Army of Occupation would gladly capitulate. He was unable to procure the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would have answered the purpose. But the first one prematurely exploded in his wood house, blowing it
clean away and setting fire to his house. The neighbors helped him put out the conflagration, but they discouraged any more experiments of that sort. The patriotical gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot the exact spots of danger that people were afraid to travel the highways and used to come to town across the fields. The colonel's motto was millions for defense, but not one cent
for tribute. When Laura came to Hawkeye, she might have forgot gotten the annoyances of the gossips of Murphysburg and have outlived the bitterness that was growing in her heart if she had been thrown less upon herself, or if the surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful. But she had little society, less and less as she
grew older. That was congenial to her, and her mind preyed upon itself, and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. She was proud, and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came in her
way and whom she despised. There was another world open to her, a world of books, but it was not the best world of that sort, for the small libraries she had access to in Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous and largely made up of romances and fictions, which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism.
From these stories, she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture, joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in society. As she read of it, and along with these ideas she imbibed other very crude ones.
In regard to the emancipation of women. There were also other books, histories, biographies of distinguished people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed and appropriated therefrom what was to her liking. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much, or after a fashion, studied so diligently as Laura. She passed for an accomplished girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was judged
by any standard near her. During the war, there came to Hawkeye Confederate officer Colonel Selby, who was stationed there for a time in command of that district. He was a handsome soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed, and it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and adventure. To find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a piece of good luck,
upon which Colonel Selby congratulated himself. He was studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which she was accustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen one before. One so high bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in conversation, so engaging in manner. It is a long story. Unfortunately, it is an old story, and it need not be dwelt on. Laura loved him and believed that his love for her
was as pure and deep as her own. She worshiped him and would have counted her life a little thing to give him if he would only love her and let her feed the hunger of her heart upon him. The passion possessed her whole being and lifted her up till she seemed to walk on air. It was all true, then, the romances she had read, the bliss of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how
blithes in the world was, how jockuned with love. The birds sang it, the trees whispered it to her as she passed. The very flowers beneath her feet strewed the way as for a bridal march. When the colonel went away, they were engaged to be married as soon as he could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary,
and quit the army. He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the service longer than he had expected, but that it would not be more than a few months. Then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago, where he had property, and should have business, either now or as soon as the war was over, which he thought could not last long. Meantime,
why should they be separated. He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she could find company and join him, they would be married and gain so many more months of happiness. Was woman ever prudent when she loved Laura went to Harding, the neighbors supposed to Nurse Washington, who had fallen ill there. Her engagement was of course known in Hawkeye, and was
indeed a matter of pride to her family. Missus Hawkins would have told the first inquirer that Laura had gone to be married, but Laura had cautioned her she did not want to be thought of, she said as going in search of a husband. Let the news come back after she was married. So she traveled to Harding on the pretense we have mentioned, and was married. She was married, But something must have happened on that very day or
the next that alarmed her. Washington did not know then or after what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it. Whatever cruel, suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away and not let it cloud her happiness.
Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor frequent between the remote Confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and Laura was in a measure lost sight of Indeed, every one had troubles enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors. Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did
not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but her sense of possession of her idol. Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered south and must go within two hours. I can be ready, said Laura cheerfully. But I can't take you. You must go back to Hawkeye. Can't take me,
Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. I can't live without you. You said, oh, bother what I said, and the colonel took up his sword to buckle it on, and then continued coolly. The fact is, Laura, our romance is played out. Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried, George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go anywhere with you. I will wait anywhere. I can't go back to Hawkeye. Well go where you like, perhaps, continued he with a sneer.
You would do as well to wait here for another colonel. Laura's brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. What does this mean? Where are you going? It means, said the officer, in measured words, that you haven't anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New Orleans. It's a lie, George, it's a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall follow you to New Orleans. Perhaps my wife might not like it. Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire. She tried to utter a cry.
And fell senseless on the floor. When she came to herself, the colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands of the only man she had ever loved. She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his mother. No one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the engagement with Colonel Selby had
fallen through. Laura was ill for a long time, but she re covered. She had that resolution in her that could conquer death almost and with her health came back her beauty and an added fascination of something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil? A beauty that shines out in the face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenchi From her guilt or her innocence, Laura
was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart. That was all. End of Chapter eighteen