CHAPTER XVIII
Just before the breaking out of the Civil War, Delisleville had been provided with a sensation in a piece of singularly unexpected good fortune which befell one of its most prominent citizens. It was indeed good fortune, wearing somewhat the proportions of a fairy tale, and that such things could happen in Delisleville and to a citizen who possessed its entire approval was considered vaguely to the credit of the town.
One of the facts which had always been counted as an added dignity to the De Willoughbys had been their well-known possession of property in land. “Land” was always felt to be dignified, and somehow it seemed additionally so when it gained a luxuriously superfluous character by merely lying in huge, uncultivated tracts, and representing nothing but wide areas and taxes.
“Them big D’Willerbys of D’lisleville owns thousands of acres as never brings ’em a cent,” Mr. Stamps had said to his friends at the Cross-roads at the time Big Tom had first appeared among them. It was Mr. Stamps who had astutely suggested that the stranger was possibly “kin” to the Delisleville family, and in his discreet pursuit of knowledge he had made divers discoveries.
“’Twarn’t Jedge D’Willerby bought the land,” he went on to explain, “‘n’ it seems like he would hev bin a fool to hev done it, bein’ as ’tain’t worked an’ brings in nothin’. But ye never know how things may turn out. ’Twas the Jedge’s gran’father, old Isham D’Willerby bought it fer a kinder joke. Some said he was blind drunk when he done it, but he warn’t so drunk but what he got a cl’ar title, an’ he got it mighty cheap too. Folks ses as he use ter laugh an’ say he war goin’ to find gold on it, but he never dug fer none—nor fer crops nuther, an’ thar it lies to-day in the mountains, an’ no one goin’ nigh it.”
In truth, Judge De Willoughby merely paid his taxes upon it from a sense of patriarchal pride.
“My ancestor bought it,” he would say. “I will hand it to my sons. In England it would be an estate for an earldom, here it means merely tax-paying. Still, I shall not sell it.”
Nobody, in fact, would have been inclined to buy it in those days. But there came a time when its value increased hour by hour in the public mind, until it was almost beyond computation.
A chance visitor from the outside world made an interesting discovery. On this wild tract of hill and forest was a vein of coal so valuable that, to the practical mind of the discoverer, the Judge’s unconsciousness of its existence was amazing. He himself was a practical, driving, business schemer from New York. He knew the value of what he saw, and the availability of the material in consequence of a certain position in which the mines lay. Before he left Delisleville he had explained this with such a presenting of facts that the Judge had awakened to an enthusiasm as Southern as his previous indifference had been. He had no knowledge of business methods; he had practised his profession in a magnificent dilettante sort of way which had worn an imposing air and impressed his clients, and, as he was by inheritance a comparatively rich man, he had not been driven by necessity to alter his methods. The sudden prospect of becoming a multimillionaire excited him. He made Napoleonic plans, and was dignified and eloquent.
“Why should I form a company?” he said. “If I am willing to make the first ventures myself, the inevitable returns of profit will do the rest, and there will be no complications. The De Willoughby Mine will be the De Willoughby Mine alone. I prefer that it should be so.”