In the various crises of political excitement in Hamlin County he had taken the part of an unbiassed but humorous observer, and in that character had gained much experience of a primitive kind. What he had been led chiefly to remark in connection with the “great republic” was that the majesty and spotlessness of its intentions were not invariably realised by mere human units.
“Well,” he said, as he took down his valise from the rack, “we’re coming in here pretty well fixed for leaving the place millionaires. If we had only fifteen cents in our pockets, it would be a dead sure thing, according to all the biographers I ever read. The only thing against us is that we have a little more—but it’s not enough to spoil our luck, that I’ll swear.”
He was not without reason in the statement. Few voyagers on the ocean of chance could have dared the journey with less than they had in their possession.
“What we’ve got to do,” he had said to Rupert, “is to take care of Sheba. We two can rough it.”
They walked through the awakening city, finding it strange and bare with its broad avenues and streets ill-paved, bearing traces everywhere of the tragedy of war through which it had passed. The public buildings alone had dignity; for the rest, it wore a singularly provincial and uncompleted aspect; its plan was simple and splendid in its vistas and noble spaces, but the houses were irregular and without beauty of form; negro shanties huddled against some of the most respectable, and there were few whose windows or doors did not announce that board and lodging might be obtained within. There was no look of well-being or wealth anywhere; the few equipages in the streets had seen hard service; the people who walked were either plainly dressed or shabby genteel; about the doors of the principal hotels there were groups of men who wore, most of them, dispirited or anxious faces. Ten years later the whole aspect of the place was changing, but at this time it was passing through a period of natural fatigue and poverty, and was not an inspiring spectacle to penniless new-comers.
“It reminds me a little of Delisleville, after all,” said Rupert.
Beyond the more frequented quarters of the town, they found broad, unkempt, and as yet unlevelled avenues and streets, where modest houses straggled, perched on high banks with an air of having found themselves there quite by accident. The banks were usually grass-covered, and the white picket fences enclosed bits of ground where scant fruit-trees and disorderly bushes grew; almost every house possessed a porch, and almost every porch was scrambled over by an untidy honeysuckle or climbing rose which did its best to clothe with some grace the dilapidated woodwork and the peeled and blistered paint.
Before one of these houses Tom stopped to look at a lopsided sign in the little garden, which announced that rooms were to be rented within.
“Perhaps we can find something here,” he said, “that may suit the first ventures of millionaires. It’s the sort of thing that will appeal to the newspaper man who writes the thing up; ‘First home of the De Willoughbys when they arrived in Washington to look up their claim.’ It’ll make a good woodcut to contrast with ‘The great De Willoughby mansion in Fifth Avenue. Cost five hundred thousand!’”
They mounted the wooden steps built into the bank and knocked at the door. Rupert and Sheba exchanged glances with a little thrill. They were young enough to feel a sort of excitement even in taking this first modest step.