East Angels: A Novel. Woolson Constance Fenimore

and for the life of him he could not rid himself of the idea that he ought to go out and cover his poor old father, lying there helpless under the snow, with something thick and warm. He roused himself with an effort, he knew that these were unhealthy fancies; he made up his mind that he would go away for a while, the under-superintendent could see to the foundery during his absence, which would not, of course, be long. But the next day he learned that he could remain away for as long a time as he pleased – he had inherited nearly a million.

      It was a great surprise. Andrew Winthrop had so successfully concealed the amount of his fortune that Evert had supposed that the foundery, and the income that came from it, a moderate one, together with the old house to live in, would be all. Andrew Winthrop's intention in this concealment had been to bestow upon his son, so far as he could, during his youth, a personal knowledge of life as seen from the side of earning one's own living – a knowledge which can never be acquired at second-hand, and which he considered inestimable, giving to a man juster views of himself and his fellow-men than anything else can.

      In the nine years that had passed since his father's death Evert had, as has been stated, quadrupled the fortune he had inherited.

      It was said – by the less successful – that Chance, Luck, and Opportunity had all favored him. It was perhaps Chance that had led the elder Winthrop in the beginning to invest some hundreds of dollars in wild lands on the shore of Lake Superior – though even that was probably foresight. But as for Luck, she is generally nothing but clear-headedness. And Opportunity offers herself, sooner or later, to almost all; it is only that so few of us recognize her, and seize the advantages she brings. Winthrop had been aided by two things; one was capital to begin with; the other a perfectly untrammelled position. He had no one to think of but himself.

      Early in the spring after his father's death he journeyed westward, looking after some property, and decided to go to Lake Superior and see that land also. He always remembered his arrival; the steamer left him on a rough pier jutting out into the dark gray lake; on the shore, stretching east and west, was pine forest, unbroken save where in the raw clearing, dotted with stumps, rose a few unpainted wooden houses, and the rough buildings of the stamping-mills, their great wooden legs stamping ponderously on iron ore. His land was in the so-called town; after looking at it, he went out to the mine from which the ore came; he knew something of ores, and had a fancy to see the place. He went on horseback, following a wagon track through the wild forest. The snow still lay in the hollows, there was scarcely a sign of spring; the mine was at some distance, and the road very bad; but at last he reached it. The buildings and machinery of the struggling little company were poor and insufficient; but few men were employed, the superintendent had a discouraged expression. But far above this puny little scratching at its base rose "the mountain," as it was called; and it was a cliff-like hill of iron ore. One could touch it, feel it; it was veritable, real. To Winthrop it seemed a striking picture – the great hill of metal, thinly veiled with a few trees, rising towards the sky, the primitive forest at its feet, the snow, the silence, and beyond, the sullen lake without a sail. The cliff was waiting – it had waited for ages; the lake was waiting too.

      Winthrop took a large portion of his fortune and put it into this mine. A new company was formed, but he himself remained the principal owner, and took the direction into his own hands. It was the right moment; in addition, his direction was brilliant. For a time he worked excessively hard, but all his expectations were fulfilled; by means of this, and one or two other enterprises in which he embarked with the same mixture of bold foresight and the most careful attention to details, his fortune was largely increased.

      When the war broke out he was abroad – his first complete vacation; he was indulging that love for pictures which he was rather astonished to find that he possessed. He came home, took a captain's place in a company of volunteers, went to the front, and served throughout the war. Immediately after the restoration of peace, he had gone abroad again. And he had come back this second time principally to disentangle from a web of embarrassments the affairs of a cousin of his father's, David Winthrop by name, whom he had left in charge of the foundery which he had once had charge of, himself. Having some knowledge of founderies, David was to superintend this one, and have a sufficient share of the profits to help him maintain his family of seven sweet, gentle, inefficient daughters, of all ages from two to eighteen, each with the same abundant flaxen hair and pretty blue eyes, the same pale oval cheeks and stooping shoulders, and a mother over them more inefficient and gentle and stooping-shouldered still – the very sort of a quiverful, as ill-natured (and richer) neighbors were apt to remark, that such an incompetent creature as David Winthrop would be sure to possess. This cousin had been a trial to Andrew Winthrop all his life. David was a well-educated man, and he had a most lovable disposition; but he had the incurable habit of postponing (with the best intentions) until another time anything important which lay before him; the unimportant things he did quite cheerily. If it were but reading the morning's paper, David would be sure to not quite get to the one article which was of consequence, but to read all the others first in his slow way, deferring that one to a more convenient season when he could give to it his best attention; of course the more convenient season never came. Mixed with this constant procrastination there was a personal activity which was amusingly misleading. Leaving the house in the morning, David would walk to his foundery, a distance of a mile, with the most rapid step possible which was not a run; the swing of his long arms, the slight frown of preoccupation from business cares (it must have been that), would have led any one to believe that, once his office reached, this man would devote himself to his work with the greatest energy, would make every moment tell. But once his office reached, this man devoted himself to nothing, that is, to nothing of importance; he arrived breathless, and hung up his hat; he rubbed his hands, and walked about the room; he glanced over the letters, and made plans for answering them, pleasing himself with the idea of the vigorous things he should say, and changing the form of his proposed sentences in his own mind more than once; for David wrote a very good letter, and was proud of it. Then he sharpened all the pencils industriously, taking pains to give each one a very fine point. He jotted down in neat figures with one of them, little sums – sums which had no connection with the foundery, however, but concerned themselves with something he had read the night before, perhaps, as the probable population of London in A.D. 1966, or the estimated value of a ton of coal in the year 3000. Then he would do a little work on his plan (David made beautiful plans) for the house which he hoped some day to build. And he would stare out of the window by the hour, seeing nothing in particular, but having the vague idea that as he was in his office, and at his desk, he was attending to business as other men attended to it; what else was an office for?

      Evert, as a boy, had always felt an interest in this whimsical cousin, who came every now and then to see his father, with some new enterprise (David was strong in enterprises) to consult him about – an enterprise which was infallibly to bring in this time a large amount of money. But this time was never David's time. And in the mean while his daughters continued to appear and grow. Evert, left master, had had more faith in David than his father had had; or perhaps it was more charity; for his cousin had always been a source of refreshment to him – this humorous, sweet-tempered man, who, with his gray-sprinkled hair and thin temples, his well-known incompetency, and his helpless family behind him, had yet no more care on his face than a child has, not half so much as Evert himself, with his youth and health, his success and his fortune, to aid him. But, curiously enough, David was quite well aware of his own faults; his appreciation of them, indeed, had given him a manner of walking slightly sidewise, his right shoulder and right leg a little behind, as though conscious of their master's inefficiency and ashamed of it. For the same reason he chronically hung his head a little as he walked, and, if addressed, looked off at a distance mildly instead of at the person who was speaking to him. But though thus conscious generally of his failings, David was never beyond a sly joke about them and himself. It was the way in which he laughed over these jokes (they were always good ones) which had endeared him to his younger cousin: there was such a delightful want of worldly wisdom about the man.

      Having disentangled David, refunded his losses, and set him going again in a small way, Evert had come southward. He would have preferred to go back to Europe for a tour in Spain; but he felt sure that David would entangle himself afresh before long (David had the most inscrutable ways of entangling himself), and that, unless he were willing to continually refund, he should do better to remain