The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

astonishing escape–that is, up to where, just as a yawl-boat was

approaching him (he was clinging to the starboard wheel of the

burning wreck at the time), a falling timber struck him on the head.

But I will write out his wonderful escape in full to-morrow or next

day. Of course the physicians will not let me tell him now that our

Laura is indeed his child–that must come later, when his health is

thoroughly restored. His case is not considered dangerous at all;

he will recover presently, the doctors say. But they insist that he

must travel a little when he gets well–they recommend a short sea

voyage, and they say he can be persuaded to try it if we continue to

keep him in ignorance and promise to let him see L. as soon as he

returns.”

The letter that bore the latest date of all, contained this clause:

“It is the most unaccountable thing in the world; the mystery

remains as impenetrable as ever; I have hunted high and low for him,

and inquired of everybody, but in vain ; all trace of him ends at

that hotel in New York ; I never have seen or heard of him since,

up to this day; he could hardly have sailed, for his name does not

appear upon the books of any shipping office in New York or Boston

or Baltimore. How fortunate it seems, now, that we kept this thing

to ourselves; Laura still has a father in you, and it is better for

her that we drop this subject here forever.”

That was all. Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave

Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or

forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in

his walk–it was not stated which leg was defective. And this indistinct

shadow represented her father. She made an exhaustive search for the

missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she

doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same

fate if Mr. Hawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind

was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation

when he received them.

She sat long, with the letters in her lap, thinking–and unconsciously

freezing. She felt like a lost person who has traveled down a long lane

in good hope of escape, and, just as the night descends finds his

progress barred by a bridge-less river whose further shore, if it has

one, is lost in the darkness. If she could only have found these letters

a month sooner! That was her thought. But now the dead had carried

their secrets with them. A dreary, melancholy settled down upon her.

An undefined sense of injury crept into her heart. She grew very

miserable.

She had just reached the romantic age–the age when there is a sad

sweetness, a dismal comfort to a girl to find out that there is a mystery

connected with her birth, which no other piece of good luck can afford.

She had more than her rightful share of practical good sense, but still

she was human; and to be human is to have one’s little modicum of romance

secreted away in one’s composition. One never ceases to make a hero of

one’s self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of his

heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of

his admiration and raise up others in their stead that seem greater.

The recent wearing days and nights of watching, and the wasting grief

that had possessed her, combined with the profound depression that

naturally came with the reaction of idleness, made Laura peculiarly

susceptible at this time to romantic impressions. She was a heroine,

now, with a mysterious father somewhere. She could not really tell

whether she wanted to find him and spoil it all or not; but still all the

traditions of romance pointed to the making the attempt as the usual and

necessary, course to follow; therefore she would some day begin the

search when opportunity should offer.