Tubal-cain

“ The forge retreated, apparently through the trees, into the evening. Alexander Hulings sat regarding it with an increasing impatience; first, it annoyed him to see such a potentiality of power lying fallow, and then his annoyance ripened into an impatience with Claypole that he could scarcely contain. The impracticable ass! It was a crime to keep the wheel stationary, the hearths cold.
He had a sudden burning desire to see Tubal Cain stirring with life; to hear the beat of the hammer forging iron; to see the dark, still interior lurid with fire. ”

“ The function of Tubal was to tell the old man where the game was, and direct his shot. One day Tubal was aware of something moving in the thicket; he turned Lamech's aim upon it, and the creature fell dead. It proved to be their ancestor Cain—covered with hair and with a horn growing out of his forehead—for such was the mark set upon him by God. Lamech, on learning what he had done, smote his mighty hands together in consternation, and in so doing smote and slew Tubal Cain. Thus it was that he "killed a man to his wounding and a young man to his hurt." ”

“ In his wagon, driving rapidly toward Tubal Cain, a sudden sense of horror, weakness, overtook him; the roadside rocked beneath his vision.
“Mordecai,” he said to his coachman, “I—I shot a man, derringered him.”
The negro was unmoved.
“Man 'at fool round you, he's bound to be killed!” he asserted. “Yes, sir; he just throwed himself right away!”
Alexander Hulings wondered how John Wooddrop's daughter would be affected. At least, he thought grimly, once more self-possessed, he had put a stop to her laughter at his expense. ”

“ When they had gone, driving in a local surrey back to the canal, Alexander Hulings secured his hat and, dismissing his carriage, walked slowly down to Tubal Cain Forge. An increasing roar and uprush of sooty smoke and sparks marked the activity within; the water poured dripping under the water wheel, through the channel he had cleared, those long years back, with bleeding hands; strange men stood at the shed opening ”

“ The more swords he made the more men fought. At last he said: “I will make no more swords for men to slay each other with.” And so the forge was cold, the fires were out, the anvil was silent and Tubal Cain sat at his door and shook his head at all who begged for swords.
One day he said: “Why should I be idle? I will make plows and scythes instead of swords.” After that the forge glowed again, the anvil rang, and Tubal Cain was busy. When men came to him he said, “Here, take this plow and break the soil and plant grain. It is better than the sword. Take this scythe and reap the grain. ”

“ The two wives of Lamech, Adah and Zillah, bore him each two children, Adah two sons, Jabal and Jubal, and Zillah a son, Tubal-cain, and a daughter, Naamah. Jabal was the first among men to erect temples to idols, and Jubal invented the music sung and played therein. Tubal-cain was rightly named, for he completed the work of his ancestor Cain. Cain committed murder, and Tubal-cain, the first who knew how to sharpen iron and copper, furnished the instruments used in wars and combats. ”

“ He asked:
“What's been the trouble with Tubal Cain? Other forges appear to flourish about here. This Wooddrop seems to have built a big thing with iron.”
“Mammon!” Claypole stated. “Slag; dross! Not this, but the Eternal World.” The other failed to comprehend, and he said so irritably. “All that,” Claypole specified, waving toward the forge, “takes the thoughts from the Supreme Being. Eager for the Word, and a poor speller-out of the Book, you can't spend priceless hours shingling blooms. And then the men left, one after another, because I stopped pandering to their carnal appetites. ”

“ Alexander Hulings quickly forgot this in the immediate pressure of manufacture. The younger Wishon, who had followed his father into Alexander's service, now came down from the charcoal stacks in a great sectional wagon drawn by six mules, collared in bells and red streamers. The pigs were sledged in endless procession from Glory, and then from a second furnace, to the forges that reached along the creek in each direction from Tubal Cain. ”

“ Not a loan,” he added immediately, “but an investment—an investment in me. You must come out to Harmony. I can't explain: it wouldn't sound convincing in Eastlake. In the valleys, at Tubal Cain, the thing will be self-evident. I have made a beginning with practically nothing; and I can go on. But it will require capital, miles of forest, furnaces built, Pittsburgh swept bare of good men. No,” he held up a hardened, arresting palm, “don't attempt to discuss it now. Come out to Tubal Cain and see; learn about John Wooddrop and how to turn iron into specie.” ”

“ I possess no evidence that I am descended from Cain. If any herald suppose that there may be such a presumption, I think it must arise from his confounding Cain with Tubal Cain, who was a great worker in iron. Still, however he might argue that, the probabilities are in favour of his opinion: for I, too, work in iron. But a friend of mine, to whose kind criticisms I am much indebted, suggests that as Tubal Cain invented the Organ, this probability is opposed to the former one.
The next step in my pedigree is to determine whence the origin of my modern family name. ”

“ Masonic writers have, however, generally adopted the more usual derivation of Cain, from a word signifying possession; and Oliver descants on Tubal Cain as a symbol of worldly possessions. As to the identity of Vulcan with Tubal Cain, we may learn something from the definition of the offices of the former, as given by Diodorus Siculus: "Vulcan was the first founder of works in iron, brass, gold, silver, and all fusible metals; and he taught the uses to which fire can be applied in the arts." ”

“ His pay will start tomorrow.”
“What about Tubal Cain, and that fellow—what's his name?”
“Claypole, James. I'll keep a record of what his forge makes, along with mine, and bank it. Common safety. Then I must get over to New York, see the market there, men. I have had letters from an anchor foundry in Philadelphia. There are nail factories, locomotive shops, stove plate, to furnish. A hundred industries. I'll have them here in time—rolling mills you will hear back in the mountains. People on the packets will see the smoke of my furnaces—Alexander Hulings' iron!” ”

“ The book Jasher says that in those days men did not love to have children, therefore they gave their wives drink to make them sterile. Zillah had taken this drink, and she was barren till in her old age she bare Tubal-cain and Naamah. Now Lamech became blind in his old age, and he was led about by the boy Tubal-cain. Tubal-cain saw Cain in the distance, and supposing from the horn on his forehead that he was a beast, he said to his father, "Span thy bow and shoot!" Then the old man discharged his arrow, and Cain fell dead. ”

“ In view of the connexion, the poem is interpreted as expressing Lamech’s exultation at the advantage he expects to derive from Tubal-Cain’s new inventions; the worker in bronze will forge for him new and formidable weapons, so that he will be able to take signal vengeance for the least injury. But the poem probably had originally nothing to do with the genealogy. It may have been a piece of folk-song celebrating the prowess of the tribe of Lamech; or it may have had some relation to a story of Cain and Abel in which Cain was a hero and not a villain. ”

“ Veneada had frowned out of his whiskers.
“What you need,” the doctor had decided, “is a complete change. You are strung up. Go away. Forget the law for two or three months. The Mineral is the place for you.”
Alexander Hulings couldn't afford a month or more at the Mineral Spring; and he had said so with the sharpness that was one of the annoying symptoms of his condition. He had had several letters, though, throughout a number of years, from James Claypole, a cousin of his mother, asking him out to Tubal Cain, the iron forge which barely kept Claypole alive ”

“ Summoned by the sound of her chuckle out came briskly Tubal Cain, venomous with fault-finding and repining. “Hyar ye be, Euphemy Sims,” he said, more harshly than he had ever before spoken to her, “a-foolin’ away yer time huntin’ fur a cow what war standin’ at the bars sence long ’fore sundown, ez sensible ez grown folks, an’ Pa’son Tynes a-settin’ an’ a-settin’ hyar waitin’ ter see ye.” ”

“ I feel easier than I have for weeks,” he realized, surprised, that this was so. He had a conviction that he could sleep here, by the stream, in the still, flowering woods. “I haven't any interest in temples,” he continued; “but I guess—two men—we won't argue about that. Some allowance on both sides. But I am interested in iron; I'd like to know this forge of yours backward. I've discovered a sort of hankering after the idea; just that—iron. It's a tremendous fact, and you can keep it from rusting.”
III The following morning Claypole showed Alexander Hulings the mechanics of Tubal Cain. ”

“ It is no matter, here, what arrangements had been made between the two for their subsequent meeting and correspondence; it is enough to know that no fetter has yet been forged by any Tubal Cain of them all, strong enough to hold apart those who choose to single out each other from the world. Tom Leslie and Josephine Harris were to meet again, and at an early day ”

“ Tubal is said by Tabari to have discovered the art of fermenting the juice of the grape, as well as that of music. Eblis deceived the young man, who was full of gaiety, and taught him many things, amongst others how to make wine. Tubal took grapes and crushed them, and made must, and let it grow bitter. Then he took it and put it in a glass jug. He made flutes, lutes, cymbals, and drums. When he began to drink the wine he had made, he jumped and danced. All the sons of Cain looked on, and, pleased with his merriment, they also drank and played on the instruments Tubal had made. ”

“ The money of other states depreciated in Pennsylvania a third. In addition to these things Alexander commenced to have trouble with his workmen—wages, too, had diminished, but their hours increased. Hulings, like other commercial operators, issued printed money of his own, good at the company store, useful in the immediate vicinity of Tubal Cain, but valueless at any distance. Cryble, as he had anticipated, recounted the triumph of John Wood-drop.
“The old man can't be beat!” he asserted. “We've got a nice little business here. Tailed on to Wooddrop's, we should do good ”

“ He, Alexander Hulings, was making iron; his determination, his capability and will were hammering out of the stubborn raw material of earth a foothold for himself and a justification! The smoke, pouring blackly, streaked with crimson sparks, from the forge shed, sifted a fine soot on the green-white flowers of a dogwood tree. A metallic clamor rose; and Emanuel, the youth, stripped to the waist and already smeared with sweat and grime, came out for a gulping breath of unsullied air. ”

“ Dancing, he knew, was customary after supper; and he lingered over a careful toilet—bright blue coat, tight black trousers, and flat, glistening slippers, with a soft cambric ruffle. Alexander Hulings surveyed his countenance in a scrap of mirror, and saw, with mingled surprise and discontent, that he—like Veneada—bore unmistakable signs of age, marks of strife and suffering; his whiskers had an evident silvery sheen. Life, receding unnoticed, had set him at the verge of middle age. ”

“ The deck and bar were occupied by men waiting for the appearance of the feminine passengers from their cabin forward, and breakfast. The day was warm and fine. The packet crossed a turgid river, at the mouths of other canal routes, and entered a wide pastoral valley.
Alexander Hulings sat facing a smaller, various river; at his back was a barrier of mountains, glossy with early laurel and rhododendron. His face was yellow and sunken, and his lips dry. John Wood-drop passed and repassed him, a girl, his daughter Gisela, on his arm. ”

“ If he, Alexander Hulings, had had Claypole's chance, his beginning, he would be more powerful than Wooddrop now.
The law was a trivial foolery compared to the fashioning, out of the earth itself, of iron. Iron, the indispensable! Railroads, in spite of the popular, vulgar disbelief, were a coming great factor; a thousand new uses, refinements, improved processes of manufacture were bound to develop. His thoughts took fire and swept over him in a conflagration of enthusiasm. By heaven, if Claypole had failed he would succeed. He, too, would be an Ironmaster! ”

“ Death was preferable to ruin, to the concerted gibes of little men, the forgetfulness of big; once, looking at his greying countenance in a mirror, he had realized that it would be easier for him to die than fail. Then, with a sudden twisting of his thoughts, his mind rested on Gisela, his wife. He told himself, with justifiable pride, that she had been content with him; Gisela was not an ordinary woman, she had not married him for a cheap and material reason, and whatever admiration she had had in the beginning he had been able to preserve. Alexander Hulings was certain of that ”

“ No man in all his properties worked harder or through longer hours than Alexander; the night shift at a forge would often see him standing grimly in the lurid reflections of the hearths; charcoal burners, eating their flitch and potatoes on an outlying mountain, not infrequently heard the beat of his horse's hoofs on the soft moss, his domineering voice bullying them for some slight oversight. He inspired everywhere a dread mingled with grudging admiration ”