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44
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REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
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It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair, and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl's; his feet were small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.
But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses, standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper. He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and from something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated a voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness to enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman--a kind of pleasure so long debarred me--I smoothed down the skirts of my jacket, and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing would afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in imparting any information concerning America that he needed.
He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face, and at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged me to accompany him on a walk.
We rambled about St. George's Pier until nearly midnight; but before we parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things respecting his history.
According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St. Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his aunt and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry thus fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.
Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no profession or business of any kind to engage his attention.
In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of her stately and storied old Saxon tower.
By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary's, which escaped the low rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain, like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms, and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and empty your glass and your purse as you list.
In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs hie to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling sportsmen and dandies, he lost his last sovereign.
What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a "guinea-pig," a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies of the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry's case, inapplicable.
He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks' dissipation in London, and again his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning to return home to his aunt, and amend--though she had often written him the kindest of letters to that effect--Harry resolved to precipitate himself upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With this object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the first train for Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook himself to the docks, to examine the American shipping, when a new crotchet entered his brain, born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume duck browsers and tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor. There was a dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of fine coats, which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the time, for all past conventionalities.
Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold Anchor in Union-street.
After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire to which he warmly responded.
Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just upon the eve of our departure.
And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of boarding them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested in the ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let their sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money; for they well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be procured, through the crimps of the port.
Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me, that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the cheapness of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and thus, instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of leaving a handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the harness-cask.
With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one fine morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing his virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.
No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain's face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression, that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first accosted him in the cabin.
Alas, Harry! thought I,--as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern where they stood,--that "gallant, gay deceiver" shall not altogether cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that should be the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across the Atlantic.
At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going to America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was acting a manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a sailor, would be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a shore, where he must battle out his fortune with Fate.
He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship; and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the strength of his wages.
However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all, my young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of admiration at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward to receive my congratulations.
"Harry," said I, "be not deceived by the fascinating Riga--that gay Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows."
And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.
And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the precise degree in which he was a practical sailor;--whether he had a giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body; whether, with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a tempest, he felt he could look right to windward and beard it.
To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and confident air; saying that in his "guinea-pig" days, he had often climbed the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur way; so he made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert tumbler in the Highlander's rigging.
His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant sight of his most unseamanlike person--more suited to the Queen's drawing-room than a ship's forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind. But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice, and indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends; yet our friends, for the most part, will "gang their ain gate;" and the most we can do is, to hope for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry, whether he had not best cross the sea as a steerage passenger, since he could procure enough money for that; but no, he was bent upon going as a sailor.
I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side inns in the vicinity of the town.
Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a London life; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over the sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble daughter of an anonymous earl.
Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his aristocratic narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes spending funds of reminiscences not his own.
As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon; and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter, against all my fine comrade's array of dukes, lords, curricles, and countesses.
In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire I cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly tempted I had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny in my pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him more, than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but mysteriously hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many days had passed. But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed it to my friend's good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes prompted him to out with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable. Besides, would this fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic acquaintances, walking down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the sleeve of my shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began to think, that Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose upon my Yankee credulity.
Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed, he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores of Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment; reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who might stare at so singular a couple.
But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel, he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till the square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden retreat, was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright on the hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with an ivory-headed riding-whip.
"Who was he, Harry?" said I. "My old chum, Lord Lovely," said Harry, with a careless air, "and Heaven only knows what brings Lovely from London."
"A lord?" said I starting; "then I must look at him again;" for lords are very scarce in Liverpool.
Unmindful of my companion's remonstrances, I ran back to the corner; and slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.
It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the legs, with small feet like a doll's, and a small, glossy head like a seal's. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental attitudes in front of Palmo's in Broadway.
However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry's, I thought something of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be done for the young prodigal's welfare; but upon second thoughts I thought best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely stepped to the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and throwing himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it--a coronet--fell into a sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted by a regal marabou feather, inside.
I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world, just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a drive into the country.
But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to his visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most Noble Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he might consider Ickworth his home.
Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry's having been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that Harry has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty easy address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his having consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the anonymous earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate the slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has, he spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon to pluck; so that is out of the question;--perish such a thought, concerning my own bosom friend!
But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all this, I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom of some immaculate friend.
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{
"id": "8118"
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45
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HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
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It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry, who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly alter his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and sprang down the hatchway into the between-decks, where, in perfect solitude, I was engaged picking oakum; at which business the mate had set me, for want of any thing better.
"Hey for London, Wellingborough!" he cried. "Off tomorrow! first train--be there the same night--come! I have money to rig you all out--drop that hangman's stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells here! Come; up you jump!"
I trembled with amazement and delight.
London? it could not be! --and Harry--how kind of him! he was then indeed what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden departure.
In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose to conceal.
"But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?" said I; "they will not let me go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don't care very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the expenses."
This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all the time.
"Tut! my Yankee bantam," said Harry; "look here!" and he showed me a handful of gold.
"But they are yours, and not mine, Harry," said I. "Yours and mine, my sweet fellow," exclaimed Harry. "Come, sink the ship, and let's go!"
"But you don't consider, if I quit the ship, they'll be sending a constable after me, won't they?"
"What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha! ha! -Up, up, Wellingborough: I can't wait."
True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself much, if I did take French leave of him. So, without further thought of the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship's bell struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the rest of the day.
The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said, that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week's time we would be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.
Arrived at the Golden Anchor, where Harry put up, he at once led me to his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see what clothing he might have, that would fit me.
Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size--if any thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt, vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat, those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose, stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and unpretending.
My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me, arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense, when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only winked, and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove to drown ugly thoughts.
Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent for it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow of the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
"It's me" said the stranger; and who was me but Harry, who had thus metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering voice, which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not going to turn gentleman forger.
He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted this mode of disguising himself.
"And why afraid of your friends?" asked I, in astonishment, "and we are not in London yet."
"Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can't you see very plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a short time, you know. But I'll tell you all by and by."
I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we came to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars are taken.
We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.
London at last, and in the West-End!
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{
"id": "8118"
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46
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A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
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"No time to lose," said Harry, "come along."
He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in some street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares, churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much gazing; particularly about the corners, owing to my darting them so rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing; though, in truth, I missed much.
"Stop," cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the window, all at once--"stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed the house--No. 40 I told you--that's it--the high steps there, with the purple light!"
The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side, and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not a little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any courtly society.
It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.
The walk were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of variegated marbles--emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver, Sienna with porphyry--supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as if every porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica, lurked somewhere among the vines.
At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.
To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially, whenever they uttered a word.
At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man, with snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket--he looked like an almond tree in blossom--who seemed to be standing, a polite sentry over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly ordered about the waiters; and with a silent salute, received the silver of the guests.
Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very loud voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us, and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.
I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much surprised,--I thought, a little disconcerted,--and then disappeared with him.
While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the thought that I was really in London. What would my brother have said? What would Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance Society, have thought?
But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for it was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid animation of the London-like scene around me.
And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me; and every instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some gentleman as "My Lord," or "four Grace." But if there were really any lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my hearing.
Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul's and the Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry's return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.
While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me. So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy; but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But spite of this, I kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight through my blushes, and observed that every now and then little parties were made up among the gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the house, as if going to a private apartment. And I overheard one of them drop the word Rouge; but he could not have used rouge, for his face was exceedingly pale. Another said something about Loo.
At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
"Come along, Redburn," said he.
So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House, in the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for the night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I sprang up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise, when he only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by three marble Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk's antlers, over the landing.
We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs, every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor's coach; and Harry hied straight to a rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his touch.
As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting, mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in Babylon.
Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven, like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney. And oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into plaited serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here and there, they flashed out sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles' oaks, were Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringes of bullion and silk.
The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings, suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.
They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii--in that part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth.
In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance of a dragon's crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold. It was that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.
"Sit down, Wellingborough," said Harry; "don't be frightened, we are at home. --Ring the bell, will you? But stop;"--and advancing to the mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.
"He's a knowing mute, Wellingborough," said he; "who stays in this one place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind you don't breathe any secrets in his ear."
In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude of a bow.
"Cigars," said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into the middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example, and make myself happy.
Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before, while leading my dog's life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander, I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and turning to my companion, exclaimed, "And pray, do you live here, Harry, in this Palace of Aladdin?"
"Upon my soul," he cried, "you have hit it:--you must have been here before! Aladdin's Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very name."
Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had been quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes, his general carriage was firm.
"Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?" said he.
"I am afraid, Harry," said I, "that when you left me just now, you must have been drinking something stronger than wine."
"Hear him now," said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the bald-headed bust on the bracket,--"a parson 'pon honor! --But remark you, Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a considerably longer time than before:--I may not be back again to-night."
"What?" said I. "Be still," he cried, "hear me, I know the old duke here, and--" "Who? not the Duke of Wellington," said I, wondering whether Harry was really going to include him too, in his long list of confidential friends and acquaintances.
"Pooh!" cried Harry, "I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw below; they call him the Duke:--he keeps the house. I say, I know him well, and he knows me; and he knows what brings me here, also. Well; we have arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and sleep here tonight, and--and--" continued he, speaking low--"you must guard this letter--" slipping a sealed one into my hand--"and, if I am not back by morning, you must post right on to Bury, and leave the letter there;--here, take this paper--it's all set down here in black and white--where you are to go, and what you are to do. And after that's done--mind, this is all in case I don't return--then you may do what you please: stay here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here's enough to pay all your expenses."
All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost started from my eyes.
"What's the matter, Redburn?" he cried, with a wild sort of laugh--"you are not afraid of me, are you? --No, no! I believe in you, my boy, or you would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that letter."
"What in heaven's name do you mean?" at last I exclaimed, "you don't really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?" and I snatched him by the hand.
"Pooh, pooh," he cried, "let me go. I tell you, it's all right: do as I say: that's all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it! --no, no," he added, vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more--"no, I won't: I have nothing more to tell you--not a word. Will you swear?"
"But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!"
"Not a syllable! Will you swear? --you will not? then here, give me that purse:--there--there--take that--and that--and that;--that will pay your fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my friend," and he wheeled round his back.
I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly impelled me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the white-whiskered old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and then introduced me as his friend--young Lord Stormont; and bade the almond tree look well to the comforts of his lordship, while he--Harry--was gone.
The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar expression, that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he withdrew. Harry then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a chance to say one word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room, saying, "Leave not this room tonight; and remember the letter, and Bury!"
I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then rose, and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but only heard the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a hushed ivory rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped back into the room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have given the world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my old bunk in Prince's Dock.
I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the house, my limbs seemed manacled.
While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.
And all the while, Harry ran through my soul--in and out, at every door, that burst open to his vehement rush.
At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London, to do this thing? --why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did he want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the hour he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed almost another person from what he had seemed before.
But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;--would he ever come back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder, I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth, search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return. Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he's in earnest; and here I am--yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the last of this thing.
But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent still.
It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point of starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was; but remembering Harry's injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town, and that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very pale, stood before me.
"The letter and paper," he cried.
I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
"There! there! there! thus I tear you," he cried, wrenching the letter to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the fragments. "I am off for America; the game is up."
"For God's sake explain," said I, now utterly bewildered, and frightened. "Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?"
"Ha, ha," he deliriously laughed. "Gambling? red and white, you mean? --cards? --dice? --the bones? --Ha, ha! --Gambling? gambling?" he ground out between his teeth--"what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables they are!"
"Wellingborough," he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes blazing into mine--"Wellingborough"--and fumbling in his breast-pocket, he drew forth a dirk--"Here, Wellingborough, take it--take it, I say--are you stupid? --there, there"--and he pushed it into my hands. "Keep it away from me--keep it out of my sight--I don't want it near me, while I feel as I do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don't bury them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it's an invitation to hang myself"--and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he twitched it down from the wall.
"In God's name, what ails you?" I cried.
"Nothing, oh nothing," said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical calmness--"nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I'm the serenest of men."
"But give me that dirk," he suddenly cried--"let me have it, I say. Oh! I don't mean to murder myself--I'm past that now--give it me"--and snatching it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a terrific stab, nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
"There now," he cried, "there's something for the old duke to see to-morrow morning; that's about all that's left of me--that's my skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don't be downhearted; there's a little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don't stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in the morning"--and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.
"And this, then," said I, "is your showing me London, is it, Harry? I did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I will not regret not seeing the town."
He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, "Red-burn! you must swear another oath, and instantly."
"And why?" said I, in alarm, "what more would you have me swear?"
"Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!" he shouted, with the foam at his lips--"never to breathe it! swear!"
"I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do not desire it," said I, "but there's no need of swearing."
"Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn," he added, imploringly.
"Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves as soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog alive."
"And what am I?" cried Harry; "but pardon me, Redburn, I did not mean to offend; if you knew all--but no, no! --never mind, never mind!" And he ran to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
"Brandy," whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
"Are you not going to sleep, then?" said I, more and more alarmed at his wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in such a mood.
"No sleep for me! sleep if you can--I mean to sit up with a decanter! --let me see"--looking at the ormolu clock on the mantel--"it's only two hours to morning."
The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow, appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to leave it and depart.
Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively calm.
At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.
"Look! it is broad day," said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings of the window.
We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled along northward by railroad, toward Prince's Dock and the Highlander.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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47
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HOMEWARD BOUND
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Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of the last thirty-six hours.
So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket, he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady, was shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our clothes, appearing once more in our sailor habiliments.
"Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?" said I, with a heavy heart.
"Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course--what else?" he replied.
"And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?" asked I. "That's as it may turn out," said Harry; "but I have now more than ever resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow like me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the wharf, you know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let's see what they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel better already. Never say die, is my motto."
We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay of Prince's Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been advertised to sail in two days' time.
"Good!" exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours, and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to any severe account for it from the officers; for several of our men had absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to know nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I could hardly believe they were the same officers who were so dictatorial at sea. The reason of this was, that we had nothing important to do; and although the captain might now legally refuse to receive me on board, yet I was not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my years, and worked as cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the homeward passage.
Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, "Well, sir, you have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good."
Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of the proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
"But turn to, sir, turn to," added the mate; "here! aloft there, and free that pennant; it's foul of the backstay--jump!"
The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of myself.
We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo had been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the between-decks, extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were already littering the decks.
To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed than upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual number of casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along the between-decks, forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing access to four rows of bunks,--three tiers, one above another,--against the ship's sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse planks. They looked more like dog-kennels than any thing else; especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no light coming down except through the fore and after hatchways, both of which were covered with little houses called "booby-hatches." Upon the main-hatches, which were well calked and covered over with heavy tarpaulins, the "passengers-galley" was solidly lashed down.
This galley was a large open stove, or iron range--made expressly for emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone the emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
After two days' work, every thing was in readiness; most of the emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into the outlet of Prince's Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go out with the tide in the morning.
In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable. Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage, were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers, following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by's, and God-bless-you's, between the emigrants and their friends; and the cheers of the surrounding ships.
At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit, now came a one-eyed crimp leading a drunken tar by the collar, who had been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated before, that two or three of our men had left us for good, while in port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely lodged in a bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable cab, pulled out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved completely helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward the quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to disturb him till the ship was away from the land.
This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.
A steam-tug, the Goliath, now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down the river past the fort.
The scene was most striking.
Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song Ho-o-he-yo, cheerily men! as the crews called their anchors.
The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days would be an uncommonly long voyage.
Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so, that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.
This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on. And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool, for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet, all this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled agents from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the emigrants themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.
No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one by one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed into the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights imaginable. The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the hearts of the emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to escape the uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two "booby-hatches" came the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and weeping. That irresistible wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and the women and children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of the poor emigrant's first storm at sea.
Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin, who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards to run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and tenderly inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and even then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady, such ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as unendurable, and put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy annihilation; all of which, however, only arises from their intense anxiety to preserve their valuable lives.
How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the drenching seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley on deck? How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a first voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just as hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter, and seventeen servants.
Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head down the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool.
But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of the quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board. Consequently--even in fine weather--when they come up from below, they are crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats, casks, and spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the officers, for unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of the "wild Irish" emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by the main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between those who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent in having this regulation maintained.
Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry about purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they could precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of humanity.
But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it is to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt, this circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless indignation at these things.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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48
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A LIVING CORPSE
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It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.
Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at their duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the third man yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his limbs had been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.
His name was down on the ship's papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But the sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to understand that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could not obey him; when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired to the quarterdeck.
This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness, recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously forbade this proceeding.
So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the bowsprit-bitts--two stout timbers rooted in the ship's keel. An hour or two afterward, some of the men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed to the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch, to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling.
"Blast that rat!" cried the Greenlander.
"He's blasted already," said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed over to the bunk of Miguel. "It's a water-rat, shipmates, that's dead; and here he is"--and with that, he dragged forth the sailor's arm, exclaiming, "Dead as a timber-head!"
Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he held to the man's face.
"No, he's not dead," he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a moment at the seaman's motionless mouth. But hardly had the words escaped, when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.
The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.
One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name, tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the flickering ground of blue.
"Where's that d--d Miguel?" was now shouted down among us from the scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to have every man up that belonged to his watch.
"He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor," coughed Jackson. "Come you down, sir, and look."
Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a bullet. "My God!" he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
"Take hold of it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I say! But stop"--and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it partly out of the bunk.
A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at all serve to soothe me.
But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the sailors seemed familiar with such things; or at least with the stories of such things having happened to others.
For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me, I almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the Calvinists, and that Miguel's earthly end was a foretaste of his eternal condemnation.
Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in the bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the bunk was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and strict orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken place to the emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.
After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing, or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand still.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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49
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CARLO
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There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness of his full morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and various, that his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye like Harry's tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of humility, deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all the ills of life.
The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of poetry, gushing from every rent.
Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire; and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
Some months previous, he had landed in Prince's Dock, with his hand-organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of Liverpool, playing the sunny airs of southern climes, among the northern fog and drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his passage over the Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes in America.
From the first, Harry took to the boy.
"Carlo," said Harry, "how did you succeed in England?"
He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child, he looked up, and said in his broken English--that seemed like mixing the potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:--said he, "Ah! I succeed very well! --for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay and the sad. I have marches for military young men, and love-airs for the ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I know from their faces what airs will best please them; I never stop before a house, but I judge from its portico for what tune they will soonest toss me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the merry, and merry airs to the sad; and most always the rich best fancy the sad, and the poor the merry."
"But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men," said Harry, "who would much rather have your room than your music?"
"Yes, sometimes," said Carlo, playing with his foot, "sometimes I do."
"And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you never leave them under a shilling?"
"No," continued the boy, "I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me; and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off, not I; would I, poor organ?" --looking down the hatchway where it was. "No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but they themselves are to blame; for such people's musical pipes are cracked, and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls."
"No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps," said Harry, with a laugh.
"Ah! there's the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without chords."
Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze, and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings; went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod. Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the high-priests tended the Jewish altars--never to be touched by a hand profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a beggar's hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken all the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on a moon-lit sward of violets.
But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of Wales.
But look! here is poor Carlo's organ; and while the silent crowd surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of his instrument.
Behold the organ!
Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was buried.
A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic order; in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies! --what mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded with devotional sunsets! --what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and niches with saints! --But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some interior Alhambra.
Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air--a mixed and liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here's that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes; and while I list to the organs twain--one yours, one mine--let me gaze fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;--'tis good as gazing down into the great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant standards, armies marching--all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes, the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm around me.
But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband--soft, dulcet, dropping sounds, like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging, martial air, as if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and swordhilts, called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!
Again-what blasted heath is this? --what goblin sounds of Macbeth's witches? --Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all the Blocksberg's, demons dire.
Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are heard--some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast, rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep dipped in silver gauzes.
All this could Carlo do--make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take me; and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound, and bowers of song.
And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in squadrons of Parisian orchestras.
But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure greatly needs the artist's repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
His York Minster's West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton's heaven, it turns on golden hinges.
What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and gilded columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.
The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass on, and disappear.
Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors, among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.
On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands, begrimed, and black, and rickety.
Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who owns a million.
And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy, with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling's door!
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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50
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HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
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As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a sailor.
Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me, even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it, that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that every spring renews the green life of the trees.
But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings, like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the world.
But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you show like a zebra, banding with elks.
And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair, Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not unlike the soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds through Caffrarian woods.
How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly, they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked him before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time, abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold and unsympathizing civility.
As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.
But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life, should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the other extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.
As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that, spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea before, even as a Guinea-pig in an Indiaman; for the slightest acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him, it would seem, from enacting this folly.
"Who's that Chinese mandarin?" cried the mate, who had made voyages to Canton. "Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it in a trice."
"Sir?" said Harry, starting back. "Is not this the morning watch, and is not mine a morning gown?"
But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities; and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
"It is too bad!" exclaimed Harry to me; "I meant to lounge away the watch in that gown until coffee time;--and I suppose your Hottentot of a mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning; but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!"
Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.
The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one, which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened his extensive stock.
It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers. Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test the color of his calves.
It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's company, the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the constables.
These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar. What else can bring them to sea?
Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was put down for a very equivocal character.
Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver, or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For to his no small astonishment,--but just as I had predicted,--Captain Riga never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into the little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands of his officers and crew.
But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is, pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the belaying-pin, so that when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he would be inordinately fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However, after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance, would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never would do: he could not go aloft; his nerves would not hear of it.
"Then, Harry," said I, "better you had never been born. Do you know what it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no doubt you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that you had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree."
But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, his nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked altogether too many Havannas.
At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the short signal halyards.
"Sir?" said Harry, aghast.
"Away you go!" said the mate, snatching a whip's end.
"Don't strike me!" screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
"Take that, and along with you," cried the mate, laying the rope once across his back, but lightly.
"By heaven!" cried Harry, wincing--not with the blow, but the insult: and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head, I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.
"Captain Riga!" cried Harry.
"Don't call upon him" said the mate; "he's asleep, and won't wake up till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!" he added, flourishing the rope's end.
Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice. I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top. Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the tar out of the ropes. "Up you go, sir." But Harry said nothing.
"You Max," cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, "spring after him, and help him; you understand?"
Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin signal halyards--, hardly bigger than common twine--were flying in the wind. "Unreeve!" cried the mate.
I saw Harry's arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging, even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became an altered person.
At the time, he went to the mate--since he could not get speech of the captain--and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he might make the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on board a ship, and always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about at his pleasure.
Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but go aloft again he could not, and would not. He would do any thing else but that.
This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a miserable life indeed.
Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead, and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such a sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth of this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of these evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted hare to the merciless crew.
But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes of a spirit not easily tamed--how was it, that he could now yield himself up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the common tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of themselves, that only He who made us can expound them.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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51
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THE EMIGRANTS
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After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with head winds, till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we were out of the weather emphatically called "Channel weather," and the last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and all the rest was broad ocean.
Land ho! was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north. At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking America itself was at hand.
"Where is it?" cried one of them, running out a little way on the bowsprit. "Is that it?"
"Aye, it doesn't look much like ould Ireland, does it?" said Jackson.
"Not a bit, honey:--and how long before we get there? to-night?"
Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together, looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice--"Look, look, ye divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!"
At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such a ridiculous tale.
Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat, and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his music by furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come forward, when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a message from the cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and entertain the gentlemen and ladies.
There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes, by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's, for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest, were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most part, the gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could to my little Italian's organ.
It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such or such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and some ladies, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that Carlo's organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
"Yes, ladies," said the captain, bowing, "by your leave, I think Carlo's organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig running after its dam."
Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo's music.
"Carlo"--said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the quarter-deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place during my watch on deck:--"Carlo"--said I, "what do the gentlemen and ladies give you for playing?"
"Look!" --and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her shield--three English pennies.
Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that the natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and steerage-passengers, regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at least, of my not feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.
Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt. Not because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that ever stepped over the Atlantic.
One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat, jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between his teeth.
Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the calf, but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable about him but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not remember it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the time, as if its owner was laboring under the mumps.
Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee of the spanker; or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing the emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of the upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the steward to help them to brandy and water, and talked about going on to Washington, to see Niagara Falls.
There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four heavy files of the London Times, and other papers; and he spent all his hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all. That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what he studied. He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now and then were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.
As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies are like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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52
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THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
|
I have made some mention of the "galley," or great stove for the steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in the steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a pretty large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough, considering the number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire was only to be kindled at certain hours.
For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and in all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well go to law with the Czar of Russia.
At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving of the spray over the uncovered "galley." Whenever I had the morning watch, from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling up from below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after bits of rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner would the fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and children; each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a great tumult ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the more quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other's pots and pans.
Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his own in its place; saying something about that individual place belonging to him; and with that, he turned aside.
Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed, made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The boy snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its contents all about the fellow's bare legs; which incontinently began to dance involuntary hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving chase to the boy, who by this time, however, had decamped.
Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of the most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very hardships to which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they themselves drive the strongest rivet into the chain, by which their social superiors hold them subject.
It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second dog-watch, at the mate's command, I would march up to the fire, and giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away disappointed.
The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled into what is sometimes called mush; by the Dutch is known as supaan; by sailors burgoo; by the New Englanders hasty-pudding; in which hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials for a sort of epic.
Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year round, fire or no fire.
There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages, Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.
There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would sometimes take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him, like an Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion, and eating his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk bottle, and smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer made time jog along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and wife in some imaginary section of the ship, called the second cabin, which was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were unheeded.
This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who was young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers'-boys fall in love with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and happy.
She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do, from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But the lady was not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime, the bucks would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying the fun. The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up, and make a dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as far as the mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that divided them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could think of.
While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him-- "Billy, my dear;" and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
"Billy, my love!"
The bow went faster and faster.
"Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let's make it all up;" and she bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her irresistible eyes.
Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed, which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass from the cabin.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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53
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THE HORATII AND CURIATII
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With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner of Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:--"It happened, that in each family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little disparity in point of age or of strength."
Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons, born, as they said, on the same day.
They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness, all six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each other; yet, the O'Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the O'Regans. The former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve around their mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the O'Regans were "broths of boys," full of mischief and fun, and given to all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.
Early every morning, Mrs. O'Regan emerged from the steerage, driving her spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and made her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up from the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes, and the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their mother engaged in shampooing them, though it was haphazard sort of work enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to fasten on a stray limb.
"Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it's you, Teddy, you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don't be mixing your legs up with Pat's."
The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
Meanwhile, Mrs. O'Brien would be standing on the boatswain's locker--or rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel's bows--with a large old quarto Bible, black with age, laid before her between the knight-heads, and reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the O'Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and activity; but the tranquil O'Briens they did not fancy so much. More especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that haunted us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs. O'Brien purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul wind for the next ensuing twenty-four hours.
At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for her.
Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion was curiously manifested.
Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her, began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The widow gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then ducking in the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and springing from the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs, biting and striking at him: which, the before timid little O'Briens no sooner perceived, than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and the amazed seaman found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max, sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of course without a serious bruise, cried out "enough!" and the assailants were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens obeyed, the three O'Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.
"There now, you rascal," cried the mate, "throw overboard another Bible, and I'll send you after it without a bowline."
This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the vessel. That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of them show in public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning their nurses.
"And were you all born at one time?" asked an old lady, letting her eye run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
"Indeed, an' we were," said Teddy; "wasn't we, mother?"
Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet, the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples of the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet, eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they possibly can be?
Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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54
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SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
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It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in the end.
True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices paid for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the greater portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to surrender the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of the Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks out, on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that tobacco was at a premium.
Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called "High-low-Jack-and-the-game," which name, indeed, has a Jackish and nautical flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco, which, like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they play. Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander's crew now shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less; and finally resolved themselves into "chaws."
So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially if they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to be boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the forecastle by those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on deck, and make a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there was a great deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of nigging and cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were exchanged.
But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky; and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become exceedingly torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the four suits might have seceded from their respective clans, and formed into a fifth tribe, under the name of "Tar-spots."
Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The modicum constituting an ordinary "chaw," was made to last a whole day; and at night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same "chaw" was placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried; so as to do duty in a pipe.
In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe. With touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings--the time of smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day's delectable "chawing," they beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable puffs.
One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an idea in his head--"Boys, let's search under the bunks!" Bless you, Blunt! what a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out; the dark places explored; and two sticks of nail-rod tobacco, and several old "chaws," thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage, were their cheering reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson, who, upon this occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one generally adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of impartiality is desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest consideration to all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance; for if they adopted this nautical method, that universally slanderous aphorism of Lavater would be forever rendered nugatory--"Expect not to understand any man till you have divided with him an inheritance."
The nail-rods they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as there were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed in the presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his face to the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the bits of weed with his knife, crying out, "Whose is this?" Whereupon a respondent, previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the opposite corner of the forecastle, "Blunt's;" and to Blunt it went; and so on, in like manner, till all were served.
I put it to you, lawyers--shade of Blackstone, I invoke you--if a more impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
But the nail-rods and last-voyage "chaws" were soon gone, and then, after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped, and relapsed into gloom.
They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however--but not altogether new among seamen--to allay the severity of the depression under which they languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the hold, and had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer their ancient, cheese-like flavor.
In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part, round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum, upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in untwisting it slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and aromatic "heart;" for so this central piece is denominated.
It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor, as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and, altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
Nor is this delectable morsel of old junk wanting in many interesting, mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what gales it may have been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How many stout masts of seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the tempest? How deep it may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of strange harbors? What outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the water, and what un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when forming part of a lofty stay or a shroud?
Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little "cut" it was, that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to see whether it had any "tenderloin."
For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies. Indeed, though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had rather an astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with which the flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors seemed to like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They converted one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when solicited by a shipmate for a "chaw," would produce a small coil of rope.
Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes. No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every pipe-bowl among us.
I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the genuine weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out, until very shortly previous to our arrival in port.
In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace, when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.
He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the nail-rods they found.
The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve or fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left to the philosophers.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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55
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DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON'S CAREER
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The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of a circumstance--which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before--that after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here, with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine weather, he remained on his back, or seated cross-legged, during the remainder of the homeward-bound passage.
Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master's lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with a midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson's would have been the face to paint for the doomed vessel's figurehead, seamed and blasted by lightning.
Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs in his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.
His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.
The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a curse between his teeth.
I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that misanthrope upon the throne of the world--the diabolical Tiberius at Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well meriting his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For there is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side by side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though Milton's Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only because he is not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine original. We gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised fancies concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure. But in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and lifting up and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples of wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be sure of fame.
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{
"id": "8118"
}
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56
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UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
COMMUNION
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A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew on Hermon.
And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had insulted and derided him.
His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and pansied margins.
"I can't sing to-night"--sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his melody--"I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough," he whispered,--and I stooped my ear,--"come you with me under the lee of the long-boat, and there I'll hum you an air."
It was "The Banks of the Blue Moselle."
Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,--to be singing it here--here, as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.
But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with sprites, and cried "chassez!" "hands across!" to the multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted, even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an accordion in their ears.
So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse. Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they relinquished their prey.
Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive. However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they were, which the future held out to him.
He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England; and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.
"I have forgotten England," he said, "and never more mean to think of it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?"
It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.
So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country; I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting, that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that his prospects and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.
Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably--"Gad, my boy, you have hit it, you have," and then he went on to mention, that in some places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats--it was customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery shillings.
They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell--Are the ladies and gentlemen in? Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing you a song: we are singers, at your service. And so, without waiting reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices, enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
"Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?" said Harry, "or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?" he anxiously added.
Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets, fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.
I could not but be struck--and had I not been, from my birth, as it were, a cosmopolite--I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney, and had shut up his Christendom in London.
Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such a business.
Said I, "My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling."
So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea of singing himself into a livelihood.
"No, I won't sing for my mutton," said he--"what would Lady Georgiana say?"
"If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry," returned I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right honorable friends and relations.
"But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your other accomplishments; and that at least, will be sure to help you."
"I do write a hand," he gladly rejoined--"there, look at the implement! --do you not think, that such a hand as that might dot an i, or cross a t, with a touching grace and tenderness?"
Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small; and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the forum.
His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us--the son of a man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled to consideration, would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.
Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot, when even a fish has no foot at all!
Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh, democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.
Often he ruefully eyed it.
Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly, that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses to their coaches? Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana? with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she vowed she was mine? --Out of sight, recreant and apostate! --deep down--disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies are gently drawn through a park for an airing.
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{
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57
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ALMOST A FAMINE
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"Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs, just like our pigs at home." Thus exclaimed one of the steerage children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the "kids," which, indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.
"Pigs, is it?" coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his appetite by chewing sulphur. --"Pigs, is it? --and the day is close by, ye spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!"
This malicious prophecy proved true.
As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.
Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from the ship's stores, or starve.
This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.
But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger: hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and carried off a promising young shoat: him they devoured raw, not venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water; they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in the name of the Church.
At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian, Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the rigging and flogged.
Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place, after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred emigrants into an insurrection.
A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs--the half of a cask; and into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of the tub. The head--divided in the middle, across the diameter of the orifice--was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs protruded through the holes in the bottom.
It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.
"Now, Pat, my boy," said the mate, "fill that big wooden belly of yours, if you can."
Compassionating his situation, our old "doctor" used to give him alms of food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving voyage.
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58
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THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
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Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the prevalence of westerly winds.
We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of a week.
During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning, when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago, overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel, during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied being a physician; and from fear of contagion--though he did not confess that to be the motive--refused even to enter the steerage. The cases increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued, over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather--wet, cold, and tempestuous--drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities, that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.
The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only make still worse, what was already direful enough.
It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing, that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the captain's order.
The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme. In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath with a gasp.
At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids; while--notwithstanding the crowd--in front of it was a clear area, which the fear of contagion had left open.
"That bulkhead must come down," cried the mate, in a voice that rose above the din. "Take hold of it, boys."
But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore they would slay us, if we did not desist.
"Haul it down!" roared the mate.
But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to depart, without achieving our object.
About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men; and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed nothing more frightful.
Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary. By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives, rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried rites, were dropped into the ocean.
At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines; but the captain did not again go down to them.
It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed their own salvation.
The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it; and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard against contagion.
Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps, presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest had been so often heard.
Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor, and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers, cabin-passengers, and emigrants--all looked upon each other like lepers. All but the only true leper among us--the mariner Jackson, who seemed elated with the thought, that for him--already in the deadly clutches of another disease--no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not, at least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic, and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by death, both mothers and babes survived.
At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages, and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and aloft; and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his elbow;--bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment of them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was more like cleaning out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.
But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for New York.
Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers--at least by far the greater number--wore a still, subdued aspect, though a little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard and bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality, that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down the hammer to lift up the coffin.
How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home, suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange land?
As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the steward.
The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to perish;--therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure, there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject invites much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of death, and his behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,--humble, composed, without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.
The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more. In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin bulk-head.
But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he shone in the sun, none braver than he.
One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy orders upon his arrival in New York.
"Why so?" said the other, "have I such an orotund voice?"
"No;" profanely returned his friend--"but you are a coward--just the man to be a parson, and pray."
However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head. There is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a three-worded sentence!
You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:--all is a blank. And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details of the Highlander's calamity.
Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known, operate unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said, concerning emigrant ships in general.
Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.
Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run fore and aft? --There is no law concerning these things. And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is there a Howard in office!
We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us? We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
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{
"id": "8118"
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59
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THE LAST END OF JACKSON
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"Off Cape Cod!" said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck, where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
"Off Cape Cod!" and in the shore-bloom that came to us--even from that desert of sand-hillocks--methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance of the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from afar.
The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a switch.
In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into all three top-sails.
While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several, Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four weeks or more, took hold of a rope.
Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.
His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard--which in reefing is accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the characteristics of this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and would yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his unbounded dominion over the men.
Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson, whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that they are the most profane.
"Haul out to windward!" coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand. But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood from his lungs.
As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the sea.
It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck, some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail, while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind man might have known something deadly had happened.
Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead of that, the next sound that greeted us was, "Bear a hand, and reef away, men!" from the mate.
Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the sea--and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have driven his soul from his lacerated lungs--our jolly-boat would have taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.
And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two, was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat was capsized without a thole-pin in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching and cracking in the sun.
Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst of the calamities that befell patient Job, some one at least of his servants escaped to report it.
In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest allusion to the departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that his death was their deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits, unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to their now drawing near to their port.
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{
"id": "8118"
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60
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HOME AT LAST
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Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches, betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them all in one.
Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air, the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue sea seemed to flow under them.
The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient cabin-passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants clustered around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own; and turning to Harry, said, "This America's skies must be down in the sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool."
Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the shore--the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the throng.
The captain now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces, and trimming the ship, to catch the least cat's-paw of wind.
When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.
The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in the steerage to be committed to the deep. --A command that was received by the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured, that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise long detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore reluctantly complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following them, went old pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the sea was strewn with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the waves--couches for all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless things of this sort, tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the harbor of New York, drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on the shores of Staten Island; along whose eastern beach I have often walked, and speculated upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and dilapidated baskets at my feet.
A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces, and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water. And to this they were incited by the same warning which had induced them to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was then fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so that by evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance, that the Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous voyage. Thus, some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens shall not get a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at sea.
That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of the forts.
An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced with aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like horses brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the Highlander was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.
No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads, and like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.
On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag, denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world, taint the air with the streamings of their fever-flag.
But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side were now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that they thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.
Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the stately old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.
Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems to pour through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm, you swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga, telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers, Governor's Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
"And that" said he, pointing out a vast black hull which, like a shark, showed tiers of teeth, "that, ladies, is a line-of-battle-ship, the North Carolina."
"Oh, dear!" --and "Oh my!" --ejaculated the ladies, and--"Lord, save us," responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.
Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor, fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of which was now worth a broad manor in England.
The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers, however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning. But nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore, seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something like "Hail Columbia!" his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and we never saw Carlo again.
Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and gazing at the thousand lights of the city.
At sunrise, we warped into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of her, was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a rush and a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the tumultuous crowd of emigrants, whose friends, day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to embrace them.
But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
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{
"id": "8118"
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61
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REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
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There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the deserted old ship, but the mate and the rats.
At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings, proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts, and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us, whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond all doubt--like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the night, and no starb-o-leens ahoy! would annoy us again.
"All night in! think of that, Harry, my friend!"
"Ay, Wellingborough, it's enough to keep me awake forever, to think I may now sleep as long as I please."
We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
"I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers," cried Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong suds. "No! they will not come out, and I'm ruined for life. Look at my hand once, Wellingborough!"
It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
"Never mind, Harry," said I--"You know the ladies of the east steep the tips of their fingers in some golden dye."
"And by Plutus," cried Harry--"I'd steep mine up to the armpits in gold; since you talk about that. But never mind, I'll swear I'm just from Persia, my boy."
We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once, I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat cakes.
"Well, gentlemen, what will you have?" --said a waiter, as we seated ourselves at a table.
"Gentlemen!" whispered Harry to me--"gentlemen! --hear him! --I say now, Redburn, they didn't talk to us that way on board the old Highlander. By heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:--Coffee and hot rolls," he added aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, "and fellow--come back--bring us a venison-steak."
"Haven't got it, gentlemen."
"Ham and eggs," suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and imperial toast.
But the butter!
"Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?"
"Don't say a word,"--said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast "I'm going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of butter, so long as I live."
We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of gold, bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.
"Now," said Harry, "lead on; and let's see something of these United States of yours. I'm ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the Great Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here, take my arm;--lead on."
Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.
He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a stranger in the land.
By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment, where they did not charge much for their board, and where the landlady's butcher's bill was not very large.
Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I turned up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had happened during my absence.
With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other, gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
Strange, but even the few hours' absence which had intervened; during which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange streets seemed now to have reminded him of his friendless condition; and I found him with a very sad eye; and his right hand groping in his pocket.
"Where am I going to dine, this day week?" --he slowly said. "What's to be done, Wellingborough?"
And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though needing a little cheering myself; even though I had got home again. But no more about that.
Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his best for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.
That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three abreast:--Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons; Harry full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself contributing a small quota to the general entertainment.
Next morning, we proceeded to business.
Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to retire for life on the profits of my first voyage; but nevertheless, I thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are valuable things; and should not be overlooked, when they are owing. Therefore, as the second morning after our arrival, had been set apart for paying off the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on ship-board, with the rest. We were told to enter the cabin; and once again I found myself, after an interval of four months, and more, surrounded by its mahogany and maple.
Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as the Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in mellow bank notes--beautiful sight! --paid them their wages.
Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in restraining him from the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy dollars as his due.
Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American "mitts." Only seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only £5000 in London, though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty much the same.
With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.
The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:--the sailors also salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the Paymaster-general of the Forces.
We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar, took up the morning paper--I think it was the Herald--threw his leg over one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all parts of the world.
I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this incomprehensible captain.
At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the disturbance.
The Paymaster-general looked up.
"Well, where do you come from? Who are you, pray? and what do you want? Steward, show these young gentlemen out."
"I want my money," said Harry.
"My wages are due," said I.
The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at us, letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
"Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young gentlemen?"
"Captain Riga!" cried Harry, enraged at his impudence--"I tell you what it is, Captain Riga; this won't do--where's the rhino?"
"Captain Riga," added I, "do you not remember, that about four months ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in this very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I'll thank you for my pay."
"Ah, yes, I remember," said the captain. "Mr. Jones! Ha! ha! I remember Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop--you, too, are the son of a wealthy French importer; and--let me think--was not your great-uncle a barber?"
"No!" thundered I. "Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs for the young gentlemen--be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me see," turning over his accounts--"Hum, hum! --yes, here it is: Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months, that's twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool--that makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost overboard--that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?"
"So it seems, sir," said I, with staring eyes.
"And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square the yards, Monsieur Redburn."
Owe him! thought I--what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed my resentment; and presently he said, "By running away from the ship in Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers, seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I'll thank you for the money;" and he extended his open palm across the desk.
"Shall I pitch into him?" whispered Harry.
I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state of my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was that he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I were in London. But a single minute's consideration showed that I could not help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin his suit, for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.
Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to be munificent. Peace to his dinners.
"Mr. Bolton, I believe," said the captain, now blandly bowing toward Harry. "Mr. Bolton, you also shipped for three dollars per month: and you had one month's advance in Liverpool; and from dock to dock we have been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a half, Mr. Bolton; and here it is;" handing him six two-shilling pieces.
"And this," said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude, "this is the reward of my long and faithful services!"
Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed, "There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse, and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir."
"Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again," said the captain, coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was invincible.
Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove precious to him. But he only cried Pshaw! and that was the last of it.
Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck, engaged in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf, loaded with their chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw very plainly that they must have some mischief under weigh; and so it turned out.
Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses--such as indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished, without betraying any appearance of having any inclination that way, and without speaking to the sailors on the subject--by this, and kindred actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of the whole ship's company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a name unmentionably expressive of their contempt.
The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their feelings.
It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president, or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their respect. It was something like this, I repeat--but with a material difference, as will be seen.
At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being agreed upon, Blunt, the "Irish cockney," was deputed to summon the captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the gentlemen alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the side next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled about, presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite salute to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who happened to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound, cleared the ship.
True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his cabin.
Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated "The Flashes." And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their looks, that his customers were "flush," and would spend their money freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
It was a touching scene.
"Well, maties," said one of them, at last--"I spose we shan't see each other again:--come, let's splice the main-brace all round, and drink to the last voyage!"
Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors, as much as to say--"Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance your liquor;--help yourselves, your honors."
And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed them all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then disappeared in couples, through the several doorways; for "The Flashes" was on a corner.
If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a "Good-by, God bless you," is heard for every "How d'ye do, welcome, my boy"--then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the most hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting themselves, they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed, are tossed to and fro.
As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
"They are gone," said I. "Thank heaven!" said Harry.
|
{
"id": "8118"
}
|
62
|
THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
|
That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a little money to enjoy it. But that's the everlasting rub--oh, who can cure an empty pocket?
"I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry," said I, "he's a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I know."
"No doubt of it," said Harry, looking hopeless.
"And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so soon."
"And I am sorry enough myself," said Harry, looking very sincere.
"But I will be soon back again, I doubt not," said I. "Perhaps so," said Harry, shaking his head. "How far is it off?"
"Only a hundred and eighty miles," said I. "A hundred and eighty miles!" said Harry, drawing the words out like an endless ribbon. "Why, I couldn't walk that in a month."
"Now, my dear friend," said I, "take my advice, and while I am gone, keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well."
But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so bad, that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we both gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing on the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the play of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits, we parted. I never saw Harry again.
I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into embraces, long and loving:--I pass over this; and will conclude my first voyage by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks; during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter, now spread before me.
"Dear Redburn--Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where. After you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together; and my interest in him increased every day. But you don't know how dull are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified, are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few dollars, but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three times after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that he had permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my questioning her closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that she did not know, but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend, she feared he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to the offices in South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made inquiries among them; but without success. And this, I am heartily grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not believe that his melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing himself away in a whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere in the city. You must come down yourself, and help me seek him out."
This letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield to the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered to think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides, or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought him all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry must indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his bitter experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
At last I was forced to give him up.
* * * * * Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat's crew that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and that the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of originally bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him why he had abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of ships.
"We had hardly been out three months," said he, "when on the Brazil banks we lost a boat's crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next day lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never entered the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the ship, and a whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he had a hard time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman's son, and when you could coax him to it, he sang like a bird."
"What was his name?" said I, trembling with expectation; "what kind of eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?"
"Harry Bolton was not your brother?" cried the stranger, starting.
Harry Bolton!
It was even he!
But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, My First Voyage--which here I end.
|
{
"id": "8118"
}
|
1
|
ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY.
|
Il faut devoir lever les yeux pour regarder ce qu'on aime.
A few children had congregated on the steps of the Marienkirche at Dantzig, because the door stood open. The verger, old Peter Koch--on week days a locksmith--had told them that nothing was going to happen; had been indiscreet enough to bid them go away. So they stayed, for they were little girls.
A wedding was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls of the Marienkirche--a cathedral built of red brick in the great days of the Hanseatic League.
“Who is it?” asked a stout fishwife, stepping over the threshold to whisper to Peter Koch.
“It is the younger daughter of Antoine Sebastian,” replied the verger, indicating with a nod of his head the house on the left-hand side of the Frauengasse where Sebastian lived. There was a wealth of meaning in the nod. For Peter Koch lived round the corner in the Kleine Schmiedegasse, and of course--well, it is only neighbourly to take an interest in those who drink milk from the same cow and buy wood from the same Jew.
The fishwife looked thoughtfully down the Frauengasse where every house has a different gable, and none of less than three floors within the pitch of the roof. She singled out No. 36, which has a carved stone balustrade to its broad verandah and a railing of wrought-iron on either side of the steps descending from the verandah to the street.
“They teach dancing?” she inquired.
And Koch nodded again, taking snuff.
“And he--the father?”
“He scrapes a fiddle,” replied the verger, examining the lady's basket of fish in a non-committing and final way. For a locksmith is almost as confidential an adviser as a notary. The Dantzigers, moreover, are a thrifty race and keep their money in a safe place; a habit which was to cost many of them their lives before the coming of another June.
The marriage service was a long one and not exhilarating. Through the open door came no sound of organ or choir, but the deep and monotonous drawl of one voice. There had been no ringing of bells. The north countries, with the exception of Russia, require more than the ringing of bells or the waving of flags to warm their hearts. They celebrate their festivities with good meat and wine consumed decently behind closed doors.
Dantzig was in fact under a cloud. No larger than a man's hand, this cloud had risen in Corsica forty-three years earlier. It had overshadowed France. Its gloom had spread to Italy, Austria, Spain; had penetrated so far north as Sweden; was now hanging sullen over Dantzig, the greatest of the Hanseatic towns, the Free City. For a Dantziger had never needed to say that he was a Pole or a Prussian, a Swede or a subject of the Czar. He was a Dantziger. Which is tantamount to having for a postal address a single name that is marked on the map.
Napoleon had garrisoned the Free City with French troops some years earlier, to the sullen astonishment of the citizens. And Prussia had not objected for a very obvious reason. Within the last fourteen months the garrison had been greatly augmented. The clouds seemed to be gathering over this prosperous city of the north, where, however, men continued to eat and drink, to marry and to be given in marriage as in another city of the plain.
Peter Koch replaced his snuff-stained handkerchief in the pocket of his rusty cassock and stood aside. He murmured a few conventional words of blessing, hard on the heels of stronger exhortations to the waiting children. And Desiree Sebastian came out into the sunlight--Desiree Sebastian no more.
That she was destined for the sunlight was clearly written on her face and in her gay, kind blue eyes. She was tall and straight and slim, as are English and Polish and Danish girls, and none other in all the world. But the colouring of her face and hair was more pronounced than in the fairness of Anglo-Saxon youth. For her hair had a golden tinge in it, and her skin was of that startlingly milky whiteness which is only found in those who live round the frozen waters. Her eyes, too, were of a clearer blue--like the blue of a summer sky over the Baltic sea. The rosy colour was in her cheeks, her eyes were laughing. This was a bride who had no misgivings.
On seeing such a happy face returning from the altar the observer might have concluded that the bride had assuredly attained her desire; that she had secured a title; that the pre-nuptial settlement had been safely signed and sealed.
But Desiree had none of these things. It was nearly a hundred years ago.
Her husband must have whispered some laughing comment on Koch, or another appeal to her quick sense of the humorous, for she looked into his changing face and gave a low, girlish laugh of amusement as they descended the steps together into the brilliant sunlight.
Charles Darragon wore one of the countless uniforms that enlivened the outward world in the great days of the greatest captain that history has seen. He was unmistakably French--unmistakably a French gentleman, as rare in 1812 as he is to-day. To judge from his small head and clean-cut features, fine and mobile; from his graceful carriage and slight limbs, this man was one of the many bearing names that begin with the fourth letter of the alphabet since the Terror only.
He was merely a lieutenant in a regiment of Alsatian recruits; but that went for nothing in the days of the Empire. Three kings in Europe had begun no farther up the ladder.
The Frauengasse is a short street, made narrow by the terrace that each house throws outward from its face, each seeking to gain a few inches on its neighbour. It runs from the Marienkirche to the Frauenthor, and remains to-day as it was built three hundred years ago.
Desiree nodded and laughed to the children, who interested her. She was quite simple and womanly, as some women, it is to be hoped, may succeed in continuing until the end of time. She was always pleased to see children; was glad, it seemed, that they should have congregated on the steps to watch her pass. Charles, with a faint and unconscious reflex of that grand manner which had brought his father to the guillotine, felt in his pocket for money, and found none.
He jerked his hand out with widespread fingers, in a gesture indicative of familiarity with the nakedness of the land.
“I have nothing, little citizens,” he said with a mock gravity; “nothing but my blessing.”
And he made a gay gesture with his left hand over their heads, not the act of benediction, but of peppering, which made them all laugh. The bride and bridegroom passing on joined in the laughter with hearts as light and voices scarcely less youthful.
The Frauengasse is intersected by the Pfaffengasse at right angles, through which narrow and straight street passes much of the traffic towards the Langenmarkt, the centre of the town. As the little bridal procession reached the corner of this street, it halted at the approach of some mounted troops. There was nothing unusual in this sight in the streets of Dantzig, which were accustomed now to the clatter of the Saxon cavalry.
But at the sight of the first troopers Charles Darragon threw up his head with a little exclamation of surprise.
Desiree looked at him and then turned to follow the direction of his gaze.
“What are these?” she murmured. For the uniforms were new and unfamiliar.
“Cavalry of the Old Guard,” replied her husband, and as he spoke he caught his breath.
The horsemen vanished into the continuation of the Pfaffengasse, and immediately behind them came a travelling carriage, swung on high wheels, three times the size of a Dantzig drosky, white with dust. It had small square windows. As Desiree drew back in obedience to a movement of her husband's arm, she saw a face for an instant--pale and set--with eyes that seemed to look at everything and yet at something beyond.
“Who was it? He looked at you, Charles,” said Desiree.
“It is the Emperor,” answered Darragon. His face was white. His eyes were dull, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is not yet back to earth.
Desiree turned to those behind her.
“It is the Emperor,” she said, with an odd ring in her voice which none had ever heard before. Then she stood looking after the carriage.
Her father, who was at her elbow--tall, white-haired, with an aquiline, inscrutable face--stood in a like attitude, looking down the Pfaffengasse. His hand was raised before his face with outspread fingers which seemed rigid in that gesture, as if lifted hastily to screen his face and hide it.
“Did he see me?” he asked in a low voice which only Desiree heard.
She glanced at him, and her eyes, which were clear as a cloudless sky, were suddenly shadowed by a suspicion quick and poignant.
“He seemed to see everything, but he only looked at Charles,” she answered. For a moment they all stood in the sunshine looking towards the Langenmarkt where the tower of the Rathhaus rose above the high roofs. The dust raised by the horses' feet and the carriage wheels slowly settled on their bridal clothes.
It was Desiree who at length made a movement to continue their way towards her father's house.
“Well,” she said with a slight laugh, “he was not bidden to my wedding, but he has come all the same.”
Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps, need make but a very small joke to cause merriment. Laughter is often nothing but the froth of tears.
There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of wedding-guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois for her taste. She carried her head with an air that told the world not to expect that she should ever be content to marry in such a humble style, and walk from the church in satin slippers like any daughter of a burgher.
This, at all events, was what old Koch the locksmith must have read in her beautiful, discontented face.
“Ah! ah!” he muttered to the bolts as he shot them. “But it is not the lightest hearts that quit the church in a carriage.”
So simple were the arrangements that bride and bridegroom and wedding-guests had to wait in the street while the servant unlocked the front door of No. 36 with a great key hurriedly extracted from her apron-pocket.
There was no unusual stir in the street. The windows of one or two of the houses had been decorated with flowers. These were the houses of friends. Others were silent and still behind their lace curtains, where there doubtless lurked peeping and criticizing eyes--the house of a neighbour.
The wedding-guests were few in number. Only one of them had a distinguished air, and he, like the bridegroom, wore the uniform of France. He was a small man, somewhat brusque in attitude, as became a soldier of Italy and Egypt. But he had a pleasant smile and that affability of manner which many learnt in the first years of the great Republic. He and Mathilde Sebastian never looked at each other: either an understanding or a misunderstanding.
The host, Antoine Sebastian, played his part well enough when he remembered that he had a part to play. He listened with a kind attention to the story of a very old lady, who it seemed had been married herself, but it was so long ago that the human interest of it all was lost in a pottle of petty detail which was all she could recall. Before the story was half finished, Sebastian's attention had strayed elsewhere, though his spare figure remained in its attitude of attention and polite forbearance. His mind had, it would seem, a trick of thus wandering away and leaving his body rigid in the last attitude that it had dictated.
Sebastian did not notice that the door was open and all the guests were waiting for him to lead the way.
“Now, old dreamer,” whispered Desiree, with a quick pinch on his arm, “take the Grafin upstairs to the drawing-room and give her wine. You are to drink our healths, remember.”
“Is there wine?” he asked with a vague smile. “Where has it come from?”
“Like other good things, my father-in-law,” replied Charles with his easy laugh, “it comes from France.”
They spoke together thus in confidence, in the language of that same sunny land. But when Sebastian turned again to the old lady, still recalling the details of that other wedding, he addressed her in German, offering his arm with a sudden stiffness of gesture which he seemed to put on with the change of tongue.
They passed up the low time-worn steps arm-in-arm, and beneath the high carved doorway, whereon some pious Hanseatic merchant had inscribed his belief that if God be in the house there is no need of a watchman, emphasizing his creed by bolts and locks of enormous strength, and bars to every window.
The servant in her Samland Sunday dress, having shaken her fist at the children, closed the door behind the last guest, and, so far as the Frauengasse was concerned, the exciting incident was over. From the open window came only the murmur of quiet voices, the clink of glasses at the drinking of a toast, or a laugh in the clear voice of the bride herself. For Desiree persisted in her optimistic view of these proceedings, though her husband scarcely helped her now at all, and seemed a different man since the passage through the Pfaffengasse of that dusty travelling carriage which had played the part of the stormy petrel from end to end of Europe.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
2
|
A CAMPAIGNER.
|
Not what I am, but what I Do, is my Kingdom.
Desiree had made all her own wedding-clothes. “Her poor little marriage-basket,” she called it. She had even made the cake which was now cut with some ceremony by her father.
“I tremble,” she exclaimed aloud, “to think what it may be like in the middle.”
And Mathilde was the only person there who did not smile at the unconscious admission. The cake was still under discussion, and the Grafin had just admitted that it was almost as good as that other cake which had been consumed in the days of Frederick the Great, when the servant called Desiree from the room.
“It is a soldier,” she said in a whisper at the head of the stairs. “He has a paper in his hand. I know what that means. He is quartered on us.”
Desiree hurried downstairs. In the entrance-hall, a broad-built little man stood awaiting her. He was stout and red, with hair all ragged at the temples, almost white. His eyes were lost behind shaggy eyebrows. His face was made broader by little whiskers stopping short at the level of his ear. He had a snuff-blown complexion, and in the wrinkles of his face the dust of a dozen campaigns seemed to have accumulated.
“Barlasch,” he said curtly, holding out a long strip of blue paper. “Of the Guard. Once a sergeant. Italy, Egypt, the Danube.”
He frowned at Desiree while she read the paper in the dim light that filtered through the twisted bars of the fanlight above the door.
Then he turned to the servant who stood, comely and breathless, looking him up and down.
“Papa Barlasch,” he added for her edification, and he drew down his left eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek. His right eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a fierce steadfastness.
“Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?” asked Desiree without seeking to hide her disgust. She spoke in her own tongue.
“French?” said the soldier, looking at her. “Good. Yes. I am quartered here. Thirty-six, Frauengasse. Sebastian; musician. You are lucky to get me. I always give satisfaction--ha!”
He gave a curt laugh in one syllable only. His left arm was curved round a bundle of wood bound together by a red pocket-handkerchief not innocent of snuff. He held out this bundle to Desiree, as Solomon may have held out some great gift to the Queen of Sheba to smooth the first doubtful steps of friendship.
Desiree accepted the gift and stood in her wedding-dress holding the bundle of wood against her breast. Then a gleam of the one grey eye that was visible conveyed to her the fact that this walnut-faced warrior was smiling. She laughed gaily.
“It is well,” said Barlasch. “We are friends. You are lucky to get me. You may not think so now. Would this woman like me to speak to her in Polish or German?”
“Do you speak so many languages?”
He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms as far as his many burdens allowed. For he was hung round with a hundred parcels and packages.
“The Old Guard,” he said, “can always make itself understood.”
He rubbed his hands together with the air of a brisk man ready for any sort of work.
“Now, where shall I sleep?” he asked. “One is not particular, you understand. A few minutes and one is at home--perhaps peeling the potatoes. It is only a civilian who is ashamed of using his knife on a potato. Papa Barlasch, they call me.”
Without awaiting an invitation he went forward towards the kitchen. He seemed to know the house by instinct. His progress was accompanied by a clatter of utensils like that which heralds the coming of a carrier's cart.
At the kitchen door he stopped and sniffed loudly. There certainly was a slight odour of burning fat. Papa Barlasch turned and shook an admonitory finger at the servant, but he said nothing. He looked round at the highly polished utensils, at the table and floor both alike scrubbed clean by a vigorous northern arm. And he was kind enough to nod approval.
“On a campaign,” he said to no one in particular, “a little bit of horse thrust into the cinders on the end of a bayonet--but in times of peace...” He broke off and made a gesture towards the saucepans which indicated quite clearly that he was between campaigns--inclined to good living.
“I am a rude fork,” he jerked to Desiree over his shoulder in the dialect of the Cotes du Nord.
“How long will you be here?” asked Desiree, who was eminently practical. A billet was a misfortune which Charles Darragon had hitherto succeeded in warding off. He had some small influence as an officer of the head-quarters' staff.
Barlasch held up a reproving hand. The question, he seemed to think, was not quite delicate.
“I pay my own,” he said. “Give and take--that is my motto. When you have nothing to give... offer a smile.”
With a gesture he indicated the bundle of firewood which Desiree still absent-mindedly carried against her white dress. He turned and opened a cupboard low down on the floor at the left-hand side of the fireplace. He seemed to know by an instinct usually possessed by charwomen and other domesticated persons of experience where the firewood was kept. Lisa gave a little exclamation of surprise at his impertinence and his perspicacity. He took the firewood, unknotted his handkerchief, and threw his offering into the cupboard. Then he turned and perceived for the first time that Desiree had a bright ribbon at her waist and on her shoulders; that a thin chain of gold was round her throat and that there were flowers at her breast.
“A fete?” he inquired curtly.
“My marriage fete,” she answered. “I was married half an hour ago.”
He looked at her beneath his grizzled brows. His face was only capable of producing one expression--a shaggy weather-beaten fierceness. But, like a dog which can express more than many human beings, by a hundred instinctive gestures he could, it seemed, dispense with words on occasion and get on quite as well without them. He clearly disapproved of Desiree's marriage, and drew her attention to the fact that she was no more than a schoolgirl with an inconsequent brain, and little limbs too slight to fight a successful battle in a world full of cruelty and danger.
Then he made a gesture half of apology as if recognizing that it was no business of his, and turned away thoughtfully.
“I had troubles of that sort myself,” he explained, putting together the embers on the hearth with the point of a twisted, rusty bayonet, “but that was long ago. Well, I can drink your health all the same, mademoiselle.”
He turned to Lisa with a friendly nod and put out his tongue, in the manner of the people, to indicate that his lips were dry.
Desiree had always been the housekeeper. It was to her that Lisa naturally turned in her extremity at the invasion of her kitchen by Papa Barlasch. And when that warrior had been supplied with beer it was with Desiree, in an agitated whisper in the great dark dining-room with its gloomy old pictures and heavy carving, that she took counsel as to where he should be quartered.
The object of their solicitude himself interrupted their hurried consultation by opening the door and putting his shaggy head round the corner of it.
“It is not worth while to consult long about it,” he said. “There is a little room behind the kitchen, that opens into the yard. It is full of boxes. But we can move them--a little straw--and there!”
With a gesture he described a condition of domestic peace and comfort which far exceeded his humble requirements.
“The blackbeetles and I are old friends,” he concluded cheerfully.
“There are no blackbeetles in the house, monsieur,” said Desiree, hesitating to accept his proposal.
“Then I shall resign myself to my solitude,” he answered. “It is quiet. I shall not hear the patron touching on his violin. It is that which occupies his leisure, is it not?”
“Yes,” answered Desiree, still considering the question.
“I too am a musician,” said Papa Barlasch, turning towards the kitchen again. “I played a drum at Marengo.”
And as he led the way to the little room in the yard at the back of the kitchen, he expressed by a shake of the head a fellow-feeling for the gentleman upstairs, whose acquaintance he had not yet made, who occupied his leisure by touching the violin.
They stood together in the small apartment which Barlasch, with the promptitude of an experienced conqueror, had set apart for his own accommodation.
“Those trunks,” he observed casually, “were made in France”--a mental note which he happened to make aloud, as some do for better remembrance. “This solid girl and I will soon move them. And you, mademoiselle, go back to your wedding.”
“The good God be merciful to you,” he added under his breath when Desiree had gone.
She laughed as she mounted the stairs, a slim white figure amid the heavy woodwork long since blackened by time. The stairs made no sound beneath her light step. How many weary feet had climbed them since they were built! For the Dantzigers have been a people of sorrow, torn by wars, starved by siege, tossed from one conqueror to another from the beginning until now.
Desiree excused herself for her absence and frankly gave the cause. She was disposed to make light of the incident. It was natural to her to be optimistic. Both she and Mathilde made a practice of withholding from their father's knowledge the smaller worries of daily life which sour so many women and make them whine on platforms to be given the larger woes.
She was glad to note that her father did not attach much importance to the arrival of Papa Barlasch; though Mathilde found opportunity to convey her displeasure at the news by a movement of the eyebrows.
Antoine Sebastian had applied himself seriously now to his role of host, so rarely played in the Frauengasse. He was courteous and quick to see a want or a possible desire of any one of his guests. It was part of his sense of hospitality to dismiss all personal matters, and especially a personal trouble, from public attention.
“They will attend to him in the kitchen, no doubt,” he said with that grand air which the dancing academy tried to imitate.
Charles hardly noted what Desiree said. So sunny a nature as his might have been expected to make light of a minor trouble, more especially the minor trouble of another. He was unusually thoughtful. Some event of the morning had, it would appear, given him pause on his primrose path. He glanced more than once over his shoulder towards the window, which stood open. He seemed at times to listen.
Suddenly he rose and went to the window. His action caused a brief silence, and all heard the clatter of a horse's feet and the quick rattle of a sword against spur and buckle.
After a glance he came back into the room.
“Excuse me,” he said, with a bow towards Mathilde. “It is, I think, a messenger for me.”
And he hurried downstairs. He did not return at once, and soon the conversation became general again.
“You,” said the Grafin, touching Desiree's arm with her fan, “you, who are now his wife, must be dying to know what has called him away. Do not consider the 'convenances,' my child.”
Desiree, thus admonished, followed Charles. She had not been aware of this consuming curiosity until it was suggested to her.
She found Charles standing at the open door. He thrust a letter into his pocket as she approached him, and turned towards her the face that she had seen for a moment when he drew her back at the corner of the Pfaffengasse to allow the Emperor's carriage to pass on its way. It was the white, half-stupefied face of one who has for an instant seen a vision of things not earthly.
“I have been sent for by the... I am wanted at head-quarters,” he said vaguely. “I shall not be long...” He took his shako, looked at her with an odd attempt to simulate cheerfulness, kissed her fingers and hurried out into the street.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
3
|
FATE.
|
We pass; the path that each man trod Is dim; or will be dim, with weeds.
When Desiree turned towards the stairs, she met the guests descending. They were taking their leave as they came down, hurriedly, like persons conscious of having outstayed their welcome.
Mathilde listened coldly to the conventional excuses. So few people recognize the simple fact that they need never apologize for going away. Sebastian stood at the head of the stairs bowing in his most Germanic manner. The urbane host, with a charm entirely French, who had dispensed a simple hospitality so easily and gracefully a few minutes earlier, seemed to have disappeared behind a pale and formal mask.
Desiree was glad to see them go. There was a sense of uneasiness, a vague unrest in the air. There was something amiss. The wedding party had been a failure. All had gone well and merrily up to a certain point--at the corner of the Pfaffengasse, when the dusty travelling carriage passed across their path. From that moment there had been a change. A shadow seemed to have fallen across the sunny nature of the proceedings; for never had bride and bridegroom set forth together with lighter hearts than those carried by Charles and Desiree Darragon down the steps of the Marienkirche.
During its progress across the whole width of Germany, the carriage had left unrest behind it. Men had travelled night and day to stand sleepless by the roadside and see it pass. Whole cities had been kept astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels would be heard in the streets before dawn. Hatred and adoration, fear and that dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused by the shadow of the superhuman, had sprung into being at the mere sound of its approach.
When therefore it passed across the Frauengasse, throwing its dust upon Desiree's wedding-dress, it was only fulfilling a mission. When it broke in upon the lives of these few persons seeking dimly for their happiness--as the heathen grope for an unknown God--and threw down carefully constructed plans, swept aside the strongest will and crushed the stoutest heart, it was only working out its destiny. The dust sprinkled on Desiree's hair had fallen on the faces of thousands of dead. The unrest that entered into the quiet little house on the left-hand side of the Frauengasse had made its way across a thousand thresholds, of Arab tent and imperial palace alike. The lives of millions were affected by it, the secret hopes of thousands were undermined by it. It disturbed the sleep of half the world, and made men old before their time.
“More troops must have arrived,” said Desiree, already busying herself to set the house in order, “since they have been forced to billet this man with us. And now they have sent for Charles, though he is really on leave of absence.”
She glanced at the clock.
“I hope he will not be late. The chaise is to come at four o'clock. There is still time for me to help you.”
Mathilde made no answer. Their father stood near the window. He was looking out with thoughtful eyes. His face was drawn downwards by a hundred fine wrinkles. It was the face of one brooding over a sorrow or a vengeance. There was something in his whole being suggestive of a bygone prosperity. This was a lean man who had once been well-seeming.
“No!” said Desiree gaily, “we were a dull company. We need not disguise it. It all came from that man crossing our path in his dusty carriage.”
“He is on his way to Russia,” Sebastian said jerkily. “God spare me to see him return!”
Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of uneasiness. It seemed that their father was subject to certain humours which they had reason to dread. Desiree left her occupation and went to him, linking her arm in his and standing beside him.
“Do not let us think of disagreeable things to-day,” she said. “God will spare you much longer than that, you depressing old wedding-guest!”
He patted her hand which rested on his arm and looked down at her with eyes softened by affection. But her fair hair, rather tumbled, which met his glance must have awakened some memory that made his face a marble mask again.
“Yes,” he said grimly, “but I am an old man and he is a young one. And I want to see him dead before I die.”
“I will not have you think such bloodthirsty thoughts on my wedding-day,” said Desiree. “See, there is Charles returning already, and he has not been absent ten minutes. He has some one with him--who is it? Papa... Mathilde, look! Who is it coming back with Charles in such a hurry?”
Mathilde, who was setting the room in order, glanced through the lace curtains.
“I do not know,” she answered indifferently. “Just an ordinary man.”
Desiree had turned away from the window as if to go downstairs and meet her husband. She paused and looked back again over her shoulder towards the street.
“Is it?” she said rather oddly. “I do not know--I--” And she stood with the incompleted sentence on her lips waiting irresolutely for Charles to come upstairs.
In a moment he burst into the room with all his usual exuberance and high spirit.
“Picture to yourselves!” he cried, standing in the doorway with his arms extended before him. “I was hurrying to head-quarters when I ran into the embrace of my dear Louis--my cousin. I have told you a hundred times that he is brother and father and everything to me. I am so glad that he should come to-day of all days.”
He turned towards the stairs with a gesture of welcome, still with his two arms outheld, as if inviting the man, who came rather slowly upstairs, to come to his embrace and to the embrace of those who were now his relations.
“There was a little suspicion of sadness--I do not know what it was--at the table; but now it is all gone. All is well now that this unexpected guest has come. This dear Louis.”
He went to the landing as he spoke, and returned bringing by the arm a man taller than himself and darker, with a still brown face and steady eyes set close together. He had a lean look of good breeding.
“This dear Louis!” repeated Charles. “My only relative in all the world. My cousin, Louis d'Arragon. But he, par exemple, spells his name in two words.”
The man bowed gravely--a comprehensive bow; but he looked at Desiree.
“This is my father-in-law,” continued Charles breathlessly. “Monsieur Antoine Sebastian, and Desiree and Mathilde--my wife, my dear Louis--your cousin, Desiree.”
He had turned again to Louis and shook him by the shoulders in the fulness of his joy. He had not distinguished between Mathilde and Desiree, and it was towards Mathilde that D'Arragon looked with a polite and rather formal repetition of his bow.
“It is I.. . I am Desiree,” said the younger sister, coming forward with a slow gesture of shyness.
D'Arragon took her hand.
“I have been happy,” he said, “in the moment of my arrival.”
Then he turned to Mathilde and bowed over the hand she held out to him. Sebastian had come forward with a sudden return of his gracious and rather old-world manner. He did not offer to shake hands, but bowed.
“A son of Louis d'Arragon who was fortunate enough to escape to England?” he inquired with a courteous gesture.
“The only son,” replied the new-comer.
“I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Monsieur le Marquis,” said Antoine Sebastian slowly.
“Oh, you must not call me that,” replied D'Arragon with a short laugh. “I am an English sailor--that is all.”
“And now, my dear Louis, I leave you,” broke in Charles, who had rather impatiently awaited the end of these formalities. “A brief half-hour and I am with you again. You will stay here till I return.”
He turned, nodded gaily to Desiree and ran downstairs.
Through the open windows they heard his quick, light footfall as he hurried up the Frauengasse. Something made them silent, listening to it.
It was not difficult to see that D'Arragon was a sailor. Not only had he the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the attentive air of one whose waking moments are a watch.
“You look at one as if one were the horizon,” Desiree said to him long afterwards. But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.
His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. He was not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before he spoke, with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and was interrupted before the words had been uttered.
“Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman, monsieur,” said Sebastian, “which would account for your being in the English service.”
“Not entirely,” answered d'Arragon, “though my mother was indeed English and died--in a French prison. But it was from a sense of gratitude that my father placed me in the English service--and I have never regretted it, monsieur.”
“Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape, like many others.”
“Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service himself. He would have done it if he could--” D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to him with averted eyes.
“My father was one of those,” he said at length, “who did not think that in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for France.”
Sebastian held up a warning hand.
“In England--” he corrected, “in England one may think such things. But not in France, and still less in Dantzig.”
“If one is an Englishman,” replied D'Arragon with a smile, “one may think them where one likes, and say them when one is disposed. It is one of the privileges of the nation, monsieur.”
He made the statement lightly, seeing the humour of it with a cosmopolitan understanding, without any suggestion of the boastfulness of youth. Desiree noticed that his hair was turning grey at the temples.
“I did not know,” he said, turning to her, “that Charles was in Dantzig, much less that he was celebrating so happy an occasion. We ran against each other by accident in the street. It was a lucky accident that allowed me to make your acquaintance so soon after you have become his wife.”
“It scarcely seems possible that it should be an accident,” said Desiree. “It must have been the work of fate--if fate has time to think of such an insignificant person as myself and so small an event as my marriage in these days.”
“Fate,” put in Mathilde in her composed voice and manner, “has come to Dantzig to-day.”
“Ah!”
“Yes. You are the second unexpected arrival this afternoon.”
D'Arragon turned and looked at Mathilde. His manner, always grave and attentive, was that of a reader who has found an interesting book on a dusty shelf.
“Has the Emperor come?” he asked.
Mathilde nodded.
“I thought I saw something in Charles's face,” he said reflectively, looking back through the open door towards the stairs where Charles had nodded farewell to them. “So the Emperor is here, in Dantzig?”
He turned towards Sebastian, who stood with a stony face.
“Which means war,” he said.
“It always means war,” replied Sebastian in a tired voice. “Is he again going to prove himself stronger than any?”
“Some day he will make a mistake,” said D'Arragon cheerfully. “And then will come the day of reckoning.”
“Ah!” said Sebastian, with a shake of the head that seemed to indicate an account so one-sided that none could ever liquidate it. “You are young, monsieur. You are full of hope.”
“I am not young--I am thirty-one--but I am, as you say, full of hope. I look to that day, Monsieur Sebastian.”
“And in the mean time?” suggested the man who seemed but a shadow of someone standing apart and far away from the affairs of daily life.
“In the mean time one must play one's part,” returned D'Arragon, with his almost inaudible laugh, “whatever it may be.”
There was no foreboding in his voice; no second meaning in the words. He was open and simple and practical, like the life he led.
“Then you have a part to play, too,” said Desiree, thinking of Charles, who had been called away at such an inopportune moment, and had gone without complaint. “It is the penalty we pay for living in one of the less dull periods of history. He touches your life too.”
“He touches every one's life, mademoiselle. That is what makes him so great a man. Yes. I have a little part to play. I am like one of the unseen supernumeraries who has to see that a door is open to allow the great actors to make an effective entree. I am lent to Russia for the war that is coming. It is a little part. I have to keep open one small portion of the line of communication between England and St. Petersburg, so that news may pass to and fro.”
He glanced towards Mathilde as he spoke. She was listening with an odd eagerness which he noted, as he noted everything, methodically and surely. He remembered it afterwards.
“That will not be easy, with Denmark friendly to France,” said Sebastian, “and every Prussian port closed to you.”
“But Sweden will help. She is not friendly to France.”
Sebastian laughed, and made a gesture with his white and elegant hand, of contempt and ridicule.
“And, bon Dieu! what a friendship it is,” he exclaimed, “that is based on the fear of being taken for an enemy.”
“It is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur,” said D'Arragon taking up his hat.
“Then you have a ship, monsieur, here in the Baltic?” asked Mathilde with more haste than was characteristic of her usual utterance.
“A very small one, mademoiselle,” he answered. “So small that I could turn her round here in the Frauengasse.”
“But she is fast?”
“The fastest in the Baltic, mademoiselle,” he answered. “And that is why I must take my leave--with the news you have told me.”
He shook hands as he spoke, and bowed to Sebastian, whose generation was content with the more formal salutation. Desiree went to the door, and led the way downstairs.
“We have but one servant,” she said, “who is busy.”
On the doorstep he paused for a moment. And Desiree seemed to expect him to do so.
“Charles and I have always been like brothers--you will remember that always, will you not?”
“Yes,” she answered with her gay nod. “I will remember.”
“Then good-bye, mademoiselle.”
“Madame,” she corrected lightly.
“Madame, my cousin,” he said, and departed smiling.
Desiree went slowly upstairs again.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
4
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THE CLOUDED MOON.
|
Quand on se mefie on se trompe, quand on ne se mefie pas, on est trompe.
Charles Darragon had come to Dantzig a year earlier. He was a lieutenant in an infantry regiment, and he was twenty-five. Many of his contemporaries were colonels in these days of quick promotion, when men lived at such a rate that few of them lived long. But Charles was too easy-going to envy any man.
When he arrived he knew no one in Dantzig, had few friends in the army of occupation. In six months he possessed acquaintances in every street, and was on terms of easy familiarity with all his fellow-officers.
“If the army of occupation had more officers like young Darragon,” a town councillor had grimly said to Rapp, “the Dantzigers would soon be resigned to your presence.”
It seemed that Charles had the gift of popularity. He was open and hearty, hail-fellow-well-met with the new-comers, who were numerous enough at this time, quick to understand the quiet men, ready to make merry with the gay. Regarding himself, he was quite open and frank.
“I am a poor devil of a lieutenant,” he said, “that is all.”
Reserve is fatal to popularity, yet friendship cannot exist without it. Charles had, it seemed, nothing to hide, and was indifferent to the secrets of others. It is such people who receive many confidences.
“But it must go no farther...” a hundred men had said to him.
“My friend, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten all about it,” he invariably replied, which men remembered afterwards and were glad.
A certain sort of friendship seemed to exist between Charles Darragon and Colonel de Casimir--not without patronage on one side and a slightly constraining sense of obligation on the other. It was de Casimir who had introduced Charles to Mathilde Sebastian at a formal reception at General Rapp's. Charles, of course, fell in love with Mathilde, and out again after half-an-hour's conversation. There was something cold and calculating about Mathilde which held him at arm's length with as much efficacy as the strictest duenna. Indeed, there are some maidens who require no better chaperon for their hearts than their own heads.
A few days after this introduction Charles met Mathilde and Desiree in the Langgasse, and he fell in love with Desiree. He went about for a whole week seeking opportunity to tell her without delay what had happened to him. The opportunity presented itself before long; for one morning he saw her walking quickly towards the Kuh-brucke with her skates swinging from her wrist. It was a sunny, still, winter morning, such as temperate countries never know. Desiree's eyes were bright with youth and happiness. The cold air had slightly emphasized the rosy colour of her cheeks.
Charles caught his breath at the sight of her, though she did not happen to perceive him. He called a sleigh and drove to the barracks for his own skates. Then to the Kuh-brucke, where a reach of the Mottlau was cleared and kept in order for skating. He overpaid the sleigh-driver and laughed aloud at the man's boorish surprise. There was no one so happy as Charles Darragon in all the world. He was going to tell Desiree that he loved her.
At first Desiree was surprised, as was only natural. For she had not thought again of the pleasant young officer introduced to her by Mathilde. They had not even commented on him after he had made his gay bow and gone.
She had of course thought of these things in the abstract when her busy mind had nothing more material and immediate to consider. She had probably arranged how some abstract person should some day tell her of his love and how she should make reply. But she had never imagined the incident as it actually happened. She had never pictured a youth in a gay uniform looking down at her with ardent eyes as he skated by her side through the crisp still air, while the ice sang a high clear song beneath their feet in accompaniment to his hurried laughing words of protestation. He seemed to touch life lightly and to anticipate nothing but happiness. In truth, it was difficult to be tragic on such a morning.
These were the heedless days of the beginning of the century, when men not only threw away their lives, but played ducks-and-drakes with their chances of happiness in a manner quite incomprehensible to the careful method of human thought to-day. Charles Darragon lived only in the present moment. He was in love with her. Desiree must marry him.
It was quite different from what she had anticipated. She had looked forward to such a moment with a secret misgiving. The abstract person of her thoughts had always inspired her with a painful shyness and an indefinite, breathless fear. But the lover who was here now in the flesh by her side inspired none of these feelings. On the contrary, she felt easy and natural and quite at home with him. There was nothing alarming about his flushed face and laughing eyes. She was not at all afraid of him. She even felt in some vague way older than he, though he had just told her that he was twenty-five, and four years her senior.
She accepted the violets which he had hurriedly bought for her as he came through the Langenmarkt, but she would not say that she loved him, because she did not. She was in most ways quite a matter-of-fact person, and she was of an honest mind. She said she would think about it. She did not love him now--she knew that. She could not say that she would not learn to love him some day, but there seemed no likelihood of it at present. Then he would shoot himself! He would certainly shoot himself unless she learnt to love him! And she asked “When?” and they both laughed. They changed the subject, but after a time they came back to it; which is the worst of love--one always comes back to it.
Then suddenly he began to assume an air of proprietorship, and burst into a hundred explanations of what fears he felt for her; for her happiness and welfare. Her father was absent-minded and heedless. He was not a fit guardian for her. Was she not the prettiest girl in all Dantzig--in all the world? Her sister was not fond enough of her to care for her properly. He announced his intention of seeing her father the next day. Everything should be done in order. Not a word must be hinted by the most watchful neighbour against the perfect propriety of their betrothal.
Desiree laughed and said that he was progressing rather rapidly. She had only her instinct to guide her through these troubled waters; which was much better than experience. Experience in a woman is tantamount to a previous conviction against a prisoner.
Charles was grave, however; a rare tribute. He was in love for the first time, which often makes men quite honest for a brief period--even unselfish. Of course, some men are honest and unselfish all their lives; which perhaps means that they remain in love--for the first time--all their lives. They are rare, of course. But the sort of woman with whom it is possible to remain in love all through a lifetime is rarer.
So Charles waylaid Antoine Sebastian the next day as he went out of the Frauenthor for his walk in the morning sun by the side of the frozen Mottlau. He was better received than he had any reason to expect.
“I am only a lieutenant,” he said, “but in these days, monsieur, you know--there are possibilities.”
He laughed gaily as he waved his gloves in the direction of Russia, across the river. But Sebastian's face clouded, and Charles, who was quick and sympathetic, abandoned that point in his argument almost before the words were out of his lips.
“I have a little money,” he said, “in addition to my pay. I assure you, monsieur, I am not of mean birth.”
“You are an orphan?” said Sebastian curtly.
“Yes.”
“Of the... Terror?”
“Yes; I--well, one does not make much of one's parentage in these rough times--monsieur.”
“Your father's name was Charles--like your own?”
“Yes.”
“The second son?”
“Yes, monsieur. Did you know him?”
“One remembers a name here and there,” answered Sebastian, in his stiff manner, looking straight in front of him.
“There was a tone in your voice--,” began Charles, and, again perceiving that he was on a false scent, broke off abruptly. “If love can make mademoiselle happy--,” he said; and a gesture of his right hand seemed to indicate that his passion was beyond the measure of words.
So Charles Darragon was permitted to pay his addresses to Desiree in the somewhat formal manner of a day which, upon careful consideration, will be found to have been no more foolish than the present. He made no inquiries respecting Desiree's parentage. It was Desiree he wanted, and that was all. They understood the arts of love and war in the great days of the Empire.
The rest was easy enough, and the gods were kind. Charles had even succeeded in getting a month's leave of absence. They were to spend their honeymoon at Zoppot, a little fishing-village hidden in the pines by the Baltic shore, only eight miles from Dantzig, where the Vistula loses itself at last in the salt water.
All these arrangements had been made, as Desiree had prepared her trousseau, with a zest and gaiety which all were invited to enjoy. It is said that love is an egoist. Charles and Desiree had no desire to keep their happiness to themselves, but wore it, as it were, upon their sleeves.
The attitude of the Frauengasse towards Desiree's wedding was only characteristic of the period. Every house in Dantzig looked askance upon its neighbour at this time. Each roof covered a number of contending interests.
Some were for the French, and some for the conqueror's unwilling ally, William of Prussia. The names above the shops were German and Polish. There are to-day Scotch names also, here as elsewhere on the Baltic shores. When the serfs were liberated it was necessary to find surnames for these free men--these Pauls-the-son-of-Paul; and the nobles of Esthonia and Lithuania were reading Sir Walter Scott at the time.
The burghers of Dantzig (“They must be made to pay, these rich Dantzigers,” wrote Napoleon to Rapp) trembled for their wealth, and stood aghast by their empty counting-houses; for their gods had been cast down; commerce was at a standstill. There were many, therefore, who hated the French, and cherished a secret love of those bluff British captains--so like themselves in build, and thought, and slowness of speech--who would thrash their wooden brigs through the shallow seas, despite decrees and threats and sloops-of-war, so long as they could lay them alongside the granaries of the Vistula. Lately the very tolls had been collected by a French customs service, and the wholesale smuggling, to which even Governor Rapp--that long-headed Alsatian--had closed his eyes, was at an end.
Again, the Poles who looked on Dantzig as the seaport of that great kingdom of Eastern Europe which was and is no more, had been assured that France would set up again the throne of the Jagellons and the Sobieskis. There was a Poniatowski high in the Emperor's service and esteem. The Poles were for France.
The Jew, hurrying along close by the wall--always in the shadow--traded with all and trusted none. Who could tell what thoughts were hidden beneath the ragged fur cap--what revenge awaited its consummation in the heart crushed by oppression and contempt?
Besides these civilians there were many who had a military air within their civil garb. For the pendulum of war had swung right across from Cadiz to Dantzig, and swept northwards in its wake the merchants of death, the men who live by feeding soldiers and rifling the dead.
All these were in the streets, rubbing shoulders with the gay epaulettes of the Saxons, the Badeners, the Wurtembergers, the Westphalians, and the Hessians, who had been poured into Dantzig by Napoleon during the months when he had continued to exchange courteous and affectionate letters with Alexander of Russia. For more than a year the broad-faced Bavarians (who have borne the brunt of every war in Central Europe) had been peaceably quartered in the town. Half a dozen different tongues were daily heard in this city of the plain, and no man knew who might be his friend and who his enemy. For some who were allies to-day were commanded by their kings to slay each other to-morrow.
In the wine-cellars and the humbler beer-shops, in the great houses of the councillors, and behind the snowy lace curtains of the Frauengasse and the Portchaisengasse a thousand slow Northerners spoke of these things and kept them in their hearts. A hundred secret societies passed from mouth to mouth instruction, warning, encouragement. Germany has always been the home of the secret society. Northern Europe gave birth to those countless associations which have proved stronger than kings and surer than a throne. The Hanseatic League, the first of the commercial unions which were destined to build up the greatest empire of the world, lived longest in Dantzig.
The Tugendbund, men whispered, was not dead but sleeping. Napoleon, who had crushed it once, was watching for its revival; had a whole army of his matchless secret police ready for it. And the Tugendbund had had its centre in Dantzig.
Perhaps, in the Rathskeller itself--one of the largest wine stores in the world, where tables and chairs are set beneath the arches of the Exchange, a vast cave under the streets--perhaps here the Tugendbund still encouraged men to be virtuous and self-denying for no other or higher purpose than the overthrow of the Scourge of Europe. Here the richer citizens have met from time immemorial to drink with solemnity and a decent leisure the wines sent hither in their own ships from the Rhine, from Greece and the Crimea, from Bordeaux and Burgundy, from the Champagne and Tokay. This is not only the Rathskeller, but the real Rathhaus, where the Dantzigers have taken counsel over their afternoon wine from generation to generation, whence have been issued to all the world those decrees of probity and a commercial uprightness between buyer and seller, debtor and creditor, master and man, which reached to every corner of the commercial world. And now it was whispered that the latter-day Dantzigers--the sons of those who formed the Hanseatic League: mostly fat men with large faces and shrewd, calculating eyes; high foreheads; good solid men, who knew the world, and how to make their way in it; withal, good judges of a wine and great drinkers, like that William the Silent, who braved and met and conquered the European scourge of mediaeval times--it was whispered that these were reviving the Tugendbund.
Amid such contending interests, and in a free city so near to several frontiers, men came and went without attracting undesired attention. Each party suspected a new-comer of belonging to the other.
“He scrapes a fiddle,” Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife. And perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian. Sebastian was poor. All the Frauengasse knew that. But the Frauengasse itself was poor, and no man in Dantzig was so foolish at this time as to admit that he had possessions.
This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The world has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.
The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to gain his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for that same safest and most satisfactory of all motives.
“But he holds his head so high!” once observed the stout and matter-of-fact daughter of a Councillor. “Why has he that grand manner?”
“Because he is a dancing-master,” replied Desiree with a grave assurance. “He does it so that you may copy him. Chin up. Oh! how fat you are.”
Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown. She did not dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with the air of a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet grace which was the envy and despair of her pupils. Mathilde was patient with the slow and heavy of foot, while Desiree told them bluntly that they were fat. Nevertheless, they were afraid of Mathilde, and only laughed at Desiree when she rushed angrily at them, and, seizing them by the arms, danced them round the room with the energy of despair.
Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as men acquire who are in authority, held the balance evenly between the sisters, and smiled apologetically over his fiddle towards the victim of Desiree's impetuosity.
“Yes,” he would reply to watching mothers, who tried to lead him to say that their daughter was the best dancer in the school: “Yes, Mathilde puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down to their feet.”
In all matters of the household Desiree played a similar part. She was up early and still astir after nine o'clock at night, when the other houses in the Frauengasse were quiet, if there were work to do.
“It is because she has no method,” said Mathilde, who had herself a well-ordered mind, and that quickness which never needs to hurry.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
5
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THE WEISSEN ROSS'L.
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The moth will singe her wings, and singed return, Her love of light quenching her fear of pain.
There are quite a number of people who get through life without realizing their own insignificance. Ninety-nine out of a hundred persons signify nothing, and the hundredth is usually so absorbed in the message which he has been sent into the world to deliver that he loses sight of the messenger altogether.
By a merciful dispensation of Providence we are permitted to bustle about in our immediate little circle like the ant, running hither and thither with all the sublime conceit of that insect. We pick up, as he does, a burden which on close inspection will be found to be absolutely valueless, something that somebody else has thrown away. We hoist it over obstructions while there is usually a short way round; we fret and sweat and fume. Then we drop the burden and rush off at a tangent to pick up another. We write letters to our friends explaining to them what we are about. We even indite diaries to be read by goodness knows whom, explaining to ourselves what we have been doing. Sometimes we find something that really looks valuable, and rush to our particular ant-heap with it while our neighbours pause and watch us. But they really do not care; and if the rumour of our discovery reach so far as the next ant-heap, the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a few may feel a passing pang of jealousy. They may perhaps remember our name, and will soon forget what we discovered--which is Fame. While we are falling over each other to attain this, and dying to tell each other what it feels like when we have it, or think we have it, let us pause for a moment and think of an ant--who kept a diary.
Desiree did not keep a diary. Her life was too busy for ink. She had had to work for her daily bread, which is better than riches. Her life had been full of occupation from morning till night, and God had given her sleep from night till morning. It is better to work for others than to think for them. Some day the world will learn to have a greater respect for the workers than for the thinkers, who are idle, wordy persons, frequently thinking wrong.
Desiree remembered the siege and the occupation of Dantzig by French troops. She was at school in the Jopengasse when the Treaty of Tilsit--that peace which was nothing but a pause--was concluded. She had seen Luisa of Prussia, the good Queen who baffled Napoleon. Her childhood had passed away in the roar of siege-guns. Her girlhood, in the Frauengasse, had been marked by the various woes of Prussia, by each successive step in the development of Napoleon's ambition. There were no bogey-men in the night-nursery at the beginning of the century. One Aaron's rod of a bogey had swallowed all the rest, and children buried their sobs in the pillow for fear of Napoleon. There were no ghosts in the dark corners of the stairs when Desiree, candle in hand, went to bed at eight o'clock, half an hour before Mathilde. The shadows on the wall were the shadows of soldiers--the wind roaring in the chimney was like the sound of distant cannon. When the timid glanced over their shoulders, the apparition they looked for was that of a little man in a cocked hat and a long grey coat.
This was not an age in which the individual life was highly valued. Men were great to-day and gone to-morrow. Women were of small account. It was the day of deeds and not of words.
Desiree had never been oppressed by a sense of her own importance, which oppression leaves its mark on many a woman's face in these times. She had not, it would seem, expected much from life; and when much was given to her she received it without misgivings. She was young and light-hearted, and she lived in a reckless age.
She was not surprised when Charles failed to return. The chaise that was to carry them to Zoppot stood in the Frauengasse on the shady side of the street in the heat of the afternoon for more than an hour. Then she ran out and told the driver to go back to his stables.
“One cannot go for a honeymoon alone,” she explained airily to her father, who was peevish and restless, standing by the window with the air of one who expects without knowing what to expect. “It is, at all events, quite clear that there is nothing for me to do but wait.”
She made light of it, and laughed at her father's grave face. Mathilde said nothing, but her silence seemed to suggest that this was no more than she had foretold, or at all events foreseen. She was too proud or too generous to put her thoughts into words. For pride and generosity are often confounded. There are many who give because they are too proud to withhold.
Desiree got her needlework and sat by the open window awaiting Charles. She could hear the continuous clatter of carts on the quay, and the voices of the men working in the great granaries across the river.
The whole city seemed to be astir, and men hurried to and fro in even the quiet Frauengasse, while the clatter of cavalry and the heavy rumble of gun carriages could be heard over the roofs from the direction of the Langenmarkt. There was a sense of hurry in the dusty air. The Emperor had arrived, and the magic of his name lifted men out of themselves. It seemed nothing extraordinary to Desiree that her life should be taken up by this whirlwind, and carried on she knew not whither.
At dinner-time Charles had not returned. Antoine Sebastian dined at half-past four, in the manner of Northern Europe; but his daughters provided his table with the lighter meats of France, which he preferred to the German cuisine. Sebastian's dinner was an event in the day, though he ate sparingly enough, and found a mental rather than a physical pleasure in the ceremonious sequence of courses.
It was now too late to think of going to Zoppot. After dinner Mathilde and Desiree prepared the rooms which had been destined for the occupation of the married pair after the honeymoon.
“We shall have to omit Zoppot, that is all,” said Desiree cheerfully, and fell to unpacking the bridal clothes which had been so merrily laid in the trunks.
At half-past six a soldier brought a hurried note from Charles.
“I cannot return to-night, as I am about to start for Konigsberg,” he wrote. “It is a commission which I could not refuse if I wished to. You, I know, would have me go and do my duty.”
There was more which Desiree did not read aloud. Charles had always found it easy enough to tell Desiree how much he loved her, and was gaily indifferent to the ears of others. But she seemed to be restrained by some feeling which had found birth in her heart during her wedding day. She said nothing of Charles's protestations of love.
“Decidedly,” she said, folding the letter, and placing it in her work-basket, “Fate is interfering in our affairs to-day.”
She turned to her work again without further complaint, almost with a sense of relief. Mathilde, whose steady grey eyes saw everything, penetrating every thought, glanced at her with a suddenly aroused interest. Desiree herself was half surprised at the philosophy with which she met this fresh misfortune.
Antoine Sebastian had never acquired the habit of drinking tea in the evening, which had found favour in these northern countries bordering on Russia. Instead, he usually went out at this time to one of the many wine-rooms or Bier Halles in the town to drink a slow and meditative glass of beer with such friends as he had made in Dantzig. For he was a lonely man, whose face was quite familiar to many who looked for a bow or a friendly salutation in vain.
If he went to the Rathskeller it was on the invitation of a friend; for he could not afford to pay the vintage of that cellar, though he drank the wine with the slow mouthing of a connoisseur when he had it.
More often than not he took a walk first, passing out of the Frauenthor on to the quay, where he turned to left or right and made his way back through one or other of the town gates, by devious narrow streets to that which is still called the Portchaisengasse though chairs and carriers have long ceased to pass along it. Here, on the northern side of the street is an old inn, “Zum weissen Ross'l,” with a broken, ill-carved head of a white horse above the door. Across the face of the house is written, in old German letters, an invitation: Gruss Gott. Tritt ein! Bring Gluck herein.
But few seemed to accept it. Even a hundred years ago the White Horse was behind the times, and fashion sought the wider streets.
Antoine Sebastian was perhaps ashamed of frequenting so humble a house of entertainment, where for a groschen he could have a glass of beer. He seemed to make his way through the narrower streets for some purpose, changing his route from day to day, and hurrying across the wider thoroughfares with the air of one desirous to attract but little attention. He was not alone in the quiet streets, for there were many in Dantzig at this time who from wealth had fallen to want. Many counting-houses once noisy with prosperity were now closed and silent. For five years the prosperous Dantzig had lain crushed beneath the iron heel of the conqueror.
It would seem that Sebastian had only waited for the explanation of Charles's most ill-timed absence to carry out his usual programme. The clock in the tower of the Rathhaus had barely struck seven when he took his hat and cloak from the peg near the dining-room door. He was so absorbed that he did not perceive Papa Barlasch seated just within the open door of the kitchen. But Barlasch saw him, and scratched his head at the sight.
The northern evenings are chill even in June, and Sebastian fumbled with his cloak. It would appear that he was little used to helping himself in such matters. Barlasch came out of the kitchen when Sebastian's back was turned and helped him to put the flowing cloak straight upon his shoulders.
“Thank you, Lisa, thank you,” said Sebastian in German, without looking round. By accident Barlasch had performed one of Lisa's duties, and the master of the house was too deeply engaged in thought to notice any difference in the handling or to perceive the smell of snuff that heralded the approach of Papa Barlasch. Sebastian took his hat and went out closing the door behind him, and leaving Barlasch, who had followed him to the door, standing rather stupidly on the mat.
“Absent-minded--the citizen,” muttered Barlasch, returning to the kitchen, where he resumed his seat on a chair by the open door. He scratched his head and appeared to lapse into thought. But his brain was slow as were his movements. He had been drinking to the health of the bride. He thumped himself on the brow with his closed fist.
“Sacred-name-of-a-thunderstorm,” he said. “Where have I seen that face before?”
Sebastian went out by the Frauenthor to the quay. Although it was dusk, the granaries were still at work. The river was full of craft and the roadway choked by rows and rows of carts, all of one pattern, too big and too heavy for roads that are laid across a marsh.
He turned to the right, but found his way blocked at the corner of the Langenmarkt, where the road narrows to pass under the Grunes Thor. Here the idlers of the evening hour were collected in a crowd, peering over each other's shoulders towards the roadway and the bridge. Sebastian was a tall man, and had no need to stand on tip-toe in order to see the straight rows of bayonets swinging past, and the line of shakos rising and falling in unison with the beat of a thousand feet on the hollow woodwork of the drawbridge.
The troops had been passing out of the city all the afternoon on the road to Elbing and Konigsberg.
“It is the same,” said a man standing near to Sebastian, “at the Hohes Thor, where they are marching out by the road leading to Konigsberg by way of Dessau.”
“It is farther than Konigsberg that they are going,” was the significant answer of a white-haired veteran who had probably been at Eylau, for he had a crushed look.
“But war is not declared,” said the first speaker.
“Does that matter?”
And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that invites opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness. He was better clad than they. He must know more than they did. But Sebastian looked over their heads and did not seem to have heard their conversation.
He turned back and went another way, by side streets and the little narrow alleys that nearly always encircle a cathedral, and are still to be found on all sides of the Marienkirche. At last he came to the Portchaisengasse, which was quiet enough in the twilight, though he could hear the tramp of soldiers along the Langgasse and the rumble of the guns.
There were only two lamps in the Portchaisengasse, swinging on wrought-iron gibbets at each end of the street. These were not yet alight, though the day was fading fast, and the western light could scarcely find its way between the high gables which hung over the road and seemed to lean confidentially towards each other.
Sebastian was going towards the door of the Weissen Ross'l when some one came out of the hostelry, as if he had been awaiting him within the porch.
The new-comer, who was a fat man with baggy cheeks and odd, light blue eyes--the eyes of an enthusiast, one would say--passed Sebastian, making a little gesture which at once recommended silence, and bade him turn and follow. At the entrance to a little alley leading down towards the Marienkirche the fat man awaited Sebastian, whose pace had not quickened, nor had his walk lost any of its dignity.
“Not there to-night,” said the man, holding up a thick forefinger and shaking it sideways.
“Then where?”
“Nowhere to-night,” was the answer. “He has come--you know that?”
“Yes,” answered Sebastian slowly, “for I saw him.”
“He is at supper now with Rapp and the others. The town is full of his people. His spies are everywhere. There are two in the Weissen Ross'l who pretend to be Bavarians. See! There is another--just there.”
He pointed the thick forefinger down the Portchaisengasse where it widens to meet the Langgasse, where the last remains of daylight, reflected to and fro between the houses, found freer play than in the narrow alley where they stood.
Sebastian looked in the direction indicated. An officer was walking away from them. A quick observer would have noticed that his spurs made no noise, and that he carried his sword instead of allowing it to clatter after him. It was not clear whence he had come. It must have been from a doorway nearly opposite to the Weissen Ross'l. “I know that man,” said Sebastian.
“So do I,” was the reply. “It is Colonel de Casimir.”
With a little nod the fat man went out again into the Portchaisengasse in the direction of the inn, as if he were keeping watch there.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
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6
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THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG.
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Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il trouve en soi.
Nearly two years had passed since the death of Queen Luisa of Prussia. And she from her grave yet spake to her people--as sixty years later she was destined to speak to another King of Prussia, who said a prayer by her tomb before departing on a journey that was to end in Fontainebleau with an imperial crown and the reckoning for all time of the seven years of woe that followed Tilsit and killed a queen.
Two years earlier than that, in 1808, while Luisa yet lived, a few scientists and professors of Konigsberg had formed a sort of Union--vague enough and visionary--to encourage virtue and discipline and patriotism. And now, in 1812, four years later, the memory of Luisa still lingered in those narrow streets that run by the banks of the Pregel beneath the great castle of Konigsberg, while the Tugendbund, like a seed that has been crushed beneath an iron heel, had spread its roots underground.
From Dantzig, the commercial, to Konigsberg, the kingly and the learned, the tide of war rolled steadily onwards. It is a tide that carries before it a certain flotsam of quick and active men, keen-eyed, restless, rising--men who speak with a sharp authority and pay from a bottomless purse. The arrival of Napoleon in Dantzig swept the first of the tide on to Konigsberg.
Already every house was full. The high-gabled warehouses on the riverside could not be used for barracks, for they too had been crammed from floor to roof with stores and arms. So the soldiers slept where they could. They bivouacked in the timber-yards by the riverside. The country-women found the Neuer Markt transformed into a camp when they brought their baskets in the early morning, but they met with eager buyers, who haggled laughingly in half a dozen different tongues. There was no lack of money, however.
Cartloads of it were on the road.
The Neuer Markt in Konigsberg is a square, of which the lower side is a quay on the Pregel. The river is narrow here. Across it the country is open. The houses surrounding the quadrangle are all alike--two-storied buildings with dormer windows in the roof. There are trees in front. In front of that which is now Number Thirteen, at the right-hand corner, facing west, sideways to the river, the trees grow quite close to the windows, so that an active man or a boy might without great risk leap from the eaves below the dormer window into the topmost branches of the linden, which here grows strong and tough, as it surely should do in the fatherland.
A young soldier, seeking lodgings, who happened to knock at the door of Number Thirteen less than thirty hours after the arrival of Napoleon at Dantzig, looked upward through the shady boughs, and noted their growth with the light of interest in his eye. It would almost seem that the house had been described to him as that one in the Neuer Markt against which the lindens grew. For he had walked all round the square between the trees and houses before knocking at this door, which bore no number then, as it does to-day.
His tired horse had followed him meditatively, and now stood with drooping head in the shade. The man himself wore a dark uniform, white with dust. His hair was dusty and rather lank. He was not a very tidy soldier.
He stood looking at the sign which swung from the doorpost, a relic of the Polish days. It bore the painted semblance of a boot. For in Poland--a frontier country, as in frontier cities where many tongues are heard--it is the custom to paint a picture rather than write a word. So that every house bears the sign of its inmate's craft, legible alike to Lithuanian or Ruthenian, Swede or Cossack of the Don.
He knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a thickly-built man, who looked, not at his face, but at his boots. As these wanted no repair he half closed the door again and looked at the newcomer's face.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“A lodging.”
The door was almost closed, when the soldier made an odd and, as it would seem, tentative gesture with his left hand. All the fingers were clenched, and with his extended thumb he scratched his chin slowly from side to side.
“I have no lodging to let,” said the bootmaker. But he did not shut the door.
“I can pay,” said the other, with his thumb still at his chin. He had quick, blue eyes beneath the shaggy hair that wanted cutting. “I am very tired--it is only for one night.”
“Who are you?” asked the bootmaker.
The soldier was a dull and slow man. He leant against the doorpost with tired gestures before replying.
“Sergeant in a Schleswig regiment, in charge of spare horses.”
“And you have come far?”
“From Dantzig without a halt.”
The shoemaker looked him up and down with a doubting eye, as if there were something about him that was not quite clear and above-board. The dust and fatigue were, however, unmistakable.
“Who sent you to me, anyway?” he grumbled.
“Oh, I do not know,” was the half-impatient answer; “the man I lodged with in Dantzig or another, I forget. It was Koch the locksmith in the Schmiedegasse. See, I have money. I tell you it is for one night. Say yes or no. I want to get to bed and to sleep.”
“How much do you pay?”
“A thaler--if you like. Among friends, one is willing to pay.”
After a short minute of hesitation the shoemaker opened the door wider and came out.
“And there will be another thaler for the horse, which I shall have to take to the stable of the wood-merchant at the corner. Go into the workshop and sit down till I come.”
He stood in the doorway and watched the soldier seat himself wearily on a bench in the workshop among the ancient boots, past repair, one would think, and lean his head against the wall.
He was half asleep already, and the bootmaker, who was lame, shrugged his shoulders as he led away the tired horse, with a gesture half of pity, half of doubting suspicion. Had it suggested itself to his mind, and had it been within the power of one so halt and heavy-footed to turn back noiselessly, he would have found his visitor wide-awake enough, hurriedly opening every drawer and peering under the twine and needles, lifting every bale of leather, shaking out the very boots awaiting repair.
When the dweller in Number Thirteen returned, the soldier was asleep, and had to be shaken before he would open his eyes.
“Will you eat before you go to bed?” asked the bootmaker not unkindly.
“I ate as I came along the street,” was the reply. “No, I will go to bed. What time is it?”
“It is only seven o'clock--but no matter.”
“No, it is no matter. To-morrow I must be astir by five.”
“Good,” said the shoemaker. “But you will get your money's worth. The bed is a good one. It is my son's. He is away, and I am alone in the house.”
He led the way upstairs as he spoke, going heavily one step at a time, so that the whole house seemed to shake beneath his tread. The room was that attic in the roof which has a dormer window overhanging the linden tree. It was small and not too clean; for Konigsberg was once a Polish city, and is not far from the Russian frontier.
The soldier hardly noticed his surroundings, but sat down instantly, with the abandonment of a shepherd's dog at the day's end.
“I will put a stitch in your boots for you while you sleep,” said the host casually. “The thread is rotten, I can see. Look here--and here!”
He stooped, and with a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper leather, bringing the frayed ends of the thread out to view.
Without answering, the soldier looked round for the boot-jack, lacking which, no German or Polish bedroom is complete.
When the bootmaker had gone, carrying the boots under his arm, the soldier, left to himself, made a grimace at the closed door. Without boots he was a prisoner in the house. He could hear his host at work already, downstairs in the shop, of which the door opened to the stairs and allowed passage to that smell of leather which breeds Radical convictions.
The regular “tap-tap” of the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed. Soon after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surreptitious approach of the unwilling host. He listened outside, and even tried the door, but found it bolted. The soldier, open-eyed on the bed, snored aloud. At the sound of the key on the outside of the door he made a grimace again. His features were very mobile, for Schleswig.
He heard the bootmaker descend the stairs again almost noiselessly, and, rising from the bed, he took his station at the window. All the Langgasse would seem to be eating-houses. The basement, which has a separate door, gives forth odours of simple Pomeranian meats, and every other house bears to this day the curt but comforting inscription, “Here one eats.” It was only to be supposed that the bootmaker at the end of his day would repair for supper to some special haunt near by.
But the smell of cooking mingling with that of leather told that he was preparing his own evening meal. He was, it seemed, an unsociable man, who had but a son beneath his roof, and mostly lived alone.
Seated near the window, where the sunset light yet lingered, the Schleswiger opened his haversack, which was well supplied, and finding paper, pens and ink, fell to writing with one eye watchful of the window and both ears listening for any movement in the room below.
He wrote easily with a running pen, and sometimes he smiled as he wrote. More than once he paused and looked across the Neuer Markt above the trees and the roofs, towards the western sky, with a sudden grave wistfulness. He was thinking of some one in the west. It was assuredly not of war that this soldier wrote. Then, again, his attention would be attracted to some passer in the street below. He only gave half of his attention to his letter. He was, it seemed, a man who as yet touched life lightly; for he was quite young. But, nevertheless, his pen, urged by only half a mind that had all the energy of spring, flew over the paper. Sowing is so much easier than reaping.
Suddenly he threw his pen aside and moved quickly to the window which stood open. The shoemaker had gone out, closing the door softly behind him.
It was to be expected that he would turn to the left, upwards towards the town and the Langgasse, but it was in the direction of the river that his footsteps died away. There was no outlet on that side except by boat.
It was almost dark now, and the trees growing close to the window obscured the view. So eager was the lodger to follow the movements of his landlord that he crept in stocking-feet out on to the roof. By lying on his face below the window he could just distinguish the shadowy form of a lame man by the river edge. He was moving to and fro, unchaining a boat moored to the steps, which are more used in winter when the Pregel is a frozen roadway than in summer. There was no one else in the Neuer Markt, for it was the supper hour.
Out in the middle of the river a few ships were moored: high-prowed, square-sterned vessels of a Dutch build trading in the Frische Haaf and in the Baltic.
The soldier saw the boat steal out towards them. There was no other boat at the steps or in sight. He stood up on the edge of the roof, and after carefully measuring his distance, with quick eyes aglow with excitement, he leapt lightly across the leafy space into the topmost boughs, where he alighted in a forked branch almost without sound.
At dawn the next morning, while the shoemaker still slept, the soldier was astir again. He shivered as he rose, and went to the window, where his clothes were hanging from a rafter. The water was still dripping from them. Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the open window to write while the morning air should dry his clothes.
That which he wrote was a long report--sheet after sheet closely written. And in the middle of his work he broke off to read again the letter that he had written the night before. With a quick, impulsive gesture he kissed the name it bore. Then he turned to his work again.
The sun was up before he folded the papers together. By way of a postscript he wrote a brief letter.
“DEAR C.--I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed report. His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful. I was quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river half the night listening at the open stern-window of a Reval pink to every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed, he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that which they call patriotism, and we treason. But I can only repeat what his Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday--that the heart of the ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and what he is about you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address, I beg of you, if only in acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed.”
The letter was unsigned, and bore the date, “Dawn, June 10.” This and the report, and that other letter (carefully sealed with a wafer) which did not deal with war or its alarms, were all placed in one large envelope. He did not seal it, however, but sat thinking while the sun began to shine on the opposite houses. Then he withdrew the open letter, and added a postscript to it: “If an attempt were made on N.'s life--I should say Sebastian. If Prussia were to play us false suddenly, and cut us off from France--I should say nothing else than Sebastian. He is more dangerous than a fanatic; for he is too clever to be one.”
The writer shivered and laughed in sheer amusement at his own misery as he drew on his wet clothes. The shoemaker was already astir, and presently knocked at his door.
“Yes, yes,” the soldier cried, “I am astir.”
And as his host rattled the door he opened it. He had unrolled his long cavalry cloak, and wore it over his wet clothes.
“You never told me your name,” said the shoemaker. A suspicious man is always more suspicious at the beginning of the day.
“My name,” answered the other carelessly. “Oh! my name is Max Brunner.”
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
7
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THE WAY OF LOVE.
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Celui qui souffle le feu s'expose a etre brule par les etincelles.
It was said that Colonel de Casimir--that guest whose presence and uniform lent an air of distinction to the quiet wedding in the Frauengasse--was a Pole from Cracow. Men also whispered that he was in the confidence of the Emperor. But this must only have been a manner of speaking. For no man was ever admitted fully into the thoughts of that superhuman mind.
De Casimir was left behind in Dantzig when the army moved forward.
“There will be a great battle,” he said, “somewhere near Vilna--and I shall miss it.”
Indeed, every man was striving to get to the front. He who, himself, had given a new meaning to human ambition seemed able to inspire not only Frenchmen but soldiers of every nationality with fire from his own consuming flame.
“Yes! madame,” said de Casimir; for it was to Desiree that he spoke, “and your husband is more fortunate than I. He is sure of a staff appointment. He will be among the first. It will soon be over. To-morrow war is to be declared.”
They were in the street--not far from the Frauengasse, whence Desiree, always practical, was hurrying towards the market-place. De Casimir had seemed idle until he perceived her.
Desiree made a little movement of horror at the announcement. She did not know that the fighting had already begun.
“Ah!” cried de Casimir with a reassuring smile. “You must be of good cheer. There will be no war at all. I tell you that in confidence. Russia will be paralyzed. I was going towards the Frauengasse when I perceived you; to pay my respects to your father, to say a word to you. Come--you are smiling again. That is right. You were so grave, madame, as you hurried along with your eyes looking far away. You must not think of Charles, if the thoughts make you look as you looked then.”
His manner was kind and confidential and easy--inviting in response that which the confidential always expect, a return in kind. It is either hit or miss with such people; and de Casimir missed. He saw Desiree draw back. She was young, and of that clear fairness of skin which seems to let the thoughts out through the face so that any can read them. That which her face expressed at that moment was a clear and definite refusal to confide anything whatsoever in this little dark man who stood in front of her, looking into her eyes with a deferential and sympathetic glance.
“I know for certain,” he said, “that Charles was well two days ago, and that he is highly thought of in high quarters. I can tell you that, at all events.”
“Thank you,” said Desiree. She had nothing against de Casimir. She had only seen him once or twice, and she knew him to be Charles's friend, and in some sense his patron. For de Casimir held a high position in Dantzig. She was quite ready to like him since Charles liked him; but she intended to do so at her own range. It is always the woman who measures the distance.
Desiree made a little movement as if to continue on her way; and de Casimir instantly stood aside, with a bow.
“Shall I find your father at home?” he asked.
“I think so. He was at home when I left,” she answered, responding to his salute with a friendly nod.
De Casimir watched her go and stood for a moment in reflection, as if going over in his mind that which had passed between them.
“I must try the other one,” he said to himself as he turned down the Pfaffengasse. He continued his way at a leisurely pace. At the corner of the Frauengasse he lingered in the shadow of the linden trees, and while so doing saw Antoine Sebastian quit the door of No. 36, going in the opposite direction towards the river, and pass out through the Frauenthor on to the quay.
He made a little gesture of annoyance on being told by the servant that Sebastian was out. After a moment's reflection, he seemed to make up his mind to ignore the conventionalities.
“It is merely,” he said in his friendly and confidential manner to the servant, in perfect German, “that I have news from Monsieur Darragon, the husband of Mademoiselle Desiree. Madame is out--you say. Well, then, what is to be done?”
He had a most charming, grave manner of asking advice which few could resist.
The servant nodded at him with a twinkle of understanding in her eye.
“There is Fraulein Mathilde.”
“But... well, ask her if she will do me the honour of speaking to me for an instant. I leave it to you....” “But come in,” protested the servant. “Come upstairs. She will see you; why not?”
And she led the way upstairs. Papa Barlasch, sitting just within the kitchen door, where he sat all day doing nothing, glanced upwards through his overhanging eyebrows at the clink of spurs and the clatter of de Casimir's sword against the banisters. He had the air of a watchdog.
Mathilde was not in the drawing-room, and the servant left the visitor there alone, saying that she would seek her mistress. There were one or two books on the tables. One table was rather untidy; it was Desiree's. A writing-desk stood in the corner of the room. It was locked--and the lock was a good one. De Casimir was an observant man. He had time to make this observation, and to see that there were no letters in Desiree's work-basket; to note the titles of the books and the absence of name on the flyleaf, and was looking out of the window when the door opened and Mathilde came in.
This was a day when women were treated with a great show of deference, while in reality they had but little voice in the world's affairs. De Casimir's bow was deeper and more elaborate than would be considered polite to-day. On standing erect he quickly suppressed a glance of surprise.
Mathilde must have expected him. She was dressed in white, and her hair was tied with a bright ribbon. In her cheeks, usually so pale, was a little touch of colour. It may have been because Desiree was not near, but de Casimir had never known until this moment how pretty Mathilde really was. There was something in her eyes, too, which gripped his attention. He remembered that at the wedding he had never seen her eyes. They had always been averted. But now they met his with a troubling directness.
De Casimir had a gallant manner. All women commanded his eager respect, which they could assess at such value as their fancy painted, remembering that it is for the woman to measure the distance. On the few occasions of previous encounters, de Casimir had been empresse in his manner towards Mathilde. As he looked at her, his quick mind ran back to former meetings. He had no recollection of having actually made love to her.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “for a soldier--in time of war--the conventions may, perhaps, be slightly relaxed. I was told that you were alone--that your father is out, and yet I persisted--” He spread out his hands and laughed appealingly, begging her, it would seem, to help him out of the social difficulty in which he found himself.
“My father will be sorry--” she began.
“That is hardly the question,” he interrupted; “I was thinking of your displeasure. But I have an excuse, I assure you. I only ask a moment to tell you that I have heard from Konigsberg that Charles Darragon is in good health there, and is moving forward with the advance-guard to the frontier.”
“You are kind to come so soon,” answered Mathilde, and there was an odd note of disappointment in her voice. De Casimir must have heard it, for he glanced at her again with a gleam of surprise in his eyes.
“That is my excuse, Mademoiselle,” he said with a tentative emphasis, as if he were feeling his way. He was an opportunist with all the quickness of one who must live by his wits among others existing on the same uncertain fare. He saw her flush, and again he hesitated as a wayfarer may hesitate when he finds an easy road where he had expected to climb a hill. What was the meaning of it? he seemed to ask himself.
“Charles does not interest you so much as he interests your sister?” he suggested.
“He has never interested me much,” she replied indifferently. She did not ask him to sit down. It would not have been etiquette in an age when women were by some odd misjudgment considered incapable of managing their own hearts.
“Is that because he is in love, Mademoiselle?” inquired de Casimir with a guarded laugh.
“Perhaps so.”
She did not look at him. De Casimir had not missed this time. His air of candid confidence had met with a quick response. He laughed again and moved towards the door. Mathilde stood motionless, and although she said no word, nor by any gesture bade him stay, he stopped on the threshold and turned again towards her.
“It was my conscience,” he said, looking at her over his shoulder, “that bade me go.”
Her face and her averted eyes asked why, but her straight lips were silent.
“Because I cannot claim to be more interesting than Charles Darragon,” he hazarded. “And you, Mademoiselle, confess that you have no tolerance for a man who is in love.”
“I have no tolerance for a man who is weakened by love. He should be strengthened and hardened by it.”
“To--?”
“To do a man's work in the world,” said Mathilde coldly.
De Casimir was standing by the open door. He closed it with his foot. He was professedly a man alert for the chance of a moment, which he was content to grasp without pausing to look ahead. Should there be difficulties yet unperceived, these in turn might present an opportunity to be seized by the quick-witted.
“Then you would admit, Mademoiselle,” he said gravely, “that there may be good in a love that fights continually against ambition, and--does not prevail.”
Mathilde did not answer at once. There was an odd suggestion of antagonism in their attitude towards each other--not irreconcilable, the poets tell us, with love--but this is assuredly not the Love that comes from Heaven and will go back there to live through eternity.
“Yes,” said she at length.
“Such is my love for you,” he said, his quick instinct telling him that with Mathilde few words were best.
He only spoke the thoughts of his age; for ambition was the ruling passion in men's hearts at this time. All who served the Great Adventurer gave it the first place in their consideration, and de Casimir only aped his betters. Though oddly enough the only two of all the great leaders who were to emerge still greater from the coming war--Ney and Eugene--thought otherwise on these matters.
“I mean to be great and rich, Mademoiselle,” he added after a pause. “I have risked my life for that purpose half a dozen times.”
Mathilde stood looking across the room towards the window. He could only see her profile and the straight line of her lips. She too was the product of a generation in which men rose to dazzling heights without the aid of women.
“I should not have troubled you with these details, Mademoiselle,” he said, watching her. His instinct was very keen, for not one woman in a thousand, even in those days, would have admitted that love was a detail. “I should not have mentioned it--had you not given me your views--so strangely in harmony with my own.”
Whatever his nationality, his voice was that of a Pole--rich, musical, and expressive. He could have made, one would have thought, a very different sort of love had he wished, or had he been sincere. But he was an opportunist. This was the sort of love that Mathilde wanted.
He came a step nearer to her and stood resting on his sword--a lean hard man who had seen much war.
“Until you opened my eyes,” he said, “I did not know, or did not care to know, that love, far from being a drag on ambition, may be a help.”
Mathilde made a little movement towards him which she instantly repressed. The heart is quicker, but the head nearly always has the last word.
“Mademoiselle,” he said--and no doubt he saw the movement and the restraint--“will you help me now at the beginning of the war, and listen to me again at the end of it--if I succeed?”
After all, he was modest in his demands.
“Will you help me? Together, Mademoiselle--to what height may we not rise in these days?”
There was a ring of sincerity in his voice, and her eyes answered it.
“How can I help you?” she asked in a doubting voice.
“Oh, it is a small matter,” was the reply. “But it is one in which the Emperor is personally interested. Such things have a special attraction for him. The human interest never fails to hold his attention. If I do well, he will know it and remember me. It is a question, Mademoiselle, of secret societies. You know that Prussia is riddled with them.”
Mathilde did not answer. He studied her face, which was clean cut and hard like a marble bust--a good face to hide a secret.
“It is my duty to watch here in Dantzig and to report to the Emperor. In serving myself I could also perhaps serve a friend, one who might otherwise run into danger--who may be in danger while you and I stand here. For the Emperor strikes hard and quickly. I speak of your father, Mademoiselle--and of the Tugendbund.”
Still he could not see from the pale profile whether Mathilde knew anything at all.
“And if I procure information for you?” asked she at length, in a quiet and collected voice.
“You will help me to attain a position such as I could ask--even you--to share with me. And you would do your father no harm. You would even render him a service. For all the secret societies in Germany will not stop Napoleon. It is only God who can stop him now, Mademoiselle. All men who attempt it will only be crushed beneath the wheels. I might save your father.”
But Mathilde did not seem to be thinking of her father.
“I am hampered by poverty,” de Casimir said, changing his ground. “In the old days it did not matter. But now, in the Empire, one must be rich. I shall be rich--at the end of this campaign.”
Again his voice was sincere, and again her eyes responded. He made a step forward, and gently taking her hand, he raised it to his lips.
“You will help me!” he said, and, turning abruptly on his heel, he left her.
De Casimir's quarters were in the Langenmarkt. On returning to them, he took from his despatch-case a letter which he turned over thoughtfully in his hand. It was addressed to Desiree, and sealed carefully with a wafer.
“She may as well have it,” he said. “It will be as well that she should be occupied with her own affairs.”
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
8
|
A VISITATION.
|
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
Whenever Papa Barlasch caught sight of his unwilling host's face, he turned his own aside with a despairing upward nod. Once or twice, during the early days of his occupation of the room behind the kitchen in the Frauengasse, he smote himself sharply on the brow, as if calling upon his brain to make an effort. But afterwards he seemed to resign himself to this lapse of memory, and the upward despairing nod gradually lost intensity until at last he brought himself to pass Antoine Sebastian in the narrow passage with no more emphatic notice than a scowl.
“You and I,” he said to Desiree, “are the friends. The others--” And his gesture seemed to permit the others to go hang if they so desired. The army had gone forward, leaving Dantzig in that idle restlessness which holds those who, finding themselves in a house of sickness, are not permitted entry to the darkened chamber, but must await the crisis elsewhere.
There were some busy enough in the commerce that must exist between a huge army and its base, in the forwarding of war material and stores, in accommodating the sick and sending out in return those who were to fill the gaps. But the Dantzigers themselves had nothing to do. Their prosperous trade was paralyzed. Those who had aught to sell had sold it. The high-seas and the high-roads were alike blocked by the French. And rumour, ever busy among those that wait, ran to and fro in the town.
The Emperor of Russia had been taken prisoner. Napoleon had been checked at the passage of the Niemen. There had been a great battle at Gumbinnen, and the French were in full retreat. Vilna had capitulated to Murat, and the war was at an end. A hundred authentic despatches of the morning were the subject of contemptuous laughter at the supper-table.
Lisa heard these tales in the market-place, and told Desiree, who, as often as not, translated them to Barlasch. But he only held up his wrinkled forefinger and shook it slowly from side to side.
“Woman's chatter!” he said. “What is the German for 'magpie'?”
And on being told the word, he repeated it gravely to Lisa. For he had not only fulfilled his promise of settling down in the house, but had assumed therein a distinct and clearly defined position. He was the counsellor, and from his chair just within the kitchen he gave forth judgment.
“And you,” he said to Desiree one morning, when household affairs had taken her to the kitchen, “you are troubled this morning. You have had a letter from your husband?”
“Yes--and he is in good health.”
“Ah!”
Barlasch glared at her beneath his brows, looking her up and down, noting her quick movements, which had the uncertainty of youth.
“And now that he is gone,” he said, “and that there is war, you are going to employ yourself by falling in love with him, when you had all the time before, and did not take advantage of it.”
Desiree laughed at him and made no other answer. While she spoke to Lisa he sat and watched them.
“It would be like a woman to do such a thing,” he pursued. “They are so inconvenient--women. They get married for fun, and then one fine Thursday they find they have missed all the fun, like one who comes late to the theatre--when the music is over.”
He went to the table and examined the morning marketing, which Lisa had laid out in preparation for dinner. Of some of her purchases he approved, but he laughed aloud at a lettuce which had no heart, and at such a buyer.
Then Desiree attracted his scrutiny again.
“Yes,” he said, half to himself, “I see it. You are in love. Just Heaven, I know! I have had them in love with me.... Barlasch.”
“That must have been a long time ago,” answered Desiree with her gay laugh, only giving him half her attention.
“Yes, it was a century ago. But they were the same then as they are now, as they always will be--inconvenient. They waited, however, till they were grown up!”
And with his ever-ready accusing finger he drew Desiree's attention to her own slimness. They were left alone for a minute while Lisa answered a knock at the door, during which time Barlasch sat in grim silence.
“It is a letter,” said Lisa, returning. “A sailor brought it.”
“Another?” said Barlasch, with a gesture of despair.
“Can you give me news of Charles?” Desiree read, in a writing that was unknown to her. “I shall wait a reply until midnight on board the Elsa, lying off the Krahn-Thor.” The letter bore the signature, “Louis d'Arragon.” Desiree turned slowly and went upstairs, carrying it folded small in her closed hand.
She was alone in the house, for Mathilde was out and her father had not yet returned from his evening walk. She stood at the head of the stairs, where the last of the daylight filtered through the barred window, and read the letter again. Then she turned and gave a slight start to see Barlasch at the foot of the stairs beckoning to her. He made no attempt to come up, but stood on the mat like a dog that has been forbidden the upper rooms.
“Is it about your father?” he asked, in a hoarse whisper.
“No!”
He made a gesture commanding secrecy and silence. Then he went to close the kitchen door and returned on tip-toe.
“It is,” he explained, “that they are talking of him in the cafes. There are many to be arrested to-morrow. They say the patron is one of them, and employs himself in plotting. That his name is not Sebastian at all. That he is a Frenchman who escaped the guillotine. What do I know? It is the gossip of the cafes. But I tell it you because we are friends, you and I. And some day I may want you to do something for me. One thinks of one's self, eh? It is good to make friends. For some day one may want them. That is why I do it. I think of myself. An old soldier. Of the Guard.”
With many gestures of tremendous import, and a face all wrinkled and twisted with mystery, he returned to the kitchen.
Mathilde was not to return until late. She had gone to the house of the old Grafin whose reminiscences had been a fruitful topic at Desiree's wedding. After dining there she and the Grafin were to go together to a farewell reception given by the Governor. For Rapp was bound for the frontier with the rest, and was to go to the war as first aide-de-camp to the Emperor.
Mathilde could not be back until ten o'clock. She, who was so quick and quiet, had been much occupied in social observances lately, and had made fast friends with the Grafin during the last few days, constantly going to see her.
Desiree knew that what Barlasch had repeated as the gossip of the cafes was in part, if not wholly, true. She and Mathilde had long known that any mention of France had the instant effect of turning their father into a man of stone. It was the skeleton in this quiet house that sat at table with its inmates, a shadowy fourth tying their tongues. The rattle of its bones seemed to paralyze Sebastian's mind, and at any moment he would fall into a dumb and stricken apathy which terrified those about him. At such times it seemed that one thought in his mind had swallowed all the rest, so that he heard without understanding and saw without perceiving.
He was in such a humour when he came back to dinner. He passed Desiree on the stairs without speaking and went to his room to change his clothes, for he never relaxed his formal habits. At the dinner-table he glanced at her as a dog, knowing that he is ill, may be seen to glance with a secret air at his master, wondering whether he is detected.
Desiree had always hoped that her father would speak to her when this humour was upon him and tell her the meaning of it. Perhaps it would come to-night, when they were alone. There was an unspoken sympathy existing between them in which Mathilde took no share, which had even shut out Charles as out of a room where there was no light, into which Desiree and her father went at times and stood hand-in-hand without speaking.
They dined in silence, while Lisa hurried about her duties, oppressed by a sense of unknown fear. After dinner they went to the drawing-room as usual. It had been a dull day, with great clouds creeping up from the West. The evening fell early, and the lamps were already alight. Desiree looked to the wicks with the eye of experience when she entered the room. Then she went to the window. Lisa did not always draw the curtains effectually. She glanced down into the street, and turned suddenly on her heel, facing her father.
“They are there,” she said. For she had seen shadowy forms lurking beneath the trees of the Frauengasse. The street was ill-lighted, but she knew the shadows of the trees.
“How many?” asked Sebastian, in a dull voice.
She glanced at him quickly--at his still, frozen face and quiescent hands. He was not going to rise to the occasion, as he sometimes did even from his deepest apathy. She must do alone anything that was to be accomplished to-night.
The house, like many in the Frauengasse, had been built by a careful Hanseatic merchant, whose warehouse was his own cellar half sunk beneath the level of the street. The door of the warehouse was immediately under the front door, down a few steps below the street, while a few more steps, broad and footworn, led up to the stone veranda and the level of the lower dwelling-rooms. A guard placed in the street could thus watch both doors without moving.
There was a third door, giving exit from the little room where Barlasch slept to the small yard where he had placed those trunks which were made in France.
Desiree had no time to think. She came of a race of women of a brighter intelligence than any women in the world. She took her father by the arm and hastened downstairs. Barlasch was at his post within the kitchen door. His eyes shone suddenly as he saw her face. It was said of Papa Barlasch that he was a gay man in battle, laughing and making a hundred jests, but at other times lugubrious. Desiree saw him smile for the first time, in the dim light of the passage.
“They are there in the street,” he said; “I have seen them. I thought you would come to Barlasch. They all do--the women. In here. Leave him to me. When they ring the bell, receive them yourself--with smiles. They are only men. Let them search the house if they want to. Tell them he has gone to the reception with Mademoiselle.”
As he spoke the bell rang just above his head. He looked up at it and laughed.
“Ah, ah!” he said, “the fanfare begins.”
He drew Sebastian within and closed the door of his little room. Lisa had already gone to answer the bell. When she opened the door three men stepped quickly over the threshold, and one of them, thrusting her aside, closed the door and turned the key. Desiree, in her white evening dress, on the bottom step, just beneath the lamp that hung from the ceiling, made them pause and look at each other. Then one of the three came towards her, hat in hand.
“Our duty, Fraulein,” he said awkwardly. “We are but obeying orders. A mere formality. It will all be explained, no doubt, if the householder, Antoine Sebastian, will put on his hat and come with us.”
“His hat is not there, as you see,” answered Desiree. “You must seek him elsewhere.”
The man shook his head with a knowing smile. “We must seek him in this house,” he said. “We will make it as easy for you as we can, Fraulein--if you make it easy for us.”
As he spoke he produced a candle from his pocket, and encouraged the broken wick with his finger-nail.
“It will make it pleasanter for all,” said Desiree cheerfully, “if you will accept a candlestick.”
The man glanced at her. He was a heavy man, with little suspicious eyes set close together. He seemed to be concluding that she had outwitted him--that Sebastian was not in the house.
“Where are the cellar-stairs?” he asked. “I warn you, Fraulein, it is useless to conceal your father. We shall, of course, find him.”
Desiree pointed to the door next to that giving entry to the kitchen. It was bolted and locked. Desiree found the key for them. She not only gave them every facility, but was anxious that they should be as quick as possible. They did not linger in the cellar, which, though vast, was empty; and when they returned, Desiree, who was waiting for them, led the way upstairs.
They were rather abashed by her silence. They would have preferred protestations and argument. Discussion always belittles. The smile recommended by Papa Barlasch, lurking at the corner of her lips, made them feel foolish. She was so slight and young and helpless, that a sort of shame rendered them clumsy.
They felt more at home in the kitchen when they arrived there, and the sight of Lisa, sturdy and defiant, reminded them of the authority upon which Desiree had somehow cast a mystic contempt.
“There is a door there,” said the heavy official, with a brusque return of his early manner. “Come, what is that door?”
“That is a little room.”
“Then open it.”
“I cannot,” returned Lisa. “It is locked.”
“Aha!” said the man, with a laugh of much meaning. “On the inside, eh?”
He went to it, and banged on it with his fist.
“Come,” he shouted, “open it and be done.”
There was a short silence, during which those in the kitchen listened breathlessly. A shuffling sound inside the door made the officer of the law turn and beckon to his two men to come closer.
Then, after some fumbling, as of one in the dark, the door was unlocked and slowly opened.
Papa Barlasch stood in a very primitive night-apparel within the door. He had not done things by halves, for he was an old campaigner, and knew that a thing half done is better left undone in times of war. He noted the presence of Desiree and Lisa, but was not ashamed. The reason of it was soon apparent. For Papa Barlasch was drunk, and the smell of drink came out of his apartment in a warm wave.
“It is the soldier billeted in the house,” explained Lisa, with a half-hysterical laugh.
Then Barlasch harangued them in the language of intoxication. If he had not spared Desiree's feelings, he spared her ears less now; for he was an ignorant man, who had lived through a brutal period in the world's history the roughest life a man can lead. Two of the men held him with difficulty against the wall, while the third hastily searched the room--where, indeed, no one could well be concealed.
Then they quitted the house, followed by the polyglot curses of Barlasch, who was now endeavouring to find his bayonet amidst his chaotic possessions.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
9
|
THE GOLDEN GUESS.
|
The golden guess Is morning star to the full round of truth.
Barlasch was never more sober in his life than when he emerged a minute later from his room, while Lisa was still feverishly bolting the door. He had not wasted much time at his toilet. In his flannel shirt, his arms bare to the elbow, knotted and muscular, he looked like some rude son of toil.
“One thinks of one's self,” he hastened to explain to Desiree, fearing that she might ascribe some other motive to his action. “Some day the patron may be in power again, and then he will remember a poor soldier. It is good to think of the future.”
He shook his head pessimistically at Lisa as belonging to a sex liable to error: instanced in this case by bolting the door too eagerly.
“Now,” he said, turning to Desiree again, “have you any in Dantzig to help you?”
“Yes,” she answered rather slowly.
“Then send for him.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Then go for him yourself,” snapped Barlasch impatiently.
He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
“It is no use to be afraid,” he said; “you are afraid--I see it in your face. And it is never any use. Before they hammered on that door there, my legs shook. For I am easily afraid--I. But it is never any use. And when one opens the door, it goes.”
He looked at her with a puzzled frown, seeking in vain, it may have been, the ordinary symptoms of fear. She was hesitating but not afraid. There ran blood in her veins which will for all time be associated by history with a gay and indomitable courage.
“Come,” he said sharply; “there is nothing else to do.”
“I will go,” said Desiree, at length, deciding suddenly to do the one thing that is left to a woman once or twice in her life--to go to the one man and trust him.
“By the back way,” said Barlasch, helping her with the cloak that Lisa had brought, and pulling the hood forward over her face with a jerk. “Ah, I know that way. The patron is hiding in the yard. An old soldier looks to the retreat--though the Emperor has saved us that, so far. Come, I will help you over the wall, for the door is rusted.”
The way, which Barlasch had perceived, led through the room at the back of the kitchen to a yard, and thence through a door not opened by the present occupiers of the old house, into a very labyrinth of narrow alleys running downward to the river and round the tall houses that stand against the cathedral walls.
The wall was taller than Barlasch, but he ran at it like a cat, and Desiree standing below could see the black outline of his limbs crouching on the top. He stooped down, and grasping her hands, lifted her by the sheer strength of one arm, balanced her for an instant on the wall, and then lowered her on the outer side.
“Run,” he whispered.
She knew the way, and although the night was dark, and these narrow alleys between high walls had no lamps, Desiree lost no time. The Krahn-Thor is quite near to the Frauengasse. Indeed, the whole of Dantzig occupied but a small space between the rivers in those straitened days. The town was quieter than it had been for months, and Desiree passed unmolested through the narrow streets. She made her way to the quay, passing through the low gateway known as the door of the Holy Ghost, and here found people still astir. For the commerce that thrives on a northern river is paralyzed all the winter, and feverishly active when the ice has gone.
“The Elsa,” replied a woman, who had been selling bread all day on the quay, and was now packing up her stall, “you ask for the Elsa. There is such a ship, I know. But how can I say which she is? See, they lie right across the river like a bridge. Besides, it is late, and sailors are rough men.”
Desiree hurried on. Louis d'Arragon had said that the ship was lying near to the Krahn-Thor, of which the great hooded roof loomed darkly against the stars above her. She was looking about her when a man came forward with the hesitating step of one who has been told to wait the arrival of some one unknown to him.
“The Elsa,” she said to him; “which ship is it?”
“Come along with me, Mademoiselle,” the man replied; “though I was not told to look for a woman.”
He spoke in English, which Desiree hardly understood; for she had never heard it from English lips, and looked for the first time on one of that race upon which all the world waited now for salvation. For the English, of all the nations, were the only men who from the first had consistently defied Napoleon.
The sailor led the way towards the river. As he passed the lamp burning dimly above some steps, Desiree saw that he was little more than a boy. He turned and offered her his hand with a shy laugh, and together they stood at the bottom of the steps with the water lapping at their feet.
“Have you a letter,” he said, “or will you come on board?”
Then perceiving that she did not understand, he repeated the question in German.
“I will come on board,” she answered.
The Elsa was lying in the middle of the river, and the boat into which Desiree stepped shot across the water without sound of oars. The sailor was paddling it noiselessly at the stern. Desiree was not unused to boats, and when they came alongside the Elsa she climbed on board without help.
“This way,” said the sailor, leading her towards the deckhouse where a light burned dimly behind red curtains. He knocked at the door and opened it without awaiting a reply. In the little cabin two men sat at a table, and one of them was Louis d'Arragon dressed in the rough clothes of a merchant seaman. He seemed to recognize Desiree at once, though she still stood without the door, in the darkness.
“You?” he said in surprise. “I did not expect you, madame. You want me?”
“Yes,” answered Desiree, stepping over the combing. Louis's companion, who was also a sailor, coarsely clad, rose and, awkwardly taking off his cap, hurried to the door, murmuring some vague apology. It is not always the roughest men who have the worst manners towards women.
He closed the door behind him, leaving Desiree and Louis looking at each other by the light of an oil lamp that flickered and gave forth a greasy smell. The little cabin was smoke-ridden, and smelt of ancient tar. It was no bigger than the table in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse, across which he had bowed to her in farewell a few days earlier, little knowing when and where they were to meet again. For fate can always turn a surprise better than the human fancy.
Behind the curtain, the window stood open, and the high, clear song of the wind through the rigging filled the little cabin with a continuous minor note of warning which must have been part of his life; for he must have heard it, as all sailors do, sleeping or waking, night and day.
He was probably so accustomed to it that he never heeded it. But it filled Desiree's ears, and whenever she heard it in after-life, in memory this moment came again to her, and she looked back to it, as a traveller may look back to a milestone at a cross-road, and wonder where his journey might have ended had he taken another turning.
“My father,” she said quickly, “is in danger. There is no one else in Dantzig to whom we can turn, and--” She paused. What was she going to add? She hesitated, and then was silent. There was no reason why she should have elected to come to him. At all events she gave none.
“I am glad I was in Dantzig when it happened,” he said, turning to take up his cap, which was of rough dark fur, such as seamen wear even in summer at night in the Northern seas.
“Come,” he added, “you can tell me as we go ashore.”
But they did not speak while the sailor sculled the boat to the steps. On the quay they would probably pass unnoticed, for there were many strange sailors at this time in Dantzig, and Louis d'Arragon might easily be mistaken for one of the French seamen who had brought stores by sea from Bordeaux and Brest and Cherbourg.
“Now tell me,” he said, as they walked side by side; and in voluble French, Desiree launched into her story. It was rather incoherent, by reason, perhaps, of its frankness.
“Stop--stop,” he interrupted gravely, “who is Barlasch?”
Louis walked rather slowly in his stiff sea-boots at her side, and she instinctively spoke less rapidly as she explained the part that Barlasch had played.
“And you trust him?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“But why?”
“Oh, you are so matter-of-fact,” she exclaimed; “I do not know. Because he is trustworthy, I suppose.”
She continued the story, but suddenly stopped and looked up at him under the shadow of her hood.
“You are silent,” she said. “Do you know something about my father of which I am ignorant? Is that it?”
“No,” he answered, “I am trying to follow--that is all. You leave so much to my imagination.”
“But I have no time to explain things,” she protested. “Every moment is of value. I will explain all those things some other time. At this moment all I can think of is my father and the danger he is in. If it had not been for Barlasch, he would have been in prison by now. And as it is, the danger is only half averted. For he, himself, is so little help. All must be done for him. He will do nothing for himself while this humour is upon him; you understand?”
“Partly,” he answered slowly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed half-impatiently, “one sees that you are an Englishman.”
And she found time, even in her hurry, to laugh. For she was young enough to float buoyant upon that sea of hope which ebbs in the course of years and leaves men stranded on the hard facts of life.
“You forget,” he said in self-defence.
“I forget what?”
“That a week ago I had never seen Dantzig, or your father, or your sister, or the Frauengasse. A week ago I did not know that there was anybody called Sebastian in the world--and did not care.”
“Yes,” she admitted thoughtfully, “I had forgotten that.”
And they walked on in silence, a long way, till they came to the Gate of the Holy Ghost.
“But you can help him to escape?” she said at length, as if following the course of her own thoughts.
“Yes,” he answered, and that was all.
They passed through the smaller streets in silence, and Desiree led the way into a narrow alley running between the street of the Holy Ghost and the Frauengasse.
“There is the wall to be climbed,” she said; but, as she spoke, the door giving exit to the alley was cautiously opened by Barlasch.
“A little oil,” he whispered, “and it was soon done.”
The yard was dark within, for there might be watchers at any of the windows above them in the pointed gables that made patterns against the star-lit sky.
“All is well,” said Barlasch; “those sons of dogs have not returned, and the patron is waiting in the kitchen, cloaked and ready for a journey. He has collected himself--the patron.”
He led the way through his own room, which was dark, save for a shaft of lamp-light coming from the kitchen. He looked back keenly at Louis d'Arragon.
“Salut!” he growled, scowling at his boots. “A sailor,” he muttered after a pause. “Good. She has her wits at the top of the basket--that child.”
Desiree was throwing back her hood and looking at her father with a reassuring smile.
“I have brought Monsieur d'Arragon,” she said, “to help us.”
For Sebastian has not recognized the new-comer. He now bowed in his stiff way, and began a formal apology, which D'Arragon cut short with a quick gesture.
“It is the least I could do,” he said, “in the absence of Charles. Have you money?”
“Yes--a little.”
“You will require money and a few clothes. I can get you a passage to Riga or to Helsingborg to-night. From there you can communicate with your daughter. Events will follow each other rapidly. One never knows what a week may bring forth in time of war. It may be safe for you to return soon. Come, monsieur, we must go.”
Sebastian made a gesture with his outspread arms, half of protestation, half of acquiescence. It was plain that he had no sympathy with these modern, hurried methods of meeting the emergencies of daily life. A valise, packed and strapped, lay on the table. D'Arragon weighed it in his hand, and then lifted it to his shoulder.
“Come, monsieur,” he repeated leading the way through Barlasch's room to the yard. “And you,” he added, addressing himself to that soldier, “shut the door behind us.”
With another gesture of protest Sebastian gathered his cloak round him and followed. D'Arragon had taken Desiree so literally at her word that he allowed her father no time for hesitation, nor a moment to say farewell.
She was alone in the kitchen before she had realized that they were going. In a minute Barlasch returned. She could hear him setting in order the room which had been hurriedly disorganized in order to open the door leading to the yard, where her father had concealed himself. He was muttering to himself as he lifted the furniture.
Coming back into the kitchen, he found Desiree standing where he had left her. Glancing at her, he scratched his grey head in a plebeian way, and gave a little laugh.
“Yes,” he said, pointing to the spot where D'Arragon had stood. “That was a man, that you fetched to help us--a man. It makes a difference when such as that goes out of the room--eh?”
He busied himself in the kitchen, setting in order that which remained of the mise en scene of his violent reception of the secret police. Suddenly he turned in his emphatic manner, and threw out his rugged forefinger to hold her attention.
“If there had been some like that in Paris, there would have been no Revolution. Za-za, za-za!” he concluded, imitating effectively the buzz of many voices in an assembly. “Words and not deeds,” Barlasch protested. Whereas to-night, he clearly showed by two gestures, they had met a man of deeds.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
10
|
IN DEEP WATER.
|
Le coeur humain est un abime qui trompe tous les calculs.
It is to be presumed that Colonel de Casimir met friends at the reception given by Governor Rapp in the great rooms of the Rathhaus. For there were many Poles present, and not a few officers of other nationalities.
The army indeed that set forth to conquer Russia was not a French-speaking army. Less than half of the regiments were of that nationality, while Italians, Bavarians, Saxons, Wurtembergers, Westphalians, Prussians, Swiss, and Portuguese went gaily forward on the great venture. There were soldiers from the numerous petty states of the German Confederation which acknowledged Napoleon as their protector, for the good reason that they could not protect themselves against him. Finally, there were those Poles who had fought in Spain for Napoleon, hoping that in return he would some day set the ancient kingdom upon its feet among the nations. Already the whisperers pointed to Davoust as the future king of the new Poland.
Many present at the farewell reception of the Governor carried a sword, though they were the merest civilians, plotting, counter-plotting, and whispering a hundred rumours. Perhaps Rapp himself, speaking bluff French with a German accent, was as honest as any man in the room, though he lacked the polish of the Parisian and had not the subtlety of the Pole. Rapp was not a shining light in these brilliant circles. He was a Governor not for peace, but for war. His day was yet to come.
Such men as de Casimir shrugged their supple shoulders at his simple talk. They spoke of him half-contemptuously as of one who had had a thousand chances and had never taken them. He was not even rich, and he had handled great sums of money. He was only a General, and he had slept in the Emperor's tent--had had access to him in every humour. He might do the same again in the coming campaign. He was worth cultivating. De Casimir and his like were full of smiles which in no wise deceived the shrewd Alsatian.
Mathilde Sebastian was among the ladies to whom these brilliant warriors paid their uncouth compliments. Perhaps de Casimir was aware that her measuring eyes followed him wherever he went. He knew, at all events, that he could hold his own amid these adventurers, many of whom had risen from the ranks; while others, from remote northern States, had birth but no manners at all. He was easy and gay, carrying lightly that subtle air of distinction which is vouchsafed to many Poles.
“Here to-day, Mademoiselle, and gone to-morrow,” he said. “All these eager soldiers. And who can tell which of us may return?”
If he had expected Mathilde to flinch at this reminder of his calling, he was disappointed. Her eyes were hard and bright. She had had so few chances of moving amidst this splendour, of seeing close at hand the greatness which Napoleon shed around him as the sun its rays. She was carried away by the spirit of the age. Anything was better, she felt, than obscurity.
“And who can tell,” whispered de Casimir with a careless and confident laugh, “which of us shall come back rich and great?”
This brought the glance from her dark eyes for which his own lay waiting. She was certainly beautiful, and wore the difficult dress of that day with assurance and grace. She possessed something which the German ladies about her lacked; something which many suddenly lack when a Frenchwoman is near.
His manner, half respectful, half triumphant, betrayed an understanding to which he did not refer in words. She had bestowed some favour upon him--had acceded to some request. He hoped for more. He had overstepped some barrier. She, who should have measured the distance, had allowed him to come too close. The barriers of love are one-sided; there is no climbing back.
“A hundred envious eyes are watching me,” he said in an undertone as he passed on; “I dare not stay longer. I am on duty to-night.”
She bowed and watched him go. She was, it would seem, aware of that fallen barrier. She had done nothing, had permitted nothing from weakness. There was no weakness at all perhaps in Mathilde Sebastian. She had the quiet manner of a skilled card-player with folded cards laid face down upon the table, who knows what is in her hand and is waiting for the foe to lead.
De Casimir did not see her again. In such a throng it would have been difficult to find her had he so desired. But, as he had told her, he was on duty to-night. There were to be a hundred arrests before dawn. Many who were laughing and talking with the French officers to-night were already in the grasp of Napoleon's secret police, and would drive straight from the door of the Rathhaus to the town prison or to the old Watch-house in the Portchaisengasse. Others, moving through the great rooms with a high head, were already condemned out of their own bureaux and escritoires now being rifled by the Emperor's spies.
The Emperor himself had given the order, before quitting Dantzig to take command of the maddest and greatest enterprise conceived by the mind of man. There was nothing above the reach of his mind, it seemed, and nothing too low for him to bend down and touch. Every detail had been considered by himself. He was like a man who, having an open wound on his back, attends to it hurriedly before showing an undaunted face to the enemy.
His inexorable finger had come down on the name of Antoine Sebastian, figuring on all the secret reports--first in many.
“Who is this man?” he asked, and none could answer.
He had gone to the frontier without awaiting the solution to the question. Such was his method now. He had so much to do that he could but skim the surface of his task. For the human mind, though it be colossal, can only work within certain limits. The greatest orator in the world can only move his immediate hearers. Those beyond the inner circle catch a word here and there, and imagination supplies the rest or improves upon it. But those in the farthest gallery hear nothing and see a little man gesticulating.
De Casimir was not entrusted with the execution of the Emperor's orders. As a member of General Rapp's staff, resident in Dantzig since the city's occupation by the French, he had been called upon to make exhaustive reports upon the feeling of the burghers. There were many doubtful cases. De Casimir did not pretend to be better than his fellows. To some he had sold the benefit of the doubt. Some had paid willingly enough for their warning. Others had put off the payment; for there were many Jews, then as now, in Dantzig; slow payers requiring something stronger than a threat to make them disburse.
De Casimir therefore quitted the Rathhaus among the first to go, and walked through the busy streets to his rooms in the Langenmarkt, where he not only lived but had a small office to which orderlies and aides-de-camp came by day or night. Two sentries kept guard on the pavement. Since the spring, this office had been one of the busiest military posts in Dantzig. Its doors were open at all hours, and in truth many of de Casimir's assistants preferred to transact their business in the dark.
There might be some recalcitrant debtor driven by stress of circumstance to clear his conscience to-night. It would be as well, de Casimir thought, to be at one's post. Nor was he mistaken. Though it was only ten o'clock, two men were awaiting his return, and, their business despatched, de Casimir deemed it wise to send away his assistants. Immediately after they had gone a woman came. She was half distracted with fear, and the tears ran down her pallid cheeks. But she dried them at the mention of de Casimir's price, and fell to abusing him.
“If your husband is innocent, there is all the more reason why he should be grateful to me for warning him,” he said, with a smile. And at last the lady paid and went away.
The town clocks had struck eleven before another footstep on the pavement made de Casimir raise his head. He did not actually expect any one, but a certain surreptitiousness in the approach of this visitor, and the low knock on the door, made him suspect that this was grist for his mill.
He opened the door and, seeing that it was a woman, stepped back. When she had entered, he closed the door while she stood watching him in the dark passage, beneath the shadow of her hood. Knowing the value of such small details, he locked the door rather ostentatiously and dropped the key into his pocket.
“And now, madame,” he said reassuringly, as he followed his visitor into the room where a shaded lamp lighted his writing-table. She threw back her hood, and it was Mathilde! The surprise on de Casimir's face was genuine enough. Romance could not have brought about this visit, nor love be its motive.
“Something has happened,” he said, looking at her doubtfully.
“Where is my father?” was the reply.
“Unless there has been some mistake,” he answered glibly, “he is at home in bed.”
She smiled contemptuously into his innocent face.
“There has been a mistake,” she said; “they came to arrest him to-night.”
De Casimir made a gesture of anger and seemed to be mentally assigning a punishment to some blunderer.
“And?” he asked, without looking at her.
“And he escaped.”
“For the moment?”
“No; he has left Dantzig.”
Something in her voice--the cold note of warning--made him glance uneasily at her. This was not a woman to be deceived, and yet she was womanly enough to fear deception and to resent her own fears, visiting her anger on any who aroused them. In the flash of an eye he understood her, and forestalled the words that were upon her lips.
“And I promised that he should come to no harm--I know that,” he said quickly. “At first I thought that it must have been a blunder, but on reflection I am sure that it is not. It is the Emperor. He must have given the order for the arrest himself, behind my back. That is his way. He trusts no one. He deceives those nearest to him. I made out the list of those to be arrested to-night, and your father's name was not on it. Do you believe me? Mademoiselle, do you believe me?”
It was only natural in such a man to look for disbelief. The air he breathed was infected by suspicion. No deception was too small for the great man whom he served. Mathilde made no answer.
“You came here to accuse me of having deceived you,” he said rather anxiously. “Is that it?”
She nodded without meeting his eyes. It was not the truth. She had come to hear his defence, hoping against hope that she might be able to believe him.
“Mathilde,” he asked slowly, “do you believe me?”
He came a step nearer, looking down at her averted face, which was oddly white. Then suddenly she turned, without a sound, without lifting her eyes--and was in his arms. It seemed that she had done it against her will, and it took him by surprise. He had thought that she was trying to attract his love because she believed in his capability to make his fortune like so many soldiers of France; that she was only playing a woman's subtle game. And, after all, she was like the rest--a little cleverer, a little colder--but, like the rest.
While his arms were still round her, his quick mind leapt forward to the future, wondering already to what end this would lead them. For a moment he was taken aback. He was over the last of those barriers which are so easy from the outside and unclimbable from within. She had thrust into his hands a power greater than, for the moment, he knew how to wield. It was characteristic of him to think first whither it would lead him, and next how he could turn it to good account.
Some instinct told him that this was a different love from any that he had met before. The same instinct made him understand that it was crying aloud to be convinced; and, oddly enough, he had told her the truth.
“See,” he said, “here is a copy of the list, and your father's name is not on it. See, here is Napoleon's letter, expressing satisfaction with my work here and in Konigsberg, where I have been served by an agent of my own choosing. Many have climbed to a throne with less than that letter for their first step. See...!” he opened another drawer. It was full of money.
“See, again!” he said with a low laugh, and from an iron chest he took two or three bags which fell upon the table with the discreet unmistakable chink of gold. “That is the Emperor's. He trusts me, you see. These bags are mine. They are to be sent back to France before I follow the army to Russia. What I have told you is true, you see.”
It was an odd way of wooing, but this man rarely made a mistake. There are many women who, like Mathilde Sebastian, are readier to love success than console failure.
“See,” he said, after a moment's hesitation, opening another drawer in his writing-table, “before I went away I had intended to ask you to remember me.”
As he spoke he drew a jewel-case from under some papers, and slowly opened it. He had others like it in the drawer; for emergencies.
“But I never hoped,” he went on, “to have an opportunity of seeing you thus alone--to ask you never to forget me. You permit me?”
He clasped the diamonds round her throat, and they glittered on the poor, cheap dress, which was the best she had. She looked down at them with a catching breath, and for an instant the glitter was reflected in her eyes.
She had come asking for reassurance, and he gave her diamonds; which is an old tale told over and over again. For in human love we have to accept not what we want, but what is given to us.
“No one in Dantzig,” he said, “is so glad to hear that your father has escaped as I am.”
And, with the glitter still lurking in her dark-grey eyes, she believed him. He drew her cloak round her, and gently brought her hood over her hair.
“I must take you home,” he said tenderly, “without delay. And as we go through the streets you must tell me how it happened, and how you were able to come to me.”
“Desiree was not asleep,” she answered; “she was waiting for me to return, and told me at once. Then she went to bed, and I waited until she was asleep. It was she who managed the escape.”
De Casimir, who was locking the drawers of his writing-table, glanced up sharply.
“Ah! but not alone?”
“No--not alone. I will tell you as we go through the streets.”
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
11
|
THE WAVE MOVES ON.
|
La meme fermete qui sert a resister a l'amour sert aussi a le rendre violent et durable.
It is only in war that the unexpected admittedly happens. In love and other domestic calamities there is always a relative who knew it all the time.
The news that Napoleon was in Vilna, hastily evacuated by the Russians in full retreat, came as a surprise and not to all as a pleasant one, in Dantzig.
It was Papa Barlasch who brought the tidings to the Frauengasse, one hot afternoon in July. He returned before his usual hour, and sent Lisa upstairs, with a message given in dumb show and interpreted by her into matter-of-fact German, that he must see the young ladies without delay. Far back in the great days of the monarchy, Papa Barlasch must have been a little child in a peasant's hut on those Cotes du Nord where they breed a race of Frenchmen startlingly similar to the hereditary foe across the Channel, where to this day the men kick off their sabots at the door and hold that an honest labourer has no business under a roof except in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves.
Barlasch had never yet been upstairs in the Sebastians' house, and deemed it only respectful to the ladies to take off his boots on the mat, and prowl to the kitchen in coarse blue woollen stockings, carefully darned by himself, under the scornful immediate eye of Lisa.
He was in the kitchen when Mathilde and Desiree, in obedience to his command, came downstairs. The floor in one corner of the room was littered with his belongings; for he never used the table. “He takes up no more room than a cat,” Lisa once said of him. “I never fall over him.”
“She leaves her greasy plates here and there,” explained Barlasch in return. “One must think of one's self and one's uniform.”
He was in his stocking-feet with unbuttoned tunic when the two girls came to him.
“Ai, ai, ai,” he said, imitating with his two hands the galloping of a horse. “The Russians,” he explained confidentially.
“Has there been a battle?” asked Desiree.
And Barlasch answered “Pooh!” not without contempt for the female understanding.
“Then what is it?” she inquired. “You must remember we are not soldiers--we do not understand those manoeuvres--ai, ai, like that.”
And she copied his gesture beneath his scowling contempt.
“It is Vilna,” he said. “That is what it is. Then it will be Smolensk, and then Moscow. Ah, ah! That little man!”
He turned and took up his haversack.
“And I--I have my route. It is good-bye to the Frauengasse. We have been friends. I told you we should be. It is good-bye to these ladies--and to that Lisa. Look at her!”
He pointed with his curved and derisive finger into Lisa's eyes. And in truth the tears were there. Lisa was in heart and person that which is comprehensively called motherly. She saw perhaps some pathos in the sight of this rugged man--worn by travel, bent with hardship and many wounds, past his work--shouldering his haversack and trudging off to the war.
“The wave moves on,” he said, making a gesture, and a sound illustrating that watery progress. “And Dantzig will soon be forgotten. You will be left in peace--but we go on to--” He paused and shrugged his shoulders while attending to a strap. “India or the devil,” he concluded.
“Colonel Casimir has gone,” he added in what he took to be an aside to Mathilde. Which made her wonder for a moment. “I saw him depart with his staff soon after daybreak. And the Emperor has forgotten Dantzig. It is safe enough for the patron now. You can write him a letter to tell him so. Tell him that I said it was safe for him to return quietly here, and live in the Frauengasse--I, Barlasch.”
He was ready now, and, buttoning his tunic, he fixed the straps across his chest, looking from one to the other of the three women watching him, not without some appreciation of an audience. Then he turned to Desiree, who had always been his friend, with whom he now considered that he had the soldier's bond of a peril passed through together.
“The Emperor has forgotten Dantzig,” he repeated, “and those against whom he had a grudge. But he has also forgotten those who are in prison. It is not good to be forgotten in prison. Tell the patron that--to put it in his pipe and smoke it. Some day he may remember an old soldier. Ah, one thinks of one's self.”
And beneath his bushy brows he looked at her with a gleam of cunning. He went to the door and, turning there, pointed the finger of scorn at Lisa, stout and tearful. He gave a short laugh of a low-born contempt, and departed without further parley.
On the doorstep he paused to put on his boots and button his gaiters, stooping clumsily with a groan beneath his burden of haversack and kit. Desiree, who had had time to go upstairs to her bedroom, ran after him as he descended the steps. She had her purse in her hand, and she thrust it into his, quickly and breathlessly.
“If you take it,” she said, “I shall know that we are friends.”
He took it ungraciously enough. It was a silken thing with two small rings to keep the money in place, and he looked at it with a grimace, weighing it in his hand. It was very light.
“Money,” he said. “No, thank you. To get drink with, and be degraded and sent to prison. Not for me, madame. No, thank you. One thinks of one's career.”
And with a gruff laugh of worldly wisdom he continued his way down the worn steps, never looking back at her as she stood in the sunlight watching him, with the purse in her hand.
So in his old age Papa Barlasch was borne forward to the war on that human tide which flooded all Lithuania, and never ebbed again, but sank into the barren ground, and was no more seen.
As the slow autumn approached, it became apparent that Dantzig no longer interested the watchers. Vilna became the base of operations. Smolensk fell, and, most wonderful of all, the Russians were retiring on Moscow. Dantzig was no longer on the route. For a time it was of the world forgotten, while, as Barlasch had predicted, free men continued at liberty, though their names had an evil savour, while innocent persons in prison were left to rot there.
Desiree continued to receive letters from her husband, full of love and war. For a long time he lingered at Konigsberg, hoping every day to be sent forward. Then he followed Murat across the Niemen, and wrote of weary journeys over the rolling plains of Lithuania.
Towards the end of July he mentioned curtly the arrival of de Casimir at head-quarters.
“With him came a courier,” wrote Charles, “bringing your dead letter. I don't believe you love me as I love you. At all events, you do not seem to tell me that you do so often as I want to tell you. Tell me what you do and think every moment of the day....” And so on. Charles seemed to write as easily as he talked, and had no difficulty in setting forth his feelings. “The courier is in the saddle,” he concluded. “De Casimir tells me that I must finish. Write and tell me everything. How is Mathilde? And your father? Is he in good health? How does he pass his day? Does he still go out in the evening to his cafe?”
This seemed to be an afterthought, suggested perhaps by conversation passing in the room in which he sat.
The other exile, writing from Stockholm, was briefer in his communications.
“I am well,” wrote Antoine Sebastian, “and hope to arrive soon after you receive this. Felix Meyer, the notary, has instructions to furnish you with money for household expenses.”
It would appear that Sebastian possessed other friends in Dantzig, who had kept him advised of all that passed in the city.
For neither Mathilde nor Desiree had obeyed Barlasch's blunt order to write to their father. They did not know whither he had fled, neither had they received any communication giving an address or a hint as to his future movements. It would appear that the same direct and laconic mind which had carried out his escape deemed it wiser that those left behind should be in no position to furnish information.
In fairness to Barlasch, Desiree had made little of that soldier's part in Sebastian's evasion, and Mathilde displayed small interest in such details. She rather fastened, however, upon the assistance rendered by Louis d'Arragon.
“Why did he do it?” she asked.
“Oh, because I asked him,” was the reply.
“And why did you ask him?”
“Who else was there to ask?” returned Desiree, which was indeed unanswerable.
Perhaps the question had been suggested to her by de Casimir, who, on learning that Louis d'Arragon had helped her father to slip through the Emperor's fingers, had asked the same in his own characteristic way.
“What could he hope to gain by doing it?” he had inquired as he walked by Mathilde's side, along the Pfaffengasse. And he made other interrogations respecting D'Arragon which Mathilde was no more able to satisfy, as he accompanied her to the Frauengasse.
Since that time the dancing-lessons had been resumed to the music of a hired fiddler, and Desiree had once more taken up her household task of making both ends meet. She approached the difficulties as impetuously as ever, and danced the stout pupils round the room with undiminished energy.
“It seems no good at all, your being married,” said one of these breathlessly, while Desiree laughingly attended to her dishevelled hair.
“Why not?”
“Because you still make your own dresses and teach dancing,” replied the pupil, with a quick sigh at the thought of some smart bursch in the Prussian contingent.
“Ah, but Charles will return a colonel, and I shall bow to you in a silk dress from a chaise and pair--come, left foot first. You are not so tired as you think you are.”
For those that are busy, time flies quickly enough. And there is nothing more absorbing than keeping the wolf from the door, else assuredly the hungry thousands would find time to arise and rend the overfed few.
August succeeded a hot July and brought with it Sebastian's curt letter. Sebastian himself--that shadowy father--returned to his home a few hours later. He was not alone, for a heavier step followed his into the passage, and Desiree, always quick to hear and see and act, coming to the head of the stairs, perceived her father looking upwards towards her, while his companion in rough sailor's clothes turned to lay aside the valise he had carried on his shoulder.
Mathilde was close behind Desiree, and Sebastian kissed his daughters with that cold repression of manner which always suggested a strenuous past in which the emotions had been relinquished for ever as an indulgence unfit for a stern and hard-bitten age.
“I took him away and now return him,” said the sailor coming forward. Desiree had always known that it was Louis, but Mathilde gave a little start at the sound of the neat clipping French in the mouth of an educated Frenchman so rarely heard in Dantzig--so rarely heard in all broad France to-day.
“Yes--that is true,” answered Sebastian, turning to him with a sudden change of manner. There was that in voice and attitude which his hearers had never noted before, although Charles had often evoked something approaching it. It seemed to indicate that, of all the people with whom they had seen their father hold intercourse, Louis d'Arragon was the only man who stood upon equality with him.
“That is true--and at great risk to yourself,” he said, not assigning, however, so great an importance to personal danger as men do in these careful days. As he spoke, he took Louis by the arm and by a gesture invited him to precede him upstairs with a suggestion of camaraderie somewhat startling in one usually so cold and formal as Antoine Sebastian, the dancing-master of the Frauengasse.
“I was writing to Charles,” said Desiree to D'Arragon, when they reached the drawing-room, and, crossing to her own table, she set the papers in order there. These consisted of a number of letters from her husband, read and re-read, it would appear. And the answer to them, a clean sheet of paper bearing only the date and address, lay beneath her hand.
“The courier leaves this evening,” she said, with a queer ring of anxiety in her voice, as if she feared that for some reason or another she ran the risk of failing to despatch her letter. She glanced at the clock, and stood, pen in hand, thinking of what she should write.
“May I enclose a line?” asked Louis. “It is not wise, perhaps, for me to address to him a letter--since I am on the other side. It is a small matter of a heritage which he and I divide. I have placed some money in a Dantzig bank for him. He may require it when he returns.”
“Then you do not correspond with Charles?” said Mathilde, clearing a space for him on the larger table, and setting before him ink and pens and paper.
“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said, glancing at her with that light of interest in his dark eyes which she had ignited once before by a question on the only occasion that they had met. He seemed to detect that she was more interested in him than her indifferent manner would appear to indicate. “No, I am a bad correspondent. If Charles and I, in our present circumstances, were to write to each other it could only lead to intrigue, for which I have no taste and Charles no capacity.”
“You seem to hint that Charles might have such a taste then,” she said, with her quiet smile, as she moved away leaving him to write.
“Charles has probably found out by this time,” he answered with the bluntness which he claimed as a prerogative of his calling and nation, “that a soldier of Napoleon's who intrigues will make a better career than one who merely fights.”
He took up his pen and wrote with the absorption of one who has but little time and knows exactly what to say. By chance he glanced towards Desiree, who sat at her own table near the window. She was stroking her cheek with the feather of her pen, looking with puzzled eyes at the blank paper before her. Each time D'Arragon dipped his pen he glanced at her, watching her. And Mathilde, with her needlework, watched them both.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
12
|
FROM BORODINO.
|
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.
War is the gambling of kings. Napoleon, the arch-gambler, from that Southern sea where men, lacking cards or dice and the money to buy either, will yet play a game of chance with the ten fingers that God gave them for another purpose--Napoleon had dealt a hand with every monarch in Europe before he met for the second time that Northern adversary of cool blood who knew the waiting game.
It is only where the stakes are small that the leisurely players, idly fingering the fallen cards, return in fancy to certain points--to this trick trumped or that chance missed, playing the game over again. But when the result is great it overshadows the game, and all men's thoughts fly to speculation on the future. How will the loser meet his loss? What use will the winner make of his gain?
The results of the Russian campaign were so stupendous to history that the historians of the day, in their bewilderment, sought rather to preserve these than the details of the war. Thus the student of to-day, in piecing together an impression of bygone times, will inevitably find portions of his picture missing. As a matter of fact, no one can say for certain whether Alexander gently led Napoleon onward to Moscow or was himself driven thither in confusion by the conqueror.
Perhaps each merely pushed on from day to day, as men who are not Emperors must needs do in the stress of life. It is only in calm weather that the eye is able to discern things afar off and make ready; but in a storm the horizon is dimmed by cloud and spray. All Europe was so obscured at this time. And even Emperors, being only men, could look no farther than the immediate and urgent danger of the moment.
Napoleon's generals were scarcely social lights. Ney, the hero of the retreat, the bravest of the brave, was a rough man who ate horseflesh without troubling to cook it. Rapp, whose dogged defence of an abandoned city is without compare in the story of war, had the manners and the mind of a peasant. These gentlemen dealt more in deeds than in words. They had not much to say for themselves.
As for the Russians, Russia remains at this time the one European country unhampered and unharassed by a cheap press--the one country where prominent men have a quiet tongue. A hundred years ago Russians did great deeds, and the rest was silence. Neither Kutusoff nor Alexander ever stated clearly whether the retreat to Moscow was intentional or unavoidable; and these are the only men who knew. Perhaps Napoleon knew; at all events, he thought he did, or pretended to think it long afterwards at St. Helena, for Napoleon the Great was a consummate liar.
Be that as it may, the Russians retreated, and the French advanced farther and farther from their base. It was a great army--the greatest ever seen. For Napoleon had eight monarchs serving with the eagles; generals innumerable, many of them immortal--Davoust, the greatest strategist; Prince Eugene, the incomparable lieutenant; Ney, the fearless; four hundred thousand men. And they carried with them only twenty days' provision.
They had marched from the Vistula, full of shipping, across the Pregel, loaded with stores, to the Niemen, where there was no navigation. Dantzig, behind them--that Gibraltar of the North--was stored with provision enough for the whole army. But there was no transport; for the roads of Lithuania were unsuitable for the heavy carts provided.
The country across the Niemen could scarce sustain its own sparse population, and had nothing to spare for an invading army. This had once been Poland, and was now inimical to Russia; but Russia did not care, and the friendship of Lithuania was like many human friendships which we make sacrifices to preserve--not worth having.
All the while the Russians retreated, and, stranger still, the French followed them, eking out their twenty days' provision.
“I will make them fight a big battle, and beat them,” said Napoleon; “and then the Emperor will sue for peace.”
But Barclay de Tolly continued to run away from that great battle. Then came the news that Barclay had been deposed; that Kutusoff was coming from the South to take command. It was true enough; and Barclay cheerfully served in a subordinate position to the new chief. September brought great hopes of a battle, for Kutusoff seemed to retreat with less despatch, like a man choosing his ground--Kutusoff, that master of the waiting game.
Early in September Murat, the impetuous leader of the pursuit, complained to Nansouty that a cavalry charge had not been pushed home.
“The horses have no patriotism,” replied Nansouty. “The men will fight on empty stomachs, but not the horses.”
An ominous reply at the beginning of a campaign, while communications were still open.
At last, within a few days' march of Moscow, Kutusoff made a stand. At last the great battle was imminent, after a hundred false alarms, after many disappointed hopes. The country had been flat hitherto. The Borodino, running in a wider valley than many of these rivers, which are merely great ditches, seemed to offer possibilities of defence. It was the only hope for Moscow.
“At last,” wrote Charles to Desiree on September 6, “we are to have a great battle. There has been much fighting the last few days, but I have seen none of it. We are only eighty miles from Moscow. If there is a great battle to-morrow we shall see Moscow in less than a week. For we shall win. I have now found out from one who is near him that the Emperor saw and remembered me the day he passed us in the Frauengasse--our wedding-day, dearest. Nobody is too insignificant for him to know. He thought that my marriage to you (for he knows that you are French) would militate against the work I had been given to do in Dantzig, so he gave orders for me to be sent at once to Konigsberg and to continue the work there. De Casimir tells me that the Emperor is pleased with me. De Casimir is the best friend I have; I am sure of that. It is said that under the walls of Moscow the Emperor will dictate his terms to Alexander. Every one wonders that Alexander of Russia did not make proposals of peace when Vilna and Smolensk fell. In a week we may be at Moscow. In a month I may be back at Dantzig, Desiree....” And the rest would have been for Desiree's eyes alone, had it ever been penned. For next in sacredness to heaven-inspired words are mere human love letters; and those who read the love-letters of another commit a sacrilege. But Charles never finished the letter, for the dawn surprised him where he wrote in a shed by the miserable Kalugha, a streamlet running to the Moskwa. And it was the dawn of September 7, 1812.
“There is the sun of Austerlitz,” said Napoleon to those who were near him when it arose. But it was not. It was the sun of Borodino. And before it set the great battle desired by the French had been fought, and eight French generals lay dead, while thirty more were wounded. Murat, Davoust, Ney, Junot, Prince Eugene, Napoleon himself--all were there; and all fought to finish a war which from the first had been disliked. The French claimed it as a victory; but they gained nothing by it, and they lost forty thousand killed and wounded.
During the night the Russians evacuated the position which they had held, and lost, and retaken. They retreated towards Moscow, but Napoleon was hardly ready to pursue.
These things, however, are history, and those who wish to know of them may read them in another volume. While to the many orderly persons who would wish to see everything in its place and the history-books on the top shelf to be taken down and read on a future day (which will never come), to such the explanation is due that this battle of Borodino is here touched upon because it changed the current of some lives with which we have to deal.
For battles and revolutions and historical events of any sort are the jagged instruments with which Fate rough-hews our lives, leaving us to shape them as we will. In other days, no doubt, men rough-hewed, while Fate shaped. But as civilization advances men will wax so tender, so careful of the individual, that they will never cut and slash, but move softly, very tolerant, very easy-going, seeking the compromise that brings peace and breeds a small and timid race of men.
Into such lives Fate comes crashing like a woodman with his axe, leaving us to smooth the edges of the gaping wound and smile, and say that we are not hurt; to pare away the knots and broken stumps; and hope that our neighbour, concealing such himself, will have the decency to pretend not to see.
Thus the battle of Borodino crashed into the lives of Desiree and Mathilde, and their father, living quietly on the sunny side of the Frauengasse in Dantzig. Antoine Sebastian was the first to hear the news. He had, it seemed, special facilities for learning news at the Weissen Ross'l, whither he went again now in the evening.
“There has been a great battle,” he said, with so much more than his usual self-restraint that Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of anxiety. “A man coming this evening from Dirschau saw and spoke with the Imperial couriers on their way to Berlin and Paris. It was a great victory, quite near to Moscow. But the loss on both sides has been terrible.”
He paused and glanced at Desiree. It was his creed that good blood should show an example of self-restraint and a certain steadfast, indifferent courage.
“Not so much among the French,” he said, “as among the Bavarians and Italians. It is an odd way of showing patriotism, to gain victories for the conqueror. One hoped--” he paused and made a gesture with his right hand, scarcely indicative of a staunch hope, “that the man's star might be setting, but it would appear to be still in the ascendant. Charles,” he added, as an afterthought, “would be on the staff. No doubt he only saw the fighting from a distance.”
Desiree, from whose face the colour had faded, nodded cheerfully enough.
“Oh yes,” she answered, “I have no doubt he is safe. He has good fortune.”
For she was an apt pupil, and had already learnt that the world only wishes to leave us in undisputed possession of our anxieties or sorrows, however ready it may be to come forward and take a hand in good fortune.
“But there is no definite news,” said Mathilde, hardly looking up from the needlework at which her fingers were so deft and industrious.
“No.”
“No news of Charles, I mean,” she continued, “or of any of our friends. Of Monsieur de Casimir, for instance?”
“No. As for Colonel de Casimir,” returned Sebastian thoughtfully, “he, like Charles, holds some staff appointment of which one does not understand the scope. He is without doubt uninjured.”
Mathilde glanced at her father not without suspicion. His grand manner might easily be at times a screen. One never knows how much is perceived by those who look down from a high place.
The town was quiet enough all that night. Sebastian must have heard the news from some unofficial source, for none other seemed to know it. But at daybreak the church bells, so rarely used in Dantzig for rejoicing, awoke the burghers to the fact that the Emperor bade them make merry. Napoleon gave great heed to such matters. In the churches of Lithuania and farther on in Russia he had commanded the popes to pray for him at their altars instead of for the Czar.
When Desiree came downstairs, she found a packet awaiting her. The courier had come in during the night. This was more than a letter. A number of papers had been folded in a handkerchief and bound with string. The address was written on a piece of white leather cut from the uniform of one who had fallen at Borodino, and had no more need of sabretasche or trapping.
“Madame Desiree Darragon--nee Sebastian, Frauengasse 36, Dantzig.”
Desiree's heart stood still; for the writing was unknown to her. As she cut the network of string, she thought that Charles was dead. When the enclosed papers fell upon the table, she was sure of it; for they were all in his writing. She did not pick and choose as one would who has leisure and no very strong excitement, but took up the first paper and read: “Dear C.--I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed report. His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful. I was quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here, they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river half the night, listening at the open stern window of a Reval pink to every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed, he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that which they call patriotism, and we, treason. But I can only repeat what His Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday--that the heart of the ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and what he is about, you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address--I beg of you--if only in acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed.”
The letter was unsigned, but the writing was the writing of Charles Darragon, and Desiree knew what he had sacrificed--what he could never recover.
There were two or three more letters addressed to “Dear C.,” bearing no signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? Was Charles dead?
At last she came to a sealed envelope addressed to herself by Charles. Some other hand had copied the address from it in identical terms on the piece of white leather. She opened and read it. It was the letter written to her by Charles on the bank of the Kalugha river on the eve of Borodino, and left unfinished by him. He must be dead. She prayed that he might be.
She was alone in the room, having come down early, as was her wont, to prepare breakfast. She heard Lisa talking with some one at the door--a messenger, no doubt, to say that Charles was dead.
One letter still remained unread. It was in a different writing--the writing on the white leather.
“Madame,” it read, “The enclosed papers were found on the field by one of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance. Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day.” The writer assured Desiree of his respectful consideration, and wrote “Surgeon” after his name.
Desiree had read the explanation too late.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
13
|
IN THE DAY OF REJOICING.
|
Truth, though it crush me.
The door of the room stood open, and the sound of a step in the passage made Desiree glance up, as she hastily put together the papers found on the battlefield of Borodino.
Louis d'Arragon was coming into the room, and for an instant, before his expression changed, she saw all the fatigue that he must have endured during the night; all that he must have risked. His face was usually still and quiet; a combination of that contemplative calm which characterises seafaring faces, and the clean-cut immobility of a racial type developed by hereditary duties of self-restraint and command.
He knew that there had been a battle, and, seeing the papers on the table, his eyes asked her the inevitable question which his lips were slow to put into words.
In reply Desiree shook her head. She looked at the papers in quick thought. Then she withdrew from them the letter written to her by Charles--and put the others together.
“You told me to send for you,” she said in a quiet, tired voice, “if I wanted you. You have saved me the trouble.”
His eyes were hard with anxiety as he looked at her. She held the letters towards him.
“By coming,” she added, with a glance at him which took in the dust, and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the dangers he had passed through--daring all--to come.
Seeing that he looked doubtfully at the papers, she spoke again.
“One,” she said, “that one on the stained paper, is addressed to me. You can read it--since I ask you.”
The letter told him, at all events, that Charles was not killed, and, seeing his face clear as he read, she gave an odd, curt laugh.
“Read the others,” she said. “Oh! you need not hesitate. You need not be so particular. Read one, the top one. One is enough.”
The windows stood open, and the morning breeze fluttering the curtains brought in the gay sound of bells, the high clear bells of Hanseatic days, rejoicing at Napoleon's new success--by order of Napoleon. A bee sailed harmoniously into the room, made the circuit of it, and sought the open again with a hum that faded drowsily into silence.
D'Arragon read the letter slowly from beginning to the unsigned end, while Desiree, sitting at the table, upon which she leant one elbow, resting her small square chin in the palm of her hand, watched him.
“Ah?” she exclaimed at length, with a ring of contempt in her voice, as if at the thought of something unclean. “A spy! It is so easy for you to keep still, and to hide all you feel.”
D'Arragon folded the letter slowly. It was the fatal letter written in the upper room in the shoemaker's house in Konigsberg in the Neuer Markt, where the linden trees grow close to the window. In it Charles spoke lightly of the sacrifice he had made in leaving Desiree on his wedding-day, to do the Emperor's bidding. It was indeed the greatest sacrifice that man can make; for he had thrown away his honour.
“It may not be so easy as you think,” returned D'Arragon, looking towards the door.
He had no time to say more; for Mathilde and her father were talking together on the stairs as they came down. D'Arragon thrust the letters into his pocket, the only indication he had time to give to Desiree of the policy they must pursue. He stood facing the door, alert and quiet, with only a moment in which to shape the course of more than one life.
“There is good news, Monsieur,” he said to Sebastian. “Though I did not come to bring it.”
Sebastian pointed interrogatively to the open window, where the sound of the bells seemed to emphasize the sunlight and the freshness of the morning.
“No--not that,” returned D'Arragon. “It is a great victory, they tell me; but it is hard to say whether such news would be good or bad. It was of Charles that I spoke. He is safe--Madame has heard.”
He spoke rather slowly, and turned towards Desiree with a measured gesture, not unlike Sebastian's habitual manner, and a quick glance to satisfy himself that she had understood and was ready.
“Yes,” said Desiree, “he was safe and well after the battle, but he gives no details; for the letter was actually written the day before.”
“With a mere word, added in postscriptum, to say that he was unhurt at the end of the day,” suggested Sebastian, already drawing forward a chair with a gesture full of hospitality, inviting D'Arragon to be seated at the simple breakfast-table. But D'Arragon was looking at Mathilde, who had gone rather hurriedly to the window, as if to breathe the air. He had caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. It was hard and set, quite colourless, with bright, sleepless eyes. D'Arragon was a sailor. He had seen that look in rougher faces and sterner eyes, and knew what it meant.
“No details?” asked Mathilde in a muffled voice, without looking round.
“No,” answered Desiree, who had noticed nothing. How much more clearly we should understand what is going on around us if we had no secrets of our own to defend!
In obedience to Sebastian's gesture, D'Arragon took a chair, and even as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of herself again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the simple meal. D'Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen's habit of adapting himself unconsciously and unobtrusively to his surroundings, was of a direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and simplified by the pressure of a strong and steady purpose. For men's minds are like the atmosphere, which is always cleared by a steady breeze, while a changing wind generates vapours, mist, uncertainty.
“And what news do you bring from the sea?” asked Sebastian. “Is your sky there as overcast as ours in Dantzig?”
“No, Monsieur, our sky is clearing,” answered D'Arragon, eating with a hearty appetite the fresh bread and butter set before him. “Since I saw you, the treaties have been signed, as you doubtless know, between Sweden and Russia and England.”
Nodding his head with silent emphasis, Sebastian gave it to be understood that he knew that and more.
“It makes a great difference to us at sea in the Baltic,” said D'Arragon. “We are no longer harassed night and day, like a dog, hounded from end to end of a hostile street, not daring to look into any doorway. The Russian ports and Swedish ports are open to us now.”
“One is glad to hear that your life is one of less hardship,” said Sebastian gravely. “I.... who have tasted it.”
Desiree glanced at his lean, hard face. She rose, went out of the room, and returned in a few minutes carrying a new loaf which she set on the table before him with a short laugh, and something glistening in her eyes that was not mirth.
But neither Desiree nor Mathilde joined in the conversation. They were glad for their father to have a companion so sympathetic as to produce a marked difference in his manner. For Sebastian was more at ease with Louis d'Arragon than he was with Charles, though the latter had the tie of a common fatherland, and spoke the same French that Sebastian spoke. D'Arragon's French had the roundness always imparted to that language by an English voice. It was perfect enough, but of an educated perfection.
The talk was of such matters as concerned men more than women; of armies and war and treaties of peace. For all the world thought that Alexander of Russia would be brought to his knees by the battle of Borodino. None knew better how to turn a victory to account than he who claimed to be victor now. “It does not suffice,” Napoleon wrote to his brother at this time, “to gain a victory. You must learn to turn it to advantage.”
Save for the one reference to his life in the Baltic during the past two months, D'Arragon said nothing of himself, of his patient, dogged work carried on by day and by night in all weathers. Content to have escaped with his life, he neither referred to, nor thought of, his part in the negotiations which had resulted in the treaty just signed. For he had been the link between Russia and England; the never-failing messenger passing from one to the other with question and answer which were destined to bear fruit at last in an understanding brought to perfection in Paris, culminating at Elba.
Both were guarded in what they said of passing events, and both seemed to doubt the truth of the reports now flying through the streets of Dantzig. Even in the quiet Frauengasse all the citizens were out on their terraces calling questions to those that passed by beneath the trees. The itinerant tradesman, the milkman going his round, the vendors of fruit from Langfuhr and the distant villages of the plain, lingered at the doors to tell the servants the latest gossip of the market-place. Even in this frontier city, full of spies, strangers spoke together in the streets, and the sound of their voices, raised above the clang of carillons, came in at the open window.
“At first a victory is always a great one,” said D'Arragon, looking towards the window.
“It is so easy to ring a bell,” added Sebastian, with his rare smile.
He was quite himself this morning, and only once did the dull look arrest his features into the stony stillness which his daughters knew.
“You are the only one of your name in Dantzig,” said D'Arragon, in the course of question and answer as to the safe delivery of letters in time of war.
“So far as I know, there is no other Sebastian,” replied he; and Desiree, who had guessed the motive of the question, which must have been in D'Arragon's mind from the beginning, was startled by the fulness of the answer. It seemed to make reply to more than D'Arragon had asked. It shattered the last faint hope that there might have been another Sebastian of whom Charles had written.
“For myself,” said D'Arragon, changing the subject quickly, “I can now make sure of receiving letters addressed to me in the care of the English Consul at Riga, or the Consul at Stockholm, should you wish to communicate with me, or should Madame find leisure to give me news of her husband.”
“Desiree will no doubt take pleasure in keeping you advised of Charles's progress. As for myself, I fear I am a bad correspondent. Perhaps not a desirable one in these days,” said Sebastian, his face slowly clearing. He waved the point aside with a gesture that looked out of place on a hand lean and spare, emerging from a shabby brown sleeve without cuff or ruffle.
“For I feel assured,” he went on, “that we shall continue to hear good news of your cousin; not only that he is safe and well, but that he makes progress in his profession. He will go far, I am sure.”
D'Arragon bowed his acknowledgment of this kind thought, and rose rather hastily.
“My best chance of quitting the city unseen,” he said, “is to pass through the gates with the market-people returning to the villages. To do that, I must not delay.”
“The streets are so full,” replied Sebastian, glancing out of the window, “that you will pass through them unnoticed. I see beneath the trees, a neighbour, Koch the locksmith, who is perhaps waiting to give me news. While you are saying farewell, I will go out and speak to him. What he has to tell may interest you and your comrades at sea--may help your escape from the city this morning.”
He took his hat as he spoke and went to the door. Mathilde, thirsting for the news that seemed to hum in the streets like the sound of bees, rose and followed him. Desiree and D'Arragon were left alone. She had gone to the window, and, turning there, she looked back at him over her shoulder, where he stood by the door watching her.
“So, you see,” she said, “there is no other Sebastian.”
D'Arragon made no reply. She came nearer to him, her blue eyes sombre with contempt for the man she had married. Suddenly she pointed to the chair which D'Arragon had just vacated.
“That is where he sat. He has eaten my father's salt a hundred times,” she said, with a short laugh. For whithersoever civilization may take us, we must still go back to certain primaeval laws of justice between man and man.
“You judge too hastily,” said D'Arragon; but she interrupted him with a gesture of warning.
“I have not judged hastily,” she said. “You do not understand. You think I judge from that letter. That is only a confirmation of something that has been in my mind for a long time--ever since my wedding-day. I knew when you came into the room upstairs on that day that you did not trust Charles.”
“I--?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, standing squarely in front of him and looking him in the eyes. “You did not trust him. You were not glad that I had married him. I could see it in your face. I have never forgotten.”
D'Arragon turned away towards the window. Sebastian and Mathilde were in the street below, in the shade of the trees, talking with the eager neighbours.
“You would have stopped it if you could,” said Desiree; and he did not deny it.
“It was some instinct,” he said at length. “Some passing misgiving.”
“For Charles?” she asked sharply.
And D'Arragon, looking out of the window, would not answer. She gave a sudden laugh.
“One cannot compliment you on your politeness,” she said. “Was it for Charles that you had misgivings?”
At last D'Arragon turned on his heel.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “Since I came too late.”
“That is true,” she said, after a pause. “You came too late; so it doesn't matter. And the thing is done now, and I.. . , well, I suppose I must do what others have done before me--I must make the best of it.”
“I will help you,” said D'Arragon slowly, almost carefully, “if I can.”
He was still avoiding her eyes, still looking out of the window. Sebastian was coming up the steps.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
14
|
MOSCOW.
|
Nothing is so disappointing as failure--except success.
While the Dantzigers with grave faces discussed the news of Borodino beneath the trees in the Frauengasse, Charles Darragon, white with dust, rose in his stirrups to catch the first sight of the domes and cupolas of Moscow.
It was a sunny morning, and the gold on the churches gleamed and glittered in the shimmering heat like fairyland. Charles had ridden to the summit of a hill and sat for a moment, as others had done, in silent contemplation. Moscow at last! All around him men were shouting: “Moscow! Moscow!” Grave, white-haired generals waved their shakos in the air. Those at the summit of the hill called the others to come. Far down in the valley, where the dust raised by thousands of feet hung in the air like a mist, a faint sound like the roar of falling water could be heard. It was the word “Moscow!” sweeping back to the rearmost ranks of these starving men who had marched for two months beneath the glaring sun, parched with dust, through a country that seemed to them a Sahara. Every house they approached, they had found deserted. Every barn was empty. The very crops ripening to harvest had been gathered in and burnt. Near to the miserable farmhouses, a pile of ashes hardly cold marked where the poor furniture had been tossed upon the fire kindled with the year's harvest.
Everywhere it was the same. There are, as God created it, few countries of a sadder aspect than that which spreads between the Moskwa and the Vistula. But it has been decreed by the dim laws of Race that the ugly countries shall be blessed with the greater love of their children, while men born in a beautiful land seem readiest to emigrate from it and make the best settlers in a new home. There is only one country in the world with a ring-fence round it. If a Russian is driven from his home, he will go to another part of Russia: there is always room.
Before the advance of the spoilers, chartered by their leader to unlimited and open rapine--indeed, he had led them hither with that understanding--the Prussians, peasant and noble alike, fled to the East. A hundred times the advance guard, fully alive to the advantages of their position, had raced to the gates of a chateau only to find, on breaking open the doors, that it was empty--the furniture destroyed, the stores burnt, the wine poured out.
So also in the peasants' huts. Some, more careful than the rest, had pulled the thatch from the roof to burn it. There was no corn in this the Egypt of their greedy hopes. And, lest they should bring the corn with them, the spoilers found the mills everywhere wrecked.
It was something new to them. It was new to Napoleon, who had so frequently been met halfway, who knew that men for greed will part smilingly with half in order to save the residue. He knew that many, rather than help a neighbour who is in danger by a robber, will join the robber and share the spoil, crying out that force majeure was used to them.
But, as every man must judge according to his lights, so must even the greatest find himself in the dark at last. No man of the Latin race will ever understand the Slav. And because the beginning is easy--because in certain superficial tricks of speech and thought Paris and Petersburg are not unlike--so much the more is the breach widened when necessity digs deeper than the surface. For, to make the acquaintance of a stranger who seems to be a counterpart of one's self in thought and taste, is like the first hearing of a kindred language such as Dutch to the English ear. At first it sounds like one's own tongue with a hundred identical words, but on closer listening it will be found that the words mean something else, and that the whole is incomprehensible and the more difficult to acquire by the very reason of its resemblance.
Napoleon thought that the Russians would act as his enemies of the Latin race had acted. He thought that like his own people they would be over-confident, urging each other on to great deeds by loud words and a hundred boasts. But the Russians lack self-confidence, are timid rather than over-bold, dreamy rather than fiery. Only their women are glib of speech. He thought that they would begin very brilliantly and end with a compromise, heart-breaking at first and soon lived down.
“They are savages out here in the plains,” he said. “It is a barbaric and stupid instinct that makes them destroy their own property for the sake of hampering us. As we approach Moscow we shall find that the more civilized inhabitants of the villages, enervated by an easy life, rendered selfish by possession of wealth, will not abandon their property, but will barter and sell to us and find themselves the victims of our might.”
And the army believed him. For they always believed him. Faith can, indeed, move mountains. It carried four hundred thousand men, without provisions, through a barren land.
And now, in sight of the golden city, the army was still hungry. Nay! it was ragged already. In three columns it converged on the doomed capital, driving before it like a swarm of flies the Cossacks who harassed the advance.
Here again, on the hill looking down into the smiling valley of the Moskwa, the unexpected awaited the invaders. The city, shimmering in the sunlight like the realization of some Arab's dream, was silent. The Cossacks had disappeared. Except those around the Kremlin, towering above the river, the city had no walls.
The army halted while aides-de-camp flew hither and thither on their weary horses. Charles Darragon, sunburnt, dusty, hoarse with cheering, was among the first. He looked right and left for de Casimir, but could not see him. He had not seen his chief since Borodino, for he was temporarily attached to the staff of Prince Eugene, who had lost heavily at the Kalugha river.
It was usual for the army to halt before a beleaguered city and await the advent in all humility of the vanquished. Commonly it was the mayor of a town who came, followed by his councillors in their robes, to explain that the army had abandoned the city, which now begged to throw itself upon the mercy of the conqueror.
For this the army waited on that sunny September morning.
“He is putting on his robes,” they said gaily. “He is new to this work.”
But the mayor of Moscow disappointed them. At last the troops moved on and camped for the night in a village under the Kremlin walls. It was here that Charles received a note from de Casimir.
“I am slightly wounded,” wrote that officer, “but am following the army. At Borodino my horse was killed under me, and I was thrown. While I was insensible, I was robbed and lost what money I had, as well as my despatch-case. In the latter was the letter you wrote to your wife. It is lost, my friend; you must write another.”
Charles was tired. He would put off till to-morrow, he thought, and write to Desiree from Moscow. As he lay, all dressed on the hard ground, he fell to thinking of what he should write to Desiree to-morrow from Moscow. The mere date and address of such a letter would make her love him the more, he thought; for, like his leaders, he was dazed by a surfeit of glory.
As he fell asleep smiling at these happy reflections, Desiree, far away in Dantzig, was locking in her bureau the letter which had been lost and found again; while, on the deck of his ship, lifting gently to the tideway where the Vistula sweeps out into the Dantziger Bucht, Louis d'Arragon stood fingering reflectively in his jacket-pocket the unread papers which had fallen from the same despatch-case. For it is a very small world in which to do wrong, though if a man do a little good in his lifetime it is--heaven knows--soon mislaid and trodden under the feet of the new-comers.
The next day it was definitely ascertained that the citizens of Moscow had no communication to make to the conquering leaders. Soon after daylight the army moved towards the city. The suburbs were deserted. The houses stood with closed shutters and locked doors. Not so much as a dog awaited the triumphant entry through the city gates.
Long streets without a living being from end to end met the eyes of those daring organizers of triumphal entries who had been sent forward to clear a path and range the respectful citizens on either hand. But there were no citizens. There was not a single witness to this triumph of the greatest army the world had seen, led across Europe by the first captain in all history to conquer a virgin capital.
The various corps marched to their quarters in silence, with nervous glances at the shuttered windows. Some, breaking rank, ventured into the churches which stood open. The candles were lighted on the altars, they reported to their comrades in a hushed voice when they returned, but there was no one there.
Certain palaces were selected as head-quarters for the general officers and the chiefs of various departments. As often as not a summons would be answered and the door opened by an obsequious porter, who handed the keys to the first-comer. But he spoke no French, and only cringed in silence when addressed. Other doors were broken in.
It was like a play acted in dumb show on an immense stage. It was disquieting and incomprehensible even to the oldest campaigner, while the young fire-eaters, fresh from St. Cyr, were strangely depressed by it. There was a smell of sour smoke in the air, a suggestion of inevitable tragedy.
On the Krasnaya Ploschad--the great Red Square, which is the central point of the old town--the soldiers were already buying and selling the spoil wrested from the burning Exchange. It seemed that the citizens before leaving had collected their merchandise in this building to burn it. To the rank-and-file this meant nothing but an incomprehensible stupidity. To the educated and the thoughtful it was another evidence of that dumb and sullen capacity for infinite self-sacrifice which makes Russians different from any other race, and which has yet to be reckoned with in the history of the world. For it will tend to the greatest good of the greatest number, and is a power for national aggrandisement quite unattainable by any Latin people.
Charles, with the other officers of Prince Eugene's staff, was quartered in a palace on the Petrovka--that wide street running from the Kremlin northward to the boulevards and the parks. Going towards it he passed through the bazaars and the merchants' quarters, where, like an army of rag-pickers, the eager looters were silently hurrying from heap to heap. Every warehouse had, it seemed, been ransacked and its contents thrown out into the streets. The first-comers had hurried on, seeking something more valuable, more portable, leaving the later arrivals to turn over their garbage like dogs upon a dust-heap.
The Petrovka is a long street of great houses, and was now deserted. The pillagers were nervous and ill at ease, as men must always be in the presence of something they do not understand. The most experienced of them--and there were some famous robbers in Murat's vanguard--had never seen an empty city abandoned all standing, as the Russians had abandoned Moscow. They felt apprehensive of the unknown. Even the least imaginative of them looked askance at the tall houses, at the open doors of the empty churches, and they kept together for company's sake.
Charles's rooms were in the Momonoff Palace, where even the youngest lieutenant had vast apartments assigned to him. It was in one of these--a lady's boudoir, where his dust-covered baggage had been thrown down carelessly by his orderly on a blue satin sofa--that he sat down to write to Desiree.
His emotions had been stirred by all that he had passed through--by the first sight of Moscow, by the passage beneath the Gate of the Redeemer, where every man must uncover and only Napoleon dared to wear a hat; by the bewildering sense of triumph and the knowledge that he was taking part in one of the epochs of man's history on this earth. The emotions lie very near together, so that laughter being aroused must also touch on tears, and hatred being kindled warms the heart to love.
And, here in this unknown woman's room, with the very pen that she had thrown aside, Charles, who wrote and spoke his love with such facility, wrote to Desiree a love-letter such as he had never written before.
When it was sealed and addressed he called his orderly to take it to the officer to whose duty it fell to make up the courier for Germany. But he received no reply. The man had joined his comrades in the busier quarters of the city. Charles went to the head of the stairs and called again, with no better success. The house was comparatively modern, built on the familiar lines of a Parisian hotel, with a wide stair descending to an entrance archway where carriages passed through into a courtyard.
Descending the stairs, Charles found that even the sentry had absented himself from his duty. His musket, leant against the post of the stone doorway, indicated that he was not far. Listening in the silence of that great house, Charles heard some one at work with hammer and chisel in the courtyard. He went there, and found the sentry kneeling at a low door, endeavouring to break it open. The man had not been idle; from a piece of rope slung across his back half a dozen clocks were suspended. They rattled together like the wares of a travelling tinsmith at every movement of his arms.
“What are you doing there, my friend?” asked Charles.
The man held up one finger over his shoulder without looking round, and shook it from side to side, as not desiring to be interrupted.
“The cellar,” he answered, “always the cellar. It is human nature. We get it from the animals.”
He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse. He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his face were filled with dust. Since quitting the banks of the Vistula no opportunity for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him. He stood at attention, his lips working over sunken gums.
“I want you to take this letter,” said Charles, “to the officer on service at head-quarters, and ask him to include it in his courier. It is, as you see, a private letter--to my wife at Dantzig.”
The man looked at it, and grumbled something inaudible. He took it in his hand and turned it over with the slow manner of the illiterate.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
15
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THE GOAL.
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God writes straight on crooked lines.
Charles, having given his letter to the sentry with the order to take it to its immediate destination, turned towards the stairs again. In those days an order was given in a different tone to that which servitude demands in later times.
He returned to his room on the first floor without even waiting to make sure that he would be obeyed. He had scarcely seated himself when, after a fumbling knock, the sentry opened the door and followed him into the room, still holding the letter in his hand.
“Mon capitaine,” he said with a certain calmness of manner as from an old soldier to a young one, “a word--that is all. This letter,” he turned it in his hand as he spoke, and looking at Charles beneath scowling brows, awaited an explanation. “Did you pick it up?”
“No--I wrote it.”
“Good. I.. .” he paused, and tapped himself on the chest so that there could be no mistake; there was a rattling sound behind him suggestive of ironware. Indeed, he was hung about with other things than clocks, and seemed to be of opinion that if a soldier sets value upon any object he must attach it to his person. “I, Barlasch of the Guard--Marengo, the Danube, Egypt--picked up after Borodino a letter like it. I cannot read very quickly--indeed--Bah! the old Guard needs no pens and paper--but that letter I picked up was just like this.”
“Was it addressed like that to Madame Desiree Darragon?”
“So a comrade told me. It is you, her husband?”
“Yes,” answered Charles, “since you ask; I am her husband.”
“Ah!” replied Barlasch darkly, and his limbs and features settled themselves into a patient waiting.
“Well,” asked Charles, “what are you waiting for?”
“Whatever you may think proper, mon capitaine, for I gave the letter to the surgeon who promised that it should be forwarded to its address.”
Charles laughingly sought his purse. But there was nothing in it, so he looked round the room.
“Here, add this to your collection,” and he took a small French clock from the writing-table, a pretty, gilded toy from Paris.
“Thank you, mon capitaine.”
Barlasch, with shaking fingers, unknotted the rope around his shoulders. As he was doing so one of the clocks on his back began to strike. He paused, and stood looking gravely at his superior officer. Another clock took up the tale and a third, while Barlasch sternly stood at attention.
“Four o'clock,” he said to himself, “and I, who have not yet breakfasted--” With a grunt and a salute he turned towards the door which stood open. Some one was coming up the stairs rather slowly, his spurs clinking, his scabbard clashing against the gilded banisters. Papa Barlasch stood aside at attention, and Colonel de Casimir came into the room with a gay word of greeting. Barlasch went out, but he did not close the door. It is to be presumed that he stood without, where he might have overheard all that they said to each other for quite a long time, until it was almost the half-hour when the clocks would strike again. But de Casimir, perceiving that the door was open, closed it quietly from within, and Barlasch, shut out on the wide landing, made a grimace at the massive woodwork before turning to descend the stairs.
It was the middle of September, and the days were shortening. The dusk of evening had already closed over the city when de Casimir and Charles at length came downstairs. No one had troubled to open the shutters of such rooms as were not required; and these were many. For Moscow was even at that day a great city, though less spacious and more fantastic than it is to-day. There was plenty of room for the whole army in the houses left empty by their owners, so that many lodged as they had never lodged before and would never lodge again.
The stairs were almost dark when Charles and his companion descended them. The rusted musket poised against the doorpost still indicated the supposed presence of a sentry.
“Listen,” said Charles, “I found him burrowing like a rat at a cellar-door in the courtyard. Perhaps he has got in.”
They listened, but could hear nothing. Charles led the way towards the courtyard. A glimmer of light guided him to the door he sought. It stood open. Barlasch had succeeded in effecting an entry to the cellar, where his experience taught him to seek the best that an abandoned house contains.
Charles and de Casimir peered down the narrow stairs. By the light of a candle Barlasch was working vigorously amid a confused pile of cases, and furniture, and roughly tied bundles of clothing. He had laid aside nothing, and his movements were attended by the usual rattle of hollow-ware. They could see the perspiration gleaming on his face. Even in this cellar there lingered the faint smell of sour smoke that filled the air of Moscow.
De Casimir caught the gleam of jewellery, and went hurriedly downstairs.
“What are you doing there, my friend?” he asked, and the words were scarcely out of his mouth, when Barlasch extinguished his candle. There followed a dead silence, such as comes when a rodent is disturbed at his work. The two men on the cellar-stairs were conscious of the gaze of the bright, rat-like eyes below.
De Casimir turned and followed Charles upstairs again.
“Come up,” he said, “and go to your post.”
There was no movement in response.
“Name of a dog,” cried de Casimir, “is all discipline relaxed? Come up, I tell you, and obey my orders.”
He emphasized his command with the cocking of a pistol, and a slight disturbance in the darkness of the cellar heralded the unwilling approach of Barlasch, who climbed the stairs step by step like a schoolboy coming to punishment.
“It is I who found the door, mon colonel, behind that pile of firewood. It is I who opened it. What is down there is mine,” he said, sullenly. But the only reply that de Casimir made was to seize him by the arm and jerk him away from the stairs.
“To your post,” he said, “take your arm, and out into the street, in front of the house. That is your place.”
But while he was still speaking, they were all startled by a sudden disturbance in the cellar, and in the gloom a man stumbled up the stairs and ran past them. Barlasch had taken the precaution of bolting the huge front door, which was large enough to give passage to a carriage. The man, who exhaled an atmosphere of dust mingled with the disquieting and all-pervading odour of smoke, rushed at the huge door and tugged furiously at its handles.
Charles, who was on his heels, grasped his arm, but the man swung round and threw him off as if he were a child. He had a hatchet in his hand with which he aimed a blow at Charles, but missed him. Barlasch was already going towards his musket, which stood in the corner against the door-post, but the Russian saw his movement, and forestalled him. Seizing the gun, he presented the bayonet to them, and stood with his back to the door, facing the three men in a breathless silence. He was a large man, dishevelled, with long hair tumbled about his head, and light-coloured eyes, glaring like the eyes of a beast at bay.
In the background de Casimir, quick and calm, had already covered him with the pistol produced as a persuasive to Barlasch. For a second there was silence, during which they all could hear the call to arms in the street outside. The patrol was hurrying down the Petrovka, calling the assembly.
The report of the pistol rang through the house, shaking the doors and windows. The man threw up his arms and stood for a moment looking at de Casimir with an expression of blank amazement. Then his legs seemed to slip away from beneath him, and he collapsed to the floor. He turned over with movements singularly suggestive of a child seeking a comfortable position in bed, and lay quite still, his cheek on the pavement and his staring eyes turned towards the cellar-door from which he had emerged.
“He has his affair--that parishioner,” muttered Barlasch, looking at him with a smile that twisted his mouth to one side. And, as he spoke, the man's throat rattled. De Casimir was reloading his pistol. So persistent was the gaze of the dead man's eyes that de Casimir turned on his heel to look in the same direction.
“Quick!” he exclaimed, pointing to the doorway, from which a lazy white smoke emerged in thin puffs. “Quick, he has set fire to the house!”
“Quick--with what, mon colonel?” asked Barlasch.
“Why, go and fetch some men with a fire-engine.”
“There are no fire-engines left in Moscow, mon colonel!”
“Then find buckets, and tell me where the well is.”
“There are no buckets left in Moscow, mon colonel. We found that out last night, when we wanted to water the horses. The citizens have removed them. And there is not a well of which the rope has not been cut. They are droll companions, these Russians, I can tell you.”
“Do as I tell you,” repeated de Casimir, angrily, “or I shall put you under arrest. Go and fetch men to help me to extinguish this fire.”
By way of reply, Barlasch held up one finger in a childlike gesture of attention to some distant sound.
“No, thank you,” he said, coolly, “not for me. Discipline, mon colonel, discipline. Listen, you can hear the 'assembly' as well as I. It is the Emperor that one obeys. One thinks of one's military career.”
With knotted and shaking fingers he drew back the bolts and opened the door. On the threshold he saluted.
“It is the call to arms, mes officiers,” he said. Then, shouldering his musket, he turned away, and all his clocks struck six. The bells of the city churches seemed to greet him as he stepped into the street, for in Moscow each hour is proclaimed with deafening iteration from a thousand towers.
He looked down the Petrovka; from half the houses which bordered the wide roadway--a street of palaces--the smoke was pouring forth in puffs. He went uphill towards the Red Square and the Kremlin, where the Emperor had his head-quarters. It was to this centre that the patrols had converged. Looking back, Barlasch saw, not one house on fire, but a hundred. The smoke arose from every quarter of the city at once. He hurried on, but was stopped by a crowd of soldiers, all laden with booty, gesticulating, shouting, abusing one another. It was Babel over again. The riff-raff of sixteen nations had followed Napoleon to Moscow--to rob. Half a dozen different tongues were spoken in one army corps. There remained no national pride to act as a deterrent. No man cared what he did. The blame would be laid upon France.
The crowd was collected in front of a high, many-windowed building in flames.
“What is it?” Barlasch asked first one and then another. But no one spoke his tongue. At last he found a Frenchman.
“It is the hospital.”
“And what is that smell? What is burning there?”
“Twelve thousand wounded,” answered the man, with a sickening laugh. And even as he spoke one or two of the wounded dragged themselves, half burnt, down the wide steps. No one dared to approach them, for the walls of the building were already bulging outwards. One man was half covered with a sheet which was black, and his bare limbs were black with smoke. All the hair was burnt from his head and face. He stood for a moment in the doorway--a sight never to be forgotten--and then fell headlong down the steps, where he lay motionless. Some one in the crowd laughed--a high cackle which was heard above the roar of the fire and the deafening chorus of burning timbers.
Barlasch passed on, following some officers who were leading their horses towards the Kremlin. The streets were full of soldiers carrying burdens, and staggering beneath the weight of their spoil. Many were wearing priceless fur cloaks, and others walked in women's wraps of sable and ermine. Some wore jewellery, such as necklaces, on their rough uniforms, and bracelets round their sunburnt wrists. No one laughed at them, but only glanced enviously at the pillage. All were in deadly earnest, and none graver than those who had found drink and now regretted that they had given way to the temptation; for their sober comrades had outwitted them in finding treasure.
One man gravely wore a gilt coronet crammed over the crown of his shako. He joined Barlasch, staggering along beside him.
“I come from the Cathedral,” he explained, confidentially. “St. Michael they call it. They said there was great treasure there hidden in the cellars, but I only found a company of old kings in their coffins. We stirred them up. They were quiet enough when we found them, under their counterpanes of red velvet. We stirred them up with the bayonet, and the dust got into our throats and choked us. Name of God, I am thirsty. You have nothing in your bottle, comrade?”
“No.”
Barlasch trudged on, all his possessions swinging and clanking together. The confidential man turned towards him and lifted his water-bottle, weighed it, and found it wanting.
“Name of a name, of a name, of a name,” he muttered, walking on. “Yes, there was nothing there. Even the silver plates on the coffins with the names of those gentlemen were no thicker than a sword. But I found a crown in the church itself. I borrowed it from St. Michael. He had a sword in his hand, but he did not strike. No. And there was only tinsel on the hilt. No jewels.”
He walked on in silence for a few minutes, coughing out the smoke and dust from his lungs. It was almost dark, but the whole city was blazing now, and the sky glowed with a red light that mingled with the remnants of a lurid sunset. A strong wind blew the smoke and the flying sparks across the roofs.
“Then I went into the sacristy,” continued the man, stumbling over the dead body of a young girl and turning to curse her. Barlasch looked at him sideways and cursed him for doing it, with a sudden fierce eloquence. For Papa Barlasch was a man of unclean lips.
“There was an old man in there, a sacristan. I asked him where he kept the dishes, and he said he could not speak French. I jerked my bayonet into him--name of a name! he soon spoke French.”
Barlasch broke off these delicate confidences by a quick word of command, and himself stood rigid in the roadway before the Imperial Palace of the Kremlin, presenting arms. A man passed close by them on his way towards a waiting carriage. He was stout and heavy-shouldered, peculiarly square, with a thick neck and head set low in the shoulders. On the step of the carriage he turned and surveyed the lurid sky and the burning city to the east with an indifferent air. Into his deep bloodshot eyes there flashed a sudden gleam of life and power, as he glanced along the row of watching faces to read what was written there.
It was Napoleon, at the summit of his dream, hurriedly quitting the Kremlin, the boasted goal of his ambition, after having passed but one night under that proud roof.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
16
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THE FIRST OF THE EBB.
|
Tho' he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay.
The days were short, and November was drawing to its end when Barlasch returned to Dantzig. Already the frost, holding its own against a sun that seemed to linger in the North that year, exercised its sway almost to midday, and drew a mist from the level plains.
The autumn had been one of unprecedented splendour, making the imaginative whisper that Napoleon, like a second Joshua, could exact obedience even from the sun. A month earlier, soon after the retreat was ordered, the nights had begun to be cold, but the days remained brilliant. Now the rivers were shrouded in white mist, and still water was frozen.
Barlasch seemed to take it for understood that a billet holds good throughout a whole campaign. But the door of No. 36 Frauengasse was locked when he turned its iron handle. He knocked, and waited on the step.
It was Desiree who opened the door at length--Desiree, grown older, with something new in her eyes. Barlasch, sure of his entree, had already removed his boots, which he carried in his hand; this added to a certain surreptitiousness in his attitude. A handkerchief was bound over his left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a peasant's homespun shirt, and he carried no arms.
He pushed past Desiree rather unceremoniously, glad to get within doors. He was very lame, and of his blue knitted stockings only the legs remained; he was barefoot.
He limped towards the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Desiree shut the door. The chair he had made his own stood just within the open door of the kitchen. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and Lisa had gone to market. Barlasch sat down.
“Voila,” he said, and that was all. But by a gesture he described the end of the world. Then he scowled at her with his available eye with suspicion, and she turned away suddenly, as one may who has not a clear conscience.
“What is the matter with your eye?” she asked, in order to break the silence. He laid aside his hat, and his ragged hair, quite white, fell to his shoulders. By way of answer, he unknotted the bloodstained dusky handkerchief, and looked up at her. The hidden eye was uninjured and as bright as the other.
“Nothing,” he answered, and he confirmed the statement by a low-born wink. More than once he glanced, with a glaring light in his eye, towards the cupboard where Lisa kept the bread, and quite suddenly Desiree knew that he was starving. She ran to the cupboard, and hurriedly set down on the table before him what was there. It was not much--a piece of cold meat and a whole loaf.
He had taken off his haversack, and was fumbling in it with unsteady hands. At last he found that which he sought. It was wrapped in a silk scarf that must have come from Cashmere to Moscow, and from Moscow in his haversack with pieces of horseflesh and muddy roots to Dantzig. With that awkwardness in giving and taking which belongs to his class, he held out to Desiree a little square “ikon” no bigger than a playing-card. It was of gold, set with diamonds, and the faces of the Virgin and Child were painted with exquisite delicacy.
“It is a thing to say your prayers to,” he said gruffly.
By an effort he kept his eyes averted from the food on the table.
“I met a baker on the bridge,” he said, “and offered it to him for a loaf, but he refused.”
And there was a whole history of human suffering and temptation--of the human fall--in his curt laugh. While Desiree was looking at the treasure in speechless admiration, he turned suddenly and took the bread and meat in his grimy hands. His crooked fingers closed over the loaf, making the crust crack, and for a second the expression of his face was not human. Then he hurried to the room that had been his, like a dog that seeks to hide its greed in its kennel.
In a surprisingly short time he came back, the greyness all gone from his face, though his eyes still glittered with the dry, hard light of starvation. He went back to the chair near the door, and sat down.
“Seven hundred miles,” he said, looking down at his feet with a shake of the head, “seven hundred miles in six weeks.”
Then he glanced at her and out through the open door, to make sure none could overhear.
“Because I was afraid,” he added in a whisper. “I am easily frightened. I am not brave.”
Desiree shook her head and laughed. Women have from all time accepted the theory that a uniform makes a man courageous.
“They had to abandon the guns,” he went on, “soon after quitting Moscow. The horses were starving. There was a steep hill, and the guns were left at the bottom. Then I began to be afraid. There were some marching with candelabras on their backs and nothing in their carnassieres. They carried a million francs on their shoulders and death in their faces. I was afraid. I carried salt--salt--and nothing else. Then one day I saw the Emperor's face. That was enough. The same night I crept away while the others slept round the fire. They looked like a masquerade. Some of them wore ermine. Oh! I was afraid, I tell you. I only had the salt and some horse. There was plenty of that on the road. And that toy. I found it in Moscow. I stood in a cellar, as big as this room, full of such things. But one thinks of one's life. I only carried salt, and that picture for you... to say your prayers to. The good God will hear you, perhaps; He has no time to listen to us others.”
And he used the last words as a French peasant, which is a survival of serfdom that has come down through the furnace of the Revolution.
“But I cannot take it,” said Desiree. “It is worth a million francs.”
He looked at her fiercely.
“You think that I look for something in return?”
“Oh no!” she answered, “I have nothing to give you in return. I am as poor as you.”
“Then we can be friends,” he said. He was eyeing surreptitiously a mug of beer which Desiree had set before him on the table. Some instinct, or the teaching of the last two months, made it repugnant to him to eat or drink beneath his neighbour's eye. He was a sorry-looking figure, not far removed from the animals, and in his downward journey he had picked up, perhaps, the instinct which none can explain, telling an animal to take its food in secret.
Desiree went to the window, turning her back to him, and looked out into the yard. She heard him drink, and set the mug down again with a gulp.
“You were in Moscow?” she said at length, half turning towards him so that he could see her profile and her short upper lip, which was parted as if to ask a question which she did not put into words. He looked her slowly up and down beneath his heavy eyebrows, his little cunning eyes alight with suspicion. He watched her parted lips, which were tilted at the corners, showing humour and a nature quick to laugh or suffer. Then he jerked his head upwards as if he saw the unasked question quivering there, and bore her some malice for her silence.
“Yes! I was in Moscow,” he said, watching the colour fade from her face. “And I saw him--your husband--there. I was on guard outside his door the night we entered the city. It was I who carried to the post the letter he wrote you. He was very anxious that it should reach you. You received it--that love-letter?”
“Yes,” answered Desiree gravely, in no wise responding to a sudden forced gaiety in Papa Barlasch, which was only an evidence of the shyness with which rough men all the world over approach the subject of love. The gaiety lapsed into a sudden silence. He waited for her to ask a question, but in vain.
“I never saw him again,” went on Barlasch, “for the 'general' sounded, and I went out into the streets to find the city on fire. In a great army, as in a large country, one may easily lose one's own brother. But he will return--have no fear. He has good fortune--the fine gentleman.”
He stopped and scratched his head, looked at her sideways with a grimace of bewilderment.
“It is good news I bring you,” he muttered. “He was alive and well when we began the retreat. He was on the staff, and the staff had horses and carriages. They had bread to eat, I am told.”
“And you--what had you?” asked Desiree, over her shoulder.
“No matter,” he answered gruffly, “since I am here.”
“And yet you believe in that man still,” flashed out Desiree, turning to face him.
Barlasch held up a warning finger, as if bidding her to be silent on a subject on which she was not capable of forming a judgment. He wagged his head from side to side and heaved a sigh.
“I tell you,” he said, “I saw his face after Malo-Jaroslavetz; we lost ten thousand that day. And I was afraid. For I saw in it that he was going to leave us as he did in Egypt. I am not afraid when he is there--not afraid of the Devil--or the bon Dieu, but when Napoleon is not there--” He broke off with a gesture describing abject terror.
“They say in Dantzig,” said Desiree, “that he will never get back across the Beresina, for the Russians are bringing two armies to stop him there. They say that the Prussians will turn against him.”
“Ah--they say that already?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her with a sudden light of anger in his eyes.
“Who has taught you to hate Napoleon?” he asked bluntly.
And again Desiree turned away from his glance as if she could not meet it.
“No one,” she answered.
“It is not the patron,” said Barlasch, muttering his thoughts as he hobbled to the door of his little room, and began unloading his belongings with a view to ablution; for he was a self-contained traveller, carrying with him all he required. “It is not the patron. Because such a hatred as his cannot be spoken of. It is not your husband, because Napoleon is his god.”
He broke off with one of his violent jerks of the head, almost threatening to dislocate his neck, and looked at her fixedly.
“It is because you have grown into a woman since I went away.”
And out came his accusing finger, though Desiree had her back turned towards him, and there was none other to see.
“Ah!” he said, with deadly contempt, “I see, I see!”
“Did you expect me to grow up into a man?” asked Desiree, over her shoulder.
Barlasch stood in the doorway, his lips and jaw moving as if he were masticating winged words. At length, having failed to find a tremendous answer, he softly closed the door.
This was not the only wise old veteran of the Grand Army to see which way the wind blew; for many another after the battle of Malo-Jaroslavetz packed upon his back such spoil as he could carry, and set off on foot for France. For the cold had come at length, and not a horse in the French army was roughed for the snowy roads, nor, indeed, had provision been made to rough them. This was a sign not lost upon those who had horses to care for. The Emperor, who forgot nothing, had forgotten this. He who foresaw everything, had omitted to foresee the winter. He had ordered a retreat from Moscow, in the middle of October, of an army in summer clothing, without provision for the road. The only hope was to retreat through a new line of country not despoiled by the enormous army in its advance of every grain of corn, every blade of grass. But this hope was frustrated by the Russians who, hemming them in, forced them to keep the road along which they had made so triumphant a march on Moscow.
Already, in the ranks, it was whispered that by the light of the burning city some had perceived dark forms moving on the distant plains--a Russian army passing westward in front of them to await and cut them off at the passage of some river. The Russians had fought well at Borodino: they fought desperately at Malo-Jaroslavetz, which town was taken and retaken eleven times and left in cinders.
The Grand Army was no longer in a position to choose its way. It was forced to cross again the battlefield of Borodino, where thirty thousand dead lay yet unburied. But Napoleon was still with them, his genius flashing out at times with something of the fire which had taken men's breath away and burnt his name indelibly into the pages of the world's history. Even when hard pressed, he never missed a chance of attacking. The enemy never made a mistake that he did not give them reason to rue it.
To the waiting world came at length the news that the winter, so long retarded, had closed down over Russia. In Dantzig, so near the frontier, a hundred rumours chased each other through the streets; and day by day Antoine Sebastian grew younger and gayer. It seemed as if a weight long laid upon his heart had been lifted at last. He made a journey to Konigsberg soon after Barlasch's return, and came back with eager eyes. His correspondence was enormous. He had, it seemed, a hundred friends who gave him news and asked something in exchange--advice, encouragement, warning. And all the while men whispered that Prussia would ally herself to Russia, Sweden, and England.
From Paris came news of a growing discontent. For France, among a multitude of virtues, has one vice unpardonable to Northern men: she turns from a fallen friend.
Soon followed the news of Beresina--a poor little river of Lithuania--where the history of the world hung for a day as on a thread. But a flash of the dying genius surmounted superhuman difficulties, and the catastrophe was turned into a disaster. The divisions of Victor and Oudinot--the last to preserve any semblance of military discipline--were almost annihilated. The French lost twelve thousand killed or drowned in the river, sixteen thousand prisoners, twelve of the remaining guns. But they were across the Beresina. There was no longer a Grand Army, however. There was no army at all--only a starving, struggling trail of men stumbling through the snow, without organization or discipline or hope.
It was a disaster on the same gigantic scale as the past victories--a disaster worthy of such a conqueror. Even his enemies forgot to rejoice. They caught their breath and waited.
And suddenly came the news that Napoleon was in Paris.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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17
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A FORLORN HOPE.
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The fire i' the flint Shows not, till it be struck.
“It is time to do something,” said Papa Barlasch on the December morning when the news reached Dantzig that Napoleon was no longer with the army--that he had made over the parody of command of the phantom army to Murat, King of Naples--that he had passed like an evil spirit unknown through Poland, Prussia, Germany, travelling twelve hundred miles night and day at breakneck speed, alone, racing to Paris to save his throne.
“It is time to do something,” said all Europe, when it was too late. For Napoleon was himself again--alert, indomitable, raising a new army, calling on France to rise to such heights of energy and vitality as only France can compass; for the colder nations of the North lack the imagination that enables men to pit themselves against the gods at the bidding of some stupendous will, only second to the will of God Himself.
“Go to Dantzig, and hold it till I come,” Napoleon had said to Rapp. “Retreat to Poland, and hold on to anything you can till I come back with a new army,” he had commanded Murat and Prince Eugene.
“It is time to do something,” said all the conquered nations, looking at each other for initiation. And lo! the Master of Surprises struck them dumb by his sudden apparition in his own capital, with all the strings of the European net gathered as if by magic into his own hands again.
While everybody told his neighbour that it was time to do something, no one knew what to do. For it has pleased the Creator to put a great many talkers into this world and only a few men of action to make its history.
Papa Barlasch knew what to do, however.
“Where is that sailor?” he asked Desiree, when she had told him the news which Mathilde brought in from the streets. “He who took the patron's valise that night--the cousin of your husband.”
“There is a man at Zoppot who will tell you,” she answered.
“Then I go to Zoppot.”
Barlasch had lived unmolested in the Frauengasse since his return. He was an old man, ill-clad, with a bloody handkerchief bound over one eye. No one asked him any questions, except Sebastian, who heard again and again the tale of Moscow--how the army which had crossed into Russia four hundred thousand strong was reduced to a hundred thousand when the retreat began; how handmills were issued to the troops to grind corn which did not exist; how the horses died in thousands and the men in hundreds from starvation; how God at last had turned his face from Napoleon.
“Something must be done. The patron will do nothing; he is in the clouds, he is dreaming dreams of a new France, that bourgeois. I am an old man. Yes, I will go to Zoppot.”
“You mean that we should have heard from Charles before now,” said Desiree.
“Name of thunder! he may be in Paris!” exclaimed Barlasch, with the sudden anger that anxiety commands. “He is on the staff, I tell you.”
For suspense is one of the most contagious of human emotions, and makes a quicker call upon our sympathy than any other. Do we not feel such a desire that our neighbour may know the worst without delay, that we race to impart it to him?
Nor was Desiree alone in the trial which had drawn certain lines about her gay lips; for Mathilde had told her father and sister that should Colonel de Casimir return from the war he would ask her hand in marriage.
“And that other--the Colonel,” added Barlasch, glancing at Mathilde, “he is on the staff too. They are safe enough, I tell you that. They are doubtless together. They were together at Moscow. I saw them, and took an order from them. They were... at their work.”
Mathilde did not like Papa Barlasch. She would, it seemed, rather have no news at all of de Casimir than learn it from the old soldier, for she quitted the room without even troubling to throw him a glance of disdain.
Barlasch waited with working lips until the sound of her footsteps ceased on the stairs. Then he pushed across the kitchen table a piece of writing-paper, rather yellow and woolly. It had been to Moscow and back.
“Write a word to him,” he said. “I will take it to Zoppot.”
“But you can send a message by the fisherman whose name I have given you,” answered Desiree.
“And will he heed the message? Will he come ashore at a word from me--only Barlasch? Remember it is his life that he carries in his hand. An English sailor with a French name! Thunder of thunder! They would shoot him like a rat!”
Desiree shook her head; but Barlasch was not to be denied. He brought pen and ink from the dresser, and pushed them across the table.
“I would not ask it,” he said, “if it was not necessary. Do you think he will mind the danger? He will like it. He will say to me, 'Barlasch, I thank you.' Ah? I know him. Write. He will come.”
“Why?” asked Desiree.
“Why? How should I know that? He came before when you asked him.”
Desiree leant over the table and wrote six words: “Come, if you can come safely.”
Barlasch took up the paper, and, pushing up the bandage which had served to bring him unharmed through Russia, he frowned at it without understanding.
“It is not all writings that I can read,” he admitted. “Have you signed it?”
“No.”
“Then sign something that he will know, and no other--they might shoot me. Your baptismal name.”
And she wrote “Desiree” after the six words.
Barlasch folded the paper carefully and placed it in the lining of an old felt hat of Sebastian's which he now wore. He bound a scarf over his ears, after the manner of those who live on the Baltic shores in winter.
“You can leave the rest to me,” he said; and, with a nod and a grimace expressive of cunning, he left her.
He did not return that night. The days were short now, for the winter was well set in. It was nearly dark the next afternoon and very cold when he came back. He sent Lisa upstairs for Desiree.
“First,” he said, “there is a question for the patron. Will he quit Dantzig? --that is the question.”
“No,” answered Desiree.
“Rapp is coming,” said Barlasch, emphasizing each point with one finger against the side of his nose. “He will hold Dantzig. There will be a siege. Let the patron make no mistake. It will not be like the last one. Rapp was outside then; he will be inside this time. He will hold Dantzig till the bottom falls out of the world.”
“My father will not leave,” said Desiree. “He has said so. He knows that Rapp is coming, with the Russians behind him.”
“But,” interrupted Barlasch, “he thinks that Prussia will turn and declare war against Napoleon. That may be. Who knows? The question is, Can the patron be induced to quit Dantzig?”
Desiree shook her head.
“It is not I,” said Barlasch, “who ask the question. You understand?”
“Yes, I understand. My father will not quit Dantzig.”
Whereupon Barlasch made a gesture conveying a desire to think as kindly of Antoine Sebastian as he could.
“In half an hour,” he said, “when it is dark, will you come for a walk with me along the Langfuhr road--where the unfinished ramparts are?”
Desiree looked at him and hesitated.
“Oh--good--if you are afraid--” said Barlasch.
“I am not afraid--I will come,” she answered quickly.
The snow was hard when they set out, and squeaked under their feet, as it does with a low thermometer.
“We shall leave no tracks,” said Barlasch, as he led the way off the Langfuhr road towards the river. There was broken ground here, where earthworks had been begun and never completed. The trees had been partly cut, and beneath the snow were square mounds showing where the timber had been piled up. But since the departure of Rapp, all had been left incomplete.
Barlasch turned towards Desiree and pointed out a rising knoll of land with fir-trees on it--an outline against the sky where a faint aurora borealis lit the north. She understood that Louis was waiting there, and must necessarily see them approaching across the untrodden snow. For an instant she lingered, and Barlasch turning, glanced at her sharply over his shoulder. She had come against her will, and her companion knew it. Her feet were heavy with misgiving, like the feet of one who treads an uncertain road into a strange country. She had been afraid of Louis d'Arragon when she first caught sight of him in the Frauengasse. The fear of him was with her now, and would not depart until he himself swept it away by the first word he spoke.
He came out from beneath the trees, made a few steps forward, and then stopped. Again Desiree lingered, and Barlasch, who was naturally impatient, turned and took her by the arm.
“Is it the snow--that you find slippery?” he asked, not requiring an answer. A moment later Louis came forward.
“There is nothing but bad news,” he said laconically. “Barlasch will have told you; but there is no need to give up hope. The army has reached the Niemen; the rearguard has quitted Vilna. There is nothing for it but to go and look for him.”
“Who will go?” she asked quietly.
“I.” He was looking at her with grave eyes trained to darkness. But she looked past him towards the sky, which was faintly lighted by the aurora. Her averted eyes and rigid attitude were not without some suggestion of guilt.
“My ship is ice-bound at Reval,” said D'Arragon, in a matter-of-fact way. “They have no use for me until the winter is over, and they have given me three months' leave.”
“To go to England?” she asked.
“To go anywhere I like,” he said, with a short laugh. “So I am going to look for Charles, and Barlasch will come with me.”
“At a price,” put in that soldier, in a shrewd undertone. “At a price.”
“A small one,” corrected Louis, turning to look at him with the close attention of one exploring a new country.
“Bah! You give what you can. One does not go back across the Niemen for pleasure. We bargained, and we came to terms. I got as much as I could.”
Louis laughed, as if this were the blunt truth.
“If I had more, I would give you more. It is the money I placed in a Dantzig bank for my cousin. I must take it out again, that is all.”
The last words were addressed to Desiree, as if he had acted in assurance of her approval.
“But I have more,” she said; “a little--not very much. We must not think of money. We must do everything to find him--to give him help, if he needs it.”
“Yes,” answered Louis, as if she had asked him a question. “We must do everything; but I have no more money.”
“And I have none with me. I have nothing that I can sell.”
She withdrew her fur mitten and held out her hand, as if to show that she had no rings, except the plain gold one on her third finger.
“You have the ikon I brought you from Moscow,” said Barlasch gruffly. “Sell that.”
“No,” answered Desiree; “I will not sell that.”
Barlasch laughed cynically.
“There you have a woman,” he said, turning to Louis. “First she will not have a thing, then she will not part with it.”
“Well,” said Desiree, with some spirit, “a woman may know her own mind.”
“Some do,” admitted Barlasch carelessly; “the happy ones. And since you will not sell your ikon, I must go for what Monsieur le capitaine offers me.
“Five hundred francs,” said Louis. “A thousand francs, if we succeed in bringing my cousin safely back to Dantzig.”
“It is agreed,” said Barlasch, and Desiree looked from one to the other with an odd smile of amusement. For women do not understand that spirit of adventure which makes the mercenary soldier, and urges the sailor to join an exploring expedition without hope of any reward beyond his daily pay, for which he is content to work and die loyally.
“And I,” she asked, “what am I to do?”
“We must know where to find you,” replied D'Arragon.
There was so much in the simple answer that Desiree fell into a train of thought. It did not seem much for her to do, and yet it was all. For it summed up in six words a woman's life: to wait till she is found.
“I shall wait in Dantzig,” she said at length.
Barlasch held up his finger close to her face so that she could not fail to see it, and shook it slowly from side to side commanding her careful and entire attention.
“And buy salt,” he said. “Fill a cupboard full of salt. It is cheap enough in Dantzig now. The patron will not think of it. He is a dreamer. But a dreamer awakes at length, and is hungry. It is I who tell you--Barlasch.”
He emphasized himself with a touch of his curved fingers on either shoulder.
“Buy salt,” he said, and walked away to a rising knoll to make sure that no one was approaching. The moon was just below the horizon, and a yellow glow was already in the sky.
Desiree and Louis were left alone. He was looking at her, but she was watching Barlasch with a still persistency.
“He said that it is the happy women who know their own minds,” she said slowly.
“I suppose he meant--Duty,” she added at length, when Louis made no sign of answering.
“Yes,” he said.
Barlasch was beckoning to her. She moved away, but stopped a few yards off, and looked at Louis again.
“Do you think it is any good trying?” she asked, with a short laugh.
“It is no good trying unless you mean to succeed,” he answered lightly. She laughed a second time and lingered, though Barlasch was calling her to come.
“Oh,” she said, “I am not afraid of you when you say things like that. It is what you leave unsaid. I am afraid of you, I think, because you expect so much.”
She tried to see his face.
“I am only an ordinary human being, you know,” she said warningly.
Then she followed Barlasch.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
18
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MISSING.
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I should fear those that dance before me now Would one day stamp upon me; it has been done: Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
During the first weeks of December the biting wind abated for a time, and immediately the snow came. It fell for days, until at length the grey sky seemed exhausted; for the flakes sailed downwards in twos and threes like the stragglers of an army bringing up the rear. Then the sun broke through again, and all the world was a dazzling white.
There had been a cessation in that stream of pitiable men who staggered across the bridge from the Konigsberg road. Some instinct had turned it southwards. Now it began again, and the rumour spread throughout the city that Rapp was coming. At length, in the middle of December, an officer brought word that Rapp with his staff would arrive next day.
Desiree heard the news without comment.
“You do not believe it?” asked Mathilde, who had come in with shining eyes and a pale face.
“Oh yes, I believe it.”
“Then you forget,” persisted Mathilde, “that Charles is on the staff. They may arrive to-night.”
While they were speaking Sebastian came in. He looked quickly from one to the other.
“You have heard the news?” he asked.
“That the General is coming back?” said Mathilde.
“No; not that. Though it is true. Macdonald is in full retreat on Dantzig. The Prussians have abandoned him--at last.”
He gave a queer laugh and stood looking towards the window with restless eyes that flitted from one object to another, as if he were endeavouring to follow in mind the quick course of events. Then he remembered Desiree and turned towards her.
“Rapp returns to-morrow,” he said. “We may presume that Charles is with him.”
“Yes,” said Desiree, in a lifeless voice.
Sebastian wrinkled his eyes and gave an apologetic laugh.
“We cannot offer him a fitting welcome,” he said, with a gesture of frustrated hospitality. “We must do what we can. You and he may, of course, consider this your home as long as it pleases you to remain with us. Mathilde, you will see that we have such delicacies in the house as Dantzig can now afford--and you, Desiree, will of course make such preparations as are necessary. It is well to remember, he may return... to-night.”
Desiree went towards the door while Mathilde laid aside the delicate needlework which seemed to absorb her mind and employ her fingers from morning till night. She made a movement as if to accompany her sister, but Desiree shook her head sharply and Mathilde remained where she was, leaving Desiree to go upstairs alone.
The day was already drawing to its long twilight, and at four o'clock the night came. Sebastian went out as usual, though he had caught cold. But Mathilde stayed at home. Desiree sent Lisa to the shops in the Langenmarkt, which is the centre of business and gossip in Dantzig. Lisa always brought home the latest news. Mathilde came to the kitchen to seek something when the messenger returned. She heard Lisa tell Desiree that a few more stragglers had come in, but they brought no news of the General. The house seemed lonely now that Barlasch was gone.
Throughout the night the sound of sleigh-bells could be faintly heard through the double windows, though no sleigh passed through the Frauengasse. A hundred times the bells seemed to come closer, and always Desiree was ready behind the curtains to see the light flash past into the Pfaffengasse. With a shiver of suspense she crept back to bed to await the next alarm. In the early morning, long before it was light, the dull thud of steps on the trodden snow called her to the window again. She caught her breath as she drew back the curtain; for through the long watches of the night she had imagined every possible form of return.
This must be Barlasch. Louis and Barlasch must, of course, have met Rapp on his homeward journey. On finding Charles, they had sent Barlasch back in advance to announce the safety of Desiree's husband. Louis would, of course, not come to Dantzig. He would go north to Russia, to Reval, and perhaps home to England--never to return.
But it was not Barlasch. It was a woman who staggered past under a burden of firewood which she had collected in the woods of Schottland, and did not dare to carry through the streets by day.
At last the clocks struck six, and, soon after, Lisa's heavy footstep made the stairs creak and crack.
Desiree went downstairs before daylight. She could hear Mathilde astir in her room, and the light of candles was visible under her door. Desiree busied herself with household affairs.
“I have not slept,” said Lisa bluntly, “for thinking that your husband might return, and fearing that we should make him wait in the street. But without doubt you would have heard him.”
“Yes, I should have heard him.”
“If it had been my husband, I should have been at the window all night,” said Lisa, with a gay laugh--and Desiree laughed too.
Mathilde seemed a long time in coming, and when at length she appeared Desiree could scarcely repress a movement of surprise. Mathilde was dressed, all in her best, as for a fete.
At breakfast Lisa brought the news told to her at the door that the Governor would re-enter the city in state with his staff at midday. The citizens were invited to decorate their streets, and to gather there to welcome the returning garrison.
“And the citizens will accept the invitation,” commented Sebastian, with a curt laugh. “All the world has sneered at Russia since the Empire existed--and yet it has to learn from Moscow what part a citizen may play in war. These good Dantzigers will accept the invitation.”
And he was right. For one reason or another the city did honour to Rapp. Even the Poles must have known by now that France had made tools of them. But as yet they could not realize that Napoleon had fallen. There were doubtless many spies in the streets that cold December day--one who listened for Napoleon; and another, peeping to this side and that, for the King of Prussia. Sweden also would need to know what Dantzig thought, and Russia must not be ignorant of the gossip in a great Baltic port.
Enveloped in their stiff sheepskins, concealed by the high collars which reached to the brim of their hats--showing nothing but eyes where the rime made old faces and young all alike, it was difficult for any to judge of his neighbour--whether he were Pole or Prussian, Dantziger or Swede. The women in thick shawls, with hoods or scarves concealing their faces, stood silently beside their husbands. It was only the children who asked a thousand questions, and got never an answer from the cautious descendants of a Hanseatic people.
“Is it the French or the Russians that are coming?” asked a child near to Desiree.
“Both,” was the answer.
“But which will come first?”
“Wait and see--silentium,” replied the careful Dantziger, looking over his shoulder.
Desiree had changed her clothes, and wore beneath her furs the dress that had been prepared for the journey to Zoppot so long ago. Mathilde had noticed the dress, which had not been seen for six months. Lisa, more loquacious, nodded to it as to a friend when helping Desiree with her furs.
“You have changed,” she said, “since you last wore it.”
“I have grown older--and fatter,” answered Desiree cheerfully.
And Lisa, who had no imagination, seemed satisfied with the explanation. But the change was in Desiree's eyes.
With Sebastian's permission--almost at his suggestion--they had selected the Grune Brucke as the point from which to see the sight. This bridge spans the Mottlau at the entrance to the Langenmarkt, and the roadway widens before it narrows again to pass beneath the Grunes Thor. There is rising ground where the road spreads like a fan, and here they could see and be seen.
“Let us hope,” said Sebastian, “that two of these gentlemen may perceive you as they pass.”
But he did not offer to accompany them.
By half-past eleven the streets were full. The citizens knew their governor, it seemed. He would not keep them waiting. Although Rapp lacked that power of appealing to the imagination which has survived Napoleon's death with such astounding vitality that it moves men's minds to-day as surely as it did a hundred years ago, he was shrewd enough to make use of his master's methods when such would seem to serve his purpose. He was not going to creep into Dantzig like a whipped dog into his kennel.
He had procured a horse at Elbing. Between that town and the Mottlau he had halted to form his army into something like order, to get together a staff with which to surround himself.
But the Dantzigers did not cheer. They stood and watched him in a sullen silence as he rode across the bridge now known as the “Milk-Can.” His bridle was twisted round his arm, for all his fingers were frostbitten. His nose and his ears were in the same plight, and had been treated by a Polish barber who, indeed, effected a cure. One eye was almost closed. His face was astonishingly red. But he carried himself like a soldier, and faced the world with the audacity that Napoleon taught to all his disciples.
Behind him rode a few staff officers, but the majority were on foot. Some effort had been made to revive the faded uniforms. One or two heroic souls had cast aside the fur cloaks to which they owed their life, but the majority were broken men without spirit, without pride--appealing only to pity. They hugged themselves closely in their ragged cloaks and stumbled as they walked. It was impossible to distinguish between the officers and the men. The biggest and the strongest were the best clad--the bullies were the best fed. All were black and smoke-grimed--with eyes reddened and inflamed by the dazzling snow through which they stumbled by day, as much as by the smoke into which they crouched at night. Every garment was riddled by the holes burnt by flying sparks--every face was smeared with blood that ran from the horseflesh they had torn asunder with their teeth while it yet smoked.
Some laughed and waved their hands to the crowd. Others, who had known the tragedy of Vilna and Kowno, stumbled on in stubborn silence still doubting that Dantzig stood--that they were at last in sight of food and warmth and rest.
“Is that all?” men asked each other in astonishment. For the last stragglers had crossed the new Mottlau before the head of the procession had reached the Grune Brucke.
“If I had such an army as that,” said a stout Dantziger, “I should bring it into the city quietly, after dusk.”
But the majority were silent, remembering the departure of these men--the triumph, the glory, and the hope. For a great catastrophe is a curtain that for a moment shuts out all history and makes the human family little children again who can but cower and hold each other's hands in the dark.
“Where are the guns?” asked one.
“And the baggage?” suggested another.
“And the treasure of Moscow?” whispered a Jew with cunning eyes, who had hidden behind his neighbour when Rapp glanced in his direction.
Emerging on the bridge, the General glanced at the old Mottlau. A crowd was collected on it. The citizens no longer used the bridges but crossed without fear where they pleased, and heavy sleighs passed up and down as on a high-road. Rapp saw it, made a grimace, and, turning in his saddle, spoke to his neighbour, an engineer officer, who was to make an immortal name and die in Dantzig.
The Mottlau was one of the chief defences of the city, but instead of a river the Governor found a high-road!
Rapp alone seemed to look about him with the air of one who knew his whereabouts. In the straggling trail of men behind him, not one in a hundred looked for a friendly face. Some stared in front of them with lifeless eyes, while others, with a little spirit plucked up at the end of a weary march, glanced up at the gabled houses with the interest called forth by the first sight of a new city.
It was not until long afterwards that the world, piecing together information purposely delayed and details carefully falsified, knew that of the four hundred thousand men who marched triumphantly to the Niemen, only twenty thousand recrossed that river six months later, and of these two-thirds had never seen Moscow.
Rapp, whose bloodshot eyes searched the crowd of faces turned towards him, recognized a number of people. To Mathilde he bowed gravely, and with a kindlier glance turned in his saddle to bow again to Desiree. They hardly heeded him, but with colourless faces turned towards the staff riding behind him.
Most of the faces were strange: others were so altered that the features had to be sought for as in the face of a mummy. Neither Charles nor de Casimir was among the horsemen. One or two of them bowed, as their leader had done, to the two girls.
“That is Captain de Villars,” said Mathilde, “and the other I do not know. Nor that tall man who is bowing now. Who are they?”
Desiree did not answer. None of these men was Charles. Unconsciously holding her two mittened hands at her throat, she searched each face.
They were well placed to see even those who followed on foot. Many of them were not French. It would have been easy to distinguish Charles or de Casimir among the dark-visaged southerners. Desiree was not conscious of the crowd around her. She heard none of the muttered remarks. All her soul was in her eyes.
“Is that all?” she said at length--as the others had said at the entrance to the town.
She found she was standing hand-in-hand with Mathilde, whose face was like marble.
At last, when even the crowd had passed away beneath the Grunes Thor, they turned and walked home in silence.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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19
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KOWNO.
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Distinct with footprints yet Of many a mighty marcher gone that way.
There are many who overlook the fact that in Northern lands, more especially in such plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost impassable--mere ruts across the plain--are for the time ignored, and the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a level of frozen snow.
Louis d'Arragon had worked out a route across the plain, as he had been taught to shape a course across a chart.
“How did you return from Kowno?” he asked Barlasch.
“Name of my own nose,” replied that traveller. “I followed the line of dead horses.”
“Then I will take you by another route,” replied the sailor.
And three days later--before General Rapp had made his entry into Dantzig--Barlasch sold two skeletons of horses and a sleigh at an enormous profit to a staff officer of Murat's at Gumbinnen.
They had passed through Rapp's army. They had halted at Konigsberg to make inquiry, and now, almost in sight of the Niemen, where the land begins to heave in great waves, like those that roll round Cape Horn, they were asking still if any man had seen Charles Darragon.
“Where are you going, comrades?” a hundred men had paused to ask them.
“To seek a brother,” answered Barlasch, who, like many unprincipled persons, had soon found that a lie is much simpler than an explanation.
But the majority glanced at them stupidly without comment, or with only a shrug of their bowed shoulders. They were going the wrong way. They must be mad. Between Dantzig and Konigsberg they had indeed found a few travellers going eastward--despatch-bearers seeking Murat--spies going northwards to Tilsit, and General Yorck still in treaty with his own conscience--a prominent member of the Tugendbund, wondering, like many others, if there were any virtue left in the world. Others, again, told them that they were officers ordered to take up some new command in the retreating army.
Beyond Konigsberg, however, D'Arragon and Barlasch found themselves alone on their eastward route. Every man's face was set towards the west. This was not an army at all, but an endless procession of tramps. Without food or shelter, with no baggage but what they could carry on their backs, they journeyed as each of us must journey out of this world into that which lies beyond--alone, with no comrade to help them over the rough places or lift them when they fell. For there was only one man of all this rabble who rose to the height of self-sacrifice, and a persistent devotion to duty. And he was coming last of all.
Many had started off in couples--with a faithful friend--only to quarrel at last. For it is a peculiarity of the French that they can only have one friend at a time. Long ago--back beyond the Niemen--all friendships had been dissolved, and discipline had vanished before that. For when Discipline and a Republic are wedded we shall have the millennium. Liberty, they cry: meaning, I may do as I like. Equality: I am better than you. Fraternity: what is yours is mine, if I want it.
So they quarrelled over everything, and fought for a place round the fire that another had lighted. They burnt the houses in which they had passed a night, though they knew that thousands trudging behind them must die for lack of this poor shelter.
At the Beresina they had fought on the bridge like wild animals, and those who had horses trod their comrades underfoot, or pushed them over the parapet. Twelve thousand perished on the banks or in the river; and sixteen thousand were left behind to the mercy of the Cossacks.
At Vilna the people were terrified at the sight of this inhuman rabble, which had commanded their admiration on the outward march. And the commander, with his staff, crept out of the city at night, abandoning sick, wounded, and fighting men.
At Kowno they crowded numbly across the bridge, fighting for precedence, when they might have walked at leisure across the ice. They were no longer men at all, but dumb and driven animals, who fell by the roadside, and were stripped by their comrades before the warmth of life had left their limbs.
“Excuse me, comrade? I thought you were dead,” said one, on being remonstrated with by a dying man. And he went on his way reluctantly, for he knew that in a few minutes another would snatch the booty. But for the most part they were not so scrupulous.
At first D'Arragon, to whom these horrors were new, attempted to help such as appealed to him, but Barlasch laughed at him.
“Yes,” he said. “Take the medallion, and promise to send it to his mother. Holy Heaven--they all have medallions, and they all have mothers. Every Frenchman remembers his mother--when it is too late. I will get a cart. By to-morrow we shall fill it with keepsakes. And here is another. He is hungry. So am I, comrade. I come from Moscow--bah!”
And so they fought their way through the stream. They could have journeyed by a quicker route--D'Arragon could have steered a course across the frozen plain as over a sea--but Charles must necessarily be in this stream. He might be by the wayside. Any one of these pitiable objects, half blind, frost-bitten, with one limb or another swinging useless, like a snapped branch, wrapped to the eyes in filthy furs--inhuman, horrible--any one of these might be Desiree's husband.
They never missed a chance of hearing news. Barlasch interrupted the last message of a dying man to inquire whether he had ever heard of Prince Eugene. It was startling to learn how little they knew. The majority of them were quite ignorant of French, and had scarcely heard the name of the commander of their division. Many spoke in a language which even Barlasch could not identify.
“His talk is like a coffee-mill,” he explained to D'Arragon, “and I do not know to what regiment he belonged. He asked me if I was Russki--I! Then he wanted to hold my hand. And he went to sleep. He will wake among the angels--that parishioner.”
Not only had no one heard of Charles Darragon, but few knew the name of the commander to whose staff he had been attached in Moscow. There was nothing for it but to go on towards Kowno, where it was understood temporary head-quarters had been established.
Rapp himself had told D'Arragon that officers had been despatched to Kowno to form a base--a sort of rock in the midst of a torrent to divert the currents. There had then been a talk of Tilsit, and diverting the stream, or part of it towards Macdonald in the north. But D'Arragon knew that Macdonald was likely to be in no better plight than Murat; for it was an open secret in Dantzig that Yorck, with four-fifths of Macdonald's army, was about to abandon him.
The road to Kowno was not to be mistaken. On either side of it, like fallen landmarks, the dead lay huddled on the snow. Sometimes D'Arragon and Barlasch found the remains of a fire, where, amid the ashes, the chains and rings showed that a gun-carriage had been burnt. The trees were cut and scored where, as a forlorn hope, some poor imbecile had stripped the bark with the thought that it might burn. Nearly every fire had its grim guardian; for the wounds of the injured nearly always mortified when the flesh was melted by the warmth. Once or twice, with their ragged feet in the ashes, a whole company had never awakened from their sleep.
Barlasch pessimistically went the round of these bivouacs, but rarely found anything worth carrying away. If he recognized a veteran by the grizzled hair straggling out of the rags in which all faces were enveloped, or perceived some remnant of a Garde uniform, he searched more carefully.
“There may be salt,” he said. And sometimes he found a little. They had been on foot since Gumbinnen, because no horse would be allowed by starving men to live a day. They existed from day to day on what they found, which was, at the best, frozen horse. But Barlasch ate singularly little.
“One thinks of one's digestion,” he said vaguely, and persuaded D'Arragon to eat his portion because it would be a sin to throw it away.
At length D'Arragon, who was quick enough in understanding rough men, said-- “No, I don't want any more. I will throw it away.”
And an hour later, while pretending to be asleep, he saw Barlasch get up, and crawl cautiously into the trees where the unsavoury food had been thrown.
“Provided,” muttered Barlasch one day, “that you keep your health. I am an old man. I could not do this alone.”
Which was true, for D'Arragon was carrying all the baggage now.
“We must both keep our health,” answered Louis. “I have eaten worse things than horse.”
“I saw one yesterday,” said Barlasch, with a gesture of disgust; “he had three stripes on his arm, too; he was crouching in a ditch eating something much worse than horse, mon capitaine. Bah! It made me sick. For three sous I would have put my heel on his face. And later on at the roadside I saw where he or another had played the butcher. But you saw none of these things, mon capitaine?”
“It was by that winding stream where a farm had been burnt,” said Louis.
Barlasch glanced at him sideways.
“If we should come to that, mon capitaine....” “We won't.”
They trudged on in silence for some time. They were off the road now, and D'Arragon was steering by dead-reckoning. Even amid the pine-woods, which seemed interminable, they frequently found remains of an encampment. As often as not they found the campers huddled over their last bivouac.
“But these,” said Barlasch, pointing to what looked like a few bundles of old clothes, continuing the conversation where he had left it after a long silence, as men learn to do who are together day and night in some hard enterprise, “even these have a woman dinning the ears of the good God for them, just as we have.”
For Barlasch's conception of a Deity could not get further than the picture of a great Commander who in times of stress had no leisure to see that non-commissioned officers did their best for the rank and file. Indeed, the poor in all lands rather naturally conclude that God will think of carriage-people first.
They came within sight of Kowno one evening, after a tiring day over snow that glittered in a cloudless sun. Barlasch sat down wearily against a pine tree, when they first caught sight of a distant church-tower. The country is much broken up into little valleys here, through which streams find their way to the Niemen. Each river necessitated a rapid descent and an arduous climb over slippery snow.
“Voila,” said Barlasch. “That is Kowno. I am done. Go on, mon capitaine. I will lie here, and if I am not dead to-morrow morning, I will join you.”
Louis looked at him with a slow smile.
“I am tired as you,” he said. “We will rest here until the moon rises.”
Already the bare larches threw shadows three times their own length on the snow. Near at hand it glittered like a carpet of diamonds, while the distance was of a pale blue, merging to grey on the horizon. A far-off belt of pines against a sky absolutely cloudless suggested infinite space--immeasurable distance. Nothing was sharp and clearly outlined, but hazy, silvery, as seen through a thin veil. The sea would seem to be our earthly picture of infinite space, but no sea speaks of distance so clearly as the plain of Lithuania--absolutely flat, quite lonely. The far-off belt of pines only leads the eye to a shadow beyond, which is another pine-wood; and the traveller walking all day towards it knows that when at length he gets there he will see just such another on the far horizon.
Louis sat down wearily beside Barlasch. As far as eye could see, they were alone in this grim white world. They had nothing to say to each other. They sat and watched the sun go down with drawn eyes and a queer stolidity which comes to men in great cold, as if their souls were numb.
As the sun sank, the shadows turned bluer, and all the snow gleamed like a lake. The silver tints slowly turned to gold; the greys grew darker. The distant lines of pines were almost black now, a silhouette against the golden sky. Near at hand the little inequalities in the snow loomed blue, like deeper pools in shallow water.
The sun sank very slowly, moving along the horizon almost parallel with it towards two bars of golden cloud awaiting it, the bars of the West forming a prison to this poor pale captive of the snows. The stems of a few silver-birch near at hand were rosy now, and suddenly the snow took a similar tint. At the same moment, a wave of cold seemed to sweep across the world.
The sun went down at length, leaving a brownish-red sky. This, too, faded to grey in a few minutes, and a steely cold gripped the world as in a vice.
Louis d'Arragon made a sudden effort and rose to his feet, beneath which the snow squeaked.
“Come,” he said. “If we stay, we shall fall asleep, and then--” Barlasch roused himself and looked sleepily at his companion. He had a patch of blue on either cheek.
“Come!” shouted Louis, as if to a deaf man. “Let us go on to Kowno, and find out whether he is alive or dead.”
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{
"id": "8158"
}
|
20
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DESIREE'S CHOICE.
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Our wills and fates do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
Rapp found himself in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an insuperable barrier to the enemy. He had an army which was a paper army only.
He had, according to official returns, thirty-five thousand men. In reality a bare eight thousand could be collected to show a face to the enemy. The rest were sick and wounded. There was no national spirit among these men; they hardly had a language in common. For they were men from Africa and Italy, from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Holland. The majority of them were recruits, raw and of poor physique. All were fugitives, flying before those dread Cossacks whose “hurrah! hurrah!” --the Arabic “kill! kill!” --haunted their fitful sleep at night. They came to Dantzig not to fight, but to lie down and rest. They were the last of the great army--the reinforcements dragged to the frontier which many of them had never crossed. For those who had been to Moscow were few and far between. The army of Moscow had perished at Malo-Jaroslavetz, at the Beresina, in Smolensk and Vilna.
These fugitives had fled to Dantzig for safety; and Rapp in crossing the bridge had made a grimace, for he saw that there was no safety here.
The fortifications had been merely sketched out. The ditches were full of snow, the rivers were frozen. All work was at a standstill. Dantzig lay at the mercy of the first-comer.
In twenty-four hours every available smith was at work, forging ice-axes and picks. Rapp was going to cut the frozen Vistula and set the river free. The Dantzigers laughed aloud.
“It will freeze again in a night,” they said. And it did. So Rapp set the ice-cutters to work again next day. He kept boats moving day and night in the water, which ran sluggish and thick, like porridge, with the desire to freeze and be still.
He ordered the engineers to set to work on the abandoned fortifications. But the ground was hard like granite, and the picks sprang back in the worker's grip, jarring his bones, and making not so much as a mark on the surface of the earth.
Again the Dantzigers laughed.
“It is frozen three feet down,” they said.
The thermometer marked between twenty and thirty degrees of frost every night now. And it was only December--only the beginning of the winter. The Russians were at the Niemen, daily coming nearer. Dantzig was full of sick and wounded. The available troops were worn out, frost-bitten, desperate. There were only a few doctors, who were without medical stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits, no forage.
No wonder the Dantzigers laughed. Rapp, who had to rely on Southerners to obey his orders--Italians, Africans, a few Frenchmen, men little used to cold and the hardships of a Northern winter--Rapp let them laugh. He was a medium-sized man, with a bullet-head and a round chubby face, a small nose, round eyes, and, if you please, side-whiskers.
Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the fortifications that had been planned.
“I took counsel,” he said, long afterwards, “with two engineer officers whose devotion equalled their brilliancy--Colonel Richemont and General Campredon.”
Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach, on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until it fell.
The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers--whose business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that spot where the Government building-yard abuts the river front to-day--were roused from their meditations by a shout on the farther bank.
They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled, disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at this time. The joke of seeing a grave artilleryman clad in a lady's ermine cloak had long since lost its savour for those who dwelt near the Moscow road.
“Ah! comrade,” said one of the boatmen, an Italian who spoke French and had learnt his seamanship on the Mediterranean, by whose waters he would never idle again. “Ah! you are from Moscow?”
“And you, countryman?” replied the new-comer, with a non-committing readiness, as he stumbled over the gunwale.
“And you--an old man?” remarked the Italian, with the easy frankness of Piedmont.
By way of reply, the new-comer held out one hand roughly swathed in cloth, and shook it from side to side slowly, taking exception to such personal matters on a short acquaintance.
“A week ago, when I quitted Dantzig on a mission to Kowno,” he said, with a careless air, “one could cross the Vistula anywhere. I have been walking on the bank for half a league looking for a way across. One would think there is a General in Dantzig now.”
“There is Rapp,” replied the Italian, poling his boat through the floating ice.
“He will be glad to see me.”
The Italian turned and looked over his shoulder. Then he gave a curt, derisive laugh.
“Barlasch--of the Old Guard!” explained the new-comer, with a careless air.
“Never heard of him.”
Barlasch pushed up the bandage which he still wore over his left eye, in order to get a better sight of this phenomenal ignoramus, but he made no comment.
On landing he nodded curtly, at which the boatman made a quick gesture and spat.
“You have not the price of a glass in your purse, perhaps,” he suggested.
Barlasch disappeared in the darkness without deigning a reply. Half an hour later he was on the steps of Sebastian's house in the Frauengasse. On his way through the streets a hundred evidences of energy had caught his attention, for many of the houses were barricaded, and palisades were built at the end of the streets running down towards the river. The town was busy, and everywhere soldiers passed to and fro. Like Samuel, Barlasch heard the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen in his ears.
The houses in the Frauengasse were barricaded like others--many of the lower windows were built up. The door of No. 36 was bolted, and through the shutters of the upper windows no glimmer of light penetrated to the outer darkness of the street. Barlasch knocked and waited. He thought he could hear surreptitious movements within the house. Again he knocked.
“Who is that?” asked Lisa just within, on the mat. She must have been there all the time.
“Barlasch,” he replied. And the bolts which he, in his knowledge of such matters, himself had oiled, were quickly drawn.
Inside he found Lisa, and behind her Mathilde and Desiree.
“Where is the patron?” he asked, turning to bolt the door again.
“He is out, in the town,” answered Desiree, in a strained voice. “Where are you from?”
“From Kowno.”
Barlasch looked from one face to the other. His own was burnt red, and the light of the lamp hanging over his head gleamed on the icicles suspended to his eyebrows and ragged whiskers. In the warmth of the house his frozen garments began to melt, and from his limbs the water dripped to the floor with a sound like rain. Then he caught sight of Desiree's face.
“He is alive, I tell you that,” he said abruptly. “And well, so far as we know. It was at Kowno that we got news of him. I have a letter.”
He opened his cloak, which was stiff like cardboard and creaked when he bent the rough cloth. Under his cloak he wore a Russian peasant's sheepskin coat, and beneath that the remains of his uniform.
“A dog's country,” he muttered, as he breathed on his fingers.
At last he found the letter, and gave it to Desiree.
“You will have to make your choice,” he commented, with a grimace indicative of a serious situation, “like any other woman. No doubt you will choose wrong.”
Desiree went up two steps in order to be nearer the lamp, and they all watched her as she opened the letter.
“Is it from Charles?” asked Mathilde, speaking for the first time.
“No,” answered Desiree, rather breathlessly.
Barlasch nudged Lisa, indicated his own mouth, and pushed her towards the kitchen. He nodded cunningly to Mathilde, as if to say that they were now free to discuss family affairs; and added, with a gesture towards his inner man-- “Since last night--nothing.”
In a few minutes Desiree, having read the letter twice, handed it to her sister. It was characteristically short.
“We have found a man here,” wrote Louis d'Arragon, “who travelled as far as Vilna with Charles. There they parted. Charles, who was ordered to Warsaw on staff work, told his friend that you were in Dantzig, and that, foreseeing a siege of the city, he had written to you to join him at Warsaw. This letter has doubtless been lost. I am following Charles to Warsaw, tracing him step by step, and if he has fallen ill by the way, as so many have done, shall certainly find him. Barlasch returns to bring you to Thorn, if you elect to join Charles. I will await you at Thorn, and if Charles has proceeded, we will follow him to Warsaw.”
Barlasch, who had watched Desiree, now followed Mathilde's eyes as they passed to and fro over the closely written lines. As she neared the end, and her face, upon which deep shadows had been graven by sorrow and suspense, grew drawn and hopeless, he gave a curt laugh.
“There were two,” he said, “travelling together--the Colonel de Casimir and the husband of--of la petite. They had facilities--name of God! --two carriages and an escort. In the carriages they had some of the Emperor's playthings--holy pictures, the imperial loot--I know not what. Besides that, they had some of their own--not furs and candlesticks such as we others carried on our backs, but gold and jewellery enough to make a man rich all his life.”
“How do you know that?” asked Mathilde, a dull light in her eyes.
“I--I know where it came from,” replied Barlasch, with an odd smile. “Allez! you may take it from me.” And he muttered to himself in the patois of the Cotes du Nord.
“And they were safe and well at Vilna?” asked Mathilde.
“Yes--and they had their treasure. They had good fortune, or else they were more clever than other men; for they had the Imperial treasure to escort, and could take any man's horse for the carriages in which also they had placed their own treasure. It was Captain Darragon who held the appointment, and the other--the Colonel--had attached himself to him as volunteer. For it was at Vilna that the last thread of discipline was broken, and every man did as he wished.”
“They did not come to Kowno?” asked Mathilde, who had a clear mind, and that grasp of a situation which more often falls to the lot of the duller sex.
“They did not come to Kowno. They would turn south at Vilna. It was as well. At Kowno the soldiers had broken into the magazines--the brandy was poured out in the streets. The men were lying there, the drunken and the dead all confused together on the snow. But there would be no confusion the next morning; for all would be dead.”
“Was it at Kowno that you left Monsieur d'Arragon?” asked Desiree, in a sharp voice.
“No--no. We quitted Kowno together, and parted on the heights above the town. He would not trust me--monsieur le marquis--he was afraid that I should get at the brandy. And he was right. I only wanted the opportunity. He is a strong one--that!” And Barlasch held up a warning hand, as if to make known to all and sundry that it would be inadvisable to trifle with Louis d'Arragon.
He drew the icicles one by one from his whiskers with a wry face indicative of great agony, and threw them down on the mat.
“Well,” he said, after a pause, to Desiree, “have you made your choice?”
Desiree was reading the letter again, and before she could answer, a quick knock on the front door startled them all. Barlasch's face broke into that broad smile which was only called forth by the presence of danger.
“Is it the patron?” he asked in a whisper, with his hand on the heavy bolts affixed by that pious Hanseatic merchant who held that if God be in the house there is no need of watchmen.
“Yes,” answered Mathilde. “Open quickly.”
Sebastian came in with a light step. He was like a man long saddled with a burden of which he had at length been relieved.
“Ah! What news?” he asked, when he recognised Barlasch.
“Nothing that you do not know already, monsieur,” replied Barlasch, “except that the husband of Mademoiselle is well and on the road to Warsaw. Here--read that.”
And he took the letter from Desiree's hand.
“I knew he would come back safely,” said Desiree; and that was all.
Sebastian read the letter in one quick glance--and then fell to thinking.
“It is time to quit Dantzig,” said Barlasch quietly, as if he had divined the old man's thoughts. “I know Rapp. There will be trouble--here, on the Vistula.”
But Sebastian dismissed the suggestion with a curt shake of the head.
Barlasch's attention had been somewhat withdrawn by a smell of cooking meat, to which he opened his nostrils frankly and noisily after the manner of a dog.
“Then it remains,” he said, looking towards the kitchen, “for Mademoiselle to make her choice.”
“There is no choice,” replied Desiree, “I shall be ready to go with you--when you have eaten.”
“Good,” said Barlasch, and the word applied as well to Lisa, who was beckoning to him.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
|
21
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ON THE WARSAW ROAD.
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Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where it most promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most sits.
Love, it is said, is blind. But hatred is as bad. In Antoine Sebastian hatred of Napoleon had not only blinded eyes far-seeing enough in earlier days, but it had killed many natural affections. Love, too, may easily die--from a surfeit or a famine. Hatred never dies; it only sleeps.
Sebastian's hatred was all awake now. It was aroused by the disasters that had befallen Napoleon; of which disasters the Russian campaign was only one small part. For he who stands above all his compeers must expect them to fall upon him should he stumble. Napoleon had fallen, and a hundred foes who had hitherto nursed their hatred in a hopeless silence were alert to strike a blow should he descend within their reach.
When whole empires had striven in vain to strike, how could a mere association of obscure men hope to record its blow? The Tugendbund had begun humbly enough; and Napoleon, with that unerring foresight which raised him above all other men, had struck at its base. For an association in which kings and cobblers stand side by side on an equal footing must necessarily be dangerous to its foes.
Sebastian was not carried off his feet by the great events of the last six months. They only rendered him steadier. For he had waited a lifetime. It is only a sudden success that dazzles. Long waiting nearly always ensures a wise possession.
Sebastian, like all men absorbed in a great thought, was neglectful of his social and domestic obligations. Has it not been shown that he allowed Mathilde and Desiree to support him by giving dancing lessons? But he was not the ordinary domestic tyrant who is familiar to all--the dignified father of a family who must have the best of everything, whose teaching to his offspring takes the form of an unconscious and solemn warning. He did not ask the best; he hardly noticed what was offered to him; and it was not owing to his demand, but to that feminine spirit of self-sacrifice which has ruined so many men, that he fared better than his daughters.
If he thought about it at all, he probably concluded that Mathilde and Desiree were quite content to give their time and thought to the support of himself--not as their father, but as the motive power of the Tugendbund in Prussia. Many greater men have made the same mistake, and quite small men with a great name make it every day, thinking complacently that it is a privilege to some woman to minister to their wants while they produce their immortal pictures or deathless books; whereas, the woman would tend him as carefully were he a crossing-sweeper, and is only following the dictates of an instinct which is loftier than his highest thought and more admirable than his most astounding work of art.
Barlasch had not lived so long in the Frauengasse without learning the domestic economy of Sebastian's household. He knew that Desiree, like many persons with kind blue eyes, shaped her own course through life, and abided by the result with a steadfastness not usually attributed to the light-hearted. He concluded that he must make ready to take the road again before midnight. He therefore gave a careful and businesslike attention to the simple meal set before him by Lisa; and, looking up over his plate, he saw for the second time in his life Sebastian hurrying into his own kitchen.
Barlasch half rose, and then, in obedience to a gesture from Sebastian, or remembering perhaps the sturdy Republicanism which he had not learnt until middle-age, he sat down again, fork in hand.
“You are prepared to accompany Madame Darragon to Thorn?” inquired Sebastian, inviting his guest by a gesture to make himself at home--scarcely a necessary thought in the present instance.
“Yes.”
“And how do you propose to make the journey?”
This was so unlike Sebastian's usual method, so far from his lax comprehension of a father's duty, that Barlasch paused and looked at him with suspicion. With the back of his hand he pushed up the unkempt hair which obscured his eyes. This unusual display of parental anxiety required looking into.
“From what I could see in the streets,” he answered, “the General will not stand in the way of women and useless mouths who wish to quit Dantzig.”
“That is possible; but he will not go so far as to provide horses.”
Barlasch gave his companion a quick glance, and returned to his supper, eating with an exaggerated nonchalance, as if he were alone.
“Will you provide them?” he asked abruptly, at length, without looking up.
“I can get them for you, and can ensure you relays by the way.”
Barlasch cut a piece of meat very carefully, and, opening his mouth wide, looked at Sebastian over the orifice.
“On one condition,” pursued Sebastian quietly; “that you deliver a letter for me in Thorn. I make no pretence; if it is found on you, you will be shot.”
Barlasch smiled pleasantly.
“The risks are very great,” said Sebastian, tapping his snuff-box reflectively.
“I am not an officer to talk of my honour,” answered Barlasch, with a laugh. “And as for risk”--he paused and put half a potato into his mouth--“it is Mademoiselle I serve,” concluded this uncouth knight with a curt simplicity.
So they set out at ten o'clock that night in a light sleigh on high runners, such as may be seen on any winter day in Poland down to the present time. The horses were as good as any in Dantzig at this date, when a horse was more costly than his master. The moon, sailing high overhead through fleecy clouds, found it no hard task to light a world all snow and ice. The streets of Dantzig were astir with life and the rumble of waggons. At first there were difficulties, and Barlasch explained airily that he was not so accomplished a whip in the streets as in the open country.
“But never fear,” he added. “We shall get there, soon enough.”
At the city gates there was, as Barlasch had predicted, no objection made to the departure of a young girl and an old man. Others were quitting Dantzig by the same gate, on foot, in sleighs and carts; but all turned westward at the cross-roads and joined the stream of refugees hurrying forward to Germany. Barlasch and Desiree were alone on the wide road that runs southward across the plain towards Dirschau. The air was very cold and still. On the snow, hard and dry like white dust, the runners of the sleigh sang a song on one note, only varied from time to time by a drop of several octaves as they passed over a culvert or some hollow in the road, after which the high note, like the sound of escaping steam, again held sway. The horses fell into a long steady trot, their feet beating the ground with a regular, sleep-inducing thud. They were harnessed well forward to a very long pole, and covered the ground with free strides, unhampered by any thought of their heels. The snow pattered against the cloth stretched like a wind-sail from their flanks to the rising front of the sleigh.
Barlasch sat upright, a thick motionless figure, four-square to the cutting wind. He drove with one hand at a time, sitting on the other to restore circulation between whiles. It was impossible to distinguish the form of his garments, for he was wrapped round in a woollen shawl like a mummy, showing only his eyes beneath the ragged fur of a sheepskin cap upon which the rime caused by the warmth of the horses and his own breath had frozen like a coating of frosted silver.
Desiree was huddled down beside him, with her head bent forward so as to protect her face from the wind, which seared like a hot iron. She wore a hood of white fur lined with a darker fur, and when she lifted her face only her eyes, bright and wakeful, were visible.
“If you are warm, you may go to sleep,” said Barlasch in a mumbling voice, for his face was drawn tight and his lips stiffened by the cold. “But if you shiver, you must stay awake.”
But Desiree seemed to have no wish for sleep. Whenever Barlasch leant forward to peer beneath her hood she looked round at him with wakeful eyes. Whenever, to see if she were still awake, he gave her an unceremonious nudge, she nudged back again instantly. As the night wore on, she grew more wakeful. When they halted at a wayside inn, which must have been minutely described to Barlasch by Sebastian, and Desiree accepted the innkeeper's offer of a cup of coffee by the fire while fresh horses were being put into harness, she was wide awake and looked at Barlasch with a reckless laugh as he shook the rime from his eyebrows. In response he frowningly scrutinized as much of her face as he could see, and shook his head disapprovingly.
“You laugh when there is nothing to laugh at,” he said grimly. “Foolish. It makes people wonder what is in your mind.”
“There is nothing in my mind,” she answered gaily.
“Then there is something in your heart, and that is worse!” said Barlasch, which made Desiree look at him doubtfully.
They had done forty miles with the same horses, and were nearly halfway. For some hours the road had followed the course of the Vistula on the high tableland above the river, and would so continue until they reached Thorn.
“You must sleep,” said Barlasch curtly, when they were once more on the road. She sat silent beside him for an hour. The horses were fresh, and covered the ground at a great pace. Barlasch was no driver, but he was skilful with the horses, and husbanded their strength at every hill.
“If we go on like this, when shall we arrive?” asked Desiree suddenly.
“By eight o'clock, if all goes well.”
“And we shall find Monsieur Louis d'Arragon awaiting us at Thorn?”
Barlasch shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.
“He said he would be there,” he muttered, and, turning in his seat, he looked down at her with some contempt.
“That is like a woman,” he said. “They think all men are fools except one, and that one is only to be compared with the bon Dieu.”
Desiree could not have heard the remark, for she made no answer and sat silent, leaning more and more heavily against her companion. He changed the reins to his other hand, and drove with it for an hour after all feeling had left it. Desiree was asleep. She was still sleeping when, in the dim light of a late dawn, Barlasch saw the distant tower of Thorn Cathedral.
They were no longer alone on the road now, but passed a number of heavy market-sleighs bringing produce and wood to the town. Barlasch had been in Thorn before. Desiree was still sleeping when he turned the horses into the crowded yard of the “Drei Kronen.” The sleighs and carriages were packed side by side as in a warehouse, but the stables were empty. No eager host came out to meet the travellers. The innkeepers of Thorn had long ceased to give themselves that trouble. For the city was on the direct route of the retreat, and few who got so far had any money left.
Slowly and painfully Barlasch unwound himself and disentangled his legs. He tried first one and then the other, as if uncertain whether he could walk. Then he staggered numbly across the yard to the door of the inn.
A few minutes later Desiree woke up. She was in a room warmed by a great white stove and dimly lighted by candles. Some one was pulling off her gloves and feeling her hands to make sure that they were not frost-bitten. She looked sleepily at a white coffee-pot standing on the table near the candles; then her eyes, still uncomprehending, rested on the face of the man who was loosening her hood, which was hard with rime and ice. He had his back to the candles, and was half-hidden by the collar of his fur coat, which met the cap pressed down over his ears.
He turned towards the table to lay aside her gloves, and the light fell on his face. Desiree was wideawake in an instant, and Louis d'Arragon, hearing her move, turned anxiously to look at her again. Neither spoke for a minute. Barlasch was holding his numbed hand against the stove, and was grinding his teeth and muttering at the pain of the restored circulation.
Desiree shook the icicles from her hood, and they rattled like hail on the bare floor. Her hair, all tumbled round her face, caught the light of the candles. Her eyes were bright and the colour was in her cheeks. D'Arragon glanced at her with a sudden look of relief, and then turned to Barlasch. He took the numbed hand and felt it; then he held a candle close to it. Two of the fingers were quite white, and Barlasch made a grimace when he saw them. D'Arragon began rubbing at once, taking no notice of his companion's moans and complaints.
Without desisting, he looked over his shoulder towards Desiree, but not actually at her face.
“I heard last night,” he said, “that the two carriages are standing in an inn-yard three leagues beyond this on the Warsaw road. I have traced them step by step from Kowno. My informant tells me that the escort has deserted, and that the officer in charge, Colonel Darragon, was going on alone, with the two drivers, when he was taken ill. He is nearly well again, and hopes to continue his journey to-morrow or the next day.”
Desiree nodded her head to signify that she had heard and understood. Barlasch gave a cry of pain, and withdrew his hand with a jerk.
“Enough, enough!” he said. “You hurt me. The life is returning now; a drop of brandy perhaps--” “There is no brandy in Thorn,” said D'Arragon, turning towards the table. “There is only coffee.”
He busied himself with the cups, and did not look at Desiree when he spoke again.
“I have secured two horses,” he said, “to enable you to proceed at once, if you are able to. But if you would rather rest here to-day--” “Let us go on at once,” interrupted Desiree hastily.
Barlasch, crouching against the stove, glanced from one to the other beneath his heavy brows, wondering, perhaps, why they avoided looking at each other.
“You will wait here,” said D'Arragon, turning towards him, “until--until I return.”
“Yes,” was the answer. “I will lie on the floor here and sleep. I have had enough. I--” Louis left the room to give the necessary orders. When he returned in a few minutes, Barlasch was asleep on the floor, and Desiree had tied on her hood again, which concealed her face. He drank a cup of coffee and ate some dry bread absent-mindedly, in silence.
The sound of bells, feebly heard through the double windows, told them that the horses were being harnessed.
“Are you ready?” asked D'Arragon, who had not sat down; and in response, Desiree, standing near the stove, went towards the door, which he held open for her to pass out. As she passed him, she glanced at his face, and winced.
In the sleigh she looked up at him as if expecting him to speak. He was looking straight in front of him. There was, after all, nothing to be said. She could see his steady eyes between his high collar and the fur cap. They were hard and unflinching. The road was level now, and the snow beaten to a gleaming track like ice. D'Arragon put the horses to a gallop at the town gate, and kept them at it.
In half an hour he turned towards her and pointed with his whip to a roof half hidden by some thin pines.
“That is the inn,” he said.
In the inn yard he indicated with his whip two travelling-carriages standing side by side.
“Colonel Darragon is here?” he said to the cringing Jew who came to meet them; and the innkeeper led the way upstairs. The house was a miserable one, evil-smelling, sordid. The Jew pointed to a door, and, cringing again, left them.
Desiree made a gesture telling Louis to go in first, which he did at once. The room was littered with trunks and cases. All the treasure had been brought into the sick man's chamber for greater safety.
On a narrow bed near the window a man lay huddled on his side. He turned and looked over his shoulder, showing a haggard face with a ten-days' beard on it. He looked from one to the other in silence.
It was Colonel de Casimir.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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22
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THROUGH THE SHOALS.
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I see my way, as birds their trackless way.
De Casimir had never seen Louis d'Arragon, and yet some dim resemblance to his cousin must have introduced the new-comer to a conscience not quite easy.
“You seek me, Monsieur,” he asked, not having recognized Desiree, who stood behind her companion, in her furs.
“I seek Colonel Darragon, and was told that we should find him in this room.”
“May I ask why you seek him in this rather unceremonious manner?” asked De Casimir, with the ready insolence of his calling and his age.
“Because I am his cousin,” replied Louis quietly, “and Madame is his wife.”
Desiree came forward, her face colourless. She caught her breath, but made no attempt to speak.
De Casimir tried to lift himself on his elbows.
“Ah! madame,” he said. “You see me in a sorry state. I have been very ill.” And he made a gesture with one hand, begging her to overlook his unkempt appearance and the disorder of his room.
“Where is Charles?” asked Desiree curtly. She had suddenly realized how intensely she had always disliked De Casimir, and distrusted him.
“Has he not returned to Dantzig?” was the ready answer. “He should have been there a week ago. We parted at Vilna. He was exhausted--a mere question of over-fatigue--and at his request I left him there to recover and to pursue his way to Dantzig, where he knew you would be awaiting him.”
He paused and looked from one to the other with quick and furtive eyes. He felt himself easily a match for them in quickness of perception, in rapid thought, in glib speech. Both were dumb--he could not guess why. But there was a steadiness in D'Arragon's eyes which rarely goes with dulness of wit. This was a man who could be quick at will--a man to be reckoned with.
“You are wondering why I travel under your cousin's name, Monsieur,” said De Casimir, with a friendly smile.
“Yes,” returned Louis, without returning the smile.
“It is simple enough,” explained the sick man. “At Vilna we found all discipline relaxed. There were no longer any regiments. There was no longer staff. There was no longer an army. Every man did as he thought best. Many, as you know, elected to await the Russians at Vilna, rather than attempt to journey farther. Your cousin had been given the command of the escort which has now filtered away, like every other corps. He was to conduct back to Paris two carriages laden with imperial treasure and certain papers of value. Charles did not want to go back to Paris. He wished most naturally to return to Dantzig. I, on the other hand, desired to go to France; and there place my sword once more at the Emperor's service. What more simple than to change places?”
“And names,” suggested D'Arragon, without falling into De Casimir's easy and friendly manner.
“For greater security in passing through Poland and across the frontier,” explained De Casimir readily. “Once in France--and I hope to be there in a week--I shall report the matter to the Emperor as it really happened: namely, that, owing to Colonel Darragon's illness, he transferred his task to me at Vilna. The Emperor will be indifferent, so long as the order has been carried out.”
De Casimir turned to Desiree as likely to be more responsive than this dark-eyed stranger, who listened with so disconcerting a lack of comment or sympathy.
“So you see, madame,” he said, “Charles will still get the credit for having carried out his most difficult task, and no harm is done.”
“When did you leave Charles at Vilna?” asked she.
De Casimir lay back on the pillow in an attitude which betrayed his weakness and exhaustion. He looked at the ceiling with lustreless eyes.
“It must have been a fortnight ago,” he said at length. “I was trying to count the days. We have lost all account of dates since quitting Moscow. One day has been like another--and all, terrible. Believe me, madame, it has always been in my mind that you were awaiting the return of your husband at Dantzig. I spared him all I could. A dozen times we saved each other's lives.”
In six words Desiree could have told him all she knew: that he was a spy who had betrayed to death and exile many Dantzigers whose hospitality had been extended to him as a Polish officer; that Charles was a traitor who had gained access to her father's house in order to watch him--though he had honestly fallen in love with her. He was in love with her still, and he was her husband. It was this thought that broke into her sleep at night, that haunted her waking hours.
She glanced at Louis d'Arragon, and held her peace.
“Then, Monsieur,” he said, “you have every reason to suppose that if Madame returns to Dantzig now, she will find her husband there?”
De Casimir looked at D'Arragon, and hesitated for an instant. They both remembered afterwards that moment of uncertainty.
“I have every reason to suppose it,” replied De Casimir at length, speaking in a low voice, as if fearful of being overheard.
Louis waited a moment, and glanced at Desiree, who, however, had evidently nothing more to say.
“Then we will not trouble you farther,” he said, going towards the door, which he held open for Desiree to pass out. He was following her when De Casimir called him back.
“Monsieur,” cried the sick man, “Monsieur, one moment, if you can spare it.”
Louis came back. They looked at each other in silence while they heard Desiree descend the stairs and speak in German to the innkeeper who had been waiting there.
“I will be quite frank with you,” said De Casimir, in that voice of confidential friendliness which so rarely failed in its effect. “You know that Madame Darragon has an elder sister, Mademoiselle Mathilde Sebastian?”
“Yes.”
De Casimir raised himself on his elbows again, with an effort, and gave a short, half shamefaced laugh which was quite genuine. It was odd that Mathilde and he, who had walked most circumspectly, should both have been tripped up, as it were, by love.
“Bah!” he said, with a gesture dismissing the subject, “I cannot tell you more. It is a woman's secret, Monsieur, not mine. Will you deliver a letter for me in Dantzig, that is all I ask?”
“I will give it to Madame Darragon to give to Mademoiselle Mathilde, if you like; I am not returning to Dantzig,” replied Louis. But de Casimir shook his head.
“I am afraid that will not do,” he said doubtfully. “Between sisters, you understand--” And he was no doubt right; this man of quick perception. Is it not from our nearest relative that our dearest secret is usually withheld?
“You cannot find another messenger?” asked De Casimir, and the anxiety in his face was genuine enough.
“I can--if you wish it.”
“Ah, Monsieur, I shall not forget it! I shall never forget it,” said the sick man quickly and eagerly. “The letter is there, beneath that sabretasche. It is sealed and addressed.”
Louis found the letter, and went towards the door, as he placed it in his pocket.
“Monsieur,” said De Casimir, stopping him again. “Your name, if I may ask it, so that I may remember a countryman who has done me so great a service.”
“I am not a countryman; I am an Englishman,” replied Louis. “My name is Louis d'Arragon.”
“Ah! I know. Charles has told me, Monsieur le--” But D'Arragon heard no more, for he closed the door behind him.
He found Desiree awaiting him in the entrance hall of the inn, where a fire of pine-logs burnt in an open chimney. The walls and low ceiling were black with smoke, the little windows were covered with ice an inch thick. It was twilight in this quiet room, and would have been dark but for the leaping flames of the fire.
“You will go back to Dantzig,” he asked, “at once?”
He carefully avoided looking at her, though he need not have feared that she would have allowed her eyes to meet his. And thus they stood, looking downward to the fire--alone in a world that heeded them not, and would forget them in a week--and made their choice of a life.
“Yes,” she answered.
He stood thinking for a moment. He was quite practical and matter-of-fact; and had the air of a man of action rather than of one who deals in thoughts, and twists them hither and thither so that good is made to look ridiculous, and bad is tricked out with a fine new name. He frowned as he looked at the fire with eyes that flitted from one object to another, as men's eyes do who think of action and not of thought. This was the sailor--second to none in the shallow northern sea, where all marks had been removed, and every light extinguished--accustomed to facing danger and avoiding it, to foresee remote contingencies and provide against them, day and night, week in, week out; a sailor, careful and intrepid. He had the air of being capable of that concentration without which no man can hope to steer a clear course at all.
“The horses that brought you from Marienwerder will not be fit for the road till to-morrow morning,” he said. “I will take you back to Thorn at once, and--leave you there with Barlasch.”
He glanced towards her, and she nodded, as if acknowledging the sureness and steadiness of the hand at the helm.
“You can start early to-morrow morning, and be in Dantzig to-morrow night.”
They stood side by side in silence for some minutes. He was still thinking of her journey--of the dangers and the difficulties of that longer journey through life without landmark or light to guide her.
“And you?” she asked curtly.
He did not reply at once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat, which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands and the lean strong face, burnt to a red-brown by sun and snow, half hidden in the fur collar of his worn and weather-beaten coat.
“Konigsberg,” he answered, “and Riga.”
A light passed through her watching eyes, usually so kind and gay; like the gleam of jealousy.
“Your ship?” she asked sharply.
“Yes,” he answered, as the innkeeper came to tell them that their sleigh awaited them.
It was snowing now, and a whistling, fitful wind swept down the valley of the Vistula from Poland and the far Carpathians which made the travellers crouch low in the sleigh and rendered talk impossible, had there been anything to say. But there was nothing.
They found Barlasch asleep where they had left him in the inn at Thorn, on the floor against the stove. He roused himself with the quickness and completeness of one accustomed to brief and broken rest, and stood up shaking himself in his clothes, like a dog with a heavy coat. He took no notice of D'Arragon, but looked at Desiree with questioning eyes.
“It was not the Captain?” he asked.
And Desiree shook her head. Louis was standing near the door giving orders to the landlady of the inn--a kindly Pomeranian, clean and slow--for Desiree's comfort till the next morning.
Barlasch went close to Desiree, and, nudging her arm with exaggerated cunning, whispered-- “Who was it?”
“Colonel de Casimir.”
“With the two carriages and the treasure from Moscow?” asked Barlasch, watching Louis out of the corner of one eye, to make sure that he did not hear. It did not matter whether he heard or not, but Barlasch came of a peasant stock that always speaks of money in a whisper. And when Desiree nodded, he cut short the conversation.
The hostess came forward to tell Desiree that her room was ready, kindly suggesting that the “gnadiges Fraulein” must need sleep and rest. Desiree knew that Louis would go on to Konigsberg at once. She wondered whether she should ever see him again--long afterwards, perhaps, when all this would seem like a dream. Barlasch, breathing noisily on his frost-bitten fingers, was watching them. Desiree shook hands with Louis in an odd silence, and, turning on her heel, followed the woman out of the room without looking back.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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23
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AGAINST THE STREAM.
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Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
In the mean time the last of the Great Army had reached the Niemen, that narrow winding river in its ditch-like bed sunk below the level of the tableland, to which six months earlier the greatest captain this world has ever seen rode alone, and, coming back to his officers, said-- “Here we cross.”
Four hundred thousand men had crossed--a bare eighty thousand lived to pass the bridge again. Twelve hundred cannons had been left behind, nearly a thousand in the hands of the enemy, and the remainder buried or thrown into those dull rivers whose slow waters flow over them to this day. One hundred and twenty-five thousand officers and men had been killed in battle, another hundred thousand had perished by cold and disaster at the Beresina or other rivers where panic seized the fugitives.
Forty-eight generals had been captured by the Russians, three thousand officers, one hundred and ninety thousand men, swallowed by the silent white Empire of the North and no more seen.
As the retreat neared Vilna the cold had increased, killing men as the first cold of an English winter kills flies. And when the French quitted Vilna, the Russians were glad enough to seek its shelter, Kutusoff creeping in with forty thousand men, all that remained to him of two hundred thousand. He could not carry on the pursuit, but sent forward a handful of Cossacks to harry the hare-brained few who called themselves the rearguard. He was an old man, nearly worn out, with only three months more to live--but he had done his work.
Ney--the bravest of the brave--left alone in Russia at the last with seven hundred foreign recruits, men picked from here and there, called in from the highways and hedges to share the glory of the only Marshal who came back from Moscow with a name untarnished--Ney and Girard, musket in hand, were the last to cross the bridge, shouting defiance at their Cossack foes, who, when they had hounded the last of the French across the frontier, flung themselves down on the bloodstained snow to rest.
All along the banks of the Vistula, from Konigsberg and Dantzig up to Warsaw--that slow river which at the last call shall assuredly give up more dead than any other--the fugitives straggled homewards. For the Russians paused at their own frontier, and Prussia was still nominally the friend of France. She had still to wear the mask for three long months when she should at last openly side with Russia, only to be beaten again by Napoleon.
Murat was at Konigsberg with the Imperial staff, left in supreme command by the Emperor, and already thinking of his own sunny kingdom of the Mediterranean, and the ease and the glory of it. In a few weeks he, too, must tarnish his name.
“I make over the command to you,” he said to Prince Eugene; and Napoleon's step-son made an answer which shows, as Eugene showed again and again, that contact with a great man makes for greatness.
“You cannot make it over to me,” he replied. “Only the Emperor can do that. You can run away in the night, and the supreme command will devolve on me the next morning.”
And what Murat did is no doubt known to the learned reader.
Macdonald, abandoned by Yorck with the Prussian contingent, in great peril, alone in the north, was retreating with the remains of the Tenth Army Corps, wondering whether Konigsberg or Dantzig would still be French when he reached them. On his heels was Wittgenstein, in touch with St. Petersburg and the Emperor Alexander, communicating with Kutusoff at Vilna. And Macdonald, like the Scotchman and the Frenchman that he was, turned at a critical moment and rent Wittgenstein. Here was another bulldog in that panic-stricken pack, who turned and snarled and fought while his companions slunk homewards with their tails between their legs. There were three of such breed--Ney and Macdonald, and Prince Eugene de Beauharnais.
Napoleon was in Paris, getting together in wild haste the new army with which he was yet to frighten Europe into fits. And Rapp, doggedly fortifying his frozen city, knew that he was to hold Dantzig at any cost--a remote, far-thrown outpost on the Northern sea, cut off from all help, hundreds of miles from the French frontier, nearly a thousand miles from Paris.
At Marienwerder, Barlasch and Desiree found themselves in the midst of that bustle and confusion which attends the arrival or departure of an army corps. The majority of the men were young and of a dark skin. They seemed gay, and called out salutations to which Barlasch replied curtly enough.
“They are Italians,” said he to his companion; “I know their talk and their manners. To you and me, who come from the North, they are like children. See that one who is dancing. It is some fete. What is to-day?”
“It is New Year's Day,” replied Desiree.
“New Year's Day,” echoed Barlasch. “Good. And we have been on the road since six o'clock; and I, who have forgotten to wish you--” He paused and called cheerily to the horses, which had covered more than forty miles since leaving their stable at Thorn. “Bon Dieu!” he said in a lower tone, glancing at her beneath the ice-bound rim of his fur cap, “Bon Dieu--what am I to wish you, I wonder?”
Desiree did not answer, but smiled a little and looked straight in front of her.
Barlasch made a movement of the shoulders and eyebrows indicative of a hidden anger.
“We are friends,” he asked suddenly, “you and I?”
“Yes.”
“We have been friends since--that day--when you were married?”
“Yes,” answered Desiree.
“Then between friends,” said Barlasch, gruffly; “it is not necessary to smile--like that--when it is tears that are there.”
Desiree laughed.
“Would you have me weep?” she asked.
“It would hurt one less,” said Barlasch, attending to his horses. They were in the town now, and the narrow streets were crowded. Many sick and wounded were dragging themselves wearily along. A few carts, drawn by starving horses, went slowly down the hill. But there was some semblance of order, and thus men had the air and carriage of soldiers under discipline. Barlasch was quick to see it.
“It is the Fourth Corps. The Viceroy's army. They have done well. He is a soldier, who commands them. Ah! There is one I know.”
He threw the reins to Desiree, and in a moment he was out on the snow. A man, as old, it would seem, as himself, in uniform and carrying a musket, was marching past with a few men who seemed to be under his orders, though his uniform was long past recognition. He did not perceive, for some minutes, that Barlasch was coming towards him, and then the process of recognition was slow. Finally, he laid aside his musket, and the two old men gravely kissed each other.
Quite forgetful of Desiree, they stood talking together for twenty minutes. Then they gravely embraced once more, and Barlasch returned to the sleigh. He took the reins, and urged the horses up the hill without commenting on his encounter, but Desiree could see that he had heard news.
The inn was outside the town, on the road that follows the Vistula northwards to Dirschau and Dantzig. The horses were tired, and stumbled on the powdery snow which was heavy, like sand, and of a sandy colour. Here and there, by the side of the road, were great stains of blood and the remains of a horse that had been killed, and eaten raw. The faces of many of the men were smeared with blood, which had dried on their cheeks and caked there. Nearly all were smoke-grimed and had sore eyes.
At last Barlasch spoke, with the decisive air of one who has finally drawn up a course of action in a difficult position.
“He comes from my own country, that man. You heard us? We spoke together in our patois. I shall not see him again. He has a catarrh. When he coughs there is blood. Alas!”
Desiree glanced at the rugged face half turned away from her. She was not naturally heartless; but she quite forgot to sympathize with the elderly soldier who had caught a cold on the retreat from Moscow; for his friend's grief lacked conviction. Barlasch had heard news which he had decided to keep to himself.
“Has he come from Vilna?” asked Desiree.
“From Vilna--oh yes. They are all from Vilna.”
“And he had no news”--persisted she, “of--Captain Darragon?”
“News--oh no! He is a common soldier, and knows nothing of the officers on the staff. We are the same--he and I--poor animals in the ranks. A little gentleman rides up, all sabretasche and gold lace. It is an officer of the staff. 'Go down into the valley and get shot,' he says. And--bon jour! we go. No--no. He has no news, my poor comrade.”
They were at the inn now, and found the huge yard still packed with sleighs and disabled carriages, and the stables ostentatiously empty.
“Go in,” said Barlasch; “and tell them who your father is--say Antoine Sebastian and nothing else. I would do it myself, but when it is so cold as that, the lips are stiff, and I cannot speak German properly. They would find out that I am French, and it is no good being French now. My comrade told me that in Konigsberg, Murat himself was ill-received by the burgomaster and such city stuff as that.”
It was as Barlasch foretold. For at the name of Antoine Sebastian the innkeeper found horses--in another stable.
It would take a few minutes, he said, to fetch them, and in the meantime there were coffee and some roast meat--his own dinner. Indeed, he could not do enough to testify his respect for Desiree, and his commiseration for her, being forced to travel in such weather through a country infested by starving brigands.
Barlasch consented to come just within the inner door, but refused to sit at the table with Desiree. He took a piece of bread, and ate it standing.
“See you,” he said to her when they were left alone, “the good God has made very few mistakes, but there is one thing I would have altered. If He intended us for such a rough life, He should have made the human frame capable of going longer without food. To a poor soldier marching from Moscow to have to stop every three hours and gnaw a piece of horse that has died--and raw--it is not amusing.”
He watched Desiree with a grudging eye. For she was young, and had eaten nothing for six freezing hours.
“And for us,” he added; “what a waste of time!”
Desiree rose at once with a laugh.
“You want to go,” she said. “Come, I am ready.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “I want to go. I am afraid--name of a dog! I am afraid, I tell you. For I have heard the Cossacks cry, 'Hurrah! Hurrah!' And they are coming.”
“Ah!” said Desiree, “that is what your friend told you.”
“That, and other things.”
He was pulling on his gloves as he spoke, and turned quickly on his heel when the innkeeper entered the room, as if he had expected one of those dread Cossacks of Toula who were half savage. But the innkeeper carried nothing more lethal in his hand than a yellow mug of beer, which he offered to Barlasch. And the old soldier only shook his head.
“There is poison in it,” he muttered. “He knows I am a Frenchman.”
“Come,” said Desiree, with her gay laugh, “I will show you that there is no poison in it.”
She took the mug and drank, and handed the measure to Barlasch. It was a poor thin beer, and Barlasch was not one to hide his opinion from the host, to whom he made a reproving grimace when he returned the empty mug. But the effect upon him was nevertheless good, for he took the reins again with a renewed energy, and called to the horses gaily enough.
“Allons,” he said; “we shall reach Dantzig safely by nightfall, and there we shall find your husband awaiting us, and laughing at us for our foolish journey.”
But being an old man, the beer could not warm his heart for long, and he soon lapsed again into melancholy and silence. Nevertheless, they reached Dantzig by nightfall, and although it was a bitter twilight--colder than the night itself--the streets were full. Men stood in groups and talked. In the brief time required to journey to Thorn something had happened. Something happened every day in Dantzig; for when history wakes from her slumber and moves, it is with a heavy and restless tread.
“What is it?” asked Barlasch of the sentry at the town gate, while they waited for their passports to be returned to them.
“It is a proclamation from the Emperor of Russia--no one knows how it has got here.”
“And what does he proclaim--that citizen?”
“He bids the Dantzigers rise and turn us out,” answered the soldier, with a grim laugh.
“Is that all?”
“No, comrade, that is not all,” was the answer in a graver voice.
“He proclaims that every Pole who submits now will be forgiven and set at liberty; the past, he says, will be committed to an eternal oblivion and a profound silence--those are his words.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, and half the defenders of Dantzig are Poles--there are your passports--pass on.”
They drove through the dark streets where men like shadows hurried silently about their business.
The Frauengasse seemed to be deserted when they reached it. It was Mathilde who opened the door. She must have been at the darkened window, behind the curtain. Lisa had gone home to her native village in Sammland in obedience to the Governor's orders. Sebastian had not been home all day. Charles had not returned, and there was no news of him.
Barlasch, wiping the snow from his face, watched Desiree, and made no comment.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
24
|
MATHILDE CHOOSES.
|
But strong is fate, O Love, Who makes, who mars, who ends.
Desiree was telling Mathilde the brief news of her futile journey, when a knock at the front door made them turn from the stairs where they were standing. It was Sebastian's knock. His hours had been less regular of late. He came and went without explanation.
When he had freed his throat from his furs, and laid aside his gloves, he glanced hastily at Desiree, who had kissed him without speaking.
“And your husband?” he asked curtly.
“It was not he whom we found at Thorn,” she answered. There was something in her father's voice--in his quick, sidelong glance at her--that caught her attention. He had changed lately. From a man of dreams he had been transformed into a man of action. It is customary to designate a man of action as a hard man. Custom is the brick wall against which feeble minds come to a standstill and hinder the progress of the world. Sebastian had been softened by action, through which his mental energy had found an outlet. But to-night he was his old self again--hard, scornful, incomprehensible.
“I have heard nothing of him,” said Desiree.
Sebastian was stamping the snow from his boots.
“But I have,” he said, without looking up.
Desiree said nothing. She knew that the secret she had guarded so carefully--the secret kept by herself and Louis--was hers no longer. In the silence of the next moments she could hear Barlasch breathing on his fingers, within the kitchen doorway just behind her. Mathilde made a little movement. She was on the stairs, and she moved nearer to the balustrade and held to it breathlessly. For Charles Darragon's secret was De Casimir's too.
“These two gentlemen,” said Sebastian slowly, “were in the secret service of Napoleon. They are hardly likely to return to Dantzig.”
“Why not?” asked Mathilde.
“They dare not.”
“I think the Emperor will be able to protect his officers,” said Mathilde.
“But not his spies,” replied Sebastian coldly.
“Since they wore his uniform, they cannot be blamed for doing their duty. They are brave enough. They would hardly avoid returning to Dantzig because--because they have outwitted the Tugendbund.”
Mathilde's face was colourless with anger, and her quiet eyes flashed. She had been surprised into this sudden advocacy, and an advocate who displays temper is always a dangerous ally. Sebastian glanced at her sharply. She was usually so self-controlled that her flashing eyes and quick breath betrayed her.
“What do you know of the Tugendbund?” he asked.
But she would not answer, merely shrugging her shoulders and closing her thin lips with a snap.
“It is not only in Dantzig,” said Sebastian, “that they are unsafe. It is anywhere where the Tugendbund can reach them.”
He turned sharply to Desiree. His wits, cleared by action, told him that her silence meant that she, at all events, had not been surprised. She had, therefore, known already the part played by De Casimir and Charles, in Dantzig, before the war.
“And you,” he said, “you have nothing to say for your husband.”
“He may have been misled,” she said mechanically, in the manner of one making a prepared speech or meeting a foreseen emergency. It had been foreseen by Louis d'Arragon. The speech had been, unconsciously, prepared by him.
“You mean, by Colonel de Casimir,” suggested Mathilde, who had recovered her usual quiet. And Desiree did not deny her meaning. Sebastian looked from one to the other. It was the irony of Fate that had married one of his daughters to Charles Darragon, and affianced the other to De Casimir. His own secret, so well kept, had turned in his hand like a concealed weapon.
They were all startled by Barlasch, who spoke from the kitchen door, where he had been standing unobserved or forgotten. He came forward to the light of the lamp hanging overhead.
“That reminds me...” he said a second time, and having secured their attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his nondescript clothing. He still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over one eye. It served to release him from duty in the trenches or work on the frozen fortifications. By this simple device, coupled with half a dozen bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-bite or a wound gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five thousand sick and wounded who encumbered Dantzig at this time, and were already dying at the rate of fifty a day.
“A letter...” he said, still searching with his maimed hand. “You mentioned the name of the Colonel de Casimir. It was that which recalled to my mind...” He paused, and produced a letter carefully sealed. He turned it over, glancing at the seals with a reproving jerk of the head, which conveyed as clearly as words a shameless confession that he had been frustrated by them... “this letter. I was told to give it you, without fail, at the right moment.”
It could hardly be the case that he honestly thought this moment might be so described. But he gave the letter to Mathilde with a gesture of grim triumph. Perhaps he was thinking of the cellar in the Palace on the Petrovka at Moscow, and the treasure which he had found there.
“It is from the Colonel de Casimir,” he said, “a clever man,” he added, turning confidentially to Sebastian, and holding his attention by an upraised hand. “Oh! ... a clever man.”
Mathilde, her face all flushed, tore open the envelope, while Barlasch, breathing on his fingers, watched with twinkling eye and busy lips.
The letter was a long one. Colonel de Casimir was an adept at explanation. There was, no doubt, much to explain. Mathilde read the letter carefully. It was the first she had ever had--a love-letter in its guise--with explanations in it. Love and explanation in the same breath. Assuredly De Casimir was a daring lover.
“He says that Dantzig will be taken by storm,” she said at length, “and that the Cossacks will spare no one.”
“Does it signify,” inquired Sebastian in his smoothest voice, “what Colonel de Casimir may say?”
His grand manner had come back to him. He made a gesture with his hand almost suggestive of a ruffle at the wrist, and clearly insulting to Colonel de Casimir.
“He urges us to quit the city before it is too late,” continued Mathilde, in her measured voice, and awaited her father's reply. He took snuff with a cold smile.
“You will not do so?” she asked. And by way of reply, Sebastian laughed as he dusted the snuff from his coat with his pocket-handkerchief.
“He asks me to go to Cracow with the Grafin, and marry him,” said Mathilde finally. And Sebastian only shrugged his shoulders. The suggestion was beneath contempt.
“And...?” he inquired with raised eyebrows.
“I shall do it,” replied Mathilde, defiance shining in her eyes.
“At all events,” commented Sebastian, who knew Mathilde's mind, and met her coldness with indifference, “you will do it with your eyes open, and not leap in the dark, as Desiree did. I was to blame there; a man is always to blame if he is deceived. With you... Bah! you know what the man is. But you do not know, unless he tells you in that letter, that he is even a traitor in his treachery. He has accepted the amnesty offered by the Czar; he has abandoned Napoleon's cause; he has petitioned the Czar to allow him to retire to Cracow, and there live on his estates.”
“He has no doubt good reasons for his action,” said Mathilde.
“Two carriages full,” muttered Barlasch, who had withdrawn to the dark corner near the kitchen door. But no one heeded him.
“You must make your choice,” said Sebastian, with the coldness of a judge. “You are of age. Choose.”
“I have already chosen,” answered Mathilde. “The Grafin leaves to-morrow. I will go with her.”
She had, at all events, the courage of her own opinions--a courage not rare in women, however valueless may be the judgment upon which it is based. And in fairness it must be admitted that women usually have the courage not only of the opinion, but of the consequence, and meet it with a better grace than men can summon in misfortune.
Sebastian dined alone and hastily. Mathilde was locked in her room, and refused to open the door. Desiree cooked her father's dinner while Barlasch made ready to depart on some vague errand in the town.
“There may be news,” he said. “Who knows? And afterwards the patron will go out, and it would not be wise for you to remain alone in the house.”
“Why not?”
Barlasch turned and looked at her thoughtfully over his shoulder.
“In some of the big houses down in the Niederstadt there are forty and fifty soldiers quartered--diseased, wounded, without discipline. There are others coming. I have told them we have fever in the house. It is the only way. We may keep them out; for the Frauengasse is in the centre of the town, and the soldiers are not needed in this quarter. But you--you cannot lie as I can. You laugh--ah! A woman tells more lies; but a man tells them better. Push the bolts, when I am gone.”
After his dinner, Sebastian went out, as Barlasch had predicted. He said nothing to Desiree of Charles or of the future. There was nothing to be said, perhaps. He did not ask why Mathilde was absent. In the stillness of the house, he could probably hear her moving in her rooms upstairs.
He had not been long gone when Mathilde came down, dressed to go out. She came into the kitchen where Desiree was doing the work of the absent Lisa, who had reluctantly gone to her home on the Baltic coast. Mathilde stood by the kitchen table and ate some bread.
“The Grafin has arranged to quit Dantzig to-morrow,” she said. “I am going to ask her to take me with her.”
Desiree nodded and made no comment. Mathilde went to the door, but paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had grown from childhood together--motherless--with a father whom neither understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity. They had worked together for their daily bread. And now the full stream of life had swept them together from the safe moorings of childhood.
“Will you come too?” asked Mathilde. “All that he says about Dantzig is true.”
“No, thank you,” answered Desiree, gently enough. “I will wait here. I must wait in Dantzig.”
“I cannot,” said Mathilde, half excusing herself. “I must go. I cannot help it. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Desiree, and nothing more.
Had Mathilde asked her the question six months ago, she would have said “No.” But she understood now, not that Mathilde could love De Casimir; that was beyond her individual comprehension, but that there was no alternative now.
Soon after Mathilde had gone, Barlasch returned.
“If Mademoiselle Mathilde is going, she will have to go to-morrow,” he said. “Those that are coming in at the gates now are the rearguard of the Heudelet Division which was driven out of Elbing by the Cossacks three days ago.”
He sat mumbling to himself by the fire, and only turned to the supper which Desiree had placed in readiness for him when she quitted the room and went upstairs. It was he who opened the door for Mathilde, who returned in half an hour. She thanked him absent-mindedly and went upstairs. He could hear the sisters talking together in a low voice in the drawing-room, which he had never seen, at the top of the stairs.
Then Desiree came down, and he helped her to find in a shed in the yard one of those travelling-trunks which he had recognized as being of French manufacture. He took off his boots, and carried it upstairs for her.
It was ten o'clock before Sebastian came in. He nodded his thanks to Barlasch, and watched him bolt the door. He made no inquiry as to Mathilde, but extinguished the lamp, and went to his room. He never mentioned her name again.
Early the next morning, the girls were astir. But Barlasch was before them, and when Desiree came down, she found the kitchen fire alight. Barlasch was cleaning a knife, and nodded a silent good morning. Desiree's eyes were red, and Barlasch must have noted this sign of grief, for he gave a contemptuous laugh, and continued his occupation.
It was barely daylight when the Grafin's heavy, old-fashioned carriage drew up in front of the house. Mathilde came down, thickly veiled and in her travelling furs. She did not seem to see Barlasch, and omitted to thank him for carrying her travelling-trunk to the carriage.
He stood on the terrace beside Desiree until the carriage had turned the corner into the Pfaffengasse.
“Bah!” he said, “let her go. There is no stopping them, when they are like that. It is the curse--of the Garden of Eden.”
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
25
|
A DESPATCH.
|
In counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to see them unless they be very great.
Mathilde had told Desiree that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little further information on the matter.
“It was given to me by the Captain Louis d'Arragon at Thorn,” he said. “He handled it as if it were not too clean. And he had nothing to say about it. You know his way, for the rest. He says little; but he knows the look of things. It seemed that he had promised to deliver the letter--for some reason, who knows what? and he kept his promise. The man was not dying by any chance--that De Casimir?”
And his little sharp eyes, reddened by the smoke of camp-fires, inflamed by the glare of sun on snow, searched her face. He was thinking of the treasure.
“Oh no!”
“Was he ill at all?”
“He was in bed,” answered Desiree, doubtfully.
Barlasch scratched his head without ceremony, and fell into a long train of thought.
“Do you know what I think?” he said at length. “I think that De Casimir was not ill at all--any more than I am; I, Barlasch. Not so ill, perhaps, as I am, for I have an indigestion. It is always there at the summit of the stomach. It is horse without salt.”
He paused and rubbed his chest tenderly.
“Never eat horse without salt,” he put in parenthetically.
“I hope never to eat it at all,” answered Desiree. “What about Colonel de Casimir?”
He waved her aside as a babbler who broke in upon his thoughts. These seemed to be lodged in his mouth, for, when reflecting, he chewed and mumbled with his lips.
“Listen,” he said at length. “This is De Casimir. He goes to bed and lets his beard grow--half an inch of beard will keep any man in the hospital. You nod your head. Yes; I thought so. He knows that the viceroy, with the last of the army, is at Thorn. He keeps quiet. He waits in his roadside inn until the last of the army has gone. He waits until the Russians come, and to them he hands over the Emperor's possessions--all the papers, the maps, the despatches. For that he will be rewarded by the Emperor Alexander, who has already promised pardon to all Poles who have taken arms against Russia and now submit. De Casimir will be allowed to retain his own baggage. He has no loot taken at Moscow--oh no! Only his own baggage. Ah--that man! See, I spit him out.”
And it is painful to record that he here resorted to graphic illustration.
“Ah!” he went on triumphantly, “I know. I can see right into the mind of such a man. I will tell you why. It is because I am that sort of man myself.”
“You do not seem to have been so successful--since you are poor,” said Desiree, with a laugh.
He frowned at her apparently in speechless anger, seeking an answer. But for the moment he could think of none, so he turned to the knives again, which he was cleaning on a board on the kitchen-table. At length he paused and glanced at Desiree.
“And your husband,” he said slowly. “Remember that he is a partner with this De Casimir. They hunt together. I know it; for I was in Moscow. Ah! that makes you stand stiffly, and push your chin out.”
He went on cleaning the knives, and, without looking at her, seemed to be speaking his own thoughts aloud.
“Yes! He is a traitor. And he is worse than the other; for he is no Pole, but a Frenchman. And if he returns to France, the Emperor will say: 'Where are my despatches, my maps, my papers, which were given into your care?'”
He finished the thought with three gestures, which seemed to illustrate the placing of a man against a wall and shooting him. His meaning could not be mistaken.
“And that is what the patron means when he says that Monsieur Charles Darragon will not return to Dantzig. I knew that he meant that last night, when he was so angry--on the mat.”
“And why did you not tell me?”
Barlasch looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, before replying slowly and impressively.
“Because, if I had told you, you might have decided to quit Dantzig with Mademoiselle Mathilde, and go hunting your husband in a country overrun by desperate fugitives and untamed Cossacks. And I did not want that. I want you here--in Dantzig; in the Frauengasse; in this kitchen; under my hand--so that I can take care of you till the war is over. I--who speak to you--Papa Barlasch, at your service. And there is not another man in the world who will do it so well. No; not one.”
And his eyes flashed as he threw the knives into a drawer.
“But why should you do all this for me?” asked Desiree. “You could have gone home to France--quite easily--and have left us to our fate here in Dantzig. Why did you not go home?”
Barlasch looked at her with surprise, not unmixed with a sudden dumb disappointment. He was preparing to go out according to his wont immediately after breakfast; for Lisa had unconsciously hit the mark when she compared him to a cat. He had the regular and self-contained habits of that unobtrusive friend. He buttoned his rough coat slowly, and looked round the kitchen with eyes dimly wistful. He was very old and ragged and homeless.
“Is it not enough,” he said, “that we are friends?”
He went towards the door, but came back and warned her by the familiar upheld finger not to let her attention wander from his words.
“You will be glad yet that I have stayed. It is because I speak a little plainly of your husband that you wish me gone. Bah! What does it matter? All men are alike. We are only men--not angels. And you can go on loving him all the same. You are not particular, you women. You can love anything--even a man like that.”
And he went out muttering anathemas on the hearts of all women.
“It seems,” he said, “that a woman can love anything.”
Which is true; and a very good thing for some of us. For without that Heaven-sent capacity the world could not go on at all.
It was later in the day when Barlasch made his way into the low and smoke-grimed Bier Halle of the Weissen Ross'l. He must have known Sebastian's habits, for he went straight to that corner of the great room where the violin-player usually sat. The stout waitress--a country girl of no intelligence, smiled broadly at the sight of such a ragged customer as she followed him down the length of the sawdust-strewn floor.
Sebastian's face showed no surprise when he looked up and recognized the new-comer. The surrounding tables were empty. It was too early in the evening for the regular customers, whose numbers, moreover, had been sadly thinned during the last few months. For the peaceful Dantzigers, remembering the siege of seven years ago, had mostly fled at the first mention of the word.
Sebastian nodded in answer to Barlasch's somewhat ceremonious bow, and by a gesture invited him to be seated on the chair upon which he had already laid his hand. The atmosphere of the room was warm, and Barlasch laid aside his sheepskin coat, as he had seen the great and the rich divest themselves of their sables. He turned sharply and caught the waitress with an amused smile still on her face. He drew her attention to a little pool of beer on the table, and stood until she had made good this lapse in her duty. Then he pointed to Sebastian's mug of beer and dismissed her giggling, to get one for him of the same size and contents.
Making sure that there was no one within earshot, he waited until Sebastian's dreamy eye met his, and then said-- “It is time we understood each other.”
A light of surprise--passing and half-indifferent--flashed into Sebastian's eyes and vanished again at once when he saw Barlasch had meant nothing: made no sign or countersign with his hand.
“By all means, my friend,” he answered.
“I delivered your letters,” said Barlasch, “at Thorn and at the other places.”
“I know; I have already had answers. You would be wise to forget the incident.”
Barlasch shrugged his shoulders.
“You were paid,” said Sebastian, jumping to a natural conclusion.
“A little,” admitted Barlasch, “a small little--but it was not that. I always get paid in advance, when I can. Except by the Emperor. He owes me some--that citizen. It was another question. In the house I am friends with all--with Lisa who has gone--with Mademoiselle Mathilde who has gone--with Mademoiselle Desiree, so-called Madame Darragon, who remains. With all except you. Why should we not be friends?”
“But we are friends--” protested Sebastian, with a bow. As if in confirmation of the statement, he held out his beer-mug, and Barlasch touched it with the rim of his own before drinking. Sebastian's attitude, his bow, his manner of drinking, were those of the Court; Barlasch was distinctly of the camp. But these were strange days, and all society had been turned topsy-turvy by one man.
“Then,” said Barlasch, licking his lips, “let us understand one another. You say there will be no siege. I say you are wrong. You think that the Dantzigers will rise in answer to the Emperor Alexander's proclamations, and turn the French out. I say the Dantzigers' stomachs are too big. I say that Rapp will hold Dantzig, and that the Russians will not take it by storm, because they are too weak. There will be a siege, and a long one. Are you and Mademoiselle and I going to sit it out in the Frauengasse together?”
“We shall be honoured to have you as our guest,” answered Sebastian, with that levity which went before the Revolution, and was never understood of the people.
Barlasch did not understand it. He glanced doubtfully at his companion, and sipped his beer.
“Then I will begin to-night.”
“Begin what, my friend?”
Barlasch waved aside all petty detail.
“My preparations. I go out about ten o'clock--after you are in. I will take the key of the front door, and let myself in when I come back. I shall make two journeys. Under the kitchen floor is a large hollow space. I fill that with bags of corn.”
“But where will you get the corn, my friend?”
“I know where to get it--corn and other things. Salt I have already--enough for a year. Other things I can get for three months.”
“But we have no money to pay for them.”
“Bah!”
“You mean you will steal them,” suggested Sebastian, not without a ring of contempt in his mincing voice.
“A soldier never steals,” answered Barlasch, carelessly announcing a great truth.
Sebastian laughed. It was obvious that his mind, absorbed in great thought, heeded small things not at all. His companion pushed his fur cap to the back of his head, and ruffled his hair forward.
“That is not all,” he said at length. He looked round the vast room, which was almost deserted. The stout waitress was polishing pewter mugs at the bar. “You say you have already had answers to those letters. It is a great organization--your secret society--whatever it is called. It delivers letters all over Prussia--eh? and Poland perhaps--or farther still.”
Sebastian shrugged one shoulder, and made no answer for some time.
“I have already told you,” he said impatiently, at length, “to forget the incident; you were paid.”
By way of reply, the old soldier laboriously emptied his pockets, searching the most remote of them for small copper coins. He counted slowly and carefully until he had made up a thaler.
“But it is not my turn to be paid this time. It is I who pay.”
He held out his hand with a pound weight of base metal in it, but Sebastian refused the money with a sudden assumption of his cold and scornful manner, oddly out of keeping with his humble surroundings.
“As between friends--” suggested Barlasch, and, on receiving a more decided negative, returned the coins to his pocket, not without satisfaction.
“I want your friends to pass on a letter for me--I am willing to pay,” he said in a whisper. “A letter to Captain Louis d'Arragon--it concerns the happiness of Mademoiselle Desiree. Do not shake your head. Think before you refuse. The letter will be an open one--six words or so--telling the Captain that his cousin, Mademoiselle's husband, is not in Dantzig, and cannot now return here since the last of the rearguard entered the city this morning.”
Sebastian seemed to be considering the matter, and Barlasch was quick to combat possible objections.
“The Captain went to Konigsberg. He is there now. Your friends can easily find him, and give him the letter. It is of great importance to Mademoiselle. The Captain is not looking for Monsieur Charles Darragon, because he thinks that he is here in Dantzig. Colonel de Casimir assured him that Mademoiselle would find him here. Where is he--that Monsieur Charles--I wonder? It is of great importance to Mademoiselle. The Captain would perhaps continue his search.”
“Where is your letter?” asked Sebastian.
By way of reply, Barlasch laid on the table a sheet of paper.
“You must write it,” he said. “My hand is injured. I write not badly, you understand. But this evening I do not feel that my hand is well enough.”
So, with the sticky, thick ink of the Weissen Ross'l, Sebastian wrote the letter, and Barlasch, forgetting his scholarly acquirements, took the pen and made a mark beneath his own name written at the foot of it.
Then he went out, and left Sebastian to pay for the beer.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
26
|
ON THE BRIDGE.
|
They that are above Have ends in everything.
A lame man was standing on the bridge that crosses the Neuer Pregel from the Kant Strasse--which is the centre of the city of Konigsberg--to the island known as the Kneiphof. This bridge is called the Kramer Brucke, and may be described as the heart of the town. From it on either hand diverge the narrow streets that run along the river bank, busy with commerce, crowded with the narrow sleighs that carry wood from the Pregel up into the town.
The wider streets--such as the Kant Strasse, running downhill from the royal castle to the river, and the Kneiphof'sche Langgasse, leading southward to the Brandenburg gate and the great world--must needs make use of the Kramer Brucke. Here, it may be said, every man in the town must sooner or later pass in the execution of his daily business, whether he go about it on foot or in a sleigh with a pair of horses. Here the idler and those grave professors from the University, which was still mourning the death of the aged Kant, nearly always passed in their thoughtful and conscientious promenades.
Here this lame man, a cobbler by trade, plying his quiet calling in a house in the Neuer Markt, where the lime-trees grow close to the upper windows, had patiently kept watch for three days. He was, like many lame men, of an abnormal width and weight. He had a large, square, dogged face, which seemed to promise that he would wait there till the crack of doom rather than abandon a quest.
It was very cold--mid-winter within a few miles of the frozen Baltic on the very verge of Russia, at that point where old Europe stretches a long arm out into the unknown. The cobbler was wrapped in a sheepskin coat, which stood out all round him with the stiffness of wood, so that he seemed to be living inside a box. To keep himself warm he occasionally limped across from end to end of the bridge, but never went farther. At times he leant his arms on the stone wall at the Kant Strasse end of the bridge, and looked down into the Lower Fish Market, where women from Pillau and the Baltic shores--mere bundles of clothes--stood over their baskets of fish frozen hard like sticks. It was a silent market. One cannot haggle long when a minute's exposure to the air will give a frost-bite to the end of the nose. The would-be purchaser can scarcely make an effective bargain through a fringe of icicles that rattle against his lips if he open them.
The Pregel had been frozen for three months, with only the one temporary thaw in November which cost Napoleon so many thousands at his broken bridge across the Beresina. Though no water had flowed beneath this bridge, many strange feet had passed across it.
It had vibrated beneath Napoleon's heavy carriage, under the lumbering guns that Macdonald took northward to blockade Riga. Within the last few weeks it had given passage to the last of the retreating army, a mere handful of heartsick fugitives. Macdonald with his staff had been ignominiously driven across it by the Cossacks who followed hard after them, the great marshal still wild with rage at the defection of Yorck and the Prussian contingent.
And now the Cossacks on their spare and ill-tempered horses passed to and fro, wild men under an untamed leader whose heart was hardened to stone by bereavement. The cobbler looked at them with a countenance of wood. It was hard to say whether he preferred them to the French, or was indifferent to one as to the other. He looked at their boots with professional disdain. For all men must look at the world from their own standpoint and consider mankind in the light of their own interests. Thus those who live on the greed or the vanity, or batten on the charity of their neighbour, learn to watch the lips.
The cobbler, by reason of looking at the lower end of men, attracted little attention from the passer-by. He who has his eyes on the ground passes unheeded. For the surest way of awakening interest is to appear interested. It would seem that this cobbler was waiting for a pair of boots not made in Konigsberg. And on the third day his expressionless black eyes lighted on feet not shod in Poland, or France, or Germany, nor yet in square-toed Russia.
The owner of these far-travelled boots was a lightly-built dark-faced man, with eyes quietly ubiquitous. He caught the interested glance of the cobbler, and turned to look at him again with the uneasiness that is bred of war. The cobbler instantly hobbled towards him.
“Will you help a poor man?” he said.
“Why should I?” was the answer, with one hand already half out of its thick glove. “You are not hungry; you have never been starved in your life.”
The German was quick enough, but it was not quite the Prussian German.
The cobbler looked at the speaker slowly.
“An Englishman?” he asked.
And the other nodded.
“Come this way.”
The cobbler hobbled towards the Kneiphof, where the streets are quiet, and the Englishman followed him. At the corner of the Kohl Markt he turned and looked, not at the man, but at his boots.
“You are a sailor?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I was told to look for an English sailor--Louis d'Arragon.”
“Then you have found me,” was the reply.
Still the cobbler hesitated.
“How am I to know it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Can you read?” asked D'Arragon. “I can prove who I am--if I want to. But I am not sure that I want to.”
“Oh! it is only a letter--of no importance. Some private business of your own. It comes from Dantzig--written by one whose name begins with 'B.'” “Barlasch,” suggested D'Arragon quietly, as he took from his pocket a paper which he unfolded and held beneath the eyes of the cobbler. It was a passport written in three languages. If the man could read, he was not anxious to boast of an accomplishment so far above his station; but he glanced at the paper, not without a practised skill, to seize the essential parts of it.
“Yes, that is the name,” he said, searching in his pockets. “The letter is an open one. Here it is.”
In passing the letter, the man made a scarcely perceptible movement of the hand which might have been a signal.
“No,” said D'Arragon, “I do not belong to the Tugendbund or to any other secret society. We have need of no such associations in my country.”
The cobbler laughed, not without embarrassment.
“You have a quick eye,” he said. “It is a great country, England. I have seen the river full of English ships before Napoleon chased you off the seas.”
D'Arragon smiled as he unfolded the letter.
“He has not done it yet,” he said, with that spirit which enables mariners of the Anglo-Saxon race to be amused when there is a talk of supremacy on the high seas. He read the letter carefully, and his face hardened.
“I was instructed,” said the cobbler, “to give you the letter, and at the same time to inform you that any assistance or facilities you may require will be forth-coming; besides...” he broke off and pointed with his thick, leather-stained finger, “that writing is not the writing of him who signs.”
“He who signs cannot write at all.”
“That writing,” went on the cobbler, “is a passport in any German state. He who carries a letter written in that hand can live and travel free anywhere from here to the Rhine or the Danube.”
“Then I am lucky in possessing a powerful friend,” said D'Arragon, “for I know who wrote this letter. I think I may say he is a friend of mine.”
“I am sure of it. I have already been told so,” said the cobbler. “Have you a lodging in Konigsberg? No? Then you can lodge in my house.”
Without awaiting a reply, which he seemed to consider a foregone conclusion, he limped down the Kohl Markt towards the steps leading to the river, which in winter is a thoroughfare.
“I live in the Neuer Markt,” he said breathlessly, as he laboured onwards. “I have waited for you three days on that bridge. Where have you been all this time?”
“Avoiding the French,” replied D'Arragon curtly. Respecting his own affairs he was reticent, as commanders and other lonely men must always be. They walked side by side on the dusty and trodden ice without further speech. At the steps from the river to Neuer Markt, D'Arragon gave the lame man his hand, and glanced a second time at the fingers which clasped his own. They had not been born to toil, but had had it thrust upon them.
They crossed the Neuer Markt together, and went into that house where the linden grows so close as to obscure the windows. And the lodging offered to Louis was the room in which Charles Darragon had slept in his wet clothes six months earlier. So small is the world in which we live, and so narrow are the circles drawn by Fate around human existence and endeavour.
The cobbler having shown his visitor the room, and pointed out its advantages, was turning to go when D'Arragon, who was laying aside his fur coat, seemed to catch his attention, and he paused on the threshold.
“There is French blood in your veins,” he said abruptly.
“Yes--a little.”
“So. I thought there must be. You reminded me--it was odd, the way you laid aside your coat--reminded me of a Frenchman who lodged here for one night. He was like you, too, in build and face. He was a spy, if you please--one of the French Emperor's secret police. I was new at the work then, but still I suspected there was something wrong about him. I took his boots--a pretext of mending them. I locked him in. He got out of that window, if you please, without his boots. He followed me, and learnt much that he was not meant to know. I have since heard it from others. He did the Emperor a great service--that man. He saved his life, I think, from assassination in Dantzig. And he did me an ill turn--but it was my own carelessness. I thought to make a thaler by lodging him, and he was tricking me all the while.”
“What was his name?” asked D'Arragon.
“Oh--I forgot the name he gave. It was a false one. He was disguised as a common soldier--and he was in reality an officer of the staff. But I know the name of the officer to whom he wrote his report of his night's lodging here--his colleague in the secret police, it would seem.”
“Ah!” said D'Arragon, busying himself with his haversack.
“It was De Casimir--a Polish name. And in the last two days I have heard of him. He has accepted the Emperor's amnesty. He has married a beautiful woman, and is living like a prince at Cracow. All this since the siege of Dantzig began. In time of war there is no moment to lose, eh?”
“And the other? He who slept in this room. Has he passed through Konigsberg again?”
“No, that he has not. If he had, I should have seen him. You can believe me, I wanted to see him. I was at my place on the bridge all the time--while the French occupied Konigsberg--when the last of them hurried away a month ago with the Cossacks close behind. No. I should have seen him, and known him. He is not on this side of the Niemen, that fine young gentleman. Now, what can I do to help you to-morrow?”
“You can help me on the way to Vilna,” answered D'Arragon.
“You will never get there.”
“I will try,” said the sailor.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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27
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A FLASH OF MEMORY.
|
Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven, No pyramids set off his memories, But the eternal substance of his greatness To which I leave him.
“Why I will not let you go out into the streets?” said Barlasch one February morning, stamping the snow from his boots. “Why I will not let you go out into the streets?”
He turned and followed Desiree towards the kitchen, after having carefully bolted the heavy oaken door which had been strengthened as if to resist a siege. Desiree's face had that clear pallor which marks an indoor life; but Barlasch, weather-beaten, scorched and wrinkled, showed no sign of having endured a month's siege in an overcrowded city.
“I will tell you why I will not let you go into the streets. Because they are not fit for any woman to go into--because if you walked from here to the Rathhaus you would see sights that would come back to you in your sleep, and wake you from it, when you are an old woman. Do you know what they do with their dead? They throw them outside their doors--with nothing to cover their starved nakedness--as Lisa put her ashes in the street every morning. And the cart goes round, as the dustman's cart used to go in times of peace, and, like the dustman's cart, it drops part of its load, and the dust that blows round it is the infection of typhus. That is why you cannot go into the streets.”
He unbuttoned his fur coat and displayed a smart new uniform; for Rapp had put his miserable army into new clothes, with which many of the Dantzig warehouses had been filled by Napoleon's order at the beginning of the war.
“There,” he said, laying a small parcel on the table, “there is my daily ration. Two ounces of horse, one ounce of salt beef, the same as yesterday. One does not know how long we shall be treated so generously. Let us keep the beef--we may come to want some day.”
And giving a hoarse laugh, he lifted a board in the floor, beneath which he hoarded his stores.
“Will you cook your dejeuner yourself,” asked Desiree. “I have something else for my father.”
“And what have you?” asked Barlasch curtly; “you are not keeping anything hidden from me?”
“No,” answered Desiree, with a laugh at the sternness of his face, “I will give him a piece of the ham which was left over from last night.”
“Left over?” echoed Barlasch, going close to her and looking up into her face, for she was two inches taller than he. “Left over? Then you did not eat your supper last night?”
“Neither did you eat yours, for it is there under the floor.”
Barlasch turned away with a gesture of despair. He sat down in the high armchair that stood on the hearth, and tapped on the floor with one foot in pessimistic thought.
“Ah! the women, the women,” he muttered, looking into the smouldering fire. “Lies--all lies. You said that your supper was very nice,” he shouted at her over his shoulder.
“So it was,” answered she gaily, “so it is still.”
Barlasch did not rise to her lighter humour. He sat in reflection for some minutes. Then his thoughts took their usual form of a muttered aside.
“It is a case of compromise. Always like that. The good God had to compromise with the first woman he created almost at once. And men have done it ever since--and have never had the best of it. See here,” he said aloud, turning to Desiree, “I will make a bargain with you. I will eat my last night's supper here at this table, now, if you will eat yours.”
“Agreed.”
“Are you hungry?” asked Barlasch, when the scanty meal was set out before him.
“Yes.”
“So am I.” He laughed quite gaily now, and the meal was not without a certain air of festivity, though it consisted of nothing better than two ounces of horse and half an ounce of ham eaten in company of that rye-bread made with one-third part of straw which Rapp allowed the citizens to buy.
For Rapp had first tamed his army, and was now taming the Dantzigers. He had effected discipline in his own camp by getting his regiments into shape, by establishing hospitals (which were immediately filled), and by protecting the citizens from the depredations of the starving fugitives who had been poured pell-mell into the town.
Then he turned his attention to the Dantzigers, who were openly or secretly opposed to him. He seized their churches and turned them into stores; their schools he used for hospitals, their monasteries for barracks. He broke into their cellars, and took the wine for the sick. Their storehouses he placed under the strictest guard, and no man could claim possession of his own goods.
“We are,” he said in effect, with that grim Alsatian humour which the Prussians were slow to understand; “we are one united family in a narrow house, and it is I who keep the storeroom key.”
Barlasch had proved to be no false prophet. His secret store escaped the vigilance of the picket, whom he himself conducted to the cellars in the Frauengasse. Although he was sparing enough, he could always provide Desiree with anything for which she expressed a wish, and even forestalled those which she left unspoken. In return he looked for absolute obedience, and after their frugal breakfast he took her to task for depriving herself of such food as they could afford.
“See you,” he said, “a siege is a question of the stomach. It is not the Russians we have to fight; for they will not fight. They sit outside and wait for us to die of cold, of starvation, of typhus. And we are obliging them at the rate of two hundred a day. Yes, each day Rapp is relieved of the responsibility of two hundred mouths that drop open and require nothing more. Be greedy--eat all you have, and hope for release to-morrow, and you die. Be sparing--starve yourself from parsimony or for the love of some one who will eat your share and forget to thank you, and you will die of typhus. Be careful, and patient, and selfish--eat a little, take what exercise you can, cook your food carefully with salt, and you will live. I was in a siege thirty years before you were born, and I am alive yet, after many others. Obey me and we will get through the siege of Dantzig, which is only just beginning.”
Then suddenly he gave way to anger, and banged his hand down on the table.
“But, sacred name of thunder, do not make me believe you have eaten when you have not,” he shouted. “Never do that.”
Carried away by the importance of this question, he said many things which cannot be set before the eyes of a generation sensitive to plainness of speech, and only tolerant of it in suggestions of impropriety.
“And the patron,” he ended abruptly, “how is he?”
“He is not very well,” answered Desiree. Which answer did not satisfy Barlasch, who insisted on taking off his boots, and going upstairs to see Sebastian.
It was a mere nothing, the invalid said. Such food did not suit him.
“You have been accustomed to live well all your life,” answered Barlasch, looking at him with the puzzled light of a baffled memory in his eye which always came when he looked at Desiree's father. “One must see what can be done.”
And he went out forthwith to return after an hour and more with a chicken freshly killed. Desiree did not ask him where he had procured it. She had given up such inquiries, for Barlasch always confessed quite bluntly to theft, and she did not know whether to believe him or not.
But the change of diet had no beneficial effect, and the next day Desiree sent Barlasch to the house of the doctor whose practice lay in the Frauengasse. He came and shook his head bluntly. For even an old doctor may be hardened at the end of his life by an orgy, as it were, of death.
“I could cure him,” he said, “if there were no Russians outside the walls; if I could give him fresh milk and good brandy and strong soup.”
But even Barlasch could not find milk in Dantzig. The brandy was forthcoming, and the fresh meat; the soup Desiree made with her own hands. Sebastian had not been the same man since the closing of the roads and the gradual death of his hopes that the Dantzigers would rise against the soldiers that thronged their streets. At one time it would have been easy to carry out such a movement, and to throw themselves and their city upon the mercy of the Russians. But Dantzig awoke to this possibility too late, when Rapp's iron hand had closed in upon it. He knew his own strength so well that he treated with a contemptuous leniency such citizens as were convicted of communicating with the enemy.
Sebastian's friends seemed to have deserted him. Perhaps it was not discreet to be seen in the company of one who had come under Napoleon's displeasure. Some had quitted the city after hurriedly concealing their valuables in their gardens, behind the chimneys, beneath the floors, where it is to be supposed they still lie hidden. Others were among the weekly thousand or twelve hundred who were carted out by the Oliva Gate to be thrown into huge trenches, while the waiting Russians watched from their lines on the heights of Langfuhr.
It was true that news continued to filter in, and never quite ceased, all through the terrible twelve months that were to follow. More especially did news that was unfavourable to the French find its way into the beleaguered city. But it was not authentic news, and Sebastian gathered little comfort from the fact--not unknown to the whispering citizens--that Rapp himself had heard nothing from the outer world since the Elbing mail-cart had been turned back by the first of the Cossacks on the night of the seventh of January.
Perhaps Sebastian had that most fatal of maladies--to which nearly all men come at last--weariness of life.
“Why don't you fortify yourself, and laugh at fortune?” asked Barlasch, twenty years his senior, as he stood sturdily on his stocking-feet at the sick man's bedside.
“I take what my daughter gives me,” protested Sebastian, half peevishly.
“But that does not suffice,” answered the materialist. “It does not suffice to swallow evil fortune--one must digest it.”
Sebastian made no answer. He was a quiet patient, and lay all day with wide-open, dreaming eyes. He seemed to be waiting for something. This, indeed, was his mental attitude as presented to his neighbours, and perhaps to the few friends he possessed in Dantzig. He had waited through the years during which Desiree had grown to womanhood. He waited on doggedly through the first month of the siege, without enthusiasm, without comment--without hope, perhaps. He seemed to be waiting now to get better.
“He has made little or no progress,” said the doctor, who could only give a passing glance at his patients, for he was working day and night. He had not time to beat about the bush, as his kind heart would have liked, for he had known Desiree all her life.
It was Shrove Tuesday, and the streets were full of revellers. The Neapolitans and other Southerners had made great preparations for the carnival, and the Governor had not denied them their annual licence. They had built a high car in one of the entrance yards to the Marienkirche; and finding that the ancient arch would not allow the erection to pass out into the street, they had pulled down the pious handiwork of a bygone generation.
The shouts of these merrymakers could be dimly heard through the double windows, but Sebastian made no inquiry as to the meaning of the cry. A sort of lassitude--the result of confinement within doors, of insufficient food, of waning hope--had come over Desiree. She listened heedlessly to the sounds in the streets through which the dead were passing to the Oliva Gate, while the living danced by in their hideous travesty of rejoicing.
It was dusk when Barlasch came in.
“The streets,” he said, “are full of fools, dressed as such.” Receiving no answer, he crossed the room to where Desiree sat, treading noiselessly, and stood in front of her, trying to see her averted face. He stooped down and peered at her until she could no longer hide her tear-stained eyes.
He made a wry face and a little clicking noise with his tongue, such as the women of his race make when they drop and break some household utensil. Then he went back towards the bed. Hitherto he had always observed a certain ceremoniousness of manner in the sick chamber. He laid this aside this evening, and sat down on a chair that stood near.
Thus they remained in a silence which seemed to increase with the darkness. At length the stillness became so marked that Barlasch slowly turned his head towards the bed. The same instinct had come to Desiree at the same moment.
They both rose and groped their way towards Sebastian. Desiree found the flint and struck it. The sulphur burnt blue for interminable moments, and then flared to meet the wick of the candle. Barlasch watched Desiree as she held the light down to her father's face. Sebastian's waiting was over. Barlasch had not needed a candle to recognize death.
From Desiree his bright and restless eyes turned slowly towards the dead man's face--and he stepped back.
“Ah!” he said, with a hoarse cry of surprise, “now I remember. I was always sure that I had seen his face before. And when I saw it it was like that--like the face of a dead man. It was on the Place de la Nation, on a tumbrel--going to the guillotine. He must have escaped, as many did, by some accident or mistake.”
He went slowly to the window, holding his shaggy head between his two clenched hands as if to spur his memory to an effort. Then he turned and pointed to the silent form on the bed.
“That is a noble of France,” he said; “one of the greatest. And all France thinks him dead this twenty years. And I cannot remember his name--goodness of God--I cannot remember his name!”
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
28
|
VILNA.
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It is our trust That there is yet another world to mend All error and mischance.
Louis d'Arragon knew the road well enough from Konigsberg to the Niemen. It runs across a plain, flat as a table, through which many small streams seek their rivers in winding beds. This country was not thinly inhabited, though the villages had been stripped, as foliage is stripped by a cloud of locusts. Each cottage had its ring of silver birch-trees to protect it from the winds which sweep from the Baltic and the steppe. These had been torn and broken down by the retreating army, in a vain hope of making fire with green wood.
It was quite easy to keep in the steps of the retreating army, for the road was marked by recumbent forms huddled on either side. Few vehicles had come so far, for the broken country near to Vilna and around Kowno had presented slopes up which the starving horses were unable to drag their load.
D'Arragon reached Kowno without mishap, and there found a Russian colonel of Cossacks who proved friendly enough, and not only appreciated the value of his passport and such letters of recommendation as he had been able to procure at Konigsberg, but gave him others, and forwarded him on his journey.
He still nourished a lingering belief in De Casimir's word. Charles must have been left behind at Vilna to recover from his exhaustion. He would, undoubtedly, make his way westward as soon as possible. He might have got away to the South. Any one of these huddled human landmarks might be Charles Darragon.
Louis was essentially a thorough man. The sea is a mistress demanding a whole and concentrated attention--and concentration soon becomes a habit. Louis did not travel at night, for fear of passing Charles on the road, alive or dead. He knew his cousin better than any in the Frauengasse had learnt to know this gay and inconsequent Frenchman. A certain cunning lay behind the happy laugh--a great capacity was hidden by the careless manner. If ready wit could bring man through the dangers of the retreat, Charles had as good a chance of surviving as any.
Nevertheless, Louis rarely passed a dead man on the road, but drew up, and quitting his sleigh, turned over the body, which was almost invariably huddled with its back offered to the deadly, prevailing North wind. Against each this wind had piled a sloping bank of that fine snow which, even in the lightest breeze, drifts over the surface of the land like an ivory mist, waist high, and cakes the clothes. In a high wind it will rise twenty feet in the air, and blind any who try to face it.
As often as not a mere glance sufficed to show that this was not Charles, for few of the bodies were clad. Many had been stripped, while still living, by their half-frozen comrades. But sometimes Louis had to dust the snow from strange bearded faces before he could pass on with a quick sigh of relief.
Beyond Kowno, the country is thinly populated, and spreading pine-forests bound the horizon. The Cossacks--the wild men of Toula, who reaped the laurels of the rearguard fighting--were all along the road. D'Arragon frequently came upon a picket--as often as not the men were placidly sitting on a frozen corpse, as on a seat--and stopped to say a few words and gather news.
“You will find your friend at Vilna,” said one young officer, who had been attached to General Wilson's staff, and had many stories to tell of the energetic and indefatigable English commissioner. “At Vilna we took twenty thousand prisoners--poor devils who came and asked us for food--and I don't know how many officers. And if you see Wilson there, remember me to him. If Napoleon has need to hate one man more than another for this business, it is that firebrand, Wilson. Yes, you will assuredly find your cousin at Vilna among the prisoners. But you must not linger by the road, for they are being sent back to Moscow to rebuild that which they have caused to be destroyed.”
He laughed and waved his gloved hand as D'Arragon drove on.
After the broken land and low abrupt hills of Kowno, the country was flat again until the valley of the Vilia opened out. And here, almost within sight of Vilna, D'Arragon drove down a short hill which must ever be historic. He drove slowly, for on either side were gun-carriages deep sunken in the snow where the French had left them. This hill marked the final degeneration of the Emperor's army into a shapeless rabble hopelessly flying before an exhausted enemy.
Half on the road and half in the ditch were hundreds of carriages which had been hurriedly smashed up to provide firewood. Carts, still laden with the booty of Moscow, stood among the trees. Some of them contained small square boxes of silver coin, brought by Napoleon to pay his army and here abandoned. Silver coin was too heavy to carry. The rate of exchange had long been sixty francs in silver for a gold napoleon or a louis. The cloth coverings of the cushions had been torn off to shape into rough garments; the straw stuffing had been eaten by the horses.
Inside the carriages were--crouching on the floor--the frozen bodies of fugitives too badly wounded or too ill to attempt to walk. They had sat there till death came to them. Many were women. In one carriage four women, in silks and fine linen, were huddled together. Their furs had been dragged from them either before or after death.
Louis stopped at the bottom and looked back. De Casimir at all events had succeeded in surmounting this obstacle which had proved fatal to so many--the grave of so many hopes--God's rubbish-heap, where gold and precious stones, silks and priceless furs, all that greedy men had schemed and striven and fought to get, fell from their hands at last.
Vilna lies all down a slope--a city built upon several hills--and the Vilia runs at the bottom. That Way of Sorrow, the Smolensk Road, runs eastward by the river bank, and here the rearguard held the Cossacks in check while Murat hastily decamped, after dark, westwards to Kowno. The King of Naples, to whom Napoleon gave the command of his broken army quite gaily--“a vous, Roi de Naples,” he is reported to have said, as he hurried to his carriage--Murat abandoned his sick and wounded; did not even warn the stragglers.
D'Arragon entered the city by the narrow gate known as the Town Gate, through which, as through that greater portal of Moscow, every man must pass bareheaded.
“The Emperor is here,” were the first words spoken to him by the officer on guard.
But the streets were quiet enough, and the winner in this great game of chance maintained the same unostentatious silence in victory as that which, in the hour of humiliation, had baffled Napoleon.
It was almost night, and D'Arragon had been travelling since daylight. He found a lodging, and, having secured the comfort of the horse provided by the lame shoemaker of Konigsberg, he went out into the streets in search of information.
Few cities are, to this day, so behind the times as Vilna. The streets are still narrow, winding, ill-paved, ill-lighted. When D'Arragon quitted his lodging, he found no lights at all, for the starving soldiers had climbed to the lamps for the sake of the oil, which they had greedily drunk. It was a full moon, however, and the patrols at the street corners were willing to give such information as they could. They were strangers to Vilna like Louis himself, and not without suspicion; for this was a city which had bidden the French welcome. There had been dancing and revelry on the outward march. The citizens themselves were afraid of the strange, wild-eyed men who returned to them from Moscow.
At last, in the Episcopal Palace, where head-quarters had been hurriedly established, Louis found the man he sought, the officer in charge of the arrangements for despatching prisoners into Russia and to Siberia. He was a grizzled warrior of the old school, speaking only French and Russian. He was tired out and hungry, but he listened to Louis' story.
“There is the list,” he said, “it is more or less complete. Many have called themselves officers who never held a commission from the Emperor Napoleon. But we have done what we can to sort them out.”
So Louis sat down in the dimly lighted room and deciphered the names of those officers who had been left behind, detained by illness or wounds or the lack of spirit to persevere.
“You understand,” said the Russian, returning to his work, “I cannot afford the time to help you. We have twenty-five thousand prisoners to feed and keep alive.”
“Yes--I understand,” answered Louis, who had the seaman's way of making himself a part of his surroundings.
The old colonel glanced at him across the table with a grim smile.
“The Emperor,” he said, “was sitting in that chair an hour ago. He may come back at any moment.”
“Ah!” said Louis, following the written lines with a pencil.
But no interruption came, and at last the list was finished. Charles was not among the officers taken prisoner at Vilna.
“Well?” inquired the Russian, without looking up.
“Not there.”
The old officer took a sheet of paper and hurriedly wrote a few words on it.
“Try the Basile Hospital to-morrow morning,” he said. “That will gain you admittance. It is to be cleared out by the Emperor's orders. We have about twenty thousand dead to dispose of as well--but they are in no hurry.”
He laughed grimly, and bade Louis good night.
“Come to me again,” he called out after him, drawn by a sudden chord of sympathy to this stranger, who had the rare capacity of confining himself to the business in hand.
By daybreak the next morning Louis was at the hospital of St. Basile. It had been prepared by the Duc de Bassano under Napoleon's orders when Vilna was selected as the base of the great army. When the Russians entered Vilna after the retreating remnant of Murat's rabble, they found the dead and the dying in the streets and the market-place. Some had made fires and had lain themselves down around them--to die. Others were without food or firing, almost without clothes. Many were barefoot. All, officers and men alike, were in rags. It was a piteous sight; for half of these men were no longer human. Some were gnawing at their own limbs. Many were blind, others had lost their speech or hearing. Nearly all were marred by some disfigurement--some terrible sore, the result of a frozen wound, of frostbite, of scurvy, of gangrene.
The Cossacks, half civilized as they were, wild with the excitement of killing and the chase of a human quarry, stood aghast in the streets of Vilna.
When the Emperor arrived, he set to work to clear the streets first, to get these piteous men indoors. There was no question yet of succouring them. It was not even possible to feed them all. The only thought was to find them some protection against the ruthless cold.
The first thought was, of course, directed to the hospitals. They looked in and saw a storehouse of the dead. The dead could wait; but the living must be housed.
So the dead waited, and it was their turn now at the St. Basile Hospital, where Louis presented himself at dawn.
“Looking for some one?” asked a man in uniform, who must have been inside the hospital, for he hurried down the steps with a set mouth and quailing eyes.
“Yes.”
“Then don't go in--wait here.”
Louis looked in and took the doctor's advice. The dead were stored in the passages, one on the top of the other, like bales of goods in a warehouse.
Some attempt seemed to have been made to clear the wards, but those whose task it had been had not had time to do more than drag the dead out into the passage.
The soldiers were now at work in the lower passage. Carts began to arrive. An officer told off to this dread duty came up hurriedly smoking a cigarette, his high fur collar about his ears. He glanced at Louis, and bowed to him.
“Looking for some one?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then stand here beside me. It is I who have to keep count. They say there are eight thousand in here. They will be carried past here to the carts. Have a cigarette.”
It is hard to talk when the thermometer registers more than twenty degrees of frost, for the lips stiffen and contract into wrinkles like the lips of a very old woman. Perhaps neither of the watchers was in the humour to begin an acquaintance.
They stood side by side, stamping their feet to keep the blood going, without speaking. Once or twice Louis stepped forward, and at a signal from the officer the bearers stopped. But Louis shook his head, and they passed on. At midday the officer was relieved, his place being taken by another, who bowed stiffly to Louis and took no more notice of him. For war either hardens or softens. It never leaves a man as it found him.
All day the work was carried on. Through the hours this procession of the bearded dead went silently by. At the invitation of a sergeant, Louis took some soup and bread from the soldiers' table. The men laughingly apologized for the quality of both.
Towards evening the officer who had first come on duty returned to his work.
“Not yet?” he asked, offering the inevitable cigarette.
“Not yet,” answered Louis, and even as he spoke he stepped forward and stopped the bearers. He brushed aside the matted hair and beard.
“Is that your friend?” asked the officer.
“Yes.”
It was Charles at last.
“The doctor says these have been dead two months,” volunteered the first bearer, over his shoulder.
“I am glad you have found him,” said the officer, signing to the men to go on with their burden. “It is better to know--is it not?”
“Yes,” answered Louis slowly. “It is better to know.”
And something in his voice made the Russian officer turn and watch him as he went away.
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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29
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THE BARGAIN.
|
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, But dream of him and guess where he may be, And do their best to climb and get to him.
“Oh yes,” Barlasch was saying, “it is easier to die--it is that that you are thinking--it is easier to die.”
Desiree did not answer. She was sitting in the little kitchen at the back of the house in the Frauengasse. For they had no firing now, and were burning the furniture. Her father had been buried a week. The siege was drawn closer than ever. There was nothing to eat, nothing to do, no one to talk to. For Sebastian's political friends did not dare to come near his house. Desiree was alone in this hopeless world with Barlasch, who was on duty now in one of the trenches near the river. He went out in the morning, and only returned at night. He had just come in, and she could see by the light of the single candle that his face was grey and haggard, with deep lines drawn downwards from eyes to chin. Desiree's own face had lost all its roundness and the bloom of her northern girlhood.
Barlasch glanced at her, and bit his lip. He had brought nothing with him. At one time he had always managed to bring something to the house every day--a chicken, or a turnip, or a few carrots. But to-night there was nothing. And he was tired out. He did not sit down, however, but stood breathing on his fingers and rubbing them together to restore circulation. He pushed the candle farther forward on the table, so that it cast a better light upon her face.
“Yes,” he said, “it is often so. I, who speak to you, have seen it so a dozen times in my life. When it is easier to sit down and die. Bah! That is a fine thing to do--a brave thing--to sit down and die.”
“I am not going to do it, so do not make that mistake,” said Desiree, with a laugh that had no mirth in it.
“But you would like to. Listen. It is not what you feel that matters; it is what you do. Remember that.”
There was an unusual vigour in his voice. Of late, since the death of Sebastian, Barlasch seemed to have fallen victim to the settled apathy which lives within a prison wall and broods over a besieged city. It is a sort of silent mourning worn by the soul for a lost liberty. Dantzig had soon succumbed to it, for the citizens had not even the satisfaction of being quite sure that they were deserving of the world's sympathy. It soon spread to the soldiers who were defending a Prussian city for a French Emperor who seemed to have forgotten them.
But to-night Barlasch seemed to be more energetic. Desiree looked round over her shoulder. He had not laid on the table any contribution to a bare larder; and yet his manner was that of one who has prepared a surprise and is waiting to enjoy its effect. He was restless, moving from one foot to another, rubbing together his crooked fingers and darting sidelong glances at her face.
“What is it?” she asked suddenly, and Barlasch gave a start as if he had been detected in some deceit. He bustled forward to the smouldering fire and held his hands over it.
“It is that it is very cold to-night,” he answered, with that exaggerated ease of manner with which the young and the simple seek to conceal embarrassment. “Tell me, mademoiselle, what have we for supper to-night? It is I who will cook it. To-night we will keep a fete. There is that piece of beef for you. I know a way to make it appetizing. For me there is my portion of horse. It is the friend of man--the horse.”
He laughed and made an effort to be gay, which had a poignant pathos in it that made Desiree bite her lip.
“What fete is it that we are to keep?” she asked, with a wan smile. Her kind blue eyes had that glitter in them which is caused by a constant and continuous hunger. Six months ago they had only been gay and kind, now they saw the world as it is, as it always must be so long as the human heart is capable of happiness and the human reason recognizes the rarity of its attainment.
“The fete of St. Matthias--my fete, mademoiselle.”
“But I thought your name was Jean.”
“So it is. But I keep my fete at St. Matthias, because on that day we won a battle in Egypt. We will have wine--a bottle of wine--eh?”
So Barlasch prepared a great feast which was to be celebrated by Desiree in the dining-room, where he lighted a fire, and by himself in the kitchen. For he held strongly to a code of social laws which the great Revolution had not succeeded in breaking. And one of these laws was that it would be in some way degrading to Desiree to see him eat.
He was a skilled and delicate cook, only hampered by that insatiable passion for economy which is the dominant characteristic of the peasant of Northern France. To-night, however, he was reckless, and Desiree could hear him searching in his secret hiding-place beneath the floor for concealed condiments and herbs.
“There,” he said, when he set the dish before her, “eat it with an easy mind. There is nothing unclean in it. It is not rat or cat or the liver of a starved horse, such as we others eat and ask no better. It is all clean meat.”
He poured out wine, and stood in the darkened doorway watching her drink it. Then he went away to his own meal in the kitchen, leaving Desiree vaguely uneasy--for he was not himself to-night. She could hear him muttering as he ate and moved hither and thither in the kitchen. At short intervals he came and looked in at the door to make sure that she was doing full honour to St. Matthias. When she had finished, he came into the room.
“Ah!” he said, glancing at her suspiciously and rubbing his hands together. “That strengthens, eh? --that strengthens. We others who lead a rough life--we know that a little food and a glass of wine fit one out for any enterprise, for--well, any catastrophe.”
And Desiree knew in a flash of comprehension that the food and the wine and the forced gaiety were nothing but preliminaries to bad news.
“What is it?” she asked a second time. “Is it... bombardment?”
“Bombardment,” he laughed, “they cannot shoot, those Cossacks. It is only the French who understand artillery.”
“Then what is it? --for you have something to tell me, I know.”
He ruffled his shock-head of white hair, with a grimace of despair.
“Yes,” he admitted, “it is news.”
“From outside?” cried Desiree, with a sudden break in her voice.
“From Vilna,” answered Barlasch. He came into the room, and went past her towards the fire, where he put the logs together carefully.
“It is that he is alive,” said Desiree, “my husband.”
“No, it is not that,” Barlasch corrected. He stood with his back to her, vaguely warming his hands. He had no learning, nor manners, nor any polish: nothing but those instincts of the heart that teach the head. And his instinct bade him turn his back on Desiree, and wait in silence until she had understood his meaning.
“Dead?” she asked, in a whisper.
And, still warming his hands, he nodded his head vigorously. He waited a long time for her to speak, and at last broke the silence himself without looking round.
“Troubles,” he said, “troubles for us all. There is no avoiding them. One can only push against them as against your cold wind of Dantzig that comes from the sea. One can only push on. You must push, mademoiselle.”
“When did he die?” asked Desiree; “where?”
“At Vilna, three months ago. He has been dead three months. I knew he was dead when you came back to the inn at Thorn, and told me that you had seen De Casimir. De Casimir had left him dying--that liar. You remember, I met a comrade on the road--one of my own country--he told me that they had left ten thousand dead at Vilna, and twenty thousand prisoners little better than dead. And I knew then that De Casimir had left him there dying, or dead.”
He glanced back at her over his shoulder, and at the sight of her face made that little click in his throat which, in peasant circles, denotes a catastrophe. Then he shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Listen,” he said roughly, “the good God knows best. I knew when I saw you first, that day in June, in this kitchen, that you were beginning your troubles; for I knew the reputation of Monsieur, your husband. He was not what you thought him. A man is never what a woman thinks him. But he was worse than most. And this trouble that has come to you is chosen by the good God--and he has chosen the least in his sack for you. You will know it some day--as I know it now.”
“You know a great deal,” said Desiree, who was quick in speech, and he swung round on his heel to meet her spirit.
“You are right,” he said, pointing his accusatory finger. “I know a great deal about you--and I am a very old man.”
“How did you learn this news from Vilna?” she asked, and his hand went up to his mouth as if to hide his thoughts and control his lips.
“From one who comes straight from there--who buried your husband there.”
Desiree rose and stood with her hands resting on the table, looking at the persistent back again turned towards her.
“Who?” she asked, in little more than a whisper.
“The Captain--Louis d'Arragon.”
“And you have spoken to him to-day--here, in Dantzig?”
Barlasch nodded his head.
“Was he well?” asked Desiree, with a spontaneous anxiety that made Barlasch turn slowly and look at her from beneath his great brows.
“Oh, he was well enough,” he answered, “he is made of steel, that gentleman. He was well enough, and he has the courage of the devil. There are some fishermen who come from Zoppot to sell their fish. They steal through the Russian lines--on the ice of the river at night and come to our outposts at daylight. One of them said my name this morning. I looked at him. He was wrapped up only to show the eyes. He drew his scarf aside. It was the Captain d'Arragon.”
“And he was well?” asked Desiree again, as if nothing else in the world mattered.
“Oh, mon Dieu, yes,” cried Barlasch, impatiently, “he was well, I tell you. Do you know why he came?”
Desiree had sat down at the table again, where she leant her arms and rested her chin in the palms of her two hands; for she was weakened by starvation, and confinement, and sorrow.
“No,” she answered.
“He came because he had learnt that the patron was dead. It was known in Konigsberg a week ago. It is known all over Germany; that quiet old gentleman who scraped a fiddle here in the Frauengasse. And it is only I, in all the world, who know that he was a greater man in Paris than ever he was in Germany--with his Tugendbund--and I cannot remember his name.”
Barlasch broke off and thumped his brow with his fists, as if to awaken that dead memory. And all the while he was searching Desiree's face, with eyes made brighter and sharper than ever by starvation.
“And do you know what he came for--the Captain--for he never does anything in idleness? He will run a great risk--but it is for a great purpose. Do you know what he came for?”
“No.”
Barlasch jerked his head back and laughed.
“For you.”
He turned and looked at her; but she had raised her clasped hands to her forehead, as if to shield her eyes from the light of the candle, and he could not see her face.
“Do you remember,” said Barlasch, “that night when the patron was so angry--on the mat--when Mademoiselle Mathilde had to make her choice. It is your turn to-night. You have to make your choice. Will you go?”
“Yes,” answered Desiree, behind her fingers.
“'If Mademoiselle will come,' he said to me, 'bring her to this place!' 'Yes, mon capitaine,' answered I. 'At any cost, Barlasch?' 'At any cost, mon capitaine.' And we are not men to break our words. I will take you there--at any cost, mademoiselle. And he will meet you there--at any cost.”
And Barlasch expectorated emphatically into the fire, after the manner of low-born men.
“What a pity,” he added reflectively, “that he is only an Englishman.”
“When are we to go?” asked Desiree, still behind her barrier of clasped fingers.
“To-morrow night, after midnight. We have arranged it all--the Captain and I--at the outpost nearest to the river. He has influence. He has rendered services to the Russians, and the Russian commander will make a night attack on the outpost. In the confusion we get through. We arranged it together. He pays me well. It is a bargain, and I am to have my money. We shook hands on it, and those who saw us must have thought that I was buying fish. I, who have no money--and he, who had no fish.”
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{
"id": "8158"
}
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30
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THE FULFILMENT.
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And I have laboured somewhat in my time And not been paid profusely.
When Desiree came down the next morning, she found Barlasch talking to himself and laughing as he prepared his breakfast.
He met her with a gay salutation, and seemed unable to control his hilarity.
“It is,” he explained, “because to-night we shall be under fire. We shall be in danger. It makes me afraid, and I laugh. I cannot help it. When I am afraid, I laugh.”
He bustled about the room, and Desiree saw that he had already opened his secret store beneath the floor, to take from it such delicacies as remained.
“You slept?” he asked sharply. “Yes, I can see you did. That is good, for to-night we shall be awake. And now you must eat.”
For Barlasch was a materialist. He had fought death in one form or another all his life, and he knew that those who eat and sleep are better equipped for the battle than those who cherish high ideals or think great thoughts.
“It is a good thing,” he said, looking at her, “that you are so slim. In a military coat--if you put on that short dress in which you skate, and your high boots--you will look like a soldier. It is a good thing that it is winter, for you can wear the hood of your military coat over your head, as they all do out in the trenches to keep their ears from falling. So you need not cut off your hair--all that golden hair. Name of thunder, that would be a pity, would it not?”
He turned to the fire and stirred his coffee reflectively.
“In my own country,” he said, “a long time ago, there was a girl who had hair like yours. That is why we are friends, perhaps.”
He gave a queer, short laugh, and took up his sheepskin coat preparatory to going out.
“I have my preparations to make,” he said, with an air of importance. “There is much to be thought of. We had not long together, for the others were watching us. But we understand each other. I go now to give him the signal that it is for to-night. I have borrowed one of Lisa's dusters--a blue one that will show against the snow--with which to give him the signal. And he is watching from Zoppot with his telescope. That fat Lisa--if I had held up my finger, she would have fallen in love with me. It has always been so. These women--” And he went away muttering.
If he had preparations to make, Desiree had no less. She could take but little with her, and she was quitting the house which had always been her home so long as she could remember. Those trunks which Barlasch had so unhesitatingly recognized as coming from France were, it seemed, destined never to be used again. Mathilde had gone, taking with her her few simple possessions; for they had always been poor in the Frauengasse. Sebastian had departed on that journey which the traveller must face alone, taking naught with him. And it was characteristic of the man that he had left nothing behind him--no papers, no testament, no clue to that other life so different from his life in the Frauengasse that it must have lapsed into a fleeting, intangible memory, such as the brain is sometimes allowed to retain of a dream dreamt in this existence, or perhaps in another. Sebastian was gone--with his secret.
Desiree, alone with hers, was left in this quiet house for a few hours longer. Mechanically she set it in order. What would it matter to-morrow whether it were set in order or not? Who would come to note the last touches? She worked with that feverish haste which is responsible for much unnecessary woman's work in this world--the haste that owes its existence to the fear of having time to think. Many talk for the same reason. What a quiet world, if those who have nothing to say said nothing! But speech or work must fail at last, and lo! the thoughts are lying in wait.
Desiree's thoughts found their opportunity when she went into the drawing-room upstairs, where her wedding-breakfast had been set before the guests only eight months ago. The guests--De Casimir, the Grafin, Sebastian, Mathilde, Charles!
Desiree stood alone now in the silent room. She did not look at the table. The guests were all gone. The dead past had buried its dead. She went to the window and drew aside the curtain as she had drawn it aside on her wedding-day to look down into the Frauengasse and see Louis d'Arragon. And again her heart leapt in her breast with that throb of fear. She turned where she stood, and looked at the door as if she expected to see Charles come in at it, laughing and gay, explaining (he was so good at explaining) his encounter in the street, and stepping aside to allow Louis to come forward. Louis, who looked at no one but her, and came into the room and into her life.
She had been afraid of him. She was afraid of him still. And her heart had leapt at the thought that he had been restlessly, sleeplessly thinking of her, working for her--had been to Vilna and back for her, and was now waiting for her beyond the barrier of Russian camp-fires. The dangers which made Barlasch laugh--and she knew they were real enough, for it was only a real danger that stirred something in the old soldier's blood to make him gay--these dangers were of no account. She knew, she had known instantly and for all time when she looked down into the Frauengasse and saw Louis, that nothing in heaven or earth could keep them apart.
She stood now, looking at the empty doorway. What was the rest of her life to be?
Barlasch returned in the afternoon. He was leisurely and inclined to contemplativeness. It would seem that his preparations having all been completed, he was left with nothing to do. War is a purifier; it clears the social atmosphere and puts womanly men and manly women into their right places. It is also a simplifier; it teaches us to know how little we really require in daily life, and how many of the environments with which men and women hamper themselves are superfluous and the fruit of idleness.
“I have nothing to do,” said Barlasch, “I will cook a careful dinner. All that I have saved in money I cannot carry away; all that was stored beneath the floor must be left there. It is often so in war.”
He had told Desiree that they would have to walk twelve miles across the snow-clad marshes bordering the frozen Vistula, between midnight and dawn. It needed no telling that they could carry little with them.
“You will have to make a new beginning in life,” he said curtly, “with the clothes upon your back. How many times have I done it--the Saints alone know! But take money, if you have it in gold or silver. Mine is all in copper groschen, and it is too heavy to carry. I have never yet been anywhere that money was not useful--and name of a dog! I have never had it.”
So Desiree divided what money she possessed with Barlasch, who added it carefully up and repeated several times for accuracy the tale of what he had received. For, like many who do not hesitate to steal, he was very particular in money matters.
“As for me,” he said, “I shall make a new beginning, too. The Captain will enable me to get back to France, when I shall go to the Emperor again. It is no place for one of the Old Guard, here with Rapp. I am getting old, but he will find something for me to do, that little Emperor.”
At midnight they set out, quitting the house in the Frauengasse noiselessly. The street was quiet enough, for half the houses were empty now. Their footsteps were inaudible on the trodden snow. It was a dark night and not cold; for the great frosts of this terrible winter were nearly over.
Barlasch carried his musket and bayonet. He had instructed Desiree to walk in front of him, should they meet a patrol. But Rapp had no men to spare for patrolling the town. There was no spirit left in Dantzig; for typhus and starvation patrolled the narrow streets.
They quitted the town to the north-west, near the Oliva Gate. There was no guard-house here because Langfuhr was held by the French, and Rapp's outposts were three miles out on the road to Zoppot.
“I have played this game for fifty years,” said Barlasch, with a low laugh, when they reached the earthworks, completed, at such enormous cost of life and strength, by Rapp; “follow me and do as I do. When I stoop, stoop; when I crawl, crawl; when I run, run.”
For he was a soldier now and nothing else. He stood erect, and looked round him with the air of a young man--ready, keen, alert. Then he moved forward with confidence towards the high land which terminates in the Johannesberg, where the peaceful Dantzigers now repair on a Sunday afternoon to drink thin beer and admire the view.
Below them on the right hand lay the marshes, a white expanse of snow with a single dark line drawn across it--the Langfuhr road with its double border of trees.
Barlasch turned once or twice to make sure that Desiree was following him; but he added nothing to his brief instructions. When he gained the summit of the tableland which runs parallel with the coast and the Langfuhr road, he paused for breath.
“When I crawl, crawl. When I run, run,” he whispered again; and led the way. He went up the bed of a stream, turning his back to the coast, and at a certain point stopped and by a gesture of the hand bade Desiree crouch down and wait till he returned. He came back and signed to her to quit the bed of the stream and follow him. When she came up to the tableland, she found that they were quite close to a camp-fire. Through the low pines she could perceive the dark outline of a house.
“Now run,” whispered Barlasch, leading the way across an open space which seemed to extend to the line of the horizon. Without looking back, Desiree ran--her only thought was a sudden surprise that Barlasch could move so quickly and silently.
When he gained the shelter of some trees, he threw himself down on the snow, and Desiree coming up to him found him breathlessly holding his sides and laughing aloud.
“We are through the lines,” he gasped, “name of a dog, I was so frightened. There they go--pam! pam! Buz. . z.. z..”
And he imitated the singing buzz of the bullets humming through the trees over their heads. For half a dozen shots were fired, while he was yet speaking, from behind the camp-fires. There were no more, however, and presently, having recovered his breath, Barlasch rose.
“Come,” he said, “we have a long walk. En route.”
They made a great circuit in the pine-woods, through which Barlasch led the way with an unerring skill, and descending towards the plain far beyond Langfuhr they came out on to a lower tableland, below which the great marshes of the Vistula stretched in the darkness, slowly merging at last into the sea.
“Those,” said Barlasch, pausing at the edge of the slope, “those are the lights of Oliva, where the Russians are. That line of lights straight in front is the Russian fleet lying off Zoppot, and with them are English ships. One of them is the little ship of Captain d'Arragon. And he will take you home with him; for the ship is ordered to England, to Plymouth--which is across the Channel from my own country. Ah--cristi! I sometimes want to see my own country again--and my own people--mademoiselle.”
He went on a few paces and then stopped again, and in the darkness held up one hand, commanding silence. It was the churches of Dantzig striking the hour.
“Six o'clock,” he whispered, “it will soon be dawn. Yes--we are half an hour too early.”
He sat down, and, by a gesture, bade Desiree sit beside him.
“Yes,” he said, “the Captain told me that he is bound for England to convoy larger ships, and you will sail in one of them. He has a home in the west of England, and he will take you there--a sister or a mother, I forget which--some woman. You cannot get on without women--you others. It is there that you will be happy, as the bon Dieu meant you to be. It is only in England that no one fears Napoleon. One may have a husband there and not fear that he will be killed. One may have children and not tremble for them--and it is that that makes you happy--you women.”
Presently he rose and led the way down the slope. At the foot of it, he paused, and pointing out a long line of trees, said in a whisper-- “He is there--where there are three taller trees. Between us and those trees are the French outposts. At dawn the Russians attack the outposts, and during the attack we have simply to go through it to those trees. There is no other way--that is the rendezvous. Those three tall trees. When I give the word, you get up and run to those trees--run without pausing, without looking round. I will follow. It is you he has come for--not Barlasch. You think I know nothing. Bah! I know everything. I have always known it--your poor little secret.”
They lay on the snow crouching in a ditch until a grey line appeared low down in the Eastern sky and the horizon slowly distinguished itself from the thin thread of cloud that nearly always awaits the rising of the sun in Northern latitudes.
A minute later the dark group of trees broke into intermittent flame and the sharp, short “Hurrah!” of the Cossacks, like an angry bark, came sweeping across the plain on the morning breeze.
“Not yet,” whispered Barlasch, with a gay chuckle of enjoyment. “Not yet--not yet. Listen, the bullets are not coming here, but are going past to the right of us. When you go, keep to the left. Slowly at first--keep a little breath till the end. Now, up! Mademoiselle, run; name of thunder, let us run!”
Desiree did not understand which were the French lines and which the line of Russian attack. But there was a clear way to the three trees which stood above the rest, and she went towards them. She knew she could not run so far, so she walked. Then the bullets, instead of passing to the right, seemed to play round her--like bees in a garden on a summer day--and she ran until she was tired.
The trees were quite close now, and the sky was light behind them. Then she saw Louis coming towards her, and she ran into his arms. The sound of the humming bullets was still in her dazed brain, and she touched him all over with her gloved hand as she clung to him, as a mother touches her child when it has fallen, to see whether it be hurt.
“How was I to know?” she whispered breathlessly. “How was I to know that you were to come into my life?”
The bullets did not matter, it seemed, nor the roar of the firing to the right of them. Nothing mattered--except that Louis must know that she had never loved Charles.
He held her and said nothing. And she wanted him to say nothing. Then she remembered Barlasch, and looked back over her shoulder.
“Where is Barlasch?” she asked, with a sudden sinking at her heart.
“He is coming slowly,” replied Louis. “He came slowly behind you all the time, so as to draw the fire away from you.”
They turned and waited for Barlasch, who seemed to be going in the wrong direction with an odd vagueness in his movements. Louis ran towards him with Desiree at his heels.
“Ca-y-est,” said Barlasch; which cannot be translated, and yet has many meanings. “Ca-y-est.”
And he sat down slowly on the snow. He sat quite upright and rigid, and in the cold light of the Baltic dawn they saw the meaning of his words. One hand was within his fur coat. He drew it out, and concealed it from Desiree behind his back. He did not seem to see them, but presently he put out his hand and lightly touched Desiree. Then he turned to Louis with that confidential drop of the voice with which he always distinguished his friends from those who were not his friends.
“What is she doing?” he asked. “I cannot see in the dark. Is it not dark? I thought it was. What is she doing? Saying a prayer? What--because I have my affair? Hey, mademoiselle. You may leave it to me. I will get in, I tell you that.”
He put his finger to his nose, and then shook it from side to side with an air of deep cunning.
“Leave it to me. I shall slip in. Who will stop an old man, who has many wounds? Not St. Peter, assuredly. Let him try. And if the good God hears a commotion at the gate, He will only shrug His shoulders. He will say to St. Peter, 'Let pass; it is only Papa Barlasch!'”
And then there was silence. For Barlasch had gone to his own people.
|
{
"id": "8158"
}
|
1
|
THE PROPHECY
|
_Trevlyn lands and Trevlyn gold, Heir nor heiress e'er shall hold, Undisturbed, till, spite of rust, Truth is found in Trevlyn dust. _ "This is the third time I've found you poring over that old rhyme. What is the charm, Richard? Not its poetry I fancy." And the young wife laid a slender hand on the yellow, time-worn page where, in Old English text, appeared the lines she laughed at.
Richard Trevlyn looked up with a smile and threw by the book, as if annoyed at being discovered reading it. Drawing his wife's hand through his own, he led her back to her couch, folded the soft shawls about her, and, sitting in a low chair beside her, said in a cheerful tone, though his eyes betrayed some hidden care, "My love, that book is a history of our family for centuries, and that old prophecy has never yet been fulfilled, except the 'heir and heiress' line. I am the last Trevlyn, and as the time draws near when my child shall be born, I naturally think of his future, and hope he will enjoy his heritage in peace."
"God grant it!" softly echoed Lady Trevlyn, adding, with a look askance at the old book, "I read that history once, and fancied it must be a romance, such dreadful things are recorded in it. Is it all true, Richard?"
"Yes, dear. I wish it was not. Ours has been a wild, unhappy race till the last generation or two. The stormy nature came in with old Sir Ralph, the fierce Norman knight, who killed his only son in a fit of wrath, by a blow with his steel gauntlet, because the boy's strong will would not yield to his."
"Yes, I remember, and his daughter Clotilde held the castle during a siege, and married her cousin, Count Hugo. 'Tis a warlike race, and I like it in spite of the mad deeds."
"Married her cousin! That has been the bane of our family in times past. Being too proud to mate elsewhere, we have kept to ourselves till idiots and lunatics began to appear. My father was the first who broke the law among us, and I followed his example: choosing the freshest, sturdiest flower I could find to transplant into our exhausted soil."
"I hope it will do you honor by blossoming bravely. I never forget that you took me from a very humble home, and have made me the happiest wife in England."
"And I never forget that you, a girl of eighteen, consented to leave your hills and come to cheer the long-deserted house of an old man like me," returned her husband fondly.
"Nay, don't call yourself old, Richard; you are only forty-five, the boldest, handsomest man in Warwickshire. But lately you look worried; what is it? Tell me, and let me advise or comfort you."
"It is nothing, Alice, except my natural anxiety for you--Well, Kingston, what do you want?"
Trevlyn's tender tones grew sharp as he addressed the entering servant, and the smile on his lips vanished, leaving them dry and white as he glanced at the card he handed him. An instant he stood staring at it, then asked, "Is the man here?"
"In the library, sir."
"I'll come."
Flinging the card into the fire, he watched it turn to ashes before he spoke, with averted eyes: "Only some annoying business, love; I shall soon be with you again. Lie and rest till I come."
With a hasty caress he left her, but as he passed a mirror, his wife saw an expression of intense excitement in his face. She said nothing, and lay motionless for several minutes evidently struggling with some strong impulse.
"He is ill and anxious, but hides it from me; I have a right to know, and he'll forgive me when I prove that it does no harm."
As she spoke to herself she rose, glided noiselessly through the hall, entered a small closet built in the thickness of the wall, and, bending to the keyhole of a narrow door, listened with a half-smile on her lips at the trespass she was committing. A murmur of voices met her ear. Her husband spoke oftenest, and suddenly some word of his dashed the smile from her face as if with a blow. She started, shrank, and shivered, bending lower with set teeth, white cheeks, and panic-stricken heart. Paler and paler grew her lips, wilder and wilder her eyes, fainter and fainter her breath, till, with a long sigh, a vain effort to save herself, she sank prone upon the threshold of the door, as if struck down by death.
"Mercy on us, my lady, are you ill?" cried Hester, the maid, as her mistress glided into the room looking like a ghost, half an hour later.
"I am faint and cold. Help me to my bed, but do not disturb Sir Richard."
A shiver crept over her as she spoke, and, casting a wild, woeful look about her, she laid her head upon the pillow like one who never cared to lift it up again. Hester, a sharp-eyed, middle-aged woman, watched the pale creature for a moment, then left the room muttering, "Something is wrong, and Sir Richard must know it. That black-bearded man came for no good, I'll warrant."
At the door of the library she paused. No sound of voices came from within; a stifled groan was all she heard; and without waiting to knock she went in, fearing she knew not what. Sir Richard sat at his writing table pen in hand, but his face was hidden on his arm, and his whole attitude betrayed the presence of some overwhelming despair.
"Please, sir, my lady is ill. Shall I send for anyone?"
No answer. Hester repeated her words, but Sir Richard never stirred. Much alarmed, the woman raised his head, saw that he was unconscious, and rang for help. But Richard Trevlyn was past help, though he lingered for some hours. He spoke but once, murmuring faintly, "Will Alice come to say good-bye?"
"Bring her if she can come," said the physician.
Hester went, found her mistress lying as she left her, like a figure carved in stone. When she gave the message, Lady Trevlyn answered sternly, "Tell him I will not come," and turned her face to the wall, with an expression which daunted the woman too much for another word.
Hester whispered the hard answer to the physician, fearing to utter it aloud, but Sir Richard heard it, and died with a despairing prayer for pardon on his lips.
When day dawned Sir Richard lay in his shroud and his little daughter in her cradle, the one unwept, the other unwelcomed by the wife and mother, who, twelve hours before, had called herself the happiest woman in England. They thought her dying, and at her own command gave her the sealed letter bearing her address which her husband left behind him. She read it, laid it in her bosom, and, waking from the trance which seemed to have so strongly chilled and changed her, besought those about her with passionate earnestness to save her life.
For two days she hovered on the brink of the grave, and nothing but the indomitable will to live saved her, the doctors said. On the third day she rallied wonderfully, and some purpose seemed to gift her with unnatural strength. Evening came, and the house was very still, for all the sad bustle of preparation for Sir Richard's funeral was over, and he lay for the last night under his own roof. Hester sat in the darkened chamber of her mistress, and no sound broke the hush but the low lullaby the nurse was singing to the fatherless baby in the adjoining room. Lady Trevlyn seemed to sleep, but suddenly put back the curtain, saying abruptly, "Where does he lie?"
"In the state chamber, my lady," replied Hester, anxiously watching the feverish glitter of her mistress's eye, the flush on her cheek, and the unnatural calmness of her manner.
"Help me to go there; I must see him."
"It would be your death, my lady. I beseech you, don't think of it," began the woman; but Lady Trevlyn seemed not to hear her, and something in the stern pallor of her face awed the woman into submission.
Wrapping the slight form of her mistress in a warm cloak, Hester half-led, half-carried her to the state room, and left her on the threshold.
"I must go in alone; fear nothing, but wait for me here," she said, and closed the door behind her.
Five minutes had not elapsed when she reappeared with no sign of grief on her rigid face.
"Take me to my bed and bring my jewel box," she said, with a shuddering sigh, as the faithful servant received her with an exclamation of thankfulness.
When her orders had been obeyed, she drew from her bosom the portrait of Sir Richard which she always wore, and, removing the ivory oval from the gold case, she locked the former in a tiny drawer of the casket, replaced the empty locket in her breast, and bade Hester give the jewels to Watson, her lawyer, who would see them put in a safe place till the child was grown.
"Dear heart, my lady, you'll wear them yet, for you're too young to grieve all your days, even for so good a man as my blessed master. Take comfort, and cheer up, for the dear child's sake if no more."
"I shall never wear them again" was all the answer as Lady Trevlyn drew the curtains, as if to shut out hope.
Sir Richard was buried and, the nine days' gossip over, the mystery of his death died for want of food, for the only person who could have explained it was in a state which forbade all allusion to that tragic day.
For a year Lady Trevlyn's reason was in danger. A long fever left her so weak in mind and body that there was little hope of recovery, and her days were passed in a state of apathy sad to witness. She seemed to have forgotten everything, even the shock which had so sorely stricken her. The sight of her child failed to rouse her, and month after month slipped by, leaving no trace of their passage on her mind, and but slightly renovating her feeble body.
Who the stranger was, what his aim in coming, or why he never reappeared, no one discovered. The contents of the letter left by Sir Richard were unknown, for the paper had been destroyed by Lady Trevlyn and no clue could be got from her. Sir Richard had died of heart disease, the physicians said, though he might have lived years had no sudden shock assailed him. There were few relatives to make investigations, and friends soon forgot the sad young widow; so the years rolled on, and Lillian the heiress grew from infancy to childhood in the shadow of this mystery.
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{
"id": "8188"
}
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2
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PAUL
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"Come, child, the dew is falling, and it is time we went in."
"No, no, Mamma is not rested yet, so I may run down to the spring if I like." And Lillian, as willful as winsome, vanished among the tall ferns where deer couched and rabbits hid.
Hester leisurely followed, looking as unchanged as if a day instead of twelve years had passed since her arms received the little mistress, who now ruled her like a tyrant. She had taken but a few steps when the child came flying back, exclaiming in an excited tone, "Oh, come quick! There's a man there, a dead man. I saw him and I'm frightened!"
"Nonsense, child, it's one of the keepers asleep, or some stroller who has no business here. Take my hand and we'll see who it is."
Somewhat reassured, Lillian led her nurse to one of the old oaks beside the path, and pointed to a figure lying half hidden in the fern. A slender, swarthy boy of sixteen, with curly black hair, dark brows, and thick lashes, a singularly stern mouth, and a general expression of strength and pride, which added character to his boyish face and dignified his poverty. His dress betrayed that, being dusty and threadbare, his shoes much worn, and his possessions contained in the little bundle on which he pillowed his head. He was sleeping like one quite spent with weariness, and never stirred, though Hester bent away the ferns and examined him closely.
"He's not dead, my deary; he's asleep, poor lad, worn out with his day's tramp, I dare say." "I'm glad he's alive, and I wish he'd wake up. He's a pretty boy, isn't he? See what nice hands he's got, and his hair is more curly than mine. Make him open his eyes, Hester," commanded the little lady, whose fear had given place to interest.
"Hush, he's stirring. I wonder how he got in, and what he wants," whispered Hester.
"I'll ask him," and before her nurse could arrest her, Lillian drew a tall fern softly over the sleeper's face, laughing aloud as she did so.
The boy woke at the sound, and without stirring lay looking up at the lovely little face bent over him, as if still in a dream. " _Bella cara_," he said, in a musical voice. Then, as the child drew back abashed at the glance of his large, bright eyes, he seemed to wake entirely and, springing to his feet, looked at Hester with a quick, searching glance. Something in his face and air caused the woman to soften her tone a little, as she said gravely, "Did you wish to see any one at the Hall?"
"Yes. Is Lady Trevlyn here?" was the boy's answer, as he stood cap in hand, with the smile fading already from his face.
"She is, but unless your business is very urgent you had better see Parks, the keeper; we don't trouble my lady with trifles."
"I've a note for her from Colonel Daventry; and as it is _not_ a trifle, I'll deliver it myself, if you please."
Hester hesitated an instant, but Lillian cried out, "Mamma is close by, come and see her," and led the way, beckoning as she ran.
The lad followed with a composed air, and Hester brought up the rear, taking notes as she went with a woman's keen eye.
Lady Trevlyn, a beautiful, pale woman, delicate in health and melancholy in spirit, sat on a rustic seat with a book in her hand; not reading, but musing with an absent mind. As the child approached, she held out her hand to welcome her, but neither smiled nor spoke.
"Mamma, here is a--a person to see you," cried Lillian, rather at a loss how to designate the stranger, whose height and gravity now awed her.
"A note from Colonel Daventry, my lady," and with a bow the boy delivered the missive.
Scarcely glancing at him, she opened it and read: _My Dear Friend_, _The bearer of this, Paul Jex, has been with me some months and has served me well. I brought him from Paris, but he is English born, and, though friendless, prefers to remain here, even after we leave, as we do in a week. When I last saw you you mentioned wanting a lad to help in the garden; Paul is accustomed to that employment, though my wife used him as a sort of page in the house. Hoping you may be able to give him shelter, I venture to send him. He is honest, capable, and trustworthy in all respects. Pray try him, and oblige_, _Yours sincerely_, _J. R. Daventry_ "The place is still vacant, and I shall be very glad to give it to you, if you incline to take it," said Lady Trevlyn, lifting her eyes from the note and scanning the boy's face.
"I do, madam," he answered respectfully.
"The colonel says you are English," added the lady, in a tone of surprise.
The boy smiled, showing a faultless set of teeth, as he replied, "I am, my lady, though just now I may not look it, being much tanned and very dusty. My father was an Englishman, but I've lived abroad a good deal since he died, and got foreign ways, perhaps."
As he spoke without any accent, and looked full in her face with a pair of honest blue eyes under the dark lashes, Lady Trevlyn's momentary doubt vanished.
"Your age, Paul?"
"Sixteen, my lady."
"You understand gardening?"
"Yes, my lady."
"And what else?"
"I can break horses, serve at table, do errands, read aloud, ride after a young lady as groom, illuminate on parchment, train flowers, and make myself useful in any way."
The tone, half modest, half eager, in which the boy spoke, as well as the odd list of his accomplishments, brought a smile to Lady Trevlyn's lips, and the general air of the lad prepossessed her.
"I want Lillian to ride soon, and Roger is rather old for an escort to such a little horsewoman. Don't you think we might try Paul?" she said, turning to Hester.
The woman gravely eyed the lad from head to foot, and shook her head, but an imploring little gesture and a glance of the handsome eyes softened her heart in spite of herself.
"Yes, my lady, if he does well about the place, and Parks thinks he's steady enough, we might try it by-and-by."
Lillian clapped her hands and, drawing nearer, exclaimed confidingly, as she looked up at her new groom, "I know he'll do, Mamma. I like him very much, and I hope you'll let him train my pony for me. Will you, Paul?"
"Yes."
As he spoke very low and hastily, the boy looked away from the eager little face before him, and a sudden flush of color crossed his dark cheek.
Hester saw it and said within herself, "That boy has good blood in his veins. He's no clodhopper's son, I can tell by his hands and feet, his air and walk. Poor lad, it's hard for him, I'll warrant, but he's not too proud for honest work, and I like that."
"You may stay, Paul, and we will try you for a month. Hester, take him to Parks and see that he is made comfortable. Tomorrow we will see what he can do. Come, darling, I am rested now."
As she spoke, Lady Trevlyn dismissed the boy with a gracious gesture and led her little daughter away. Paul stood watching her, as if forgetful of his companion, till she said, rather tartly, "Young man, you'd better have thanked my lady while she was here than stare after her now it's too late. If you want to see Parks, you'd best come, for I'm going."
"Is that the family tomb yonder, where you found me asleep?" was the unexpected reply to her speech, as the boy quietly followed her, not at all daunted by her manner.
"Yes, and that reminds me to ask how you got in, and why you were napping there, instead of doing your errand properly?"
"I leaped the fence and stopped to rest before presenting myself, Miss Hester" was the cool answer, accompanied by a short laugh as he confessed his trespass.
"You look as if you'd had a long walk; where are you from?"
"London."
"Bless the boy! It's fifty miles away."
"So my shoes show; but it's a pleasant trip in summer time."
"But why did you walk, child! Had you no money?"
"Plenty, but not for wasting on coaches, when my own stout legs could carry me. I took a two days' holiday and saved my money for better things."
"I like that," said Hester, with an approving nod. "You'll get on, my lad, if that's your way, and I'll lend a hand, for laziness is my abomination, and one sees plenty nowadays."
"Thank you. That's friendly, and I'll prove that I am grateful. Please tell me, is my lady ill?"
"Always delicate since Sir Richard died."
"How long ago was that?"
"Ten years or more."
"Are there no young gentlemen in the family?"
"No, Miss Lillian is an only child, and a sweet one, bless her!"
"A proud little lady, I should say."
"And well she may be, for there's no better blood in England than the Trevlyns, and she's heiress to a noble fortune."
"Is that the Trevlyn coat of arms?" asked the boy abruptly, pointing to a stone falcon with the motto ME AND MINE carved over the gate through which they were passing.
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"Mere curiosity; I know something of heraldry and often paint these things for my own pleasure. One learns odd amusements abroad," he added, seeing an expression of surprise on the woman's face.
"You'll have little time for such matters here. Come in and report yourself to the keeper, and if you'll take my advice ask no questions of him, for you'll get no answers."
"I seldom ask questions of men, as they are not fond of gossip." And the boy nodded with a smile of mischievous significance as he entered the keeper's lodge.
A sharp lad and a saucy, if he likes. I'll keep my eye on him, for my lady takes no more thought of such things than a child, and Lillian cares for nothing but her own will. He has a taking way with him, though, and knows how to flatter. It's well he does, poor lad, for life's a hard matter to a friendless soul like him.
As she thought these thoughts Hester went on to the house, leaving Paul to win the good graces of the keeper, which he speedily did by assuming an utterly different manner from that he had worn with the woman.
That night, when the boy was alone in his own room, he wrote a long letter in Italian describing the events of the day, enclosed a sketch of the falcon and motto, directed it to "Father Cosmo Carmela, Genoa," and lay down to sleep, muttering, with a grim look and a heavy sigh, "So far so well; I'll not let my heart be softened by pity, or my purpose change till my promise is kept. Pretty child, I wish I had never seen her!"
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{
"id": "8188"
}
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3
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SECRET SERVICE
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In a week Paul was a favorite with the household; even prudent Hester felt the charm of his presence, and owned that Lillian was happier for a young companion in her walks. Hitherto the child had led a solitary life, with no playmates of her own age, such being the will of my lady; therefore she welcomed Paul as a new and delightful amusement, considering him her private property and soon transferring his duties from the garden to the house. Satisfied of his merits, my lady yielded to Lillian's demands, and Paul was installed as page to the young lady. Always respectful and obedient, he never forgot his place, yet seemed unconsciously to influence all who approached him, and win the goodwill of everyone.
My lady showed unusual interest in the lad, and Lillian openly displayed her admiration for his accomplishments and her affection for her devoted young servitor. Hester was much flattered by the confidence he reposed in her, for to her alone did he tell his story, and of her alone asked advice and comfort in his various small straits. It was as she suspected: Paul was a gentleman's son, but misfortune had robbed him of home, friends, and parents, and thrown him upon the world to shift for himself. This sad story touched the woman's heart, and the boy's manly spirit won respect. She had lost a son years ago, and her empty heart yearned over the motherless lad. Ashamed to confess the tender feeling, she wore her usual severe manner to him in public, but in private softened wonderfully and enjoyed the boy's regard heartily.
"Paul, come in. I want to speak with you a moment," said my lady, from the long window of the library to the boy who was training vines outside.
Dropping his tools and pulling off his hat, Paul obeyed, looking a little anxious, for the month of trial expired that day. Lady Trevlyn saw and answered the look with a gracious smile.
"Have no fears. You are to stay if you will, for Lillian is happy and I am satisfied with you."
"Thank you, my lady." And an odd glance of mingled pride and pain shone in the boy's downcast eyes.
"That is settled, then. Now let me say what I called you in for. You spoke of being able to illuminate on parchment. Can you restore this old book for me?"
She put into his hand the ancient volume Sir Richard had been reading the day he died. It had lain neglected in a damp nook for years till my lady discovered it, and, sad as were the associations connected with it, she desired to preserve it for the sake of the weird prophecy if nothing else. Paul examined it, and as he turned it to and fro in his hands it opened at the page oftenest read by its late master. His eye kindled as he looked, and with a quick gesture he turned as if toward the light, in truth to hide the flash of triumph that passed across his face. Carefully controlling his voice, he answered in a moment, as he looked up, quite composed, "Yes, my lady, I can retouch the faded colors on these margins and darken the pale ink of the Old English text. I like the work, and will gladly do it if you like."
"Do it, then, but be very careful of the book while in your hands. Provide what is needful, and name your own price for the work," said his mistress.
"Nay, my lady, I am already paid--" "How so?" she asked, surprised.
Paul had spoken hastily, and for an instant looked embarrassed, but answered with a sudden flush on his dark cheeks, "You have been kind to me, and I am glad to show my, gratitude in any way, my lady."
"Let that pass, my boy. Do this little service for me and we will see about the recompense afterward." And with a smile Lady Trevlyn left him to begin his work.
The moment the door closed behind her a total change passed over Paul. He shook his clenched hand after her with a gesture of menace, then tossed up the old book and caught it with an exclamation of delight, as he reopened it at the worn page and reread the inexplicable verse.
"Another proof, another proof! The work goes bravely on, Father Cosmo; and boy as I am, I'll keep my word in spite of everything," he muttered.
"What is that you'll keep, lad?" said a voice behind him.
"I'll keep my word to my lady, and do my best to restore this book, Mrs. Hester," he answered, quickly recovering himself.
"Ah, that's the last book poor Master read. I hid it away, but my lady found it in spite of me," said Hester, with a doleful sigh.
"Did he die suddenly, then?" asked the boy.
"Dear heart, yes; I found him dying in this room with the ink scarce dry on the letter he left for my lady. A mysterious business and a sad one."
"Tell me about it. I like sad stories, and I already feel as if I belonged to the family, a loyal retainer as in the old times. While you dust the books and I rub the mold off this old cover, tell me the tale, please, Mrs. Hester."
She shook her head, but yielded to the persuasive look and tone of the boy, telling the story more fully than she intended, for she loved talking and had come to regard Paul as her own, almost.
"And the letter? What was in it?" asked the boy, as she paused at the catastrophe.
"No one ever knew but my lady."
"She destroyed it, then?"
"I thought so, till a long time afterward, one of the lawyers came pestering me with questions, and made me ask her. She was ill at the time, but answered with a look I shall never forget, 'No, it's not burnt, but no one shall ever see it.' I dared ask no more, but I fancy she has it safe somewhere and if it's ever needed she'll bring it out. It was only some private matters, I fancy."
"And the stranger?"
"Oh, he vanished as oddly as he came, and has never been found. A strange story, lad. Keep silent, and let it rest."
"No fear of my tattling," and the boy smiled curiously to himself as he bent over the book, polishing the brassbound cover.
"What are you doing with that pretty white wax?" asked Lillian the next day, as she came upon Paul in a quiet corner of the garden and found him absorbed in some mysterious occupation.
With a quick gesture he destroyed his work, and, banishing a momentary expression of annoyance, he answered in his accustomed tone as he began to work anew, "I am molding a little deer for you, Miss Lillian. See, here is a rabbit already done, and I'll soon have a stag also."
"It's very pretty! How many nice things you can do, and how kind you are to think of my liking something new. Was this wax what you went to get this morning when you rode away so early?" asked the child.
"Yes, Miss Lillian. I was ordered to exercise your pony and I made him useful as well. Would you like to try this? It's very easy."
Lillian was charmed, and for several days wax modeling was her favorite play. Then she tired of it, and Paul invented a new amusement, smiling his inexplicable smile as he threw away the broken toys of wax.
"You are getting pale and thin, keeping such late hours, Paul. Go to bed, boy, go to bed, and get your sleep early," said Hester a week afterward, with a motherly air, as Paul passed her one morning.
"And how do you know I don't go to bed?" he asked, wheeling about.
"My lady has been restless lately, and I sit up with her till she sleeps. As I go to my room, I see your lamp burning, and last night I got as far as your door, meaning to speak to you, but didn't, thinking you'd take it amiss. But really you are the worse for late hours, child."
"I shall soon finish restoring the book, and then I'll sleep. I hope I don't disturb you. I have to grind my colors, and often make more noise than I mean to."
Paul fixed his eyes sharply on the woman as he spoke, but she seemed unconscious of it, and turned to go on, saying indifferently, "Oh, that's the odd sound, is it? No, it doesn't trouble me, so grind away, and make an end of it as soon as may be."
An anxious fold in the boy's forehead smoothed itself away as he left her, saying to himself with a sigh of relief, "A narrow escape; it's well I keep the door locked."
The boy's light burned no more after that, and Hester was content till a new worry came to trouble her. On her way to her room late one night, she saw a tall shadow flit down one of the side corridors that branched from the main one. For a moment she was startled, but, being a woman of courage, she followed noiselessly, till the shadow seemed to vanish in the gloom of the great hall.
"If the house ever owned a ghost I'd say that's it, but it never did, so I suspect some deviltry. I'll step to Paul. He's not asleep, I dare say. He's a brave and a sensible lad, and with him I'll quietly search the house."
Away she went, more nervous than she would own, and tapped at the boy's door. No one answered, and, seeing that it was ajar, Hester whisked in so hurriedly that her candle went out. With an impatient exclamation at her carelessness she glided to the bed, drew the curtain, and put forth her hand to touch the sleeper. The bed was empty. A disagreeable thrill shot through her, as she assured herself of the fact by groping along the narrow bed. Standing in the shadow of the curtain, she stared about the dusky room, in which objects were visible by the light of a new moon.
"Lord bless me, what is the boy about! I do believe it was him I saw in the--" She got no further in her mental exclamation for the sound of light approaching footsteps neared her. Slipping around the bed she waited in the shadow, and a moment after Paul appeared, looking pale and ghostly, with dark, disheveled hair, wide-open eyes, and a cloak thrown over his shoulders. Without a pause he flung it off, laid himself in bed, and seemed to sleep at once.
"Paul! Paul!" whispered Hester, shaking him, after a pause of astonishment at the whole proceeding.
"Hey, what is it?" And he sat up, looking drowsily about him.
"Come, come, no tricks, boy. What are you doing, trailing about the house at this hour and in such trim?"
"Why, Hester, is it you?" he exclaimed with a laugh, as he shook off her grip and looked up at her in surprise.
"Yes, and well it is me. If it had been any of those silly girls, the house would have been roused by this time. What mischief is afoot that you leave your bed and play ghost in this wild fashion?"
"Leave my bed! Why, my good soul, I haven't stirred, but have been dreaming with all my might these two hours. What do you mean, Hester?"
She told him as she relit her lamp, and stood eyeing him sharply the while. When she finished he was silent a minute, then said, looking half vexed and half ashamed, "I see how it is, and I'm glad you alone have found me out. I walk in my sleep sometimes, Hester, that's the truth. I thought I'd got over it, but it's come back, you see, and I'm sorry for it. Don't be troubled. I never do any mischief or come to any harm. I just take a quiet promenade and march back to bed again. Did I frighten you?"
"Just a trifle, but it's nothing. Poor lad, you'll have to have a bedfellow or be locked up; it's dangerous to go roaming about in this way," said Hester anxiously.
"It won't last long, for I'll get more tired and then I shall sleep sounder. Don't tell anyone, please, else they'll laugh at me, and that's not pleasant. I don't mind your knowing for you seem almost like a mother, and I thank you for it with all my heart."
He held out his hand with the look that was irresistible to Hester. Remembering only that he was a motherless boy, she stroked the curly hair off his forehead, and kissed him, with the thought of her own son warm at her heart.
"Good night, dear. I'll say nothing, but give you something that will ensure quiet sleep hereafter."
With that she left him, but would have been annoyed could she have seen the convulsion of boyish merriment which took possession of him when alone, for he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
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{
"id": "8188"
}
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4
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VANISHED
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He's a handsome lad, and one any woman might be proud to call her son," said Hester to Bedford, the stately butler, as they lingered at the hall door one autumn morning to watch their young lady's departure on her daily ride.
"You are right, Mrs. Hester, he's a fine lad, and yet he seems above his place, though he does look the very picture of a lady's groom," replied Bedford approvingly.
So he did, as he stood holding the white pony of his little mistress, for the boy gave an air to whatever he wore and looked like a gentleman even in his livery. The dark-blue coat with silver buttons, the silver band about his hat, his white-topped boots and bright spurs, spotless gloves, and tightly drawn belt were all in perfect order, all becoming, and his handsome, dark face caused many a susceptible maid to blush and simper as they passed him. "Gentleman Paul," as the servants called him, was rather lofty and reserved among his mates, but they liked him nonetheless, for Hester had dropped hints of his story and quite a little romance had sprung up about him. He stood leaning against the docile creature, sunk in thought, and quite unconscious of the watchers and whisperers close by. But as Lillian appeared he woke up, attended to his duties like a well-trained groom, and lingered over his task as if he liked it. Down the avenue he rode behind her, but as they turned into a shady lane Lillian beckoned, saying, in the imperious tone habitual to her, "Ride near me. I wish to talk."
Paul obeyed, and amused her with the chat she liked till they reached a hazel copse; here he drew rein, and, leaping down, gathered a handful of ripe nuts for her.
"How nice. Let us rest a minute here, and while I eat a few, please pull some of those flowers for Mamma. She likes a wild nosegay better than any I can bring her from the garden."
Lillian ate her nuts till Paul came to her with a hatful of late flowers and, standing by her, held the impromptu basket while she made up a bouquet to suit her taste.
"You shall have a posy, too; I like you to wear one in your buttonhole as the ladies' grooms do in the Park," said the child, settling a scarlet poppy in the blue coat.
"Thanks, Miss Lillian, I'll wear your colors with all my heart, especially today, for it is my birthday." And Paul looked up at the blooming little face with unusual softness in his keen blue eyes.
"Is it? Why, then, you're seventeen; almost a man, aren't you?"
"Yes, thank heaven," muttered the boy, half to himself.
"I wish I was as old. I shan't be in my teens till autumn. I must give you something, Paul, because I like you very much, and you are always doing kind things for me. What shall it be?" And the child held out her hand with a cordial look and gesture that touched the boy.
With one of the foreign fashions which sometimes appeared when he forgot himself, he kissed the small hand, saying impulsively, "My dear little mistress, I want nothing but your goodwill--and your forgiveness," he added, under his breath.
"You have that already, Paul, and I shall find something to add to it. But what is that?" And she laid hold of a little locket which had slipped into sight as Paul bent forward in his salute.
He thrust it back, coloring so deeply that the child observed it, and exclaimed, with a mischievous laugh, "It is your sweetheart, Paul. I heard Bessy, my maid, tell Hester she was sure you had one because you took no notice of them. Let me see it. Is she pretty?"
"Very pretty," answered the boy, without showing the picture.
"Do you like her very much?" questioned Lillian, getting interested in the little romance.
"Very much," and Paul's black eyelashes fell.
"Would you die for her, as they say in the old songs?" asked the girl, melodramatically.
"Yes, Miss Lillian, or live for her, which is harder."
"Dear me, how very nice it must be to have anyone care for one so much," said the child innocently. "I wonder if anybody ever will for me?" " _Love comes to all soon or late, And maketh gay or sad; For every bird will find its mate, And every lass a lad,_" sang Paul, quoting one of Hester's songs, and looking relieved that Lillian's thoughts had strayed from him. But he was mistaken.
"Shall you marry this sweetheart of yours someday?" asked Lillian, turning to him with a curious yet wistful look.
"Perhaps."
"You look as if there was no 'perhaps' about it," said the child, quick to read the kindling of the eye and the change in the voice that accompanied the boy's reply.
"She is very young and I must wait, and while I wait many things may happen to part us."
"Is she a lady?"
"Yes, a wellborn, lovely little lady, and I'll marry her if I live." Paul spoke with a look of decision, and a proud lift of the head that contrasted curiously with the badge of servitude he wore.
Lillian felt this, and asked, with a sudden shyness coming over her, "But you are a gentleman, and so no one will mind even if you are not rich."
"How do you know what I am?" he asked quickly.
"I heard Hester tell the housekeeper that you were not what you seemed, and one day she hoped you'd get your right place again. I asked Mamma about it, and she said she would not let me be with you so much if you were not a fit companion for me. I was not to speak of it, but she means to be your friend and help you by-and-by."
"Does she?"
And the boy laughed an odd, short laugh that jarred on Lillian's ear and made her say reprovingly, "You are proud, I know, but you'll let us help you because we like to do it, and I have no brother to share my money with."
"Would you like one, or a sister?" asked Paul, looking straight into her face with his piercing eyes.
"Yes, indeed! I long for someone to be with me and love me, as Mamma can't."
"Would you be willing to share everything with another person--perhaps have to give them a great many things you like and now have all to yourself?"
"I think I should. I'm selfish, I know, because everyone pets and spoils me, but if I loved a person dearly I'd give up anything to them. Indeed I would, Paul, pray believe me."
She spoke earnestly, and leaned on his shoulder as if to enforce her words. The boy's arm stole around the little figure in the saddle, and a beautiful bright smile broke over his face as he answered warmly, "I do believe it, dear, and it makes me happy to hear you say so. Don't be afraid, I'm your equal, but I'll not forget that you are my little mistress till I can change from groom to gentleman."
He added the last sentence as he withdrew his arm, for Lillian had shrunk a little and blushed with surprise, not anger, at this first breach of respect on the part of her companion. Both were silent for a moment, Paul looking down and Lillian busy with her nosegay. She spoke first, assuming an air of satisfaction as she surveyed her work.
"That will please Mamma, I'm sure, and make her quite forget my naughty prank of yesterday. Do you know I offended her dreadfully by peeping into the gold case she wears on her neck? She was asleep and I was sitting by her. In her sleep she pulled it out and said something about a letter and Papa. I wanted to see Papa's face, for I never did, because the big picture of him is gone from the gallery where the others are, so I peeped into the case when she let it drop and was so disappointed to find nothing but a key."
"A key! What sort of a key?" cried Paul in an eager tone.
"Oh, a little silver one like the key of my piano, or the black cabinet. She woke and was very angry to find me meddling."
"What did it belong to?" asked Paul.
"Her treasure box, she said, but I don't know where or what that is, and I dare not ask any more, for she forbade my speaking to her about it. Poor Mamma! I'm always troubling her in some way or other."
With a penitent sigh, Lillian tied up her flowers and handed them to Paul to carry. As she did so, the change in his face struck her.
"How grim and old you look," she exclaimed. "Have I said anything that troubles you?"
"No, Miss Lillian. I'm only thinking."
"Then I wish you wouldn't think, for you get a great wrinkle in your forehead, your eyes grow almost black, and your mouth looks fierce. You are a very odd person, Paul; one minute as gay as any boy, and the next as grave and stern as a man with a deal of work to do."
"I _have_ got a deal of work to do, so no wonder I look old and grim."
"What work, Paul?"
"To make my fortune and win my lady."
When Paul spoke in that tone and wore that look, Lillian felt as if they had changed places, and he was the master and she the servant. She wondered over this in her childish mind, but proud and willful as she was, she liked it, and obeyed him with unusual meekness when he suggested that it was time to return. As he rode silently beside her, she stole covert glances at him from under her wide hat brim, and studied his unconscious face as she had never done before. His lips moved now and then but uttered no audible sound, his black brows were knit, and once his hand went to his breast as if he thought of the little sweetheart whose picture lay there.
He's got a trouble. I wish he'd tell me and let me help him if I can. I'll make him show me that miniature someday, for I'm interested in that girl, thought Lillian with a pensive sigh.
As he held his hand for her little foot in dismounting her at the hall door, Paul seemed to have shaken off his grave mood, for he looked up and smiled at her with his blithest expression. But Lillian appeared to be the thoughtful one now and with an air of dignity, very pretty and becoming, thanked her young squire in a stately manner and swept into the house, looking tall and womanly in her flowing skirts.
Paul laughed as he glanced after her and, flinging himself onto his horse, rode away to the stables at a reckless pace, as if to work off some emotion for which he could find no other vent.
"Here's a letter for you, lad, all the way from some place in Italy. Who do you know there?" said Bedford, as the boy came back.
With a hasty "Thank you," Paul caught the letter and darted away to his own room, there to tear it open and, after reading a single line, to drop into a chair as if he had received a sudden blow. Growing paler and paler he read on, and when the letter fell from his hands he exclaimed, in a tone of despair, "How could he die at such a time!"
For an hour the boy sat thinking intently, with locked door, curtained window, and several papers strewn before him. Letters, memoranda, plans, drawings, and bits of parchment, all of which he took from a small locked portfolio always worn about him. Over these he pored with a face in which hope, despondency, resolve, and regret alternated rapidly. Taking the locket out he examined a ring which lay in one side, and the childish face which smiled on him from the other. His eyes filled as he locked and put it by, saying tenderly, "Dear little heart! I'll not forget or desert her whatever happens. Time must help me, and to time I must leave my work. One more attempt and then I'm off."
* * * * * "I'll go to bed now, Hester; but while you get my things ready I'll take a turn in the corridor. The air will refresh me."
As she spoke, Lady Trevlyn drew her wrapper about her and paced softly down the long hall lighted only by fitful gleams of moonlight and the ruddy glow of the fire. At the far end was the state chamber, never used now, and never visited except by Hester, who occasionally went in to dust and air it, and my lady, who always passed the anniversary of Sir Richard's death alone there. The gallery was very dark, and she seldom went farther than the last window in her restless walks, but as she now approached she was startled to see a streak of yellow light under the door. She kept the key herself and neither she nor Hester had been there that day. A cold shiver passed over her for, as she looked, the shadow of a foot darkened the light for a moment and vanished as if someone had noiselessly passed. Obeying a sudden impulse, my lady sprang forward and tried to open the door. It was locked, but as her hand turned the silver knob a sound as if a drawer softly closed met her ear. She stooped to the keyhole but it was dark, a key evidently being in the lock. She drew back and flew to her room, snatched the key from her dressing table, and, bidding Hester follow, returned to the hall.
"What is it, my lady?" cried the woman, alarmed at the agitation of her mistress.
"A light, a sound, a shadow in the state chamber. Come quick!" cried Lady Trevlyn, adding, as she pointed to the door, "There, there, the light shines underneath. Do you see it?"
"No, my lady, it's dark," returned Hester.
It was, but never pausing my lady thrust in the key, and to her surprise it turned, the door flew open, and the dim, still room was before them. Hester boldly entered, and while her mistress slowly followed, she searched the room, looking behind the tall screen by the hearth, up the wide chimney, in the great wardrobe, and under the ebony cabinet, where all the relics of Sir Richard were kept. Nothing appeared, not even a mouse, and Hester turned to my lady with an air of relief. But her mistress pointed to the bed shrouded in dark velvet hangings, and whispered breathlessly, "You forgot to look there."
Hester had not forgotten, but in spite of her courage and good sense she shrank a little from looking at the spot where she had last seen her master's dead face. She believed the light and sound to be phantoms of my lady's distempered fancy, and searched merely to satisfy her. The mystery of Sir Richard's death still haunted the minds of all who remembered it, and even Hester felt a superstitious dread of that room. With a nervous laugh she looked under the bed and, drawing back the heavy curtains, said soothingly, "You see, my lady, there's nothing there."
But the words died on her lips, for, as the pale glimmer of the candle pierced the gloom of that funeral couch, both saw a face upon the pillow: a pale face framed in dark hair and beard, with closed eyes and the stony look the dead wear. A loud, long shriek that roused the house broke from Lady Trevlyn as she fell senseless at the bedside, and dropping both curtain and candle Hester caught up her mistress and fled from the haunted room, locking the door behind her.
In a moment a dozen servants were about them, and into their astonished ears Hester poured her story while vainly trying to restore her lady. Great was the dismay and intense the unwillingness of anyone to obey when Hester ordered the men to search the room again, for she was the first to regain her self-possession.
"Where's Paul? He's the heart of a man, boy though he is," she said angrily as the men hung back.
"He's not here. Lord! Maybe it was him a-playing tricks, though it ain't like him," cried Bessy, Lillian's little maid.
"No, it can't be him, for I locked him in myself. He walks in his sleep sometimes, and I was afraid he'd startle my lady. Let him sleep; this would only excite him and set him to marching again. Follow me, Bedford and James, I'm not afraid of ghosts or rogues."
With a face that belied her words Hester led the way to the awful room, and flinging back the curtain resolutely looked in. The bed was empty, but on the pillow was plainly visible the mark of a head and a single scarlet stain, as of blood. At that sight Hester turned pale and caught the butler's arm, whispering with a shudder, "Do you remember the night we put him in his coffin, the drop of blood that fell from his white lips? Sir Richard has been here."
"Good Lord, ma'am, don't say that! We can never rest in our beds if such things are to happen," gasped Bedford, backing to the door.
"It's no use to look, we've found all we shall find so go your ways and tell no one of this," said the woman in a gloomy tone, and, having assured herself that the windows were fast, Hester locked the room and ordered everyone but Bedford and the housekeeper to bed. "Do you sit outside my lady's door till morning," she said to the butler, "and you, Mrs. Price, help me to tend my poor lady, for if I'm not mistaken this night's work will bring on the old trouble."
Morning came, and with it a new alarm; for, though his door was fast locked and no foothold for even a sparrow outside the window, Paul's room was empty, and the boy nowhere to be found.
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{
"id": "8188"
}
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5
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A HERO
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Four years had passed, and Lillian was fast blooming into a lovely woman: proud and willful as ever, but very charming, and already a belle in the little world where she still reigned a queen. Owing to her mother's ill health, she was allowed more freedom than is usually permitted to an English girl of her age; and, during the season, often went into company with a friend of Lady Trevlyn's who was chaperoning two young daughters of her own. To the world Lillian seemed a gay, free-hearted girl; and no one, not even her mother, knew how well she remembered and how much she missed the lost Paul. No tidings of him had ever come, and no trace of him was found after his flight. Nothing was missed, he went without his wages, and no reason could be divined for his departure except the foreign letter. Bedford remembered it, but forgot what postmark it bore, for he had only been able to decipher "Italy." My lady made many inquiries and often spoke of him; but when month after month passed and no news came, she gave him up, and on Lillian's account feigned to forget him. Contrary to Hester's fear, she did not seem the worse for the nocturnal fright, but evidently connected the strange visitor with Paul, or, after a day or two of nervous exhaustion, returned to her usual state of health. Hester had her own misgivings, but, being forbidden to allude to the subject, she held her peace, after emphatically declaring that Paul would yet appear to set her mind at rest.
"Lillian, Lillian, I've such news for you! Come and hear a charming little romance, and prepare to see the hero of it!" cried Maud Churchill, rushing into her friend's pretty boudoir one day in the height of the season.
Lillian lay on a couch, rather languid after a ball, and listlessly begged Maud to tell her story, for she was dying to be amused.
"Well my, dear, just listen and you'll be as enthusiastic as I am," cried Maud. And throwing her bonnet on one chair, her parasol on another, and her gloves anywhere, she settled herself on the couch and began: "You remember reading in the papers, some time ago, that fine account of the young man who took part in the Italian revolution and did that heroic thing with the bombshell?"
"Yes, what of him?" asked Lillian, sitting up.
"He is my hero, and we are to see him tonight."
"Go on, go on! Tell all, and tell it quickly," she cried.
"You know the officers were sitting somewhere, holding a council, while the city (I forget the name) was being bombarded, and how a shell came into the midst of them, how they sat paralyzed, expecting it to burst, and how this young man caught it up and ran out with it, risking his own life to save theirs?"
"Yes, yes, I remember!" And Lillian's listless face kindled at the recollection.
"Well, an Englishman who was there was so charmed by the act that, finding the young man was poor and an orphan, he adopted him. Mr. Talbot was old, and lonely, and rich, and when he died, a year after, he left his name and fortune to this Paolo."
"I'm glad, I'm glad!" cried Lillian, clapping her hands with a joyful face. "How romantic and charming it is!"
"Isn't it? But, my dear creature, the most romantic part is to come. Young Talbot served in the war, and then came to England to take possession of his property. It's somewhere down in Kent, a fine place and good income, all his; and he deserves it. Mamma heard a deal about him from Mrs. Langdon, who knew old Talbot and has seen the young man. Of course all the girls are wild to behold him, for he is very handsome and accomplished, and a gentleman by birth. But the dreadful part is that he is already betrothed to a lovely Greek girl, who came over at the same time, and is living in London with a companion; quite elegantly, Mrs. Langdon says, for she called and was charmed. This girl has been seen by some of our gentlemen friends, and they already rave about the 'fair Helene,' for that's her name."
Here Maud was forced to stop for breath, and Lillian had a chance to question her.
"How old is she?"
"About eighteen or nineteen, they say."
"Very pretty?"
"Ravishing, regularly Greek and divine, Fred Raleigh says."
"When is she to be married?"
"Don't know; when Talbot gets settled, I fancy."
"And he? Is he as charming as she?"
"Quite, I'm told. He's just of age, and is, in appearance as in everything else, a hero of romance."
"How came your mother to secure him for tonight?"
"Mrs. Langdon is dying to make a lion of him, and begged to bring him. He is very indifferent on such things and seems intent on his own affairs. Is grave and old for his years, and doesn't seem to care much for pleasure and admiration, as most men would after a youth like his, for he has had a hard time, I believe. For a wonder, he consented to come when Mrs. Langdon asked him, and I flew off at once to tell you and secure you for tonight."
"A thousand thanks. I meant to rest, for Mamma frets about my being so gay; but she won't object to a quiet evening with you. What shall we wear?" And here the conversation branched off on the all-absorbing topic of dress.
When Lillian joined her friend that evening, the hero had already arrived, and, stepping into a recess, she waited to catch a glimpse of him. Maud was called away, and she was alone when the crowd about the inner room thinned and permitted young Talbot to be seen. Well for Lillian that no one observed her at that moment, for she grew pale and sank into a chair, exclaiming below her breath, "It is Paul--_my_ Paul!"
She recognized him instantly, in spite of increased height, a dark moustache, and martial bearing. It was Paul, older, graver, handsomer, but still "her Paul," as she called him, with a flush of pride and delight as she watched him, and felt that of all there she knew him best and loved him most. For the childish affection still existed, and this discovery added a tinge of romance that made it doubly dangerous as well as doubly pleasant.
Will he know me? she thought, glancing at a mirror which reflected a slender figure with bright hair, white arms, and brilliant eyes; a graceful little head, proudly carried, and a sweet mouth, just then very charming, as it smiled till pearly teeth shone between the ruddy lips.
I'm glad I'm not ugly, and I hope he'll like me, she thought, as she smoothed the golden ripples on her forehead, settled her sash, and shook out the folds of her airy dress in a flutter of girlish excitement. "I'll pretend not to know him, when we meet, and see what he will do," she said, with a wicked sense of power; for being forewarned she was forearmed, and, fearing no betrayal of surprise on her own part, was eager to enjoy any of which he might be guilty.
Leaving her nook, she joined a group of young friends and held herself prepared for the meeting. Presently she saw Maud and Mrs. Langdon approaching, evidently intent on presenting the hero to the heiress.
"Mr. Talbot, Miss Trevlyn," said the lady. And looking up with a well-assumed air of indifference, Lillian returned the gentleman's bow with her eyes fixed full upon his face.
Not a feature of that face changed, and so severely unconscious of any recognition was it that the girl was bewildered. For a moment she fancied she had been mistaken in his identity, and a pang of disappointment troubled her; but as he moved a chair for Maud, she saw on the one ungloved hand a little scar which she remembered well, for he received it in saving her from a dangerous fall. At the sight all the happy past rose before her, and if her telltale eyes had not been averted they would have betrayed her. A sudden flush of maidenly shame dyed her cheek as she remembered that last ride, and the childish confidences then interchanged. This Helen was the little sweetheart whose picture he wore, and now, in spite of all obstacles, he had won both fortune and ladylove. The sound of his voice recalled her thoughts, and glancing up she met the deep eyes fixed on her with the same steady look they used to wear. He had addressed her, but what he said she knew not, beyond a vague idea that it was some slight allusion to the music going on in the next room. With a smile which would serve for an answer to almost any remark, she hastily plunged into conversation with a composure that did her credit in the eyes of her friends, who stood in awe of the young hero, for all were but just out.
"Mr. Talbot hardly needs an introduction here, for his name is well-known among us, though this is perhaps his first visit to England?" she said, flattering herself that this artful speech would entrap him into the reply she wanted.
With a slight frown, as if the allusion to his adventure rather annoyed him, and a smile that puzzled all but Lillian, he answered very simply, "It is not my first visit to this hospitable island. I was here a few years ago, for a short time, and left with regret."
"Then you have old friends here?" And Lillian watched him as she spoke.
"I had. They had doubtless forgotten me now," he said, with a sudden shadow marring the tranquillity of his face.
"Why doubt them? If they were true friends, they will not forget."
The words were uttered impulsively, almost warmly, but Talbot made no response, except a polite inclination and an abrupt change in the conversation.
"That remains to be proved. Do you sing, Miss Trevlyn?"
"A little." And Lillian's tone was both cold and proud.
"A great deal, and very charmingly," added Maud, who took pride in her friend's gifts both of voice and beauty. "Come, dear, there are so few of us you will sing, I know. Mamma desired me to ask you when Edith had done."
To her surprise Lillian complied, and allowed Talbot to lead her to the instrument. Still hoping to win some sign of recognition from him, the girl chose an air he taught her and sang it with a spirit and skill that surprised the listeners who possessed no key to her mood. At the last verse her voice suddenly faltered, but Talbot took up the song and carried her safely through it with his well-tuned voice.
"You know the air then?" she said in a low tone, as a hum of commendation followed the music.
"All Italians sing it, though few do it like yourself," he answered quietly, restoring the fan he had held while standing beside her.
Provoking boy! why won't he know me? thought Lillian. And her tone was almost petulant as she refused to sing again.
Talbot offered his arm and led her to a seat, behind which stood a little statuette of a child holding a fawn by a daisy chain.
"Pretty, isn't it?" she said, as he paused to look at it instead of taking the chair before her. "I used to enjoy modeling tiny deer and hinds in wax, as well as making daisy chains. Is sculpture among the many accomplishments which rumor tells us you possess?"
"No. Those who, like me, have their own fortunes to mold find time for little else," he answered gravely, still examining the marble group.
Lillian broke her fan with an angry flirt, for she was tired of her trial, and wished she had openly greeted him at the beginning; feeling now how pleasant it would have been to sit chatting of old times, while her friends dared hardly address him at all. She was on the point of calling him by his former name, when the remembrance of what he had been arrested the words on her lips. He was proud; would he not dread to have it known that, in his days of adversity, he had been a servant? For if she betrayed her knowledge of his past, she would be forced to tell where and how that knowledge was gained. No, better wait till they met alone, she thought; he would thank her for her delicacy, and she could easily explain her motive. He evidently wished to seem a stranger, for once she caught a gleam of the old, mirthful mischief in his eye, as she glanced up unexpectedly. He did remember her, she was sure, yet was trying her, perhaps, as she tried him. Well, she would stand the test and enjoy the joke by-and-by. With this fancy in her head she assumed a gracious air and chatted away in her most charming style, feeling both gay and excited, so anxious was she to please, and so glad to recover her early friend. A naughty whim seized her as her eye fell on a portfolio of classical engravings which someone had left in disorder on a table near her. Tossing them over she asked his opinion of several, and then handed him one in which Helen of Troy was represented as giving her hand to the irresistible Paris.
"Do you think her worth so much bloodshed, and deserving so much praise?" she asked, vainly trying to conceal the significant smile that would break loose on her lips and sparkle in her eyes.
Talbot laughed the short, boyish laugh so familiar to her ears, as he glanced from the picture to the arch questioner, and answered in a tone that made her heart beat with a nameless pain and pleasure, so full of suppressed ardor was it: "Yes! 'All for love or the world well lost' is a saying I heartily agree to. La belle Helene is my favorite heroine, and I regard Paris as the most enviable of men."
"I should like to see her."
The wish broke from Lillian involuntarily, and she was too much confused to turn it off by any general expression of interest in the classical lady.
"You may sometime," answered Talbot, with an air of amusement; adding, as if to relieve her, "I have a poetical belief that all the lovely women of history or romance will meet, and know, and love each other in some charming hereafter."
"But I'm no heroine and no beauty, so I shall never enter your poetical paradise," said Lillian, with a pretty affectation of regret.
"Some women are beauties without knowing it, and the heroines of romances never given to the world. I think you and Helen will yet meet, Miss Trevlyn."
As he spoke, Mrs. Langdon beckoned, and he left her pondering over his last words, and conscious of a secret satisfaction in his implied promise that she should see his betrothed.
"How do you like him?" whispered Maud, slipping into the empty chair.
"Very well," was the composed reply; for Lillian enjoyed her little mystery too much to spoil it yet.
"What did you say to him? I longed to hear, for you seemed to enjoy yourselves very much, but I didn't like to be a marplot."
Lillian repeated a part of the conversation, and Maud professed to be consumed with jealousy at the impression her friend had evidently made.
"It is folly to try to win the hero, for he is already won, you know," answered Lillian, shutting the cover on the pictured Helen with a sudden motion as if glad to extinguish her.
"Oh dear, no; Mrs. Langdon just told Mamma that she was mistaken about their being engaged; for she asked him and he shook his head, saying Helen was his ward."
"But that is absurd, for he's only a boy himself. It's very odd, isn't it? Never mind, I shall soon know all about it."
"How?" cried Maud, amazed at Lillian's assured manner.
"Wait a day or two and, I'll tell you a romance in return for yours. Your mother beckons to me, so I know Hester has come. Good night. I've had a charming time."
And with this tantalizing adieu, Lillian slipped away. Hester was waiting in the carriage, but as Lillian appeared, Talbot put aside the footman and handed her in, saying very low, in the well-remembered tone: "Good night, my little mistress."
|
{
"id": "8188"
}
|
6
|
FAIR HELEN
|
To no one but her mother and Hester did Lillian confide the discovery she had made. None of the former servants but old Bedford remained with them, and till Paul chose to renew the old friendship it was best to remain silent. Great was the surprise and delight of our lady and Hester at the good fortune of their protege, and many the conjectures as to how he would explain his hasty flight.
"You will go and see him, won't you, Mamma, or at least inquire about him?" said Lillian, eager to assure the wanderer of a welcome, for those few words of his had satisfied her entirely.
"No, dear, it is for him to seek us, and till he does, I shall make no sign. He knows where we are, and if he chooses he can renew the acquaintance so strangely broken off. Be patient, and above all things remember, Lillian, that you are no longer a child," replied my lady, rather disturbed by her daughter's enthusiastic praises of Paul.
"I wish I was, for then I might act as I feel, and not be afraid of shocking the proprieties." And Lillian went to bed to dream of her hero.
For three days she stayed at home, expecting Paul, but he did not come, and she went out for her usual ride in the Park, hoping to meet him. An elderly groom now rode behind her, and she surveyed him with extreme disgust, as she remembered the handsome lad who had once filled that place. Nowhere did Paul appear, but in the Ladies' Mile she passed an elegant brougham in which sat a very lovely girl and a mild old lady.
"That is Talbot's fiancee," said Maud Churchill, who had joined her. "Isn't she beautiful?"
"Not at all--yes, very," was Lillian's somewhat peculiar reply, for jealousy and truth had a conflict just then. "He's so perfectly absorbed and devoted that I am sure that story is true, so adieu to our hopes," laughed Maud.
"Did you have any? Good-bye, I must go." And Lillian rode home at a pace which caused the stout groom great distress.
"Mamma, I've seen Paul's betrothed!" she cried, running into her mother's boudoir.
"And I have seen Paul himself," replied my lady, with a warning look, for there he stood, with half-extended hand, as if waiting to be acknowledged.
Lillian forgot her embarrassment in her pleasure, and made him an elaborate curtsy, saying, with a half-merry, half-reproachful glance, "Mr. Talbot is welcome in whatever guise he appears."
"I choose to appear as Paul, then, and offer you a seat, Miss Lillian," he said, assuming as much of his boyish manner as he could.
Lillian took it and tried to feel at ease, but the difference between the lad she remembered and the man she now saw was too great to be forgotten.
"Now tell us your adventures, and why you vanished away so mysteriously four years ago," she said, with a touch of the childish imperiousness in her voice, though her frank eyes fell before his.
"I was about to do so when you appeared with news concerning my cousin," he began.
"Your cousin!" exclaimed Lillian.
"Yes, Helen's mother and my own were sisters. Both married Englishmen, both died young, leaving us to care for each other. We were like a brother and sister, and always together till I left her to serve Colonel Daventry. The death of the old priest to whom I entrusted her recalled me to Genoa, for I was then her only guardian. I meant to have taken leave of you, my lady, properly, but the consequences of that foolish trick of mine frightened me away in the most unmannerly fashion."
"Ah, it was you, then, in the state chamber; I always thought so," and Lady Trevlyn drew a long breath of relief.
"Yes, I heard it whispered among the servants that the room was haunted, and I felt a wish to prove the truth of the story and my own courage. Hester locked me in, for fear of my sleepwalking; but I lowered myself by a rope and then climbed in at the closet window of the state chamber. When you came, my lady, I thought it was Hester, and slipped into the bed, meaning to give her a fright in return for her turning the key on me. But when your cry showed me what I had done, I was filled with remorse, and escaped as quickly and quietly as possible. I should have asked pardon before; I do now, most humbly, my lady, for it was sacrilege to play pranks _there_."
During the first part of his story Paul's manner had been frank and composed, but in telling the latter part, his demeanor underwent a curious change. He fixed his eyes on the ground and spoke as if repeating a lesson, while his color varied, and a half-proud, half-submissive expression replaced the former candid one. Lillian observed this, and it disturbed her, but my lady took it for shame at his boyish freak and received his confession kindly, granting a free pardon and expressing sincere pleasure at his amended fortunes. As he listened, Lillian saw him clench his hand hard and knit his brows, assuming the grim look she had often seen, as if trying to steel himself against some importunate emotion or rebellious thought.
"Yes, half my work is done, and I have a home, thanks to my generous benefactor, and I hope to enjoy it well and wisely," he said in a grave tone, as if the fortune had not yet brought him his heart's desire.
"And when is the other half of the work to be accomplished, Paul? That depends on your cousin, perhaps." And Lady Trevlyn regarded him with a gleam of womanly curiosity in her melancholy eyes.
"It does, but not in the way you fancy, my lady. Whatever Helen may be, she is not my fiancee yet, Miss Lillian." And the shadow lifted as he laughed, looking at the young lady, who was decidedly abashed, in spite of a sense of relief caused by his words.
"I merely accepted the world's report," she said, affecting a nonchalant air.
"The world is a liar, as you will find in time" was his abrupt reply.
"I hope to see this beautiful cousin, Paul. Will she receive us as old friends of yours?"
"Thanks, not yet, my lady. She is still too much a stranger here to enjoy new faces, even kind ones. I have promised perfect rest and freedom for a time, but you shall be the first whom she receives."
Again Lillian detected the secret disquiet which possessed him, and her curiosity was roused. It piqued her that this Helen felt no desire to meet her and chose to seclude herself, as if regardless of the interest and admiration she excited. "I _will_ see her in spite of her refusal, for I only caught a glimpse in the Park. Something is wrong, and I'll discover it, for it evidently worries Paul, and perhaps I can help him."
As this purpose sprang up in the warm but willful heart of the girl, she regained her spirits and was her most charming self while the young man stayed. They talked of many things in a pleasant, confidential manner, though when Lillian recalled that hour, she was surprised to find how little Paul had really told them of his past life or future plans. It was agreed among them to say nothing of their former relations, except to old Bedford, who was discretion itself, but to appear to the world as new-made friends--thus avoiding unpleasant and unnecessary explanations which would only excite gossip. My lady asked him to dine, but he had business out of town and declined, taking his leave with a lingering look, which made Lillian steal away to study her face in the mirror and wonder if she looked her best, for in Paul's eyes she had read undisguised admiration.
Lady Trevlyn went to her room to rest, leaving the girl free to ride, drive, or amuse herself as she liked. As if fearing her courage would fail if she delayed, Lillian ordered the carriage, and, bidding Hester mount guard over her, she drove away to St. John's Wood.
"Now, Hester, don't lecture or be prim when I tell you that we are going on a frolic," she began, after getting the old woman into an amiable mood by every winning wile she could devise. "I think you'll like it, and if it's found out I'll take the blame. There is some mystery about Paul's cousin, and I'm going to find it out."
"Bless you, child, how?"
"She lives alone here, is seldom seen, and won't go anywhere or receive anyone. That's not natural in a pretty girl. Paul won't talk about her, and, though he's fond of her, he always looks grave and grim when I ask questions. That's provoking, and I won't hear it. Maud is engaged to Raleigh, you know; well, he confided to her that he and a friend had found out where Helen was, had gone to the next villa, which is empty, and under pretense of looking at it got a peep at the girl in her garden. I'm going to do the same."
"And what am _I_ to do?" asked Hester, secretly relishing the prank, for she was dying with curiosity to behold Paul's cousin.
"You are to do the talking with the old woman, and give me a chance to look. Now say you will, and I'll behave myself like an angel in return."
Hester yielded, after a few discreet scruples, and when they reached Laburnum Lodge played her part so well that Lillian soon managed to stray away into one of the upper rooms which overlooked the neighboring garden. Helen was there, and with eager eyes the girl scrutinized her. She was very beautiful, in the classical style; as fair and finely molded as a statue, with magnificent dark hair and eyes, and possessed of that perfect grace which is as effective as beauty. She was alone, and when first seen was bending over a flower which she caressed and seemed to examine with great interest as she stood a long time motionless before it. Then she began to pace slowly around and around the little grass plot, her hands hanging loosely clasped before her, and her eyes fixed on vacancy as if absorbed in thought. But as the first effect of her beauty passed away, Lillian found something peculiar about her. It was not the somewhat foreign dress and ornaments she wore; it was in her face, her movements, and the tone of her voice, for as she walked she sang a low, monotonous song, as if unconsciously. Lillian watched her keenly, marking the aimless motions of the little hands, the apathy of the lovely face, and the mirthless accent of the voice; but most of all the vacant fixture of the great dark eyes. Around and around she went, with an elastic step and a mechanical regularity wearisome to witness.
What is the matter with her? thought Lillian anxiously, as this painful impression increased with every scrutiny of the unconscious girl. So abashed was she that Hester's call was unheard, and Hester was unseen as she came and stood beside her. Both looked a moment, and as they looked an old lady came from the house and led Helen in, still murmuring her monotonous song and moving her hands as if to catch and hold the sunshine.
"Poor dear, poor dear. No wonder Paul turns sad and won't talk of her, and that she don't see anyone," sighed Hester pitifully.
"What is it? I see, but don't understand," whispered Lillian.
"She's an innocent, deary, an idiot, though that's a hard word for a pretty creature like her."
"How terrible! Come away, Hester, and never breathe to anyone what we have seen." And with a shudder and sense of pain and pity lying heavy at her heart, she hurried away, feeling doubly guilty in the discovery of this affliction. The thought of it haunted her continually; the memory of the lonely girl gave her no peace; and a consciousness of deceit burdened her unspeakably, especially in Paul's presence. This lasted for a week, then Lillian resolved to confess, hoping that when he found she knew the truth he would let her share his cross and help to lighten it. Waiting her opportunity, she seized a moment when her mother was absent, and with her usual frankness spoke out impetuously.
"Paul, I've done wrong, and I can have no peace till I am pardoned. I have seen Helen."
"Where, when, and how?" he asked, looking disturbed and yet relieved.
She told him rapidly, and as she ended she looked up at him with her sweet face, so full of pity, shame, and grief it would have been impossible to deny her anything.
"Can you forgive me for discovering this affliction?"
"I think I could forgive you a far greater fault, Lillian," he answered, in a tone that said many things.
"But deceit is so mean, so dishonorable and contemptible, how can you so easily pardon it in me?" she asked, quite overcome by this forgiveness, granted without any reproach.
"Then you would find it hard to pardon such a thing in another?" he said, with the expression that always puzzled her.
"Yes, it would be hard; but in those I loved, I could forgive much for love's sake."
With a sudden gesture he took her hand saying, impulsively, "How little changed you are! Do you remember that last ride of ours nearly five years ago?"
"Yes, Paul," she answered, with averted eyes.
"And what we talked of?"
"A part of that childish gossip I remember well."
"Which part?"
"The pretty little romance you told me." And Lillian looked up now, longing to ask if Helen's childhood had been blighted like her youth.
Paul dropped her hand as if he, read her thoughts, and his own hand went involuntarily toward his breast, betraying that the locket still hung there.
"What did I say?" he asked, smiling at her sudden shyness.
"You vowed you'd win and wed your fair little lady-love if you lived."
"And so I will," he cried, with sudden fire in his eyes.
"What, marry her?"
"Aye, that I will."
"Oh Paul, will you tie yourself for life to a--" The word died on her lips, but a gesture of repugnance finished the speech.
"A what?" he demanded, excitedly.
"An innocent, one bereft of reason," stammered Lillian, entirely forgetting herself in her interest for him.
"Of whom do you speak?" asked Paul, looking utterly bewildered, "Of poor Helen."
"Good heavens, who told you that base lie?" And his voice deepened with indignant pain.
"I saw her, you did not deny her affliction; Hester said so, and I believed it. Have I wronged her, Paul?"
"Yes, cruelly. She is blind, but no idiot, thank God."
There was such earnestness in his voice, such reproach in his words, and such ardor in his eye, that Lillian's pride gave way, and with a broken entreaty for pardon, she covered up her face, weeping the bitterest tears she ever shed. For in that moment, and the sharp pang it brought her, she felt how much she loved Paul and how hard it was to lose him. The childish affection had blossomed into a woman's passion, and in a few short weeks had passed through many phases of jealousy, hope, despair, and self-delusion. The joy she felt on seeing him again, the pride she took in him, the disgust Helen caused her, the relief she had not dared to own even to herself, when she fancied fate had put an insurmountable barrier between Paul and his cousin, the despair at finding it only a fancy, and the anguish of hearing him declare his unshaken purpose to marry his first love--all these conflicting emotions had led to this hard moment, and now self-control deserted her in her need. In spite of her efforts the passionate tears would have their way, though Paul soothed her with assurances of entire forgiveness, promises of Helen's friendship, and every gentle device he could imagine. She commanded herself at last by a strong effort, murmuring eagerly as she shrank from the hand that put back her fallen hair, and the face so full of tender sympathy bending over her: "I am so grieved and ashamed at what I have said and done. I shall never dare to see Helen. Forgive me, and forget this folly. I'm sad and heavyhearted just now; it's the anniversary of Papa's death, and Mamma always suffers so much at such times that I get nervous."
"It is your birthday also. I remembered it, and ventured to bring a little token in return for the one you gave me long ago. This is a talisman, and tomorrow I will tell you the legend concerning it. Wear it for my sake, and God bless you, dear."
The last words were whispered hurriedly; Lillian saw the glitter of an antique ring, felt the touch of bearded lips on her hand, and Paul was gone.
But as he left the house he set his teeth, exclaiming low to himself, "Yes, tomorrow there shall be an end of this! We must risk everything and abide the consequences now. I'll have no more torment for any of us."
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{
"id": "8188"
}
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7
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THE SECRET KEY
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"Is Lady Trevlyn at home, Bedford?" asked Paul, as he presented himself at an early hour next day, wearing the keen, stern expression which made him look ten years older than he was.
"No, sir, my lady and Miss Lillian went down to the Hall last night."
"No ill news, I hope?" And the young man's eye kindled as if he felt a crisis at hand.
"Not that I heard, sir. Miss Lillian took one of her sudden whims and would have gone alone, if my lady hadn't given in much against her will, this being a time when she is better away from the place."
"Did they leave no message for me?"
"Yes, sir. Will you step in and read the note at your ease. We are in sad confusion, but this room is in order."
Leading the way to Lillian's boudoir, the man presented the note and retired. A few hasty lines from my lady, regretting the necessity of this abrupt departure, yet giving no reason for it, hoping they might meet next season, but making no allusion to seeing him at the Hall, desiring Lillian's thanks and regards, but closing with no hint of Helen, except compliments. Paul smiled as he threw it into the fire, saying to himself, "Poor lady, she thinks she has escaped the danger by flying, and Lillian tries to hide her trouble from me. Tender little heart! I'll comfort it without delay."
He sat looking about the dainty room still full of tokens of her presence. The piano stood open with a song he liked upon the rack; a bit of embroidery, whose progress he had often watched, lay in her basket with the little thimble near it; there was a strew of papers on the writing table, torn notes, scraps of drawing, and ball cards; a pearl-colored glove lay on the floor; and in the grate the faded flowers he had brought two days before. As his eye roved to and fro, he seemed to enjoy some happy dream, broken too soon by the sound of servants shutting up the house. He arose but lingered near the table, as if longing to search for some forgotten hint of himself.
"No, there has been enough lock picking and stealthy work; I'll do no more for her sake. This theft will harm no one and tell no tales." And snatching up the glove, Paul departed.
"Helen, the time has come. Are you ready?" he asked, entering her room an hour later.
"I am ready." And rising, she stretched her hand to him with a proud expression, contrasting painfully with her helpless gesture.
"They have gone to the Hall, and we must follow. It is useless to wait longer; we gain nothing by it, and the claim must stand on such proof as we have, or fall for want of that one link. I am tired of disguise. I want to be myself and enjoy what I have won, unless I lose it all."
"Paul, whatever happens, remember we cling together and share good or evil fortune as we always have done. I am a burden, but I cannot live without you, for you are my world. Do not desert me."
She groped her way to him and clung to his strong arm as if it was her only stay. Paul drew her close, saying wistfully, as he caressed the beautiful sightless face leaning on his shoulder, "_Mia cara_, would it break your heart, if at the last hour I gave up all and let the word remain unspoken? My courage fails me, and in spite of the hard past I would gladly leave them in peace."
"No, no, you shall not give it up!" cried Helen almost fiercely, while the slumbering fire of her southern nature flashed into her face. "You have waited so long, worked so hard, suffered so much, you must not lose your reward. You promised, and you must keep the promise."
"But it is so beautiful, so noble to forgive, and return a blessing for a curse. Let us bury the old feud, and right the old wrong in a new way. Those two are so blameless, it is cruel to visit the sins of the dead on their innocent heads. My lady has suffered enough already, and Lillian is so young, so happy, so unfit to meet a storm like this. Oh, Helen, mercy is more divine than justice."
Something moved Paul deeply, and Helen seemed about to yield, when the name of Lillian wrought a subtle change in her. The color died out of her face, her black eyes burned with a gloomy fire, and her voice was relentless as she answered, while her frail hands held him fast, "I will not let you give it up. We are as innocent as they; we have suffered more; and we deserve our rights, for we have no sin to expiate. Go on, Paul, and forget the sentimental folly that unmans you."
Something in her words seemed to sting or wound him. His face darkened, and he put her away, saying briefly, "Let it be so then. In an hour we must go."
On the evening of the same day, Lady Trevlyn and her daughter sat together in the octagon room at the Hall. Twilight was falling and candles were not yet brought, but a cheery fire blazed in the wide chimney, filling the apartment with a ruddy glow, turning Lillian's bright hair to gold and lending a tinge of color to my lady's pallid cheeks. The girl sat on a low lounging chair before the fire, her head on her hand, her eyes on the red embers, her thoughts--where? My lady lay on her couch, a little in the shadow, regarding her daughter with an anxious air, for over the young face a somber change had passed which filled her with disquiet.
"You are out of spirits, love," she said at last, breaking the long silence, as Lillian gave an unconscious sigh and leaned wearily into the depths of her chair.
"Yes, Mamma, a little."
"What is it? Are you ill?"
"No, Mamma; I think London gaiety is rather too much for me. I'm too young for it, as you often say, and I've found it out."
"Then it is only weariness that makes you so pale and grave, and so bent on coming back here?"
Lillian was the soul of truth, and with a moment's hesitation answered slowly, "Not that alone, Mamma. I'm worried about other things. Don't ask me what, please."
"But I must ask. Tell me, child, what things? Have you seen any one? Had letters, or been annoyed in any way about--anything?"
My lady spoke with sudden energy and rose on her arm, eyeing the girl with unmistakable suspicion and excitement.
"No, Mamma, it's only a foolish trouble of my own," answered Lillian, with a glance of surprise and a shamefaced look as the words reluctantly left her lips.
"Ah, a love trouble, nothing more? Thank God for that!" And my lady sank back as if a load was off her mind. "Tell me all, my darling; there is no confidante like a mother."
"You are very kind, and perhaps you can cure my folly if I tell it, and yet I am ashamed," murmured the girl. Then yielding to an irresistible impulse to ask help and sympathy, she added, in an almost inaudible tone, "I came away to escape from Paul."
"Because he loves you, Lillian?" asked my lady, with a frown and a half smile.
"Because he does _not_ love me, Mamma." And the poor girl hid her burning cheeks in her hands, as if overwhelmed with maidenly shame at the implied confession of her own affection.
"My child, how is this? I cannot but be glad that he does _not_ love you; yet it fills me with grief to see that this pains you. He is not a mate for you, Lillian. Remember this, and forget the transient regard that has sprung up from that early intimacy of yours."
"He is wellborn, and now my equal in fortune, and oh, so much my superior in all gifts of mind and heart," sighed the girl, still with hidden face, for tears were dropping through her slender fingers.
"It may be, but there is a mystery about him; and I have a vague dislike to him in spite of all that has passed. But, darling, are you sure he does not care for you? I fancied I read a different story in his face, and when you begged to leave town so suddenly, I believed that you had seen this also, and kindly wished to spare him any pain."
"It was to spare myself. Oh, Mamma, he loves Helen, and will marry her although she is blind. He told me this, with a look I could not doubt, and so I came away to hide my sorrow," sobbed poor Lillian in despair.
Lady Trevlyn went to her and, laying the bright head on her motherly bosom, said soothingly as she caressed it, "My little girl, it is too soon for you to know these troubles, and I am punished for yielding to your entreaties for a peep at the gay world. It is now too late to spare you this; you have had your wish and must pay its price, dear. But, Lillian, call pride to aid you, and conquer this fruitless love. It cannot be very deep as yet, for you have known Paul, the man, too short a time to be hopelessly enamored. Remember, there are others, better, braver, more worthy of you; that life is long, and full of pleasure yet untried."
"Have no fears for me, Mamma. I'll not disgrace you or myself by any sentimental folly. I do love Paul, but I can conquer it, and I will. Give me a little time, and you shall see me quite myself again."
Lillian lifted her head with an air of proud resolve that satisfied her mother, and with a grateful kiss stole away to ease her full heart alone. As she disappeared Lady Trevlyn drew a long breath and, clasping her hands with a gesture of thanksgiving, murmured to herself in an accent of relief, "Only a love sorrow! I feared it was some new terror like the old one. Seventeen years of silence, seventeen years of secret dread and remorse for me," she said, pacing the room with tightly locked hands and eyes full of unspeakable anguish. "Oh, Richard, Richard! I forgave you long ago, and surely I have expiated my innocent offense by these years of suffering! For her sake I did it, and for her sake I still keep dumb. God knows I ask nothing for myself but rest and oblivion by your side."
Half an hour later, Paul stood at the hall door. It was ajar, for the family had returned unexpectedly, as was evident from the open doors and empty halls. Entering unseen, he ascended to the room my lady usually occupied. The fire burned low, Lillian's chair was empty, and my lady lay asleep, as if lulled by the sighing winds without and the deep silence that reigned within. Paul stood regarding her with a great pity softening his face as he marked the sunken eyes, pallid cheeks, locks too early gray, and restless lips muttering in dreams.
"I wish I could spare her this," he sighed, stooping to wake her with a word. But he did not speak, for, suddenly clutching the chain about her neck, she seemed to struggle with some invisible foe and beat it off, muttering audibly as she clenched her thin hands on the golden case. Paul leaned and listened as if the first word had turned him to stone, till the paroxysm had passed, and with a heavy sigh my lady sank into a calmer sleep. Then, with a quick glance over his shoulder, Paul skillfully opened the locket, drew out the silver key, replaced it with one from the piano close by, and stole from the house noiselessly as he had entered it.
That night, in the darkest hour before the dawn, a figure went gliding through the shadowy Park to its most solitary corner. Here stood the tomb of the Trevlyns, and here the figure paused. A dull spark of light woke in its hand, there was a clank of bars, the creak of rusty hinges, then light and figure both seemed swallowed up.
Standing in the tomb where the air was close and heavy, the pale glimmer of the lantern showed piles of moldering coffins in the niches, and everywhere lay tokens of decay and death. The man drew his hat lower over his eyes, pulled the muffler closer about his mouth, and surveyed the spot with an undaunted aspect, though the beating of his heart was heard in the deep silence. Nearest the door stood a long casket covered with black velvet and richly decorated with silver ornaments, tarnished now. The Trevlyns had been a stalwart race, and the last sleeper brought there had evidently been of goodly stature, for the modern coffin was as ponderous as the great oaken beds where lay the bones of generations. Lifting the lantern, the intruder brushed the dust from the shield-shaped plate, read the name RICHARD TREVLYN and a date, and, as if satisfied, placed a key in the lock, half-raised the lid, and, averting his head that he might not see the ruin seventeen long years had made, he laid his hand on the dead breast and from the folded shroud drew a mildewed paper. One glance sufficed, the casket was relocked, the door rebarred, the light extinguished, and the man vanished like a ghost in the darkness of the wild October night.
|
{
"id": "8188"
}
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8
|
WHICH?
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"A Gentleman, my lady."
Taking a card from the silver salver on which the servant offered it, Lady Trevlyn read, "Paul Talbot," and below the name these penciled words, "I beseech you to see me." Lillian stood beside her and saw the line. Their eyes met, and in the girl's face was such a sudden glow of hope, and love, and longing, that the mother could not doubt or disappoint her wish.
"I will see him," she said.
"Oh, Mamma, how kind you are!" cried the girl with a passionate embrace, adding breathlessly, "He did not ask for me. I cannot see him yet. I'll hide in the alcove, and can appear or run away as I like when we know why he comes."
They were in the library, for, knowing Lillian's fondness for the room which held no dark memories for her, my lady conquered her dislike and often sat there. As she spoke, the girl glided into the deep recess of a bay window and drew the heavy curtains just as Paul's step sounded at the door.
Hiding her agitation with a woman's skill, my lady rose with outstretched hand to welcome him. He bowed but did not take the hand, saying, in a voice of grave respect in which was audible an undertone of strong emotion, "Pardon me, Lady Trevlyn. Hear what I have to say; and then if you offer me your hand, I shall gratefully receive it."
She glanced at him, and saw that he was very pale, that his eye glittered with suppressed excitement, and his whole manner was that of a man who had nerved himself up to the performance of a difficult but intensely interesting task. Fancying these signs of agitation only natural in a young lover coming to woo, my lady smiled, reseated herself, and calmly answered, "I will listen patiently. Speak freely, Paul, and remember I am an old friend."
"I wish I could forget it. Then my task would be easier," he murmured in a voice of mingled regret and resolution, as he leaned on a tall chair opposite and wiped his damp forehead, with a look of such deep compassion that her heart sank with a nameless fear.
"I must tell you a long story, and ask your forgiveness for the offenses I committed against you when a boy. A mistaken sense of duty guided me, and I obeyed it blindly. Now I see my error and regret it," he said earnestly.
"Go on," replied my lady, while the vague dread grew stronger, and she braced her nerves as for some approaching shock. She forgot Lillian, forgot everything but the strange aspect of the man before her, and the words to which she listened like a statue. Still standing pale and steady, Paul spoke rapidly, while his eyes were full of mingled sternness, pity, and remorse.
"Twenty years ago, an English gentleman met a friend in a little Italian town, where he had married a beautiful wife. The wife had a sister as lovely as herself, and the young man, during that brief stay, loved and married her--in a very private manner, lest his father should disinherit him. A few months passed, and the Englishman was called home to take possession of his title and estates, the father being dead. He went alone, promising to send for the wife when all was ready. He told no one of his marriage, meaning to surprise his English friends by producing the lovely woman unexpectedly. He had been in England but a short time when he received a letter from the old priest of the Italian town, saying the cholera had swept through it, carrying off half its inhabitants, his wife and friend among others. This blow prostrated the young man, and when he recovered he hid his grief, shut himself up in his country house, and tried to forget. Accident threw in his way another lovely woman, and he married again. Before the first year was out, the friend whom he supposed was dead appeared, and told him that his wife still lived, and had borne him a child. In the terror and confusion of the plague, the priest had mistaken one sister for the other, as the elder did die."
"Yes, yes, I know; go on!" gasped my lady, with white lips, and eyes that never left the narrator's face.
"This friend had met with misfortune after flying from the doomed village with the surviving sister. They had waited long for letters, had written, and, when no answer came, had been delayed by illness and poverty from reaching England. At this time the child was born, and the friend, urged by the wife and his own interest, came here, learned that Sir Richard was married, and hurried to him in much distress. We can imagine the grief and horror of the unhappy man. In that interview the friend promised to leave all to Sir Richard, to preserve the secret till some means of relief could be found; and with this promise he returned, to guard and comfort the forsaken wife. Sir Richard wrote the truth to Lady Trevlyn, meaning to kill himself, as the only way of escape from the terrible situation between two women, both so beloved, both so innocently wronged. The pistol lay ready, but death came without its aid, and Sir Richard was spared the sin of suicide."
Paul paused for breath, but Lady Trevlyn motioned him to go on, still sitting rigid and white as the marble image near her.
"The friend only lived to reach home and tell the story. It killed the wife, and she died, imploring the old priest to see her child righted and its father's name secured to it. He promised; but he was poor, the child was a frail baby, and he waited. Years passed, and when the child was old enough to ask for its parents and demand its due, the proofs of the marriage were lost, and nothing remained but a ring, a bit of writing, and the name. The priest was very old, had neither friends, money, nor proofs to help him; but I was strong and hopeful, and though a mere boy I resolved to do the work. I made my way to England, to Trevlyn Hall, and by various stratagems (among which, I am ashamed to say, were false keys and feigned sleepwalking) I collected many proofs, but nothing which would satisfy a court, for no one but you knew where Sir Richard's confession was. I searched every nook and corner of the Hall, but in vain, and began to despair, when news of the death of Father Cosmo recalled me to Italy; for Helen was left to my care then. The old man had faithfully recorded the facts and left witnesses to prove the truth of his story; but for four years I never used it, never made any effort to secure the title or estates."
"Why not?" breathed my lady in a faint whisper, as hope suddenly revived.
"Because I was grateful," and for the first time Paul's voice faltered. "I was a stranger, and you took me in. I never could forget that, nor tie many kindnesses bestowed upon the friendless boy. This afflicted me, even while I was acting a false part, and when I was away my heart failed me. But Helen gave me no peace; for my sake, she urged me to keep the vow made to that poor mother, and threatened to tell the story herself. Talbot's benefaction left me no excuse for delaying longer, and I came to finish the hardest task I can ever undertake. I feared that a long dispute would follow any appeal to law, and meant to appeal first to you, but fate befriended me, and the last proof was found."
"Found! Where?" cried Lady Trevlyn, springing up aghast.
"In Sir Richard's coffin, where you hid it, not daring to destroy, yet fearing to keep it."
"Who has betrayed me?" And her eye glanced wildly about the room, as if she feared to see some spectral accuser.
"Your own lips, my lady. Last night I came to speak of this. You lay asleep, and in some troubled dream spoke of the paper, safe in its writer's keeping, and your strange treasure here, the key of which you guarded day and night. I divined the truth. Remembering Hester's stories, I took the key from your helpless hand, found the paper on Sir Richard's dead breast, and now demand that you confess your part in this tragedy."
"I do, I do! I confess, I yield, I relinquish everything, and ask pity only for my child."
Lady Trevlyn fell upon her knees before him, with a submissive gesture, but imploring eyes, for, amid the wreck of womanly pride and worldly fortune, the mother's heart still clung to its idol.
"Who should pity her, if not I? God knows I would have spared her this blow if I could; but Helen would not keep silent, and I was driven to finish what I had begun. Tell Lillian this, and do not let her hate me."
As Paul spoke, tenderly, eagerly, the curtain parted, and Lillian appeared, trembling with the excitement of that interview, but conscious of only one emotion as she threw herself into his arms, crying in a tone of passionate delight, "Brother! Brother! Now I may love you!"
Paul held her close, and for a moment forgot everything but the joy of that moment. Lillian spoke first, looking up through tears of tenderness, her little hand laid caressingly against his cheek, as she whispered with sudden bloom in her own, "Now I know why I loved you so well, and now I can see you marry Helen without breaking my heart. Oh, Paul, you are still mine, and I care for nothing else."
"But, Lillian, I am not your brother."
"Then, in heaven's name, who are you?" she cried, tearing herself from his arms.
"Your lover, dear!"
"Who, then, is the heir?" demanded Lady Trevlyn, springing up, as Lillian turned to seek shelter with her mother.
"I am."
Helen spoke, and Helen stood on the threshold of the door, with a hard, haughty look upon her beautiful face.
"You told your story badly, Paul," she said, in a bitter tone. "You forgot me, forgot my affliction, my loneliness, my wrongs, and the natural desire of a child to clear her mother's honor and claim her father's name. I am Sir Richard's eldest daughter. I can prove my birth, and I demand my right with his own words to sustain me."
She paused, but no one spoke; and with a slight tremor in her proud voice, she added, "Paul has done the work; he shall have the reward. I only want my father's name. Title and fortune are nothing to one like me. I coveted and claimed them that I might give them to you, Paul, my one friend, always, so tender and so true."
"I'll have none of it," he answered, almost fiercely. "I have kept my promise, and am free. You chose to claim your own, although I offered all I had to buy your silence. It is yours by right--take it, and enjoy it if you can. I'll have no reward for work like this."
He turned from her with a look that would have stricken her to the heart could she have seen it. She felt it, and it seemed to augment some secret anguish, for she pressed her hands against her bosom with an expression of deep suffering, exclaiming passionately, "Yes, I _will_ keep it, since I am to lose all else. I am tired of pity. Power is sweet, and I will use it. Go, Paul, and be happy if you can, with a nameless wife, and the world's compassion or contempt to sting your pride."
"Oh, Lillian, where shall we go? This is no longer our home, but who will receive us now?" cried Lady Trevlyn, in a tone of despair, for her spirit was utterly broken by the thought of the shame and sorrow in store for this beloved and innocent child.
"I will." And Paul's face shone with a love and loyalty they could not doubt. "My lady, you gave me a home when I was homeless; now let me pay my debt. Lillian, I have loved you from the time when, a romantic boy, I wore your little picture in my breast, and vowed to win you if I lived. I dared not speak before, but now, when other hearts may be shut against you, mine stands wide open to welcome you. Come, both. Let me protect and cherish you, and so atone for the sorrow I have brought you."
It was impossible to resist the sincere urgency of his voice, the tender reverence of his manner, as he took the two forlorn yet innocent creatures into the shelter of his strength and love. They clung to him instinctively, feeling that there still remained to them one staunch friend whom adversity could not estrange.
An eloquent silence fell upon the room, broken only by sobs, grateful whispers, and the voiceless vows that lovers plight with eyes, and hands, and tender lips. Helen was forgotten, till Lillian, whose elastic spirit threw off sorrow as a flower sheds the rain, looked up to thank Paul, with smiles as well as tears, and saw the lonely figure in the shadow. Her attitude was full of pathetic significance; she still stood on the threshold, for no one had welcomed her, and in the strange room she knew not where to go; her hands were clasped before her face, as if those sightless eyes had seen the joy she could not share, and at her feet lay the time-stained paper that gave her a barren title, but no love. Had Lillian known how sharp a conflict between passion and pride, jealousy and generosity, was going on in that young heart, she could not have spoken in a tone of truer pity or sincerer goodwill than that in which she softly said, "Poor girl! We must not forget her, for, with all her wealth, she is poor compared to us. We both had one father, and should love each other in spite of this misfortune. Helen, may I call you sister?"
"Not yet. Wait till I deserve it."
As if that sweet voice had kindled an answering spark of nobleness in her own heart, Helen's face changed beautifully, as she tore the paper to shreds, saying in a glad, impetuous tone, while the white flakes fluttered from her hands, "I, too, can be generous. I, too, can forgive. I bury the sad past. See! I yield my claim, I destroy my proofs, I promise eternal silence, and keep 'Paul's cousin' for my only title. Yes, you are happy, for you love one another!" she cried, with a sudden passion of tears. "Oh, forgive me, pity me, and take me in, for I am all alone and in the dark!"
There could be but one reply to an appeal like that, and they gave it, as they welcomed her with words that sealed a household league of mutual secrecy and sacrifice.
They _were_ happy, for the world never knew the hidden tie that bound them so faithfully together, never learned how well the old prophecy had been fulfilled, or guessed what a tragedy of life and death the silver key unlocked.
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{
"id": "8188"
}
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1
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THE SHOP
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It was an evening early in May. The sun was low, and the street was mottled with the shadows of its paving-stones--smooth enough, but far from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the fragments. The street was almost empty, and the air was chill. The spring was busy, and the summer was at hand; but the wind was blowing from the north.
The street was not a common one; there was interest, that is feature, in the shadowy front of almost each of its old houses. Not a few of them wore, indeed, something like a human expression, the look of having both known and suffered. From many a porch, and many a latticed oriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in a wind unfelt of the body--or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and flit away, and add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and exercising a charm none of them would ever gain.
Some of the oldest of its houses, most of them with more than one projecting story, stood about the middle of the street. The central and oldest of these was a draper's shop. The windows of the ground-floor encroached a little on the pavement, to which they descended very close, for the floor of the shop was lower than the street. But, although they had glass on three oriel sides, they were little used for the advertising of the stores within. A few ribbons and gay handkerchiefs, mostly of cotton, for the eyes of the country people on market-days, formed the chief part of their humble show. The door was wide and very low, the upper half of it of glass--old, and bottle-colored; and its threshold was a deep step down into the shop. As a place for purchases it might not to some eyes look promising, but both the ladies and the housekeepers of Testbridge knew that rarely could they do better in London itself than at the shop of Turnbull and Marston, whether variety, quality, or price, was the point in consideration. And, whatever the first impression concerning it, the moment the eyes of a stranger began to grow accustomed to its gloom, the evident size and plenitude of the shop might well suggest a large hope. It was low, indeed, and the walls could therefore accommodate few shelves; but the ceiling was therefore so near as to be itself available for stowage by means of well-contrived slides and shelves attached to the great beams crossing it in several directions. During the shop-day, many an article, light as lace, and heavy as broadcloth, was taken from overhead to lay upon the counter. The shop had a special reputation for all kinds of linen goods, from cambric handkerchiefs to towels, and from table-napkins to sheets; but almost everything was to be found in it, from Manchester moleskins for the navy's trousers, to Genoa velvet for the dowager's gown, and from Horrocks's prints to Lyons silks. It had been enlarged at the back, by building beyond the original plan, and that part of it was a little higher, and a little better lighted than the front; but the whole place was still dark enough to have awaked the envy of any swindling London shopkeeper. Its owners, however, had so long enjoyed the confidence of the neighborhood, that faith readily took the place of sight with their customers--so far at least as quality was concerned; and seldom, except in a question of color or shade, was an article carried to the door to be confronted with the day. It had been just such a shop, untouched of even legendary change, as far back as the memory of the sexton reached; and he, because of his age and his occupation, was the chief authority in the local history of the place.
As, on this evening, there were few people in the street, so were there few in the shop, and it was on the point of being closed: they were not particular there to a good many minutes either way. Behind the counter, on the left hand, stood a youth of about twenty, young George Turnbull, the son of the principal partner, occupied in leisurely folding and putting aside a number of things he had been showing to a farmer's wife, who was just gone. He was an ordinary-looking lad, with little more than business in his high forehead, fresh-colored, good-humored, self-satisfied cheeks, and keen hazel eyes. These last kept wandering from his not very pressing occupation to the other side of the shop, where stood, behind the opposing counter, a young woman, in attendance upon the wants of a well-dressed youth in front of it, who had just made choice of a pair of driving-gloves. His air and carriage were conventionally those of a gentleman--a gentleman, however, more than ordinarily desirous of pleasing a young woman behind a counter. She answered him with politeness, and even friendliness, nor seemed aware of anything unusual in his attentions.
"They're splendid gloves," he said, making talk; "but don't you think it a great price for a pair of gloves, Miss Marston?"
"It is a good deal of money," she answered, in a sweet, quiet voice, whose very tone suggested simplicity and straightforwardness; "but they will last you a long time. Just look at the work, Mr. Helmer. You see how they are made? It is much more difficult to stitch them like that, one edge over the other, than to sew the two edges together, as they do with ladies' gloves. But I'll just ask my father whether he marked them himself."
"He did mark those, I know," said young Turnbull, who had been listening to all that went on, "for I heard my father say they ought to be sixpence more."
"Ah, then!" she returned, assentingly, and laid the gloves on the box before her, the question settled.
Helmer took them, and began to put them on.
"They certainly are the only glove where there is much handling of reins," he said.
"That is what Mr. Wardour says of them," rejoined Miss Marston.
"By the by," said Helmer, lowering his voice, "when did you see anybody from Thornwick?"
"Their old man was in the town yesterday with the dog-cart."
"Nobody with him?"
"Miss Letty. She came in for just two minutes or so."
"How was she looking?"
"Very well," answered Miss Marston, with what to Helmer seemed indifference.
"Ah!" he said, with a look of knowingness, "you girls don't see each other with the same eyes as we. I grant Letty is not very tall, and I grant she has not much of a complexion; but where did you ever see such eyes?"
"You must excuse me, Mr. Helmer," returned Mary, with a smile, "if I don't choose to discuss Letty's merits with you; she is my friend."
"Where would be the harm?" rejoined Helmer, looking puzzled. "I am not likely to say anything against her. You know perfectly well I admire her beyond any woman in the world. I don't care who knows it."
"Your mother?" suggested Mary, in the tone of one who makes a venture.
"Ah, come now, Miss Marston! Don't you turn my mother loose upon me. I shall be of age in a few months, and then my mother may--think as she pleases. I know, of course, with her notions, she would never consent to my making love to Letty--" "I should think not!" exclaimed Mary. "Who ever thought of such an absurdity? Not you, surely, Mr. Helmer? What would your mother say to hear you? I mention her in earnest now."
"Let mothers mind their own business!" retorted the youth angrily. "I shall mind mine. My mother ought to know that by this time."
Mary said no more. She knew Mrs. Helmer was not a mother to deserve her boy's confidence, any more than to gain it; for she treated him as if she had made him, and was not satisfied with her work.
"When are you going to see Letty, Miss Marston?" resumed Helmer, after a brief pause of angry feeling.
"Next Sunday evening probably."
"Take me with you."
"Take you with me! What are you dreaming of, Mr. Helmer?"
"I would give my bay mare for a good talk with Letty Lovel," he returned.
Mary made no reply.
"You won't?" he said petulantly, after a vain pause of expectation.
"Won't what?" rejoined Miss Marston, as if she could not believe him in earnest.
"Take me with you on Sunday?"
"No," she answered quietly, but with sober decision.
"Where would be the harm?" pleaded the youth, in a tone mingled of expostulation, entreaty, and mortification.
"One is not bound to do everything there would be no harm in doing," answered Miss Marston. "Besides, Mr. Helmer, I don't choose to go out walking with you of a Sunday evening."
"Why not?"
"For one thing, your mother would not like it. You know she would not."
"Never mind my mother. She's nothing to you. She can't bite you. --Ask the dentist. Come, come! that's all nonsense. I shall be at the stile beyond the turnpike-gate all the afternoon--waiting till you come."
"The moment I see you--anywhere upon the road--that moment I shall turn back. --Do you think," she added with half-amused indignation, "I would put up with having all the gossips of Testbridge talk of my going out on a Sunday evening with a boy like you?"
Tom Helmer's face flushed. He caught up the gloves, threw the price of them on the counter, and walked from the shop, without even a good night.
"Hullo!" cried George Turnbull, vaulting over the counter, and taking the place Helmer had just left opposite Mary; "what did you say to the fellow to send him off like that? If you do hate the business, you needn't scare the customers, Mary."
"I don't hate the business, you know quite well, George. And if I did scare a customer," she added, laughing, as she dropped the money in the till, "it was not before he had done buying."
"That may be; but we must look to to-morrow as well as to-day. When is Mr. Helmer likely to come near us again, after such a wipe as you must have given him to make him go off like that?"
"Just to-morrow, George, I fancy," answered Mary. "He won't be able to bear the thought of having left a bad impression on me, and so he'll come again to remove it. After all, there's something about him I can't help liking. I said nothing that ought to have put him out of temper like that, though; I only called him a boy."
"Let me tell you, Mary, you could not have called him a worse name."
"Why, what else is he?"
"A more offensive word a man could not hear from the lips of a woman," said George loftily.
"A man, I dare say! But Mr. Helmer can't be nineteen yet."
"How can you say so, when he told you himself he would be of age in a few months? The fellow is older than I am. You'll be calling me a boy next."
"What else are you? You at least are not one-and-twenty."
"And how old do you call yourself, pray, miss?"
"Three-and-twenty last birthday."
"A mighty difference indeed!"
"Not much--only all the difference, it seems, between sense and absurdity, George."
"That may be all very true of a fine gentleman, like Helmer, that does nothing from morning to night but run away from his mother; but you don't think it applies to me, Mary, I hope!"
"That's as you behave yourself, George. If you do not make it apply, it won't apply of itself. But if young women had not more sense than most of the young men I see in the shop--on both sides of the counter, George--things would soon be at a fine pass. Nothing better in your head than in a peacock's! --only that a peacock _has_ the fine feathers he's so proud of."
"If it were Mr. Wardour now, Mary, that was spreading his tail for you to see, you would not complain of that peacock!"
A vivid rose blossomed instantly in Mary's cheek. Mr. Wardour was not even an acquaintance of hers. He was cousin and friend to Letty Lovel, indeed, but she had never spoken to him, except in the shop.
"It would not be quite out of place if you were to learn a little respect for your superiors, George," she returned. "Mr. Wardour is not to be thought of in the same moment with the young men that were in my mind. Mr. Wardour is not a young man; and he is a gentleman."
She took the glove-box, and turning placed it on a shelf behind her.
"Just so!" remarked George, bitterly. "Any man you don't choose to count a gentleman, you look down upon! What have you got to do with gentlemen, I should like to know?"
"To admire one when I see him," answered Mary. "Why shouldn't I? It is very seldom, and it does me good."
"Oh, yes!" rejoined George, contemptuously. "You _call_ yourself a lady, but--" "I do nothing of the kind," interrupted Mary, sharply. "I should _like_ to be a lady; and inside of me, please God, I _will_ be a lady; but I leave it to other people to call me this or that. It matters little what any one is _called_."
"All right," returned George, a little cowed; "I don't mean to contradict you. Only just tell me why a well-to-do tradesman shouldn't be a gentleman as well as a small yeoman like Wardour."
"Why don't you say--as well as a squire, or an earl, or a duke?" said Mary.
"There you are, chaffing me again! It's hard enough to have every fool of a lawyer's clerk, or a doctor's boy, looking down upon a fellow, and calling him a counter-jumper; but, upon my soul, it's too bad when a girl in the same shop hasn't a civil word for him, because he isn't what she counts a gentleman! Isn't my father a gentleman? Answer me that, Mary."
It was one of George's few good things that he had a great opinion of his father, though the grounds of it were hardly such as to enable Mary to answer his appeal in a way he would have counted satisfactory. She thought of her own father, and was silent.
"Everything depends on what a man is in himself, George," she answered. "Mr. Wardour would be a gentleman all the same if he were a shopkeeper or a blacksmith."
"And shouldn't I be as good a gentleman as Mr. Wardour, if I had been born with an old tumble-down house on my back, and a few acres of land I could do with as I liked? Come, answer me that."
"If it be the house and the land that makes the difference, you would, of course," answered Mary.
Her tone implied, even to George's rough perceptions, that there was a good deal more of a difference between them than therein lay. But common people, whether lords or shopkeepers, are slow to understand that possession, whether in the shape of birth, or lands, or money, or intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.
"I know you don't think me fit to hold a candle to him," he said. "But I happen to know, for all he rides such a good horse, he's not above doing the work of a wretched menial, for he polishes his own stirrup-irons."
"I'm very glad to hear it," rejoined Mary. "He must be more of a gentleman yet than I thought him."
"Then why should you count him a better gentleman than me?"
"I'm afraid for one thing, you would go with your stirrup-irons rusty, rather than clean them yourself, George. But I will tell you one thing Mr. Wardour would not do if he were a shopkeeper: he would not, like you, talk one way to the rich, and another way to the poor--all submission and politeness to the one, and familiarity, even to rudeness, with the other! If you go on like that, you'll never come within sight of being a gentleman, George--not if you live to the age of Methuselah."
"Thank you, Miss Mary! It's a fine thing to have a lady in the shop! Shouldn't I just like my father to hear you! I'm blowed if I know how a fellow is to get on with you! Certain sure I am that it ain't _my_ fault if we're not friends."
Mary made no reply. She could not help understanding what George meant, and she flushed, with honest anger, from brow to chin. But, while her dark-blue eyes flamed with indignation, her anger was not such as to render her face less pleasant to look upon. There are as many kinds of anger as there are of the sunsets with which they ought to end: Mary's anger had no hate in it.
I must now hope my readers sufficiently interested in my narrative to care that I should tell them something of what she was like. Plainly as I see her, I can not do more for them than that. I can not give a portrait of her; I can but cast her shadow on my page. It was a dainty half-length, neither tall nor short, in a plain, well-fitting dress of black silk, with linen collar and cuffs, that rose above the counter, standing, in spite of displeasure, calm and motionless. Her hair was dark, and dressed in the simplest manner, without even a reminder of the hideous occipital structure then in favor--especially with shop women, who in general choose for imitation and exorbitant development whatever is ugliest and least lady-like in the fashion of the hour. It had a natural wave in it, which broke the too straight lines it would otherwise have made across a forehead of sweet and composing proportions. Her features were regular--her nose straight--perhaps a little thin; the curve of her upper lip carefully drawn, as if with design to express a certain firmness of modesty; and her chin well shaped, perhaps a little too sharply defined for her years, and rather large. Everything about her suggested the repose of order satisfied, of unconstrained obedience to the laws of harmonious relation. The only fault honest criticism could have suggested, merely suggested, was the presence of just a possible _nuance_ of primness. Her boots, at this moment unseen of any, fitted her feet, as her feet fitted her body. Her hands were especially good. There are not many ladies, interested in their own graces, who would not have envied her such seals to her natural patent of ladyhood. Her speech and manners corresponded with her person and dress; they were direct and simple, in tone and inflection, those of one at peace with herself. Neatness was more notable in her than grace, but grace was not absent; good breeding was more evident than delicacy, yet delicacy was there; and unity was plain throughout.
George went back to his own side of the shop, jumped the counter, put the cover on the box he had left open with a bang, and shoved it into its place as if it had been the backboard of a cart, shouting as he did so to a boy invisible, to make haste and put up the shutters. Mary left the shop by a door on the inside of the counter, for she and her father lived in the house; and, as soon as the shop was closed, George went home to the villa his father had built in the suburbs.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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2
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CUSTOMERS.
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The next day was Saturday, a busy one at the shop. From the neighboring villages and farms came customers not a few; and ladies, from the country-seats around, began to arrive as the hours went on. The whole strength of the establishment was early called out. Busiest in serving was the senior partner, Mr. Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with a bald crown, a heavy watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the wide space between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his little one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had cultivated an ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree that, to use the common hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By nature he was good-tempered and genial; but, having devoted every mental as well as physical endowment to the making of money, what few drops of spiritual water were in him had to go with the rest to the turning of the mill-wheel that ground the universe into coin. In his own eyes he was a strong churchman, but the only sign of it visible to others was the strength of his contempt for dissenters--which, however, excepting his partner and Mary, he showed only to church-people; a dissenter's money being, as he often remarked, when once in his till, as good as the best churchman's.
To the receptive eye he was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as he bent over a piece of goods outspread before a customer, one hand resting on the stuff, the other on the yard-measure, his chest as nearly touching the counter as the protesting adjacent parts would permit, his broad smooth face turned up at right angles, and his mouth, eloquent even to solemnity on the merits of the article, now hiding, now disclosing a gulf of white teeth. No sooner was anything admitted into stock, than he bent his soul to the selling of it, doing everything that could be done, saying everything he could think of saying, short of plain lying as to its quality: that he was not guilty of. To buy well was a care to him, to sell well was a greater, but to make money, and that as speedily as possible, was his greatest care, and his whole ambition.
John Turnbull in his gig, as he drove along the road to the town, and through the street approached his shop-door, showed to the chance observer a man who knew himself of importance, a man who might have a soul somewhere inside that broad waistcoat; as he drew up, threw the reins to his stable-boy, and descended upon the pavement--as he stepped down into the shop even, he looked a being in whom son or daughter or friend might feel some honest pride; but, the moment he was behind the counter and in front of a customer, he changed to a creature whose appearance and carriage were painfully contemptible to any beholder who loved his kind; he had lost the upright bearing of a man, and cringed like an ape. But I fear it was thus he had gained a portion at least of his favor with the country-folk, many of whom much preferred his ministrations to those of his partner. A glance, indeed, from the one to the other, was enough to reveal which must be the better salesman--and to some eyes which the better man.
In the narrow walk of his commerce--behind the counter, I mean--Mr. Marston stood up tall and straight, lank and lean, seldom bending more than his long neck in the direction of the counter, but doing everything needful upon it notwithstanding, from the unusual length of his arms and his bony hands. His forehead was high and narrow, his face pale and thin, his hair long and thin, his nose aquiline and thin, his eyes large, his mouth and chin small. He seldom spoke a syllable more than was needful, but his words breathed calm respect to every customer. His conversation with one was commonly all but over as he laid something for approval or rejection on the counter: he had already taken every pains to learn the precise nature of the necessity or desire; and what he then offered he submitted without comment; if the thing was not judged satisfactory, he removed it and brought another. Many did not like this mode of service; they would be helped to buy; unequal to the task of making up their minds, they welcomed any aid toward it; and therefore preferred Mr. Turnbull, who gave them every imaginable and unimaginable assistance, groveling before them like a man whose many gods came to him one after the other to be worshiped; while Mr. Marston, the moment the thing he presented was on the counter, shot straight up like a poplar in a sudden calm, his visage bearing witness that his thought was already far away--in heavenly places with his wife, or hovering like a perplexed bee over some difficult passage in the New Testament; Mary could have told which, for she knew the meaning of every shadow that passed or lingered on his countenance.
His partner and his like-minded son despised him, as a matter of course; his unbusiness-like habits, as they counted them, were the constantly recurring theme of their scorn; and some of these would doubtless have brought him the disapprobation of many a business man of a moral development beyond that of Turnbull; but Mary saw nothing in them which did not stamp her father the superior of all other men she knew.
To mention one thing, which may serve as typical of the man: he not unfrequently sold things under the price marked by his partner. Against this breach of fealty to the firm Turnbull never ceased to level his biggest guns of indignation and remonstrance, though always without effect. He even lowered himself in his own eyes so far as to quote Scripture like a canting dissenter, and remind his partner of what came to a house divided against itself. He did not see that the best thing for some houses must be to come to pieces. "Well, but, Mr. Turnbull, I thought it was marked too high," was the other's invariable answer. "William, you are a fool," his partner would rejoin for the hundredth time. "Will you never understand that, if we get a little more than the customary profit upon one thing, we get less upon another? You must make the thing even, or come to the workhouse." Thereto, for the hundredth time also, William Marston would reply: "That might hold, I daresay, Mr. Turnbull--I am not sure--if every customer always bought an article of each of the two sorts together; but I can't make it straight with my conscience that one customer should pay too much because I let another pay too little. Besides, I am not at all sure that the general scale of profit is not set too high. I fear you and I will have to part, Mr. Turnbull." But nothing was further from Turnbull's desire than that he and Marston should part; he could not keep the business going without his money, not to mention that he never doubted Marston would straightway open another shop, and, even if he did not undersell him, take from him all his dissenting customers; for the junior partner was deacon of a small Baptist church in the town--a fact which, although like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of John Turnbull in his villa, was invaluable in the eyes of John Turnbull behind his counter.
Whether William Marston was right or wrong in his ideas about the rite of baptism--probably he was both--he was certainly right in his relation to that which alone makes it of any value--that, namely, which it signifies; buried with his Master, he had died to selfishness, greed, and trust in the secondary; died to evil, and risen to good--a new creature. He was just as much a Christian in his shop as in the chapel, in his bedroom as at the prayer-meeting.
But the world was not now much temptation to him, and, to tell the truth, he was getting a good deal tired of the shop. He had to remind himself, oftener and oftener, that in the mean time it was the work given him to do, and to take more and more frequently the strengthening cordial of a glance across the shop at his daughter. Such a glance passed through the dusky place like summer lightning through a heavy atmosphere, and came to Mary like a glad prophecy; for it told of a world within and beyond the world, a region of love and faith, where struggled no antagonistic desires, no counteracting aims, but unity was the visible garment of truth.
The question may well suggest itself to my reader--How could such a man be so unequally yoked with such another as Turnbull? --To this I reply that Marston's greatness had yet a certain repressive power upon the man who despised him, so that he never uttered his worst thoughts or revealed his worst basenesses in his presence. Marston never thought of him as my reader must soon think--flattered himself, indeed, that poor John was gradually improving, coming to see things more and more as he would have him look on them. Add to this, that they had been in the business together almost from boyhood, and much will be explained.
An open carriage, with a pair of showy but ill-matched horses, looking unfit for country work on the one hand, as for Hyde Park on the other, drew up at the door; and a visible wave of interest ran from end to end of the shop, swaying as well those outside as those inside the counter, for the carriage was well known in Testbridge. It was that of Lady Margaret Mortimer; she did not herself like the _Margaret_, and signed only her second name _Alice_ at full length, whence her _friends_ generally called her to each other Lady Malice. She did not leave the carriage, but continued to recline motionless in it, at an angle of forty-five degrees, wrapped in furs, for the day was cloudy and cold, her pale handsome face looking inexpressibly more indifferent in its regard of earth and sky and the goings of men, than that of a corpse whose gaze is only on the inside of the coffin-lid. But the two ladies who were with her got down. One of them was her daughter, Hesper by name, who, from the dull, cloudy atmosphere that filled the doorway, entered the shop like a gleam of sunshine, dusky-golden, followed by a glowing shadow, in the person of her cousin, Miss Yolland.
Turnbull hurried to meet them, bowing profoundly, and looking very much like Issachar between the chairs he carried. But they turned aside to where Mary stood, and in a few minutes the counter was covered with various stuffs for some of the smaller articles of ladies' attire.
The customers were hard to please, for they wanted the best things at the price of inferior ones, and Mary noted that the desires of the cousin were farther reaching and more expensive than those of Miss Mortimer. But, though in this way hard to please, they were not therefore unpleasant to deal with; and from the moment she looked the latter in the face, whom she had not seen since she was a girl, Mary could hardly take her eyes off her. All at once it struck her how well the unusual, fantastic name her mother had given her suited her; and, as she gazed, the feeling grew.
Large, and grandly made, Hesper stood "straight, and steady, and tall," dusky-fair, and colorless, with the carriage of a young matron. Her brown hair seemed ever scathed and crinkled afresh by the ethereal flame that here and there peeped from amid the unwilling volute rolled back from her creamy forehead in a rebellious coronet. Her eyes were large and hazel; her nose cast gently upward, answering the carriage of her head; her mouth decidedly large, but so exquisite in drawing and finish that the loss of a centimetre of its length would to a lover have been as the loss of a kingdom; her chin a trifle large, and grandly lined; for a woman's, her throat was massive, and her arms and hands were powerful. Her expression was frank, almost brave, her eyes looking full at the person she addressed. As she gazed, a kind of love she had never felt before kept swelling in Mary's heart.
Her companion impressed her very differently.
Some men, and most women, counted Miss Yolland _strangely_ ugly. But there were men who exceedingly admired her. Not very slight for her stature, and above the middle height, she looked small beside Hesper. Her skin was very dark, with a considerable touch of sallowness; her eyes, which were large and beautifully shaped, were as black as eyes could be, with light in the midst of their blackness, and more than a touch of hardness in the midst of their liquidity; her eyelashes were singularly long and black, and she seemed conscious of them every time they rose. She did not _use_ her eyes habitually, but, when she did, the thrust was sudden and straight. I heard a man once say that a look from her was like a volley of small-arms. Like Hesper's, her mouth was large and good, with fine teeth; her chin projected a little too much; her hands were finer than Hesper's, but bony. Her name was Septimia; Lady Margaret called her Sepia, and the contraction seemed to so many suitable that it was ere long generally adopted. She was in mourning, with a little crape. To the first glance she seemed as unlike Hesper as she could well be; but, as she stood gently regarding the two, Mary, gradually, and to her astonishment, became indubitably aware of a singular likeness between them. Sepia, being a few years older, and in less flourishing condition, had her features sharper and finer, and by nature her complexion was darker by shades innumerable; but, if the one was the evening, the other was the night: Sepia was a diminished and overshadowed Hesper. Their manner, too, was similar, but Sepia's was the haughtier, and she had an occasional look of defiance, of which there appeared nothing in Hesper. When first she came to Durnmelling, Lady Malice had once alluded to the dependence of her position--but only once: there came a flash into rather than out of Sepia's eyes that made any repetition of the insult impossible and Lady Malice wish that she had left her a wanderer on the face of Europe.
Sepia was the daughter of a clergyman, an uncle of Lady Malice, whose sons had all gone to the bad, and whose daughters had all vanished from society. Shortly before the time at which my narrative begins, one of the latter, however, namely Sepia, the youngest, had reappeared, a fragment of the family wreck, floating over the gulf of its destruction. Nobody knew with any certainty where she had been in the interim: nobody at Durnmelling knew anything but what she chose to tell, and that was not much. She said she had been a governess in Austrian Poland and Russia. Lady Margaret had become reconciled to her presence, and Hesper attached to her.
Of the men who, as I have said, admired her, some felt a peculiar enchantment in what they called her ugliness; others declared her devilish handsome; and some shrank from her as if with an undefined dread of perilous entanglement, if she should but catch them looking her in the face. Among some of them she was known as Lucifer, in antithesis to Hesper: they meant the Lucifer of darkness, not the light-bringer of the morning.
The ladies, on their part, especially Hesper, were much pleased with Mary. The simplicity of her address and manner, the pains she took to find the exact thing she wanted, and the modest decision with which she answered any reference to her, made Hesper even like her. The most artificially educated of women is yet human, and capable of even more than liking a fellow-creature as such. When their purchases were ended, she took her leave with a kind smile, which went on glowing in Mary's heart long after she had vanished.
"Home, John," said Lady Margaret, the moment the two ladies were seated. "I hope you have got _all_ you wanted. We shall be late for luncheon, I fear. I would not for worlds keep Mr. Redmain waiting. --A little faster, John, please."
Hesper's face darkened. Sepia eyed her fixedly, from under the mingling of ascended lashes and descended brows. The coachman pretended to obey, but the horses knew very well when he did and when he did not mean them to go, and took not a step to the minute more: John had regard to the splendid-looking black horse on the near side, which was weak in the wind, as well as on one fired pastern, and cared little for the anxiety of his mistress. To him, horses were the final peak of creation--or if not the horses, the coachman, whose they are--masters and mistresses the merest parasitical adjuncts. He got them home in good time for luncheon, notwithstanding--more to Lady Margaret's than Hesper's satisfaction.
Mr. Redmain was a bachelor of fifty, to whom Lady Margaret was endeavoring to make the family agreeable, in the hope he might take Hesper off their hands. I need not say he was rich. He was a common man, with good cold manners, which he offered you like a handle. He was selfish, capable of picking up a lady's handkerchief, but hardly a wife's. He was attentive to Hesper; but she scarcely concealed such a repugnance to him as some feel at sight of strange fishes--being at the same time afraid of him, which was not surprising, as she could hardly fail to perceive the fate intended for her.
"Ain't Miss Mortimer a stunner?" said George Turnbull to Mary, when the tide of customers had finally ebbed from the shop.
"I don't exactly know what you mean, George," answered Mary.
"Oh, of course, I know it ain't fair to ask any girl to admire another," said George. "But there's no offense to you, Mary. One young lady can't carry _every_ merit on her back. She'd be too lovely to live, you know. Miss Mortimer ain't got your waist, nor she ain't got your 'ands, nor your 'air; and you ain't got her size, nor the sort of hair she 'as with her."
He looked up from the piece of leno he was smoothing out, and saw he was alone in the shop.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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3
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THE ARBOR AT THORNWICK.
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The next day was Sunday at last, a day dear to all who do anything like their duty in the week, whether they go to church or not. For Mary, she went to the Baptist chapel; it was her custom, rendered holy by the companionship of her father. But this day it was with more than ordinary restlessness and lack of interest that she stood, knelt, and sat, through the routine of observance; for old Mr. Duppa was certainly duller than usual: how could it be otherwise, when he had been preparing to spend a mortal hour in descanting on the reasons which necessitated the separation of all true Baptists from all brother-believers? The narrow, high-souled little man--for a soul as well as a forehead can be both high and narrow--was dull that morning because he spoke out of his narrowness, and not out of his height; and Mary was better justified in feeling bored than even when George Turnbull plagued her with his vulgar attentions. When she got out at last, sedate as she was, she could hardly help skipping along the street by her father's side. Far better than chapel was their nice little cold dinner together, in their only sitting-room, redolent of the multifarious goods piled around it on all the rest of the floor. Greater yet was the following pleasure--of making her father lie down on the sofa, and reading him to sleep, after which she would doze a little herself, and dream a little, in the great chair that had been her grandmother's. Then they had their tea, and then her father always went to see the minister before chapel in the evening.
When he was gone, Mary would put on her pretty straw bonnet, and set out to visit Letty Lovel at Thornwick. Some of the church-members thought this habit of taking a walk, instead of going again to the chapel, very worldly, and did not scruple to let her know their opinion; but, so long as her father was satisfied with her, Mary did not care a straw for the world besides. She was too much occupied with obedience to trouble her head about opinion, either her own or other people's. Not until a question comes puzzling and troubling us so as to paralyze the energy of our obedience is there any necessity for its solution, or any probability of finding a real one. A thousand foolish _doctrines_ may lie unquestioned in the mind, and never interfere with the growth or bliss of him who lives in active subordination of his life to the law of life: obedience will in time exorcise them, like many another worse devil.
It had drizzled all the morning from the clouds as well as from the pulpit, but, just as Mary stepped out of the kitchen-door, the sun stepped out of the last rain-cloud. She walked quickly from the town, eager for the fields and the trees, but in some dread of finding Tom Helmer at the stile; for he was such a fool, she said to herself, that there was no knowing what he might do, for all she had said; but he had thought better of it, and she was soon crossing meadows and cornfields in peace, by a path which, with many a winding, and many an up and down, was the nearest way to Thornwick.
The saints of old did well to pray God to lift on them the light of his countenance: has the Christian of the new time learned of his Master that the clouds and the sunshine come and go of themselves? If the sunshine fills the hearts of old men and babes and birds with gladness and praise, and God never meant it, then are they all idolaters, and have but a careless Father. Sweet earthy odors rose about Mary from the wet ground; the rain-drops glittered on the grass and corn-blades and hedgerows; a soft damp wind breathed rather than blew about the gaps and gates; with an upward springing, like that of a fountain momently gathering strength, the larks kept shooting aloft, there, like music-rockets, to explode in showers of glowing and sparkling song; while, all the time and over all, the sun as he went down kept shining in the might of his peace; and the heart of Mary praised her Father in heaven.
Where the narrow path ran westward for a little way, so that she could see nothing for the sun in her eyes, in the middle of a plowed field she would have run right against a gentleman, had he been as blind as she; but, his back being to the sun, he saw her perfectly, and stepped out of her way into the midst of a patch of stiff soil, where the rain was yet lying between the furrows. She saw him then, and as, lifting his hat, he stopped again upon the path, she recognized Mr. Wardour.
"Oh, your nice boots!" she cried, in the childlike distress of a simple soul discovering itself the cause of catastrophe, for his boots were smeared all over with yellow clay.
"It only serves me right," returned Mr. Wardour, with a laugh of amusement. "I oughtn't to have put on such thin ones at the first smile of summer."
Again he lifted his hat, and walked on.
Mary also pursued her path, genuinely though gently pained that one should have stepped up to the ankles in mud on her account. As I have already said, except in the shop she had never before spoken to Mr. Wardour, and, although he had so simply responded to her exclamation, he did not even know who she was.
The friendship which now drew Mary to Thornwick, Godfrey Wardour's place, was not one of long date. She and Letty Lovel had, it is true, known each other for years, but only quite of late had their acquaintance ripened into something better; and it was not without protestation on the part of Mrs. Wardour, Godfrey's mother, that she had seen the growth of an intimacy between the two young women. The society of a shopwoman, she often remarked, was far from suitable for one who, as the daughter of a professional man, might lay claim to the position of a gentlewoman. For Letty was the orphan daughter of a country surgeon, a cousin of Mrs. Wardour, for whom she had had a great liking while yet they were boy and girl together. At the same time, however much she would have her consider herself the superior of Mary Marston, she by no means treated her as her own equal, and Letty could not help being afraid of her aunt, as she called her.
The well-meaning woman was in fact possessed by two devils--the one the stiff-necked devil of pride, the other the condescending devil of benevolence. She was kind, but she must have credit for it; and Letty, although the child of a loved cousin, must not presume upon that, or forget that the wife and mother of long-descended proprietors of certain acres of land was greatly the superior of any man who lived by the exercise of the best-educated and most helpful profession. She counted herself a devout Christian, but her ideas of rank, at least--therefore certainly not a few others--were absolutely opposed to the Master's teaching: they who did least for others were her aristocracy.
Now, Letty was a simple, true-hearted girl, rather slow, who honestly tried to understand her aunt's position with regard to her friend. "Shop-girls," her aunt had said, "are not fitting company for you, Letty."
"I do not know any other shop-girls, aunt," Letty replied, with hidden trembling; "but, if they are not nice, then they are not like Mary. She's downright good; indeed she is, aunt! --a great deal, ever so much, better than I am."
"That may well be," answered Mrs. Wardour, "but it does not make a lady of her."
"I am sure," returned Letty, bewildered, "on Sundays you could not tell the difference between her and any other young lady."
"Any other well-dressed young woman, my dear, you should say. I believe shop-girls do call their companions young ladies, but that can not justify the application of the word. I am scarcely bound to speak of my cook as a lady because letters come addressed to her as Miss Tozer. If the word 'lady' should sink at last to common use, as in Italy every woman is Donna, we must find some other word to ex-press what _used_ to be meant by it."
"Is Mrs. Cropper a lady, aunt?" asked Letty, after a pause, in which her brains, which were not half so muddled as she thought them, had been busy feeling after firm ground in the morass of social distinction thus opened under her.
"She is received as such," replied Mrs. Wardour, but with doubled stiffness, through which ran a tone of injury.
"Would you receive her, aunt, if she called upon you?"
"She has horses and servants, and everything a woman of the world can desire; but I should feel I was bowing the knee to Mammon were I to ask her to my house. Yet such is the respect paid to money in these degenerate days that many a one will court the society of a person like that, who would think me or your cousin Godfrey unworthy of notice, because we have no longer a tithe of the property the family once possessed."
The lady forgot there is a Rimmon as well as a Mammon.
"God knows," she went on, "how that woman's husband made his money! But that is a small matter nowadays, except to old-fashioned people like myself. Not _how_ but _how much_, is all the question now," she concluded, flattering herself she had made a good point.
"Don't think me rude, please, aunt: I am really wishing to understand--but, if Mrs. Cropper is not a lady, how can Mary Marston not be one? She is as different from Mrs. Croppor as one woman can be from another."
"Because she has not the position in society," replied Mrs. Wardour, enveloping her nothing in flimsy reiteration and self-contradiction.
"And Mrs. Cropper has the position?" ventured Letty, with a little palpitation from fear of offending.
"Apparently so," answered Mrs. Wardour. But her inquiring pupil did not feel much enlightened. Letty had not the logic necessary to the thinking of the thing out; or to the discovery that, like most social difficulties, hers was merely one of the upper strata of a question whose foundation lies far too deep for what is called Society to perceive its very existence. And hence it is no wonder that Society, abetted by the Church, should go on from generation to generation talking murderous platitudes about it.
But, although such was her reasoning beforehand, heart had so far overcome habit and prejudice with Mrs. Wardour, that, convinced on the first interview of the high tone and good influence of Mary, she had gradually come to put herself in the way of seeing her as often as she came, ostensibly to herself that she might prevent any deterioration of intercourse; and although she always, on these occasions, played the grand lady, with a stateliness that seemed to say, "Because of your individual worth, I condescend, and make an exception, but you must not imagine I receive your class at Thornwick," she had almost entirely ceased making remarks upon the said class in Letty's hearing.
On her part, Letty had by this time grown so intimate with Mary as to open with her the question upon which her aunt had given her so little satisfaction; and this same Sunday afternoon, as they sat in the arbor at the end of the long yew hedge in the old garden, it had come up again between them; for, set thinking by Letty's bewilderment, Mary had gone on thinking, and had at length laid hold of the matter, at least by the end that belonged to _her_.
"I can not consent, Letty," she said, "to trouble my mind about it as you do. I can not afford it. Society is neither my master nor my servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence, and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she, constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me, Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says _Daughter_ to me? It reminds me of what I heard my father say once to Mr. Turnbull, when he had been protesting that none but church people ought to be buried in the churchyards. 'I don't care a straw about it, Mr. Turnbull,' he said. 'The Master was buried in a garden.' --'Ah, but you see things are different now,' said Mr. Turnbull. --'I don't hang by things, but by my Master. It is enough for the disciple that he should be as his Master,' said my father. --'Besides, you don't think it of any real consequence yourself, or you would never want to keep your brothers and sisters out of such nice quiet places!' --Mr. Turnbull gave his kind of grunt, and said no more."
After passing Mary, Mr. Wardour did not go very far before he began to slacken his pace; a moment or two more and he suddenly wheeled round, and began to walk back toward Thornwick. Two things had combined to produce this change of purpose--the first, the state of his boots, which, beginning to dry in the sun and wind as he walked, grew more and more hideous at the end of his new gray trousers; the other, the occurring suspicion that the girl must be Letty's new shopkeeping friend, Miss Marston, on her way to visit her. What a sweet, simple young woman she was! he thought; and straightway began to argue with himself that, as his boots were in such evil plight, it would be more pleasant to spend the evening with Letty and her friend, than to hold on his way to his own friend's, and spend the evening smoking and lounging about the stable, or hearing his sister play polkas and mazurkas all the still Sunday twilight.
Mary had, of course, upon her arrival, narrated her small adventure, and the conversation had again turned upon Godfrey just as he was nearing the house.
"How handsome your cousin is!" said Mary, with the simplicity natural to her.
"Do you think so?" returned Letty.
"Don't _you_ think so?" rejoined Mary.
"I have never thought about it," answered Letty.
"He looks so manly, and has such a straightforward way with him!" said Mary.
"What one sees every day, she may feel in a sort of take-for-granted way, without thinking about it," said Letty. "But, to tell the truth, I should feel it as impertinent of me to criticise Cousin Godfrey's person as to pass an opinion on one of the books he reads. I can not express the reverence I have for Cousin Godfrey."
"I don't wonder," replied Mary. "There is that about him one could trust."
"There is that about him," returned Letty, "makes me afraid of him--I can not tell why. And yet, though everybody, even his mother, is as anxious to please him as if he were an emperor, he is the easiest person to please in the whole house. Not that he tells you he is pleased; he only smiles; but that is quite enough."
"But I suppose he talks to you sometimes?" said Mary.
"Oh, yes--now. He used not; but I think he does now more than to anybody else. It was a long time before he began, though. Now he is always giving me something to read. I wish he wouldn't; it frightens me dreadfully. He always questions me, to know whether I understand what I read."
Letty ended with a little cry. Through the one narrow gap in the yew hedge, near to the arbor, Godfrey had entered the walk, and was coming toward them.
He was a well-made man, thirty years of age, rather tall, sun-tanned, and bearded, with wavy brown hair, and gentle approach. His features were not regular, but that is of little consequence where there is unity. His face indicated faculty and feeling, and there was much good nature, shadowed with memorial suffering, in the eyes which shone so blue out of the brown.
Mary rose respectfully as he drew near.
"What treason were you talking, Letty, that you were so startled at sight of me?" he said, with a smile. "You were complaining of me as a hard master, were you not?"
"No, indeed, Cousin Godfrey!" answered Letty energetically, not without tremor, and coloring as she spoke. "I was only saying I could not help being frightened when you asked me questions about what I had been reading. I am so stupid, you know!"
"Pardon me, Letty," returned her cousin, "I know nothing of the sort. Allow me to say you are very far from stupid. Nobody can understand everything at first sight. But you have not introduced me to your friend."
Letty bashfully murmured the names of the two.
"I guessed as much," said Wardour. "Pray sit down, Miss Marston. For the sake of your dresses, I will go and change my boots. May I come and join you after?"
"Please do, Cousin Godfrey; and bring something to read to us," said Letty, who wanted her friend to admire her cousin. "It's Sunday, you know."
"Why you should be afraid of him, I can't think," said Mary, when his retreating steps had ceased to sound on the gravel. "He is delightful!"
"I don't like to look stupid," said Letty.
"I shouldn't mind how stupid I looked so long as I was learning," returned Mary. "I wonder you never told me about him!"
"I couldn't talk about Cousin Godfrey," said Letty; and a pause followed.
"How good of him to come to us again!" said Mary. "What will he read to us?"
"Most likely something out of a book you never heard of before, and can't remember the name of when you have heard it--at least that's the way with me. I wonder if he will talk to you, Mary? I should like to hear how Cousin Godfrey talks to girls."
"Why, you know how he talks to you," said Mary.
"Oh, but I am only Cousin Letty! He can talk anyhow to me."
"By your own account he talks to you in the best possible way."
"Yes; I dare say; but--" "But what?"
"I can't help wishing sometimes he would talk a little nonsense. It would be such a relief. I am sure I should understand better if he would. I shouldn't be so frightened at him then."
"The way I generally hear gentlemen talk to girls makes me ashamed--makes me feel as if I must ask, 'Is it that you are a fool, or that you take that girl for one?' They never talk so to me."
Letty sat pulling a jonquil to pieces. She looked up. Her eyes were full of thought, but she paused a long time before she spoke, and, when she did, it was only to say: "I fear, Mary, I should take any man for a fool who took me for anything else."
Letty was a rather small and rather freckled girl, with the daintiest of rounded figures, a good forehead, and fine clear brown eyes. Her mouth was not pretty, except when she smiled--and she did not smile often. When she did, it was not unfrequently with the tears in her eyes, and then she looked lovely. In her manner there was an indescribably taking charm, of which it is not easy to give an impression; but I think it sprang from a constitutional humility, partly ruined into a painful and haunting sense of inferiority, for which she imagined herself to blame. Hence there dwelt in her eyes an appeal which few hearts could resist. When they met another's, they seemed to say: "I am nobody; but you need not kill me; I am not pretending to be anybody. I will try to do what you want, but I am not clever. Only I am sorry for it. Be gentle with me." To Godfrey, at least, her eyes spoke thus.
In ten minutes or so he reappeared, far at the other end of the yew-walk, approaching slowly, with a book, in which he seemed thoughtfully searching as he came. When they saw him the girls instinctively moved farther from each other, making large room for him between them, and when he came up he silently took the place thus silently assigned him.
"I am going to try your brains now, Letty," he said, and tapped the book with a finger.
"Oh, please don't!" pleaded Letty, as if he had been threatening her with a small amputation, or the loss of a front tooth.
"Yes," he persisted; "and not your brains only, Letty, but your heart, and all that is in you."
At this even Mary could not help feeling a little frightened; and she was glad there was no occasion for her to speak.
With just a word of introduction, Godfrey read Carlyle's translation of that finest of Jean Paul's dreams in which he sets forth the condition of a godless universe all at once awakened to the knowledge of the causelessness of its own existence. Slowly, with due inflection and emphasis--slowly, but without pause for thought or explanation--he read to the end, ceased suddenly, and lifted his eyes.
"There, Letty," he said, "what do you think of that? There's a bit of Sunday reading for you!"
Letty was looking altogether perplexed, and not a little frightened.
"I don't understand a word of it," she answered, gulping back her tears. He glanced at Mary. She was white as death, her lips quivered, and from her eyes shot a keen light that seemed to lacerate their blue.
"It is terrible!" she said. "I never read anything like that."
"There _is_ nothing like it," he answered.
"But the author is a Unitarian, is he not?" remarked Mary--for she heard plenty of theology, if not much Christianity, in her chapel.
Godfrey looked at her, then at the book for a moment.
"That may merely seem, from the necessity of the supposition," he answered; and read again: "'Now sank from aloft a noble, high Form, with a look of uneffaceable sorrow, down to the Altar, and all the Dead cried out, "Christ! is there no God?" He answered, "There is none!" The whole Shadow of each then shuddered, not the breast alone; and one after the other all, in this shuddering, shook into pieces.' --"You see," he went on, "that if there be no God, Christ can only be the first of men."
"I understand," said Mary.
"Do you really then, Mary?" said Letty, looking at her with wondering admiration.
"I only meant," answered Mary--"but," she went on, interrupting herself, "I do think I understand it a little. If Mr. Wardour would be kind enough to read it through again!"
"With much pleasure," answered Godfrey, casting on her a glance of pleased surprise.
The second reading affected Mary more than the first--because, of course, she took in more. And this time a glimmer of meaning broke on the slower mind of Letty: as her cousin read the passage, "Oh, then came, fearful for the heart, the dead Children who had been awakened in the Churchyard, into the temple, and cast themselves before the high Form on the Altar, and said, 'Jesus, have we no Father?' And he answered, with streaming tears: 'We are all orphans, I and you; we are without Father!'" --at this point Letty gave her little cry, then bit her lip, as if she had said something wrong.
All the time a great bee kept buzzing in and out of the arbor, and Mary vaguely wondered how it could be so careless.
"I can't be dead stupid after all, Cousin Godfrey," said Letty, with broken voice, when once more he ceased, and, as she spoke, she pressed her hand on her heart, "for something kept going through and through me; but I can not say yet I understand it. --If you will lend me the book," she continued, "I will read it over again before I go to bed."
He shut the volume, handed it to her, and began to talk about something else.
Mary rose to go.
"You will take tea with us, I hope, Miss Marston," said Godfrey.
But Mary would not. What she had heard was working in her mind with a powerful fermentation, and she longed to be alone. In the fields, as she walked, she would come to an understanding with herself.
She knew almost nothing of the higher literature, and felt like a dreamer who, in the midst of a well-known and ordinary landscape, comes without warning upon the mighty cone of a mountain, or the breaking waters of a boundless ocean.
"If one could but get hold of such things, what a glorious life it would be!" she thought. She had looked into a world beyond the present, and already in the present all things were new. The sun set as she had never seen him set before; it was only in gray and gold, with scarce a touch of purple and rose; the wind visited her cheek like a living thing, and loved her; the skylarks had more than reason in their jubilation. For the first time she heard the full chord of intellectual and emotional delight. What a place her chamber would be, if she could there read such things! How easy would it be then to bear the troubles of the hour, the vulgar humor of Mr. Turnbull, and the tiresome attentions of George! Would Mr. Wardour lend her the book? Had he other books as good? Were there many books to make one's heart go as that one did? She would save every penny to buy such books, if indeed such treasures were within her reach! Under the enchantment of her first literary joy, she walked home like one intoxicated with opium--a being possessed for the time with the awful imagination of a grander soul, and reveling in the presence of her loftier kin.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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4
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GODFREY WARDOUR.
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The property of which Thornwick once formed a part was then large and important; but it had, by not very slow degrees, generation following generation of unthrift, dwindled and shrunk and shriveled, until at last it threatened to disappear from the family altogether, like a spark upon burnt paper. Then came one into possession who had some element of salvation in him; Godfrey's father not only held the poor remnant together, but, unable to add to it, improved it so greatly that at length, in the midst of the large properties around, it resembled the diamond that hearts a disk of inferior stones. Doubtless, could he have used his wife's money, he would have spent it on land; but it was under trustees for herself and her children, and indeed would not have gone far in the purchase of English soil.
Considerably advanced in years before he thought of marrying, he died while Godfrey, whom he intended bringing up to a profession, was yet a child; and his widow, carrying out his intention, had educated the boy with a view to the law. Godfrey, however, had positively declined entering on the studies special to a career he detested; nor was it difficult to reconcile his mother to the enforced change of idea, when she found that his sole desire was to settle down with her, and manage the two hundred acres his father had left him. He took his place in the county, therefore, as a yeoman-farmer--none the less a gentleman by descent, character, and education. But while in genuine culture and refinement the superior of all the landed proprietors in the neighborhood, and knowing it, he was the superior of most of them in this also, that he counted it no derogation from the dignity he valued to put his hands upon occasion to any piece of work required about the place.
His nature was too large, however, and its needs therefore too many, to allow of his spending his energies on the property; and he did not brood over such things as, so soon as they become cares, become despicable. How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of result! Of this fault, I say, Godfrey was not guilty--more, however, I must confess, from healthful drawings in other directions, than from philosophy or wisdom: he was _a reader_--not in the sense of a man who derives intensest pleasure from the absorption of intellectual pabulum--one not necessarily so superior as some imagine to the _gourmet_, or even the _gourmand_: in his reading Godfrey nourished certain of the higher tendencies of his nature--read with a constant reference to his own views of life, and the confirmation, change, or enlargement of his theories of the same; but neither did he read with the highest aim of all--the enlargement of reverence, obedience, and faith; for he had never turned his face full in the direction of infinite growth--the primal end of a man's being, who is that he may return to the Father, gathering his truth as he goes. Yet by the simple instincts of a soul undebased by self-indulgence or low pursuits, he was drawn ever toward things lofty and good; and life went calmly on, bearing Godfrey Wardour toward middle age, unruffled either by anxiety or ambition.
To the forecasting affection of a mother, the hour when she must yield the first place both in her son's regards and in the house-affairs could not but have often presented itself, in doubt and pain--perhaps dread. Only as year after year passed and Godfrey revealed no tendency toward marriage, her anxiety changed sides, and she began to fear lest with Godfrey the ancient family should come to an end. As yet, however, finding no response to covert suggestion, she had not ventured to speak openly to him on the subject. All the time, I must add, she had never thought of Letty either as thwarting or furthering her desires, for in truth she felt toward her as one on whom Godfrey could never condescend to look, save with the kindness suitable for one immeasurably below him. As to what might pass in Letty's mind, Mrs. Wardour had neither curiosity nor care: else she might possibly have been more considerate than to fall into the habit of talking to her in such swelling words of maternal pride that, even if she had not admired him of herself, Letty could hardly escape coming to regard her cousin Godfrey as the very first of men.
It added force to the veneration of both mother and cousin--for it was nothing less than veneration in either--that there was about Godfrey an air of the inexplicable, or at least the unknown, and therefore mysterious. This the elder woman, not without many a pang at her exclusion from his confidence, attributed, and correctly, to some passage in his life at the university; to the younger it appeared only as greatness self-veiled from the ordinary world: to such as she, could be vouchsafed only an occasional peep into the gulf of his knowledge, the grandeur of his intellect, and the imperturbability of his courage.
The passage in Godfrey's life to which I have referred as vaguely suspected by his mother, I need not present in more than merest outline: it belongs to my history only as a component part of the soil whence it springs, and as in some measure necessary to the understanding of Godfrey's character. In the last year of his college life he had formed an attachment, the precise nature of which I do not know. What I do know is, that the bonds of it were rudely broken, and of the story nothing remained but disappointment and pain, doubt and distrust. Godfrey had most likely cherished an overweening notion of the relative value of the love he gave; but being his, I am certain it was genuine--by that, I mean a love with no small element of the everlasting in it. The woman who can cast such a love from her is not likely to meet with such another. But with this one I have nothing to do.
It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw--below that clear blue eye, and that upright easy carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted by a sense of wrong: he who is not perfect in forgiveness must be haunted thus; he only is free whose love for the human is so strong that he can pardon the individual sin; he alone can pray the prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses," out of a full heart. Forgiveness is the only cure of wrong. And hand in hand with Sense-of-injury walks ever the weak sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many--both of them the children of Philautos, not of Agape. But there was no hate, no revenge, in Godfrey, and, I repeat, his weakness he kept concealed. It must have been in his eyes, but eyes are hard to read. For the rest, his was a strong poetic nature--a nature which half unconsciously turned ever toward the best, away from the mean judgments of common men, and with positive loathing from the ways of worldly women. Never was peace endangered between his mother and him, except when she chanced to make use of some evil maxim which she thought experience had taught her, and the look her son cast upon her stung her to the heart, making her for a moment feel as if she had sinned what the theologians call the unpardonable sin. When he rose and walked from the room without a word, she would feel as if abandoned to her wickedness, and be miserable until she saw him again. Something like a spring-cleaning would begin and go on in her for some time after, and her eyes would every now and then steal toward her judge with a glance of awe and fearful apology. But, however correct Godfrey might be in his judgment of the worldly, that judgment was less inspired by the harmonies of the universe than by the discords that had jarred his being and the poisonous shocks he had received in the encounter of the noble with the ignoble. There was yet in him a profound need of redemption into the love of the truth for the truth's sake. He had the fault of thinking too well of himself--which who has not who thinks of himself at all, apart from his relation to the holy force of life, within yet beyond him? It was the almost unconscious, assuredly the undetected, self-approbation of the ordinarily righteous man, the defect of whose righteousness makes him regard himself as upright, but the virtue of whose uprightness will at length disclose to his astonished view how immeasurably short of rectitude he comes. At the age of thirty, Godfrey Wardour had not yet become so displeased with himself as to turn self-roused energy upon betterment; and until then all growth must be of doubtful result. The point on which the swift-revolving top of his thinking and feeling turned was as yet his present conscious self, as a thing that was and would be, not as a thing that had to become. Naturally the pivot had worn a socket, and such socket is sure to be a sore. His friends notwithstanding gave him credit for great imperturbability; but in such willfully undemonstrative men the evil burrows the more insidiously that it is masked by a constrained exterior.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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5
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GODFREY AND LETTY.
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Godfrey, being an Englishman, and with land of his own, could not fail to be fond of horses. For his own use he kept two--an indulgence disproportioned to his establishment; for, although precise in his tastes as to equine toilet, he did not feel justified in the keeping of a groom for their use only. Hence it came that, now and then, strap and steel, as well as hide and hoof, would get partially neglected; and his habits in the use of his horses being fitful--sometimes, it would be midnight even, when he scoured from his home, seeking the comfort of desert as well as solitary places--it is not surprising if at times, going to the stable to saddle one, he should find its gear not in the spick-and-span condition alone to his mind. It might then well happen there was no one near to help him, and there be nothing for it but to put his own hands to the work: he was too just to rouse one who might be nowise to blame, or send a maid to fetch him from field or barn, where he might be more importantly engaged.
One night, meaning to start for a long ride early in the morning, he had gone to the stable to see how things were; and, soon after, it happened that Letty, attending to some duty before going to bed, caught sight of him cleaning his stirrups: from that moment she took upon herself the silent and unsuspected supervision of the harness-room, where, when she found any part of the riding-equipments neglected, she would draw a pair of housemaid's gloves on her pretty hands, and polish away like a horse-boy.
Godfrey had begun to remark how long it was since he had found anything unfit, and to wonder at the improvement somewhere in the establishment, when, going hastily one morning, some months before the date of my narrative, into the harness-room to get a saddle, he came upon Letty, who had imagined him afield with the men: she was energetic upon a stirrup with a chain-polisher. He started back in amazement, but she only looked up and smiled.
"I shall have done in a moment, Cousin Godfrey," she said, and polished away harder than before.
"But, Letty! I can't allow you to do things like that. What on earth put it in your head? Work like that is only for horny hands."
"Your hands ain't horny, Cousin Godfrey. They may be a little harder than mine--they wouldn't be much good if they weren't--but they're no fitter by nature to clean stirrups. Is it for me to sit with mine in my lap, and yours at this? I know better."
"Why shouldn't I clean my own harness, Letty, if I like?" said Godfrey, who could not help feeling pleased as well as annoyed; in this one moment Letty had come miles nearer him.
"Oh, surely! if you like, Cousin Godfrey," she answered; "but do you like?"
"Better than to see you doing it."
"But not better than I like to do it; that I am sure of. It is hands that write poetry that are not fit for work like this."
"How do you know I write poetry?" asked Godfrey, displeased, for she touched here a sensitive spot.
"Oh, don't be angry with me!" she said, letting the stirrup fall on the floor, and clasping her great wash-leather gloves together; "I couldn't help seeing it was poetry, for it lay on the table when I went to do your room."
"Do my room, Letty! Does my mother--?"
"She doesn't want to make a fine lady of me, and I shouldn't like it if she did. I have no head, but I have pretty good hands. Of course, Cousin Godfrey, I didn't read a word of the poetry. I daredn't do that, however much I might have wished."
A childlike simplicity looked out of the clear eyes and sounded in the swift words of the maiden; and, had Godfrey's heart been as hard as the stirrup she had dropped, it could not but be touched by her devotion. He was at the same time not a little puzzled how to carry himself. Letty had picked up the stirrup, and was again hard at work with it; to take it from her, and turn her out of the saddle-room, would scarcely be a proper way of thanking her, scarcely an adequate mode of revealing his estimate of the condescension of her ladyhood. For, although Letty did make beds and chose to clean harness, Godfrey was gentleman enough not to think her less of a lady--for the moment at least--because of such doings: I will not say he had got so far on in the great doctrine concerning the washing of hands as to be able to think her _more_ of a lady for thus cleaning his stirrups. But he did see that to set the fire-engine of indignant respect for womankind playing on the individual woman was not the part of the man to whose service she was humbling herself. He laid his hand on her bent head, and said: "I ought to be a knight of the old times, Letty, to have a lady serve me so."
"You're just as good, Cousin Godfrey," she rejoined, rubbing away.
He turned from her, and left her at her work.
He had taken no real notice of the girl before--had felt next to no interest in her. Neither did he feel much now, save as owing her something beyond mere acknowledgment. But was there anything now he could do for her--anything in her he could help? He did not know. What she really was, he could not tell. She was a fresh, bright girl--that he seemed to have just discovered; and, as she sat polishing the stirrup, her hair shaken about her shoulders, she looked engaging; but whether she was one he could do anything for that was worth doing, was hardly the less a question for those discoveries.
"There must be _something_ in the girl!" he said to himself--then suddenly reflected that he had never seen a book in her hand, except her prayer-book; how _was_ he to do anything for a girl like that? For Godfrey knew no way of doing people good without the intervention of books. How could he get near one that had no taste for the quintessence of humanity? How was he to offer her the only help he had, when she desired no such help? "But," he continued, reflecting further, "she may have thirsted, may even now be athirst, without knowing that books are the bottles of the water of life!" Perhaps, if he could make her drink once, she would drink again. The difficulty was, to find out what sort of spiritual drink would be most to her taste, and would most entice her to more. There must be some seeds lying cold and hard in her uncultured garden; what water would soonest make them grow? Not all the waters of Damascus will turn mere sand sifted of eternal winds into fruitful soil; but Letty's soul could not be such. And then literature has seed to sow as well as water for the seed sown. Letty's foolish words about the hands that wrote poetry showed a shadow of respect for poetry--except, indeed, the girl had been but making game of him, which he was far from ready to believe, and for which, he said to himself, her face was at the time much too earnest, and her hands much too busy; he must find out whether she had any instincts, any predilections, in the matter of poetry!
Thus pondering, he forgot all about his projected ride, and, going up to the study he had contrived for himself in the rambling roof of the ancient house, began looking along the backs of his books, in search of some suggestion of how to approach Letty; his glance fell on a beautifully bound volume of verse--a selection of English lyrics, made with tolerable judgment--which he had bought to give, but the very color of which, every time his eye flitting along the book-shelves caught it, threw a faint sickness over his heart, preluding the memory of old pain and loss: "It may as well serve some one," he said, and, taking it down, carried it with him to the saddle-room.
Letty was not there, and the perfect order of the place somehow made him feel she had been gone some time. He went in search of her; she might be in the dairy.
That was the very picture of an old-fashioned English dairy--green-shadowy, dark, dank, and cool--floored with great irregular slabs, mostly of green serpentine, polished into smooth hollows by the feet of generations of mistresses and dairy-maids. Its only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy, which stood open, and let in the scents of bud and blossom, weaving a net of sweetness in the gloom, through which, like a silver thread, shot the twittering song of a bird, which had inherited the gathered carelessness and bliss of a long ancestry in God's aviary.
Godfrey came softly to the door, which he found standing ajar, and peeped in. There stood Letty, warm and bright in the middle of the dusky coolness. She had changed her dress since he saw her, and now, in a pink-rosebud print, with the sleeves tucked above her elbows, was skimming the cream in a great red-brown earthen pan. He pushed the door a little, and, at its screech along the uneven floor, Letty's head turned quickly on her lithe neck, and she saw Godfrey's brown face and kind blue eyes where she had never seen them before. In his hand glowed the book: some of the stronger light from behind him fell on it, and it caught her eyes.
"Letty," he said, "I have just come upon this book in my library: would you care to have it?"
"You don't mean to keep for my own, Cousin Godfrey?" cried Letty, in sweet, childish fashion, letting the skimmer dive like a coot to the bottom of the milk-pool, and hastily wiping her hands in her apron. Her face had flushed rosy with pleasure, and grew rosier and brighter still as she took the rich morocco-bound thing from Godfrey's hand into her own. Daintily she peeped within the boards, and the gilding of the leaves responded in light to her smile.
"Poetry!" she cried, in a tone of delight. "Is it really for me, Cousin Godfrey? Do you think I shall be able to understand it?"
"You can soon settle that question for yourself," answered Godfrey, with a pleased smile--for he augured well from this reception of his gift--and turned to leave the dairy.
"But, Cousin Godfrey--please!" she called after him, "you don't give me time to thank you."
"That will do when you are certain you care for it," he returned.
"I care for it very _much_!" she replied.
"How can you say that, when you don't know yet whether you will understand it or not?" he rejoined, and closed the door.
Letty stood motionless, the book in her hand illuminating the dusk with gold, and warming its coolness with its crimson boards and silken linings. One poem after another she read, nor knew how the time passed, until the voice of her aunt in her ears warned her to finish her skimming, and carry the jug to the pantry. But already Letty had taken a little cream off the book also, and already, between the time she entered and the time she left the dairy, had taken besides a fresh start in spiritual growth.
The next day Godfrey took an opportunity of asking her whether she had found in the book anything she liked. To his disappointment she mentioned one of the few commonplace things the collection contained--a last-century production, dull and respectable, which, surely, but for the glamour of some pleasant association, the editor would never have included. Happily, however, he bethought himself in time not to tell her the thing was worthless: such a word, instead of chipping the shell in which the girl's faculty lay dormant, would have smashed the whole egg into a miserable albuminous mass. And he was well rewarded; for, the same day, in the evening, he heard her singing gayly over her work, and listening discovered that she was singing verse after verse of one of the best ballads in the whole book. She had chosen with the fancy of pleasing Godfrey; she sang to please herself. After this discovery he set himself in earnest to the task of developing her intellectual life, and, daily almost, grew more interested in the endeavor. His main object was to make her think; and for the high purpose, chiefly but not exclusively, he employed verse.
The main obstacle to success he soon discovered to be Letty's exceeding distrust of herself. I would not be mistaken to mean that she had too little confidence in herself; of that no one can have too little. Self-distrust will only retard, while self-confidence will betray. The man ignorant in these things will answer me, "But you must have one or the other." "You must have neither," I reply. "You must follow the truth, and, in that pursuit, the less one thinks about himself, the pursuer, the better. Let him so hunger and thirst after the truth that the dim vision of it occupies all his being, and leaves no time to think of his hunger and his thirst. Self-forgetfulness in the reaching out after that which is essential to us is the healthiest of mental conditions. One has to look to his way, to his deeds, to his conduct--not to himself. In such losing of the false, or merely reflected, we find the true self. There is no harm in being stupid, so long as a man does not think himself clever; no good in being clever, if a man thinks himself so, for that is a short way to the worst stupidity. If you think yourself clever, set yourself to do something; then you will have a chance of humiliation."
With good faculties, and fine instincts, Letty was always thinking she must be wrong, just because it was she was in it--a lovely fault, no doubt, but a fault greatly impeditive to progress, and tormenting to a teacher. She got on very fairly in spite of it, however; and her devotion to Godfrey, as she felt herself growing in his sight, increased almost to a passion. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. If I say anything grows to a passion, I mean, of course, the passion of that thing, not of something else. Here I no more mean that her devotion became what in novels is commonly called love, than, if I said ambition or avarice had grown to a passion, I should mean those vices had changed to love. Godfrey Wardour was at least ten years older than Letty; besides him, she had not a single male relative in this world--neither had she mother or sister on whom to let out her heart; while of Mrs. Wardour, who was more severe on her than on any one else, she was not a little afraid: from these causes it came that Cousin Godfrey grew and grew in Letty's imagination, until he was to her everything great and good--her idea of him naturally growing as she grew herself under his influences. To her he was the heart of wisdom, the head of knowledge, the arm of strength.
But her worship was quiet, as the worship of maiden, in whatever kind, ought to be. She knew nothing of what is called love except as a word, and from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have resented as the most offensive impertinence--an accusation of impossible irreverence.
By degrees Godfrey came to understand, but then only in a measure, with what a self-refusing, impressionable nature he was dealing; and, as he saw, he became more generous toward her, more gentle and delicate in his ministration. Of necessity he grew more and more interested in her, especially after he had made the discovery that the moment she laid hold of a truth--the moment, that is, when it was no longer another's idea but her own perception--it began to sprout in her in all directions of practice. By nature she was not intellectually quick; but, because such was her character, the ratio of her progress was of necessity an increasing one.
If Godfrey had seen in his new relation to Letty a possibility of the revival of feelings he had supposed for ever extinguished, such a possibility would have borne to him purely the aspect of danger; at the mere idea of again falling in love he would have sickened with dismay; and whether or not he had any dread of such a catastrophe, certain it is that he behaved to her more as a pedagogue than a cousinly tutor, insisting on a precision in all she did that might have gone far to rouse resentment and recoil in the mind of a less childlike woman. Just as surely, notwithstanding all that, however, did the sweet girl grow into his heart: it _could_ not be otherwise. The idea of her was making a nest for itself in his soul--what kind of a nest for long he did not know, and for long did not think to inquire. Living thus, like an elder brother with a much younger sister, he was more than satisfied, refusing, it may be, to regard the probability of intruding change. But how far any man and woman may have been made capable of loving without falling in love, can be answered only after question has yielded to history. In the mean time, Mrs. Wardour, who would have been indignant at the notion of any equal bond between her idolized son and her patronized cousin, neither saw, nor heard, nor suspected anything to rouse uneasiness.
Things were thus in the old house, when the growing affection of Letty for Mary Marston took form one day in the request that she would make Thornwick the goal of her Sunday walk. She repented, it is true, the moment she had said the words, from dread of her aunt; but they had been said, and were accepted. Mary went, and the aunt difficulty had been got over. The friendship of Godfrey also had now run into that of the girls, and Mary's visits were continued with pleasure to all, and certainly with no little profit to herself; for, where the higher nature can not communicate the greater benefit, it will reap it. Her Sunday visit became to Mary the one foraging expedition of the week--that which going to church ought to be, and so seldom can be.
The beginning and main-stay of her spiritual life was, as we have seen, her father, in whom she believed absolutely. From books and sermons she had got little good; for in neither kind had the best come nigh her. She did very nearly her best to obey, but without much perceiving the splendor of the thing required, or much feeling its might upon her own eternal nature. She was as yet, in relation to the gospel, much as the Jews were in relation to their law; they had not yet learned the gospel of their law, and she was yet only serving the law of the gospel. But she was making progress, in simple and pure virtue of her obedience. Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest, sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been living a life more obedient than the rest.
And now was sent Godfrey to her aid, a teacher himself far behind his pupil, inasmuch as he was more occupied with what he was, than what he had to become: the weakest may be sent to give the strongest saving help; even the foolish may mediate between the wise and the wiser; and Godfrey presented Mary to men greater than himself, whom in a short time she would understand even better than he. Book after book he lent her--now and then gave her one of the best--introducing her, with no special intention, to much in the way of religion that was good in the way of literature as well. Only where he delighted mainly in the literature, she delighted more in the religion. Some of my readers will be able to imagine what it must have been to a capable, clear-thinking, warm-hearted, loving soul like Mary, hitherto in absolute ignorance of any better religious poetry than the chapel hymn-book afforded her, to make acquaintance with George Herbert, with Henry Vaughan, with Giles Fletcher, with Richard Crashaw, with old Mason, not to mention Milton, and afterward our own Father Newman and Father Faber.
But it was by no means chiefly upon such that Godfrey led the talk on the Sunday afternoons. A lover of all truly imaginative literature, his knowledge of it was large, nor confined to that of his own country, although that alone was at present available for either of his pupils. His seclusion from what is called the world had brought him into larger and closer contact with what is really the world. The breakers upon reef and shore may be the ocean to some, but he who would know the ocean indeed must leave them afar, sinking into silence, and sail into wider and lonelier spaces. Through Godfrey, Mary came to know of a land never promised, yet open--a land of whose nature even she had never dreamed--a land of the spirit, flowing with milk and honey--a land of which the fashionable world knows little more than the dwellers in the back slums, although it imagines it lying, with the kingdoms of the earth, at its feet.
As regards her feeling toward her new friend, this opener of unseen doors, the greatness of her obligation to him wrought against presumption and any possible folly. Besides, Mary was one who possessed power over her own spirit--rare gift, given to none but those who do something toward the taking of it. She was able in no small measure to order her own thoughts. Without any theory of self-rule, she yet ruled her Self. She was not one to slip about in the saddle, or let go the reins for a kick and a plunge or two. There was the thing that should be, and the thing that should not be; the thing that was reasonable, and the thing that was absurd. Add to all this, that she believed she saw in Mr. Wardour's behavior to his cousin, in the careful gentleness evident through all the severity of the schoolmaster, the presence of a deeper feeling, that might one day blossom to the bliss of her friend--and we need not wonder if Mary's heart remained calm in the very floods of its gratitude; while the truth she gathered by aid of the intercourse, enlarging her strength, enlarged likewise the composure that comes of strength. She did not even trouble herself much to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it, by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
Nor was Godfrey without payment for what he did: the revival of ancient benefits, a new spring-time of old flowers, and the fresh quickening of one's own soul, are the spiritual wages of every spiritual service. In giving, a man receives more than he gives, and the _more_ is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.
Mary did not encourage Letty to call at the shop, because the rudeness of the Turnbulls was certain to break out on her departure, as it did one day that Godfrey, dismounting at the door, and entering the shop in quest of something for his mother, naturally shook hands with Mary over the counter. No remark was made so long as her father was in the shop, for, with all their professed contempt of him and his ways, the Turnbulls stood curiously in awe of him: no one could tell what he might or might not do, seeing they did not in the least understand him; and there were reasons for avoiding offense.
But the moment he retired, which he always did earlier than the rest, the small-arms of the enemy began to go off, causing Mary a burning cheek and indignant heart. Yet the great desire of Mr. Turnbull was a match between George and Mary, for that would, whatever might happen, secure the Marston money to the business. Their evil report Mary did not carry to her father. She scorned to trouble his lofty nature with her small annoyances; neither could they long keep down the wellspring of her own peace, which, deeper than anger could reach, soon began to rise again fresh in her spirit, fed from that water of life which underlies all care. In a few moments it had cooled her cheek, stilled her heart, and washed the wounds of offense.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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6
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TOM HELMER.
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When Tom Helmer's father died, his mother, who had never been able to manage him, sent him to school to get rid of him, lamented his absence till he returned, then writhed and fretted under his presence until again he went. Never thereafter did those two, mother and son, meet, whether from a separation of months or of hours, without at once tumbling into an obstinate difference. When the youth was at home, their sparring, to call it by a mild name, went on from morning to night, and sometimes almost from night to morning. Primarily, of course, the fault lay with the mother; and things would have gone far worse, had not the youth, along with the self-will of his mother, inherited his father's good nature. At school he was a great favorite, and mostly had his own way, both with boys and masters, for, although a fool, he was a pleasant fool, clever, fond of popularity, and complaisant with everybody--except always his mother, the merest word from whom would at once rouse all the rebel in his blood. In person he was tall and loosely knit, with large joints and extremities. His face was handsome and vivacious, expressing far more than was in him to express, and giving ground for expectation such as he had never met. He was by no means an ill-intentioned fellow, preferred doing well and acting fairly, and neither at school nor at college had got into any serious scrape. But he had never found it imperative to reach out after his own ideal of duty. He had never been worthy the name of student, or cared much for anything beyond the amusements the universities provide so liberally, except dabbling in literature. Perhaps his only vice was self-satisfaction--which few will admit to be a vice; remonstrance never reached him; to himself he was ever in the right, judging himself only by his sentiments and vague intents, never by his actions; that these had little correspondence never struck him; it had never even struck him that they ought to correspond. In his own eyes he did well enough, and a good deal better. Gifted not only with fluency of speech, that crowning glory and ruin of a fool, but with plausibility of tone and demeanor, a confidence that imposed both on himself and on others, and a certain dropsical impressionableness of surface which made him seem and believe himself sympathetic, nobody could well help liking him, and it took some time to make one accept the disappointment he caused.
He was now in his twenty-first year, at home, pretending that nothing should make him go back to Oxford, and enjoying more than ever the sport of plaguing his mother. A soul-doctor might have prescribed for him a course of small-pox, to be followed by intermittent fever, with nobody to wait upon him but Mrs. Gamp: after that, his mother might have had a possible chance with him, and he with his mother. But, unhappily, he had the best of health--supreme blessing in the eyes of the fool whom it enables to be a worse fool still; and was altogether the true son of his mother, who consoled herself for her absolute failure in his moral education with the reflection that she had reared him sound in wind and limb. Plaguing his mother, amusing himself as best he could, riding about the country on a good mare, of which he was proud, he was living in utter idleness, affording occasion for much wonder that he had never yet disgraced himself. He talked to everybody who would talk to him, and made acquaintance with anybody on the spur of the moment's whim. He would sit on a log with a gypsy, and bamboozle him with lies made for the purpose, then thrash him for not believing them. He called here and called there, made himself specially agreeable everywhere, went to every ball and evening party to which he could get admittance in the neighborhood, and flirted with any girl who would let him. He meant no harm, neither had done much, and was imagined by most incapable of doing any. The strange thing to some was that he staid on in the country, and did not go to London and run up bills for his mother to pay; but the mare accounted for a good deal; and the fact that almost immediately on his late return he had seen Letty and fallen in love with her at first sight, accounted for a good deal more. Not since then, however, had he yet been able to meet her so as only to speak to her; for Thornwick was one of the few houses of the middle class in the neighborhood where he was not encouraged to show himself. He was constantly, therefore, on the watch for a chance of seeing her, and every Sunday went to church in that same hope and no other. But Letty knew nothing of the favor in which she stood with him; for, although Tom had, as we have heard, confessed to her friend Mary Marston his admiration of her, Mary had far too much good sense to make herself his ally in the matter.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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7
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DURNMELLING.
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In the autumn, Mr. Mortimer of Durnmelling resolved to give a harvest-home to his tenants, and under the protection of the occasion to invite also a good many of his neighbors and of the townsfolk of Testbridge, whom he could not well ask to dinner: there happened to be a political expediency for something of the sort: America is not the only country in which ambition opens the door to mean doings on the part of such as count themselves gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady Margaret had never called, and whom she would never in any way acknowledge again, were invited; nor did the knowledge of what it meant cause many of them to decline the questionable honor--which fact carried in it the best justification of which the meanness and insult were capable. Mrs. Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their case Lady Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized, he said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.
Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had reaped both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the strength of the latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon began to embody in his own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman ought to carry himself; whence, from being only a small, he became an objectionable man, and failed of being amusing by making himself offensive. He had never manifested the least approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although their houses were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had Wardour been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have behaved differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely, old family, a small, though indeed _very_ small, property of his own, a university education, good horses, and the habits and manners of a gentleman--the men scarcely even saluted when they met. The Mortimer ladies, indeed, had more than once remarked--but it was in solemn silence, each to herself only--how well the man sat, and how easily he handled the hunter he always rode; but not once until now had so much as a greeting passed between them and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful that Godfrey should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding, however, that his mother was distressed at having to go to the gathering without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was needful as to what would be thought of his absence, and what excuse it would be becoming to make, he resolved to go to London a day or two before the event, and pay a long-promised visit to a clerical friend.
The relative situation of the houses--I mean the stone-and-lime houses--of Durnmelling and Thornwick, was curious; and that they had at one time formed part of the same property might have suggested itself to any beholder. Durnmelling was built by an ancestor of Godfrey's, who, forsaking the old nest for the new, had allowed Thornwick to sink into a mere farmhouse, in which condition it had afterward become the sole shelter of the withered fortunes of the Wardours. In the hands of Godfrey's father, by a continuity of judicious cares, and a succession of partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its original modest dignity. Durnmelling, too, had in part sunk into ruin, and had been but partially recovered from it; still, it swelled important beside its antecedent Thornwick. Nothing but a deep ha-ha separated the two houses, of which the older and smaller occupied the higher ground. Between it and the ha-ha was nothing but grass--in front of the house fine enough and well enough kept to be called lawn, had not Godfrey's pride refused the word. On the lower, the Durnmelling side of the fence, were trees, shrubbery, and out-houses--the chimney of one of which, the laundry, gave great offense to Mrs. Wardour, when, as she said, wind and wash came together. But, although they stood so near, there was no lawful means of communication between the houses except the road; and the mile that implied was seldom indeed passed by any of the unneighborly neighbors.
The father of Lady Margaret would at one time have purchased Thornwick at twice its value; but the present owner could not have bought it at half its worth. He had of late been losing money heavily--whence, in part, arose that anxiety of Lady Margaret's not to keep Mr. Redmain fretting for his lunch.
The house of Durnmelling, new compared with that of Thornwick, was yet, as I have indicated, old enough to have passed also through vicissitudes, and a large portion of the original structure had for many years been nothing better than a ruin. Only a portion of one side of its huge square was occupied by the family, and the rest of that side was not habitable. Lady Margaret, of an ancient stock, had gathered from it only pride, not reverence; therefore, while she valued the old, she neglected it; and what money she and her husband at one time spent upon the house, was devoted to addition and ornamentation, nowise to preservation or restoration. They had enlarged both dining-room and drawing-rooms to twice their former size, when half the expense, with a few trees from a certain outlying oak-plantation of their own, would have given them a room fit for a regal assembly. For, constituting a portion of the same front in which they lived, lay roofless, open to every wind that blew, its paved floor now and then in winter covered with snow--an ancient hall, whose massy south wall was pierced by three lovely windows, narrow and lofty, with simple, gracious tracery in their pointed heads. This hall connected the habitable portion of the house with another part, less ruinous than itself, but containing only a few rooms in occasional use for household purposes, or, upon necessity, for quite inferior lodgment. It was a glorious ruin, of nearly a hundred feet in length, and about half that in width, the walls entire, and broad enough to walk round upon in safety. Their top was accessible from a tower, which formed part of the less ruinous portion, and contained the stair and some small rooms.
Once, the hall was fair with portraits and armor and arms, with fire and lights, and state and merriment; now the sculptured chimney lay open to the weather, and the sweeping winds had made its smooth hearthstone clean as if fire had never been there. Its floor was covered with large flags, a little broken: these, in prospect of the coming entertainment, a few workmen were leveling, patching, replacing. For the tables were to be set here, and here there was to be dancing after the meal.
It was Miss Yolland's idea, and to her was committed the responsibility of its preparation and adornment for the occasion, in which Hesper gave her active assistance. With colored blankets, with carpets, with a few pieces of old tapestry, and a quantity of old curtains, mostly of chintz, excellent in hues and design, all cunningly arranged for as much of harmony as could be had, they contrived to clothe the walls to the height of six or eight feet, and so gave the weather-beaten skeleton an air of hospitable preparation and respectful reception.
The day and the hour arrived. It was a hot autumnal afternoon. Borne in all sorts of vehicles, from a carriage and pair to a taxed cart, the guests kept coming. As they came, they mostly scattered about the place. Some loitered on the lawn by the flower-beds and the fountain; some visited the stables and the home-farm, with its cow-houses and dairy and piggeries; some the neglected greenhouses, and some the equally neglected old-fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and their moss-grown statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere visible to receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them to the plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of some people has no roof to it," Godfrey said, when he heard of the preparations. "Ten people will give you a dinner, for one who will offer you a bed and a breakfast:" Then at last their host made his appearance, and took the head of the table: the ladies, he said, were to have the honor of joining the company afterward. They were at the time--but this he did not say--giving another stratum of society a less ponderous, but yet tolerably substantial, refreshment in the dining-room.
By the time the eating and drinking were nearly over, the shades of evening had gathered; but even then some few of the farmers, capable only of drinking, grumbled at having their potations interrupted for the dancers. These were presently joined by the company from the house, and the great hall was crowded.
Much to her chagrin, Mrs. Wardour had a severe headache, occasioned by her working half the night at her dress, and was compelled to remain at home. But she allowed Letty to go without her, which she would not have done had she not been so anxious to have news of what she could not lift her head to see: she sent her with an old servant--herself one of the invited guests--to gather and report. The dancing had begun before they reached the hall.
Tom Helmer had arrived among the first, and had joined the tenants in their feast, faring well, and making friends, such as he knew how to make, with everybody in his vicinity. When the tables were removed, and the rest of the company began to come in, he went about searching anxiously for Letty's sweet face, but it did not appear; and, when she did arrive, she stole in without his seeing her, and stood mingled with the crowd about the door.
It was a pleasant sight that met her eyes. The wide space was gayly illuminated with colored lamps, disposed on every shelf, and in every crevice of the walls, some of them gleaming like glow-worms out of mere holes; while candles in sconces, and lamps on the window-sills and wherever they could stand, gave a light the more pleasing that it was not brilliant. Overhead, the night-sky was spangled with clear pulsing stars, afloat in a limpid blue, vast even to awfulness in the eyes of such--were any such there? --as say to themselves that to those worlds also were they born. Outside, it was dark, save where the light streamed from the great windows far into the night. The moon was not yet up; she would rise in good time to see the scattering guests to their homes.
Tom's heart had been sinking, for he could see Letty nowhere. Now at last, he had been saying to himself all the day, had come his chance! and his chance seemed but to mock him. More than any girl he had ever seen, had Letty moved him--perhaps because she was more unlike his mother. He knew nothing, it is true, or next to nothing, of her nature; but that was of little consequence to one who knew nothing, and never troubled himself to know anything, of his own. Was he doomed never to come near his idol? --Ah, there she was! Yes; it was she--all but lost in a humble group near the door! His foolish heart--not foolish in that--gave a great bound, as if it would leap to her where she stood. She was dressed in white muslin, from which her white throat rose warm and soft. Her head was bent forward, and a gentle dissolved smile was over all her face, as with loveliest eyes she watched eagerly the motions of the dance, and her ears drank in the music of the yeomanry band. He seized the first opportunity of getting nearer to her. He had scarcely spoken to her before, but that did not trouble Tom. Even in a more ceremonious assembly, that would never have abashed him; and here there was little form, and much freedom. He had, besides, confidence in his own carriage and manners--which, indeed, were those of a gentleman--and knew himself not likely to repel by his approach.
Mr. Mortimer had opened the dancing by leading out the wife of his principal tenant, a handsome matron, whose behavior and expression were such as to give a safe, home-like feeling to the shy and doubtful of the company. But Tom knew better than injure his chance by precipitation: he would wait until the dancing was more general, and the impulse to movement stronger, and then offer himself. He stood therefore near Letty for some little time, talking to everybody, and making himself agreeable, as was his wont, all round; then at last, as if he had just caught sight of her, walked up to her where she stood flushed and eager, and asked her to favor him with her hand in the next dance.
By this time Letty had got familiar with his presence, had recalled her former meeting with him, had heard his name spoken by not a few who evidently liked him, and was quite pleased when he asked her to dance with him.
In the dance, nothing but commonplaces passed between them; but Tom had a certain pleasant way of his own in saying the commonest, emptiest things--an off-hand, glancing, skimming, swallow-like way of brushing and leaving a thing, as if he "could an' if he would," which made it seem for the moment as if he had said something: were his companion capable of discovering the illusion, there was no time; Tom was instantly away, carrying him or her with him to something else. But there was better than this--there was poetry, more than one element of it, in Tom. In the presence of a girl that pleased him, there would rise in him a poetic atmosphere, full of a rainbow kind of glamour, which, first possessing himself, passed out from him and called up a similar atmosphere, a similar glamour, about many of the girls he talked to. This he could no more help than the grass can help smelling sweet after the rain.
Tom was a finely projected, well-built, unfinished, barely furnished house, with its great central room empty, where the devil, coming and going at his pleasure, had not yet begun to make any great racket. There might be endless embryonic evil in him, but Letty was aware of no repellent atmosphere about him, and did not shrink from his advances. He pleased her, and why should she not be pleased with him? Was it a fault to be easily pleased? The truer and sweeter any human self, the readier is it to be pleased with another self--save, indeed, something in it grate on the moral sense: that jars through the whole harmonious hypostasy. To Tom, therefore, Letty responded with smiles and pleasant words, even grateful to such a fine youth for taking notice of her small self.
The sun had set in a bank of cloud, which, as if he had been a lump of leaven to it, immediately began to swell and rise, and now hung dark and thick over the still, warm night. Even the farmers were unobservant of the change: their crops were all in, they had eaten and drunk heartily, and were merry, looking on or sharing in the multiform movement, their eyes filled with light and color.
Suddenly came a torrent-sound in the air, heard of few and heeded by none, and straight into the hall rushed upon the gay company a deluge of rain, mingled with large, half-melted hail-stones. In a moment or two scarce a light was left burning, except those in the holes and recesses of the walls. The merrymakers scattered like flies--into the house, into the tower, into the sheds and stables in the court behind, under the trees in front--anywhere out of the hall, where shelter was none from the perpendicular, abandoned down-pour.
At that moment, Letty was dancing with Tom, and her hand happened to be in his. He clasped it tight, and, as quickly as the crowd and the confusion of shelter-seeking would permit, led her to the door of the tower already mentioned. But many had run in the same direction, and already its lower story and stair were crowded with refugees--the elder bemoaning the sudden change, and folding tight around them what poor wraps they were fortunate enough to have retained; the younger merrier than ever, notwithstanding the cold gusts that now poked their spirit-arms higher and thither through the openings of the half-ruinous building: to them even the destruction of their finery was but added cause of laughter. But a few minutes before, its freshness had been a keen pleasure to them, brightening their consciousness with a rare feeling of perfection; now crushed and rumpled, soiled and wet and torn, it was still fuel to the fire of gayety. But Tom did not stay among them. He knew the place well; having a turn for scrambling, he had been all over it many a time. On through the crowd, he led Letty up the stair to the first floor. Even here were a few couples talking and laughing in the dark. With a warning, by no means unnecessary, to mind where they stepped, for the floors were bad, he passed on to the next stair.
"Let us stop here, Mr. Helmer," said Letty. "There is plenty of room here."
"I want to show you something," answered Tom. "You need not be frightened. I know every nook of the place."
"I am not frightened," said Letty, and made no further objection.
At the top of that stair they entered a straight passage, in the middle of which was a faint glimmer of light from an oval aperture in the side of it. Thither Tom led Letty, and told her to look through. She did so.
Beneath lay the great gulf, wide and deep, of the hall they had just left. This was the little window, high in its gable, through which, in far-away times, the lord or lady of the mansion could oversee at will whatever went on below.
The rain had ceased as suddenly as it came on, and already lights were moving about in the darkness of the abyss--one, and another, and another, was searching for something lost in the hurry of the scattering. It was a waste and dismal show. Neither of them had read Dante; but Letty may have thought of the hall of Belshazzar, the night after the hand-haunted revel, when the Medes had had their will; for she had but lately read the story. A strange fear came upon her, and she drew back with a shudder.
"Are you cold?" said Tom. "Of course you must be, with nothing but that thin muslin! Shall I run down and get you a shawl?"
"Oh, no! do not leave me, please. It's not that," answered Letty. "I don't mind the wind a bit; it's rather pleasant. It's only that the look of the place makes me miserable, I think. It looks as if no one had danced there for a hundred years."
"Neither any one has, I suppose, till to-night," said Tom. "What a fine place it would be if only it had a roof to it! I can't think how any one can live beside it and leave it like that!"
But Tom lived a good deal closer to a worse ruin, and never spent a thought on it.
Letty shivered again.
"I'm quite ashamed of myself," she said, trying to speak cheerfully. "I can't think why I should feel like this--just as if something dreadful were watching me! I'll go home, Mr. Helmer." .
"It will be much the safest thing to do: I fear you have indeed caught cold," replied Tom, rejoiced at the chance of accompanying her. "I shall be delighted to see you safe."
"There is not the least occasion for that, thank you," answered Letty. "I have an old servant of my aunt's with me--somewhere about the place. The storm is quite over now: I will go and find her."
Tom made no objection, but helped her down the dark stair, hoping, however, the servant might not be found.
As they went, Letty seemed to herself to be walking in some old dream of change and desertion. The tower was empty as a monument, not a trace of the crowd left, which a few minutes before had thronged it. The wind had risen in earnest now, and was rushing about, like a cold wild ghost, through every cranny of the desolate place. Had Letty, when she reached the bottom of the stairs, found herself on the rocks of the seashore, with the waves dashing up against them, she would only have said to herself, "I knew I was in a dream!" But the wind having blown away the hail-cloud, the stars were again shining down into the hall. One or two forlorn-looking searchers were still there; the rest had scattered like the gnats. A few were already at home; some were harnessing their horses to go, nor would wait for the man in the moon to light his lantern; some were already trudging on foot through the dark. Hesper and Miss Yolland were talking to two or three friends in the drawing-room; Lady Margaret was in her boudoir, and Mr. Mortimer smoking a cigar in his study.
Nowhere could Letty find Susan. She was in the farmer's kitchen behind. Tom suspected as much, but was far from hinting the possibility. Letty found her cloak, which she had left in the hall, soaked with rain, and thought it prudent to go home at once, nor prosecute her search for Susan further. She accepted, therefore, Tom's renewed offer of his company.
They were just leaving the hall, when a thought came to Letty: the moon suddenly appearing above the horizon had put it in her head.
"Oh," she cried, "I know quite a short way home!" and, without waiting any response from her companion, she turned, and led him in an opposite direction, round, namely, by the back of the court, into a field. There she made for a huge oak, which gloomed in the moonlight by the sunk fence parting the grounds. In the slow strength of its growth, by the rounding of its bole, and the spreading of its roots, it had so rent and crumbled the wall as to make through it a little ravine, leading to the top of the ha-ha. When they reached it, before even Tom saw it, Letty turned from him, and was up in a moment. At the top she turned to bid him good night, but there he was, close behind her, insisting on seeing her safe to the house.
"Is this the way you always come?" asked Tom.
"I never was on Durnmelling land before," answered Letty.
"How did you find the short-cut, then?" he asked. "It certainly does not look as if it were much used."
"Of course not," replied Letty. "There is no communication between Durnmelling and Thornwick now. It was all ours once, though, Cousin Godfrey says. Did you notice how the great oak sends its biggest arm over our field?"
"Yes."
"Well, I often sit there under it, when I want to learn my lesson, and can't rest in the house; and that's how I know of the crack in the ha-ha."
She said it in absolute innocence, but Tom laid it up in his mind.
"Are you at lessons still?" he said. "Have you a governess?"
"No," she answered, in a tone of amusement. "But Cousin Godfrey teaches me many things."
This made Tom thoughtful; and little more had been said, when they reached the gate of the yard behind the house, and she would not let him go a step farther.
|
{
"id": "8201"
}
|
8
|
THE OAK.
|
In the morning, as she narrated the events of the evening, she told her aunt of the acquaintance she had made, and that he had seen her home. This information did not please the old lady, as, indeed, without knowing any reason, Letty had expected. Mrs. Wardour knew all about Tom's mother, or thought she did, and knew little good; she knew also that, although her son was a general favorite, her own son had a very poor opinion of him. On these grounds, and without a thought of injustice to Letty, she sharply rebuked the poor girl for allowing such a fellow to pay her any attention, and declared that, if ever she permitted him so much as to speak to her again, she would do something which she left in a cloud of vaguest suggestion.
Letty made no reply. She was hurt. Nor was it any wonder if she judged this judgment of Tom by the injustice of the judge to herself. It was of no consequence to her, she said to herself, whether she spoke to him again or not; but had any one the right to compel another to behave rudely? Only what did it matter, since there was so little chance of her ever seeing him again! All day she felt weary and disappointed, and, after the merrymaking of the night before, the household work was irksome. But she would soon have got over both weariness and tedium had her aunt been kind. It is true, she did not again refer to Tom, taking it for granted that he was done with; but all day she kept driving Letty from one thing to another, nor was once satisfied with anything she did, called her even an ungrateful girl, and, before evening, had rendered her more tired, mortified, and dispirited, than she had ever been in her life.
But the tormentor was no demon; she was only doing what all of us have often done, and ought to be heartily ashamed of: she was only emptying her fountain of bitter water. Oppressed with the dregs of her headache, wretched because of her son's absence, who had not been a night from home for years, annoyed that she had spent time and money in preparation for nothing, she had allowed the said cistern to fill to overflowing, and upon Letty it overflowed like a small deluge. Like some of the rest of us, she never reflected how balefully her evil mood might operate; and that all things work for good in the end, will not cover those by whom come the offenses. Another night's rest, it is true, sent the evil mood to sleep again for a time, but did not exorcise it; for there are demons that go not out without prayer, and a bad temper is one of them--a demon as contemptible, mean-spirited, and unjust, as any in the peerage of hell--much petted, nevertheless, and excused, by us poor lunatics who are possessed by him. Mrs. Wardour was a lady, as the ladies of this world go, but a poor lady for the kingdom of heaven: I should wonder much if she ranked as more than a very common woman there.
The next day all was quiet; and a visit paid Mrs. Wardour by a favorite sister whom she had not seen for months, set Letty at such liberty as she seldom had. In the afternoon she took the book Godfrey had given her, in which he had set her one of Milton's smaller poems to study, and sought the shadow of the Durnmelling oak.
It was a lovely autumn day, the sun glorious as ever in the memory of Abraham, or the author of Job, or the builder of the scaled pyramid at Sakkara. But there was a keenness in the air notwithstanding, which made Letty feel a little sad without knowing why, as she seated herself to the task Cousin Godfrey had set her. She, as well as his mother, heartily wished he were home. She was afraid of him, it is true; but in how different a way from that in which she was afraid of his mother! His absence did not make her feel free, and to escape from his mother was sometimes the whole desire of her day.
She was trying hard, not altogether successfully, to fix her attention on her task, when a yellow leaf dropped on the very line she was poring over. Thinking how soon the trees would be bare once more, she brushed the leaf away, and resumed her lesson.
"To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light," she had just read once more, when down fell a second tree-leaf on the book-leaf. Again she brushed it away, and read to the end of the sonnet: "Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure."
What Letty's thoughts about the sonnet were, I can not tell: how fix thought indefinite in words defined? But her angel might well have thought what a weary road she had to walk before she gained that entrance. But for all of us the road _has_ to be walked, every step, and the uttermost farthing paid. The gate will open wide to welcome us, but it will not come to meet us. Neither is it any use to turn aside; it only makes the road longer and harder.
Down on the same spot fell the third leaf. Letty looked up. There was a man in the tree over her head. She started to her feet. At the same moment, he dropped on the ground beside her, lifting his hat as coolly as if he had met her on the road. Her heart seemed to stand still with fright. She stood silent, with white lips parted.
"I hope I haven't frightened you," said Tom. "Do forgive me," he added, becoming more aware of the perturbation he had caused her. "You were so kind to me the other night, I could not help wanting to see you again. I had no idea the sight of me would terrify you so."
"You gave me such a start!" gasped Letty, with her hand pressed on her heart.
"I was afraid of it," answered Tom; "but what could I do? I was certain, if you saw me coming, you would run away."
"Why should you think that?" asked Letty, a faint color rising in her cheek.
"Because," answered Tom, "I was sure they would be telling you all manner of things against me. But there is no harm in me--really, Miss Lovel--nothing, that is, worth mentioning."
"I am sure there isn't," said Letty; and then there was a pause.
"What book are you reading, may I ask?" said Tom.
Letty had now remembered her aunt's injunctions and threats; but, partly from a kind of paralysis caused by his coolness, partly from its being impossible to her nature to be curt with any one with whom she was not angry, partly from mere lack of presence of mind, not knowing what to do, yet feeling she ought to run to the house, what should she do but drop down again on the very spot whence she had been scared! Instantly Tom threw himself on the grass at her feet, and there lay, looking up at her with eyes of humble admiration.
Confused and troubled, she began to turn over the leaves of her book. She supposed afterward she must have asked him why he stared at her so, for the next thing she remembered was hearing him say: "I can't help it. You are so lovely!"
"Please don't talk such nonsense to me," she rejoined. "I am not lovely, and I know it. What is not true can not please anybody."
She spoke a little angrily now.
"I speak the truth," said Tom, quietly and earnestly. "Why should you think I do not?"
"Because nobody ever said so before."
"Then it is quite time somebody should say so," returned Tom, changing his tone. "It may be a painful fact, but even ladies ought to be told the truth, and learn to bear it. To say you are not lovely would be a downright lie."
"I wish you wouldn't talk to me about myself!" said Letty, feeling confused and improper, but not altogether displeased that it was possible for such a mistake to be made. "I don't want to hear about myself. It makes me so uncomfortable! I am sure it isn't right: is it, now, Mr. Helmer?"
As she ended, the tears rose in her eyes, partly from unanalyzed uneasiness at the position in which she found herself and the turn the talk had taken, partly from the discomfort of conscious disobedience. But still she did not move.
"I am very sorry if I have vexed you," said Tom, seeing her evident trouble. "I can't think how I've done it. I know I didn't mean to; and I promise you not to say a word of the kind again--if I can help it. But tell me, Letty," he went on again, changing in tone and look and manner, and calling her by her name with such simplicity that she never even noticed it, "do tell me what you are reading, and that will keep me from _talking_ about you--not from--the other thing, you know."
"There!" said Letty, almost crossly, handing him her book, and pointing to the sonnet, as she rose to go.
Tom took the book, and sprang to his feet. He had never read the poem, for Milton had not been one of his masters. He stood devouring it. He was doing his best to lay hold of it quickly, for there Letty stood, with her hand held out to take the book again, ready upon its restoration to go at once. Silent and motionless, to all appearance unhasting, he read and reread. Letty was restless, and growing quite impatient; but still Tom read, a smile slow-spreading from his eyes over his face; he was taking possession of the poem, he would have said. But the shades and kinds and degrees of possession are innumerable; and not until we downright love a thing, can we _know_ we understand it, or rightly call it our own; Tom only admired this one; it was all he was capable of in regard to such at present. Had the whim for acquainting himself with it seized him in his own study, he would have satisfied it with a far more superficial interview; but the presence of the girl, with those eyes fixed on him as he read--his mind's eye saw them--was for the moment an enlargement of his being, whose phase to himself was a consciousness of ignorance.
"It is a beautiful poem," he said at last, quite honestly; and, raising his eyes, he looked straight in hers. There is hardly a limit to the knowledge and sympathy a man may have in respect of the finest things, and yet be a fool. Sympathy is not harmony. A man may be a poet even, and speak with the tongue of an angel, and yet be a very bad fool.
"I am sure it must be a beautiful poem," said Letty; "but I have hardly got a hold of it yet." And she stretched her hand a little farther, as if to proceed with its appropriation.
But Tom was not yet prepared to part with the book. He proceeded instead, in fluent speech and not inappropriate language, to set forth, not the power of the poem--that he both took and left as a matter of course--but the beauty of those phrases, and the turns of those expressions, which particularly pleased him--nor failing to remark that, according to the strict laws of English verse, there was in it one bad rhyme.
That point Letty begged him to explain, thus leading Tom to an exposition of the laws of rhyme, in which, as far as English was concerned, he happened to be something of an expert, partly from an early habit of scribbling in ladies' albums. About these surface affairs, Godfrey, understanding them better and valuing them more than Tom, had yet taught Letty nothing, judging it premature to teach polishing before carving; and hence this little display of knowledge on the part of Tom impressed Letty more than was adequate--so much, indeed, that she began to regard him as a sage, and a compeer of her cousin Godfrey. Question followed question, and answer followed answer, Letty feeling all the time she _must_ go, yet standing and standing, like one in a dream, who thinks he can not, and certainly does not break its spell--for in the act only is the ability and the deed born. Besides, was she to go away and leave her beautiful book in his hand? What would Godfrey think if she did? Again and again she stretched out her own to take it, but, although he saw the motion, he held on to the book as to his best anchor, hurriedly turned its leaves by fits and searching for something more to his mind than anything of Milton's. Suddenly his face brightened.
"Ah!" he said--and remained a moment silent, reading. "I don't wonder," he resumed, "at your admiration of Milton. He's very grand, of course, and very musical, too; but one can't be listening to an organ always. Not that I prefer merry music; that must be inferior, for the tone of all the beauty in the world is sad." Much Tom Helmer knew of beauty or sadness either! but ignorance is no reason with a fool for holding his tongue. "But there is the violin, now! --that can be as sad as any organ, without being so ponderous. Hear this, now! This is the violin after the organ--played as only a master can!"
With this preamble, he read a song of Shelley's, and read it well, for he had a good ear for rhythm and cadence, and prided himself on his reading of poetry.
Now the path to Letty's heart through her intellect was neither open nor well trodden; but the song in question was a winged one, and flew straight thither; there was something in the tone of it that suited the pitch of her spirit-chamber. And, if Letty's heart was not easily found, it was the readier to confess itself when found. Her eyes filled with tears, and through those tears Tom looked large and injured. "He must be a poet himself to read poetry like that!" she said to herself, and felt thoroughly assured that her aunt had wronged him greatly. "Some people scorn poetry like sin," she said again. "I used myself to think it was only for children, until Cousin Godfrey taught me differently."
As thus her thoughts went on interweaving themselves with the music, all at once the song came to an end. Tom closed the book, handed it to her, said, "Good morning, Miss Lovel," and ran down the rent in the ha-ha; and, before Letty could come to herself, she heard the soft thunder of hoofs on the grass. She ran to the edge, and, looking over, saw Tom on his bay mare, at full gallop across the field. She watched him as he neared the hedge and ditch that bounded it, saw him go flying over, and lost sight of him behind a hazel-copse. Slowly, then, she turned, and slowly she went back to the house and up to her room, vaguely aware that a wind had begun to blow in her atmosphere, although only the sound of it had yet reached her.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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9
|
CONFUSION.
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Then first, and from that moment, Letty's troubles began. Up to this point neither she herself nor another could array troublous accusation or uneasy thought against her; and now she began to feel like a very target, which exists but to receive the piercing of arrows. At first sight, and if we do not look a long way ahead of what people stupidly regard as the end when it is only an horizon, it seems hard that so much we call evil, and so much that is evil, should result from that unavoidable, blameless, foreordained, preconstituted, and essential attraction which is the law of nature, that is the will of God, between man and woman. Even if Letty had fallen in love with Tom at first sight, who dares have the assurance to blame her? who will dare to say that Tom was blameworthy in seeking the society and friendship, even the love, of a woman whom in all sincerity he admired, or for using his wits to get into her presence, and detain her a little in his company? Reasons there are, infinitely deeper than any philosopher has yet fathomed, or is likely to fathom, why a youth such as he--foolish, indeed, but not foolish in this--and a sweet and blameless girl such as Letty, should exchange regards of admiration and wonder. That which thus moves them, and goes on to draw them closer and closer, comes with them from the very source of their being, and is as reverend as it is lovely, rooted in all the gentle potencies and sweet glories of creation, and not unworthily watered with all the tears of agony and ecstasy shed by lovers since the creation of the world. What it is, I can not tell; I only know it is _not_ that which the young fool calls it, still less that which the old sinner thinks it. As to Letty's disobedience of her aunt's extravagant orders concerning Tom, I must leave that to the judgment of the just, reminding them that she was taken by surprise, and that, besides, it was next to impossible to obey them. But Letty found herself very uncomfortable, because there now was that to be known of her, the knowledge of which would highly displease her aunt--for which very reason, if for no other, ought she not to tell her all? On the other hand, when she recalled how unkindly, how unjustly her aunt had spoken, when she confessed her new acquaintance, it became to her a question whether in very deed she _must_ tell her all that had passed that afternoon. There was no smallest hope of any recognition of the act, surely more hard than incumbent, but severity and unreason; _must_ she let the thing out of her hands, and yield herself a helpless prey--and that for good to none? Concerning Mrs. Wardour, she reasoned justly: she who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.
But, supposing it remained Letty's duty to acquaint her aunt with what had taken place, and not forgetting that, as one of the old people, I have to render account of the young that come after me, and must be careful over their lovely dignities and fair duties, I yet make haste to assert that the old people, who make it hard for the young people to do right, may be twice as much to blame as those whom they arraign for a concealment whose very heart is the dread of their known selfishness, fierceness, and injustice. If children have to obey their parents or guardians, those parents and guardians are over them in the name of God, and they must look to it: if in the name of God they act the devil, that will not prove a light thing for their answer. The causing of the little ones to offend hangs a fearful woe about the neck of the causer. It were a hard, as well as a needless task, seeing there is One who judges, to set forth how far the child is to blame as toward the parent, where the parent first of all is utterly wrong, yea out of true relation, toward the child. Not, therefore, is the child free; obligation remains--modified, it may be, but how difficult, alas, to fulfill! And, whether Letty and such as act like her are _excusable_ or not in keeping attentions paid them a secret, this sorrow for the good ones of them certainly remains, that, next to a crime, a secret is the heaviest as well as the most awkward of burdens to carry. It has to be carried always, and all about. From morning to night it hurts in tenderest parts, and from night to morning hurts everywhere. At any expense, let there be openness. Take courage, my child, and speak out. Dare to speak, I say, and that will give you strength to resist, should disobedience become a duty. Letty's first false step was here: she said to herself _I can not_, and did not. She lacked courage--a want in her case not much to be wondered at, but much to be deplored, for courage of the true sort is just as needful to the character of a woman as of a man. Had she spoken, she might have heard true things of Tom, sufficient so to alter her opinion of him as, at this early stage of their intercourse, to alter the _set_ of her feelings, which now was straight for him. It may be such an exercise of courage would have rendered the troubles that were now to follow unnecessary to her development. For lack of it, she went about from that time with the haunting consciousness that she was one who might be found out; that she was guilty of what would go a good way to justify the hard words she had so resented. Already the secret had begun to work conscious woe. She contrived, however, to quiet herself a little with the idea, rather than the resolve, that, as soon as Godfrey came home, she would tell him all, confessing, too, that she had not the courage to tell his mother. She was sure, she said to herself, he would forgive her, would set her at peace with herself, and be unfair neither to Mr. Helmer nor to her. In the mean time she would take care--and this was a real resolve, not a mere act contemplated in the future--not to go where she might meet him again. Nor was the resolve the less genuine that, with the very making of it, rose the memory of that delightful hour more enticing than ever. How beautifully, and with what feeling, he read the lovely song! With what appreciation had he not expounded Milton's beautiful poem! Not yet was she capable of bethinking herself that it was but on this phrase and on that he had dwelt, on this and on that line and rhythm, enforcing their loveliness of sound and shape; while the poem, the really important thing, the drift of the whole--it was her own heart and conscience that revealed that to her, not the exposition of one who at best could understand it only with his brain. She kept to her resolve, nevertheless; and, although Tom, leaving his horse now here now there, to avoid attracting attention, almost every day visited the oak, he looked in vain for the light of her approach. Disappointment increased his longing: what would he not have given to see once more one of those exquisite smiles break out in its perfect blossom! He kept going and going--haunted the oak, sure of some blessed chance at last. It was the first time in his life he had followed one idea for a whole fortnight.
At length Godfrey came. But, although all the time he was away Letty had retained and contemplated with tolerable calmness the idea of making her confession to him, the moment she saw him she felt such confession impossible. It was a sad discovery to her. Hitherto Godfrey, and especially of late, had been the chief source of the peace and interest of her life, that portion of her life, namely, to which all the rest of it looked as its sky, its overhanging betterness--and now she felt before him like a culprit: she had done what he might be displeased with. Nay, would that were all! for she felt like a hypocrite: she had done that which she could not confess. Again and again, while Godfrey was away, she had flattered herself that the help the objectionable Tom had given her with her task would at once recommend him to Godfrey's favorable regard; but now that she looked in Godfrey's face, she was aware--she did not know why, but she was aware it would not be so. Besides, she plainly saw that the same fact would, almost of necessity, lead him to imagine there had been much more between them than was the case; and she argued with herself, that, now there was nothing, now that everything was over, it would be a pity if, because of what she could not help, and what would never be again, there should arise anything, however small, of a misunderstanding between her cousin Godfrey and her.
The moment Godfrey saw her, he knew that something was the matter; but there had been that going on in him which put him on a false track for the explanation. Scarcely had he, on his departure for London, turned his back on Thornwick, ere he found he was leaving one whom yet he could not leave behind him. Every hour of his absence he found his thoughts with the sweet face and ministering hands of his humble pupil. Therewith, however, it was nowise revealed to him that he was in love with her. He thought of her only as his younger sister, loving, clinging, obedient. So dear was she to him, he thought, that he would rejoice to secure her happiness at any cost to himself. _Any_ cost? he asked--and reflected. Yes, he answered himself--even the cost of giving her to a better man. The thing was sure to come, he thought--nor thought without a keen pang, scarcely eased by the dignity of the self-denial that would yield her with a smile. But such a crisis was far away, and there was no necessity for now contemplating it. Indeed, there was no _certainty_ it would ever arrive; it was only a possibility. The child was not beautiful, although to him she was lovely, and, being also penniless, was therefore not likely to attract attention; while, if her being unfolded under the genial influences he was doing his best to make powerful upon her, if she grew aware that by them her life was enlarging and being tenfold enriched, it was possible she might not be ready to fall in love, and leave Thornwick. He must be careful, however, he said to himself, quite plainly now, that his behavior should lead her into no error. He was not afraid she might fall in love with him; he was not so full of himself as that; but he recoiled from the idea, as from a humiliation, that she might imagine him in love with her. It was not merely that he had loved once for all, and, once deceived and forsaken, would love no more; but it was not for him, a man of thirty years, to bow beneath the yoke of a girl of eighteen--a child in everything except outward growth. Not for a moment would he be imagined by her a courtier for her favor.
Thus, even in the heart of one so far above ordinary men as Godfrey, and that in respect of the sweetest of child-maidens, pride had its evil place; and no good ever comes of pride, for it is the meanest of mean things, and no one but he who is full of it thinks it grand. For its sake this wise man was firmly resolved on caution; and so, when at last they met, it was no more with that _abandon_ of simple pleasure with which he had been wont to receive her when she came knocking at the door of his study, bearing clear question or formless perplexity; and his restraint would of itself have been enough to make Letty, whose heart was now beating in a very thicket of nerves, at once feel it impossible to carry out her intent--impossible to confess to him any more than to his mother; while Godfrey, on his part, perceiving her manifest shyness and unwonted embarrassment, attributed them altogether to his own wisely guarded behavior, and, seeing therein no sign of loss of influence, continued his caution. Thus the pride, which is of man, mingled with the love, which is of God, and polluted it. From that hour he began to lord it over the girl; and this change in his behavior immediately reacted on himself, in the obscure perception that there might be danger to her in continued freedom of intercourse: he must, therefore, he concluded, order the way for both; he must take care of her as well as of himself. But was it consistent with this resolve that he should, for a whole month, spend every leisure moment in working at a present for her--a written marvel of neatness and legibility?
Again, by this meeting askance, as it were, another disintegrating force was called into operation: the moment Letty knew she could not tell Godfrey, and that therefore a wall had arisen between him and her, that moment woke in her the desire, as she had never felt it before, to see Tom Helmer. She could no longer bear to be shut up in herself; she must see somebody, get near to somebody, talk to somebody; her secret would choke her otherwise, would swell and break her heart; and who was there to think of but Tom--and Mary Marston?
She had never once gone to the oak again, but she had not altogether avoided a certain little cobwebbed gable-window in the garret, from which it was visible; neither had she withheld her hands from cleaning a pane in that window, that through it she might see the oak; and there, more than once or twice, now thickening the huge limb, now spotting the grass beneath it, she had descried a dark object, which could be nothing else than Tom Helmer on the watch for herself. He must surely be her friend, she reasoned, or how would he care, day after day, to climb a tree to look if she were coming--she who was the veriest nobody in all other eyes but his? It was so good of Tom! She _would_ call him Tom; everybody else called him Tom, and why shouldn't she--to herself, when nobody was near? As to Mary Marston, she treated her like a child! When she told her that she had met Tom at Durnmelling, and how kind he had been, she looked as grave as if it had been wicked to be civil to him; and told her in return how he and his mother were always quarreling: that must be his mother's fault, she was sure-it could not be Tom's; any one might see that at a glance! His mother must be something like her aunt! But, after that, how could she tell Mary any more? It would not be fair to Tom, for, like the rest, she would certainly begin to abuse him. What harm could come of it? and, if harm did, how could she help it! If they had been kind to her, she would have told them everything, but they all frightened her so, she could not speak. It was not her fault if Tom was the only friend she had! She _would_ ask his advice; he was sure to advise her just the right thing. He had read that sonnet about the wise virgin with such feeling and such force, he _must_ know what a girl ought to do, and how she ought to behave to those who were unkind and would not trust her.
Poor Letty! she had no stay, no root in herself yet. Well do I know not one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself; each of us needs God and every human soul he has made, before he has enough; but we ought each to be able, in the hope of what is one day to come, to endure for a time, not having enough. Letty was unblamable that she desired the comfort of humanity around her soul, but I am not sure that she was quite unblamable in not being fit to walk a few steps alone, or even to sit still and expect. With all his learning, Godfrey had not taught her what William Marston had taught Mary; and now her heart was like a child left alone in a great room. She had not yet learned that we must each bear his own burden, and so become able to bear each the burden of the other. Poor friends we are, if we are capable only of leaning, and able never to support.
But the moment Letty's heart had thus cried out against Mary, came a shock, and something else cried out against herself, telling her that she was not fair to her friend, and that Mary, and no other, was the proper person to advise with in this emergency of her affairs. She had no right to turn from her because she was a little afraid of her. Perhaps Letty was on the point of discovering that to be unable to bear disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the self-depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting. Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what may. The right will produce more right and be its own reward--in the end a reward altogether infinite, for God will meet it with what is deeper than all right, namely, perfect love. But the more Letty thought, the more she was sure she must tell Mary; and, disapprove as she might, Mary was a very different object of alarm from either her aunt or her cousin Godfrey.
The first afternoon, therefore, on which she thought her aunt could spare her, she begged leave to go and see Mary. Mrs. Wardour yielded it, but not very graciously. She had, indeed, granted that Miss Marston was not like other shop-girls, but she did not favor the growth of the intimacy, and liked Letty's going to her less than Mary's coming to Thornwick.
|
{
"id": "8201"
}
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10
|
THE HEATH AND THE HUT.
|
Letty seldom went into the shop, except to buy, for she knew Mr. Turnbull would not like it, and Mary did not encourage it; but now her misery made her bold. Mary saw the trouble in her eyes, and without a moment's hesitation drew her inside the counter, and thence into the house, where she led the way to her own room, up stairs and through passages which were indeed lanes through masses of merchandise, like those cut through deep-drifted snow. It was shop all over the house, till they came to the door of Mary's chamber, which, opening from such surroundings, had upon Letty much the effect of a chapel--and rightly, for it was a room not unused to having its door shut. It was small, and plainly but daintily furnished, with no foolish excess of the small refinements on which girls so often set value, spending large time on what it would be waste to buy: only they have to kill the weary captive they know not how to redeem, for he troubles them with his moans.
"Sit down, Letty dear, and tell me what is the matter," said Mary, placing her friend in a chintz-covered straw chair, and seating herself beside her.
Letty burst into tears, and sat sobbing.
"Come, dear, tell me all about it," insisted Mary. "If you don't make haste, they will be calling me."
Letty could not speak.
"Then I'll tell you what," said Mary; "you must stop with me to-night, that we may have time to talk it over. You sit here and amuse yourself as well as you can till the shop is shut, and then we shall have such a talk! I will send your tea up here. Beenie will be good to you."
"Oh, but, indeed, I can't!" sobbed Letty; "my aunt would never forgive me."
"You silly child! I never meant to keep you without sending to your aunt to let her know."
"She won't let me stop," persisted Letty.
"We will try her," said Mary, confidently; and, without more ado, left Letty, and, going to her desk in the shop, wrote a note to Mrs. Wardour. This she gave to Beenie to send by special messenger to Thornwick; after which, she told her, she must take up a nice tea to Miss Lovel in her bedroom. Mary then resumed her place in the shop, under the frowns and side-glances of Turnbull, and the smile of her father, pleased at her reappearance from even such a short absence.
But the return, in an hour or so, of the boy-messenger, whom Beenie had taken care not to pay beforehand, destroyed the hope of a pleasant evening; for he brought a note from Mrs. Wardour, absolutely refusing to allow Letty to spend the night from home: she must return immediately, so as to get in before dark.
The rare anger flushed Letty's cheek and flashed from her eyes as she read; for, in addition to the prime annoyance, her aunt's note was addressed to her and not to Mary, to whom it did not even allude. Mary only smiled inwardly at this, but Letty felt deeply hurt, and her displeasure with her aunt added yet a shade to the dimness of her judgment. She rose at once.
"Will you not tell me first what is troubling you, Letty?" said Mary.
"No, dear, not now," replied Letty, caring a good deal less about the right ordering of her way than when she entered the house. Why should she care, she said to herself--but it was her anger speaking in her--how she behaved, when she was treated so abominably?
"Then I will come and see you on Sunday," said Mary; "and then we shall manage to have our talk."
They kissed and parted--Letty unaware that she had given her friend a less warm kiss than usual. There can hardly be a plainer proof of the lowness of our nature, until we have laid hold of the higher nature that belongs to us by birthright, than this, that even a just anger tends to make us unjust and unkind: Letty was angry with every person and thing at Thornwick, and unkind to her best friend, for whose sake in part she was angry. With glowing cheeks, tear-filled eyes, and indignant heart she set out on her walk home.
It was a still evening, with a great cloud rising in the southwest; from which, as the sun drew near the horizon, a thin veil stretched over the sky between, and a few drops came scattering. This was in harmony with Letty's mood. Her soul was clouded, and her heaven was only a place for the rain to fall from. Annoyance, doubt, her new sense of constraint, and a wide-reaching, undefined feeling of homelessness, all wrought together to make her mind a chaos out of which misshapen things might rise, instead of an ordered world in which gracious and reasonable shapes appear. For as the place such will be the thoughts that spring there; when all in us is peace divine, then, and not till then, shall we think the absolutely reasonable. Alas, that by our thoughtlessness or unkindness we should so often be the cause of monster-births, and those even in the minds of the loved! that we should be, if but for a moment, the demons that deform a fair world that loves us! Such was Mrs. Wardour, with her worldly wisdom, that day to Letty.
About half-way to Thornwick, the path crossed a little heathy common; and just as Letty left the hedge-guarded field-side, and through a gate stepped, as it were, afresh out of doors on the open common, the wind came with a burst, and brought the rain in earnest. It was not yet very heavy, but heavy enough, with the wind at its back, and she with no defense but her parasol, to wet her thoroughly before she could reach any shelter, the nearest being a solitary, decrepit old hawthorn-tree, about half-way across the common. She bent her head to the blast, and walked on. She had no desire for shelter. She would like to get wet to the skin, take a violent cold, go into a consumption, and die in a fortnight. The wind whistled about her bonnet, dashed the rain-drops clanging on the drum-tight silk of her parasol, and made of her skirts fetters and chains. She could hardly get along, and was just going to take down her parasol, when suddenly, where was neither house nor hedge nor tree, came a lull. For from behind, over head and parasol, had come an umbrella, and now came a voice and an audible sigh of pleasure.
"I little thought when I left home this afternoon," said the voice, "that I should have such a happiness before night!"
At the sound of the voice Letty gave a cry, which ran through all the shapes of alarm, of surprise, of delight; and it was not much of a cry either.
"O Tom!" she said, and clasped the arm that held the umbrella. How her foolish heart bounded! Here was help when she had sought none, and where least she had hoped for any! Her aunt would have her run from under the umbrella at once, no doubt, but she would do as she pleased this time. Here was Tom getting as wet as a spaniel for her sake, and counting it a happiness! Oh, to have a friend like that--all to herself! She would not reject such a friend for all the aunts in creation. Besides, it was her aunt's own fault; if she had let her stay with Mary, she would not have met Tom. It was not her doing; she would take what was sent her, and enjoy it! But, at the sound of her own voice calling him Tom, the blood rushed to her cheeks, and she felt their glow in the heart of the chill-beating rain.
"What a night for you to be out in, Letty," responded Tom, taking instant advantage of the right she had given him. "How lucky it was I chose the right place to watch in at last! I was sure, if only I persevered long enough, I should be rewarded."
"Have you been waiting for me long?" asked Letty, with foolish acceptance.
"A fortnight and a day," answered Tom, with a laugh. "But I would wait a long year for such another chance as this." And he pressed to his side the hand upon his arm. "Fate is indeed kind to-night."
"Hardly in the weather," said Letty, fast recovering her spirits.
"Not?" said Tom, with seeming pretense of indignation. "Let any one but yourself dare to say a word against the weather of this night, and he will have me to reckon with. It's the sweetest weather I ever walked in. I will write a glorious song in praise of showery gusts and bare commons."
"Do," said Letty, careful not to say Tom this time, but unwilling to revert to Mr. Helmer, "and mind you bring in the umbrella."
"That I will! See if I don't!" answered Tom.
"And make it real poetry too?" asked Letty, looking archly round the stick of the umbrella.
"Thou shalt thyself be the lovely critic, fair maiden!" answered Tom.
And thus they were already on the footing of somewhere about a two years' acquaintance--thanks to the smart of ill-usage in Letty's bosom, the gayety in Tom's, the sudden wild weather, the quiet heath, the gathering shades, and the umbrella! The wind blew cold, the air was dank and chill, the west was a low gleam of wet yellow, and the rain shot stinging in their faces; but Letty cared quite as little for it all as Tom did, for her heart, growing warm with the comfort of the friendly presence, felt like a banished soul that has found a world; and a joy as of endless deliverance pervaded her being. And neither to her nor to Tom must we deny our sympathy in the pleasure which, walking over a bog, they drew from the flowers that mantled awful deeps; they will not sink until they stop, and begin to build their house upon it. Within that umbrella, hovered, and glided with them, an atmosphere of bliss and peace and rose-odors. In the midst of storm and coming darkness, it closed warm and genial around the pair. Tom meditated no guile, and Letty had no deceit in her. Yet was Tom no true man, or sweet Letty much of a woman. Neither of them was yet _of the truth. _ At the other side of the heath, almost upon the path, stood a deserted hut; door and window were gone, but the roof remained: just as they neared it, the wind fell, and the rain began to come down in earnest.
"Let us go in here for a moment," said Tom, "and get our breath for a new fight."
Letty said nothing, but Tom felt she was reluctant.
"Not a soul will pass to-night," he said. "We mustn't get wet to the skin."
Letty felt, or fancied, refusal would be more unmaidenly than consent, and allowed Tom to lead her in. And there, within those dismal walls, the twilight sinking into a cheerless night of rain, encouraged by the very dreariness and obscurity of the place, she told Tom the trouble of mind their interview at the oak was causing her, saying that now it would be worse than ever, for it was altogether impossible to confess that she had met him yet again that evening.
So now, indeed, Letty's foot was in the snare: she had a secret with Tom. Every time she saw him, liberty had withdrawn a pace. There was no room for confession now. If a secret held be a burden, a secret shared is a fetter. But Tom's heart rejoiced within him.
"Let me see! --How old are you, Letty?" he asked gayly.
"Eighteen past," she answered.
"Then you are fit to judge for yourself. You ain't a child, and they are not your father and mother. What right have they to know everything you do? I wouldn't let any such nonsense trouble me."
"But they give me everything, you know--food, and clothes, and all."
"Ah, just so!" returned Tom. "And what do you do for them?"
"Nothing."
"Why! what are you about all day?"
Letty gave him a brief sketch of her day.
"And you call that nothing?" exclaimed Tom. "Ain't that enough to pay for your food and your clothes? Does it want your private affairs to make up the difference? Or have you to pay for your food and clothes with your very thoughts? --What pocket-money do they give you?"
"Pocket-money?" returned Letty, as if she did not quite know what he meant.
"Money to do what you like with," explained Tom.
Letty thought for a moment.
"Cousin Godfrey gave me a sovereign last Christmas," she answered. "I have got ten shillings of it yet."
Tom burst into a merry laugh.
"Oh, you dear creature!" he cried. "What a sweet slave you make! The lowest servant on the farm gets wages, and you get none: yet you think yourself bound to tell them everything, because they give you food and clothes, and a sovereign last Christmas!"
Here a gentle displeasure arose in the heart of the girl, hitherto so contented and grateful. She did not care about money, but she resented the claim her conscience made for them upon her confidence. She did not reflect that such claim had never been made by them; nor that the fact that she felt the claim, proved that she had been treated, in some measure at least, like a daughter of the house.
"Why," continued Tom, "it is mere, downright, rank slavery! You are walking to the sound of your own chains. Of course, you are not to do anything wrong, but you are not bound not to do anything they may happen not to like."
In this style he went on, believing he spoke the truth, and was teaching her to show a proper spirit. His heart, as well as Godfrey's, was uplifted, to think he had this lovely creature to direct and superintend: through her sweet confidence, he had to set her free from unjust oppression taking advantage of her simplicity. But in very truth he was giving her just the instruction that goes to make a slave--the slave in heart, who serves without devotion, and serves unworthily. Yet in this, and much more such poverty-stricken, swine-husk argument, Letty seemed to hear a gospel of liberty, and scarcely needed the following injunctions of Tom, to make a firm resolve not to utter a word concerning him. To do so would be treacherous to him, and would be to forfeit the liberty he had taught her! Thus, from the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.
"If you do," Tom had said, "I shall never see you again: they will set every one about the place to watch you, like so many cats after one poor little white mousey, and on the least suspicion, one way or another, you will be gobbled up, as sure as fate, before you can get to me to take care of you."
Letty looked up at him gratefully.
"But what could you do for me if I did?" she asked. "If my aunt were to turn me out of the house, your mother would not take me in!"
Letty was not herself now; she was herself and Tom--by no means a healthful combination.
"My mother won't be mistress long," answered Tom. "She will have to do as I bid her when I am one-and-twenty, and that will be in a few months." Tom did not know the terms of his father's will. "In the mean time we must keep quiet, you know. I don't want a row--we have plenty of row as it is. You may be sure _I_ shall tell no one how I spent the happiest hour of my life. How little circumstance has to do with bliss!" he added, with a philosophical sigh. "Here we are in a wretched hut, roared and rained upon by an equinoctial tempest, and I am in paradise!"
"I must go home," said Letty, recalled to a sense of her situation, yet set trembling with pleasure, by his words. "See, it is getting quite dark!"
"Don't be afraid, my white bird," said Tom. "I will see you home. But surely you are as well here as there anyhow! Who knows when we shall meet again? Don't be alarmed; I'm not going to ask you to meet me anywhere; I know your sweet innocence would make you fancy it wrong, and then you would be unhappy. But that is no reason why I should not fall in with you when I have the chance. It is very hard that two people who understand each other can not be friends without other people shoving in their ugly beaks! Where is the harm to any one if we choose to have a few minutes' talk together now and then?"
"Where, indeed?" responded Letty shyly.
A tall shadow--no shadow either, but the very person of Godfrey Wardour--passed the opening in the wall of the hut where once had been a window, and the gloom it cast into the dusk within was awful and ominous. The moment he saw it, Tom threw himself flat on the clay floor of the hut. Godfrey stopped at the doorless entrance, and stood on the threshold, bending his head to clear the lintel as he looked in. Letty's heart seemed to vanish from her body. A strange feeling shook her, as if some mysterious transformation were about to pass upon her whole frame, and she were about to be changed into some one of the lower animals. The question, where was the harm, late so triumphantly put, seemed to have no heart in it now. For a moment that had to Letty the air of an aeon, Godfrey stood peering.
Not a little to his displeasure, he had heard from his mother of her refusal to grant Letty's request, and had set out in the hope of meeting and helping her home, for by that time it had begun to rain, and looked stormy.
In the darkness he saw something white, and, as he gazed, it grew to Letty's face. The strange, scared, ghastly expression of it bewildered him.
Letty became aware that Godfrey did not recognize her at first, and the hope sprung up in her heart that he might not see Tom at all; but she could not utter a word, and stood returning Godfrey's gaze like one fascinated with terror. Presently her heart began again to bear witness in violent piston-strokes.
"Is it really you, my child?" said Godfrey, in an uncertain voice--for, if it was indeed she, why did she not speak, and why did she look so scared at the sight of him?
"O Cousin Godfrey!" gasped Letty, then first finding a little voice, "you gave me such a start!"
"Why should you be so startled at seeing me, Letty?" he returned. "Am I such a monster of the darkness, then?"
"You came all at once," replied Letty, gathering courage from the playfulness of his tone, "and blocked up the door with your shoulders, so that not a ray of light fell on your face; and how was I to know it was you, Cousin Godfrey?"
From a paleness grayer than death, her face was now red as fire; it was the burning of the lie inside her. She felt all a lie now: there was the good that Tom had brought her! But the gloom was friendly. With a resolution new to herself, she went up to Godfrey and said: "If you are going to the town, let me walk with you, Cousin Godfrey. It is getting so dark."
She felt as if an evil necessity--a thing in which man must not believe--were driving her. But the poor child was not half so deceitful inside as the words seemed to her issuing from her lips. It was such a relief to be assured Godfrey had not seen Tom, that she felt as if she could forego the sight of Tom for evermore. Her better feelings rushed back, her old confidence and reverence; and, in the altogether nebulo-chaotic condition of her mind, she felt as if, in his turn, Godfrey had just appeared for her deliverance.
"I am not going to the town, Letty," he answered. "I came to meet you, and we will go home together. It is no use waiting for the rain to stop, and about as little to put up an umbrella, I have brought your waterproof, and we must just take it as it comes."
The wind was up again, and the next moment Letty, on Godfrey's arm, was struggling with the same storm she had so lately encountered leaning on Tom's, while Tom was only too glad to be left alone on the floor of the dismal hut, whence he did not venture to rise for some time, lest any the most improbable thing should happen, to bring Mr. Wardour back. He was as mortally afraid of being discovered as any young thief in a farmer's orchard.
He had a dreary walk back to the public house where he had stabled his horse; but he trudged it cheerfully, brooding with delight on Letty's beauty, and her lovely confidence in Tom Helmer--a personage whom he had begun to feel nobody trusted as he deserved.
"Poor child!" he said to himself--he as well as Godfrey patronized her--"what a doleful walk home she will have with that stuck-up old bachelor fellow!"
Nor, indeed, was it a very comfortable walk home she had, although Godfrey talked all the way, as well as a head-wind, full of rain, would permit. A few weeks ago she would have thought the walk and the talk and everything delightful. But after Tom's airy converse on the same level with herself, Godfrey's sounded indeed wise--very wise--but dull, so dull! It is true the suspicion, hardly awake enough to be troublous, lay somewhere in her, that in Godfrey's talk there was a value of which in Tom's there was nothing; but then it was not wisdom Letty was in want of, she thought, but somebody to be kind to her--as kind as she should like; somebody, though she did not say this even to herself, to pet her a little, and humor her, and not require too much of her. Physically, Letty was not in the least lazy, but she did not enjoy being forced to think much. She could think, and to no very poor purpose either, but as yet she had no hunger for the possible results of thought, and how then could she care to think? Seated on the edge of her bed, weary and wet and self-accused, she recalled, and pondered, and, after her faculty, compared the two scarce comparable men, until the voice of her aunt, calling to her to make haste and come to tea, made her start up, and in haste remove her drenched garments. The old lady imagined from her delay she was out of temper because she had sent for her home; but, when she appeared, she was so ready, so attentive, and so quick to help, that, a little repentant, she said to herself, "Really the girl is very good-natured!" as if then first she discovered the fact. But Thornwick could never more to Letty feel like a home! Not at peace with herself, she could not be in rhythmic relation with her surroundings.
The next day, the old manner of life began again; but, alas! it was only the old manner, it was not the old life; that was gone for ever, like an old sunset, or an old song, and could not be recalled from the dead. We may have better, but we can not have the same. God only can have the same. God grant our new may inwrap our old! Letty labored more than ever to lay hold of the lessons, to his mind so genial, in hers bringing forth more labor than fruit, which Godfrey set before her, but success seemed further from her than ever. She was now all the time aware of a weight, an oppression, which seemed to belong to the task, but was in reality her self-dissatisfaction. She was like a poor Hebrew set to make brick without straw, but the Egyptian that had brought her into bondage was the feebleness of her own will. Now and then would come a break--a glow of beauty, a gleam of truth; for a moment she would forget herself; for a moment a shining pool would flash on the clouded sea of her life; presently her heart would send up a fresh mist, the light would fade and vanish, and the sea lie dusky and sad. Not seldom reproaching herself with having given Tom cause to think unjustly of her guardians, she would try harder than ever to please her aunt; and the small personal services she had been in the way of rendering to Godfrey were now ministered with the care of a devotee. Not once should he miss a button from a shirt or find a sock insufficiently darned! But even this conscience of service did not make her happy. Duty itself could not, where faith was wanting, where the heart was not at one with those to whom the hands were servants. She would cry herself to sleep, and rise early to be sad. She resolved at last, and seemed to gain strength and some peace from the resolve, to do all in her power to avoid Tom; and certainly not once did she try to meet him. Not with him, she could resist him.
Thus it went on. Her aunt saw that something was amiss, and watched her, without attempt at concealment, which added greatly to Letty's discomfort. But the only thing her keenness discovered was, that the girl was forwardly eager to please Godfrey, and the conviction began to grow that she was indulging the impudent presumption of being in love with her peerless cousin. Then maternal indignation misled her into the folly of dropping hints that should put Godfrey on his guard: men were so easily taken in by designing girls! She did not say much; but she said a good deal too much for her own ends, when she caused her fancy to present itself to the mind of Godfrey.
He had not failed, no one could have failed, to observe the dejection that had for some time ruled every feature and expression of the girl's countenance. Again and again he had asked himself whether she might not be fancying him displeased with her; for he knew well that, becoming more and more aware of what he counted his danger, he had kept of late stricter guard than ever over his behavior; but, watching her now with the misleading light of his mother's lantern, nor quite unwilling, I am bound to confess, that the thing might be as she implied, he became by degrees convinced that she was right.
So far as this, perhaps, the man was pardonable--with a mother to cause him to err. But, for what followed, punishment was inevitable. He had a true and strong affection for the girl, but it was an affection as from conscious high to low; an affection, that is, not unmixed with patronage--a bad thing--far worse than it can seem to the heart that indulges it. He still recoiled, therefore, from the idea of such a leveling of himself as he counted it would be to show her anything like the love of a lover. All pride is more or less mean, but one pride may be grander than another, and Godfrey was not herein proud in any grand way. Good fellow as he was, he thought much too much of himself; and, unconsciously comparing it with Letty's, altogether overvalued his worth. Stranger than any bedfellow misery ever acquainted a man withal, are the heart-fellows he carries about with him. Noble as in many ways Wardour was, and kind as, to Letty, he thought he always was, he was not generous toward her; he was not Prince Arthur, "the Knight of Magnificence." Something may perhaps be allowed on the score of the early experience because of which he had resolved--pridefully, it is true--never again to come under the power of a woman; it was unworthy of any man, he said, to place his peace in a hand which could thenceforth wring his whole being with agony. But, had he now brought himself as severely to task as he ought, he would have discovered that he was making no objection to the little girl's loving him, only he would not love her in the same way in return; and where was the honor in that? Doubtless, had he thus examined himself, he would have thought he meant to take care that the child's love for him should not go too far--should not endanger her peace; and that, if the thing should give her trouble, it should be his business to comfort her in it; but descend he would not--would not _yet_--from his pedestal, to meet the silly thing on the level ground of humanity, and the relation of the man and the woman! Something like this, I say, he would have found in his heart, horrid as it reads. That heart's action was not even, was not healthy.
When in London he had ransacked Holywell Street for dainty editions of so many of his favorite authors as would make quite a little library for Letty; and on his return, had commissioned a cabinet-maker in Testbridge to put together a small set of book-shelves, after his own design, measured and fitted to receive them exactly; these shelves, now ready, he fastened to her wall one afternoon when she was out of the way, and filled them with the books. He never doubted that, the moment she saw them, she would rush to find him; and, when he had done, retreated, therefore, to his study, there to sit in readiness to receive her and her gratitude with gentle kindness; when he would express the hope that she would make real friends of the spirits whose quintessence he had thus stored to her hand; and would introduce her to what Milton says in his "Areopagitica" concerning good books. There, for her sake, then, he sat, in mental state, expectant; but sat in vain. When they met at tea, then, in the presence of his mother, with embarrassment and broken utterance, she did thank him.
"O Cousin Godfrey!" she said, and ceased; then, "It is so much more than I deserve, I dare hardly thank you." After another pause, with a shake of her pretty head, as if she would toss aside her hair, or the tears out of her eyes, "I don't know--I seem to have no right to thank you; I ought not to have such a splendid present. Indeed, I don't deserve it. You would not give it me if you knew how naughty I am."
These broken sentences were by both mother and son altogether misinterpreted. The mother, now hearing for the first time of Godfrey's present, was filled with jealousy, and began to revolve thoughts of dire disquietude: was the hussy actually beginning to gain her point, and steal from her the heart of her son? Was it in the girl's blood to wrong her? The father of her had wronged her: she would take care his daughter should not! She had taken a viper to her bosom! Who was _she_, to wriggle herself into an old family and property? Had _she_ been born to such things? She would teach her who she was! When dependents began to presume, it was time they had a lesson.
Letty could not bear the sight of the books and their shelves; the very beauty of the bindings was a reproach to her. From the misery of this fresh burden, this new stirring of her sense of hypocrisy, she began to wish herself anywhere out of the house, and away from Thornwick. It was torture to her to think how she had deceived Cousin Godfrey at the hut; and throughout the night, across the darkness, she felt, though she could not see, the books gazing at her, like an embodied conscience, from the wall of her chamber. Twenty times that night she started from her sleep, saying, "I will go where they shall never see me"; then rose with the dawn, and set herself to the hardest work she could find.
The next day was Sunday, and they all went to church. Letty felt that Tom was there, too, but she never raised her eyes to glance at him.
He had been looking out in vain for a sight of her--now from the oak-tree, now from his bay mare's back, as he haunted the roads about Thornwick, now from the window of the little public-house where the path across the fields joined the main road to Testbridge: but not once had he caught a glimpse of her.
He had seated himself where he could not fail to see her if she were in the Thornwick pew. How ill she looked! His heart swelled with indignation.
"They are cruel to her," he said; "that is plain. Poor girl, they will kill her! She is a pearl in the oyster-maw of Thornwick. This will never do; I _must_ see her somehow!"
If at this crisis Letty had but had a real friend to strengthen and advise her, much suffering might have been spared her, for never was there a more teachable girl. She was, indeed, only too ready to be advised, too ready to accept for true whatever friendship offered itself. None but the friend who will strengthen us to stand, is worthy of the name. Such a friend Mary would have been, but Letty did not yet know what she needed. The unrest of her conscience made her shrink from one who was sure to side with that conscience, and help it to trouble her. It was sympathy Letty longed for, not strength, and therefore she was afraid of Mary. She came to see her, as she had promised, the Sunday after that disastrous visit; but the weather was still uncertain and gusty, and she found both her and Godfrey in the parlor; nor did Letty give her a chance of speaking to her alone. The poor girl had now far more on her mind that needed help than then when she went in search of it, but she would seek it no more from her! For, the more she thought, the surer she felt that Mary would insist on her making a disclosure of the whole foolish business to Mrs. Wardour, and would admit neither her own fear nor her aunt's harshness as reason sufficient to the contrary. "More than that," thought Letty, "I can't be sure she wouldn't go, in spite of me, and tell her all about it! and what would become of me then? I should be worse off a hundred times than if I had told her myself."
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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11
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WILLIAM MARSTON.
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The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of altogether another kind from those that enveloped Letty: no troubles are for one moment to be compared with those that come of the wrongness, even if it be not wickedness, that is our own. Some clouds rise from stagnant bogs and fens; others from the wide, clean, large ocean. But either kind, thank God, will serve the angels to come down by. In the old stories of celestial visitants the clouds do much; and it is oftenest of all down the misty slope of griefs and pains and fears, that the most powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and women and children. Beautiful are the feet of the men of science on the dust-heaps of the world, but the patient heart will yield a myriad times greater thanks for the clouds that give foothold to the shining angels.
Few people were interested in William Marston. Of those who saw him in the shop, most turned from him to his jolly partner. But a few there were who, some by instinct, some from experience, did look for him behind the counter, and were disappointed if he were absent: most of them had a repugnance to the over-complaisant Turnbull. Yet Marston was the one whom the wise world of Testbridge called the hypocrite, and Turnbull was the plain-spoken, agreeable, honest man of the world, pretending to be no better either than himself or than other people. The few friends, however, that Marston bad, loved him as not many are loved: they knew him, not as he seemed to the careless eye, but as he was. Never did man do less either to conceal or to manifest himself. He was all taken up with what he loved, and that was neither himself nor his business. These friends knew that, when the far-away look was on him, when his face was paler, and he seemed unaware of person or thing about him, he was not indifferent to their presence, or careless of their existence; it was only that his thoughts were out, like heavenly bees, foraging; a word of direct address brought him back in a moment, and his soul would return to them with a smile. He stood as one on the keystone of a bridge, and held communion now with these, now with those: on this side the river and on that, both companies were his own.
He was not a man of much education, in the vulgar use of the word; but he was a good way on in that education, for the sake of which, and for no other without it, we are here in our consciousness--the education which, once begun, will, soon or slow, lead knowledge captive, and teaches nothing that has to be unlearned again, because every flower of it scatters the seed of one better than itself. The main secret of his progress, the secret of all wisdom, was, that with him action was the beginning and end of thought. He was not one of that cloud of false witnesses, who, calling themselves Christians, take no trouble for the end for which Christ was born, namely, their salvation from unrighteousness--a class that may be divided into the insipid and the offensive, both regardless of obedience, the former indifferent to, the latter contentious for doctrine.
It may well seem strange that such a man should have gone into business with such another as John Turnbull; but the latter had been growing more and more common, while Marston had been growing more and more refined. Still from the first it was an unequal yoking of believer with unbeliever--just as certainly, although not with quite such wretched results, as would have been the marriage of Mary Marston and George Turnbull. And it had been a great trial: punishment had not been spared--with best results in patience and purification; for so are our false steps turned back to good by the evil to which they lead us. Turnbull was ready to take every safe advantage to be gained from his partner's comparative carelessness about money. He drew a larger proportion of the profits than belonged to his share in the capital, justifying himself on the ground that he had a much larger family, did more of the business, and had to keep up the standing of the firm. He made him pay more than was reasonable for the small part of the house yielded from storage to the accommodation of him, his daughter, and their servant, notwithstanding that, if they had not lived there, some one must have been paid to do so. Far more than this, careless of his partner's rights, and insensible to his interests, he had for some time been risking the whole affair by private speculations. After all, Marston was the safer man of business, even from the worldly point of view. Alone, it is true, he would hardly have made money, but he would have got through, and would have left his daughter the means of getting through also; for he would have left her in possession of her own peace and the confidence of her friends, which will always prove enough for those who confess themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on the earth--those who regard it as a grand staircase they have to climb, not a plain on which to build their houses and plant their vineyards.
As to the peculiar doctrines of the sect to which he had joined himself, right or wrong in themselves, Marston, after having complied with what seemed to him the letter of the law concerning baptism, gave himself no further trouble. He had for a long time known--for, by the power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and little church, gather only the husks and chaff--that the only baptism of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of him a living soul. When a man _knows_ this, potentially he knows all things. But, _just therefore_, he did not stand high with his sect any more than with his customers, though--a fact which Marston himself never suspected--the influence of his position had made them choose him for a deacon. One evening George had had leave to go home early, because of a party at _the villa_, as the Turnbulls always called their house; and, the boy having also for some cause got leave of absence, Mr. Marston was left to shut the shop himself, Mary, who was in some respects the stronger of the two, assisting him. When he had put up the last shutter, he dropped his arms with a weary sigh. Mary, who had been fastening the bolts inside, met him in the doorway.
"You look worn out, father," she said. "Come and lie down, and I will read to you."
"I will, my dear," he answered. "I don't feel quite myself to-night. The seasons tell upon me now. I suppose the stuff of my tabernacle is wearing thin."
Mary cast an anxious look at him, for, though never a strong man, he seldom complained. But she said nothing, and, hoping a good cup of tea would restore him, led the way through the dark shop to the door communicating with the house. Often as she had passed through it thus, the picture of it as she saw it that night was the only one almost that returned to her afterward: a few vague streaks of light, from the cracks of the shutters, fed the rich, warm gloom of the place; one of them fell upon a piece of orange-colored cotton stuff, which blazed in the dark.
Arrived at their little sitting-room at the top of the stair, she hastened to shake up the pillows and make the sofa comfortable for him. He lay down, and she covered him with a rug; then ran to her room for a book, and read to him while Beenie was getting the tea. She chose a poem with which Mr. Wardour had made her acquainted almost the last tune she was at Thornwick--that was several weeks ago now, for plainly Letty was not so glad to see her as she used to be--it was Milton's little ode "On Time," written for inscription on a clock--one of the grandest of small poems. Her father knew next to nothing of literature; having pondered his New Testament, however, for thirty years, he was capable of understanding Milton's best--to the childlike mind the best is always simplest and easiest-not unfrequently the _only_ kind it can lay hold of. When she ended, he made her read it again, and then again; not until she had read it six times did he seem content. And every time she read it, Mary found herself understanding it better. It was gradually growing very precious.
Her father had made no remark; but, when she lifted her eyes from the sixth reading, she saw that his face shone, and, as the last words left her lips, he took up the line like a refrain, and repeated it after her: "'Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee, O Time!'
"That will do now, Mary, I thank you," he said. "I have got a good hold of it, I think, and shall be able to comfort myself with it when I wake in the night. The man must have been very like the apostle Paul."
He said no more. The tea was brought, and he drank a cup of it, but could not eat; and, as he could not, neither could Mary.
"I want a long sleep," he said; and the words went to his child's heart--she dared not question herself why. When the tea-things were removed, he called her.
"Mary," he said, "come here. I want to speak to you."
She kneeled beside him, "Mary," he said again, taking her little hand in his two long, bony ones, "I love you, my child, to that degree I can not say; and I want you, I do want you, to be a Christian."
"So do I, father dear," answered Mary simply, the tears rushing into her eyes at the thought that perhaps she was not one; "I want me to be a Christian."
"Yes, my love," he went on; "but it is not that I do not think you a Christian; it is that I want you to be a downright real Christian, not one that is but trying to feel as a Christian ought to feel. I have lost so much precious time in that way!"
"Tell me--tell me," cried Mary, clasping her other hand over his. "What would you have me do?"
"I will tell you. I am just trying how," he responded. "A Christian is just one that does what the Lord Jesus tells him. Neither more nor less than that makes a Christian. It is not even understanding the Lord Jesus that makes one a Christian. That makes one dear to the Father; but it is being a Christian, that is, doing what he tells us, that makes us understand him. Peter says the Holy Spirit is given to them that obey him: what else is that but just actually, really, doing what he says--just as if I was to tell you to go and fetch me my Bible, and you would get up and go? Did you ever do anything, my child, just because Jesus told you to do it?"
Mary did not answer immediately. She thought awhile. Then she spoke.
"Yes, father," she said, "I think so. Two nights ago, George was very rude to me--I don't mean anything bad, but you know he is very rough."
"I know it, my child. And you must not think I don't care because I think it better not to interfere. I am with you all the time."
"Thank you, father; I know it. Well, when I was going to bed, I was angry with him still, so it was no wonder I found I could not say my prayers. Then I remembered how Jesus said we must forgive or we should not be forgiven. So I forgave him with all my heart, and kindly, too, and then I found I could pray."
The father stretched out his arms and drew her to his bosom, murmuring, "My child! my Christ's child!" After a little he began to talk again.
"It is a miserable thing to hear those who desire to believe themselves Christians, talking and talking about this question and that, the discussion of which is all for strife and nowise for unity--not a thought among them of the one command of Christ, to love one another. I fear some are hardly content with not hating those who differ from them."
"I am sure, father, I try--and I think I do love everybody that loves him," said Mary.
"Well, that is much--not enough though, my child. We must be like Jesus, and you know that it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us; therefore we must love all men, whether they are Christians or not."
"Tell me, then, what you want me to do, father dear. I will do whatever you tell me."
"I want you to be just like that to the Lord Christ, Mary. I want you to look out for his will, and find it, and do it. I want you not only to do it, though that is the main thing, when you think of it, but to look for it, that you may do it. I need not say to you that this is not a thing to be _talked_ about much, for you don't do that. You may think me very silent, my love; but I do not talk always when I am inclined, for the fear I might let my feeling out that way, instead of doing something he wants of me with it. And how repulsive and full of offense those generally are who talk most! Our strength ought to go into conduct, not into talk--least of all, into talk about what they call the doctrines of the gospel. The man who does what God tells him, sits at his Father's feet, and looks up in his Father's face; and men had better leave him alone, for he can not greatly mistake his Father, and certainly will not displease him. Look for the lovely will, my child, that you may be its servant, its priest, its sister, its queen, its slave--as Paul calls himself. How that man did glory in his Master!"
"I will try, father," returned Mary, with a burst of tears. "I do want to be good. I do want to be one of his slaves, if I may." " _May! _ my child? You are bound to be. You have no choice but choose it. It is what we are made for--freedom, the divine nature, God's life, a grand, pure, open-eyed existence! It is what Christ died for. You must not talk about _may;_ it is all _must. _" Mary had never heard her father talk like this, and, notwithstanding the endless interest of his words, it frightened her. An instinctive uneasiness crept up and laid hold of her. The unsealing hand of Death was opening the mouth of a dumb prophet.
A pause followed, and he spoke again.
"I will tell you one thing now that Jesus says: he is unchangeable; what he says once he says always; and I mention it now, because it may not be long before you are specially called to mind it. It is this: _'Let not your heart be troubled.' _" "But he said that on one particular occasion, and to his disciples--did he not?" said Mary, willing, in her dread, to give the conversation a turn.
"Ah, Mary!" said her father, with a smile, "_will_ you let the questioning spirit deafen you to the teaching one? Ask yourself, the first time you are alone, what the disciples were not to be troubled about, and why they were not to be troubled about it. --I am tired, and should like to go to bed."
He rose, and stood for a moment in front of the fire, winding his old double-cased silver watch. Mary took from her side the little gold one he had given her, and, as was her custom, handed it to him to wind for her. The next moment he had dropped it on the fender.
"Ah, my child!" he cried, and, stooping, gathered up a dying thing, whose watchfulness was all over. The glass was broken; the case was open; it lay in his hand a mangled creature. Mary heard the rush of its departing life, as the wheels went whirring, and the hands circled rapidly.
They stopped motionless. She looked up in her father's face with a smile. He was looking concerned.
"I am very sorry, Mary," he said; "but, if it is past repair, I will get you another. --You don't seem to mind it much!" he added, and smiled himself.
"Why should I, father dear?" she replied. "When one's father breaks one's watch, what is there to say but 'I am very glad it was you did it'? I shall like the little thing the better for it."
He kissed her on the forehead.
"My child, say that to your Father in heaven, when he breaks something for you. He will do it from love, not from blundering. I don't often preach to you, my child--do I? but somehow it comes to me to-night."
"I will remember, father," said Mary; and she did remember.
She went with him to his bedroom, and saw that everything was right for him. When she went again, before going to her own, he felt more comfortable, he said, and expected to have a good night. Relieved, she left him; but her heart would be heavy. A shapeless sadness seemed pressing it down; it was being got ready for what it had to bear.
When she went to his room in the middle of the night, she found him slumbering peacefully, and went back to her own and slept better. When she went again in the morning, he lay white, motionless, and without a breath.
It was not in Mary's nature to give sudden vent to her feelings. For a time she was stunned. As if her life had rushed to overtake her departing parent, and beg a last embrace, she stood gazing motionless. The sorrow was too huge for entrance. The thing could not be! Not until she stooped and kissed the pale face, did the stone in her bosom break, and yield a torrent of grief. But, although she had left her father in that very spot the night before, already she not only knew but felt that was not he which lay where she had left him. He was gone, and she was alone. She tried to pray, but her heart seemed to lie dead in her bosom, and no prayer would rise from it. It was the time of all times when, if ever, prayer must be the one reasonable thing--and pray she could not. In her dull stupor she did not hear Beenie's knock. The old woman entered, and found her on her knees, with her forehead on one of the dead hands, while the white face of her master lay looking up to heaven, as if praying for the living not yet privileged to die. Then first was the peace of death broken. Beenie gave a loud cry, and turned and ran, as if to warn the neighbors that Death was loose in the town. Thereupon, as if Death were a wild beast yet lurking in it, the house was filled with noise and tumult; the sanctuary of the dead was invaded by unhallowed presence; and the poor girl, hearing behind her voices she did not love, raised herself from her knees, and, without lifting her eyes, crept from the room and away to her own.
"Follow her, George," said his father, in a loud, eager whisper. "You've got to comfort her now. That's your business, George. There's your chance!"
The last words he called from the bottom of the stair, as George sped up after her. "Mary! Mary, dear," he called as he ran.
But Mary had the instinct--it was hardly more--to quicken her pace, and lock the door of her room the moment she entered. As she turned from it, her eye fell upon her watch--where it lay, silent and disfigured, on her dressing-table; and, with the sight, the last words of her father came back to her. She fell again on her knees with a fresh burst of weeping, and, while the foolish youth was knocking unheard at her door, cried, with a strange mixture of agony and comfort, "O my Father in heaven, give me back William Marston!" Never in his life had she thought of her father by his name; but death, while it made him dearer than ever, set him away from her so, that she began to see him in his larger individuality, as a man before the God of men, a son before the Father of many sons: Death turns a man's sons and daughters into his brothers and sisters. And while she kneeled, and, with exhausted heart, let her brain go on working of itself, as it seemed, came a dreamy vision of the Saviour with his disciples about him, reasoning with them that they should not give way to grief. "Let not your heart be troubled," he seemed to be saying, "although I die, and go out of your sight. It is all well. Take my word for it."
She rose, wiped her eyes, looked up, said, "I will try, Lord," and, going down, called Beenie, and sent her to ask Mr. Turnbull to speak with her. She knew her father's ideas, and must do her endeavor to have the funeral as simple as possible. It was a relief to have something, anything, to do in his name.
Mr. Turnbull came, and the coarse man was kind. It went not a little against the grain with him to order what he called a pauper's funeral for the junior partner in the firm; but, more desirous than ever to conciliate Mary, he promised all that she wished.
"Marston was but a poor-spirited fellow," he said to his wife when he told her; "the thing is a disgrace to the shop, but it's fit enough for him. --It will be so much money saved," he added in self-consolation, while his wife turned up her nose, as she always did at any mention of the shop.
Mary returned to her father's room, now silent again with the air of that which is not. She took from the table the old silver watch. It went on measuring the time by a scale now useless to its owner. She placed it lovingly in her bosom, and sat down by the bedside. Already, through love, sorrow, and obedience, she began to find herself drawing nearer to him than she had ever been before; already she was able to recall his last words, and strengthen her resolve to keep them. And, sitting thus, holding vague companionship with the merely mortal, the presence of that which was not her father, which was like him only to remind her that it was not he, and which must so soon cease to resemble him, there sprang, as in the very footprint of Death, yet another flower of rarest comfort--a strong feeling, namely, of the briefness of time, and the certainty of the messenger's return to fetch herself. Her soul did not sink into peace, but a strange peace awoke in her spirit. She heard the spring of the great clock that measures the years rushing rapidly down with a feverous whir, and saw the hands that measure the weeks and months careering around its face; while Death, like one of the white-robed angels in the tomb of the Lord, sat watching, with patient smile, for the hour when he should be wanted to go for her. Thus mingled her broken watch, her father's death, and Jean Paul's dream; and the fancy might well comfort her.
I will not linger much more over the crumbling time. It is good for those who are in it, specially good for those who come out of it chastened and resolved; but I doubt if any prolonged contemplation of death is desirable for those whose business it now is to live, and whose fate it is ere long to die. It is a closing of God's hand upon us to squeeze some of the bad blood out of us, and, when it relaxes, we must live the more diligently--not to get ready for death, but to get more life. I will relate only one thing yet, belonging to this twilight time.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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12
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MARY'S DREAM.
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That night, and every night until the dust was laid to the dust, Mary slept well; and through the days she had great composure; but, when the funeral was over, came a collapse and a change. The moment it became necessary to look on the world as unchanged, and resume former relations with it, then, first, a fuller sense of her lonely desolation declared itself. When she said good night to Beenie, and went to her chamber, over that where the loved parent and friend would fall asleep no more, she felt as if she went walking along to her tomb.
That night was the first herald of the coming winter, and blew a cold blast from his horn. All day the wind had been out. Wildly in the churchyard it had pulled at the long grass, as if it would tear it from its roots in the graves; it had struck vague sounds, as from a hollow world, out of the great bell overhead in the huge tower; and it had beat loud and fierce against the corner-buttresses which went stretching up out of the earth, like arms to hold steady and fast the lighthouse of the dead above the sea which held them drowned below; despairingly had the gray clouds drifted over the sky; and, like white clouds pinioned below, and shadows that could not escape, the surplice of the ministering priest and the garments of the mourners had flapped and fluttered as in captive terror; the only still things were the coffin and the church--and the soul which had risen above the region of storms in the might of Him who abolished death. At the time Mary had noted nothing of these things; now she saw them all, as for the first time, in minute detail, while slowly she went up the stair and through the narrowed ways, and heard the same wind that raved alike about the new grave and the old house, into which latter, for all the bales banked against the walls, it found many a chink of entrance. The smell of the linen, of the blue cloth, and of the brown paper--things no longer to be handled by those tender, faithful hands--was dismal and strange, and haunted her like things that intruded, things which she had done with, and which yet would not go away. Everything had gone dead, as it seemed, had exhaled the soul of it, and retained but the odor of its mortality. If for a moment a thing looked the same as before, she wondered vaguely, unconsciously, how it could be. The passages through the merchandise, left only wide enough for one, seemed like those she had read of in Egyptian tombs and pyramids: a sarcophagus ought to be waiting in her chamber. When she opened the door of it, the bright fire, which Beenie undesired had kindled there, startled her: the room looked unnatural, _uncanny_, because it was cheerful. She stood for a moment on the hearth, and in sad, dreamy mood listened to the howling swoops of the wind, making the house quiver and shake. Now and then would come a greater gust, and rattle the window as if in fierce anger at its exclusion, then go shrieking and wailing through the dark heaven. Mechanically she took her New Testament, and, seating herself in a low chair by the fire, tried to read; but she could not fix her thoughts, or get the meaning of a sentence: when she had read it, there it lay, looking at her just the same, like an unanswered riddle.
The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul; and out of that now began to rise fumes of doubt and question into Mary's heart and brain. Death was a fact. The loss, the evanishment, the ceasing, were incontrovertible--the only incontrovertible things: she was sure of them: could she be sure of anything else? How could she? She had not seen Christ rise; she had never looked upon one of the dead; never heard a voice from the other bank; had received no certain testimony. These were not her thoughts; she was too weary to think; they were but the thoughts that steamed up in her, and went floating about before her; she looked on them calmly, coldly, as they came, and passed, or remained--saw them with indifference--there they were, and she could not help it--weariedly, believing none of them, unable to cope with and dispel them, hardly affected by their presence, save with a sense of dreariness and loneliness and wretched company. At last she fell asleep, and in a moment was dreaming diligently. This was her dream, as nearly as she could recall it, when she came to herself after waking from it with a cry.
She was one of a large company at a house where she had never been before--a beautiful house with a large garden behind. It was a summer night, and the guests were wandering in and out at will, and through house and garden, amid lovely things of all colors and odors. The moon was shining, and the roses were in pale bloom. But she knew nobody, and wandered alone in the garden, oppressed with something she did not understand. Every now and then she came on a little group, or met a party of the guests, as she walked, but none spoke to her, or seemed to see her, and she spoke to none.
She found herself at length in an avenue of dark trees, the end of which was far off. Thither she went walking, the only living thing, crossing strange shadows from the moon. At the end of it she was in a place of tombs. Terror and a dismay indescribable seized her; she turned and fled back to the company of her kind. But for a long time she sought the house in vain; she could not reach it; the avenue seemed interminable to her feet returning. At last she was again upon the lawn, but neither man nor woman was there; and in the house only a light here and there was burning. Every guest was gone. She entered, and the servants, soft-footed and silent, were busy carrying away the vessels of hospitality, and restoring order, as if already they prepared for another company on the morrow. No one heeded her. She was out of place, and much unwelcome. She hastened to the door of entrance, for every moment there was a misery. She reached the hall. A strange, shadowy porter opened to her, and she stepped out into a wide street.
That, too, was silent. No carriage rolled along the center, no footfarer walked on the side. Not a light shone from window or door, save what they gave back of the yellow light of the moon. She was lost--lost utterly, with an eternal loss. She knew nothing of the place, had nowhere to go, nowhere she wanted to go, had not a thought to tell her what question to ask, if she met a living soul. But living soul there could be none to meet. She had nor home, nor direction, nor desire; she knew of nothing that she had lost, nor of anything she wished to gain; she had nothing left but the sense that she was empty, that she needed some goal, and had none. She sat down upon a stone between the wide street and the wide pavement, and saw the moon shining gray upon the stone houses. It was all deadness.
Presently, from somewhere in the moonlight, appeared, walking up to her, where she sat in eternal listlessness, the one only brother she had ever had. She had lost him years and years before, and now she saw him; he was there, and she knew him. But not a throb went through her heart. He came to her side, and she gave him no greeting. "Why should I heed him?" she said to herself. "He is dead. I am only in a dream. This is not he; it is but his pitiful phantom that comes wandering hither--a ghost without a heart, made out of the moonlight. It is nothing. I am nothing. I am lost. Everything is an empty dream of loss. I know it, and there is no waking. If there were, surely the sight of him would give me some shimmer of delight. The old time was but a thicker dream, and this is truer because more shadowy." And, the form still standing by her, she felt it was ages away; she was divided from it by a gulf of very nothingness. Her only life was, that she was lost. Her whole consciousness was merest, all but abstract, loss.
Then came the form of her mother, and bent over that of her brother from behind. "Another ghost of a ghost! another shadow of a phantom!" she said to herself. "She is nothing to me. If I speak to her, she is not there. Shall I pour out my soul into the ear of a mist, a fume from my own brain? Oh, cold creatures, ye are not what ye seem, and I will none of you!"
With that, came her father, and stood beside the others, gazing upon her with still, cold eyes, expressing only a pale quiet. She bowed her face on her hands, and would not regard him. Even if he were alive, her heart was past being moved. It was settled into stone. The universe was sunk in one of the dreams that haunt the sleep of death; and, if these were ghosts at all, they were ghosts walking in their sleep.
But the dead, one of them seized one of her hands, and another the other. They raised her to her feet, and led her along, and her brother walked before. Thus was she borne away captive of her dead, neither willing nor unwilling, of life and death equally careless. Through the moonlight they led her from the city, and over fields, and through valleys, and across rivers and seas--a long journey; nor did she grow weary, for there was not life enough in her to be made weary. The dead never spoke to her, and she never spoke to them. Sometimes it seemed as if they spoke to each other, but, if it were so, it concerned some shadowy matter, no more to her than the talk of grasshoppers in the field, or of beetles that weave their much-involved dances on the face of the pool. Their voices were even too thin and remote to rouse her to listen.
They came at length to a great mountain, and, as they were going up the mountain, light began to grow, as if the sun were beginning to rise. But she cared as little for the sun that was to light the day as for the moon that had lighted the night, and closed her eyes, that she might cover her soul with her eyelids.
Of a sudden a great splendor burst upon her, and through her eyelids she was struck blind--blind with light and not with darkness, for all was radiance about her. She was like a fish in a sea of light. But she neither loved the light nor mourned the shadow.
Then were her ears invaded with a confused murmur, as of the mingling of all sweet sounds of the earth--of wind and water, of bird and voice, of string and metal--all afar and indistinct. Next arose about her a whispering, as of winged insects, talking with human voices; but she listened to nothing, and heard nothing of what was said: it was all a tiresome dream, out of which whether she waked or died it mattered not.
Suddenly she was taken between two hands, and lifted, and seated upon knees like a child, and she felt that some one was looking at her. Then came a voice, one that she never heard before, yet with which she was as familiar as with the sound of the blowing wind. And the voice said, "Poor child! something has closed the valve between her heart and mine." With that came a pang of intense pain. But it was her own cry of speechless delight that woke her from her dream.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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13
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THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.
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The same wind that rushed about the funeral of William Marston in the old churchyard of Testbridge, howled in the roofless hall and ruined tower of Durnmelling, and dashed against the plate-glass windows of the dining-room, where the three ladies sat at lunch. Immediately it was over, Lady Malice rose, saying: "Hesper, I want a word with you. Come to my room."
Hesper obeyed, with calmness, but without a doubt that evil awaited her there. To that room she had never been summoned for anything she could call good. And indeed she knew well enough what evil it was that to-day played the Minotaur. When they reached the boudoir, rightly so called, for it was more in use for _sulking_ than for anything else, Lady Margaret, with back as straight as the door she had just closed, led the way to the fire, and, seating herself, motioned Hesper to a chair. Hesper again obeyed, looking as unconcerned as if she cared for nothing in this world or in any other. Would we were all as strong to suppress hate and fear and anxiety as some ladies are to suppress all show of them! Such a woman looks to me like an automaton, in which a human soul, somewhere concealed, tries to play a good game of life, and makes a sad mess of it.
"Well, Hesper, what do you think?" said her mother, with a dull attempt at gayety, which could nowise impose upon the experience of her daughter.
"I think nothing, mamma," drawled Hesper.
"Mr. Redmain has come to the point at last, my dear child."
"What point, mamma?"
"He had a private interview with your father this morning."
"Indeed!"
"Foolish girl! you think to tease me by pretending indifference!"
"How can a fact be pretended, mamma? Why should I care what passes in the study? I was never welcome there. But, if you wish, I will pretend. What important matter was settled in the study this morning?"
"Hesper, you provoke me with your affectation!"
Hesper's eyes began to flash. Otherwise she was still--silent--not a feature moved. The eyes are more untamable than the tongue. When the wild beast can not get out at the door, nothing can keep him from the windows. The eyes flash when the will is yet lord even of the lines of the mouth. Not a nerve of Hesper's quivered. Though a mere child in the knowledge that concerned her own being, even the knowledge of what is commonly called the heart, she was yet a mistress of the art of self-defense, socially applied, and she would not now put herself at the disadvantage of taking anything for granted, or accept the clearest hint for a plain statement. She not merely continued silent, but looked so utterly void of interest, or desire to speak, that her mother, recognizing her own child, and quailing before the evil spirit she had herself sent on to the generations to come, yielded and spoke out.
"Mr. Redmain has proposed for your hand, Hesper," she said, in a tone as indifferent in her turn as if she were mentioning the appointment of a new clergyman to the family living.
For one moment, and one only, the repose of Hesper's faultless upper lip gave way; one writhing movement of scorn passed along its curves, and left them for a moment straightened out--to return presently to a grander bend than before. In a tone that emulated, and more than equaled, the indifference of her mother's, she answered: "And papa?"
"Has referred him to you, of course," replied Lady Margaret.
"Meaning it?"
"What else? Why not? Is he not a _bon parli? _" "Then papa did not mean it?"
"I do not understand you," elaborated the mother, with a mingled yawn, which she was far from attempting to suppress, seeing she simulated it.
"If Mr. Redmain is such a good match in papa's eyes," explained Hesper, "why does papa refer him to me?"
"That you may accept him, of course."
"How much has the man promised to pay for me?" " _Hesper! _" "I beg your pardon, mamma. I thought you approved of calling things by their right names!"
"No girl can do better than follow her mother's example," said Lady Margaret, with vague sequence. "If _you_ do, Hesper, you will accept Mr. Redmain."
Hesper fixed her eyes on her mother, but hers were too cold and clear to quail before them, let them flash and burn as they pleased.
"As you did papa?" said Hesper.
"As I did Mr. Mortimer."
"That explains a good deal, mamma."
"We are _your_ parents, anyhow, Hesper."
"I suppose so. I don't know which to be sorrier for--you or me. Tell me, mamma: would _you_ marry Mr. Redmain?"
"That is a foolish question, and ought not to be put. It is one which, as a married woman, I could not consider without impropriety. Knowing the duty of a daughter, I did not put the question to _you_. You are yourself the offspring of duty."
"If you were in my place, mamma," reattempted Hesper, but her mother did not allow her to proceed.
"In any place, in every place, I should do my duty," she said.
It was not only born in Lady Malice's blood, but from earliest years, had been impressed on her brain, that her first duty was to her family, and mainly consisted in getting well out of its way--in going peaceably through the fire to Moloch, that the rest might have good places in the Temple of Mammon. In her turn, she had trained her children to the bewildering conviction that it was duty to do a certain wrong, if it should be required. That wrong thing was now required of Hesper--a thing she scorned, hated, shuddered at; she must follow the rest; her turn to be sacrificed was come; she must henceforth be a living lie. She could recompense herself as the daughters who have sinned by yielding generally do when they are mothers, with the sin of compelling, and thus make the trespass round and full. There is in no language yet the word invented to fit the vileness of such mothers; but, as time flows and speech grows, it may be found, and, when it is found, it will have action retrospective. It is a frightful thing when ignorance of evil, so much to be desired where it can contribute to safety, is employed to smooth the way to the unholiest doom, in which love itself must ruthlessly perish, and those, who on the plea of virtue were kept ignorant, be perfected in the image of the mothers who gave them over to destruction. Some, doubtless, of the innocents thus immolated pass even through hideous fires of marital foulness to come out the purer and the sweeter; but whither must the stone about the neck of those that cause the little ones to offend sink those mothers? What company shall in the end be too low, too foul for them? Like to like it must always be.
Hesper was not so ignorant as some girls; she had for some time had one at her side capable of casting not a little light of the kind that is darkness. " _Duty_, mamma!" she cried, her eyes flaming, and her cheek flushed with the shame of the thing that was but as yet the merest object in her thought; "can a woman be born for such things? How _could_ I--mamma, how could any woman, with an atom of self-respect, consent to occupy the same--_room_ with Mr. Redmain?"
"Hesper! I am shocked. _Where_ did you learn to speak, not to say _think_, of such things? Have I taken such pains--good God! you strike me dumb! Have I watched my child like a very--angel, as anxious to keep her mind pure as her body fair, and is _this_ the result?" Upon what Lady Margaret founded her claim to a result more satisfactory to her maternal designs, it were hard to say. For one thing, she had known nothing of what went on in her nursery, positively nothing of the real character of the women to whom she gave the charge of it; and--although, I dare say, for worldly women, Hesper's schoolmistresses were quite respectable--what did her mother, what could she know of the governesses or of the flock of sheep--all presumably, but how certainly _all_ white? --into which she had sent her?
"Is _this_ the result?" said Lady Margaret.
"Was it your object, then, to keep me innocent, only that I might have the necessary lessons in wickedness first from my husband?" said Hesper, with a rudeness for which, if an apology be necessary, I leave my reader to find it.
"Hesper, you are vulgar!" said Lady Margaret, with cold indignation, and an expression of unfeigned disgust. She was, indeed, genuinely shocked. That a young lady of Hesper's birth and position should talk like this, actually objecting to a man as her husband because she recoiled from his wickedness, of which she was not to be supposed to know, or to be capable of understanding, anything, was a thing unheard of in her world-a thing unmaidenly in the extreme! What innocent girl would or could or dared allude to such matters? She had no right to know an atom about them!
"You are a married woman, mamma," returned Hesper, "and therefore must know a great many things I neither know nor wish to know. For anything I know, you may be ever so much a better woman than I, for having learned not to mind things that are a horror to me. But there was a time when you shrunk from them as I do now. I appeal to you as a woman: for God's sake, save me from marrying that wretch!"
She spoke in a tone inconsistently calm.
"Girl! is it possible you dare to call the man, whom your father and I have chosen for your husband, a wretch!"
"Is he not a wretch, mamma?"
"If he were, how should I know it? What has any lady got to do with a man's secrets?"
"Not if he wants to marry her daughter?"
"Certainly not. If he should not be altogether what he ought to be--and which of us is? --then you will have the honor of reclaiming him. But men settle down when they marry."
"And what comes of their wives?"
"What comes of women. You have your mother before you, Hesper."
"O mother!" cried Hesper, now at length losing the horrible affectation of calm which she had been taught to regard as _de rigueur_, "is it possible that you, so beautiful, so dignified, would send me on to meet things you dare not tell me--knowing they would turn me sick or mad? How dares a man like that even desire in his heart to touch an innocent girl?"
"Because he is tired of the other sort," said Lady Malice, half unconsciously, to herself. What she said to her daughter was ten times worse: the one was merely a fact concerning Redmain; the other revealed a horrible truth concerning herself. "He will settle three thousand a year on you, Hesper," she said with a sigh; "and you will find yourself mistress."
"I don't doubt it," answered Hesper, in bitter scorn. "Such a man is incapable of making any woman a wife."
Hesper meant an awful spiritual fact, of which, with all her ignorance of human nature, she had yet got a glimpse in her tortured reflections of late; but her mother's familiarity with evil misinterpreted her innocence, and caused herself utter dismay. What right had a girl to think at all for herself in such matters? Those were things that must be done, not thought of!
"These things must not be thought After these ways; so, they will drive us mad."
Yes, these things are hard to think about--harder yet to write about! The very persons who would send the white soul into arms whose mere touch is a dishonor will be the first to cry out with indignation against that writer as shameless who but utters the truth concerning the things they mean and do; they fear lest their innocent daughters, into whose hands his books might chance, by ill luck, to fall, should learn that it is _their_ business to keep themselves pure. --Ah, sweet mothers! do not be afraid. You have brought them up so carefully, that they suspect you no more than they do the well-bred gentlemen you would have them marry. And have they not your blood in them? That will go far. Never heed the foolish puritan. Your mothers succeeded with you: you will succeed with your daughters.
But it is a shame to speak of those things that are done of you in secret, and I will forbear. Thank God, the day will come--it may be thousands of years away--when there shall be no such things for a man to think of, any more than for a girl to shudder at! There is a purification in progress, and the kingdom of heaven _will_ come, thanks to the Man who was holy, harmless, undefined, and separate from sinners. You have heard a little, probably only a little, about him at church sometimes. But, when that day comes, what part will you have had in causing evil to cease from the earth?
There had been a time in the mother's life when she herself regarded her approaching marriage, with a man she did not love, as a horror to which her natural maidenliness--a thing she could not help--had to be compelled and subjected: of the true maidenliness--that before which the angels make obeisance, and the lion cowers--she never had had any; for that must be gained by the pure will yielding itself to the power of the highest. Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in a measure satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring enough, that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually, been assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the contact with uncleanness. One thing she did know, and that swallowed up all the rest--that her husband's affairs were so involved as to threaten absolute poverty; and what woman of the world would not count damnation better than that? --while Mr. Redmain was rolling in money. Had she known everything bad of her daughter's suitor, short of legal crime, for her this would have covered it all.
In Hesper's useless explosion the mother did not fail to recognize the presence of Sepia, without whose knowledge of the bad side of the world, Hesper, she believed, could not have been awake to so much. But she was afraid of Sepia. Besides, the thing was so far done; and she did not think she would work to thwart the marriage. On that point she would speak to her.
But it was a doubtful service that Sepia had rendered her cousin--to rouse her indignation and not her strength; to wake horror without hinting at remedy; to give knowledge of impending doom, without poorest suggestion of hope, or vaguest shadow of possible escape. It is one thing to see things as they are; to be consumed with indignation at the wrong; to shiver with aversion to the abominable; and quite another to rouse the will to confront the devil, and resist him until he flee. For this the whole education of Hesper had tended to unfit her. What she had been taught--and that in a world rendered possible only by the self-denial of a God--was to drift with the stream, denying herself only that divine strength of honest love, which would soonest help her to breast it.
For the earth, it is a blessed thing that those who arrogate to themselves the holy name of society, and to whom so large a portion of the foolish world willingly yields it, are in reality so few and so ephemeral. Mere human froth are they, worked up by the churning of the world-sea--rainbow-tinted froth, lovely thinned water, weaker than the unstable itself out of which it is blown. Great as their ordinance seems, it is evanescent as arbitrary: the arbitrary is but the slavish puffed up--and is gone with the hour. The life of the people is below; it ferments, and the scum is for ever being skimmed off, and cast--God knows where. All is scum where will is not. They leave behind them influences indeed, but few that keep their vitality in shapes of art or literature. There they go--little sparrows of the human world, chattering eagerly, darting on every crumb and seed of supposed advantage! while from behind the great dustman's cart, the huge tiger-cat of an eternal law is creeping upon them. Is it a spirit of insult that leads me to such a comparison? Where human beings do not, will not _will_, let them be ladies gracious as the graces, the comparison is to the disadvantage of the sparrows. Not time, but experience will show that, although indeed a simile, this is no hyperbole.
"I will leave your father to deal with you, Hesper," said her mother, and rose.
Up to this point, Mortimer children had often resisted their mother; beyond this point, never more than once.
"No, please, mamma!" returned Hesper, in a tone of expostulation. "I have spoken my mind, but that is no treason. As my father has referred Mr. Redmain to me, I would rather deal with him."
Lady Malice was herself afraid of her husband. There is many a woman, otherwise courageous enough, who will rather endure the worst and most degrading, than encounter articulate insult. The mere lack of conscience gives the scoundrel advantage incalculable over the honest man; the lack of refinement gives a similar advantage to the cad over the gentleman; the combination of the two lacks elevates the husband and father into an autocrat. Hesper was not one her world would have counted weak; she had physical courage enough; she rode well, and without fear; she sat calm in the dentist's chair; she would have fought with knife and pistol against violence to the death; and yet, rather than encounter the brutality of an evil-begotten race concentrated in her father, she would yield herself to a defilement eternally more defiling than that she would both kill and die to escape.
"Give me a few hours first, mamma," she begged. "Don't let him come to me just yet. For all your hardness, you feel a little for me--don't you?"
"Duty is always hard, my child," said Lady Margaret. She entirely believed it, and looked on herself as a martyr, a pattern of self-devotion and womanly virtue. But, had she been certain of escaping discovery, she would have slipped the koh-i-noor into her belt-pouch, notwithstanding. Never once in her life had she done or abstained from doing a thing _because_ that thing was right or was wrong. Such a person, be she as old and as hard as the hills, is mere putty in the fingers of Beelzebub.
Hesper rose and went to her own room. There, for a long hour, she sat--with the skin of her fair face drawn tight over muscles rigid as marble--sat without moving, almost without thinking--in a mere hell of disgusted anticipation. She neither stormed nor wept; her life went smoldering on; she nerved herself to a brave endurance, instead of a far braver resistance.
I fancy Hesper would have been a little shocked if one had called her an atheist. She went to church most Sundays--when in the country; for, in the opinion of Lady Margaret, it was not decorous _there_ to omit the ceremony: where you have influence you ought to set a good example--of hypocrisy, namely! But, if any one had suggested to Hesper a certain old-fashioned use of her chamber-door, she would have inwardly laughed at the absurdity. But, then, you see, her chamber was no closet, but a large and stately room; and, besides, how, alas! _could_ the child of Roger and Lady M. Alice Mortimer know that in the silence was hearing--that in the vacancy was a power waiting to be sought? Hesper was not much alone, and here was a chance it was a pity she should lose; but, when she came to herself with a sigh, it was not to pray, and, when she rose, it was to ring the bell.
A good many minutes passed before it was answered. She paced the room--swiftly; she could sit, but she could not walk slowly. With her hands to her head, she went sweeping up and down. Her maid's knock arrested her before her toilet-table, with her back to the door. In a voice of perfect composure, she desired the woman to ask Miss Yolland to come to her.
Entering with a slight stoop from the waist, Sepia, with a long, rapid, yet altogether graceful step, bore down upon Hesper like a fast-sailing cutter over broad waves, relaxing her speed as she approached her.
"Here I am, Hesper!" she said.
"Sepia," said Hesper, "I am sold."
Miss Yolland gave a little laugh, showing about the half of her splendid teeth--a laugh to which Hesper was accustomed, but the meaning of which she did not understand--nor would, without learning a good deal that were better left unlearned. "To Mr. Redmain, of course!" she said.
Hesper nodded.
"When are you going to be--"--she was about to say "cut up" but there was a something occasionally visible in Hesper that now and then checked one of her less graceful coarsenesses. "When is the purchase to be completed?" she asked, instead.
"Good Heavens, Sepia! don't be so heartless!" cried Hesper. "Things are not quite so bad as that! I am not yet in the hell of knowing that. The day is not fixed for the great red dragon to make a meal of me."
"I see you were not asleep in church, as I thought, all the time of the sermon, last Sunday," said Sepia.
"I did my best, but I could not sleep: every time little Mowbray mentioned the beast, I thought of Mr. Redmain; and it made me too miserable to sleep."
"Poor Hesper! --Well! let us hope that, like the beast in the fairy-tale, he will turn out a man after all."
"My heart will break," cried Hesper, throwing herself into a chair. "Pity me, Sepia; _you_ love me a little."
A slight shadow darkened yet more Sepia's shadowy brow.
"Hesper," she said, gravely, "you never told me there was anything of that sort! Who is it?"
"Mr. Redmain, of course! --I don't know what you mean, Sepia."
"You said your heart was breaking: who is it for?" asked Sepia, almost imperiously, and raising her voice a little.
"Sepia!" cried Hesper, in bewilderment.
"Why should your heart be breaking, except you loved somebody?"
"Because I hate _him_," answered Hesper.
"Pooh! is that all?" returned Miss Yolland. "If there were anybody you wanted--then I grant!"
"Sepia!" said Hesper, almost entreatingly, "I can not bear to be teased to-day. Do be open with me. You always puzzle me so! I don't understand you a bit better than the first day you came to us. I have got used to you--that is all. Tell me--are you my friend, or are you in league with mamma? I have my doubts. I can't help it, Sepia."
She looked in her face pitifully. Miss Yolland looked at her calmly, as if waiting for her to finish.
"I thought you would--not help me," Hesper went on, "--that no one can except God--he could strike me dead; but I did think you would feel for me a little. I hate Mr. Redmain, and I loathe myself. If _you_ laugh at me, I shall take poison."
"I wouldn't do that," returned Miss Yolland, quite gravely, and as if she had already contemplated the alternative; "--that is, not so long as there was a turn of the game left."
"The game!" echoed Hesper. " --Playing for love with the devil! --I wish the game were yours, as you call it!"
"Mine I'd make it, if I had it to play," returned Sepia. "I wish I were the other player instead of you, but the man hates me. Some men do. --Come," she went on, "I will be open with you, Hesper; you don't hang for thoughts in England. I will tell you what I would do with a man I hated--that is, if I was compelled to marry him; it would hardly be fair otherwise, and I have a weakness for fair play. --I would give him absolute fair play."
The last three words she spoke with a strange expression of mingled scorn and jest, then paused, and seemed to have said all she meant to say.
"Go on," sighed Hesper; "you amuse me." Her tone expressed anything but amusement. "What would a woman of your experience do in my place?"
Sepia fixed a momentary look on Hesper; the words seemed to have stung her. She knew well enough that, if Lady Malice came to know anything of her real history, she would have bare time to pack up her small belongings. She wanted Hesper married, that she might go with her into the world again; at the same time, she feared her marriage with Mr. Redmain would hardly favor her wishes. But she could not with prudence do anything expressly to prevent it; while she might even please Mr. Redmain a little, if she were supposed to have used influence on his side. That, however, must not seem to Hesper. Sepia did not yet know in fact upon what ground she had to build.
For some time she had been trying to get nearer to Hesper, but--much like Hesper's experience with her--had found herself strangely baffled, she could not tell how--the barrier being simply the half innocence, half ignorance, of Hesper. When minds are not the same, words do not convey between them.
She gave a ringing laugh, throwing back her head, and showing all her fine teeth.
"You want to know what I would do with a man I hated, as you _say_ you hate Mr. Redmain? --I would send for him at once--not wait for him to come to me--and entreat him, _as he loved me_, to deliver me from the dire necessity of obeying my father. If he were a gentleman, as I hope he may be, he would manage to get me out of it somehow, and wouldn't compromise me a hair's breadth. But, that is, _if I were you_. If I were _myself_ in your circumstances, and hated him as you do, that would not serve my turn. I would ask him all the same to set me free, but I would behave myself so that he could not do it. While I begged him, I mean, I should make him feel that he could not--should make him absolutely determined to marry me, at any price to him, and at whatever cost to me. He should say to himself that I did not mean what I said--as, indeed, for the sake of my revenge, I should not. For that I would give anything--supposing always, don't you know? that I hated him as you do Mr. Redmain. He should declare to me it was impossible; that he would die rather than give up the most precious desire of his life--and all that rot, you know. I would tell him I hated him--only so that he should not believe me. I would say to him, 'Release me, Mr. Redmain, or I will make you repent it. I have given you fair warning. I have told you I hated you.' He should persist, should marry me, and then I _would_."
"Would what?"
"Do as I said."
"But what?"
"Make him repent it."
With the words, Miss Yolland broke into a second fit of laughter, and, turning from Hesper, went, with a kind of loitering, strolling pace toward the door, glancing round more than once, each time with a fresh bubble rather than ripple in her laughter. Whether it was all nonsensical merriment, or whether the author of laughter without fun, Beelzebub himself, was at the moment stirring in her, Hesper could not have told; as it was, she sat staring after her, unable even to think. Just as she reached the door, however, she turned quickly, and, with the smile of a hearty, innocent child, or something very like it, ran back to Hesper, threw her arms round her, and said: "There, now! I've done for you what I could: I have made you forget the odious man for a moment. I was curious to know whether I could not make a bride forget her bridegroom. The other thing is too easy."
"What other thing?"
"To make a bridegroom forget his bride, of course, you silly child! --But there I am, off again! when really it is time to be serious, and come to the only important point in the matter. --In what shade of purity do you think of ascending the funeral pyre? --In absolute white? --or rose-tinged? --or cream-colored! --or gold-suspect? --Eh, happy bride?"
As she ceased, she turned her head away, pulled out her handkerchief, and whimpered a little.
"Sepia!" said Hesper, annoyed, "you are a worse goose than I thought you! What have _you_ got to cry about? _You_ have not got to marry him!"
"No; I wish I had!" returned Sepia, wiping her eyes. "Then I shouldn't lose you. I should take care of that."
"And am I likely to gain such a friend in Mr. Redmain as to afford the loss of the only _other_ friend I have?" said Hesper, calmly.
"Ah, Hesper! a sad experience has taught me differently, The moment you are married to the man--as married you will be--you all are--bluster as you may--that moment you will begin to change into a wife--a domesticated animal, that is--a tame tabby. Unwilling a woman must be to confess herself only the better half of a low-bred brute, with a high varnish--or not, as the case may be; and there is nothing left her to do but set herself to find out the wretch's virtues, or, as he hasn't got any, to invent for him the least unlikely ones. She wants for her own sake to believe in him, don't you know? Then she begins to repent having said hard words of the poor gentleman. The next thing, of course, will be, that you begin to hate the person, to whom you said them, and to persuade yourself she drew them out of you; and so you break off all communication with the obnoxious person; who being, in the present instance, that black-faced sheep, Sepia Yolland, she is very sorry beforehand, and hates Mr. Redmain with all her heart; first, because Hesper Mortimer hates him, and next, but twice as much, because she is going to love him. It is a great pity _you_ should have him, Hesper. I wish you would hand him over to me. _I_ shouldn't mind what he was. I should soon tame him."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hesper, with righteous indignation. " _You would not mind what he was! _" Sepia laughed--this time her curious half-laugh.
"If I did, I wouldn't marry him, Hesper," she said. "Which is worse--not to mind, and marry him; or to mind, and marry him all the same? Eh, Cousin Hesper Mortimer?"
"I _can't_ make you out, Sepia!" said Hesper. "I believe I never shall."
"Very likely. Give it up?"
"Quite."
"The best thing you could do. I can't always make myself out. But, then, I always give it up directly, and so it does me no harm. But it's ten times worse to worry your poor little heart to rags about such a man as that; he's not worth a thought from a grand creature like you. Where's the use, besides? Would you stand staring at your medicine a whole day before the time for taking it comes? I wouldn't have my right leg cut off because that is the side my dog walks on, and dogs go mad! Slip, cup, and lip--don't you know? The man may be underground long before the wedding-day: he's anything but sound, they tell me. But it would be far better soon after it, of course. Think only--a young widow, rich, and not a straw the worse!"
"Sepia, I can't for the life of me tell whether you are a Job's comforter or the devil's advocate."
"Not the latter, my child; for I want to see you emerge a saint from the miseries of matrimony. But, whatever you do, Hesper, don't break your heart, for you will find it hard to mend. I broke mine once, and have been mad ever since."
"What is the use of saying that to me, when you know I have to marry the man?"
"I never said you were not to marry him; I said you were not to break your heart. Marriage is nothing so long as you do not make a heart affair of it; that hurts; and, as you are not in love, there is no occasion for it at all."
"Marriage is nothing, Sepia! Is it nothing to be tied to a man--to _any_ man--for all your life?"
"That's as you take it. Nobody makes so much of it nowadays as they used. The clergy themselves, who are at the bottom of all the business, don't fuss about every trifle in the prayer-book. They sign the articles, and have done with it--meaning, of course, to break them, if they stand in their way."
Hesper rose in anger.
"How dare you--" she began.
"Good gracious!" cried Sepia, "you don't imagine I meant anything so wicked! How could you let such a thing come into your head? I declare you are quite dangerous to talk to!"
"It's such a horrible business," said Hesper, "it seems to make one capable of anything wicked, only to think about it. I would rather not say another word on the subject."
A shudder ran through her, as if at the sight of some hideously offensive object.
"That would be the best thing," said Sepia, "if it meant not think more about it. Everything is better for not being thought about. I would do anything to comfort you, dear. I would marry him for you, if that would do; but I fear it would scarcely meet the views of Herr Papa. If I could please the beast as well--and I think I should in time--I would willingly hand him the purchase-money. But, of course, he would scorn to touch it, except as the proceeds of the _bona-fide_ sale of his own flesh and blood."
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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14
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UNGENEROUS BENEVOLENCE.
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As the time went on, and Letty saw nothing more of Tom, she began to revive a little, and feel as if she were growing safe again. The tide of temptation was ebbing away; there would be no more deceit; never again would she place herself in circumstances whence might arise any necessity for concealment. She began, much too soon, alas! to feel as if she were newborn; nothing worthy of being called a new birth can take place anywhere but in the will, and poor Letty's will was not yet old enough to give birth to anything; it scarcely, indeed, existed. The past was rapidly receding, that was all, and had begun to look dead, and as if it wanted only to be buried out of her sight. For what is done is done, in small faults as well as in murders; and, as nothing can recall it, or make it not be, where can be the good in thinking about it? --a reasoning worse than dangerous, before one has left off being capable of the same thing over again. Still, in the mere absence of renewed offense, it is well that some shadow of peace should return; else how should men remember the face of innocence? or how should they live long enough to learn to repent? But for such breaks, would not some grow worse at full gallop?
That the idea of Tom's friendship was very pleasant to her, who can blame her? He had never said he loved her; he had only said she was lovely: was she therefore bound to persuade herself he meant nothing at all? Was it not as much as could be required of her, that, in her modesty, she took him for no more than a true, kind friend, who would gladly be of service to her? Ah! if Tom had but been that! If he was not, he did not know it, which is something to say both for and against him. It could not be other than pleasant to Letty to have one, in her eyes so superior, who would talk to her as an equal. It was not that ever she resented being taught; but she did get tired of lessons only, beautiful as they were. A kiss from Mrs. Wardour, or a little teasing from Cousin Godfrey, would have done far more than all his intellectual labor upon her to lift her feet above such snares as she was now walking amid. She needed some play--a thing far more important to life than a great deal of what is called business and acquirement. Many a matter, over which grown people look important, long-faced, and consequential, is folly, compared with the merest child's frolic, in relation to the true affairs of existence.
All the time, Letty had not in the least neglected her houseduties; and, again, her readings with her cousin Godfrey, since Tom's apparent recession, had begun to revive in interest. He grew kinder and kinder to her, more and more fatherly.
But the mother, once disquieted, had lost no time in taking measures. In every direction, secretly, through friends, she was inquiring after some situation suitable for Letty: she owed it to herself, she said, to find for the girl the right thing, before sending her from the house. In the true spirit of benevolent tyranny, she said not a word to Letty of her design. She had the chronic distemper of concealment, where Letty had but a feverish attack. Much false surmise might have been corrected, and much evil avoided, had she put it in Letty's power to show how gladly she would leave Thornwick. In the mean time the old lady kept her lynx-eye upon the young people.
But Godfrey, having caught a certain expression in the said eye, came to the resolution that thenceforth their schoolroom should be the common sitting-room. This would aid him in carrying out his resolve of a cautious and staid demeanor toward his pupil. To preserve his freedom, he must keep himself thoroughly in hand. Experience had taught him that, were he once to give way and show his affection, there would from that moment be an end of teaching and learning. And yet so much was he drawn to the girl, that, at this very time, he gave her the manuscript of his own verses to which I have referred--a volume exquisitely written, and containing, certainly, the outcome of the best that was in him: he did not tell her that he had copied them all with such care and neatness, and had the book so lovelily bound, expressly and only for her eyes. .
News of something that seemed likely to suit her ideas for Letty at length came to Mrs. Wardour's ears, whereupon she thought it time to prepare the girl for the impending change. One day, therefore, as she herself sat knitting one sock for Godfrey, and Letty darning another, she opened the matter.
"I am getting old, Letty," she said, "and you can't be here always. You are a thoughtless creature, but I suppose you have the sense to see that?"
"Yes, indeed, aunt," answered Letty.
"It is high time you should be thinking," Mrs. Wardour went on, "how you are to earn your bread. If you left it till I was gone, you would find it very awkward, for you would have to leave Thornwick at once, and I don't know who would take you while you were looking out. I must see you comfortably settled before I go."
"Yes, aunt."
"There are not many things you could do."
"No, aunt; very few. But I should make a better housemaid than most--I do believe that."
"I am glad to find you willing to work; but we shall be able, I trust, to do a little better for you than that. A situation as housemaid would reflect little credit on my pains for you--would hardly correspond to the education you have had."
Mrs. Wardour referred to the fact that Letty was for about a year a day--boarder at a ladies' school in Testbridge, where no immortal soul, save that of a genius, which can provide its own sauce, could have taken the least interest in the chaff and chopped straw that composed the provender.
"It is true," her aunt went on, "you might have made a good deal more of it, if you had cared to do your best; but, such as you are, I trust we shall find you a very tolerable situation as governess."
At the word, Letty's heart ran half-way up her throat. A more dreadful proposal she could not have imagined. She felt, and was, utterly insufficient for--indeed, incapable of such an office. She felt she knew nothing: how was she to teach anything? Her heart seemed to grow gray within her. By nature, from lack of variety of experience, yet more from daily repression of her natural joyousness, she was exceptionally apprehensive where anything was required of her. What she understood, she encountered willingly and bravely; but, the simplest thing that seemed to involve any element of obscurity, she dreaded like a dragon in his den.
"You don't seem to relish the proposal, Letty," said Mrs. Wardour. "I hope you had not taken it in your head that I meant to leave you independent. What I have done for you, I have done purely for your father's sake. I was under no obligation to take the least trouble about you. But I have more regard to your welfare than I fear you give me credit for."
"O aunt! it's only that I'm not fit for being a governess. I shouldn't a bit mind being dairymaid or housemaid. I would go to such a place to-morrow, if you liked."
"Letty, your tastes may be vulgar, but you owe it to your family to look at least like a lady."
"But I am not scholar enough for a governess, aunt."
"That is not my fault. I sent you to a good school. Now, I will find you a good situation, and you must contrive to keep it."
"O aunt! let me stay here--just as I am. Call me your dairymaid or your housemaid. It is all one--I do the work now."
"Do you mean to reflect on me that I have required menial offices of you? I have been to you in the place of a mother; and it is for me, not for you, to make choice of your path in life."
"Do you want me to go at once?" asked Letty, her heart sinking again, and her voice trembling with a pathos her aunt quite misunderstood.
"As soon as I have secured for you a desirable situation--not before," answered Mrs. Wardour, in a tone generously protective.
Her affection for the girl had never been deep; and, the moment she fancied she and her son were drawing toward each other, she became to her the thawed adder: she wished the adder well, but was she bound to harbor it after it had begun to bite? There are who never learn to see anything except in its relation to themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by themselves; and, this being a withering habit of mind, they keep growing drier, and older, and smaller, and deader, the longer they live--thinking less of other people, and more of themselves and their past experience, all the time as they go on withering.
But Mrs. Wardour was in some dread of what her son would say when he came to know what she had been doing; for, when we are not at ease with ourselves, when conscience keeps moving as if about to speak, then we dread the disapproval of the lowliest, and Godfrey was the only one before whom his mother felt any kind of awe. Toward him, therefore, she kept silence for the present. If she had spoken then, things might have gone very differently: it might have brought Godfrey to the point of righteous resolve or of passionate utterance. He could not well have opposed his mother's design without going further and declaring that, if Letty would, she should remain where she was, the mistress of the house. If not the feeling of what was due to her, the dread of the house without her might well have brought him to this.
Letty, for her part, believed her cousin Godfrey regarded her with pity, and showed her kindness from a generous sense of duty; she was a poor, dull creature for whom her cousin must do what he could: one word of genuine love from him, one word even of such love as was in him, would have caused her nature to shoot heavenward and spread out earthward with a rapidity that would have astonished him; she would thereby have come into her spiritual property at once, and heaven would have opened to her--a little way at least--probably to close again for a time. Now she felt crushed. The idea of undertaking that for which she knew herself so ill fitted was not merely odious but frightful to her. She was ready enough to work, but it must be real, not sham work. She must see and consult Mary! This was quite another affair from Tom! She would take the first opportunity. In the mean time there was nothing to be done or said; and with a heavy heart she held her peace--only longed for her own room, that she might have a cry. To her comfort the clock struck ten, and all that now lay between her and that refuge was the usual round of the house with Mrs. Wardour, to see all safe for the night. That done, they parted, and Letty went slowly and sadly up the stair. It was a dark prospect before her. At best, she had to leave the only home she remembered, and go among strangers.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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15
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THE MOONLIGHT.
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It was a still, frosty night, with a full moon. When she reached her chamber, Letty walked mechanically to the window, and there stood, with the candle in her hand, looking carelessly out, nor taking any pleasure in the great night. The window looked on an open, grassy yard, where were a few large ricks of wheat, shining yellow in the cold, far-off moon. Between the moon and the earth hung a faint mist, which the thin clouds of her breath seemed to mingle with and augment. There lay her life--out of doors--dank and dull; all the summer faded from it--all its atmosphere a growing fog! She would never see Tom again! It was six weeks since she saw him last! He must have ceased to think of her by this time! And, if he did think of her again, she would be far off, nobody knew where.
Something struck the window with a slight, sharp clang. It was winter, and there were no moths or other insects flying, What could it be? She put her face close to the pane, and looked out. There was a man in the shadow of one of the ricks! He had his hat off, and was beckoning to her. It could be nobody but Tom! The thought sent to her heart a pang of mingled pleasure and pain. Clearly he wanted to speak to her! How gladly she would! but then would come again all the trouble of conscious deceit: how was she to bear that all over again! Still, if she was going to be turned out of the house so soon, what would it matter? If her aunt was going to compel her to be her own mistress, where was the harm if she began it a few days sooner? What did it matter anyhow what she did? But she dared not speak to him! Mrs. Wardour's ears were as sharp as her eyes. The very sound of her own voice in the moonlight would terrify her. She opened the lattice softly, and gently shaking her head--she dared not shake it vigorously--was on the point of closing it again, when, making frantic signs of entreaty, the man stepped into the moonlight, and it was plainly Tom. It was too dreadful! He might be seen any moment! She shook her head again, in a way she meant, and he understood, to mean she dared not. He fell on his knees and laid his hands together like one praying. Her heart interpreted the gesture as indicating that he was in trouble, and that, therefore, he begged her to go to him. With sudden resolve she nodded acquiescence, and left the window.
Her room was in a little wing, projecting from the back of the house, over the kitchen. The servants' rooms were in another part, but Letty forgot a tiny window in one of them, which looked also upon the ricks. There was a back stair to the kitchen, and in the kitchen a door to the farm-yard. She stole down the stair, and opened the door with absolute noiselessness. In a moment more she had stolen on tiptoe round the corner, and was creeping like a ghost among the ricks. Not even a rustle betrayed her as she came up to Tom from behind. He still knelt where she had left him, looking up to her window, which gleamed like a dead eye in the moonlight. She stood for a moment, afraid to move, lest she should startle him, and he should call out, for the slightest noise about the place would bring Godfrey down. The next moment, however, Tom, aware of her presence, sprang to his feet, and, turning, bounded to her, and took her in his arms. Still possessed by the one terror of making a noise, she did not object even by a contrary motion, and, when he took her hand to lead her away out of sight of the house, she yielded at once.
When they were safe in the field behind the hedge-- "Why did you make me come down, Tom?" she whispered, half choked with fear, looking up in his face, which was radiant in the moonshine.
"Because I could not bear it one day longer," he answered. "All this time I have been breaking my heart to get a word with you, and never seeing you except at church, and there you would never even look at me. It is cruel of you, Letty. I know you could manage it, if you liked, well enough. Why should you try me so?"
"Do speak a little lower, Tom: sound goes so far at night! --I didn't know you would want to see me like that," she answered, looking up in his face with a pleased smile.
"Didn't know!" repeated Tom. "I want nothing else, think of nothing else, dream of nothing else. Oh, the delight of having you here all alone to myself at last! You darling Letty!"
"But I must go directly, Tom. I have no business to be out of the house at this time of the night. If you hadn't made me think you were in some trouble, I daredn't have come."
"And ain't I in trouble enough--trouble that nothing but your coming could get me out of? To love your very shadow, and not be able to get a peep even of that, except in church, where all the time of the service I'm raging inside like a wild beast in a cage--ain't that trouble enough to make you come to me?"
Letty's heart leaped up. He loved her, then! Love, real love, was what it meant! It was paradise! Anything might come that would! She would be afraid of nothing any more. They might say or do to her what they pleased--she did not care a straw, if he loved her--really loved her! And he did! he did! She was going to have him all to her own self, and nobody was to have any right to meddle with her more!
"I didn't know you loved me, Tom!" she said, simply, with a little gasp.
"And I don't know yet whether you love me," returned Tom.
"Of course, if you love _me_," answered Letty, as if everybody must give back love for love.
Tom took her again in his arms, and Letty was in greater bliss than she had ever dreamed possible. From being a nobody in the world, she might now queen it to the top of her modest bent; from being looked down on by everybody, she had the whole earth under her feet; from being utterly friendless, she had the heart of Tom Helmer for her own! Yet even then, eluding the barriers of Tom's arms, shot to her heart, sharp as an arrow, the thought that she was forsaking Cousin Godfrey. She did not attempt to explain it to herself; she was in too great confusion, even if she had been capable of the necessary analysis. It came, probably, of what her aunt had told her concerning her cousin's opinion of Tom. Often and often since, she had said to herself that, of course, Cousin Godfrey was mistaken and quite wrong in not liking Tom; she was sure he would like him if he knew him as she did! --and yet to act against his opinion, and that never uttered to herself, cost her this sharp pang, and not a few that followed! To soften it for the moment, however, came the vaguely, sadly reproachful feeling, that, seeing they were about to send her out into the world to earn her bread, they had no more any right to make such demands upon her loyalty to them as should exclude the closest and only satisfying friend she had--one who would not turn her away, but wanted to have her for ever. That Godfrey knew nothing of his mother's design, she did not once suspect.
"Now, Tom, you have seen me, and spoken to me, and I must go," said Letty.
"O Letty!" cried Tom, reproachfully, "now when we understand each other? Would you leave me in the very moment of my supremest bliss? That would be mockery, Letty! That is the way my dreams serve me always. But, surely, you are no dream! Perhaps I _am_ dreaming, and shall wake to find myself alone! I never was so happy in my life, and you want to leave me all alone in the midnight, with the moon to comfort me! Do as you like, Letty! --I won't leave the place till the morning. I will go back to the rick-yard, and lie under your window all night."
The idea of Tom, out on the cold ground, while she was warm in bed, was too much for Letty's childish heart. Had she known Tom better, she would not have been afraid: she would have known that he would indeed do as he had said--so far; that he would lie down under her window, and there remain, even to the very moment when he began to feel miserable, and a moment longer, but not more than two; that then he would get up, and, with a last look, start home for bed.
"I will stop a little while, Tom," she offered, "if you will promise to go home as soon as I leave you."
Tom promised.
They went wandering along the farm-lanes, and Tom made love to her, as the phrase is--in his case, alas! a phrase only too correct. I do not say, or wish understood, that he did not love her--with such love as lay in the immediate power of his development; but, being a sort of a poet, such as a man may be who loves the form of beauty, but not the indwelling power of it, that is, the truth, he _made_ love to her--fashioned forms of love, and offered them to her; and she accepted them, and found the words of them very dear and very lovely. For neither had she got far enough, with all Godfrey's endeavors for her development, to love aright the ring of the true gold, and therefore was not able to distinguish the dull sound of the gilt brass Tom offered her. Poor fellow! it was all he had. But compassion itself can hardly urge that as a reason for accepting it for genuine. What rubbish most girls will take for poetry, and with it heap up impassably their door to the garden of delights! what French polish they will take for refinement! what merest French gallantry for love! what French sentiment for passion! what commonest passion they will take for devotion! --passion that has little to do with their beauty even, still less with the individuality of it, and nothing at all with their loveliness!
In justice to Tom, I must add, however, that he also took not a little rubbish for poetry, much sentiment for pathos, and all passion for love. He was no intentional deceiver; he was so self-deceived, that, being himself a deception, he could be nothing but a deceiver--at once the most complete and the most pardonable, and perhaps the most dangerous of deceivers.
With all his fine talk of love, to which he now gave full flow, it was characteristic of him that, although he saw Letty without hat or cloak, just because he was himself warmly clad, he never thought of her being cold, until the arm he had thrown round her waist felt her shiver. Thereupon he was kind, and would have insisted that she should go in and get a shawl, had she not positively refused to go in and come out again. Then he would have had her put on his coat, that she might be able to stay a little longer; but she prevailed on him to let her go. He brought her to the nearest point not within sight of any of the windows, and, there leaving her, set out at a rapid pace for the inn where he had put up his mare.
When Tom was gone, and the bare night, a diffused conscience, all about her, Letty, with a strange fear at her heart, like one in a churchyard, with the ghost-hour at hand, and feeling like "a guilty thing surprised," although she had done nothing wrong in its mere self, stole back to the door of the kitchen, longing for the shelter of her own room, as never exile for his fatherland.
She had left the door an inch ajar, that she might run the less risk of making a noise in opening it; but ere she reached it, the moon shining full upon it, she saw plainly, and her heart turned sick when she saw, that it was closed. Between cold and terror she shuddered from head to foot, and stood staring.
Recovering a little, she said to herself some draught must have blown it to. If so, there was much danger that the noise had been heard; but, in any case, there was no time to lose. She glided swiftly to it. She lifted the latch softly--but, horror of horrors! in vain. The door was locked. She was shut out. She must lie or confess! And what lie would serve? Poor Letty! And yet, for all her dismay, her terror, her despair that night, in her innocence, she never once thought of the worst danger in which she stood!
The least perilous, where no safe way was left, would now have been to let the simple truth appear; Letty ought immediately to have knocked at the door, and, should that have proved unavailing, to have broken her aunt's window even, to gain hearing and admittance. But that was just the kind of action of which, truthful as was her nature, poor Letty, both by constitution and training, was incapable; human opposition, superior anger, condemnation, she dared not encounter. She sank, more than half fainting, upon the door-step.
The moment she came to herself, apprehension changed into active dread, rushed into uncontrollable terror. She sprang to her feet, and, the worst thing she could do, fled like the wind after Tom--now, indeed, she imagined, her only refuge! She knew where he had put up his horse, and knew he could hardly take any other way than the foot-path to Testbridge. He could not be more than a few yards ahead of her, she thought. Presently she heard him whistling, she was sure, as he walked leisurely along, but she could not see him. The way was mostly between hedges until it reached the common: there she would catch sight of him, for, notwithstanding the gauzy mist, the moon gave plenty of light. On she went swiftly, still fancying at intervals she heard in front of her his whistle, and even his step on the hard, frozen path. In her eager anxiety to overtake him, she felt neither the chilling air nor the fear of the night and the loneliness. Dismay was behind her, and hope before her. On and on she ran. But when, with now failing breath, she reached the common, and saw it lie so bare and wide in the moonlight, with the little hut standing on its edge, like a ghastly lodge to nowhere, with gaping black holes for door and window, then, indeed, the horror of her deserted condition and the terrors of the night began to crush their way into her soul. What might not be lurking in that ruin, ready to wake at the lightest rustle, and, at sight of a fleeing girl, start out in pursuit, and catch her by the hair that now streamed behind her! And there was the hawthorn, so old and grotesquely contorted, always bringing to her mind a frightful German print at the head of a poem called "The Haunted Heath," in one of her cousin Godfrey's books! It was like an old miser, decrepit with age, pursued and unable to run! Miserable as was her real condition, it was rendered yet more pitiable by these terrors of the imagination. The distant howl of a dog which the moon would not let sleep, the muffled low of a cow from a shippen, and a certain strange sound, coming again and again, which she could not account for, all turned to things unnatural, therefore frightful. Faintly, once or twice, she tried to persuade herself that it was only a horrible dream, from which she would wake in safety; but it would not do; it was, alas! all too real--hard, killing fact! Anyhow, dream or fact, there was no turning; on to the end she must go. More frightful than all possible dangers, most frightful thing of all, was the old house she had left, standing silent in the mist, holding her room inside it empty, the candle burning away in the face of the moon! Across the common she glided like a swift wraith, and again into the shadow of the hedges.
There seems to be a hope as well as a courage born of despair: immortal, yet inconstant children of a death-doomed sire, both were now departing. If Tom had come this way, she must, she thought, have overtaken him long before now! But, perhaps, she had fainted outright, and lain longer than she knew at the kitchen-door; and when she started to follow him, Tom was already at home! Alas, alas! she was lost utterly!
The footpath came to an end, and she was on the high-road. There was the inn where Tom generally put up! It was silent as the grave. The clang of a horseshoe striking a stone came through the frosty air from far along the road. Her heart sank into the depths of the infinite sea that encircles the soul, and, for the second time that night, Death passing by gave her an alms of comfort, and she lay insensible on the border of the same highway along which Tom, on his bay mare, went singing home.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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16
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THE MORNING.
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At Thornwick, Tom had been descried in the yard, by the spying organs of one of the servants--a woman not very young, and not altogether innocent of nightly interviews. Through the small window of her closet she had seen, and having seen she watched--not without hope she might be herself the object of the male presence, which she recognized as that of Tom Helmer, whom almost everybody knew. In a few minutes, however, Letty appeared behind him, and therewith a throb of evil joy shot through her bosom: what a chance! what a good joke! what a thing for her to find out Miss Letty; to surprise her naughty secret! to have her in her power! She would have no choice but tell her everything--and then what privileges would be hers! and what larks they two would have together, helping each other! She had not a thought of betraying her: there would be no fun in that! not the less would she encourage a little the fear that she might, for it would be as a charm in her bosom to work her will withal! --To make sure of Letty and her secret, partly also in pure delight of mischief, and enjoyment of the power to tease, she stole down stairs, and locked the kitchen door--the bolt of which, for reasons of her own, she kept well oiled; then sat down in an old rocking-chair, and waited--I can not say watched, for she fell fast asleep. Letty lifted the latch almost too softly for her to have heard had she been awake; but on the door-step Letty, had she been capable of listening, might have heard her snoring.
When the young woman awoke in the cold gray of the morning, and came to herself, compunction seized her. Opening the door softly, she went out and searched everywhere; then, having discovered no trace of Letty, left the door unlocked, and went to bed, hoping she might yet find her way into the house before Mrs. Wardour was down.
When that lady awoke at the usual hour, and heard no sound of stir, she put on her dressing-gown, and went, in the anger of a housekeeper, to Letty's room: there, to her amazement and horror, she saw the bed had lain all the night expectant. She hurried thence to the room occupied by the girl who was the cause of the mischief. Roused suddenly by the voice of her mistress, she got up half awake, and sleepy-headed; and, assailed by a torrent of questions, answered so, in her confusion, as to give the initiative to others: before she was well awake, she had told all she had seen from the window, but nothing of what she had herself done. Mrs. Wardour hurried to the kitchen, found the door on the latch, believed everything and much more, went straight to her son's room, and, in a calm rage, woke him up, and poured into his unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein floated side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she could bring the lips of propriety to utter. Before he quite came to himself the news had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his mother, dashing her cold hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the girl he loved, whom he had gone to bed believing the sweetest creature in creation, and loving himself more than she dared show! He had been dreaming of her with the utmost tenderness, when his mother woke him with the news that she had gone in the night with Tom Helmer, the poorest creature in the neighborhood.
"For God's sake, mother," he cried, "go away, and let me get up!"
"What can you do, Godfrey? What is there to be done? Let the jade go to her ruin!" cried Mrs. Wardour, alarmed in the midst of her wrath. "You _can_ do nothing now. As she has made her bed, so she must lie."
Her words were torture to him. He sprang from his bed, and proceeded to pull on his clothes. Terrified at the wildness of his looks, his mother fled from the room, but only to watch at the door.
Scarcely could Godfrey dress himself for agitation; brain and heart seemed to mingle in chaotic confusion. Anger strove with unbelief, and indignation at his mother with the sense of bitter wrong from Letty. It was all incredible and shameful, yet not the less utterly miserable. The girl whose Idea lay in the innermost chamber of his heart like the sleeping beauty in her palace! while he loved and ministered to her outward dream-shape which flitted before the eyes of his sense, in the hope that at last the Idea would awake, and come forth and inform it! --he dared not follow the thought! it was madness and suicide! He had been silently worshiping an angel with wings not yet matured to the spreading of themselves to the winds of truth; those wings were a little maimed, and he had been tending them with precious balms, and odors, and ointments: all at once she had turned into a bat, a skin-winged creature that flies by night, and had disappeared in the darkness! Of all possible mockeries, for _her_ to steal out at night to the embraces of a fool! a wretched, weak-headed, idle fellow, whom every clown called by his Christian name! an ass that did nothing but ride the country on a horse too good for him, and quarrel with his mother from Sunday to Saturday! For such a man she had left him, Godfrey Wardour! a man who would have lifted her to the height of her nature! whereas the fool Helmer would sink her to the depth of his own merest nothingness! The thing was inconceivable! yet it was! He knew it; they were all the same! Never woman worthy of true man! The poorest show would take them captive, would draw them from reason!
He knew _now_ that he loved the girl. Gnashing his teeth with fellest rage, he caught from the wall his heaviest hunting-whip, rushed heedless past his mother where she waited on the landing, and out of the house.
In common with many, he thought worse of Tom Helmer than he yet deserved. He was a characterless fool, a trifler, a poetic babbler, a good-for-nothing good sort of fellow; that was the worst that as yet was true of him; and better things might with equal truth have been said of him, had there been any one that loved him enough to know them.
Godfrey ran to the stable, and to the stall of his fastest horse. As he threw the saddle over his back, he almost wept in the midst of his passion at the sight of the bright stirrups. His hands trembled so that he failed repeatedly in passing the straps through the buckles of the girths. But the moment he felt the horse under him, he was stronger, set his head straight for the village of Warrender, where Tom's mother lived, and went away over everything. His crow-flight led him across the back of the house of Durnmelling. Hesper, who had not slept well, and found the early morning even a worse time to live in than the evening, saw him from her window, going straight as an arrow. The sight arrested her. She called Sepia, who for a few nights had slept in her room, to the window.
"There, now!" she said, "there is a man who looks a man! Good Heavens! how recklessly he rides! I don't believe Mr. Redmain could keep on a horse's back if he tried!" Sepia looked, half asleep. Her eyes grew wider. Her sleepiness vanished.
"Something is wrong with the proud yeoman!" she said. "He is either mad or in love, probably both! We shall hear more of this morning's ride, Hesper, as I hope to die a maid! --That's a man I should like to know now," she added, carelessly. "There is some go in him! I have a weakness for the kind of man that _could_ shake the life out of me if I offended him."
"Are you so anxious, then, to make a good, submissive wife?" said Hesper.
"I should take the very first opportunity of offending him--mortally, as they call it. It would be worth one's while with a man like that."
"Why? How? For what good?"
"Just to see him look. There is nothing on earth so scrumptious as having a grand burst of passion all to yourself." She drew in her breath like one in pain. "My God!" she said, "to see it come and go! the white and the red! the tugging at the hair! the tears and the oaths, and the cries and the curses! To know that you have the man's heart-strings stretched on your violin, and that with one dash of your bow, one tiniest twist of a peg, you can make him shriek!"
"Sepia!" said Hesper, "I think Darwin must be right, and some of us at least are come from--" "Tiger-cats? or perhaps the Tasmanian devil?" suggested Sepia, with one of her scornful half-laughs.
But the same instant she turned white as death, and sat softly down on the nearest chair.
"Good Heavens, Sepia! what is the matter? I did not mean it," said Hesper, remorsefully, thinking she had wounded her, and that she had broken down in the attempt to conceal the pain.
"It's not that, Hesper, dear. Nothing you could say would hurt me," replied Sepia, drawing breath sharply. "It's a pain that comes sometimes--a sort of picture drawn in pains--something I saw once."
"A picture?"
"Oh! well! --picture, or what you will! --Where's the difference, once it's gone and done with? Yet it will get the better of me now and then for a moment! Some day, when you are married, and a little more used to men and their ways, I will tell you. My little cousin is much too innocent now."
"But you have not been married, Sepia! What should you know about disgraceful things?"
"I will tell you when you are married, and not until then, Hesper. There's a bribe to make you a good child, and do as you must--that is, as your father and mother and Mr. Redmain would have you!"
While they talked, Godfrey, now seen, now vanishing, had become a speck in the distance. Crossing a wide field, he was now no longer to be distinguished from the grazing cattle, and so was lost to the eyes of the ladies.
By this time he had collected his thoughts a little, and it had grown plain to him that the last and only thing left for him to do for Letty was to compel Tom to marry her at once. "My mother will then have half her own way!" he said to himself bitterly. But, instead of reproaching himself that he had not drawn the poor girl's heart to his own, and saved her by letting her know that he loved her, he tried to congratulate himself on the pride and self-important delay which had preserved him from yielding his love to one who counted herself of so little value. He did not reflect that, if the value a woman places upon herself be the true estimate of her worth, the world is tolerably provided with utterly inestimable treasures of womankind; yet is it the meek who shall inherit it; and they who make least of themselves are those who shall be led up to the dais at last.
"But the wretch shall marry her at once!" he swore. "Her character is nothing now but a withered flower in the hands of that woman. Even were she capable of holding her tongue, by this time a score must have seen them together."
Godfrey hardly knew what he was to gain by riding to Warrender, for how could he expect to find Tom there? and what could any one do with the mother? Only, where else could he go first to learn anything about him? Some hint he might there get, suggesting in what direction to seek them. And he must be doing something, however useless: inaction at such a moment would be hell itself!
Arrived at the house--a well-appointed cottage, with out-houses larger than itself--he gave his horse to a boy to lead up and down, while he went through the gate and rang the bell in a porch covered with ivy. The old woman who opened the door said Master Tom was not up yet, but she would take his message. Returning presently, she asked him to walk in. He declined the hospitality, and remained in front of the house.
Tom was no coward, in the ordinary sense of the word: there was in him a good deal of what goes to the making of a gentleman; but he confessed to being "in a bit of a funk" when he heard who was below: there was but one thing it could mean, he thought--that Letty had been found out, and here was her cousin come to make a row. But what did it matter, so long as Letty was true to him? The world should know that Wardour nor Platt--his mother's maiden name! --nor any power on earth should keep from him the woman of his choice! As soon as he was of age, he would marry her, in spite of them all. But he could not help being a little afraid of Godfrey Wardour, for he admired him.
For Godfrey, he would have rather liked Tom Helmer, had he ever seen down into the best of him; but Tom's carelessness had so often misrepresented him, that Godfrey had too huge a contempt for him. And now the miserable creature had not merely grown dangerous, but had of a sudden done him the greatest possible hurt! It was all Godfrey could do to keep his contempt and hate within what he would have called the bounds of reason, as he waited for "the miserable mongrel." He kept walking up and down the little lawn, which a high shrubbery protected from the road, making a futile attempt, as often as he thought of the policy of it, to look unconcerned, and the next moment striking fierce, objectless blows with his whip. Catching sight of him from a window on the stair, Tom was so little reassured by his demeanor, that, crossing the hall, he chose from the stand a thick oak stick--poor odds against a hunting-whip in the hands of one like Godfrey, with the steel of ten years of manhood in him.
Tom's long legs came doubling carelessly down the two steps from the door, as, with a gracious wave of the hand, and swinging his cudgel as if he were just going out for a stroll, he coolly greeted his visitor. But the other, instead of returning the salutation, stepped quickly up to him.
"Mr. Helmer, where is Miss Lovel?" he said, in a low voice.
Tom turned pale, for a pang of undefined fear shot through him, and his voice betrayed genuine anxiety as he answered: "I do not know. What has happened?"
Wardour's fingers gripped convulsively his whip-handle, and the word _liar_ had almost escaped his lips; but, through the darkness of the tempest raging in him, he yes read truth in Tom's scared face and trembling words.
"You were with her last night," he said, grinding it out between his teeth.
"I was," answered Tom, looking more scared still.
"Where is she now?" demanded Godfrey again.
"I hope to God you know," answered Tom, "for I don't."
"Where did you leave her?" asked Wardour, in the tone of an avenger rather than a judge.
Tom, without a moment's hesitation, described the place with precision--a spot not more than a hundred yards from the house.
"What right had you to come sneaking about the place?" hissed Godfrey, a vain attempt to master an involuntary movement of the muscles of his face at once clinching and showing his teeth. At the same moment he raised his whip unconsciously.
Tom instinctively stepped back, and raised his stick in attitude of defense. Godfrey burst into a scornful laugh.
"You fool!" he said; "you need not be afraid; I can see you are speaking the truth. You dare not tell me a lie!"
"It is enough," returned Tom with dignity, "that I do not tell lies. I am not afraid of you, Mr. Wardour. What I dare or dare not do, is neither for you nor me to say. You are the older and stronger and every way better man, but that gives you no right to bully me."
This answer brought Godfrey to a better sense of what became himself, if not of what Helmer could claim of him. Using positive violence over himself, he spoke next in a tone calm even to iciness.
"Mr. Helmer," he said, "I will gladly address you as a gentleman, if you will show me how it can be the part of a gentleman to go prowling about his neighbor's property after nightfall."
"Love acknowledges no law but itself, Mr. Wardour," answered Tom, inspired by the dignity of his honest affection for Letty. "Miss Lovel is not your property. I love her, and she loves me. I would do my best to see her, if Thornwick were the castle of Giant Blunderbore."
"Why not walk up to the house, like a man, in the daylight, and say you wanted to see her?"
"Should I have been welcome, Mr. Wardour?" said Tom, significantly. "You know very well what my reception would have been; and I know better than throw difficulties in my own path. To do as you say would have been to make it next to impossible to see her."
"Well, we must find her now anyhow; and you must marry her off-hand."
"Must!" echoed Tom, his eyes flashing, at once with anger at the word and with pleasure at the proposal. "Must?" he repeated, "when there is nothing in the world I desire or care for but to marry her? Tell me what it all means, Mr. Wardour; for, by Heaven! I am utterly in the dark."
"It means just this--and I don't know but I am making a fool of myself to tell you--that the girl was seen in your company late last night, and has been neither seen nor heard of since."
"My God!" cried Tom, now first laying hold of the fact; and with the word he turned and started for the stable. His run, however, broke down, and with a look of scared bewilderment he came back to Godfrey.
"Mr. Wardour," he said, "what am I to do? Please advise me. If we raise a hue and cry, it will set people saying all manner of things, pleasant neither for you nor for us."
"That is your business, Mr. Helmer," answered Godfrey, bitterly. "It is you who have brought this shame on her."
"You are a cold-hearted man," said Tom. "But there is no shame in the matter. I will soon make that clear--if only I knew where to go after her. The thing is to me utterly mysterious: there are neither robbers nor wild beasts about Thornwick. What _can_ have happened to her?"
He turned his back on Godfrey for a moment, then, suddenly wheeling, broke out: "I will tell you what it is; I see it all now; she found out that she had been seen, and was too terrified to go into the house again! --Mr. Wardour," he continued, with a new look in his eyes, "I have more reason to be suspicious of you and your mother than you have to suspect me. Your treatment of Letty has not been of the kindest."
So Letty had been accusing him of unkindness! Ready as he now was to hear anything to her disadvantage, it was yet a fresh stab to the heart of him. Was this the girl for whom, in all honesty and affection, he had sought to do so much! How could she say he was unkind to her? --and say it to a fellow like this? It was humiliating, indeed! But he would not defend himself. Not to Tom, not to his mother, not to any living soul, would he utter a word even resembling blame of the girl! He, at least, would carry himself generously! Everything, though she had plunged his heart in a pitcher of gall, should be done for her sake! She should go to her lover, and leave blame behind her with him! His sole care should be that the wind-bag should not collapse and slip out of it, that he should actually marry her; and, as soon as he had handed him over to her in safety, he would have done with her and with all women for ever, except his mother! Not once more would he speak to one of them in tone of friendship!
He looked at Tom full in the eyes, and made him no answer.
"If I don't find Letty this very morning," said Tom, "I shall apply for a warrant to search your house: my uncle Rendall will give me one."
Godfrey smiled a smile of scorn, turned from him as a wise man turns from a fool, and went out of the gate.
He had just taken his horse from the boy and sent him off, when he saw a young woman coming hurriedly across the road, from the direction of Testbridge. Plainly she was on business of pressing import. She came nearer, and he saw it was Mary Marston. The moment she recognized Godfrey, she began to run to him; but, when she came near enough to take notice of his mien, as he stood with his foot in the stirrup, with no word of greeting or look of reception, and inquiry only in every feature, her haste suddenly dropped, her flushed face turned pale, and she stood still, panting. Not a word could she utter, and was but just able to force a faint smile, with intent to reassure him.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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17
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THE RESULT.
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Letty would never perhaps have come to herself in the cold of this world, under the shifting tent of the winter night, but for an outcast mongrel dog, which, wandering masterless and hungry, but not selfish, along the road, came upon her where she lay seemingly lifeless, and, recognizing with pity his neighbor in misfortune, began at once to give her--it was all he had that was separable--what help and healing might lie in a warm, honest tongue. Diligently he set himself to lick her face and hands.
By slow degrees her misery returned, and she sat up. Rejoiced at his success, the dog kept dodging about her, catching a lick here and a lick there, wherever he saw a spot of bare within his reach. By slow degrees, next, the knowledge of herself joined on to the knowledge of her misery, and she knew who it was that was miserable. She threw her arms round the dog, laid her head on his, and wept. This relieved her a little: weeping is good, even to such as Alberigo in an ice-pot of hell. But she was cold to the very marrow, almost too cold to feel it; and, when she rose, could scarcely put one foot before the other.
Not once, for all her misery, did she imagine a return to Thornwick. Without a thought of whither, she moved on, unaware even that it was in the direction of the town. The dog, delighted to believe that he had raised up to himself a mistress, followed humbly at her heel: but always when she stopped, as she did every few paces, ran round in front of her, and looked up in her face, as much as to say, "Here I am, mistress! shall I lick again?" If a dog could create, he would make masters and mistresses. Gladly would she then have fondled him, but feared the venture; for, it seemed, were she to stoop, she must fall flat on the road, and never rise more.
Slowly the two went on, with motion scarce enough to keep the blood moving in their veins. Had she not been, for all her late depression, in fine health and strength, Letty could hardly have escaped death from the cold of that night. For many months after, some portion of every night she passed in dreaming over again this dreariest wandering; and in her after life people would be puzzled to think why Mrs. Helmer looked so angry when any one spoke as if the animals died outright. But, although she never forgot this part of the terrible night, she never dreamed of any rescue from it; memory could not join it on to the next part, for again she lost consciousness, and could recall nothing between feeling the dog once more licking her face and finding herself in bed.
When Beenie opened her kitchen-door in the morning to let in the fresh air, she found seated on the step, and leaning against the wall, what she took first for a young woman asleep, and then for the dead body of one; for, when she gave her a little shake, she fell sideways off the door-step. Beenie's heart smote her; for during the last hours of her morning's sleep she had been disturbed by the howling of a dog, apparently in their own yard, but had paid no further attention to it than that of repeated mental objurgation: there stood the offender, looking up at her pitifully--ugly, disreputable, of breed unknown, one of the _canaille! _ When the girl fell down, he darted at her, licked her cold face for a moment, then stretching out a long, gaunt neck, uttered from the depth of his hidebound frame the most melancholy appeal, not to Beenie, at whom he would not even look again, but to the open door. But, when Beenie, in whom, as in most of us, curiosity had the start of service, stooped, and, peering more closely into the face of the girl, recognized, though uncertainly, a known face, she too uttered a kind of howl, and straightway raising Letty's head drew her into the house. It is the mark of an imperfect humanity, that personal knowledge should spur the sides of hospitable intent: what difference does our knowing or not knowing make to the fact of human need? The good Samaritan would never have been mentioned by the mouth of the True, had he been even an old acquaintance of the "certain man." But it is thus we learn; and, from loving this one and that, we come to love all at last, and then is our humanity complete.
Letty moved not one frozen muscle, and Beenie, growing terrified, flew up the stair to her mistress. Mary sprang from her bed and hurried down. There, on the kitchen-floor, in front of the yet fireless grate, lay the body of Letty Lovel. A hideous dog was sitting on his haunches at her head. The moment she entered, again the animal stretched out a long, bony neck, and sent forth a howl that rang penetrative through the house. It sounded in Mary's ears like the cry of the whole animal creation over the absence of their Maker. They raised her and carried her to Mary's room. There they laid her in the still warm bed, and proceeded to use all possible means for the restoration of heat and the renewal of circulation.
Here I am sorry to have to mention that Beenie, returning, unsuccessful, from their first efforts, to the kitchen, to get hot water, and finding the dog sitting there motionless, with his face turned toward the door by which they had carried Letty out, peevish with disappointment and dread, drove him from the kitchen, and from the court, into the street where that same day he was seen wildly running with a pan at his tail, and the next was found lying dead in a bit of waste ground among stones and shards. God rest all such!
But, as far as Letty was concerned, happily Beenie was not an old woman for nothing. With a woman's sympathy, Mary hesitated to run for the doctor: who could tell what might be involved in so strange an event? If they could but bring her to, first, and learn something to guide them! She pushed delay to the very verge of danger. But, soon after, thanks to Beenie's persistence, indications of success appeared, and Letty began to breathe. It was then resolved between the nurses that, for the present, they would keep the affair to themselves, a conclusion affording much satisfaction to Beenie, in the consciousness that therein she had the better of the Turnbulls, against whom she cherished an ever-renewed indignation.
But, when Mary set herself at length to find out from Letty what had happened, without which she could not tell what to do next, she found her mind so far gone that she understood nothing said to her, or, at least, could return no rational response, although occasionally an individual word would seem to influence the current of her ideas. She kept murmuring almost inarticulately; but, to Mary's uneasiness, every now and then plainly uttered the name _Tom_. What was she to make of it? In terror lest she should betray her, she must yet do something. Matters could not have gone wrong so far that nothing could be done to set them at least a little straight! If only she knew what! A single false step might do no end of mischief! She must see Tom Helmer: without betraying Letty, she might get from him some enlightenment. She knew his open nature, had a better opinion of him than many had, and was a little nearer the right of him. The doctor must be called; but she would, if possible, see Tom first.
It was not more than half an hour's walk to Warrender, and she set out in haste. She must get back before George Turnbull came to open the shop.
When she got near enough to see Mr. Wardour's face, she read in it at once that he was there from the same cause as herself; but there was no good omen to be drawn from its expression: she read there not only keen anxiety and bitter disappointment, but lowering anger; nor was that absent which she felt to be distrust of herself. The sole acknowledgment he made of her approach was to withdraw his foot from the stirrup and stand waiting.
"You know something," he said, looking cold and hard in her face.
"About what?" returned Mary, recovering herself; she was careful, for Letty's sake, to feel her way.
"I hope to goodness," returned Godfrey, almost fiercely, yet with a dash of rude indifference, "_you_ are not concerned in this--business!" --he was about to use a bad adjective, but suppressed it.
"I _am_ concerned in it," said Mary, with perfect quietness.
"You knew what was going on?" cried Wardour. "You knew that fellow there came prowling about Thornwick like a fox about a hen-roost? By Heaven! if I had but suspected it--" "No, Mr. Wardour," interrupted Mary, already catching a glimpse of light, "I knew nothing of that."
"Then what do you mean by saying you are concerned in the matter?"
Mary thought he was behaving so unlike himself that a shock might be of service.
"Only this," she answered, "--that Letty is now lying in my room, whether dead or alive I am in doubt. She must have spent the night in the open air--and that without cloak or bonnet."
"Good God!" cried Godfrey. "And you could leave her like that!"
"She is attended to," replied Mary, with dignity. "There are worse evils to be warded than death, else I should not be here; there are hard judgments and evil tongues. --Will you come and see her, Mr. Wardour?"
"No," answered Godfrey, gruffly.
"Shall I send a note to Mrs. Wardour, then?"
"I will tell her myself."
"What would you have me do about her?"
"I have no concern in the matter, but I suppose you had better send for a doctor. Talk to that fellow there," he added, pointing with his whip toward the cottage, and again putting his foot in the stirrup. "Tell him he has brought her to disgrace--" "I don't believe it," interrupted Mary, her face flushing with indignant shame. But Godfrey went on without heeding her: "And get him to marry her off-hand, if you can--for, by God! he _shall_ marry her, or I will kill him."
He spoke looking round at her over his shoulder, a scowl on his face, his foot in the stirrup, one hand twisted in the mane of his horse, and the other with the whip stretched out as if threatening the universe. Mary stood white but calm, and made no answer. He swung himself into the saddle, and rode away. She turned to the gate.
From behind the shrubbery, Tom had heard all that passed between them, and, meeting her as she entered, led the way to a side-walk, unseen from the house.
"O Miss Marston! what is to be done?" he said. "This is a terrible business! But I am so glad you have got her, poor girl! I heard all you said to that brute, Wardour. Thank you, thank you a thousand times, for taking her part. Indeed, you spoke but the truth for her. Let me tell you all I know."
He had not much to tell, however, beyond what Mary knew already.
"She keeps calling out for you, Mr. Helmer," she said, when he had ended.
"I will go with you. Come, come," he answered.
"You will leave a message for your mother?"
"Never mind my mother. She's good at finding out for herself."
"She ought to be told," said Mary; "but I can't stop to argue it with you. Certainly your first duty is to Letty now. Oh, if people only wouldn't hide things!"
"Come along," cried Tom, hurrying before her; "I will soon set everything right."
"How shall we manage with the doctor?" said Mary, as they went. "We can not do without him, for I am sure she is in danger."
"Oh, no!" said Tom. "She will be all right when she sees me. But we will take the doctor on our way, and prepare him."
When they came to the doctor's house, Mary walked on, and Tom told the doctor he had met Miss Marston on her way to him, and had come instead: she wanted to let him know that Miss Lovel had come to her quite unexpected that morning; that she was delirious, and had apparently wandered from home under an attack of brain-fever, or something of the sort.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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18
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MARY AND GODFREY.
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Everything went very tolerably, so far as concerned the world of talk, in the matter of Letty's misfortunes. Rumors, it is true--and more than one of them strange enough--did for a time go floating about the country; but none of them came to the ears of Tom or of Mary, and Letty was safe from hearing anything; and the engagement between her and Tom soon became generally known.
Mrs. Helmer was very angry, and did all she could to make Tom break it off--it was so much below him! But in nothing could the folly of the woman have been more apparent than in her fancying, with the experience of her life before her, that any opposition of hers could be effectual otherwise than to the confirmation of her son's will. So short-sighted was she as to originate most of the reports to Letty's disadvantage; but Tom's behavior, on the other hand, was strong to put them down; for the man is seldom found so faithful where such reports are facts.
Mrs. Wardour took care to say nothing unkind of Letty. She was of her own family; and, besides, not only was Tom a better match than she could have expected for her, but she was more than satisfied to have Godfrey's dangerous toy thus drawn away beyond his reach. As soon as ever the doctor gave his permission, she went to see her; but, although, dismayed at sight of her suffering face, she did not utter one unkind word, her visit was so plainly injurious in its effects, that it was long before Mary would consent to a repetition of it.
Letty's recovery was very slow. The spring was close at hand before the bloom began to reappear--and then it was but fitfully--in Letty's cheek. Neither her gayety nor her usual excess of timorousness returned. A certain sad seriousness had taken the place of both, and she seemed to look out from deeper eyes. I can not think that Letty had begun to perceive that there actually is a Nature shaping us to its own ends; but I think she had begun to feel that Mary lived in the conscious presence of such a power. To Tom she behaved very sweetly, but more like a tender sister than a lover, and Mary began to doubt whether her heart was altogether Tom's. From mention of approaching marriage, she turned with a nervous, uneasy haste. Had the insight which the enforced calmness of suffering sometimes brings opened her eyes to anything in Tom? The doubt filled Mary with anxiety. She thought and thought, until--delicate matter as it was to meddle with, and small encouragement as Godfrey Wardour had given her to expect sympathy--she yet made up her mind to speak to him on the subject--and the rather that she was troubled at the unworthiness of his behavior to Letty: gladly would she have him treat her with the generosity essential to the idea she had formed of him.
She went, therefore, one Sunday evening, to Thornwick, and requested to see Mr. Wardour.
It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was not thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.
"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "--I come altogether without authority--but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her engagement with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married--at least so soon."
"You would have her break it off?" said Godfrey, with cold restraint.
"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr. Helmer. But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that unhappy accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own mind."
"Miss Marston," answered Godfrey, severely, "it is her own fault--all and entirely her own fault."
"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon desert. That is not how we are treated ourselves."
"Is it not?" returned Godfrey, angrily. "My experience is different. I am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty sharply. --She _must_ marry the fellow, or her character is gone."
"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her to have anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and a foolish thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl, and you know country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there is nothing wicked in having a talk with a young man after dark."
"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in--certain strata of society," returned Godfrey, coldly; "but such views do not hold in that to which either of them belongs."
"It seems to me a pity they should not, then," said Mary. "I know nothing of such matters, but, surely, young people should have opportunities of understanding each other. Anyhow, marriage is a heavy penalty to pay for such an indiscretion. A girl might like a young man well enough to enjoy a talk with him now and then, and yet find it hard to marry him."
"Did you come here to dispute social customs with me, Miss Marston?" said Godfrey. "I am not prepared, nor, indeed, sufficiently interested, to discuss them with you."
"I will come to the point at once," answered Mary; who, although speaking so collectedly, was much frightened at her own boldness: Godfrey seemed from his knowledge so far above her, and she owed him so much. --"Would it not be possible for Letty to return here? Then the thing might take its natural course, and Tom and she know each other better before they did what was irrevocable. They are little better than children now."
"The thing is absolutely impossible," said Godfrey, and haughtily rose from his chair like one in authority ending an interview. "But," he added, "you have been put to great expense for the foolish girl, and, when she leaves you, I desire you will let me know--" "Thank you, Mr. Wardour!" said Mary, who had risen also. "As you have now given a turn to the conversation which is not in the least interesting to me, I wish you a good evening."
With the words, she left the room. He had made her angry at last. She trembled so that, the instant she was out of sight of the house, she had to sit down for dread of falling.
Godfrey remained in the room where she left him, full of indignation. Ever since that frightful waking, he had brooded over the injury--the insult, he counted it--which Letty had heaped upon him. A great tenderness toward her, to himself unknown, and of his own will unbegotten, remained in his spirit. When he passed the door of her room, returning from that terrible ride, he locked it, and put the key in his pocket, and from that day no one entered the chamber. But, had he loved Letty as purely as he had loved her selfishly, he would have listened to Mary pleading in her behalf, and would have thought first about her well-being, not about her character in the eyes of the world. He would have seen also that, while the breath of the world's opinion is a mockery in counterpoise with a life of broken interest and the society of an unworthy husband, the mere fact of his mother's receiving her again at Thornwick would of itself be enough to reestablish her position in the face of all gainsayers. But in Godfrey Wardour love and pride went hand in hand. Not for a moment would he will to love a girl capable of being interested, if nothing more, in Tom Helmer. It must be allowed, however, that it would have been a terrible torture to see Letty about the place, to pass her on the stair, to come upon her in the garden, to sit with her in the room, and know all the time that it was the test of Tom's worth and her constancy. Even were she to give up Tom, satisfied that she did not love him, she could be nothing more to him, even in the relation in which he had allowed her to think she stood to him. She had behaved too deceitfully, too heartlessly, too ungratefully, too _vulgarly_ for that! Yet was his heart torn every time the vision of the gentle girl rose before "that inward eye," which, for long, could no more be to him "the bliss of solitude"; when he saw those hazel depths looking half anxious, half sorrowful in his face, as, with sadly comic sense of her stupidity, she listened while he explained or read something he loved. But no; nothing else would do than act the mere honest guardian, compelling them to marry, no matter how slight or transient the shadow the man had cast over her reputation!
Mary returned with a sense of utter failure.
But before long she came to the conclusion that all was right between Tom and Letty, and that the cause of her anxiety had lain merely in Letty's loss of animal spirits.
Now and then Mary tried to turn Tom's attention a little toward the duty of religion: Tom received the attempt with gentle amusement and a little _badinage_. It was all very well for girls! Indeed, he had made the observation that girls who had no religion were "strong-minded," and that he could not endure! Like most men, he was so well satisfied with himself, that he saw no occasion to take trouble to be anything better than he was. Never suspecting what a noble creature he was meant to be, he never saw what a poor creature he was. In his own eyes he was a man any girl might be proud to marry. He had not yet, however, sunk to the depth of those who, having caught a glimpse of nobility, confess wretchedness, excuse it, and decline to allow that the noble they see they are bound to be; or, worse still, perhaps, admit the obligation, but move no inch to fulfill it. It seems to me that such must one day make acquaintance with _essential_ misery--a thing of which they have no conception.
Day after day Tom passed through Turnbull and Marston's shop to see Letty. Tom cared for nobody, else he would have gone in by the kitchen-door, which was the only other entrance to the house; but I do not know whether it is a pity or not that he did not hear the remarks which rose like the dust of his passage behind him. In the same little sitting-room, where for so many years Mary had listened to the slow, tender wisdom of her father, a clever young man was now making love to an ignorant girl, whom he did not half understand or half appreciate, all the time he feeling himself the greater and wiser and more valuable of the two. He was unaware, however, that he did feel so, for he had never yet become conscious of any _fact_ concerning himself.
The whole Turnbull family, from the beginnings of things self-constituted judges of the two Marstons, were not the less critical of the daughter, that the father had been taken from her. There was grumbling in the shop every time she ran up to see Letty, every one regarding her and speaking of her as a servant neglecting her duty. Yet all knew well enough that she was co-proprietor of business and stock, and the elder Turnbull knew besides that, if the lawyer to whose care William Marston had committed his daughter were at that moment to go into the affairs of the partnership, he would find that Mary had a much larger amount of money actually in the business than he.
Of all matters connected with the business, except those of her own department, Mary was ignorant. Her father had never neglected his duty, but he had so far neglected what the world calls a man's interests as to leave his affairs much too exclusively in the hands of his partner; he had been too much interested in life itself to look sharply after anything less than life. He acknowledged no _worldly_ interests at all: either God cared for his interests or he himself did not. Whether he might not have been more attentive to the state of his affairs without danger of deeper loss, I do not care to examine or determine; the result of his life in the world was a grand success. Now, Mary's feeling and judgment in regard to _things_ being identical with her father's, Turnbull, instructed by his greed, both natural and acquired, argued thus--unconsciously almost, but not the less argued--that what Mary valued so little, and he valued so much, must, by necessary deduction, be more his than hers--and _logically_ ought to be _legally_. So servants begin to steal, arguing that such and such things are only lying about, and nobody cares for them.
But Turnbull, knowing that, notwithstanding the reason on his side, it was not safe to act on such a conclusion, had for some time felt no little anxiety to secure himself from investigation and possible disaster by the marriage of Mary to his son George.
Tom Helmer had now to learn that, by his father's will, made doubtless under the influence of his mother, he was to have but a small annuity so long as she lived. Upon this he determined nevertheless to marry, confident in his literary faculty, which, he never doubted, would soon raise it to a very sufficient income. Nor did Mary attempt to dissuade him; for what could be better for a disposition like his than care for the things of this life, occasioned by the needs of others dependent upon him! Besides, there seemed to be nothing else now possible for Letty. So, in the early summer, they were married, no relative present except Mrs. Wardour, Mrs. Helmer and Godfrey having both declined their invitation; and no friend, except Mary for bridesmaid, and Mr. Pycroft, a school and college friend of Tom's, who was now making a bohemian livelihood in London by writing for the weekly press, as he called certain journals of no high standing, for groom's man. After the ceremony, and a breakfast provided by Mary, the young couple took the train for London.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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19
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MARY IN THE SHOP.
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More than a year had now passed from the opening of my narrative. It was full summer again at Testbridge, and things, to the careless eye, were unchanged, and, to the careless mind, would never change, although, in fact, nothing was the same, and nothing could continue as it now was. For were not the earth and the sun a little colder? Had not the moon crumbled a little? And had not the eternal warmth, unperceived save of a few, drawn a little nearer--the clock that measures the eternal day ticked one tick more to the hour when the Son of Man will come? But the greed and the fawning did go on unchanged, save it were for the worse, in the shop of Turnbull and Marston, seasoned only with the heavenly salt of Mary's good ministration.
She was very lonely. Letty was gone; and the link between Mr. Wardour and her not only broken, but a gulf of separation in its place. Not the less remained the good he had given her. No good is ever lost. The heavenly porter was departed, but had left the door wide. She had seen him but once since Letty's marriage, and then his salutation was like that of a dead man in a dream; for in his sore heart he still imagined her the confidante of Letty's deception.
But the shadow of her father's absence swallowed all the other shadows. The air of warmth and peace and conscious safety which had hitherto surrounded her was gone, and in its place cold, exposure, and annoyance. Between them her father and she had originated a mutually protective atmosphere of love; when that failed, the atmosphere of earthly relation rushed in and enveloped her. The moment of her father's departure, malign influences, inimical to the very springs of her life, concentrated themselves upon her: it was the design of John Turnbull that she should not be comfortable so long as she did not irrevocably cast in her lot with his family; and, the rest in the shop being mostly creatures of his own choice, by a sort of implicit understanding they proceeded to make her uncomfortable. So long as they confined themselves to silence, neglect, and general exclusion, Mary heeded little their behavior, for no intercourse with them, beyond that of external good offices, could be better than indifferent to her; but, when they advanced to positive interference, her position became indeed hard to endure. They would, for instance, keep watch on her serving, and, as soon as the customer was gone, would find open fault with this or that she had said or done. But even this was comparatively endurable: when they advanced to the insolence of doing the same in the presence of the customer, she found it more than she could bear with even a show of equanimity. She did her best, however; and for some time things went on without any symptom of approaching crisis. But it was impossible this should continue; for, had she been capable of endless endurance, her persecutors would only have gone on to worse. But Mary was naturally quick-tempered, and the chief trouble they caused her was the control of her temper; for, although she had early come to recognize the imperative duty of this branch of self-government, she was not yet perfect in it. Not every one who can serve unboundedly can endure patiently; and the more gentle some natures, the more they resent the rudeness which springs from an opposite nature; absolutely courteous, they flame at discourtesy, and thus lack of the perfection to which patience would and must raise them. When Turnbull, in the narrow space behind the counter, would push his way past her without other pretense of apology than something like a sneer, she did feel for a moment as if evil were about to have the victory over her; and when Mrs. Turnbull came in, which happily was but seldom, she felt as if from some sepulchre in her mind a very demon sprang to meet her. For she behaved to her worst of all. She would heave herself in with the air and look of a vulgar duchess; for, from the height of her small consciousness, she looked down upon the shop, and never entered it save as a customer. The daughter of a small country attorney, who, notwithstanding his unneglected opportunities, had not been too successful to accept as a husband for his daughter such a tradesman as John Turnbull, she arrogated position from her idea of her father's position; and, while bitterly cherishing the feeling that she had married beneath her, obstinately excluded the fact that therein she had descended to her husband's level, regarding herself much in the light of a princess whose disguise takes nothing from her rank. She was like those ladies who, having set their seal to the death of their first husbands by marrying again, yet cling to the title they gave them, and continue to call themselves by their name.
Mrs. Turnbull never bought a dress at the shop. No one should say of her, it was easy for a snail to live in a castle! She took pains to let her precious public know that she went to London to make her purchases. If she did not mention also that she made them at the warehouses where her husband was a customer, procuring them at the same price he would have paid, it was because she saw no occasion. It was indeed only for some small occasional necessity she ever crossed the threshold of the place whence came all the money she had to spend. When she did, she entered it with such airs as she imagined to represent the consciousness of the scion of a county family: there is one show of breeding vulgarity seldom assumes--simplicity. No sign of recognition would pass between her husband and herself: by one stern refusal to acknowledge his advances, she had from the first taught him that in the shop they were strangers: he saw the rock of ridicule ahead, and required no second lesson: when she was present, he never knew it. George had learned the lesson before he went into the business, and Mary had never required it. The others behaved to her as to any customer known to stand upon her dignity, but she made them no return in politeness; and the way she would order Mary, now there was no father to offend, would have been amusing enough but for the irritation its extreme rudeness caused her. She did, however, manage sometimes to be at once both a little angry and much amused. Small idea had Mrs. Turnbull of the diversion which on such occasions she afforded the customers present.
One day, a short time before her marriage, delayed by the illness of Mr. Redmain, Miss Mortimer happened to be in the shop, and was being served by Mary, when Mrs. Turnbull entered. Careless of the customer, she walked straight up to her as if she saw none, and in a tone that would be dignified, and was haughty, desired her to bring her a reel of marking-cotton. Now it had been a principle with Mary's father, and she had thoroughly learned it, that whatever would be counted a rudeness by _any_ customer, must be shown to _none_. "If all are equal in the sight of God," he would say, "how dare I leave a poor woman to serve a rich? Would I leave one countess to serve another? My business is to sell in the name of Christ. To respect persons in the shop would be just the same as to do it in the chapel, and would be to deny him."
"Excuse me, ma'am," said Mary, "I am waiting on Miss Mortimer," and went on with what she was about. Mrs. Turnbull flounced away, a little abashed, not by Mary, but by finding who the customer was, and carried her commands across the shop. After a moment or two, however, imagining, in the blindness of her surging anger, that Miss Mortimer was gone, whereas she had only moved a little farther on to look at something, she walked up to Mary in a fury.
"Miss Marston," she said, her voice half choked with rage, "I am at a loss to understand what you mean by your impertinence."
"I am sorry you should think me impertinent," answered Mary. "You saw yourself I was engaged with a customer, and could not attend to you."
"Your tone was insufferable, miss!" cried the grand lady; but what more she would have said I can not tell, for just then Miss Mortimer resumed her place in front of Mary. She had no idea of her position in the shop, neither suspected who her assailant was, and, fearing the woman's accusation might do her an injury, felt compelled to interfere.
"Miss Marston," she said--she had just heard Mrs. Turnbull use her name--"if you should be called to account by your employer, will you, please, refer to me? You were perfectly civil both to me and to this--" she hesitated a perceptible moment, but ended with the word "_lady_," peculiarly toned.
"Thank you, ma'am," said Mary, with a smile, "but it is of no consequence."
This answer would have almost driven the woman out of her reason--already, between annoyance with herself and anger with Mary, her hue was purple: something she called her constitution required a nightly glass of brandy-and-water--but she was so dumfounded by Miss Mortimer's defense of Mary, which she looked upon as an assault on herself, so painfully aware that all hands were arrested and all eyes fixed on herself, and so mortified with the conviction that her husband was enjoying her discomfiture, that, with what haughtiness she could extemporize from consuming offense, she made a sudden vertical gyration, and walked from the vile place.
Now, George never lost a chance of recommending himself to Mary by siding with her--but only after the battle. He came up to her now with a mean, unpleasant look, intended to represent sympathy, and, approaching his face to hers, said, confidentially: "What made my mother speak to you like that, Mary?"
"You must ask herself," she answered.
"There you are, as usual, Mary!" he protested; "you will never let a fellow take your part!"
"If you wanted to take my part, you should have done so when there would have been some good in it."
"How could I, before Miss Mortimer, you know!"
"Then why do it now?"
"Well, you see--it's hard to bear hearing you ill used! What did you say to Miss Mortimer that angered my mother?"
His father heard him, and, taking the cue, called out in the rudest fashion: "If you think, Mary, you're going to take liberties with customers because you've got no one over you, the sooner you find you're mistaken the better."
Mary made him no answer.
On her way to "the villa," Mrs. Turnbull, spurred by spite, had got hold of the same idea as George, only that she invented where he had but imagined it; and when her husband came home in the evening fell out upon him for allowing Mary to be impertinent to his customers, in whom for the first time she condescended to show an interest: "There she was, talking away to that Miss Mortimer as if she was Beenie in the kitchen! County people won't stand being treated as if one was just as good as another, I can tell you! She'll be the ruin of the business, with her fine-lady-airs! Who's she, I should like to know?"
"I shall speak to her," said the husband. "But," he went on, "I fear you will no longer approve of marrying her to George, if you think she's an injury to the business!"
"You know, as well as I do, that is the readiest way to get her out of it. Make her marry George, and she will fall into my hands. If I don't make her repent her impudence then, you may call me the fool you think me."
Mary knew well enough what they wanted of her; but of the real cause at the root of their desire she had no suspicion. Recoiling altogether from Mr. Turnbull's theories of business, which were in flat repudiation of the laws of Him who alone understands either man or his business, she yet had not a doubt of his honesty as the trades and professions count honesty. Her father had left the money affairs of the firm to Mr. Turnbull, and she did the same. It was for no other reason than that her position had become almost intolerable, that she now began to wonder if she was bound to this mode of life, and whether it might not be possible to forsake it.
Greed is the soul's thieving; where there is greed, there can not be honesty. John Turnbull, it is true, was not only proud of his reputation for honesty, but prided himself on being an honest man; yet not the less was he dishonest--and that with a dishonesty such as few of those called thieves have attained to.
Like most of his kind, he had been neither so vulgar nor so dishonest from the first. In the prime of youth he had had what the people about him called high notions, and counted quixotic fancies. But it was not their mockery of his tall talk that turned him aside; opposition invariably confirmed Turnbull. He had never set his face in the right direction. The seducing influence lay in himself. It was not the truth he had loved; it was the show of fine sentiment he had enjoyed. The distinction of holding loftier opinions than his neighbors was the ground of his advocacy of them. Something of the beauty of the truth he must have seen--who does not? --else he could not have been thus moved at all; but he had never denied himself even a whim for the carrying out of one of his ideas; he had never set himself to be better; and the whole mountain-chain, therefore, of his notions sank and sank, until at length their loftiest peak was the maxim, _Honesty is the best policy_--a maxim which, true enough in fact, will no more make a man honest than the economic aphorism, _The supply equals the demand_, will teach him the niceties of social duty. Whoever makes policy the ground of his honesty will discover more and more exceptions to the rule. The career, therefore, of Turnbull of the high notions had been a gradual descent to the level of his present dishonesty and vulgarity; nothing is so vulgarizing as dishonesty. I do not care to follow the history of any man downward. Let him who desires to look on such a panorama, faithfully and thoroughly depicted, read Auerbach's "Diethelm von Buchenberg."
Things went a little more quietly in the shop after this for a while: Turnbull probably was afraid of precipitating matters, and driving Mary to seek counsel--from which much injury might arise to his condition and prospects. As if to make amends for past rudeness, he even took some pains to be polite, putting on something of the manners with which he favored his "best customers," of all mankind in his eyes the most to be honored. This, of course, rendered him odious in the eyes of Mary, and ripened the desire to free herself from circumstances which from garments seemed to have grown cerements. She was, however, too much her father's daughter to do anything in haste.
She might have been less willing to abandon them, had she had any friends like-minded with herself, but, while they were all kindly disposed to her, none of the religious associates of her father, who knew, or might have known her well, approved of her. They spoke of her generally with a shake of the head, and an unquestioned feeling that God was not pleased with her. There are few of the so-called religious who seem able to trust either God or their neighbor in matters that concern those two and no other. Nor had she had opportunity of making acquaintance with any who believed and lived like her father, in other of the Christian communities of the town. But she had her Bible, and, when that troubled her, as it did not a little sometimes, she had the Eternal Wisdom to cry to for such wisdom as she could receive; and one of the things she learned was, that nowhere in the Bible was she called on to believe in the Bible, but in the living God, in whom is no darkness, and who alone can give light to understand his own intent. All her troubles she carried to him.
It was not always the solitude of her room that Mary sought to get out of the wind of the world. Her love of nature had been growing stronger, notably, from her father's death. If the world is God's, every true man ought to feel at home in it. Something is wrong if the calm of the summer night does not sink into the heart, for the peace of God is there embodied. Sometime is wrong in the man to whom the sunrise is not a divine glory for therein are embodied the truth, the simplicity, the might of the Maker. When all is true in us, we shall feel the visible presence of the Watchful and Loving; for the thing that he works is its sign and symbol, its clothing fact. In the gentle conference of earth and sky, in the witnessing colors of the west, in the wind that so gently visited her cheek, in the great burst of a new morning, Mary saw the sordid affairs of Mammon, to whose worship the shop seemed to become more and more of a temple, sink to the bottom of things, as the mud, which, during the day, the feet of the drinking cattle have stirred, sinks in the silent night to the bottom of the clear pool; and she saw that the sordid is all in the soul, and not in the shop. The service of Christ is help. The service of Mammon is greed.
Letty was no good correspondent: after one letter in which she declared herself perfectly happy, and another in which she said almost nothing, her communication ceased. Mrs. Wardour had been in the shop again and again, but on each occasion had sought the service of another; and once, indeed, when Mary alone was disengaged, had waited until another was at liberty. While Letty was in her house, she had been civil, but, as soon as she was gone, seemed to show that she held her concerned in the scandal that had befallen Thornwick. Once, as I have said, she met Godfrey. It was in the fields. He was walking hurriedly, as usual, but with his head bent, and a gloomy gaze fixed upon nothing visible. He started when he saw her, took his hat off, and, with his eyes seeming to look far away beyond her, passed without a word. Yet had she been to him a true pupil; for, although neither of them knew it, Mary had learned more from Godfrey than Godfrey was capable of teaching. She had turned thought and feeling into life, into reality, into creation. They speak of the _creations_ of the human intellect, of the human imagination! there is nothing man can do comes half so near the making of the Maker as the ordering of his way--except one thing: the highest creation of which man is capable, is to will the will of the Father. That _has_ in it an element of the purely creative, and then is man likest God. But simply to do what we ought, is an altogether higher, diviner, more potent, more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshiping temple, dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony. If Godfrey could have seen the soul of the maiden into whose face his discourtesy called the hot blood, he would have beheld there simply what God made the earth for; as it was, he saw a shop-girl, to whom in happier circumstances he had shown kindness, in whom he was now no longer interested. But the sight of his troubled face called up all the mother in her; a rush of tenderness, born of gratitude, flooded her heart. He was sad, and she could do nothing to comfort him! He had been royally good to her, and no return was in her power. She could not even let him know how she had profited by his gifts! She could come near him with no ministration! The bond between them was an eternal one, yet were they separated by a gulf of unrelation. Not a mountain-range, but a stayless nothingness parted them. She built many a castle, with walls of gratitude and floors of service to entertain Godfrey Wardour; but they stood on no foundation of imagined possibility.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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20
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THE WEDDING-DRESS.
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For all her troubles, however, Mary had her pleasures, even in the shop. It was a delight to receive the friendly greetings of such as had known and honored her father. She had the pleasure, as real as it was simple, of pure service, reaping the fruit of the earth in the joy of the work that was given her to do; there is no true work that does not carry its reward though there are few that do not drop it and lose it. She gathered also the pleasure of seeing and talking with people whose manners and speech were of finer grain and tone than those about her. When Hesper Mortimer entered the shop, she brought with her delight; her carriage was like the gait of an ode; her motions were rhythm; and her speech was music. Her smile was light, and her whole presence an enchantment to Mary. The reading aloud which Wardour had led her to practice had taught her much, not only in respect of the delicacies of speech and utterance, but in the deeper matters of motion, relation, and harmony. Hesper's clear-cut but not too sharply defined consonants; her soft but full-bodied vowels; above all, her slow cadences that hovered on the verge of song, as her walk on the verge of a slow aerial dance; the carriage of her head, the movements of her lips, her arms, her hands; the self-possession that seemed the very embodiment of law--these formed together a whole of inexpressible delight, inextricably for Mary associated with music and verse: she would hasten to serve her as if she had been an angel come to do a little earthly shopping, and return with the next heavenward tide. Hesper, in response all but unconscious, would be waited on by no other than Mary; and always between them passed some sweet, gentle nothings, which afforded Hesper more pleasure than she could have accounted for.
Her wedding-day was now for the third time fixed, when one morning she entered the shop to make some purchases. Not happy in the prospect before her, she was yet inclined to make the best of it so far as clothes were concerned--the more so, perhaps, that she had seldom yet been dressed to her satisfaction: she was now brooding over a certain idea for her wedding-dress, which she had altogether failed in the attempt to convey to her London _couturiere_; and it had come into her head to try whether Mary might not grasp her idea, and help her to make it intelligible. Mary listened and thought, questioned, and desired explanations--at length, begged she would allow her to ponder the thing a little: she could hardly at once venture to say anything. Hesper laughed, and said she was taking a small matter too seriously--concluding from Mary's hesitation that she had but perplexed her, and that she could be of no use to her in the difficulty.
"A small matter? Your wedding-dress!" exclaimed Mary, in a tone of expostulation.
Hesper did not laugh again, but gave a little sigh instead, which struck sadly on Mary's sympathetic heart. She cast a quick look in her face. Hesper caught the look, and understood it. For one passing moment she felt as if, amid the poor pleasure of adorning herself for a hated marriage, she had found a precious thing of which she had once or twice dreamed, never thought as a possible existence--a friend, namely, to love her: the next, she saw the absurdity of imagining a friend in a shop-girl.
"But I must make up my mind so soon!" she answered. "Madame Crepine gave me her idea, in answer to mine, but nothing like it, two days ago; and, as I have not written again, I fear she may be taking her own way with the thing. I am certain to hate it."
"I will talk to you about it as early as you please to-morrow, if that will do," returned Mary.
She knew nothing about dressmaking beyond what came of a true taste, and the experience gained in cutting out and making her own garments, which she had never yet found a dressmaker to do to her mind; and, indeed, Hesper had been led to ask her advice mainly from observing how neat the design of her dresses was, and how faithfully they fitted her. Dress is a sort of freemasonry between girls.
"But I can not have the horses to-morrow," said Hesper.
"I might," pondered Mary aloud, after a moment's silence, "walk out to Durnmelling this evening after the shop is shut. By that time I shall have been able to think; I find it impossible, with you before me."
Hesper acknowledged the compliment with a very pleasant smile. If it be true, as I may not doubt, that women, in dressing, have the fear of women and not of men before their eyes, then a compliment from some women must be more acceptable to some than a compliment from any man but the specially favored.
"Thank you a thousand times," she drawled, sweetly. "Then I shall expect you. Ask for my maid. She will take you to my room. Good-by for the present."
As soon as she was gone, Mary, her mind's eye full of her figure, her look, her style, her motion, gave herself to the important question of the dress conceived by Hesper; and during her dinner-hour contrived to cut out and fit to her own person the pattern of a garment such as she supposed intended in the not very lucid description she had given her. When she was free, she set out with it for Durnmelling.
It was rather a long walk, the earlier part of it full of sad reminders of the pleasure with which, greater than ever accompanied her to church, she went to pay her Sunday visit at Thornwick; but the latter part, although the places were so near, almost new to her: she had never been within the gate of Durnmelling, and felt curious to see the house of which she had so often heard.
The butler opened the door to her--an elderly man, of conscious dignity rather than pride, who received the "young person" graciously, and, leaving her in the entrance-hall, went to find "Miss Mortimer's maid," he said, though there was but one lady's-maid in the establishment.
The few moments she had to wait far more than repaid her for the trouble she had taken: through a side-door she looked into the great roofless hall, the one grand thing about the house. Its majesty laid hold upon her, and the shopkeeper's daughter felt the power of the ancient dignity and ineffaceable beauty far more than any of the family to which it had for centuries belonged.
She was standing lost in delight, when a rude voice called to her from half-way up a stair: "You're to come this way, miss."
With a start, she turned and went. It was a large room to which she was led. There was no one in it, and she walked to an open window, which had a wide outlook across the fields. A little to the right, over some trees, were the chimneys of Thornwick. She almost started to see them--so near, and yet so far--like the memory of a sweet, sad story.
"Do you like my prospect?" asked the voice of Hesper behind her. "It is flat."
"I like it much, Miss Mortimer," answered Mary, turning quickly with a bright face. "Flatness has its own beauty. I sometimes feel as if room was all I wanted; and of that there is so much there! You see over the tree-tops, too, and that is good--sometimes--don't you think?"
Miss Mortimer gave no other reply than a gentle stare, which expressed no curiosity, although she had a vague feeling that Mary's words meant something. Most girls of her class would hardly have got so far.
The summer was backward, but the day had been fine and warm, and the evening was dewy and soft, and full of evasive odor. The window looked westward, and the setting sun threw long shadows toward the house. A gentle wind was moving in the tree-tops. The spirit of the evening had laid hold of Mary. The peace of faithfulness filled the air. The day's business vanished, molten in the rest of the coming night. Even Hesper's wedding-dress was gone from her thoughts. She was in her own world, and ready, for very, quietness of spirit, to go to sleep. But she had not forgotten the delight of Hesper's presence; it was only that all relation between them was gone except such as was purely human.
"This reminds me so of some beautiful verses of Henry Vaughan!" she said, half dreamily.
"What do they say?" drawled Hesper.
Mary repeated as follows: "'The frosts are past, the storms are gone, And backward life at last comes on. And here in dust and dirt, O here, The Lilies of His love appear!'"
"Whose did you say the lines were?" asked Hesper, with merest automatic response.
"Henry Vaughan's," answered Mary, with a little spiritual shiver as of one who had dropped a pearl in the miry way.
"I never heard of him," rejoined Hesper, with entire indifference.
For anything she knew, he might be an occasional writer in "The Belgrave Magazine," or "The Fireside Herald." Ignorance is one of the many things of which a lady of position is never ashamed; wherein she is, it may be, more right than most of my readers will be inclined to allow; for ignorance is not the thing to be ashamed of, but neglect of knowledge. That a young person in Mary's position should know a certain thing, was, on the other hand, a reason why a lady in Hesper's position should not know it! Was it possible a shop-girl should know anything that Hesper ought to know and did not? It was foolish of Mary, perhaps, but she had vaguely felt that a beautiful lady like Miss Mortimer, and with such a name as Hesper, must know all the lovely things she knew, and many more besides.
"He lived in the time of the Charleses," she said, with a tremble in her voice, for she was ashamed to show her knowledge against the other's ignorance.
"Ah!" drawled Hesper, with a confused feeling that people who kept shops read stupid old books that lay about, because they could not subscribe to a circulating library. --"Are you fond of poetry?" she added; for the slight, shadowy shyness, into which her venture had thrown Mary, drew her heart a little, though she hardly knew it, and inclined her to say something.
"Yes," answered Mary, who felt like a child questioned by a stranger in the road; "--when it is good," she added, hesitatingly.
"What do you mean by good?" asked Hesper--out of her knowledge, Mary thought, but it was not even out of her ignorance, only out of her indifference. People must say something, lest life should stop.
"That is a question difficult to answer," replied Mary. "I have often asked it of myself, but never got any plain answer."
"I do not see why you should find any difficulty in it," returned Hesper, with a shadow of interest. "You know what you mean when you say to yourself you like this, or you do not like that."
"How clever she is, too!" thought Mary; but she answered: "I don't think I ever say anything to myself about the poetry I read--not at the time, I mean. If I like it, it drowns me; and, if I don't like it, it is as the Dead Sea to me, in which you know you can't sink, if you try ever so."
Hesper saw nothing in the words, and began to fear that Mary was so stupid as to imagine herself clever; whereupon the fancy she had taken to her began to sink like water in sand. The two were still on their feet, near the window--Mary, in her bonnet, with her back to it, and Hesper, in evening attire, with her face to the sunset, so that the one was like a darkling worshiper, the other like the radiant goddess. But the truth was, that Hesper was a mere earthly woman, and Mary a heavenly messenger to her. Neither of them knew it, but so it was; for the angels are essentially humble, and Hesper would have condescended to any angel out of her own class.
"I think I know good poetry by what it does to me," resumed Mary, thoughtfully, just as Hesper was about to pass to the business of the hour.
"Indeed!" rejoined Hesper, not less puzzled than before, if the word should be used where there was no effort to understand. Poetry had never done anything to her, and Mary's words conveyed no shadow of an idea.
The tone of her _indeed_ checked Mary. She hesitated a moment, but went on.
"Sometimes," she said, "it makes me feel as if my heart were too big for my body; sometimes as if all the grand things in heaven and earth were trying to get into me at once; sometimes as if I had discovered something nobody else knew; sometimes as if--no, not _as if_, for then I _must_ go and pray to God. But I am trying to tell you what I don't know how to tell. I am not talking nonsense, I hope, only ashamed of myself that I can't talk sense. --I will show you what I have been doing about your dress."
Far more to Hesper's surprise and admiration than any of her half-foiled attempts at the utterance of her thoughts, Mary, taking from her pocket the shape she had prepared, put it on herself, and, slowly revolving before Hesper, revealed what in her eyes was a masterpiece.
"But how clever of you!" she cried. --Her own fingers had not been quite innocent of the labor of the needle, for money had long been scarce at Durnmelling, and in the paper shape she recognized the hand of an artist. --"Why," she continued, "you are nothing less than an accomplished dressmaker!"
"That I dare not think myself," returned Mary, "seeing I never had a lesson."
"I wish you would make my wedding-dress," said Hesper.
"I could not venture, even if I had the time," answered Mary. "The moment I began to cut into the stuff, I should be terrified, and lose my self-possession. I never made a dress for anybody but myself."
"You are a little witch!" said Hesper; while Mary, who had roughly prepared a larger shape, proceeded to fit it to her person.
She was busy pinning and unpinning, shifting and pinning again, when suddenly Hesper said: "I suppose you know I am going to marry money?"
"Oh! don't say that. It's too dreadful!" cried Mary, stopping her work, and looking up in Hesper's face.
"What! you supposed I was going to marry a man like Mr. Redmain for love?" rejoined Hesper, with a hard laugh.
"I can not bear to think of it!" said Mary. "But you do not really mean it! You are only--making fun of me! Do say you are."
"Indeed, I am not. I wish I could say I was! It is very horrid, I know, but where's the good of mincing matters? If I did not call the thing by its name, the thing would be just the same. You know, people in our world have to do as they must; they can't pick and choose like you happy creatures. I dare say, now, you are engaged to a young man you love with all your heart, one you would rather marry than any other in the whole universe."
"Oh, dear, no!" returned Mary, with a smile most plainly fancy-free. "I am not engaged, nor in the least likely to be."
"And not in love either?" said Hesper--with such coolness that Mary looked up in her face to know if she had really said so.
"No," she replied.
"No more am I," echoed Hesper; "that is the one good thing in the business: I sha'n't break my heart, as some girls do. At least, so they say--I don't believe it: how could a girl be so indecent? It is bad enough to marry a man: that one can't avoid; but to die of a broken heart is to be a traitor to your sex. As if women couldn't live without men!"
Mary smiled and was silent. She had read a good deal, and thought she understood such things better than Miss Mortimer. But she caught herself smiling, and she felt as if she had sinned. For that a young woman should speak of love and marriage as Miss Mortimer did, was too horrible to be understood--and she had smiled! She would have been less shocked with Hesper, however, had she known that she forced an indifference she could not feel--her last poor rampart of sand against the sea of horror rising around her. But from her heart she pitied her, almost as one of the lost.
"Don't fix your eyes like that," said Hesper, angrily, "or I shall cry. Look the other way, and listen. --I am marrying money, I tell you--and for money; therefore, I ought to get the good of it. Mr. Mortimer will be father enough to see to that! So I shall be able to do what I please. I have fallen in love with you; and why shouldn't I have you for my--" She paused, hesitating: what was it she was about to propose to the little lady standing before her? She had been going to say _maid_: what was it that checked her? The feeling was to herself shapeless and nameless; but, however some of my readers may smile at the notion of a girl who served behind a counter being a lady, and however ready Hesper Mortimer would have been to join them, it was yet a vague sense of the fact that was now embarrassing her, for she was not half lady enough to deal with it. In very truth, Mary Marston was already immeasurably more of a lady than Hesper Mortimer was ever likely to be in this world. What was the stateliness and pride of the one compared to the fact that the other would have died in the workhouse or the street rather than let a man she did not love embrace her--yes, if all her ancestors in hell had required the sacrifice! To be a martyr to a lie is but false ladyhood. She only is a lady who witnesses to the truth, come of it what may. " --For my--my companion, or something of the sort," concluded Hesper; "and then I should be sure of being always dressed to my mind."
"That _would_ be nice!" responded Mary, thinking only of the kindness in the speech.
"Would you really like it?" asked Hesper, in her turn pleased.
"I should like it very much," replied Mary, not imagining the proposal had in it a shadow of seriousness. "I wish it were possible."
"Why not, then? Why shouldn't it be possible? I don't suppose you would mind using your needle a little?"
"Not in the least," answered Mary, amused. "Only what would they do in the shop without me?"
"They could get somebody else, couldn't they?"
"Hardly, to take my place. My father was Mr. Turnbull's partner."
"Oh!" said Hesper, not much instructed. "I thought you had only to give warning."
There the matter dropped, and Mary thought no more about it.
"You will let me keep this pattern?" said Hesper.
"It was made for you," answered Mary.
While Hesper was lazily thinking whether that meant she was to pay for it, Mary made her a pretty obeisance, and bade her good night. Hesper returned her adieu kindly, but neither shook hands with her nor rang the bell to have her shown out Mary found her own way, however, and presently was breathing the fresh air of the twilight fields on her way home to her piano and her books.
For some time after she was gone, Hesper was entirely occupied with the excogitation of certain harmonies of the toilet that must minister effect to the dress she had now so plainly before her mind's eye; but by and by the dress began to melt away, and like a dissolving view disappeared, leaving in its place the form of "that singular shop-girl." There was nothing striking about her; she made no such sharp impression on the mind as compelled one to think of her again; yet always, when one had been long enough in her company to feel the charm of her individuality, the very quiet of any quiet moment was enough to bring back the sweetness of Mary's twilight presence. For this girl, who spent her days behind a counter, was one of the spiritual forces at work for the conservation and recovery of the universe.
Not only had Hesper Mortimer never had a friend worthy of the name, but no idea of pure friendship had as yet been generated in her. Sepia was the nearest to her intimacy: how far friendship could have place between two such I need not inquire; but in her fits of misery Hesper had no other to go to. Those fits, alas! grew less and less frequent; for Hesper was on the downward incline; but, when the next came, after this interview, she found herself haunted, at a little distance, as it were, by a strange sense of dumb, invisible tending. It did not once come close to her; it did not once offer her the smallest positive consolation; the thing was only this, that the essence of Mary's being was so purely ministration, that her form could not recur to any memory without bringing with it a dreamy sense of help. Most powerful of all powers in its holy insinuation is _being_. _To be_ is more powerful than even _to do_. Action _may_ be hypocrisy, but being is the thing itself, and is the parent of action. Had anything that Mary said recurred to Hesper, she would have thought of it only as the poor sentimentality of a low education.
But Hesper did not think of Mary's position as low; that would have been to measure it; and it did not once suggest itself as having any relation to any life in which she was interested. She saw no difference of level between Mary and the lawyer who came about her marriage settlements: they were together beyond her social horizon. In like manner, moral differences--and that in her own class--were almost equally beyond recognition. If by neglect of its wings, an eagle should sink to a dodo, it would then recognize only the laws of dodo life. For the dodos of humanity, did not one believe in a consuming fire and an outer darkness, what would be left us but an ever-renewed _alas_! It is truth and not imperturbability that a man's nature requires of him; it is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as the test; it is love, and no amount of flattery that will prosper; differences wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to a hair's breadth in that day; the customs of the trade and the picking of pockets will go together, with the greater excuse for the greater need and the less knowledge; liars the most gentleman-like and the most rowdy will go as liars; the first shall be last, and the last first.
Hesper's day drew on. She had many things to think about--things very different from any that concerned Mary Marston. She was married; found life in London somewhat absorbing; and forgot Mary.
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{
"id": "8201"
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21
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MR. REDMAIN.
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A life of comparatively innocent gayety could not be attractive to Mr. Redmain, but at first he accompanied his wife everywhere. No one knew better than he that not an atom of love had mingled with her motives in marrying him; but for a time he seemed bent on showing her that she needed not have been so averse to him. Whether this was indeed his design or not, I imagine he enjoyed the admiration she roused: for why should not a man take pride in the possession of a fine woman as well as in that of a fine horse? To be sure, Mrs. Redmain was not quite in the same way, nor quite so much his, as his horses were, and might one day be a good deal less his than she was now; but in the mean time she was, I fancy, a pleasant break in the gathering monotony of his existence. As he got more accustomed to the sight of her in a crowd, however, and at the same time to her not very interesting company in private, when she took not the smallest pains to please him, he gradually lapsed into his former ways, and soon came to spend his evenings in company that made him forget his wife. He had loved her in a sort of a way, better left undefined, and had also, almost from the first, hated her a little; for, following her cousin's advice, she had appealed to him to save her, and, when he evaded her prayer, had addressed him in certain terms too appropriate to be agreeable, and too forcible to be forgotten. His hatred, however, if that be not much too strong a name, was neither virulent nor hot, for it had no inverted love to feed and embitter it. It was more a thing of his head than his heart, revealing itself mainly in short, acrid speeches, meant to be clever, and indubitably disagreeable. Nor did Hesper prove an unworthy antagonist in their encounters of polite Billingsgate: what she lacked in experience she made up in breeding. The common remark, generally false, about no love being lost, was in their case true enough, for there never had been any between them to lose. The withered rose-leaves have their sweetness yet, but what of the rotted peony? It was generally when Redmain had been longer than usual without seeing his wife that he said the worst things to her, as if spite had grown in absence; but that he should then be capable of saying such things as he did say, could be understood only by those who knew the man and his history.
Ferdinand Goldberg Redmain--parents with mean surroundings often give grand names to their children--was the son of an intellectually gifted laborer, who, rising first to be boss of a gang, began to take portions of contracts, and arrived at last, through one lucky venture after another, at having his estimate accepted and the contract given him for a rather large affair. The result was that, through his minute knowledge of details, his faculty for getting work out of his laborers, a toughness of heart and will that enabled him to screw wages to the lowest mark, and the judicious employment of inferior material, the contract paid him much too well for any good to come out of it. From that time, what he called his life was a continuous course of what he called success, and he died one of the richest dirt-beetles of the age, bequeathing great wealth to his son, and leaving a reputation for substantial worth behind him; hardly leaving it, I fancy, for surely he found it waiting him where he went. He had been guilty of a thousand meannesses, oppressions, rapacities, and some quiet rogueries, but none of them worse than those of many a man whose ultimate failure has been the sole cause of his excommunication by the society which all the time knew well enough what he was. Often had he been held up by would-be teachers as a pattern to aspiring youth of what might be achieved by unwavering attention to _the main chance_, combined with unassailable honesty: from his experience they would once more prove to a gaping world the truth of the maxim, the highest intelligible to a base soul, that "honesty is the best policy." With his money he left to his son the seeds of a varied meanness, which bore weeds enough, but curiously, neither avarice nor, within the bounds of a modest prudence, any unwillingness to part with money--a fact which will probably appear the stranger when I have told the following anecdote concerning a brother of the father, of whom few indeed mentioned in my narrative ever heard.
This man was a joiner, or working cabinet-maker, or something of the sort. Having one day been set by his master to repair for an old lady an escritoire which had been in her possession for a long time, he came to her house in the evening with a five-pound note of a country bank, which he had found in a secret drawer of the same, handing it to her with the remark that he had always found honesty the best policy. She gave him half a sovereign, and he took his leave well satisfied. _He had been first to make inquiry, and had learned that the bank stopped payment many years ago. _ I can not help wondering, curious in the statistics of honesty, how many of my readers will be more amused than disgusted with the story. It is a great thing to come of decent people, and Ferdinand Goldberg Redmain must not be judged like one who, of honorable parentage, whether noble or peasant, takes himself across to the shady side of the road. Much had been against Redmain. I do not know of what sort his mother was, but from certain embryonic virtues in him, which could hardly have been his father's, I should think she must have been better than her husband. She died, however, while he was a mere child; and his father married, some said did not _marry_ again. The boy was sent to a certain public school, which at that time, whatever it may or may not be now, was simply a hot-bed of the lowest vices, and in devil-matters Redmain was an apt pupil. There is fresh help for the world every time a youth starts clean upon manhood's race; his very being is a hope of cleansing: this one started as foul as youth could well be, and had not yet begun to repent. His character was well known to his associates, for he was no hypocrite, and Hosper's father knew it perfectly, and was therefore worse than he. Had Redmain had a daughter, he would never have given her to a man like himself. But, then, Mortimer was so poor, and Redmain was so _very_ rich! Alas for the man who degrades his poverty by worshiping wealth! there is no abyss in hell too deep for him to find its bottom.
Mr. Redmain had no profession, and knew nothing of business beyond what was necessary for understanding whether his factor or steward, or whatever he called him, was doing well with his money--to that he gave heed. Also, wiser than many, he took some little care not to spend at full speed what life he had. With this view he laid down and observed certain rules in the ordering of his pleasures, which enabled him to keep ahead of the vice-constable for some time longer than would otherwise have been the case. But he is one who can never finally be outrun, and now, as Mr. Redmain was approaching the end of middle age, he heard plainly enough the approach of the wool-footed avenger behind him. Horrible was the inevitable to him, as horrible as to any; but it had not yet looked frightful enough to arrest his downward rush. In his better conditions--physical, I mean--whether he had any better moral conditions, I can not tell--he would laugh and say, "_Gather the roses while you may_"--heaven and earth! what roses! --but, in his worse, he maledicted everything, and was horribly afraid of hell. When in tolerable health, he laughed at the notion of such an out-of-the-way place, repudiating its very existence, and, calling in all the arguments urged by good men against the idea of an eternity of aimless suffering, used them against the idea of any punishment after death. Himself a bad man, he reasoned that God was too good to punish sin; himself a proud man, he reasoned that God was too high to take heed of him. He forgot the best argument he could have adduced--namely, that the punishment he had had in this life had done him no good; from which he might have been glad to argue that none would, and therefore none would be tried. But I suppose his mother believed there was a hell, for at such times, when from weariness he was less of an evil beast than usual, the old-fashioned horror would inevitably raise its dinosaurian head afresh above the slime of his consciousness; and then even his wife, could she have seen how the soul of the man shuddered and recoiled, would have let his brutality pass unheeded, though it was then at its worst, his temper at such times being altogether furious. There was no grace in him when he was ill, nor at any time, beyond a certain cold grace of manner, which he kept for ceremony, or where he wanted to please.
Happily, Mr. Redmain had one intellectual passion, which, poor thing as it was, and in its motive, most of its aspects, and almost all its tendencies, evil exceedingly, yet did something to delay that corruption of his being which, at the same time, it powerfully aided to complete: it was for the understanding and analysis of human evil--not in the abstract, but alive and operative. For the appeasement of this passion, he must render intelligible to himself, and that on his own exclusive theory of human vileness, the aims and workings of every fresh specimen of what he called human nature that seemed bad enough, or was peculiar enough to interest him. In this region of darkness he ranged like a discoverer--prowled rather, like an unclean beast of prey--ever and always on the outlook for the false and foul; acknowledging, it is true, that he was no better himself, but arrogating on that ground a correctness of judgment beyond the reach of such as, desiring to be better, were unwilling to believe in the utter badness of anything human. Like a lover, he would watch for the appearance of the vile motive, the self-interest, that "must be," _he knew_, at the heart of this or that deed or proceeding of apparent benevolence or generosity. Often, alas! the thing was provable; and, where he did not find, he was quick to invent; and, where he failed in finding or inventing, he not the less believed the bad motive was there, and followed the slightest seeming trail of the cunning demon only the more eagerly. What a smile was his when he heard, which truly he was not in the way to hear often, the praise of some good deed, or an ascription of high end to some endeavor of one of the vile race to which he belonged! Do those who abuse their kind actually believe they are of it? Do they hold themselves exceptions? Do they never reflect that it must be because such is their own nature, whether their accusation be true or false, that they know how to attribute such motives to their fellows? Or is it that, actually and immediately rejoicing in iniquity, they delight in believing it universal?
Quiet as a panther, Redmain was, I say, always in pursuit, if not of something sensual for himself, then of something evil in another. He would sit at his club, silent and watching, day after day, night after night, waiting for the chance that should cast light on some idea of detection, on some doubt, bewilderment, or conjecture. He would ask the farthest-off questions: who could tell what might send him into the track of discovery? He would give to the talk the strangest turns, laying trap after trap to ensnare the most miserable of facts, elevated into a desirable secret only by his hope to learn through it something equally valueless beyond it. Especially he delighted in discovering, or flattering himself he had discovered, the hollow full of dead men's bones under the flowery lawn of seeming goodness. Nor as yet had he, so far as he knew, or at least was prepared to allow, ever failed. And this he called the study of human nature, and quoted Pope. Truly, next to God, the proper study of mankind is man; but how shall a man that knows only the evil in himself, nor sees it hateful, read the thousandfold-compounded heart of his neighbor? To rake over the contents of an ash-pit, is not to study geology. There were motives in Redmain's own being, which he was not merely incapable of understanding, but incapable of seeing, incapable of suspecting.
The game had for him all the pleasure of keenest speculation; nor that alone, for, in the supposed discovery of the evil of another, he felt himself vaguely righteous.
One more point in his character I may not in fairness omit: he had naturally a strong sense of justice; and, if he exercised it but little in some of the relations of his life, he was none the less keenly alive to his own claims on its score; for chiefly he cried out for fair play on behalf of those who were wicked in similar fashion to himself. But, in truth, no one dealt so hardly with Redmain as his own conscience at such times when suffering and fear had awaked it.
So much for a portrait-sketch of the man to whom Mortimer had sold his daughter--such was the man whom Hesper, entirely aware that none could compel her to marry against her will, had, partly from fear of her father, partly from moral laziness, partly from reverence for the Moloch of society, whose priestess was her mother, vowed to love, honor, and obey! In justice to her, it must be remembered, however, that she did not and could not know of him what her father knew.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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22
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MRS. REDMAIN.
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In the autumn the Redmains went to Durnmelling: why they did so, I should find it hard to say. If, when a child, Hesper loved either of her parents, the experiences of later years had so heaped that filial affection with the fallen leaves of dead hopes and vanished dreams, that there was now nothing in her heart recognizable to herself as love to father or mother. She always behaved to them, of course, with perfect propriety; never refused any small request; never showed resentment when blamed--never felt any, for she did not care enough to be angry or sorry that father or mother should disapprove.
On the other hand, Lady Margaret saw great improvement in her daughter. To the maternal eye, jealous for perfection, Hesper's carriage was at length satisfactory. It was cold, and the same to her mother as to every one else, but the mother did not find it too cold. It was haughty, even repellent, but by no means in the mother's eyes repulsive. Her voice came from her in well-balanced sentences, sounding as if they had been secretly constructed for extempore use, like the points of a parliamentary orator. "Marriage has done everything for her!" said Lady Malice to herself with a dignified chuckle, and dismissed the last shadowy remnant of maternal regret for her part in the transaction of her marriage.
She never saw herself in the wrong, and never gave herself the least trouble to be in the right. She was in good health, ate, and liked to eat; drank her glass of champagne, and would have drunk a second, but for her complexion, and that it sometimes made her feel ill, which was the only thing, after marrying Mr. Redmain, she ever felt degrading. Of her own worth she had never had a doubt, and she had none yet: how was she to generate one, courted wherever she went, both for her own beauty and her husband's wealth?
To her father she was as stiff and proud as if she had been a maiden aunt, bent on destroying what expectations from her he might be cherishing. Who will blame her? He had done her all the ill he could, and by his own deed she was beyond his reach. Nor can I see that the debt she owed him for being her father was of the heaviest.
Her husband was again out of health--certain attacks to which he was subject were now coming more frequently. I do not imagine his wife offered many prayers for his restoration. Indeed, she never prayed for the thing she desired; and, while he and she occupied separate rooms, the one solitary thing she now regarded as a privilege, how _could_ she pray for his recovery?
Greatly contrary to Mr. Redmain's unexpressed desire, Miss Yolland had been installed as Hesper's cousin-companion. After the marriage, she ventured to unfold a little, as she had promised, but what there was yet of womanhood in Hesper had shrunk from further acquaintance with the dimly shadowed mysteries of Sepia's story; and Sepia, than whom none more sensitive to change of atmosphere, had instantly closed again; and now not unfrequently looked and spoke like one feeling her way. The only life-principle she had, so far as I know, was to get from the moment the greatest possible enjoyment that would leave the way clear for more to follow. She had not been in his house a week before Mr. Redmain hated her. He was something given to hating people who came near him, and she came much too near. She was by no means so different in character as to be repulsive to him; neither was she so much alike as to be tiresome; their designs could not well clash, for she was a woman and he was a man; if she had not been his wife's friend, they might, perhaps, have got on together better than well; but the two were such as must either be hand in glove or hate each other. There had not, however, been the least approach to rupture between them. Mr. Redmain, indeed, took no trouble to avoid such a catastrophe, but Sepia was far too wise to allow even the dawn of such a risk. When he was ill, he was, if possible, more rude to her than to every one else, but she did not seem to mind it a straw. Perhaps she knew something of the ways of such _gentlemen_ as lose their manners the moment they are ailing, and seem to consider a headache or an attack of indigestion excuse sufficient for behaving like the cad they scorn. It was not long, however, before he began to take in her a very real interest, though not of a sort it would have made her comfortable with him to know.
Every time Mr. Redmain had an attack, the baldness on the top of his head widened, and the skin of his face tightened on his small, neat features; his long arms looked longer; his formerly flat back rounded yet a little; and his temper grew yet more curiously spiteful. Long after he had begun to recover, he was by no means an agreeable companion. Nevertheless, as if at last, though late in the day, she must begin to teach her daughter the duty of a married woman, from the moment he arrived, taken ill on the way, Lady Malice, regardless of the brusqueness with which he treated her from the first, devoted herself to him with an attention she had never shown her husband. She was the only one who manifested any appearance of affection for him, and the only one of the family for whom, in return, he came to show the least consideration. Rough he was, even to her, but never, except when in absolute pain, rude as to everybody in the house besides. At times, one might have almost thought he stood in some little awe of her. Every night, after his man was gone, she would visit him to see that he was left comfortable, would tuck him up as his mother might have done, and satisfy herself that the night-light was shaded from his eyes. With her own hands she always arranged his breakfast on the tray, nor never omitted taking him a basin of soup before he got up; and, whatever he may have concluded concerning her motives, he gave no sign of imagining them other than generous. Perhaps the part in him which had never had the opportunity of behaving ill to his mother, and so had not choked up its channels with wrong, remained, in middle age and illness, capable of receiving kindness.
Hesper saw the relation between them, but without the least pleasure or the least curiosity. She seemed to care for nothing--except the keeping of her back straight. What could it be, inside that lovely form, that gave itself pleasure to be, were a difficult question indeed. The bear as he lies in his winter nest, sucking his paw, has no doubt his rudimentary theories of life, and those will coincide with a desire for its continuance; but whether what either the lady or the bear counts the good of life, be really that which makes either desire its continuance, is another question. Mere life without suffering seems enough for most people, but I do not think it could go on so for ever. I can not help fancying that, but for death, utter dreariness would at length master the healthiest in whom the true life has not begun to shine. But so satisfying is the mere earthly existence to some at present, that this remark must sound to them bare insanity.
Partly out of compliment to Mr. Redmain, the Mortimers had scarcely a visitor; for he would not come out of his room when he knew there was a stranger in the house. Fond of company of a certain kind when he was well, he could not endure an unknown face when he was ill. He told Lady Malice that at such times a stranger always looked a devil to him. Hence the time was dull for everybody--dullest, perhaps, for Sepia, who, as well as Redmain, had a few things that required forgetting. It was no wonder, then, that Hesper, after a fort-night of it, should think once more of the young woman in the draper's shop of Testbridge. One morning, in consequence, she ordered her brougham, and drove to the town.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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23
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THE MENIAL.
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Things had been going nowise really better with Mary, though there was now more lull and less storm around her. The position was becoming less and less endurable to her, and she had as yet no glimmer of a way out of it. Breath of genial air never blew in the shop, except when this and that customer entered it. But how dear the dull old chapel had grown! Not that she heard anything more to her mind, or that she paid any more attention to what was said; but the memory of her father filled the place, and when the Bible was read, or some favorite hymn sung, he seemed to her actually present. And might not love, she thought, even love to her, be strong enough to bring him from the gracious freedom of the new life, back to the house of bondage, to share it for an hour with his daughter?
When Hesper entered, she was disappointed to see Mary so much changed. But when, at sight of her, the pale face brightened, and a faint, rosy flush overspread it from brow to chin, Mary was herself again as Hesper had known her; and the radiance of her own presence, reflected from Mary, cast a reflex of sunshine into the February of Hesper's heart: had Mary known how long it was since such a smile had lighted the face she so much admired, hers would have flushed with a profounder pleasure. Hesper was human after all, though her humanity was only molluscous as yet, and it is not in the power of humanity in any stage of development to hold itself indifferent to the pleasure of being loved. Also, poor as is the feeling comparatively, it is yet a reflex of love itself--the shine of the sun in a rain-pool.
She walked up to Mary, holding out her hand.
"O ma'am, I am so glad to see you!" exclaimed Mary, forgetting her manners in her love.
"I, too, am glad," drawled Hesper, genuinely, though with condescension. "I hope you are well. I can not say you look so."
"I am pretty well, thank you, ma'am," answered Mary, flushing afresh: not much anxiety was anywhere expressed about her health now, except by Beenie, who mourned over the loss of her plumpness, and told her if she did not eat she would soon follow her poor father.
"Come and have a drive with me," said Hesper, moved by a sudden impulse: through some hidden motion of sympathy, she felt, as she looked at her, that the place was stuffy. "It will do you good," she went on. "You are too much indoors. --And the ceiling is low," she added, looking up.
"It is very kind of you," replied Mary, "but--I don't think I could quite manage it to-day."
She looked round as she spoke. There were not many customers; but for conscience sake she was trying hard to give as little ground for offense as possible.
"Why not? --If I were to ask Mr.--" "If you really wish it, ma'am, I will venture to go for half an hour. There is no occasion to speak to Mr. Turnbull. Besides, it is almost dinner-time."
"Do, then. I am sure you will eat a better dinner for having had a little fresh air first. It is a lovely morning. We will drive to the Roman camp on the top of Clover-down."
"I shall be ready in two minutes," said Mary, and ran from the shop.
As she passed along the outside of his counter coming back, she stopped and told Mr. Turnbull where she was going. Instead of answering her, he turned himself toward Mrs. Redmain, and went through a series of bows and smiles recognizant of favor, which she did not choose to see. She turned and walked from the shop, got into the brougham, and made room for Mary at her side.
But, although the drive was a lovely one, and the view from either window delightful, and to Mary it was like getting out of a tomb to leave the shop in the middle of the day, she saw little of the sweet country on any side, so much occupied was she with Hesper. Ere they stopped again at the shop-door, the two young women were nearer being friends than Hesper had ever been with any one. The sleepy heart in her was not yet dead, but capable still of the pleasure of showing sweet condescension and gentle patronage to one who admired her, and was herself agreeable. To herself she justified her kindness to Mary with the remark that _the young woman deserved encouragement_--whatever that might mean--_because she was so anxious to improve herself! _--a duty Hesper could recognize in another.
As they went, Mary told her something of her miserable relations with the Turnbulls; and, as they returned, Hesper actually--this time with perfect seriousness--proposed that she should give up business, and live with her.
Nor was this the ridiculous thing it may at first sight appear to not a few of my readers. It arose from what was almost the first movement in the direction of genuine friendship Hesper had ever felt. She had been familiar in her time with a good many, but familiarity is not friendship, and may or may not exist along with it. Some, who would scorn the idea of a _friendship_ with such as Mary, will be familiar enough with maids as selfish as themselves, and part from them--no--part _with_ them, the next day, or the next hour, with never a twinge of regret. Of this, Hesper was as capable as any; but friendship is its own justification, and she felt no horror at the new motion of her heart. At the same time she did not recognize it as friendship, and, had she suspected Mary of regarding their possible relation in that light, she would have dismissed her pride, perhaps contempt. Nevertheless the sorely whelmed divine thing in her had uttered a feeble sigh of incipient longing after the real; Mary had begun to draw out the love in her; while her conventional judgment justified the proposed extraordinary proceeding with the argument of the endless advantages to result from having in the house, devoted to her wishes, a young woman with an absolute genius for dressmaking; one capable not only of originating in that foremost of arts, but, no doubt, with a little experience, of carrying out also with her own hands the ideas of her mistress. No more would she have to send for the dressmaker on every smallest necessity! No more must she postpone confidence in her appearance, that was, in herself, until Sepia, dressed, should be at leisure to look her over! Never yet had she found herself the best dressed in a room: now there would be hope!
Nothing, however, was clear in her mind as to the position she would have Mary occupy. She had a vague feeling that one like her ought not to be expected to undertake things befitting such women as her maid Folter; for between Mary and Folter there was, she saw, less room for comparison than between Folter and a naked Hottentot. She was incapable, at the same time, of seeing that, in the eyes of certain courtiers of a high kingdom, not much known to the world of fashion, but not the less judges of the beautiful, there was a far greater difference between Mary and herself than between herself and her maid, or between her maid and the Hottentot. For, while the said beholders could hardly have been astonished at Hesper's marrying Mr. Redmain, there would, had Mary done such a thing, have been dismay and a hanging of the head before the face of her Father in heaven.
"Come and live with me, Miss Marston," said Hesper; but it was with a laugh, and that light touch of the tongue which suggests but a flying fancy spoken but for the sake of the preposterous; while Mary, not forgetting she had heard the same thing once before, heard it with a smile, and had no rejoinder ready; whereupon Hesper, who was, in reality, feeling her way, ventured a little more seriousness.
"I should never ask you to do anything you would not like," she said.
"I don't think you could," answered Mary. "There are more things I should like to do for you than you would think to ask. --In fact," she added, looking round with a loving smile, "I don't know what I shouldn't like to do for you."
"My meaning was, that, as a thing of course, I should never ask you to do anything menial," explained Hesper, venturing a little further still, and now speaking in a tone perfectly matter-of-fact.
"I don't know what you intend by _menial_," returned Mary.
Hesper thought it not unnatural she should not be familiar with the word, and proceeded to explain it as well as she could. That seeming ignorance may be the consequence of more knowledge, she had yet to learn. " _Menial_, don't you know?" she said, "is what you give servants to do."
But therewith she remembered that Mary's help in certain things wherein her maid's incapacity was harrowing, was one of the hopes she mainly cherished in making her proposal: that definition of _menial_ would hardly do.
"I mean--I mean," she resumed, with a little embarrassment, a rare thing with her, "--things like--like--cleaning one's shoes, don't you know? --or brushing your hair."
Mary burst out laughing.
"Let me come to you to-morrow morning," she said, "and I will brush your hair that you will want me to come again the next day. You beautiful creature! whose hands would not be honored to handle such stuff as that?"
As she spoke, she took in her fingers a little stray drift from the masses of golden twilight that crowned one of the loveliest temples in which the Holy Ghost had not yet come to dwell.
"If cleaning your shoes be menial, brushing your hair must be royal," she added.
Hesper's heart was touched; and if at the same time her _self_ was flattered, the flattery was mingled with its best antidote--love.
"Do you really mean," she said, "you would not mind doing such things for me? --Of course I should not be exacting."
She laughed again, afraid of showing herself too much in earnest before she was sure of Mary.
"You would not ask me to do anything _menial_?" said Mary, archly.
"I dare not promise," said Hesper, in tone responsive. "How could I help it, if I saw you longing to do what I was longing to have you do?" she added, growing more and more natural.
"I would no more mind cleaning your boots than my own," said Mary.
"But I should not like to clean my own boots," rejoined Hesper.
"No more should I, except it had to be done. Even then I would much rather not," returned Mary, "for cleaning my own would not interest me. To clean yours would. Still I would rather not, for the time might be put to better use--except always it were necessary, and then, of course, it couldn't. But as to anything degrading in it, I scorn the idea. I heard my father once say that, to look down on those who have to do such things may be to despise them for just the one honorable thing about them. --Shall I tell you what I understand by the word _menial_? You know it has come to have a disagreeable taste about it, though at first it only meant, as you say, something that fell to the duty of attendants."
"Do tell me," answered Hesper, with careless permission.
"I did not find it out myself," said Mary. "My father taught me. He was a wise as well as a good man, Mrs. Redmain."
"Oh!" said Hesper, with the ordinary indifference of fashionable people to what an inferior may imagine worth telling them.
"He said," persisted Mary, notwithstanding, "that it is menial to undertake anything you think beneath you for the sake of money; and still more menial, having undertaken it, not to do it as well as possible."
"That would make out a good deal more of the menial in the world than is commonly supposed," laughed Hesper. "I wonder who would do anything for you if you didn't pay them--one way or another!"
"I've taken my father's shoes out of Beenie's hands many a time," said Mary, "and finished them myself, just for the pleasure of making them shine for _him_."
"Re-a-ally!" drawled Hesper, and set out for the conclusion that after all it was no such great compliment the young woman had paid her in wanting to brush her hair. Evidently she had a taste for low things! --was naturally menial! --would do as much for her own father as for a lady like her! But the light in Mary's eyes checked her.
"Any service done without love, whatever it be," resumed Mary, "is slavery--neither more nor less. It can not be anything else. So, you see, most slaves are made slaves by themselves; and that is what makes me doubtful whether I ought to go on serving in the shop; for, as far as the Turnbulls are concerned, I have no pleasure in it; I am only helping them to make money, not doing them any good."
"Why do you not give it up at once then?" asked Hesper.
"Because I like serving the customers. They were my father's customers; and I have learned so much from having to wait on them!"
"Well, now," said Hesper, with a rush for the goal, "if you will come to me, I will make you comfortable; and you shall do just as much or as little as you please."
"What will your maid think?" suggested Mary. "If I am to do what I please, she will soon find me trespassing on her domain."
"I never trouble myself about what my servants think," said Hesper.
"But it might hurt her, you know--to be paid to do a thing and then not allowed to do it."
"She may take herself away, then. I had not thought of parting with her, but I should not be at all sorry if she went. She would be no loss to me."
"Why should you keep her, then?"
"Because one is just as good--and as bad as another. She knows my ways, and I prefer not having to break in a new one. It is a bore to have to say how you like everything done."
"But you are speaking now as if you meant it," said Mary, waking up to the fact that Hesper's tone was of business, and she no longer seemed half playing with the proposal. " _Do_ you mean you want me to come and live with you?"
"Indeed, I do," answered Hesper, emphatically. "You shall have a room close to my bedroom, and there you shall do as you like all day long; and, when I want you, I dare say you will come."
"Fast enough," said Mary, cheerily, as if all was settled. In contrast with her present surroundings, the prospect was more than attractive. " --But would you let me have my piano?" she asked, with sudden apprehension.
"You shall have my grand piano always when I am out, which will be every night in the season, I dare say. That will give you plenty of practice; and you will be able to have the best of lessons. And think of the concerts and oratorios you will go to!"
As she spoke, the carriage drew up at the door of the shop, and Mary took her leave. Hesper accepted her acknowledgments in the proper style of a benefactress, and returned her good-by kindly. But not yet did she shake hands with her.
Some of my readers may wonder that Mary should for a moment dream of giving up what they would call her independence; for was she not on her own ground in the shop of which she was a proprietor? and was the change proposed, by whatever name it might be called, anything other than _service_? But they are outside it, and Mary was in it, and knew how little such an independence was worth the name. Almost everything about the shop had altered in its aspect to her. The very air she breathed in it seemed slavish. Nor was the change in her. The whole thing was growing more and more sordid, for now--save for her part--the one spirit ruled it entirely.
The work had therefore more or less grown a drudgery to her. The spirit of gain was in full blast, and whoever did not trim his sails to it was in danger of finding it rough weather. No longer could she, without offense, and consequent disturbance of spirit, arrange her attendance as she pleased, or have the same time for reading as before. She could encounter black looks, but she could not well live with them; and how was she to continue the servant of such ends as were now exclusively acknowledged in the place? The proposal of Mrs. Redmain stood in advantageous contrast to this treadmill-work. In her house she would be called only to the ministrations of love, and would have plenty of time for books and music, with a thousand means of growth unapproachable in Testbridge. All the slavery lay in the shop, all the freedom in the personal service. But she strove hard to suppress anxiety, for she saw that, of all poverty-stricken contradictions, a Christian with little faith is the worst.
The chief attraction to her, however, was simply Hesper herself. She had fallen in love with her--I hardly know how otherwise to describe the current with which her being set toward her. Few hearts are capable of loving as she loved. It was not merely that she saw in Hesper a grand creature, and lovely to look upon, or that one so much her superior in position showed such a liking for herself; she saw in her one she could help, one at least who sorely needed help, for she seemed to know nothing of what made life worth having--one who had done, and must yet be capable of doing, things degrading to the humanity of womanhood. Without the hope of helping in the highest sense, Mary could not have taken up her abode in such a house as Mrs. Redmain's. No outward service of any kind, even to the sick, was to her service enough to _choose_; were it laid upon her, she would hasten to it; for necessity is the push, gentle or strong, as the man is more or less obedient, by which God sends him into the path he would have him take. But to help to the birth of a beautiful Psyche, enveloped all in the gummy cerecloths of its chrysalis, not yet aware, even, that it must get out of them, and spread great wings to the sunny wind of God--that was a thing for which the holiest of saints might well take a servant's place--the thing for which the Lord of life had done it before him. To help out such a lovely sister--how Hesper would have drawn herself up at the word! it is mine, not Mary's--as she would be when no longer holden of death, but her real self, the self God meant her to be when he began making her, would indeed be a thing worth having lived for! Between the ordinarily benevolent woman and Mary Marston, there was about as great a difference as between the fashionable church-goer and Catherine of Siena. She would be Hesper's servant that she might gain Hesper. I would not have her therefore wondered at as a marvel of humility. She was simply a young woman who believed that the man called Jesus Christ is a real person, such as those represent him who profess to have known him; and she therefore believed the man himself--believed that, when he said a thing, he entirely meant it, knowing it to be true; believed, therefore, that she had no choice but do as he told her. That man was the servant of all; therefore, to regard any honest service as degrading would be, she saw, to deny Christ, to call the life of creation's hero a disgrace. Nor was he the first servant; he did not of himself choose his life; the Father gave it him to live--sent him to be a servant, because he, the Father, is the first and greatest servant of all. He gives it to one to serve as the rich can, to another as the poor must. The only disgrace, whether of the counting-house, the shop, or the family, is to think the service degrading. If it be such, why not sit down and starve rather than do it? No man has a right to disgrace himself. Starve, I say; the world will lose nothing in you, for you are its disgrace, who count service degrading. You are much too grand people for what your Maker requires of you, and does himself, and yet you do it after a fashion, because you like to eat and go warm. You would take rank in the kingdom of hell, not the kingdom of heaven. But obedient love, learned by the meanest Abigail, will make of her an angel of ministration, such a one as he who came to Peter in the prison, at whose touch the fetters fell from the limbs of the apostle.
"What forced, overdriven, Utopian stuff! A kingdom always coming, and never come! I hold by what _is. _ This solid, plowable earth will serve my turn. My business is what I can find in the oyster."
I hear you, friend. Your answer will come whence you do not look for it. For some, their only answer will be the coming of that which they deny; and the _Presence_ will be a very different thing to those who desire it and those who do not. In the mean time, if we are not yet able to serve like God from pure love, let us do it because it is his way; so shall we come to do it from pure love also.
The very next morning, as she called it--that is, at four o'clock in the afternoon--Hesper again entered the shop, and, to the surprise and annoyance of the master of it, was taken by Mary through the counter and into the house. "What a false impression," thought the great man, "will it give of the way _we_ live, to see the Marstons' shabby parlor in a warehouse!" But he would have been more astonished and more annoyed still, had the deafening masses of soft goods that filled the house permitted him to hear through them what passed between the two. Before they came down, Mary had accepted a position in Mrs. Redmain's house, if that may be called a position which was so undefined; and Hesper had promised that she would not mention the matter. For Mary judged Mr. Turnbull would be too glad to get rid of her to mind how brief the notice she gave him, and she would rather not undergo the remarks that were sure to be made in contempt of her scheme. She counted it only fair, however, to let him know that she intended giving up her place behind the counter, hinting that, as she meant to leave when it suited her without further warning, it would be well to look out at once for one to take her place.
As to her money in the business, she scarcely thought of it, and said nothing about it, believing it as safe as in the bank. It was in the power of a dishonest man who prided himself on his honesty--the worst kind of rogue in the creation; but she had not yet learned to think of him as a dishonest man--only as a greedy one--and the money had been there ever since she had heard of money. Mr. Turnbull was so astonished by her communication that, not seeing at once how the change was likely to affect him, he held his peace--with the cunning pretense that his silence arose from anger. His first feeling was of pleasure, but the man of business must take care how he shows himself pleased. On reflection, he continued pleased; for, as they did not seem likely to succeed in securing Mary in the way they had wished, the next best thing certainly would be to get rid of her. Perhaps, indeed, it was the very best thing; for it would be easy to get George a wife more suitable to the position of his family than a little canting dissenter, and her money would be in their hands all the same; while, once clear of her haunting cat-eyes, ready to pounce upon whatever her soft-headed father had taught her was wicked, he could do twice the business. But, while he continued pleased, he continued careful not to show his satisfaction, for she would then go smelling about for the cause! During three whole days, therefore, he never spoke to her. On the fourth, he spoke as if nothing had ever been amiss between them, and showed some interest in her further intentions. But Mary, in the straightforward manner peculiar to herself, told him she preferred not speaking of them at present; whereupon the cunning man concluded that she wanted a place in another shop, and was on the outlook--prepared to leave the moment one should turn up.
She asked him one day whether he had yet found a person to take her place.
"Time enough for that," he answered. "You're not gone yet."
"As you please, Mr. Turnbull," said Mary. "It was merely that I should be sorry to leave you without sufficient help in the shop."
"And _I_ should be sorry," rejoined Turnbull, "that Miss Marston should fancy herself indispensable to the business she turned her back upon."
From that moment, the restraint he had for the last week or two laid upon himself thus broken through, he never spoke to her except with such rudeness that she no longer ventured to address him even on shop-business; and all the people in the place, George included, following the example so plainly set them, she felt, when, at last, in the month of November, a letter from Hesper heralded the hour of her deliverance, that to take any formal leave would be but to expose herself to indignity. She therefore merely told Turnbull, one evening as he left the shop, that she would not be there in the morning, and was gone from Testbridge before it was opened the next day.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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24
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MRS. REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM.
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A few years ago, a London drawing-room was seldom beautiful; but size is always something, and, if Mrs. Redmain's had not harmony, it had gilding--a regular upholsterer's drawing-room it was, on which about as much taste had been expended as on the fattening of a prize-pig. Happily there is as little need as temptation to give any description of it, with its sheets of glass and steel, its lace curtains, crude-colored walls and floor and couches, and glittering chandeliers of a thousand prisms. Everybody knows the kind of room--a huddle of the chimera ambition wallowing in the chaos of the commonplace--no miniature world of harmonious abiding. The only interesting thing in it was, that on all sides were doors, which must lead out of it, and might lead to a better place.
It was about eleven o'clock of a November morning--more like one in March. There might be a thick fog before the evening, but now the sun was shining like a brilliant lump of ice--so inimical to heat, apparently, that a servant had just dropped the venetian blind of one of the windows to shut his basilisk-gaze from the sickening fire, which was now rapidly recovering. Betwixt the cold sun and the hard earth, a dust-befogged wind, plainly borrowed from March, was sweeping the street.
Mr. and Mrs. Redmain had returned to town thus early because their country-place was in Cornwall, and there Mr. Redmain was too far from his physician. He was now considerably better, however, and had begun to go about again, for the weather did not yet affect him much. He was now in his study, as it was called, where he generally had his breakfast alone. Mrs. Redmain always had hers in bed, as often with a new novel as she could, of which her maid cut the leaves, and skimmed the cream. But now she was descending the stair, straight as a Greek goddess, and about as cold as the marble she is made of--mentally rigid, morally imperturbable, and vacant of countenance to a degree hardly equaled by the most ordinary of goddesses. She entered the drawing-room with a slow, careless, yet stately step, which belonged to her, I can not say by nature, for it was not natural, but by ancestry. She walked to the chimney, seated herself in a low, soft, shiny chair almost on the hearth-rug, and gazed listlessly into the fire. In a minute she rose and rang the bell.
"Send my maid, and shut the door," she said.
The woman came.
"Has Miss Yolland left her room yet?" she asked.
"No, ma'am."
"Let her know I am in the drawing-room."
This said, she resumed her fire-gazing.
There was not much to see in the fire, for the fire is but a reflector, and there was not much behind the eyes that looked into it for that fire to reflect. Hesper was no dreamer--the more was the pity, for dreams are often the stuff out of which actions are made. Had she been a truer woman, she might have been a dreamer, but where was the space for dreaming in a life like hers, without heaven, therefore without horizon, with so much room for desiring, and so little room for hope? The buz that greeted her entrance of a drawing-room, was the chief joy she knew; to inhabit her well-dressed body in the presence of other well-dressed bodies, her highest notion of existence. And even upon these hung ever as an abating fog the consciousness of having a husband. I can not say she was tired of marriage, for she had loathed her marriage from the first, and had not found it at all better than her expectation: she had been too ignorant to forebode half its horrors.
Education she had had but little that was worth the name, for she had never been set growing; and now, although well endowed by nature, she was gradually becoming stupid. People who have plenty of money, and neither hope nor aspiration, must become stupid, except indeed they hate, and then for a time the devil in them will make them a sort of clever.
Miss Yolland came undulating. No kiss, no greeting whatever passed between the ladies. Sepia began at once to rearrange a few hot-house flowers on the mantel-piece, looking herself much like some dark flower painted in an old missal.
"This day twelve months!" said Hesper.
"I know," returned Sepia.
"If one could die without pain, and there was nothing to come after!" said Hesper. "What a tiresome dream it is!"
"Dream, or nightmare, or what you will, you had better get all you can out of it before you break it," said Sepia.
"You seem to think it worth keeping!" yawned Hesper.
Sepia smiled, with her face to the glass, in which she saw the face of her cousin with her eyes on the fire; but she made no answer. Hesper went on.
"Ah!" she said, "your story is not mine. You are free; I am a slave. You are alive; I am in my coffin."
"That's marriage," said Sepia, dryly.
"It would not matter much," continued Hesper, "if you could have your coffin to yourself; but when you have to share it--ugh!"
"If I were you, then," said Sepia, "I would not lie still; I would get up and bite--I mean, be a vampire."
Hesper did not answer. Sepia turned from the mirror, looked at her, and burst into a laugh--at least, the sound she made had all the elements of a laugh--except the merriment.
"Now really, Hesper, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she cried. "You to put on the pelican and the sparrow, with all the world before you, and all the men in it at your feet!"
"A pack of fools!" remarked Hesper, with a calmness which in itself was scorn. "I don't deny it--but amusing fools--you must allow that!"
"They don't amuse me."
"That's your fault: you won't be amused. The more foolish they are, the more amusing I find them."
"I am sick of it all. Nothing amuses me. How can it, when there is nothing behind it? You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water an inch deep, and then the mud!"
"I declare, misery makes a poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable peck, I hope." " _I_ don't mind mud so long as you can keep out of it. But when one is over head and ears in it, I should like to know what life is worth," said Hesper, heedless that the mud was of her own making. "I declare, Sepia," she went on, drawling the declaration, "if I were to be asked whether I would go on or not--" "You would ask a little time to make up your mind, Hesper, I fancy," suggested Sepia, for Hesper had paused. As she did not reply, Sepia resumed.
"Which is your favorite poison, Hesper?" she said.
"When I choose, it will be to use," replied Hesper.
"Rhyming, at last!" said Sepia.
But Hesper would not laugh, and her perfect calmness checked the laughter which would have been Sepia's natural response: she was careful not to go too far.
"Do you know, Hesper," she said, with seriousness, "what is the matter with you?"
"Tolerably well," answered Hesper.
"You do not--let me tell you. You are nothing but a baby yet. You have no heart."
"If you mean that I have never been in love, you are right. But you talk foolishly; for you know that love is no more within my reach than if I were the corpse I feel."
Sepia pressed her lips together, and nodded knowingly; then, after a moment's pause, said: "When your hour is come, you will understand. Every woman's hour comes, one time or another--whether she will or not."
"Sepia, if you think that, because I hate my husband, I would allow another man to make love to me, you do not know me yet."
"I know you very well; you do not know yourself, Hesper; you do not know the heart of a woman--because your own has never come awake yet."
"God forbid it ever should, then--so long as--as the man I hate is alive!"
Sepia laughed.
"A good prayer," she said; "for who can tell what you might do to him!"
"Sepia, I sometimes think you are a devil."
"And I sometimes think you are a saint."
"What do you take me for the other times?"
"A hypocrite. What do _you_ take _me_ for the other times?"
"No hypocrite," answered Hesper.
With a light, mocking laugh, Sepia turned away, and left the room.
Hesper did not move. If stillness indicates thought, then Hesper was thinking; and surely of late she had suffered what might have waked something like thought in what would then have been something like a mind: all the machinery of thought was there--sorely clogged, and rusty; but for a woman to hate her husband is hardly enough to make a thinking creature of her. True as it was, there was no little affectation in her saying what she did about the worthlessness of her life. She was plump and fresh; her eye was clear, her hand firm and cool; suffering would have to go a good deal deeper before it touched in her the issues of life, or the love of it. What set her talking so, was in great part the _ennui_ of endeavor after enjoyment, and the reaction from success in the pursuit. Her low moods were, however, far more frequent than, even with such fatigue and reaction to explain them, belonged to her years, her health, or her temperament.
The fire grew hot. Hesper thought of her complexion, and pushed her chair back. Then she rose, and, having taken a hand-screen from the chimney-piece, was fanning herself with it, when the door opened, and a servant asked if she were at home to Mr. Helmer. She hesitated a moment: what an unearthly hour for a caller!
"Show him up," she answered: anything was better than her own company.
Tom Helmer entered--much the same--a little paler and thinner. He made his approach with a certain loose grace natural to him, and seated himself on the chair, at some distance from her own, to which Mrs. Redmain motioned him.
Tom seldom failed of pleasing. He was well dressed, and not too much; and, to the natural confidence of his shallow character, added the assurance born of a certain small degree of success in his profession, which he took for the pledge of approaching supremacy. He carried himself better than he used, and his legs therefore did not look so long. His hair continued to curl soft and silky about his head, for he protested against the fashionable convict-style. His hat was new, and he bore it in front of him like a ready apology.
It was to no presentableness of person, however, any more than to previous acquaintance, that Tom now owed his admittance. True, he had been to Durnmelling not unfrequently, but that was in the other world of the country, and even there Hesper had taken no interest in the self-satisfied though not ill-bred youth who went galloping about the country, showing off to rustic girls. It was merely, as I have said, that she could no longer endure a _tete-a-tete_ with one she knew so little as herself, and whose acquaintance she was so little desirous of cultivating.
Tom had been to a small party at the house a few evenings before, brought thither by the well-known leader of a certain literary clique, who, in return for homage, not seldom, took younger aspirants under a wing destined never to be itself more than half-fledged. It was, notwithstanding, broad enough already so to cover Tom with its shadow that under it he was able to creep into several houses of a sort of distinction, and among them into Mrs. Redmain's.
Nothing of less potency than the presumption attendant on self-satisfaction could have emboldened him to call thus early, and that in the hope not merely of finding Mrs. Redmain at home, but of finding her alone; and, with the not unusual reward of unworthy daring, he had succeeded. He was ambitious of making himself acceptable to ladies of social influence, and of being known to stand well with such. In the case of Mrs. Redmain he was the more anxious, because she had not received him on any footing of former acquaintance.
At the gathering to which I have referred, a certain song was sung by a lady, not without previous manoeuvre on the part of Tom, with which Mrs. Redmain had languidly expressed herself pleased; that song he had now brought her--for, concerning words and music both, he might have said with Touchstone, "An ill-favored thing, but mine own." He did not quote Touchstone because he believed both words and music superexcellent, the former being in truth not quite bad, and the latter nearly as good. Appreciation was the very hunger of Tom's small life, and here was a chance!
"I ought to apologize," he said, airily, "and I will, if you will allow me."
Mrs. Redmain said nothing, only waited with her eyes. They were calm, reposeful eyes, not fixed, scarcely lying upon Tom. It was chilling, but he was not easily chilled when self was in the question--as it generally was with Tom. He felt, however, that he must talk or be lost.
"I have taken the liberty," he said, "of bringing you the song I had the pleasure--a greater pleasure than you will readily imagine--of hearing you admire the other evening."
"I forget," said Hesper.
"I would not have ventured," continued Tom, "had it not happened that both air and words were my own."
"Ah! --indeed! --I did not know you were a poet, Mr.--" She had forgotten his name.
"That or nothing," answered Tom, boldly.
"And a musician, too?"
"At your service, Mrs. Redmain."
"I don't happen to want a poet at present--or a musician either," she said, with just enough of a smile to turn the rudeness into what Tom accepted as a flattering familiarity.
"Nor am I in want of a place," he replied, with spirit; "a bird can sing on any branch. Will you allow me to sing this song on yours? Mrs. Downport scarcely gave the expression I could have desired. --May I read the voices before I sing them?"
Without either intimacy or encouragement, Tom was capable of offering to read his own verses! Such fools self-partisanship makes of us.
Mrs. Redmain was, for her, not a little amused with the young man; he was not just like every other that came to the house.
"I should li-i-ike," she said.
Tom laid himself back a little in his chair, with the sheet of music in his hand, closed his eyes, and repeated as follows--he knew all his own verses by heart: "Lovely lady, sweet disdain! Prithee keep thy Love at home; Bind him with a tressed chain; Do not let the mischief roam.
"In the jewel-cave, thine eye, In the tangles of thy hair, It is well the imp should lie-- There his home, his heaven is there.
"But for pity's sake, forbid Beauty's wasp at me to fly; Sure the child should not be chid, And his mother standing by.
"For if once the villain came To my house, too well I know He would set it all aflame-- To the winds its ashes blow.
"Prithee keep thy Love at home; Net him up or he will start; And if once the mischief roam, Straight he'll wing him to my heart."
What there might be in verse like this to touch with faintest emotion, let him say who cultivates art for art's sake. Doubtless there is that in rhythm and rhyme and cadence which will touch the pericardium when the heart itself is not to be reached by divinest harmony; but, whether such women as Hesper feel this touch or only admire a song as they admire the church-prayers and Shakespeare, or whether, imagining in it some _tour de force_ of which they are themselves incapable, they therefore look upon it as a mighty thing, I am at a loss to determine. All I know is that a gleam as from some far-off mirror of admiration did certainly, to Tom's great satisfaction, appear on Hesper's countenance. As, however, she said nothing, he, to waive aside a threatening awkwardness, lightly subjoined: "Queen Anne is all the rage now, you see."
Mrs. Redmain knew that Queen-Anne houses were in fashion, and was even able to recognize one by its flush window-frames, while she had felt something odd, which might be old-fashioned, in the song; between the two, she was led to the conclusion that the fashion of Queen Anne's time had been revived in the making of verses also.
"Can you, then, make a song to any pattern you please?" she asked.
"I fancy so," answered Tom, indifferently, as if it were nothing to him to do whatever he chose to attempt. And in fact he could imitate almost anything--and well, too--the easier that he had nothing of his own pressing for utterance; for he had yet made no response to the first demand made on every man, the only demand for originality made on any man--that he should order his own way aright.
"How clever you must be!" drawled Hesper; and, notwithstanding the tone, the words were pleasant in the ears of goose Tom. He rose, opened the piano, and, with not a little cheap facility, began to accompany a sweet tenor voice in the song he had just read.
The door opened, and Mr. Redmain came in. He gave a glance at Tom as he sang, and went up to his wife where she still sat, with her face to the fire, and her back to the piano.
"New singing-master, eh?" he said.
"No," answered his wife.
"Who the deuce is he?"
"I forget his name," replied Hesper, in the tone of one bored by question. "He used to come to Durnmelling."
"That is no reason why he should not have a name to him."
Hesper did not reply. Tom went on playing. The moment he struck the last chord, she called to him in a clear, soft, cold voice: "Will you tell Mr. Redmain your name? I happen to have forgotten it."
Tom picked up his hat, rose, came forward, and, mentioning his name, held out his hand.
"I don't know you," said Mr. Redmain, touching his palm with two fingers that felt like small fishes.
"It is of no consequence," said his wife; "Mr. Aylmer is an old acquaintance of our family."
"Only you don't quite remember his name!"
"It is not my _friends'_ names only I have an unhappy trick of forgetting. I often forget yours, Mr. Redmain!"
"My _good_ name, you must mean."
"I never heard that."
Neither had raised the voice, or spoken with the least apparent anger.
Mr. Redmain gave a grin instead of a retort. He appreciated her sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so that he vanished with something of the look of a hairless tiger.
The moment he disappeared, Tom's gaze, which had been fascinated, sought Hesper. Her lips were shaping the word _brute! _--Tom heard it with his eyes; her eyes were flashing, and her face was flushed. But the same instant, in a voice perfectly calm-- "Is there anything else you would like to sing, Mr. Helmer?" she said. "Or--" Here she ceased, with the slightest possible choking--it was only of anger--in the throat.
Tom's was a sympathetic nature, especially where a pretty woman was in question. He forgot entirely that she had given quite as good, or as bad, as she received, and was hastening to say something foolish, imagining he had looked upon the sorrows of a lovely and unhappy wife and was almost in her confidence, when Sepia entered the room, with a dark glow that flashed into dusky radiance at sight of the handsome Tom. She had noted him on the night of the party, and remembered having seen him at the merrymaking in the old hall of Durnmelling, but he had not been introduced to her. A minute more, and they were sitting together in a bay-window, blazing away at each other like two corvettes, though their cartridges were often blank enough, while Hesper, never heeding them, kept her place by the chimney, her gaze transferred from the fire to the novel she had sent for from her bedroom.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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25
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MARY'S RECEPTION.
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In the afternoon of the same day, now dreary enough, with the dreariness naturally belonging to the dreariest month of the year, Mary arrived in the city preferred to all cities by those who live in it, but the most uninviting, I should imagine, to a stranger, of all cities on the face of the earth. Cold seemed to have taken to itself a visible form in the thin, gray fog that filled the huge station from the platform to the glass roof. The latter had vanished, indistinguishable from sky invisible, and from the brooding darkness, in which the lamps innumerable served only to make spots of thinness. It was a mist, not a November fog, properly so called; but every breath breathed by every porter, as he ran along by the side of the slowly halting train, was adding to its mass, which seemed to Mary to grow in bulk and density as she gazed. Her quiet, simple, decided manner at once secured her attention, and she was among the first who had their boxes on cabs and were driving away.
But the drive seemed interminable, and she had grown anxious and again calmed herself many times, before it came to an end. The house at which the cab drew up was large, and looked as dreary as large, but scarcely drearier than any other house in London on that same night of November. The cabman rang the bell, but it was not until they had waited a time altogether unreasonable that the door at length opened, and a lofty, well-built footman in livery appeared framed in it.
Mary got out, and, going up the steps, said she hoped the driver had brought her to the right house: it was Mrs. Redmain's she wanted.
"Mrs. Redmain is not at home, miss," answered the man. "I didn't hear as how she was expecting of any one," he added, with a glance at the boxes, formlessly visible on the cab, through the now thicker darkness.
"She is expecting me, I know," returned Mary; "but of course she would not stay at home to receive me," she remarked, with a smile.
"Oh!" returned the man, in a peculiar tone, and adding, "I'll see," went away, leaving her on the top of the steps, with the cabman behind her, at the bottom of them, waiting orders to get her boxes down.
"It don't appear as you was overwelcome, miss!" he remarked: with his comrades on the stand he passed for a wit; "--leastways, it don't seem as your sheets was quite done hairing."
"It's all right," said Mary, cheerfully.
She was not ready to imagine her dignity in danger, therefore did not provoke assault upon it by anxiety for its safety.
"I'm sorry to hear it, miss," the man rejoined.
"Why?" she asked. " 'Cause I should ha' liked to ha' taken _you_ farther."
"But why?" said Mary, the second time, not understanding him, and not unwilling to cover the awkwardness of that slow minute of waiting.
"Because it gives a poor man with a whole family o' prowocations some'at of a chance, to 'ave a affable young lady like you, miss, behind him in his cab, once a year, or thereabouts. It's not by no means as I'd have you go farther and fare worse, which it's a sayin' as I've heerd said, miss. So, if you're sure o' the place, I may as well be a-gettin' down of _your_ boxes."
So saying, he got on the cab, and proceeded to unfasten the chain that secured the luggage.
"Wait a bit, cabbie. Don't you be in sech a 'urry as if you was a 'ansom, now," cried the footman, reappearing at the farther end of the hall. "I should be sorry if there was a mistake, and you wasn't man enough to put your boxes up again without assistance." Then, turning to Mary, "Mrs. Perkin says, miss--that's the housekeeper, miss," he went on, "--that, if as you're the young woman from the country--and I'm sure I beg your pardon if I make a mistake--it ain't my fault, miss--Mrs. Perkin says she did hear Mrs. Redmain make mention of one, but she didn't have any instructions concerning her. --But, as there you are," he continued more familiarly, gathering courage from Mary's nodded assent, "you can put your boxes in the hall, and sit down, she says, till Mrs. R. comes 'ome."
"Do you think she will be long?" asked Mary.
"Well, that's what no fellow can't say, seein' its a new play as she's gone to. They call it Doomsday, an' there's no tellin' when parties is likely to come 'ome from that," said the man, with a grin of satisfaction at his own wit.
Was London such a happy place that everybody in it was given to joking, thought Mary. " 'Ere, mister! gi' me a 'and wi' this 'ere luggage," cried the cabman, finding the box he was getting down too much for him. "Yah wouldn't see me break my back, an' my poor 'orse standin' there a lookin' on--would ye now?"
"Why don't you bring a man with you?" objected the footman, as he descended the steps notwithstanding, to give the required assistance. "I ain't paid as a crane. --By Juppiter! what a weight the new party's boxes is!"
"Only that one," said Mary, apologetically. "It is full of books. The other is not half so heavy."
"Oh, it ain't the weight, miss!" returned the footman, who had not intended she should hear the remark. "I believe Mr. Cabman and myself will prove equal to the occasion."
With that the book-box came down a great bump on the pavement, and presently both were in the hall, the one on the top of the other. Mary paid the cabman, who asked not a penny more than his fare; he departed with thanks; the facetious footman closed the door, told her to take a seat, and went away full of laughter, to report that the young person had brought a large library with her to enliven the dullness of her new situation.
Mrs. Perkin smiled crookedly, and, in a tone of pleasant reproof, desired her laughter-compressing inferior not to forget his manners.
"Please, ma'am, am I to leave the young woman sittin' up there all by herself in the cold?" he asked, straightening himself up. "She do look a rayther superior sort of young person," he added, "and the 'all-stove is dead out."
"For the present, Castle," replied Mrs. Perkin.
She judged it wise to let the young woman have a lesson at once in subjection and inferiority.
Mrs. Perkin was a rather tall, rather thin, quite straight, and very dark-complexioned woman. She always threw her head back on one side and her chin out on the other when she spoke, and had about her a great deal of the authoritative, which she mingled with such consideration toward her subordinates as to secure their obedience to her, while she cultivated antagonism to her mistress. She had had a better education than most persons of her class, but was morally not an atom their superior in consequence. She never went into a new place but with the feeling that she was of more importance by far than her untried mistress, and the worthier person of the two. She entered her service, therefore, as one whose work it was to take care of herself against a woman whose mistress she ought to have been, had Providence but started her with her natural rights. At the same time, she would have been _almost_ as much offended by a hint that she was not a Christian, as she would have been by a doubt whether she was a lady. For, indeed, she was both, if a great opinion of herself constituted the latter, and a great opinion of going to church constituted the former.
She had not been taken into Hesper's confidence with regard to Mary, had discovered that "a young person" was expected, but had learned nothing of what her position in the house was to be. She welcomed, therefore, this opportunity both of teaching Mrs. Redmain--she never called her her _mistress_, while severely she insisted on the other servants' speaking of her so--the propriety of taking counsel with her housekeeper and of letting the young person know in time that Mrs. Perkin was in reality her mistress.
The relation of the upper servants of the house to their employers was more like that of the managers of an hotel to their guests. The butler, the lady's-maid, and Mr. Redmain's body-servant, who had been with him before his marriage, and was supposed to be deep in his master's confidence, ate with the housekeeper in her room, waited upon by the livery and maid-servants, except the second cook: the first cook only came to superintend the cooking of the dinner, and went away after. To all these Mrs. Perkin was careful to be just; and, if she was precise even to severity with them, she was herself obedient to the system she had established--the main feature of which was punctuality. She not only regarded punctuality as the foremost of virtues, but, in righteous moral sequence, made it the first of her duties; and the benefit everybody reaped. For nothing oils the household wheels so well as this same punctuality. In a family, love, if it be strong, genuine, and patent, will make up for anything; but, where there is no family and no love, the loss of punctuality will soon turn a house into the mere pouch of a social _inferno_. Here the master and mistress came and went, regardless of each other, and of all household polity; but their meals were ready for them to the minute, when they chose to be there to eat them; the carriage came round like one of the puppets on the Strasburg clock; the house was quiet as a hospital; the bells were answered--all except the door-bell outside of calling hours--with swiftness; you could not soil your fingers anywhere--not even if the sweep had been that same morning; the manners of the servants--_when serving_--were unexceptionable; but the house was scarcely more of a home than one of the huge hotels characteristic of the age.
In the hall of it sat Mary for the space of an hour, not exactly learning the lesson Mrs. Perkin had intended to teach her, but learning more than one thing Mrs. Perkin was not yet capable of learning. I can not say she was comfortable, for she was both cold and hungry; but she was far from miserable. She had no small gift of patience, and had taught herself to look upon the less troubles of life as on a bad dream. There are children, though not yet many, capable, through faith in their parents, of learning not a little by their experience, and Mary was one of such; from the first she received her father's lessons like one whose business it was to learn them, and had thereby come to learn where he had himself learned. Hence she was not one to say _our Father in heaven_, and act as if there were no such Father, or as if he cared but little for his children. She was even foolish enough to believe that that Father both knew and cared that she was hungry and cold and wearily uncomfortable; and thence she was weak enough to take the hunger and cold and discomfort as mere passing trifles, which could not last a moment longer than they ought. From her sore-tried endeavors after patience, had grown the power of active waiting--and a genuinely waiting child is one of the loveliest sights the earth has to show.
This was not the reception she had pictured to herself, as the train came rushing from Testbridge to London; she had not, indeed, imagined a warm one, but she had not expected to be forgotten--for so she interpreted her abandonment in the hall, which seemed to grow colder every minute. She saw no means of reminding the household of her neglected presence, and indeed would rather have remained where she was till the morning than encounter the growing familiarity of the man who had admitted her. She did think once--if Mrs. Redmain were to hear of her reception, how she would resent it! and would have found it difficult to believe how far people like her are from troubling themselves about the behavior of their servants to other people; for they have no idea of an obligation to rule their own house, neither seem to have a notion of being accountable for what goes on in it.
She had grown very weary, and began to long for a floor on which she might stretch herself; there was not a sound in the house but the ticking of a clock somewhere; and she was now wondering whether everybody had gone to bed, when she heard a step approaching, and presently Castle, who was the only man at home, stood up before her, and, with the ease of perfect self-satisfaction, and as if there was nothing in the neglect of her but the custom of the house to cool people well in the hall before admitting them to its penetralia, said, "Step this way--miss"; the last word added after a pause of pretended hesitation, for the man had taken his cue from the housekeeper.
Mary rose, and followed him to the basement story, into a comfortable room, where sat Mrs. Perkin, embroidering large sunflowers on a piece of coarse stuff. She was _artistic_, and despised the whole style of the house.
"You may sit down," she said, and pointed to a chair near the door.
Mary, not a little amused, for all her discomfort, did as she was permitted, and awaited what should come next.
"What part of the country are you from?" asked Mrs. Perkin, with her usual diagonal upward toss of the chin, but without lifting her eyes from her work.
"From Testbridge," answered Mary.
"The servants in this house are in the habit of saying _ma'am_ to their superiors: it is required of them," remarked Mrs. Perkin. But, although her tone was one of rebuke, she said the words lightly, tossed the last of them off, indeed, almost playfully, as if the lesson was meant for one who could hardly have been expected to know better. "And what place did you apply for in the house?" she went on to ask.
"I can hardly say, ma'am," answered Mary, avoiding both inflection and emphasis, and by her compliance satisfying Mrs. Perkin that she had been right in requiring the _kotou_. "It is not usual for young persons to be engaged without knowing for what purpose."
"I suppose not, ma'am."
"What wages were you to have?" next inquired Mrs. Perkin, gradually assuming a more decided drawl as she became more assured of her position with the stranger. She would gladly get some light on the affair. "You need not object to mentioning them," she went on, for she imagined Mary hesitated, whereas she was only a little troubled to keep from laughing; "I always pay the wages myself."
"There was nothing said about wages, ma'am," answered Mary.
"Indeed! Neither work nor wages specified? Excuse me if I say it seems rather peculiar. --We must be content to wait a little, then--until we learn what Mrs. Redmain expected of you, _and whether or not you are capable of it_. We can go no further now."
"Certainly not, ma'am," assented Mary.
"Can you use your needle?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Have you done any embroidery?"
"I understand it a little, but I am not particularly fond of it."
"You mistake: I did not ask you whether you were fond of it," said Mrs. Perkin; "I asked you if you had ever done any"; and she smiled severely, but ludicrously, for a diagonal smile is apt to have a comic effect. "Here! --take off your gloves," she continued, "and let me see you do one of these loose-worked sunflowers. They are the fashion now, though. I dare say, you will not be able to see the beauty of them."
"Please, ma'am," returned Mary, "if you will excuse me, I would rather go to my room. I have had a long journey, and am very tired."
"There is no room yours. --I have had no character with you. --Nothing can be done til Mrs. Redman comes home, and she and I have had a little talk about you. But you can go to the housemaid's--the second housemaid's room, I mean--and make yourself tidy. There is a spare bed in it, I believe, which you can have for the night; only mind you don't keep the girl awake talking to her, or she will be late in the morning, and that I never put up with. I think you will do. You seem willing to learn, and that is half the battle."
Therewith Mrs. Perkin, believing she had laid in awe the foundation of a rightful authority over the young person, gave her a nod of dismissal, which she intended to be friendly.
"Please, ma'am," said Mary, "could I have one of my boxes taken up stairs?"
"Certainly not. I can not have two movings of them; I must take care of my men. And your boxes, I understand, are heavy, quite absurdly so. It would _look_ better in a young person not to have so much to carry about with her."
"I have but two boxes, ma'am," said Mary.
"Full of _books_, I am told."
"One of them only."
"You must do your best without them to-night. When I have made up my mind what is to be done with you, I shall let you have the one with your clothes; the other shall be put away in the box-room. I give my people what books I think fit. For light reading, the 'Fireside Herald' is quite enough for the room. --There--good night!"
Mary courtesied, and left her. At the door she glanced this way and that to find some indication to guide her steps. A door was open at the end of a passage, and from the odor that met her, it seemed likely to be that of the kitchen. She approached, and peeped in.
"Who is that?" cried a voice irate.
It was the voice of the second cook, who was there supreme except when the _chef_ was present. Mary stepped in, and the woman advanced to meet her.
"May I ask to what I am indebted for the honner of this unexpected visit?" said the second cook, whose head its overcharge of self-importance jerked hither and thither upon her neck, as she seized the opportunity of turning to her own use a sentence she had just read in the "Fireside Herald" which had taken her fancy--spoken by Lady Blanche Rivington Delaware to a detested lover disinclined to be dismissed.
"Would you please tell me where to find the second house-maid," said Mary. "Mrs. Perkin has sent me to her room."
"Why don't Mrs. Perkin show you the way, then?" returned the woman. "There ain't nobody else in the house as I knows on fit to send to the top o' them stairs with you. A nice way Jemim' 'ill be in when _she_ comes 'ome, to find a stranger in her room!"
The same instant, however, the woman bethought herself that, if what she had said in her haste were reported, it would be as much as her place was worth; and at once thereupon she assumed a more complaisant tone. Casting a look at her saucepans, as if to warn them concerning their behavior in her absence, she turned again to Mary, saying: "I believe I better show you the way myself. It's easier to take you than find a girl to do it. Them hussies is never where they oughto be! _You_ follow _me_."
She led the way along two passages, and up a back staircase of stone--up and up, till Mary, unused to such heights, began to be aware of knees. Plainly at last in the regions of the roof, she thought her hill Difficulty surmounted, but the cook turned a sharp corner, and Mary following found herself once more at the foot of a stair--very narrow and steep, leading up to one of those old-fashioned roof-turrets which had begun to appear in the new houses of that part of London.
"Are you taking me to the clouds, cook?" she said, willing to be cheerful, and to acknowledge her obligation for laborious guidance.
"Not yet a bit, I hope," answered the cook; "we'll get there soon enough, anyhow--excep' you belong to them peculiars as wants to be saints afore their time. If that's your sort, don't you come here; for a wickeder 'ouse, or an 'ouse as you got to work harder in o' Sundays, no one won't easily find in this here west end."
With these words she panted up the last few steps, immediately at the top of which was the room sought. It was a very small one, scarcely more than holding the two beds. Having lighted the gas, the cook left her; and Mary, noting that one of the beds was not made up, was glad to throw herself upon it. Covering herself with her cloak, her traveling-rug, and the woolen counterpane, she was soon fast asleep.
She was roused by a cry, half of terror, half of surprise. There stood the second housemaid, who, having been told nothing of her room-fellow, stared and gasped.
"I am sorry to have startled you," said Mary, who had half risen, leaning on her elbow. "They ought to have told you there was a stranger in your room."
The girl was not long from the country, and, in the midst of the worst vulgarity in the world, namely, among the servants of the selfish, her manners had not yet ceased to be simple. For a moment, however, she seemed capable only of panting, and pressing her hand on her heart.
"I am very sorry," said Mary, again; "but you see I won't hurt you! I don't look dangerous, do I?"
"No, miss," answered the girl, with an hysterical laugh. "I been to the play, and there was a man in it was a thief, you know, miss!" And with that she burst out crying.
It was some time before Mary got her quieted, but, when she did, the girl was quite reasonable. She deplored that the bed was not made up, and would willingly have yielded hers; she was sorry she had not a clean night-gown to offer her--"not that it would be fit for the likes of _you_, miss!" --and showed herself full of friendly ministration. Mary being now without her traveling-cloak, Jemima judged from her dress she must be some grand visitor's maid, vastly her superior in the social scale: if she had taken her for an inferior, she would doubtless, like most, have had some airs handy.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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26
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HER POSITION.
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Mary seemed to have but just got to sleep again, when she was startled awake by the violent ringing of a bell, almost at her ear.
"Oh, you needn't trouble yet a long while, miss!" said the girl, who was already dressing. "I've got ever so many fires to light, ere there'll be a thought of you!"
Mary lay down again, and once more fell fast asleep.
She was waked the third time by the girl telling her that breakfast was ready; whereupon she rose, and made herself as tidy as she could, while Jemima _cleaned herself up a bit,_ and was not a little improved in the process.
"I thought," she said, "as Mrs. Perkin would 'a' as't you to your first meal with her; but she told me, when I as't what were to be done with you, as how you must go to the room, and eat your breakfast with the rest of us."
"As Mrs. Perkin pleases," said Mary.
She had before this come to understand the word of her Master, that not what enters into a man defiles him, but only what comes out of him; hence, that no man's dignity is affected by what another does to him, but only by what he does, or would like to do, himself.
She did, however, feel a little shy on entering "the room," where all the livery and most of the women servants were already seated at breakfast. Two of the men, with a word to each other, made room for her between them, and laughed; but she took no notice, and seated herself at the bottom of the table with her companion. Everything was as clean and tidy as heart could wish, and Mary was glad enough to make a good meal.
For a few minutes there was loud talking--from a general impulse to show off before the stranger; then fell a silence, as if some feeling of doubt had got among them. The least affected by it was the footman who had opened the door to her: he had witnessed her reception by Mrs. Perkin. Addressing her boldly, he expressed a hope that she was not too much fatigued by her journey. Mary thanked him in her own natural, straightforward way, and the consequence was, that, when he spoke to her next, he spoke like a gentleman--in the tone natural to him, that is, and in the language of the parlor, without any mock-politeness. And, although the way they talked among themselves made Mary feel as if she were in a strange country, with strange modes, not of living merely, but of feeling and of regarding, she received not the smallest annoyance during the rest of the meal--which did not last long: Mrs. Perkin took care of that.
For an hour or more, after the rest had scattered to their respective duties, she was left alone. Then Mrs. Perkin sent for her.
When she entered her room, she found her occupied with the cook, and was allowed to stand unnoticed.
"When shall I be able to see Mrs. Redmain, ma'am?" she asked, when the cook at length turned to go.
"Wait," rejoined Mrs. Perkin, with a quiet dignity, well copied, "until you are addressed, young woman." --Then first casting a glance at her, and perhaps perceiving on her countenance a glimmer of the amusement Mary felt, she began to gather a more correct suspicion of the sort of being she might possibly be, and hastily added, "Pray, take a seat."
The idea of making a blunder was unendurable to Mrs. Perkin, and she was most unwilling to believe she had done so; but, even if she had, to show that she knew it would only be to render it the more difficult to recover her pride of place. An involuntary twinkle about the corners of Mary's mouth made her hasten to answer her question.
"I am sorry," she said, "that I can give you no prospect of an interview with Mrs. Redmain before three o'clock. She will very likely not be out of her room before one. --I suppose you saw her at Durnmelling?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Mary, "--and at Testbridge."
It kept growing on the housekeeper that she had made a mistake--though to what extent she sought in vain to determine.
"You will find it rather wearisome waiting," she said next; "--would you not like to help me with my work?"
Already she had the sunflowers under her creative hands.
"I should be very glad--if I can do it well enough to please you, ma'am," answered Mary. "But," she added, "would you kindly see that Mrs. Redmain is told, as soon as she wakes, that I am here?"
"Oblige me by ringing the bell," said Mrs. Perkin. --"Send Mrs. Folter here."'
A rather cross-looking, red-faced, thin woman appeared, whom she requested to let her mistress know, as soon as was proper, that there was a young person in the house who said she had come from Testbridge by appointment to see her.
"Yes, ma'am," said Folter, with a supercilious yet familiar nod to Mary; "I'll take care she knows."
Mary passed what would have been a dreary morning to one dependent on her company. It was quite three o'clock when she was at length summoned to Mrs. Redmain's boudoir. Folter, who was her guide thither, lingered, in the soft closing of the door, long enough to learn that her mistress received the young person with a kiss--almost as much to Mary's surprise as Folter's annoyance, which annoyance partly to relieve, partly to pass on to Mrs. Perkin, whose reception of Mary she had learned, Folter hastened to report the fact, and succeeded thereby in occasioning no small uneasiness in the bosom of the housekeeper, who was almost as much afraid of her mistress as the other servants were of herself. Some time she spent in expectant trepidation, but gradually, as nothing came of it, calmed her fears, and concluded that her behavior to Mary had been quite correct, seeing the girl had made it no ground of complaint.
But, although Hesper, being at the moment in tolerable spirits, in reaction from her depression of the day before, received Mary with a kiss, she did not ask her a question about her journey, or as to how she had spent the night. She was there, and looking all right, and that was enough. On the other hand, she did proceed to have her at once properly settled.
The little room appointed her looked upon a small court or yard, and was dark, but otherwise very comfortable. As soon as she was left to herself, she opened her boxes, put her things away in drawers and wardrobe, arranged her books within easy reach of the low chair Hesper had sent for from the drawing-room for her, and sat down to read a little, brood a little, and build a few castles in the air, more lovely than evanescent: no other house is so like its builder as this sort of castle.
About eight o'clock, Folter summoned her to go to Mrs. Redmain. By this time she was tired: she was accustomed to tea in the afternoon, and since her dinner with the housekeeper she had had nothing.
She found Mrs. Redmain dressed for the evening. As soon as Mary entered, she dismissed Folter.
"I am going out to dinner," she said. "Are you quite comfortable?"
"I am rather cold, and should like some tea," said Mary.
"My poor girl! have you had no tea?" said Hesper, with some concern, and more annoyance. "You are looking quite pale, I see! When did you have anything to eat?"
"I had a good dinner at one o'clock," replied Mary, with a rather weary smile.
"This is dreadful!" said Hesper. "What can the servants be about!"
"And, please, may I have a little fire?" begged Mary.
"Certainly," replied Hesper, knitting her brows with a look of slight anguish. "Is it possible you have been sitting all day without one? Why did you not ring the bell?" She took one of her hands. "You are frozen!" she said.
"Oh, no!" answered Mary; "I am far from that. You see nobody knows yet what to do with me. --You hardly know yourself," she added, with a merry look. "But, if you wouldn't mind telling Mrs. Perkin where you wish me to have my meals, that would put it all right, I think."
"Very well," said Hesper, in a tone that for her was sharp. "Will you ring the bell?"
She sent for the housekeeper, who presently appeared--lank and tall, with her head on one side like a lamp-post in distress, but calm and prepared--a dumb fortress, with a live garrison.
"I wish you, Mrs. Perkin, to arrange with Miss Marston about her meals."
"Yes, ma'am," answered Mrs. Perkin, with sedatest utterance.
"Mrs. Perkin," said Mary, "I don't want to be troublesome; tell me what will suit you best."
But Mrs. Perkin did not even look at her; standing straight as a rush, she kept her eyes on her mistress.
"Do you desire, ma'am, that Miss Marston should have her meals in the housekeeper's room?" she asked.
"That must be as Miss Marston pleases," answered Hesper. "If she prefer them in her own, you will see they are properly sent up."
"Very well, ma'am! --Then I wait Miss Marston's orders," said Mrs. Perkin, and turned to leave the room. But, when her mistress spoke again, she turned again and stood. It was Mary, however, whom Hesper addressed.
"Mary," she said, apparently foreboding worse from the tone of the housekeeper's obedience than from her occurred neglect, "when I am alone, you shall take your meals with me; and when I have any one with me, Mrs. Perkin will see that they are sent to your room. We will settle it so."
"Thank you," said Mary.
"Very well, ma'am," said Mrs. Perkin.
"Send Miss Marston some tea directly," said Hesper.
Scarcely was Mrs. Perkin gone when the brougham was announced. Mary returned to her room, and in a little while tea, with thin bread and butter in limited quantity, was brought her. But it was brought by Jemima, whose face wore a cheerful smile over the tray she carried: she, at least, did not grudge Mary her superior place in the household.
"Do you think, Jemima," asked Mary, "you could manage to answer my bell when I ring?"
"I should only be too glad, miss; it would be nothing but a pleasure to me; and I'd jump to it if I was in the way; but if I was up stairs, which this house ain't a place to hear bells in, sure I am nobody would let me know as you was a-ringin'; and if you was to think as how I was giving of myself airs, like some people not far out of this square, I should be both sorry and ashamed--an' that's more'n I'd say for my place to Mrs. Perkin, miss."
"You needn't be afraid of that, Jemima," returned Mary. "If you don't answer when I ring, I shall know, as well as if you told me, that you either don't hear or can't come at the moment. I sha'n't be exacting."
"Don't you be afeared to ring, miss; I'll answer your bell as often as I hear it."
"Could you bring me a loaf? I have had nothing since Mrs. Perkin's dinner; and this bread and butter is rather too delicately cut," said Mary.
"Laws, miss, you must be nigh clemmed!" said the girl; and, hastening away, she soon returned with a loaf, and butter, and a pot of marmalade sent by the cook, who was only too glad to open a safety-valve to her pleasure at the discomfiture of Mrs. Perkin.
"When would you like your breakfast, miss?" asked Jemima, as she removed the tea-things.
"Any time convenient," replied Mary.
"It's much the same to me, miss, so it's not before there's bilin' water. You'll have it in bed, miss?"
"No, thank you. I never do."
"You'd better, miss."
"I could not think of it."
"It makes no more trouble--less, miss, than if I had to get it when the room-breakfast was on. I've got to get the things together anyhow; and why shouldn't you have it as well as Mrs. Perkin, or that ill-tempered cockatoo, Mrs. Folter? You're a lady, and that's more'n can be said for either of them--justly, that is."
"You don't mean," said Mary, surprised out of her discretion, "that the housekeeper and the lady's-maid have breakfast in bed?"
"It's every blessed mornin' as I've got to take it up to 'em, miss, upon my word of honor, with a soft-biled egg, or a box o' sardines, new-opened, or a slice o' breakfast bacon, streaky. An' I do _not_ think as it belongs proper to my place; only you see, miss, the kitchen-maid has got to do it for the cook, an' if I don't, who is there? It's not them would let the scullery-maid come near them in their beds."
"Does Mrs. Perkin know that the cook and the lady's-maid have it as well as herself?"
"Not she, miss; she'd soon make their coffee too 'ot! She's the only lady down stairs--she is! No more don't Mrs. Folter know as the cook has hers, only, if she did, it wouldn't make no differ, for she daren't tell. And cook, to be sure, it ain't her breakfast, only a cup o' tea an' a bit o' toast, to get her heart up first."
"Well," said Mary, "I certainly shall not add another to the breakfasts in bed. But I must trouble you all the same to bring it me here. I will make my bed, and do out the room myself, if you will come and finish it off for me."
"Oh, no, indeed, miss, you mustn't do that! Think what they'd say of you down stairs! They'd despise you downright!"
"I shall do it, Jemima. If they were servants of the right sort, I should like to have their good opinion, and they would think all the more of me for doing my share; as it is, I should count it a disgrace to care a straw, what they thought. We must do our work, and not mind what people say."
"Yes, miss, that's what my mother used to say to my father, when he wouldn't be reasonable. But I must go, miss, or I shall catch it for gossiping with you--that's what _she'll_ call it."
When Jemima was gone, Mary fell a-thinking afresh. It was all very well, she said to herself, to talk about doing her work, but here she was with scarce a shadow of an idea what her work was! Had _any_ work been given her to do in this house? Had she presumed in coming--anticipated the guidance of Providence, and was she therefore now where she had no right to be? She could not tell; but, anyhow, here she was, and no one could be anywhere without the fact involving its own duty. Even if she had put herself there, and was to blame for being there, that did not free her from the obligations of the position, and she was willing to do whatever should _now_ be given her to do. God was not a hard master; if she had made a mistake, he would pardon her, and either give her work here, where she found herself, or send her elsewhere. I need not say that thinking was not all her care; for she thought in the presence of Him who, because he is always setting our wrong things right, is called God our Saviour.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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27
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MR. AND MRS. HELMER
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The next morning, Mary set out to find Letty, from whom, as I have said, she had heard but twice since her marriage. Mary had written again about a month ago, but had had no reply. The sad fact was, that, ever since she left Testbridge, Letty, for a long time, without knowing it, had been going down hill. There have been many whose earnestness has vanished with the presence of those whose influence awoke it. Letty's better self seemed to have remained behind with Mary; and not even if he had been as good as she thought him, could Tom himself have made up to her for the loss of such a friend.
But Letty had not found marriage at all the grand thing she had expected. With the faithfulness of a woman, however, she attributed her disappointment to something inherent in marriage, nowise affecting the man whom marriage had made her husband.
That he might be near the center to which what little work he did gravitated, Tom had taken a lodging in a noisy street, as unlike all that Letty had been accustomed to as anything London, except in its viler parts, could afford. Never a green thing was to be looked upon in any direction. Not a sweet sound was to be heard.
The sun, at this time of the year, was seldom to be seen in London anywhere; and in Lydgate Street, even when there was no fog, it was but askance, and for a brief portion of the day, that he shone upon that side where stood their dusty windows. And then the noise! --a ceaseless torrent of sounds, of stony sounds, of iron sounds, of grinding sounds, of clashing sounds, of yells and cries--of all deafening and unpoetic discords! Letty had not much poetry in her, and needed what could be had from the outside so much the more. It is the people of a land without springs that must have cisterns. It is the poetic people without poetry that pant and pine for the country. When such get hold of a poet, they expect him to talk poetry, or, at least, to talk about poetry! I fancy poets do not read much poetry, and except to their peers do not often care to talk about it. But to one like Letty, however little she may understand or even be aware of the need, the poetic is as necessary as rain in summer; while, to one so little skilled in the finding of it, there was none visible, audible, or perceptible about her--except, indeed, what, of poorest sort for her uses, she might discover bottled in some circulating library: there was one--blessed proximity! --within ten minutes' walk of her.
Once a week or so, some weeks oftener, Tom would take her to the play, and that was, indeed, a happiness--not because of the pleasure of the play only or chiefly, though that was great, but in the main because she had Tom beside her all the time, and mixed up Tom with the play, and the play with Tom.
Alas! Tom was not half so dependent upon her, neither derived half so much pleasure from her company. Some of his evenings every week he spent at houses where those who received him had not the faintest idea whether he had a wife or not, and cared as little, for it would have made no difference: they would not have invited her. Small, silly, conceited Tom, regarding himself as a somebody, was more than content to be asked to such people's houses. He thought he went as a lion, whereas it was merely as a jackal: so great is the love of some for wild beasts in general, that they even think something of jackals. He was aware of no insult to himself in asking him whether as a lion or any other wild beast, nor of any to his wife and himself together in not asking her with him. While she sat in her dreary lodging, dingily clad and lonely, Tom, dressed in the height of the fashion, would be strolling about grand rooms, now exchanging a flying shot of recognition, now pausing to pay a compliment to this lady on her singing, to that on her verses, to a third, where he dared, on her dress; for good-natured Tom was profuse of compliments, not without a degree and kind of honesty in them; now singing one of his own songs to the accompaniment of some gracious goddess, now accompanying the same or some other gracious goddess as she sang--for Tom could do that well enough for people without a conscience in their music; now in the corner of a conservatory, now in a cozy little third room behind a back drawing-room, talking nonsense with some lady foolish enough to be amused with his folly. Tom meant no harm and did not do much--was only a human butterfly, amusing himself with other creatures of a day, who have no notion that death can not kill them, or they might perhaps be more miserable than they are. They think, if they think at all, that it is life, strong in them, that makes them forget death; whereas, in truth, it is death, strong in them, that makes them forget life. Like a hummingbird, all sparkle and flash, Tom flitted through the tropical delights of such society as his "uncommon good luck" had gained him admission to, forming many an evanescent friendship, and taking many a graceful liberty for which his pleasant looks, confident manners, and free carriage were his indemnity--for Tom seemed to have been born to show what a nice sort of a person a fool, well put together, may be--with his high-bred air, and his ready replies, for he had also a little of that social element, once highly valued, now less countenanced, and rare--I mean wit.
He had, indeed, plenty of all sorts of brains; but no amount of talent could reveal to him the reason or the meaning of the fact that wedded life was less interesting than courtship; for the former, the reason lay in himself, and of himself proper he knew, as I have said, next to nothing; while the latter, the meaning of the fact, is profound as eternity. He had no notion that, when he married, his life was thereby, in a lofty and blessed sense, forfeit; that, to save his wife's life, he must yield his own, she doing the same for him--for God himself can save no other way. But the notion of any saving, or the need of it, was far from Tom; nor had Letty, for her part, any thought of it either, except from the tyranny of her aunt. Not the less, in truth, did they both want saving--very much saving--before life could be to either of them a good thing. It is only its inborn possibility of and divine tendency toward blossoming that constitute life a good thing. Life's blossom is its salvation, its redemption, the justification of its existence--and is a thing far off with most of us. For Tom, his highest notion of life was to be recognized by the world for that which he had chosen as his idea of himself--to have the reviews allow him a poet, not grudgingly, nor with abatement of any sort, but recognizing him as the genius he must contrive to believe himself, or "perish in" his "self-contempt." Then would he live and die in the blessed assurance that his name would be for over on the lips and in the hearts of that idol of fools they call _posterity_-divinity as vague as the old gray Fate, and less noble, inasmuch as it is but the supposed concave whence is to rebound the man's own opinion of himself.
While jewelly Tom was idling away time which yet could hardly be called precious, his little brown wife, as I have said, sat at home--such home as a lodging can be for a wife whose husband finds his interest mainly outside of it--inquired after by nobody, thought of by nobody, hardly even taken up by her own poor, weary self; now trying in vain after interest in the feeble trash she was reading; now getting into the story for the last half of a chapter, to find herself, when the scene changed at the next, as far out and away and lost as ever; now dropping the book on her knee, to sit musing--if, indeed, such poor mental vagaries as hers can be called even musing! --ignorant what was the matter with her, hardly knowing that anything was the matter, and yet pining morally, spiritually, and psychically; now wondering when Tom would be home; now trying to congratulate herself on his being such a favorite, and thinking what an honor it was to a poor country girl like her to be the wife of a man so much courted by the best society--for she never doubted that the people to whose houses Tom went desired his company from admiration of his writings. She had not an idea that never a soul of them or of their guests cared a straw about what he wrote--except, indeed, here and there, a young lady in her first season, who thought it a grand thing to know an author, as poor Letty thought it a grand thing to be the wife of one. Hail to the coming time when, those who write books outnumbering those who do not, a man will be thought no more of because he can write than because he can sit a horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither an atom the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like irritating attentions. From that time, also, it may be, the number of writers will begin to diminish; for then, it is to be hoped, men will begin to see that it is better to do the inferior thing well than the superior thing after a middling fashion. The man who would not rather be a good shoemaker than a middling author would be no honor to the shoemakers, and can hardly be any to the authors. I have the comfort that in this all authors will agree with me, for which of us is now able to see himself _middling_? Honorable above all honor that authorship can give is he who can.
It was through some of his old college friends that Tom had thus easily stepped into the literary profession. They were young men with money and friends to back them, who, having taken to literature as soon as they chipped the university shell, were already in the full swing of periodical production, when Tom, to quote two rather contradictory utterances of his mother, ruined his own prospects and made Letty's fortune by marrying her. I can not say, however, that they had found him remunerative employment. The best they had done for him was to bring him into such a half sort of connection with a certain weekly paper that now and then he got something printed in it, and now and then, with the joke of acknowledging an obligation irremunerable, the editor would hand him what he called an honorarium, but what in reality was a five-pound note. When such an event occurred, Tom would feel his bosom swell with the imagined dignity of supporting a family by literary labor, and, forgetful of the sparseness of his mother's doles, who delighted to make the young couple feel the bitterness of dependence, would immediately, on the strength of it, invite his friends to supper--not at the lodging where Letty sat lonely, but at some tavern frequented by people of the craft. It was at such times, and in the company of men certainly not better than himself, that Tom's hopes were brightest, and his confidence greatest: therefore such seasons were those of his highest bliss. Especially, when his sensitive but poor imagination was stimulated from the nerve-side of the brain, was Tom in his glory; and it was not the "few glasses of champagne," of which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced angels of their true selves, made in the image of God, withdrew into the dark; until at last, between night and morning, Tom would reel gracefully home, using all the power of his will--the best use to which it ever was put--to subdue the drunkenness of which, even in its embrace, he had the lingering honor to be ashamed, that he might face his wife with the appearance of the gentleman he was anxious she should continue to consider him.
It was an unhappy thing for Tom that his mother, having persuaded her dying husband, "for Tom's sake," to leave the money in her power, should not now have carried her tyranny further, and refused him money altogether. He would then have been compelled to work harder, and to use what he made in procuring the necessaries of life. There might have been some hope for him then. As it was, his profession was the mere grasping after the honor of a workman without the doing of the work; while the little he gained by it was, at the same time, more than enough to foster the self-deception that he did something in the world. With the money he gave her, which was never more than a part of what his mother sent him, Letty had much ado to make both ends meet; and, while he ran in debt to his tailor and bootmaker, she never had anything new to wear. She did sometimes wish he would take her out with him a little oftener of an evening; for sometimes she felt so lonely as to be quite unable to amuse herself: her resources were not many in her position, and fewer still in herself; but she always reflected that he could not afford it, and it was long ere she began to have any doubt or uneasiness about him--long before she began even to imagine it might be well if he spent his evenings with her, or, at least, in other ways and other company than he did. When first such a thought presented itself, she banished it as a disgrace to herself and an insult to him. But it was no wonder if she found marriage dull, poor child! --after such expectations, too, from her Tom!
What a pity it seems to our purblind eyes that so many girls should be married before they are women! The woman comes at length, and finds she is forestalled--that the prostrate and mutilated Dagon of a girl's divinity is all that is left her to do the best with she can! But, thank God, in the faithfully accepted and encountered responsibility, the woman must at length become aware that she has under her feet an ascending stair by which to climb to the woman of the divine ideal.
There was at present, however, nothing to be called thought in the mind of Letty. She had even lost much of what faculty of thinking had been developed in her by the care of Cousin Godfrey. That had speedily followed the decay of the aspiration kindled in her by Mary. Her whole life now--as much of it, that is, as was awake--was Tom, and only Tom. Her whole day was but the continuous and little varied hope of his presence. Most of the time she had a book in her hands, but ever again book and hands would sink into her lap, and she would sit staring before her at nothing. She was not unhappy, she was only not happy. At first it was a speechless delight to have as many novels as she pleased, and she thought Tom the very prince of bounty in not merely permitting her to read them, but bringing them to her, one after the other, sometimes two at once, in spendthrift profusion. The first thing that made her aware she was not quite happy was the discovery that novels were losing their charm, that they were not sufficient to make her day pass, that they were only dessert, and she had no dinner. When it came to difficulty in going on with a new one long enough to get interested in it, she sighed heavily, and began to think that perhaps life was rather a dreary thing--at least considerably diluted with the unsatisfactory. How many of my readers feel the same! How few of them will recognize that the state of things would indeed be desperate were it otherwise! How many would go on and on being only butterflies, but for life's dismay! And who would choose to be a butterfly, even if life and summer and the flowers were to last for ever!
"I would," I fancy this and that reader saying.
"Then," I answer, "the only argument you are equal to, is the fact that life nor summer nor the flowers do last for ever."
"I suppose I am made a butterfly," do you say? "seeing I prefer to be one."
"Ah! do you say so, indeed? Then you begin to excuse yourself, and what does that mean? It means that you are no butterfly, for a butterfly--no, nor an angel in heaven--could never begin excusing the law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you."
I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do children, nor that she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.
Tom talked of himself as on the staff of "The Firefly"--such was the name of the newspaper whose editor sometimes paid him--a weekly of great pretense, which took upon itself the mystery of things, as if it were God's spy. It was popular in a way, chiefly in fashionable circles. As regarded the opinions it promulgated, I never heard one, who understood the particular question at any time handled, say it was correct. Its writers were mostly young men, and their passion was to say clever things. If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism, and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men, immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the reviewer chose to call it. A scandalous rumor of any kind, especially from the region styled "high life," often false, and always incorrect, was the delight both of the paper and of its readers; and the interest it thus awoke, united to the fear it thus caused, was mainly what procured for such as were known to be employed upon it the _entree_ of houses where, if they had had a private existence only, their faces would never have been seen. But, to do Tom justice, he wrote nothing of this sort: he was neither ill-natured nor experienced enough for that department; what he did write was clever, shallow sketches of that same society into whose charmed precincts he was but so lately a comer that much was to him interesting which had long ceased to be observed by eyes turned horny with the glare of the world's footlights; and, while these sketches pleased the young people especially, even their jaded elders enjoyed the sparkling reflex of what they called life, as seen by an outsider; for they were thereby enabled to feel for a moment a slight interest in themselves objectively, along with a galvanized sense of existence as the producers of history. These sketches did more for the paper than the editor was willing to know or acknowledge.
But "The Firefly" produced also a little art on its own account--not always very original, but, at least, not a sucking of life from the labor of others, as is most of that parasitic thing miscalled criticism. In this branch Tom had a share, in the shape of verse. A ready faculty was his, but one seldom roused by immediate interest, and never by insight. It was not things themselves, but the reflection of things in the art of others, that moved him to produce. Coleridge, I think, says of Dryden, that he took fire with the running of his own wheels: so did Tom; but it was the running of the wheels of others that set his wheels running. He was like some young preachers who spend a part of the Saturday in reading this or that author, in order to _get up_ the mental condition favorable to preaching on the Sunday. He was really fond of poetry; delighted in the study of its external elements for the sake of his craft; possessed not only a good but cultivated ear for verse, which is a rare thing out of the craft; had true pleasure in a fine phrase, in a strong or brilliant word; last and chief, had a special faculty for imitation; from which gifts, graces, and acquirements, it came, that he could write almost in any style that moved him--so far, at least, as to remind one who knew it, of that style; and that every now and then appeared verses of his in "The Firefly."
As often as this took place, Letty was in the third heaven of delight. For was not Tom's poetry unquestionably superior to anything else the age could produce? was the poetry Cousin Godfrey made her read once to be compared to Tom's? and was not Tom her own husband? Happy woman she!
But, by the time at which my narrative has arrived, the first mist of a coming fog had begun to gather faintly dim in her heart. When Tom would come home happy, but talk perplexingly; when he would drop asleep in the middle of a story she could make nothing of; when he would burst out and go on laughing, and refuse to explain the motive--how was she to avoid the conclusion forced upon her, that he had taken too much strong drink? and, when she noted that this condition reappeared at shorter and shorter intervals, might she not well begin to be frightened, and to feel, what she dared not allow, that she was being gradually left alone--that Tom had struck into a diverging path, and they were slowing parting miles from each other?
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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28
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MARY AND LETTY.
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When her landlady announced a visitor, Letty, not having yet one friend in London, could not think who it should be. When Mary entered, she sprang to her feet and stood staring: what with being so much in the house, and seeing so few people, the poor girl had, I think, grown a little stupid. But, when the fact of Mary's presence cleared itself to her, she rushed forward with a cry, fell into her arms, and burst out weeping. Mary held her fast until she had a little come to herself, then, pushing her gently away to the length of her arms, looked at her.
She was not a sight to make one happy. She was no longer the plump, fresh girl that used to go singing about; nor was she merely thin and pale, she looked unhealthy. Things could not be going well with her. Had her dress been only disordered, that might have been accidental, but it looked neglected--was not merely dingy, but plainly shabby, and, to Mary's country eyes, appeared on the wrong side of clean. Presently, as those eyes got accustomed to the miserable light, they spied in the skirt of her gown a perfunctory darn, revealing but too evidently that to Letty there no longer seemed occasion for being particular. The sadness of it all sunk to Mary's heart: Letty had not found marriage a grand affair!
But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is either not to know or to deny God our Saviour. True, her heart ached for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith, and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary was not a poor Christian--at least, for the time she had been learning, and as Christians go in the present aeon of their history. Her whole nature drew itself together, confronting the destroyer, whatever he might be, in possession of Letty. How to help she could not yet tell, but sympathy was already at its work.
"You are not looking your best, Letty," she said, clasping her again in her arms.
With a little choking, Letty assured her she was quite well, only rather overcome with the pleasure of seeing her so unexpectedly.
"How is Mr. Helmer?" asked Mary.
"Quite well--and very busy," answered Letty--a little hurriedly, Mary thought. " --But," she added, in a tone of disappointment, "you always used to call him Tom!"
"Oh!" answered Mary, with a smile, "one must be careful how one takes liberties with married people. A certain mysterious change seems to pass over some of them; they are not the same somehow, and you have to make your acquaintance with them all over again from the beginning."
"I shouldn't think such people's acquaintance worth making over again," said Letty.
"How can you tell what it may be worth?" said Mary, "--they are so different from what they were? Their friendship may now be one that won't change so easily."
"Ah! don't be hard on me, Mary. I have never ceased to love you."
"I am _so_ glad!" answered Mary. "People don't generally take much to me--at least, not to come _near_ me. But you can _be_ friends without _having_ friends," she added, with a sententiousness she had inherited.
"I don't quite understand you," said Letty, sadly; "but, then, I never could quite, you know. Tom finds me very stupid."
These words strengthened Mary's suspicion, from the first a probability, that all was not going well between the two; but she shrunk from any approach to confidences with _one_ of a married pair. To have such, she felt instinctively, would be a breach of unity, except, indeed, that were already, and irreparably, broken. To encourage in any married friend the placing of a confidence that excludes the other, is to encourage that friend's self-degradation. But neither was this a fault to which Letty could have been tempted; she loved her Tom too much for it: with all her feebleness, there was in Letty not a little of childlike greatness, born of faith.
But, although Mary would make Letty tell nothing, she was not the less anxious to discover, that she might, if possible, help. She would observe: side-lights often reveal more than direct illumination. It might be for Letty, and not for Mrs. Redmain, she had been sent. He who made time in time would show.
"Are you going to be long in London, Mary?" asked Letty.
"Oh, a long time!" answered Mary, with a loving glance.
Letty's eyes fell, and she looked troubled.
"I am so sorry, Mary," she said, "that I can not ask you to come here! We have only these two rooms, and--and--you see--Mrs. Helmer is not very liberal to Tom, and--because they--don't get on together very well--as I suppose everybody knows--Tom won't--he won't consent to--to--" "You little goose!" cried Mary; "you don't think I would come down on you like a devouring dragon, without even letting you know, and finding whether it would suit you! --I have got a situation in London."
"A situation!" echoed Letty. "What can you mean, Mary? You haven't left your own shop, and gone into somebody else's?"
"No, not exactly that," replied Mary, laughing; "but I have no doubt most people would think that by far the more prudent thing to have done."
"Then I don't," said Letty, with a little flash of her old enthusiasm. "Whatever you do, Mary, I am sure will always be the best."
"I am glad I have so much of your good opinion, Letty; but I am not sure I shall have it still, when I have told you what I have done. Indeed, I am not quite sure myself that I have done wisely; but, if I have made a mistake, it is from having listened to love more than to prudence."
"What!" cried Letty; "you're married, Mary?"
And here a strange thing, yet the commonest in the world, appeared; had her own marriage proved to Letty the most blessed of fates, she could not have shown more delight at the idea of Mary's. I think men find women a little incomprehensible in this matter of their friends' marriage: in their largerheartedness, I presume, women are able to hope for their friends, even when they have lost all hope for themselves.
"No," replied Mary, amused at having thus misled her. "It is neither so bad nor so good as that. But I was far from comfortable in the shop without my father, and kept thinking how to find a life, more suitable for me. It was not plain to me that my lot was cast there any longer, and one has no right to choose difficulty; for, even if difficulty be the right thing for you, the difficulty you choose can't be the right difficulty. Those that are given to choosing, my father said, are given to regretting. Then it happened that I fell in love--not with a gentleman--don't look like that, Letty--but with a lady; and, as the lady took a small fancy to me at the same time, and wanted to have me about her, here I am."
"But, surely, that is not a situation fit for one like you, Mary!" cried Letty, almost in consternation; for, notwithstanding her opposition to her aunt's judgment in the individual case of her friend, Letty's own judgments, where she had any, were mostly of this world. "I suppose you are a kind of--of--companion to your lady-friend?"
"Or a kind of lady's-maid, or a kind of dressmaker, or a kind of humble friend--something like a dog, perhaps--only not to be quite so much loved and petted; In truth, Letty, I do not know what I am, or what I am going to be; but I shall find out before long, and where's the use of knowing, any more than anything else before it's wanted?"
"You take my breath away, Mary! The thing doesn't seem at all like you! It's not consistent! --Mary Marston in a menial position! I can't get a hold of it!"
"You remind me," said Mary, laughing, "of what my father said to Mr. Turnbull once. They were nearer quarreling then than ever I saw them. You remember my father's way, Letty--how he would say a thing too quietly even to smile with it? I can't tell you what a delight it is to me to talk to anybody that knew him! --Mr. Turnbull imagined he did not know what he was about, for the thoughts my father was thinking could not have lived a moment in Mr. Turnbull. 'You see, John Turnbull,' my father said, 'no man can look so inconsistent as one whose principles are not understood; for hardly in anything will that man do as his friend must have thought he would.' --I suppose you think, Letty," Mary went on, with a merry air, "that, for the sake of consistency, I should never do anything but sell behind a counter?"
"In that case," said Letty, "I ought to have married a milkman, for a dairy is the only thing I understand. I can't help Tom ever so little! --But I suppose it wouldn't be possible for two to write poetry together, even if they were husband and wife, and both of them clever!"
"Something like it has been tried, I believe," answered Mary, "but not with much success. I suppose, when a man sets himself to make anything, he must have it all his own way, or he can't do it."
"I suppose that's it. I know Tom is very angry with the editor when he wants to alter anything he has written. I'm sure Tom's right, too. You can't think how much better Tom's way always is! --He makes that quite clear, even to poor, stupid me. But then, you know, Tom's a genius; that's one thing there's _no_ doubt of! --But you haven't told me yet where you are."
"You remember Miss Mortimer, of Durnmelling?"
"Quite well, of course."
"She is Mrs. Redmain now: I am with her."
"You don't mean it! Why, Tom knows her very well! He has been several times to parties at her house."
"And not you, too?" asked Mary.
"Oh, dear, no!" answered Letty, laughing, superior at Mary's ignorance. "It's not the fashion in London, at least for distinguished persons like my Tom, to take their wives to parties."
"Are there no ladies at those parties, then?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Letty, smiling again at Mary's ignorance of the world, "the grandest of ladies--duchesses and all. You don't know what a favorite Tom is in the highest circles!"
Now Mary could believe almost anything bearing on Tom's being a favorite, for she herself liked him a great deal more than she approved of him; but she could not see the sense of his going to parties without his wife, neither could she see that the _height_ of the circle in which he was a favorite made any difference. She had old-fashioned notions of a man and his wife being one flesh, and felt a breach of the law where they were separated, whatever the custom--reason there could be none. But Letty seemed much too satisfied to give her any light on the matter. Did it seem to her so natural that she could not understand Mary's difficulty? She could not help suspecting, however, that there might be something in this recurrence of a separation absolute as death--for was it not a passing of one into a region where the other could not follow? --to account for the change in her. --The same moment, as if Letty divined what was passing in Mary's thought, and were not altogether content with the thing herself, but would gladly justify what she could not explain, she added, in the tone of an unanswerable argument: "Besides, Mary, how could I get a dress fit to wear at such parties? You wouldn't have me go and look like a beggar! That would be to disgrace Tom. Everybody in London judges everybody by the clothes she wears. You should hear Tom's descriptions of the ladies' dresses when he comes home!"
Mary was on the verge of crying out indignantly, "Then, if he can't take you, why doesn't he stop at home with you?" but she bethought herself in time to hold her peace. She settled it with herself, however, that Tom must have less heart or yet more muddled brains than she had thought.
"So, then," reverted Letty, as if willing to turn definitively from the subject, "you are actually living with the beautiful Mrs. Redmain! What a lucky girl you are! You will see no end of grand people! You will see my Tom sometimes--when I can't!" she added, with a sigh that went to Mary's heart.
"Poor thing!" she said to herself, "it isn't anything much out of the way she wants--only a little more of a foolish husband's company!"
It was no wonder that Tom found Letty dull, for he had just as little of his own in him as she, and thought he had a great store--which is what sends a man most swiftly along the road to that final poverty in which even that which he has shall be taken from him.
Mary did not stay so long with Letty as both would have liked, for she did not yet know enough of Hesper's ways. When she got home, she learned that she had a headache, and had not yet made her appearance.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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29
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THE EVENING STAR.
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Notwithstanding her headache, however, Mrs. Redmain was going in the evening to a small fancy-ball, meant for a sort of rehearsal to a great one when the season should arrive. The part and costume she had chosen were the suggestion of her own name: she would represent the Evening Star, clothed in the early twilight; and neither was she unfit for the part, nor was the dress she had designed altogether unsuitable either to herself or to the part. But she had sufficient confidence neither in herself nor her maid to forestall a desire for Mary's opinion. After luncheon, therefore, she sent for Miss Marston to her bedroom.
Mary found her half dressed, Folter in attendance, a great heap of pink lying on the bed.
"Sit down, Mary," said Hesper, pointing to a chair; "I want your advice. But I must first explain. Where I am going this evening, nobody is to be herself except me. I am not to be Mrs. Redmain, though, but Hesper. You know what Hesper means?"
Mary said she knew, and waited--a little anxious; for sideways in her eyes glowed the pink of the chosen Hesperian clouds, and, if she should not like it, what could be done at that late hour.
"There is my dress," continued the Evening Star, with a glance of her eyes, for Folter was busied with her hair; "I want to know your opinion of it." Folter gave a toss of her head that seemed to say, "Have not _I_ spoken?" but what it really did mean, how should other mortal know? for the main obstructions to understanding are profundity and shallowness, and the latter is far the more perplexing of the two.
"I should like to see it on first," said Mary: she was in doubt whether the color--bright, to suggest the brightest of sunset-clouds--would suit Hesper's complexion. Then, again, she had always associated the name _Hesper_ with a later, a solemnly lovely period of twilight, having little in common with the color so voluminous in the background.
Hesper had a good deal of appreciative faculty, and knew therefore when she liked and when she did not like a thing; but she had very little originative faculty--so little that, when anything was wrong, she could do next to nothing to set it right. There was small originality in taking a suggestion for her part from her name, and less in the idea, following by concatenation, of adopting for her costume sunset colors upon a flimsy material, which might more than hint at clouds. She had herself, with the assistance of Sepia and Folter, made choice of the particular pink; but, although it continued altogether delightful in the eyes of her maid, it had, upon nearer and pro-longed acquaintance, become doubtful in hers; and she now waited, with no little anxiety, the judgment of Mary, who sat silently thinking.
"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, at length, impatiently.
"Please, ma'am," replied Mary, "I must think, if I am to be of any use. I am doing my best, but you must let me be quiet."
Half annoyed, half pleased, Hesper was silent, and Mary went on thinking. All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made, as, like a machine, she went on heartlessly brushing her mistress's hair, which kept emitting little crackles, as of dissatisfaction with her handling. Mary would now take a good gaze at the lovely creature, now abstract herself from the visible, and try to call up the vision of her as the real Hesper, not a Hesper dressed up--a process which had in it hope for the lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last Folter had done her part.
"I suppose you _must_ see it on!" said Hesper, and she rose up.
Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on her arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head, got down, and, having pulled it this way and that for a while, fastened it here, undone it there, and fastened it again, several times, exclaimed, in a tone whose confidence was meant to forestall the critical impertinence she dreaded: "There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room, I shall never trust my eyes again."
Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but added to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed and bubbled and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so that the form of the woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness of the cloud. The whole, if whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy and fashion, and, in result, an ugly nothing.
"I see you don't like it!" said Hesper, with a mingling of displeasure and dismay. "I wish you had come a few days sooner! It is much too late to do anything now. I might just as well have gone without showing it to you! --Here, Folter!"
With a look almost of disgust, she began to pull off the dress, in which, a few hours later, she would yet make the attempt to enchant an assembly.
"O ma'am!" cried Mary, "I wish you had told me yesterday. There would have been time then. --And I don't know," she added, seeing disgust change to mortification on Hesper's countenance, "but something might be done yet."
"Oh, indeed!" dropped from Folter's lips with an indescribable expression.
"What can be done?" said Hesper, angrily. "There can be no time for anything."
"If only we had the stuff!" said Mary. "That shade doesn't suit your complexion. It ought to be much, much darker--in fact, a different color altogether."
Folter was furious, but restrained herself sufficiently to preserve some calmness of tone, although her face turned almost blue with the effort, as she said: "Miss Marston is not long from the country, ma'am, and don't know what's suitable to a London drawing-room."
Her mistress was too dejected to snub her impertinence.
"What color were you thinking of, Miss Marston?" Hesper asked, with a stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary volunteered the opinion she had been asked to give. She was out of temper with Mary from feeling certain she was right, and believing there was no remedy.
"I could not describe it," answered Mary. "And, indeed, the color I have in my mind may not be to be had. I have seen it somewhere, but, whether in a stuff or only in nature, I can not at this moment be certain."
"Where's the good of talking like that--excuse me, ma'am--it's more than I can bear--when the ball comes off in a few hours?" cried Folter, ending with eyes of murder on Mary.
"If you would allow me, ma'am," said Mary, "I should like much to try whether I could not find something that would suit you and your idea too. However well you might look in that, you would owe it no thanks. The worst is, I know nothing of the London shops."
"I should think not!" remarked Folter, with emphasis.
"I would send you in the brougham, if I thought it was of any use," said Hesper. "Folter could take you to the proper places."
"Folter would be of no use to me," said Mary. "If your coachman knows the best shops, that will be enough."
"But there's no time to make up anything," objected Hesper, despondingly, not the less with a glimmer of hope in her heart.
"Not like that," answered Mary; "but there is much there as unnecessary as it is ugly. If Folter is good at her needle--" "I won't take up a single stitch. It would be mere waste of labor," cried Folter.
"Then, please, ma'am," said Mary, "let Folter have that dress ready, and, if I don't succeed, you have something to wear."
"I hate it. I won't go if you don't find me another."
"Some people may like it, though I don't," said Mary.
"Not a doubt of that!" said Folter.
"Ring the bell," said her mistress.
The woman obeyed, and the moment afterward repented she had not given warning on the spot, instead. The brougham was ordered immediately, and in a few minutes Mary was standing at a counter in a large shop, looking at various stuffs, of which the young man waiting on her soon perceived she knew the qualities and capabilities better than he.
She had set her heart on carrying out Hesper's idea, but in better fashion; and after great pains taken, and no little trouble given, left the shop well satisfied with her success. And now for the greater difficulty!
She drove straight to Letty's lodging, and, there dismissing the brougham, presented herself, with a great parcel in her arms, for the second time that day, at the door of her room, as unexpected as the first, and even more to the joy of her solitary friend.
She knew that Letty was good at her needle. And Letty was, indeed, even now, by fits, fond of using it; and on several occasions, when her supply of novels had for a day run short, had asked a dressmaker who lived above to let her help her for an hour or two: before Mary had finished her story, she was untying the parcel, and preparing to receive her instructions. Nor had they been at work many minutes, when Letty bethought her of calling in the help of the said dressmaker; so that presently there were three of them busy as bees--one with genius, one with experience, and all with facility. The notions of the first were quickly taken up by the other two, and, the design of the dress being simplicity itself, Mary got all done she wanted in shorter time than she had thought possible. The landlady sent for a cab, and Mary was home with the improbability in more than time for Mrs. Redmain's toilet. It was with some triumph, tempered with some trepidation, that she carried it to her room.
There Folter was in the act of persuading her mistress of the necessity of beginning to dress: Miss Marston, she said, knew nothing of what she had undertaken; and, even if she arrived in time, it would be with something too ridiculous for any lady to appear in--when Mary entered, and was received with a cry of delight from Hesper; in proportion to whose increasing disgust for the pink robe, was her pleasure when she caught sight of Mary's colors, as she undid the parcel: when she lifted the dress on her arm for a first effect, she was enraptured with it--aerial in texture, of the hue of a smoky rose, deep, and cloudy with overlying folds, yet diaphanous, a darkness dilute with red.
Silent as a torture-maiden, and as grim, Folter approached to try the filmy thing, scornfully confident that the first sight of it on would prove it unwearable. But Mary judged her scarcely in a mood to be trusted with anything so ethereal; and begged therefore that, as the dress had, of necessity, been in many places little more than run together, and she knew its weak points, she might, for that evening, be allowed the privilege of dressing Mrs. Redmain. Hesper gladly consented; Folter left the room; Mary, now at her ease, took her place; and presently, more to Hesper's pleasure than Mary's surprise, for she had made and fixed in her mind the results of minute observation before she went, it was found that the dress fitted quite sufficiently well, and, having confined it round the waist with a cincture of thin pale gold, she advanced to her chief anxiety--the head-dress.
For this she had chosen such a doubtful green as the sky appears through yellowish smoke--a sad, lovely color--the fair past clouded with the present--youth not forgotten, but filmed with age. They were all colors of the evening, as it strives to keep its hold of the heavens, with the night pressing upon it from behind. In front, above the lunar forehead, among the coronal masses, darkly fair, she fixed a diamond star, and over it wound the smoky green like a turbaned vapor, wind-ruffled, through which the diamonds gleamed faintly by fits. Not once would she, while at her work, allow Hesper to look, and the self-willed lady had been submissive in her hands as a child of the chosen; but the moment she had succeeded--for her expectations were more than realized--she led her to the cheval-glass. Hesper gazed for an instant, then, turning, threw her arms about Mary, and kissed her.
"I don't believe you're a human creature at all!" she cried. "You are a fairy godmother, come to look after your poor Cinderella, the sport of stupid lady's-maids and dressmakers!"
The door opened, and Folter entered.
"If you please, ma'am, I wish to leave this day month," she said, quietly.
"Then," answered her mistress, with equal calmness, "oblige me by going at once to Mrs. Perkin, and telling her that I desire her to pay you a month's wages, and let you leave the house to-morrow morning. --You won't mind helping me to dress till I get another maid--will you, Mary?" she added; and Folter left the room, chagrined at her inability to cause annoyance.
"I do not see why you should have another maid so long as I am with you, ma'am," said Mary. "It should not need many days' apprenticeship to make one woman able to dress another."
"Not when she is like you, Mary," said Hesper. "It is well the wretch has done my hair for to-night, though! That will be the main difficulty."
"It will not be a great one," said Mary, "if you will allow me to undo it when you come home."
"I begin almost to believe in a special providence," said Hesper. "What a blessed thing for me that you came to drive away that woman! She has been getting worse and worse."
"If I have driven her away," answered Mary, "I am bound to supply her place."
As they talked, she was giving her final touches of arrangement to the head-dress--with which she found it least easy to satisfy herself. It swept round from behind in a misty cloak, the two colors mingling with and gently obscuring each other; while, between them, the palest memory of light, in the golden cincture, helped to bring out the somber richness, the delicate darkness of the whole.
Searching now again Hesper's jewel-case, Mary found a fine bracelet of the true, the Oriental topaz, the old chrysolite--of that clear yellow of the sunset-sky that looks like the 'scaped spirit of miser-smothered gold: this she clasped upon one arm; and when she had fastened a pair of some ancient Mortimer's garnet buckles in her shoes, which she had insisted should be black, and taken off all the rings that Hesper had just put on, except a certain glorious sapphire, she led her again to the mirror; and, if there Hesper was far more pleased with herself than was reasonable or lovely, my reader needs not therefore fear a sermon from the text, "Beauty is only skin-deep," for that text is out of the devil's Bible. No Baal or Astarte is the maker of beauty, but the same who made the seven stars and Orion, and His works are past finding out. If only the woman herself and her worshipers knew how deep it is! But the woman's share in her own beauty may be infinitely less than skin-deep; and there is but one greater fool than the man who worships that beauty--the woman who prides herself upon it, as if she were the fashioner and not the thing fashioned.
But poor Hesper had much excuse, though no justification. She had had many of the disadvantages and scarce one of the benefits of poverty. She had heard constantly from childhood the most worldly and greedy talk, the commonest expression of abject dependence on the favors of Mammon, and thus had from the first been in preparation for _marrying money_. She had been taught no other way of doing her part to procure the things of which the Father knows we have need. She had never earned a dinner; had never done or thought of doing a day's work--of offering the world anything for the sake of which the world might offer her a shilling to do it again; she had never dreamed of being of any use, even to herself; she had learned to long for money, but had never been hungry, never been cold: she had sometimes felt shabby. Out of it all she had brought but the knowledge that this matter of beauty, with which, by some blessed chance, she was endowed, was worth much precious money in the world's market--worth all the dresses she could ever desire, worth jewels and horses and servants, adoration and adulation--everything, in fact, the world calls fine, and the devil offers to those who, unscared by his inherent ugliness, will fall down and worship him.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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30
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A SCOLDING.
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The Evening Star found herself a success--that is, much followed by the men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song "To the Evening Star," which _everybody_ knew to stand for Mrs. Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep in his first devotion that he jumbled up his lady-love, Hesper, and Aphrodite, in the same poetic bundle--of which he left the string-ends hanging a little loose, while, upon the whole, it remained a not altogether unsightly bit of prentice-work. Tom had not been at the party, but had gathered fire enough from what he heard of Hesper's appearance there to write the verses. Here they are, as nearly as I can recall them. They are in themselves not worth writing out for the printers, but, in their surroundings, they serve to show Tom, and are the last with which I shall trouble the readers of this narrative.
"TO THE EVENING STAR.
"From the buried sunlight springing, Through flame-darkened, rosy loud, Native sea-hues with thee bringing, In the sky thou reignest proud!
"Who is like thee, lordly lady, Star-choragus of the night! Color worships, fainting fady, Night grows darker with delight!
"Dusky-radiant, far, and somber, In the coolness of thy state, From my eyelids chasing slumber, Thou dost smile upon my fate; "Calmly shinest; not a whisper Of my songs can reach thine ear; What is it to thee, O Hesper, That a heart should long or fear?"
Tom did not care to show Letty this poem--not that there was anything more in his mind than an artistic admiration of Hesper, and a desire to make himself agreeable in her eyes; but, when Letty, having read it, betrayed no shadow of annoyance with its folly, he was a little relieved. The fact was, the simple creature took it as a pardon to herself.
"I am glad you have forgiven me, Tom," she said.
"What do you mean?" asked Tom.
"For working for Mrs. Redmain with _your_ hands," she said, and, breaking into a little laugh, caught his cheeks between those same hands, and reaching up gave him a kiss that made him ashamed of himself--a little, that is, and for the moment, that is: Tom was used to being this or that a little for the moment.
For this same dress, which Tom had thus glorified in song, had been the cause of bitter tears to Letty. He came home _too late_ the day of Mary's visit, but the next morning she told him all about both the first and the second surprise she had had--not, however, with much success in interesting the lordly youth.
"And then," she went on, "what do you think we were doing all the afternoon, Tom?"
"How should I know?" said Tom, indifferently.
"We were working hard at a dress--a dress for a fancy-ball!"
"A fancy-ball, Letty? What do you mean? You going to a fancy-ball!"
"Me!" cried Letty, with merry laugh; "no, not quite me. Who do you think it was for?"
"How should I know?" said Tom again, but not quite so indifferently; he was prepared to be annoyed.
"For Mrs. Redmain!" said Letty, triumphantly, clapping her hands with delight at what she thought the fun of the thing, for was not Mrs. Redmain Tom's friend? --then stooping a little--it was an unconscious, pretty trick she had--and holding them out, palm pressed to palm, with the fingers toward his face.
"Letty," said Tom, frowning--and the frown deepened and deepened; for had he not from the first, if in nothing else, taken trouble to instruct her in what became the wife of Thomas Helmer, Esq.? --"Letty, this won't do!"
Letty was frightened, but tried to think he was only pretending to be displeased.
"Ah! don't frighten me, Tom," she said, with her merry hands now changed to pleading ones, though their position and attitude remained the same.
But he caught them by the wrists in both of his, and held them tight.
"Letty," he said once more, and with increased severity, "this won't do. I tell you, it won't do."
"What won't do, Tom?" she returned, growing white. "There's no harm done."
"Yes, there is," said Tom, with solemnity; "there _is_ harm done, when _my_ wife goes and does like that. What would people say of _me,_ if they were to come to know--God forbid they should! --that your husband was talking all the evening to ladies at whose dresses his wife had been working all the afternoon! --You don't know what you are doing, Letty. What do you suppose the ladies would think if they were to hear of it?"
Poor, foolish Tom, ignorant in his folly, did not know how little those grand ladies would have cared if his wife had been a char-woman: the eyes of such are not discerning of fine social distinctions in women who are not of their set, neither are the family relations of the bohemians they invite of the smallest consequence to them.
"But, Tom," pleaded his wife, "such a grand lady as that! one you go and read your poetry to! What harm can there be in your poor little wife helping to make a dress for a lady like that?"
"I tell you, Letty, I don't choose _my_ wife to do such a thing for the greatest lady in the land! Good Heavens! if it _were_ to come to the ears of the staff! It would be the ruin of me! I should never hold up my head again!"
By this time Letty's head was hanging low, like a flower half broken from its stem, and two big tears were slowly rolling down her cheeks. But there was a gleam of satisfaction in her heart notwithstanding. Tom thought so much of his little wife that he would not have her work for the greatest lady in the land! She did not see that it was not pride in her, but pride in himself, that made him indignant at the idea. It was not "my _wife,"_ but "_my_ wife" with Tom. She looked again up timidly in his face, and said, her voice trembling, and her cheeks wet, for she could not wipe away the tears, because Tom still held her hands as one might those of a naughty child: "But, Tom! I don't exactly see how you can make so much of it, when you don't think me--when you know I am not fit to go among such people."
To this Tom had no reply at hand: he was not yet far enough down the devil's turnpike to be able to tell his wife that he had spoken the truth--that he did not think her fit for such company; that he would be ashamed of her in it; that she had no style; that, instead of carrying herself as if she knew herself somebody--as good as anybody there, indeed, being the wife of Tom Helmer--she had the meek look of one who knew herself nobody, and did not know her husband to be anybody. He did not think how little he had done to give the unassuming creature that quiet confidence which a woman ought to gather from the assurance of her husband's satisfaction in her, and the consciousness of being, in dress and everything else, pleasing in his eyes, therefore of occupying the only place in the world she desires to have. But he did think that Letty's next question might naturally be, "Why do you not take me with you?" No doubt he could have answered, no one had ever asked her; but then she might rejoin, had he ever put it in any one's way to ask her? It might even occur to her to in-quire whether he had told Mrs. Redmain that he had a wife! and he had heart enough left to imagine it might mortally hurt her to find he lived a life so utterly apart from hers--that she had so little of the relations though all the rights of wifehood. It was no wonder, therefore, if he was more than willing to change the subject. He let the poor, imprisoned hands drop so abruptly that, in their abandonment, they fell straight from her shoulders to her sides.
"Well, well, child!" he said; "put on your bonnet, and we shall be in time for the first piece at the Lyceum."
Letty flew, and was ready in five minutes. She could dress the more quickly that she was delayed by little doubt as to what she had better wear: she had scarcely a choice. Tom, looking after his own comforts, left her to look after her necessities; and she, having a conscience, and not much spirit, went even shabbier than she yet needed.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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31
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SEPIA.
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As naturally as if she had been born to that very duty and no other, Mary slid into the office of lady's-maid to Mrs. Redmain, feeling in it, although for reasons very different, no more degradation than her mistress saw in it. If Hesper was occasionally a little rude to her, Mary was not one to _accept_ a rudeness--that is, to wrap it up in resentment, and put it away safe in the pocket of memory. She could not help feeling things of the kind--sometimes with indignation and anger; but she made haste to send them from her, and shut the doors against them. She knew herself a far more blessed creature than Hesper, and felt the obligation, from the Master himself, of so enduring as to keep every channel of service open between Hesper and her. To Hesper, the change from the vulgar service of Folter to the ministration of Mary was like passing from a shallow purgatory to a gentle paradise. Mary's service was full of live and near presence, as that of dew or summer wind; Folter handled her as if she were dressing a doll, Mary as if she were dressing a baby; her hands were deft as an angel's, her feet as noiseless as swift. And to have Mary near was not only to have a ministering spirit at hand, but to have a good atmosphere all around--an air, a heaven, out of which good things must momently come. Few could be closely associated with her and not become aware at least of the capacity of being better, if not of the desire to be better.
In the matter of immediate result, it was a transition from decoration to dress. If in any sense Hesper was well dressed before, she was in every sense well dressed now--dressed so, that is, as to reveal the nature, the analogies, and the associations of her beauty: no manner of dressing can make a woman look more beautiful than she is, though many a mode may make her look less so.
There was one in the house, however, who was not pleased at the change from Folter to Mary: Sepia found herself in consequence less necessary to Hesper. Hitherto Hesper had never been satisfied without Sepia's opinion and final approval in that weightiest of affairs, the matter of dress; but she found in Mary such a faculty as rendered appeal to Sepia unnecessary; for she not only satisfied her idea of herself, and how she would choose to look, but showed her taste as much surer than Sepia's as Sepia's was readier than Hesper's own. Sepia was equal to the dressing of herself--she never blundered there; but there was little dependence to be placed upon her in dressing another. She cared for herself, not for another; and to dress another, love is needful--love, the only true artist--love, the only opener of eyes. She cared nothing to minister to the comfort or beautification of her cousin, and her displeasure did not arise from the jealousy that is born of affection. So far as Hesper's self was concerned, Sepia did not care a straw whether she was well or ill dressed; but, if the link between them of dress was severed, what other so strong would be left? And to find herself in any way a less object in Hesper's eyes, would be to find herself on the inclined plane of loss, and probable ruin.
Another, though a smaller, point was, that hitherto she had generally been able so to dress Hesper as to make of her more or less a foil to herself. My reader may remember that there was between Hesper and Sepia, if not a resemblance, yet a relation of appearance, like, vaguely, that between the twilight and the night; seen in certain positions and circumstances, the one would recall the other; and it was therefore a matter of no small consequence to Sepia that the relation of her dress to Hesper's should be such as to give herself any advantage to be derived in it from the relation of their looks. This was far more difficult, of course, when she had no longer a voice in the matter of Hesper's dress, and when the loving skill of the new maid presented her rival to her individual best. Mary would have been glad to help her as well, but Sepia drew back as from a hostile nature, and they made no approximation. This was more loss to Sepia than she knew, for Mary would have assisted her in doing the best when she had no money, a condition which often made it the more trying that she had now so little influence over her cousin's adornment. To dress was a far more difficult, though not more important, affair with Sepia than with Hesper, for she had nothing of her own, and from, her cousin no fixed allowance. Any arrangement of the kind had been impossible at Durnmelling, where there was no money; and here, where it would have been easy enough, she judged it better to give no hint in its direction, although plainly it had never suggested itself to Hesper. There was nothing of the money-mean in her, any more than in her husband. They were of course, as became people of fashion, regular and unwearied attendants of the church of Mammon, ordering all their judgments and ways in accordance with the precepts there delivered; but they were none of Mammon's priests or pew-openers, money-grubs, or accumulators. They gave liberally where they gave, and scraped no inferior to spend either on themselves or their charities. They had plenty, it is true; but so have many who withhold more than is meet, and take the ewe-lamb to add to their flock. For one thing, they had no time for that sort of wickedness, and took no interest in it. So Hesper, although it had not come into her mind to give her the ease of a stated allowance, behaved generously to Sepia--when she thought of it; but she did not love her enough to be love-watchful, and seldom thought how her money must be going, or questioned whether she might not at the moment be in want of more. There are many who will give freely, who do not care to understand need and anticipate want. Hence at times Sepia's purse would be long empty before the giving-thought would wake in the mind of Hesper. When it woke, it was gracious and free.
Had Sepia ventured to run up bills with the tradespeople, Hesper would have taken it as a thing of course, and settled them with her own. But Sepia had a certain politic pride in spending only what was given her; also she saw or thought she saw serious reason for avoiding all appearances of taking liberties; from the first of Mr. Redmain's visits to Durnmelling, she had been aware, with an instinct keen in respect of its objects, though blind as to its own nature, that he did not like her, and soon satisfied herself that any overt attempt to please him would but ripen his dislike to repugnance; and her dread was that he might make it a condition with Mr. Mortimer that Hesper's intimacy with her should cease; whereas, if once they were married, the husband's disfavor would, she believed, only strengthen the wife's predilection. Having so far gained her end, it remained, however, almost as desirable as before that she should do nothing to fix or increase his dislike--nay, that, if within the possible, she should become pleasing to him. Did not even hate turn sometimes to its mighty opposite? But she understood so little of the man with whom she had to deal that her calculations were ill-founded.
She was right in believing that Mr. Redmain disliked her, but she was wrong in imagining that he had therefore any objection to her being for the present in the house. He certainly did not relish the idea of her continuing to be his wife's inseparable companion, but there would be time enough to get rid of her after he had found her out. For she had not long been one of his _family,_ before he knew, with insight unerring, that she had to be found out, and was therefore an interesting subject for the exercise of his faculty of moral analysis. He was certain her history was composed mainly of secrets. As yet, however, he had discovered nothing.
I must just remind my reader of the intellectual passion I have already mentioned as characterizing Mr. Redmain's mental constitution. His faults and vices were by no means peculiar; but the bent to which I refer, certainly no virtue, and springing originally from predominant evil, was in no small degree peculiar, especially in the degree to which, derived as it was from his father, he had in his own being developed it. Most men, he judged with himself, were such fools as well as rogues, that there was not the least occasion to ask what they were after: they did but turn themselves inside out before you! But, on the other hand, there were not a few who took pains, more or less successful, to conceal their game of life; and such it was the delight of his being to lay bare to his own eyes-not to those of other people; that, he said, would be to spoil his game! Men were his library, he said-his history, his novels, his sermons, his philosophy, his poetry, his whole literature--and he did not like to have his books thumbed by other people. Human nature, in its countless aspects, was all about him, he said, every mask crying to him to take it off. Unhappily, it was but the morbid anatomy of human nature he cared to study. For all his abuse of it, he did not yet recognize it as morbid, but took it as normal, and the best to be had. No doubt, he therein judged and condemned himself, but that he never thought of--nor, perceived, would it have been a point of any consequence to him.
From the first, he saw through Mr. Mortimer, and all belonging to him, except Miss Yolland: she soon began to puzzle--and, so far, to please him, though, as I have said, he did not like her. Had he been a younger man, she would have captivated him; as it was, she would have repelled him entirely, but that she offered him a good subject. He said to himself that she was a bad lot, but what sort of a bad lot was not so clear as to make her devoid of interest to him; he must discover how she played her life-game; she had a history, and he would fain know it. As I have said, however, so far it had come to nothing, for, upon the surface, Sepia showed herself merely like any other worldly girl who knows "on which side her bread is buttered."
The moment he had found, or believed he had found, what there was to know about her, he was sure to hate her heartily. For some time after his marriage, he appeared at his wife's parties oftener than he otherwise would have done, just for the sake of having an eye upon Sepia; but had seen nothing, nor the shadow of anything--until one night, by the merest chance, happening to enter his wife's drawing-room, he caught a peculiar glance between Sepia and a young man--not very young--who had just entered, and whom he had not seen before.
To not a few it seemed strange that, with her unquestioned powers of fascination, she had not yet married; but London is not the only place in which poverty is as repellent as beauty is attractive. At the same time it must be confessed there was something about her which made not a few men shy of her. Some found that, if her eyes drew them within a certain distance, there they began to repel them, they could not tell why. Others felt strangely uncomfortable in her presence from the first. Not only much that a person has done, but much of what a person is capable of, is, I suspect, written on the bodily presence; and, although no human eye is capable of reading more than here and there a scattered hint of the twilight of history, which is the aurora of prophecy, the soul may yet shudder with an instinctive foreboding it can not explain, and feel the presence, without recognizing the nature, of the hostile.
Sepia's eyes were her great power. She knew the laws of mortar-practice in that kind as well as any officer of engineers those of projectiles. There was something about her engines which it were vain to attempt to describe. Their lightest glance was a thing not to be trifled with, and their gaze a thing hardly to be withstood. Sustained and without hurt defied, it could hardly be by man of woman born. They were large, but no fool would be taken with mere size. They were as dark as ever eyes of woman, but our older poets delighted in eyes as gray as glass: certainly not in their darkness lay their peculiar witchery. They were grandly proportioned, neither almond-shaped nor round, neither prominent nor deep-set; but even shape by itself is not much. If I go on to say they were luminous, plainly there the danger begins. Sepia's eyes, I confess, were not lords of the deepest light--for she was not true; but neither was theirs a surface light, generated of merely physical causes: through them, concentrating her will upon their utterance, she could establish a psychical contact with _almost_ any man she chose. Their power was an evil, selfish shadow of original, universal love. By them she could produce at once, in the man on whom she turned their play, a sense as it were of some primordial, fatal affinity between her and him--of an aboriginal understanding, the rare possession of but a few of the pairs made male and female. Into those eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light, in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations--not from great, black pupils alone--to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid--but from great, dark irids as well--nay, from eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtile the soul of the man she chose to assail, who, thenceforward, for a season, if he were such as she took him for, scarce had choice but be her slave. She seldom exerted their full force, however, without some further motive than mere desire to captivate. There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little birds and all; but Sepia did not so waste herself: her quarry must be worth her hunt: she must either love him or need him. _Love! _ did I say? Alas! if ever holy word was put to unholy use, _love_ is that word! When Diana goes to hell, her name changes to Hecate, but love among the devils is called love still!
In more than one other country, whatever might be the cause, Sepia had found _the men_ less shy of her than here; and she had almost begun to think her style was not generally pleasing to English eyes. Whether this had anything to do with the fact that now in London she began to amuse herself with Tom Helmer, I can not say with certainty; but almost if not quite the first time they met, that morning, namely, when first he called, and they sat in the bay-window of the drawing-room in Glammis Square, she brought her eyes to play upon him; and, although he addressed "The Firefly" poem to Hesper in the hope of pleasing her, it was for the sake of Sepia chiefly that he desired the door of her house to be an open one to him. Whether at that time she knew he was a married man, it is hardly necessary to inquire, seeing it would have made no difference whatever to one like her, whose design was only to amuse herself with the youth, and possibly to make of him a screen. She went so far, however, as to allow him, when there was opportunity, to draw her into quiet corners, and even to linger when the other guests were gone, and he had had his full share of champagne. Once, indeed, they remained together so long in the little conservatory, lighted only by an alabaster lamp, pale as the moon in the dawning, that she had to unbolt the door to let him out. This did not take place without coming to the knowledge of both Mr. and Mrs. Redmain; but the former was only afraid there was nothing in it, and was far from any wish to control her; and Sepia herself was the in-formant of the latter. To her she would make game of her foolish admirer, telling how, on this and that occasion, it was all she could do to get rid of him.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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32
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HONOR.
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Having now gained a partial insight into Letty's new position, Mary pondered what she could do to make life more of life to her. Not many knew better than she that the only true way to help a human heart is to lift it up; but she knew also that every kind of loving aid tends more or less to that uplifting; and that, if we can not do the great thing, we must be ready to do the small: if we do not help in little things, how shall we be judged fit to help in greater? We must help where we can, that we may help where we can not. The first and the only thing she could for a time think of, was, to secure for Letty, if possible, a share in her husband's pleasures.
Quietly, yet swiftly, a certain peaceful familiarity had established itself between Hesper and Mary, to which the perfect balance of the latter and her sense of the only true foundation of her position contributed far more than the undefined partiality of the former. The possibility of such a conversation as I am now going to set down was one of the results.
"Do you like Mr. Helmer, ma'am?" asked Mary one morning, as she was brushing her hair.
"Very well. How do you know anything of him?"
"Not many people within ten miles of Testbridge do not know Mr. Helmer," answered Mary.
"Yes, yes, I remember," said Hesper. "He used to ride about on a long-legged horse, and talked to anybody that would listen to him. But there was always something pleasing about him, and he is much improved. Do you know, he is considered really very clever?"
"I am not surprised," rejoined Mary. "He used to be rather foolish, and that is a sign of cleverness--at least, many clever people are foolish, I think."
"You can't have had much opportunity for making the observation, Mary!"
"Clever people think as much of themselves in the country as they do in London, and that is what makes them foolish," returned Mary. "But I used to think Mr. Helmer had very good points, and was worth doing something for--if one only knew what."
"He does not seem to want anything done for him," said Hesper.
"I know one thing _you_ could do for him, and it would be no trouble," said Mary.
"I will do anything for anybody that is no trouble," answered Hesper. "I should like to know something that is no trouble."
"It is only, the next time you ask him, to ask his wife," said Mary.
"He is married, then?" returned Hesper with indifference. "Is the woman presentable? Some shopkeeper's daughter, I suppose!"
Mary laughed. "You don't imagine the son of a lawyer would be likely to marry a shopkeeper's daughter!" she said.
"Why not?" returned Hesper, with a look of non-intelligence.
"Because a professional man is so far above a tradesman."
"Oh!" said Hesper. " --But he should have told me if he wanted to bring his wife with him. I don't care who she is, so long as she dresses decently and holds her tongue. What are you laughing at, Mary?"
Hesper called it laughing, but Mary was only smiling.
"I can't help being amused," answered Mary, "that you should think it such an out-of-the-way thing to be a shopkeeper's daughter, and here am I all the time, feeling quite comfortable, and proud of the shopkeeper whose daughter I am."
"Oh! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Hesper, growing hot for, I almost believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear, showing a drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's side of the creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the feelings of an inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the world aware of the least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not only feeling like a woman of God's making, but actually showing it! --"How cruel of me!" she went on. "But, you see, I never think of you--when I am talking to you--as--as one of that class!"
Mary laughed outright this time: she was amused, and thought it better to show it, for that would show also she was not hurt. Hesper, however, put it down to insensibility.
"Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "you can not think the class to which I belong in itself so objectionable that it is rude to refer to it in my hearing!"
"I am very sorry," repeated Hesper, but in a tone of some offense: it was one thing to confess a fault; another to be regarded as actually guilty of the fault. "Nothing was further from my intention than to offend you. I have not a doubt that shopkeepers are a most respectable class in their way--" "Excuse me, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary again, "but you quite mistake me. I am not in the least offended. I don't care what you think of the class. There are a great many shopkeepers who are anything but respectable--as bad, indeed, as any of the nobility."
"I was not thinking of morals," answered Hesper. "In that, I dare say, all classes are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are differences."
"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make respectability more a question of the individual than you do in yours."
"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man behaves himself, we ask no questions."
"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.
"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the people about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."
So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about her that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be ruled at all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave--the man so utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his fetters. Yet, perhaps, but for the opinions of those about her, Hesper would have been worse than she was.
"Am I right, then, in thinking," began Mary, "that people of your class care only that a man should wear the look of a gentleman, and carry himself like one? --that, whether his appearance be a reality or a mask, you do not care, so long as no mask is removed in your company? --that he may be the lowest of men, but, so long as other people receive him, you will, too, counting him good enough?"
Hesper held her peace. She had by this time learned some facts concerning the man she had married which, beside Mary's question, were embarrassing.
"It is interesting," she said at length, "to know how the different classes in a country regard each other." But she spoke wearily: it was interesting in the abstract, not interesting to her.
"The way to try a man," said Mary, "would be to turn him the other way, as I saw the gentleman who is taking your portrait do yesterday trying a square--change his position quite, I mean, and mark how far he continued to look a true man. He would show something of his real self then, I think. Make a nobleman a shopkeeper, for instance, and see what kind of a shopkeeper he made. If he showed himself just as honorable when a shopkeeper as he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good reason for counting him an honorable man."
"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.
"I know my father would have been as honorable as a nobleman as he was when a shopkeeper," persisted Mary.
"That I can well believe--he was your father," said Hesper, kindly, meaning what she said, too, so far as her poor understanding of the honorable reached.
"Would you mind telling me," asked Mary, "how you would define the difference between a nobleman and a shopkeeper?"
Hesper thought a little. The question to her was a stupid one. She had never had interest enough in humanity to care a straw what any shopkeeper ever thought or felt. Such people inhabited a region so far below her as to be practically out of her sight. They were not of her kind. It had never occurred to her that life must look to them much as it looked to her; that, like Shylock, they had feelings, and would bleed if cut with a knife. But, although she was not interested, she peered about sleepily for an answer. Her thoughts, in a lazy fashion, tumbled in her, like waves without wind--which, indeed, was all the sort of thinking she knew. At last, with the decision of conscious superiority, and the judicial air afforded by the precision of utterance belonging to her class--a precision so strangely conjoined with the lack of truth and logic both--she said, in a tone that gave to the merest puerility the consequence of a judgment between contending sages: "The difference is, that the nobleman is born to ease and dignity and affluence, and the--shopkeeper to buy and sell for his living."
"Many a nobleman," suggested Mary, "buys and sells without the necessity of making a living."
"That is the difference," said Hesper.
"Then the nobleman buys and sells to make money, and the shopkeeper to make a living?"
"Yes," granted Hesper, lazily.
"Which is the nobler end--to live, or to make money?" But this question was too far beyond Hesper. She did not even choose to hear it.
"And," she said, resuming her definition instead, "the nobleman deals with great things, the shopkeeper with small."
"When things are finally settled," said Mary--"Gracious, Mary!" cried Hesper, "what do you mean? Are not things settled for good this many a century? I am afraid I have been harboring an awful radical! --a--what do they call it? --a communist!"
She would have turned the whole matter out of doors, for she was tired of it.
"Things hardly look as if they were going to remain just as they are at this precise moment," said Mary. "How could they, when, from the very making of the world, they have been going on changing and changing, hardly ever even seeming to standstill?"
"You frighten me, Mary! You will do something terrible in my house, and I shall get the blame of it!" said Hesper, laughing.
But she did in truth feel a little uncomfortable. The shadow of dismay, a formless apprehension overclouded her. Mary's words recalled sentiments which at home she had heard alluded to with horror; and, however little parents may be loved or respected by their children, their opinions will yet settle, and, until they are driven out by better or worse, will cling.
"When I tell you what I was really thinking of, you will not be alarmed at my opinions," said Mary, not laughing now, but smiling a deep, sweet smile; "I do not believe there ever will be any settlement of things but one; they can not and must not stop changing, until the kingdom of heaven is come. Into that they must change, and rest."
"You are leaving politics for religion now, Mary. That is the one fault I have to find with you--you won't keep things in their own places! You are always mixing them up--like that Mrs.--what's her name? --who will mix religion and love in her novels, though everybody tells her they have nothing to do with each other! It is so irreverent!"
"Is it irreverent to believe that God rules the world he made, and that he is bringing things to his own mind in it?"
"You can't persuade me religion means turning things upside down."
"It means that a good deal more than people think. Did not our Lord say that many that are first shall be last, and the last first?"
"What has that to do with this nineteenth century?"
"Perhaps that the honorable shopkeeper and the mean nobleman will one day change places."
"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower classes take so to religion!" But what she said was: "Oh, yes, I dare say! But everything then will be so different that it won't signify. When we are all angels, nobody will care who is first, and who is last. I'm sure, for one, it won't be anything to me."
Hesper was a tolerable attendant at church--I will not say whether high or low church, because I should be supposed to care.
"In the kingdom of heaven," answered Mary, "things will always look what they are. My father used to say people will grow their own dresses there, as surely as a leopard his spots. He had to do with dresses, you know. There, not only will an honorable man look honorable, but a mean or less honorable man must look what he is."
"There will be nobody mean there."
"Then a good many won't be there who are called honorable here."
"I have no doubt there will be a good deal of allowance made for some people," said Hesper. "Society makes such demands!"
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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33
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THE INVITATION.
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When Letty received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her husband to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered flutter--of pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay: how dared she show her face in such a grand assembly? She would not know a bit how to behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go anywhere! What would Tom say if she looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed of her, and she dared not think what might come of it!
But close upon the postman came Mary, and a long talk followed. Letty was full of trembling delight, but Mary was not a little anxious with herself how Tom would take it.
The first matter, however, was Letty's dress. She had no money, and seemed afraid to ask for any. The distance between her and her husband had been widening.
Their council of ways and means lasted a good while, including many digressions. At last, though unwillingly, Letty accepted Mary's proposal that a certain dress, her best indeed, though she did not say so, which she had scarcely worn, and was not likely to miss, should be made to fit Letty. It was a lovely black silk, the best her father had been able to choose for her the last time he was in London. A little pang did shoot through her heart at the thought of parting with it, but she had too much of that father in her not to know that the greatest honor that can be shown any _thing_, is to make it serve a _person_; that the dearest gift of love, withheld from human necessity, is handed over to the moth and the rust. But little idea had Letty, much as she appreciated her kindness, what a sacrifice Mary was making for her that she might look her own sweet self, and worthy of her renowned Tom!
When Tom came home that night, however, the look of the world and all that is in it changed speedily for Letty, and terribly. He arrived in great good humor--somebody had been praising his verses, and the joy of the praise overflowed on his wife. But when, pleased as any little girl with the prospect of a party and a new frock, she told him, with gleeful gratitude, of the invitation and the heavenly kindness which had rendered it possible for her to accept it, the countenance of the great man changed. He rejected the idea of her going with him to any gathering of his grand friends--objected most of all to her going to Mrs. Redmain's. Alas! he had begun to allow to himself that he had married in too great haste--and beneath him. Wherever he went, his wife could be no credit to him, and her presence would take from him all sense of liberty! Not choosing, however, to acknowledge either of these objections, and not willing, besides, to appear selfish in the eyes of the woman who had given herself to him, he was only too glad to put all upon another, to him equally genuine ground. Controlling his irritation for the moment, he set forth with lordly kindness the absolute impossibility of accepting such an offer as Mary's. Could she for a moment imagine, he said, that he would degrade himself by taking his wife out in a dress that was not her own?
Here Letty interrupted him.
"Mary has given me the dress," she sobbed, "--for my very own."
"A second-hand dress! A dress that has been worn!" cried Tom. "How could you dream of insulting me so? The thing is absolutely impossible. Why, Letty, just think! --There should I be, going about as if the house were my own, and there would be my wife in the next room, or perhaps at my elbow, dressed in the finery of the lady's-maid of the house! It won't bear thinking of! I declare it makes me so ashamed, as I lie here, that I feel my face quite hot in the dark! To have to reason about such a thing--with my own wife, too!"
"It's not finery," sobbed Letty, laying hold of the one fact within her reach; "it's a beautiful black silk."
"It matters not a straw what it is," persisted Tom, adding humbug to cruelty. "You would be nothing but a sham! --A live dishonesty! A jackdaw in peacock's feathers! --I am sorry, Letty, your own sense of truth and uprightness should not prevent even the passing desire to act such a lie. Your fine dress would be just a fine fib--yourself would be but a walking fib. I have been taking too much for granted with you: I must bring you no more novels. A volume or two of Carlyle is what _you_ want."
This was too much. To lose her novels and her new dress together, and be threatened with nasty moral medicine--for she had never read a word of Carlyle beyond his translation of that dream of Richter's, and imagined him dry as a sand-pit--was bad enough, but to be so reproved by her husband was more than she could bear. If she was a silly and ignorant creature, she had the heart of a woman-child; and that precious thing in the sight of God, wounded and bruised by the husband in whom lay all her pride, went on beating laboriously for him only. She did not blame him. Anything was better than that. The dear, simple soul had a horror of rebuke. It would break hedges and climb stone walls to get out of the path of judgment--ten times more eagerly if her husband were the judge. She wept and wailed like a sick child, until at length the hard heart of selfish Tom was touched, and he sought, after the fashion of a foolish mother, to read the inconsolable a lesson of wisdom. But the truer a heart, the harder it is to console with the false. By and by, however, sleep, the truest of things, did for her what even the blandishments of her husband could not.
When she woke in the morning, he was gone: he had thought of an emendation in a poem that had been set up the day before, and made haste to the office, lest it should be printed without the precious betterment.
Mary came before noon, and found sadness where she had left joy. When she had heard as much as Letty thought proper to tell her, she was filled with indignation, and her first thought was to compass the tyrant's own exclusion from the paradise whose gates he closed against his wife. But second thoughts are sometimes best, and she saw the next moment not only that punishment did not belong to her, but that the weight of such would fall on Letty. The sole thing she could think of to comfort her was, to ask her to spend the same evening with her in her room. The proposal brightened Letty up at once: some time or other in the course of the evening she would, she fancied, see, or at least catch a glimpse of Tom in his glory!
The evening came, and with beating heart Letty went up the back stairs to Mary's room. She was dressing her mistress, but did not keep her waiting long. She had provided tea beforehand, and, when Mrs. Redmain had gone down, the two friends had a pleasant while together. Mary took Letty to Mrs. Redmain's room while she put away her things, and there showed her many splendors, which, moving no envy in her simple heart, yet made her sad, thinking of Tom. As she passed to the drawing-room, Sepia looked in, and saw them together.
But, as the company kept arriving, Letty grew very restless. She could not talk of anything for two minutes together, but kept creeping out of the room and half-way down the stair, to look over the banister-rail, and have a bird's-eye peep of a portion of the great landing, where indeed she caught many a glimpse of beauty and state, but never a glimpse of her Tom. Alas! she could not even imagine herself near him. What she saw made her feel as if her idol were miles away, and she could never draw nigh him again. How should the familiar associate of such splendid creatures care a pin's point for his humdrum wife?
Worn out at last, and thoroughly disappointed, she wanted to go home. It was then past midnight. Mary went with her, and saw her safe in bed before she left her.
As she went up to her room on her return, she saw, through the door by which the gardener entered the conservatory, Sepia standing there, and Tom, with flushed face, talking to her eagerly.
Letty cried herself to sleep, and dreamed that Tom had disowned her before a great company of grand ladies, who mocked her from their sight.
Tom came home while she slept, and in the morning was cross and miserable--in part, because he had been so abominably selfish to her. But the moment that, half frightened, half hopeful, she told him where she was the night before, he broke into the worst anger he had ever yet shown her. His shameful pride could not brook the idea that, where he was a guest, his wife was entertained by one of the domestics!
"How dare you be guilty of such a disgraceful thing!" he cried.
"Oh, don't, Tom--dear Tom!" pleaded Letty in terror. "It was you I wanted to see--not the great people, Tom! I don't care if I never see one of them again."
"Why should you ever see one of them again, I should like to know! What are they to you, or you to them?"
"But you know I was asked to go, Tom!"
"You're not such a fool as to fancy they cared about you! Everybody knows they are the most heartless set of people in the world!"
"Then why do you go, Tom?" said Letty, innocently.
"That's quite another thing! A man has to cultivate connections his wife need not know anything about. It is one of the necessities laid on my position."
Letty supposed it all truer than it was either intelligible or pleasant, and said no more, but let poor, self-abused, fine-fellow Tom scold and argue and reason away till he was tired. She was not sullen, but bewildered and worn out. He got up, and left her without a word.
Even at the risk of hurt to his dignity, of which there was no danger from the presence of his sweet, modest little wife in the best of company, it had been well for Tom to have allowed Letty the pleasure within her reach; for that night Sepia's artillery played on him ruthlessly. It may have been merely for her amusement--time, you see, moves so slowly with such as have no necessities they must themselves supply, and recognize no duties they must perform: without those two main pillars of life, necessity and duty, how shall the temple stand, when the huge, weary Samson comes tugging at it? The wonder is, there is not a great deal more wickedness in the world. For listlessness and boredness and nothing-to-do-ness are the best of soils for the breeding of the worms that never stop gnawing. Anyhow, Sepia had flashed on Tom, the tinder of Tom's heart had responded, and, any day when Sepia chose, she might blow up a wicked as well as foolish flame; nor, if it should suit her purpose, was Sepia one to hesitate in the use of the fire-fan. All the way home, her eyes haunted him, and it is a more dreadful thing than most are aware to be haunted by anything, good or bad, except the being who is our life. And those eyes, though not good, were beautiful. Evil, it is true, has neither part nor lot in beauty; it is absolutely hostile to it, and will at last destroy it utterly; but the process is a long one, so long that many imagine badness and beauty vitally associable. Tom yielded to the haunting, and it was in part the fault of those eyes that he used such hard words to his wife in the morning. Wives have not seldom to suffer sorely for discomforts and wrongs in their husbands of which they know nothing. But the thing will be set right one day, and in a better fashion than if all the woman's-rights' committees in the world had their will of the matter.
About this time, from the top, left-hand corner of the last page of "The Firefly," it appeared that Twilight had given place to Night; for the first of many verses began to show themselves, in which Twilight, or Hesper, or Vesper, or the Evening Star, was no more once mentioned, but only and al-ways Nox, or Hecate, or the dark Diana. _Tenebrious_ was a great word with Tom about this time. He was very fond, also, of the word _interlunar_. I will not trouble my reader with any specimen of the outcome of Tom's new inspiration, partly for this reason, that the verses not unfrequently came so near being good, nay, sometimes were really so good, that I do not choose to set them down where they would be treated with a mockery they do not in themselves deserve. He did not direct his wife's attention to them, nor did he compose them at home or at the office. Mostly he wrote them between acts at the theatre, or in any public place where something in which he was not interested was going on.
Of all that read them, and here was a Nemesis awful in justice, there was not one less moved by them than she who had inspired them. She saw in them, it is true, a reflex of her own power--and that pleased, but it did not move her. She took the devotion and pocketed it, as a greedy boy might an orange or bull's-eye. The verses in which Tom delighted were but the merest noise in the ears of the lady to whom of all he would have had them acceptable. One momentary revelation as to how she regarded them would have been enough to release him from his foolish enthrallment. Indignation, chagrin, and mortification would have soon been the death of such poor love as Tom's.
Mary and Sepia were on terms of politeness--of readiness to help on the one side, and condescension upon the other. Sepia would have condescended to the Mother Mary. The pure human was an idea beyond her, as beyond most people. They have not enough _religion_ toward God to know there is such a thing as religion toward their neighbor. But Sepia never made an enemy-if she could help it. She could not afford the luxury of hating--openly, at least. But I imagine she would have hated Mary heartily could she have seen the way she regarded her--the look of pitiful love, of compassionate and waiting helpfulness which her soul would now and then cast upon her. Of all things she would have resented pity; and she took Mary's readiness to help for servility--and naturally, seeing in herself willingness came from nothing else, though she called it prudence and necessity, and knew no shame because of it. Her children justify the heavenly wisdom, but the worldly wisdom justifies her children. Mary could not but feel how Sepia regarded her service, but service, to be true, must be divine, that is, to the just and the unjust, like the sun and the rain.
Between Sepia and Mr. Redmain continued a distance too great for either difference or misunderstanding. They met with a cold good morning, and parted without any good night. Their few words were polite, and their demeanor was civil. At the breakfast-table, Sepia would silently pass things to Mr. Redmain; Mr. Redmain would thank her, but never trouble himself to do as much for her. His attentions, indeed, were seldom wasted at home; but he was not often rude to anybody save his wife and his man, except when he was ill.
It was a long time before he began to feel any interest in Mary. He knew nothing of her save as a nice-looking maid his wife had got--rather a prim-looking puss, he would have said, had he had occasion to describe her. What Mary knew of him was merely the reflection of him in the mind of his wife; but, the first time she saw him, she felt she would rather not have to speak to him.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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34
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A STRAY SOUND.
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Mary went to see Letty as often as she could, and that was not seldom; but she had scarcely a chance of seeing Tom; either he was not up, or had gone--to the office, Letty supposed: she had no more idea of where the office was, or of the other localities haunted by Tom, than he himself had of what spirit he was of.
One day, when Mary could not help remarking upon her pale, weary looks, Letty burst into tears, and confided to her a secret of which she was not the less proud that it caused her anxiety and fear. As soon as she began to talk about it, the joy of its hope began to predominate, and before Mary left her she might have seemed to a stranger the most blessed little creature in the world. The greatness of her delight made Mary sad for her. To any thoughtful heart it must be sad to think what a little time the joy of so many mothers lasts--not because their babies die, but because they live; but Mary's mournfulness was caused by the fear that the splendid dawn of mother-hope would soon be swallowed in dismal clouds of father-fault. For mothers and for wives there is no redemption, no unchaining of love, save by the coming of the kingdom--_in themselves_. Oh! why do not mothers, sore-hearted mothers at least, if none else on the face of the earth, rush to the feet of the Son of Mary?
Yet every birth is but another link in the golden chain by which the world shall be lifted to the feet of God. It is only by the birth of new children, ever fresh material for the creative Spirit of the Son of Man to work upon, that the world can finally be redeemed. Letty had no _ideas_ about children, only the usual instincts of appropriation and indulgence; Mary had a few, for she recalled with delight some of her father's ways with herself. Him she knew as, next to God, the source of her life, so well had he fulfilled that first duty of all parents--the transmission of life. About such things she tried to talk to Letty, but soon perceived that not a particle of her thought found its way into Letty's mind: she cared nothing for any duty concerned--only for the joy of being a mother.
She grew paler yet and thinner; dark hollows came about her eyes; she was parting with life to give it to her child; she lost the girlish gayety Tom used to admire, and the something more lovely that was taking its place he was not capable of seeing. He gave her less and less of his company. His countenance did not shine on her; in her heart she grew aware that she feared him, and, ever as she shrunk, he withdrew. Had it not now been for Mary, she would likely have died. She did all for her that friend could. As often as she seemed able, she would take her for a drive, or on the river, that the wind, like a sensible presence of God, might blow upon her, and give her fresh life to take home with her. So little progress did she make with Hesper, that she could not help thinking it must have been for Letty's sake she was allowed to go to London.
Mr. and Mrs. Redmain went again to Durnmelling, but Mary begged Hesper to leave her behind. She told her the reason, without mentioning the name of the friend she desired to tend. Hesper shrugged her shoulders, as much as to say she wondered at her taste; but she did not believe that was in reality the cause of her wish, and, setting herself to find another, concluded she did not choose to show herself at Testbridge in her new position, and, afraid of losing if she opposed her, let her have her way. Nor, indeed, was she so necessary to her at Durnmelling, where there were few visitors, and comparatively little dressing was required: for the mere routine of such ordinary days, Jemima was enough, who, now and then called by Mary to her aid, had proved herself handy and capable, and had learned much. So, all through the hottest of the late summer and autumn weather, Mary remained in London, where every pavement seemed like the floor of a baker's oven, and, for all the life with which the city swarmed, the little winds that wandered through it seemed to have lost their vitality. How she longed for the common and the fields and the woods, where the very essence of life seemed to dwell in the atmosphere even when stillest, and the joy that came pouring from the throats of the birds seemed to flow first from her own soul into them! The very streets and lanes of Testbridge looked like paradise to Mary in Lon-don. But she never wished herself in the shop again, although almost every night she dreamed of the glad old time when her father was in it with her, and when, although they might not speak from morning to night, their souls kept talking across crowd and counters, and each was always aware of the other's supporting presence.
Longing, however, is not necessarily pain--it may, indeed, be intensest bliss; and, if Mary longed for the freedom of the country, it was not to be miserable that she could not have it. Her mere thought of it was to her a greater delight than the presence of all its joys is to many who desire them the most. That such things, and the possibility of such sensations from them, should be in the world, was enough to make Mary jubilant. But, then, she was at peace with her conscience, and had her heart full of loving duty. Besides, an active patience is a heavenly power. Mary could not only walk along a pavement dry and lifeless as the Sahara, enjoying the summer that brooded all about and beyond the city, but she bore the re-freshment of blowing winds and running waters into Letty's hot room, with the clanging street in front, and the little yard behind, where, from a cord stretched across between the walls, hung a few pieces of ill-washed linen, motionless in the glare, two plump sparrows picking up crumbs in their shadow--into this live death Mary would carry a tone of breeze, and sailing cloud, and swaying tree-top. In her the life was so concentrated and active that she was capable of communicating life--the highest of human endowments.
One evening, as Letty was telling her how the dressmaker up stairs had been for some time unwell, and Mary was feeling reproachful that she had not told her before, that she might have seen what she could do for her, they became aware, it seemed gradually, of one softest, sweetest, faintest music-tone coming from somewhere--but not seeming sufficiently of this world to disclose whence. Mary went to the window: there was nothing capable of music within sight. It came again; and intermittingly came and came. For some time they would hear nothing at all, and then again the most delicate of tones would creep into their ears, bringing with it more, it seemed to Mary in the surprise of its sweetness, than she could have believed single tone capable of carrying. Once or twice a few consecutive sounds made a division strangely sweet; and then again, for a time, nothing would reach them but a note here and a note there of what she was fain to imagine a wonderful melody. The visitation lasted for about an hour, then ceased. Letty went to bed, and all night long dreamed she heard the angels calling her. She woke weeping that her time was come so early, while as yet she had tasted so little of the pleasure of life. But the truth was, she had as yet, poor child, got so little of the _good_ of life, that it was not at all time for her to go.
When her hour drew near, Tom condescended--unwillingly, I am sorry to say, for he did not take the trouble to understand her feelings--to leave word where he might be found if he should be wanted. Even this assuagement of her fears Letty had to plead for; Mary's being so much with her was to him reason, and he made it excuse, for absence; he had begun to dread Mary. Nor, when at length he was sent for, was he in any great haste; all was well over ere he arrived. But he was a little touched when, drawing his face down to hers, she feebly whispered, "He's as like to you, Tom, as ever small thing was to great!" She saw the slight emotion, and fell asleep comforted.
It was night when she woke. Mary was sitting by her.
"O Mary!" she cried, "the angels have been calling me again. Did you hear them?"
"No," answered Mary, a little coldly, for, if ever she was inclined to be hard, it was toward self-sentiment. "Why do you think the angels should call you? Do you suppose them very desirous of your company?"
"They do call people," returned Letty, almost crying; "and I don't know why they mightn't call me. I'm not such a very wicked person!"
Mary's heart smote her; she was refusing Letty the time God was giving her! She could not wake her up, and, while God was waking her, she was impatient!
"I heard the call, too, Letty," she said; "but it was not the angels. It was the same instrument we heard the other night. Who can there be in the house to play like that? It was clearer this time. I thought I could listen to it a whole year."
"Why didn't you wake me?" said Letty.
"Because the more you sleep the better. And the doctor says I mustn't let you talk. I will get you something, and then you must go to sleep again."
Tom did not appear any more that night; and, if they had wanted him now, they would not have known where to find him. He was about nothing very bad--only supping with some friends--such friends as he did not even care to tell that he had a son.
He was ashamed of being in London at this time of the year, and, but that he had not money enough to go anywhere except to his mother's, he would have gone, and left Letty to shift for herself.
With his child he was pleased, and would not seldom take him for a few moments; but, when he cried, he was cross with him, and showed himself the unreasonable baby of the two.
The angels did not want Letty just yet, and she slowly recovered.
For Mary it was a peaceful time. She was able to read a good deal, and, although there were no books in Mr. Redmain's house, she generally succeeded in getting such as she wanted. She was able also to practice as much as she pleased, for now the grand piano was entirely at her service, and she took the opportunity of having a lesson every day.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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35
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THE MUSICIAN.
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One evening, soon after the baby's arrival, as Mary sat with him in her lap, the sweet tones they had heard twice before came creeping into her ears so gently that she seemed to be aware of their presence only after they had been for some time coming and going: she laid the baby down, and, stealing from the room, listened on the landing. Certainly the sounds were born in the house, but whether they came from below or above she could not tell. Going first down the stair, and then up, she soon satisfied herself that they came from above, and thereupon ventured a little farther up the stair.
She had already been to see the dressmaker, whom she had come to know through the making of Hesper's twilight robe of cloud, had found her far from well, and had done what she could for her. But she was in no want, and of more than ordinary independence--a Yorkshire woman, about forty years of age, delicate, but of great patience and courage; a plain, fair, freckled woman, with a belief in religion rather than in God. Very strict, therefore, in her observances, she thought a great deal more of the Sabbath than of man, a great deal more of the Bible than of the truth, and ten times more of her creed than of the will of God; and, had she heard any one utter such words as I have just written, would have said he was an atheist. She was a worthy creature, notwithstanding, only very unpleasant if one happened to step on the toes of a pet ignorance. Mary soon discovered that there was no profit in talking with her on the subjects she loved most: plainly she knew little about them, except at second hand--that is, through the forms of other minds than her own. Such people seem intended for the special furtherance of the saints in patience; being utterly unassailable by reason, they are especially trying to those who desire to stand on brotherly terms with all men, and so are the more sensitive to the rudeness that always goes with moral stupidity; intellectual stupidity may coexist with the loveliness of an angel. It is one of the blessed hopes of the world to come, that there will be none such in it. But why so many words? I say to myself, Will one of such as I mean recognize his portrait in my sketch? Many such have I met in my young days, and in my old days I find they swarm still. I could wish that all such had to earn their own bread like Ann Byron: had she been rich, she would have been unbearable. Women like her, when they are well to do, walk with a manly stride, make the tails of their dresses go like the screw of a steamer behind them, and are not unfrequently Scotch.
As Mary went up, the music ceased; but, hoping Miss Byrom would be able to enlighten her concerning its source, she continued her ascent, and knocked at her door. A voice, rather wooden, yet not without character, invited her to enter.
Ann sat near the window, for, although it was quite dusk, a little use might yet be made of the lingering ghost of the daylight. Almost all Mary could see of her was the reflection from the round eyes of a pair of horn spectacles.
"How do you do, Miss Byrom?" she said.
"Not at all well," answered Ann, almost in a tone of offense.
"Is there nothing I can do for you?" asked Mary.
"We are to owe no man anything but love, the apostle tells us."
"You must owe a good deal of that, then," said Mary, one part vexed, and two parts amused, "for you don't seem to pay much of it."
She was just beginning to be sorry for what she had said when she was startled by a sound, very like a little laugh, which seemed to come from behind her. She turned quickly, but, before she could see anything through the darkness, the softest of violin-tones thrilled the air close beside her, and then she saw, seated on the corner of Ann's bed, the figure of a man--young or old, she could not tell. How could he have kept so still! His bow was wandering slowly about over the strings of his violin; but presently, having overcome, as it seemed, with the help of his instrument, his inclination to laugh, he ceased, and all was still.
"I came," said Mary, turning again to Ann, "hoping you might be able to tell me where the sweet sounds came from which we have heard now two or three times; but I had no idea there was any one in the room besides yourself. --They come at intervals a great deal too long," she added, turning toward the figure in the darkness.
"I am afraid my ear is out sometimes," said the man, mistaking her remark. "I think it comes of the anvil."
The voice was manly, though gentle, and gave an impression of utter directness and simplicity. It was Mary's turn, however, not to understand, and she made no answer.
"I am very sorry," the musician went on, "if I annoyed you, miss."
Mary was hastening to assure him that the fact was quite the other way, when Ann prevented her.
"I told you so!" she said; "_you_ make an idol of your foolish plaything, but other people take it only for the nuisance it is."
"Indeed, you never were more mistaken," said Mary. "Both Mrs. Helmer and myself are charmed with the little that reaches us. It is, indeed, seldom one hears tones of such purity."
The player responded with a sigh of pleasure.
"Now there you are, miss," cried Ann, "a-flattering of his folly till not a word I say will be of the smallest use!"
"If your words are not wise," said Mary, with suppressed indignation, "the less he heeds them the better."
"It ain't wise, to my judgment, miss, to make a man think himself something when he is nothing. It's quite enough a man should deceive his own self, without another to come and help him."
"To speak the truth is not to deceive," replied Mary. "I have some knowledge of music, and I say only what is true."
"What good can it be spending his time scraping horsehair athort catgut?"
"They must fancy some good in it up in heaven," said Mary, "or they wouldn't have so much of it there."
"There ain't no fiddles in heaven," said Ann, with indignation; "they've nothing there but harps and trumpets." Mary turned to the man, who had not said a word.
"Would you mind coming down with me," she said, "and playing a little, very softly, to my friend? She has a little baby, and is not strong. It would do her good."
"She'd better read her Bible," said Ann, who, finding she could no longer see, was lighting a candle.
"She does read her Bible," returned Mary; "and a little music would, perhaps, help her to read it to better purpose."
"There, Ann!" cried the player.
The woman replied with a scornful grunt.
"Two fools don't make a wise man, for all the franchise," she said.
But Mary had once more turned toward the musician, and in the light of the candle was met by a pair of black eyes, keen yet soft, looking out from tinder an overhanging ridge of forehead. The rest of the face was in shadow, but she could see by the whiteness, through a beard that clouded all the lower part of it, that he was smiling to himself: Mary had said what pleased him, and his eyes sought her face, and seemed to rest on it with a kind of trust, and a look as if he was ready to do whatever she might ask of him.
"You will come?" said Mary.
"Yes, miss, with all my heart," he replied, and flashed a full smile that rested upon Ann, and seemed to say he knew her not so hard as she looked.
Rising, he tucked his violin under his arm, and showed himself ready to follow.
"Good night, Miss Byrom," said Mary.
"Good night, miss," returned Ann, grimly. "I'm sorry for you both, miss. But, until the spirit is poured out from on high, it's nothing but a stumbling in the dark."
This last utterance was a reflection rather than a remark.
Mary made no reply. She did not care to have the last word; nor did she fancy her cause lost when she had not at hand the answer that befitted folly. She ran down the stair, and at the bottom stood waiting her new acquaintance, who descended more slowly, careful not to make a noise.
She could now see, by the gaslight that burned on the landing, a little more of what the man was. He was powerfully built, rather over middle height, and about the age of thirty. His complexion was dark, and the hand that held the bow looked grimy. He bore himself well, but a little stiffly, with a care over his violin like that of a man carrying a baby. He was decidedly handsome, in a rugged way--mouth and chin but hinted through a thick beard of darkest brown.
"Come this way," said Mary, leading him into Letty's parlor. "I will tell my friend you are come. Her room, you see, opens off this, and she will hear you delightfully. Pray, take a seat."
"Thank you, miss," said the man, but remained standing.
"I have caught the bird, Letty," said Mary, loud enough for him to hear; "and he is come to sing a little to you--if you feel strong enough for it."
"It will do me good," said Letty. "How kind of him!"
The man, having heard, was already tuning his violin when Mary came from the bedroom, and sat down on the sofa. The instant he had got it to his mind, he turned, and, going to the farthest corner of the room, closed his eyes tight, and began to play.
But how shall I describe that playing? how convey an idea of it, however remote? I fear it is nothing less than presumption in me, so great is my ignorance, to attempt the thing. But would it be right, for dread of bringing shame upon me through failure, to leave my readers without any notion of it at all? On the other hand, I shall, at least, have the merit of daring to fail--a merit of which I could well be ambitious.
If, then, my reader will imagine some music-loving sylph attempting to guide the wind among the strings of an Aeolian harp, every now and then for a moment succeeding, and then again for a while the wind having its own way, he will gain, I think, something like a dream-notion of the man's playing. Mary tried hard to get hold of some clew to the combinations and sequences, but the motive of them she could not find. Whatever their source, there was, either in the composition itself or in his mode of playing, not a little of the inartistic, that is, the lawless. Yet every now and then would come a passage of exquisite melody, owing much, however, no doubt, to the marvelous delicacy of the player's tones, and the utterly tender expression with which he produced them. But ever as she thought to get some insight into the movement of the man's mind, still would she be swept away on the storm of some change, seeming of mood incongruous.
At length came a little pause. He wiped his forehead with a blue cotton handkerchief, and seemed ready to begin again. Mary interrupted him with the question: "Will you please tell me whose music you have been playing?"
He opened his eyes, which had remained closed even while he stood motionless, and, with a smile sweeter than any she had ever seen on such a strong face, answered: "It's nobody's, miss."
"Do you mean you have been extemporizing all this time?"
"I don't know exactly what that means."
"You must have learned it from notes?"
"I couldn't read them if I had any to read," he answered.
"Then what an ear and what a memory you must have! How often have you heard it?"
"Just as often as I've played it, and no oftener. Not being able to read, and seldom hearing any music I care for, I'm forced to be content with what runs out at my fingers when I shut my eyes. It all comes of shutting my eyes. I couldn't play a thing but for shutting my eyes. It's a wonderful deal that comes of shutting your eyes! Did you never try it, miss?"
Mary was so astonished both by what he said and the simplicity with which he said it, having clearly no notion that he was uttering anything strange, that she was silent, and the man, after a moment's retuning, began again to play. Then did Mary gather all her listening powers, and brace her attention to the tightest--but at first with no better success. And, indeed, that was not the way to understand. It seems to me, at least, in my great ignorance, that one can not understand music unless he is humble toward it, and consents, if need be, not to understand. When one is quiescent, submissive, opens the ears of the mind, and demands of them nothing more than the hearing--when the rising waters of question retire to their bed, and individuality is still, then the dews and rains of music, finding the way clear for them, soak and sink through the sands of the mind, down, far down, below the thinking-place, down to the region of music, which is the hidden workshop of the soul, the place where lies ready the divine material for man to go making withal.
Weary at last with vain effort, she ceased to endeavor, and in a little while was herself being molded by the music unconsciously received to the further understanding of it. It wrought in her mind pictures, not thoughts. It is possible, however, my later knowledge may affect my description of what Mary then saw with her mind's eye.
First there was a crowd in slow, then rapid movement. Arose cries and entreaties. Came hurried motions, disruption, and running feet. A pause followed. Then woke a lively melody, changing to the prayer of some soul too grateful to find words. Next came a bar or two of what seemed calm, lovely speech, then a few slowly delivered chords, and all was still.
She came to herself, and then first knew that, like sleep, the music had seized her unawares, and she had been understanding, or at least enjoying, without knowing it. The man was approaching her from his dark corner. His face was shining, but plainly he did not intend more music, for his violin was already under his arm. He made her a little awkward bow--not much more than a nod, and turned to the door. He had it half open, and not yet could Mary speak. For Letty, she was fast asleep.
From the top of the stair came the voice of Ann, screaming: "Here's your hat, Joe. I knew you'd be going when you played that. You'd have forgotten it, I know!"
Mary heard the hat come tumbling down the stair.
"Thank you, Ann," returned Joe. "Yes, I'm going. The ladies don't care much for my music. Nobody does but myself. But, then, it's good for me." The last two sentences were spoken in soliloquy, but Mary heard them, for he stood with the handle of the door in his hand. He closed it, picked up his hat, and went softly down the stair.
The spell was broken, and Mary darted to the door. But, just as she opened it, the outer door closed behind the strange musician, and she had not even learned his name.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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36
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A CHANGE.
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As soon as Letty had strength enough to attend to her baby without help, Mary, to the surprise of her mistress, and the destruction of her theory concerning her stay in London, presented herself at Durnmelling, found that she was more welcome than looked for, and the same hour resumed her duties about Hesper.
It was with curiously mingled feelings that she gazed from her window on the chimneys of Thornwick. How much had come to her since first, in the summer-seat at the end of the yew-hedge, Mr. Wardour opened to her the door of literature! It was now autumn, and the woods, to get young again, were dying their yearly death. For the moment she felt as if she, too, had begun to grow old. Ministration had tired her a little--but, oh! how different its weariness from that which came of labor amid obstruction and insult! Her heart beat a little slower, perhaps, but she could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost; that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made--in other and higher words, after the will of God.
But she did for a moment taste some bitterness in her cup, when, one day, on the footpath of Testbridge, near the place where, that memorable Sunday, she met Mr. Wardour, she met him again, and, looking at her, and plainly recognizing her, he passed without salutation. Like a sudden wave the blood rose to her face, and then sank to the deeps of her heart; and from somewhere came the conviction that one day the destiny of Godfrey Wardour would be in her hands: he had done more for her than any but her father; and, when that day was come, he should not find her fail him!
She was then on her way to the shop. She did not at all relish entering it, but, as she had a large money-interest in the business; she ought at least, she said to herself, to pay the place a visit. When she went in, Turnbull did not at first recognize her, and, taking her for a customer, blossomed into repulsive suavity. The change that came over his countenance, when he knew her, was a shadow of such mingled and conflicting shades that she felt there was something peculiar in it which she must attempt to analyze. It remained hardly a moment to encounter question, but was almost immediately replaced with a politeness evidently false. Then, first, she began to be aware of distrusting the man.
Asking a few questions about the business, to which he gave answers most satisfactory, she kept casting her eyes about the shop, unable to account for the impression the look of it made upon her. Either her eyes had formed for themselves another scale, and could no more rightly judge between past and present, or the aspect of the place was different, and not so satisfactory. Was there less in it? she asked herself--or was it only not so well kept as when she left it? She could not tell. Neither could she understand the profound but distant consideration with which Mr. Turnbull endeavored to behave to her, treating her like a stranger to whom he must, against his inclination, manifest all possible respect, while he did not invite her even to call at _the villa. _ She bought a pair of gloves of the young woman who seemed to occupy her place, paid for them, and left the shop without speaking to any one else. All the time, George was standing behind the opposite counter, staring at her; but, much to her relief, he showed no other sign of recognition.
Before she went to find Beenie, who was still at Testbridge, in a cottage of her own, she felt she must think over these things, and come, if possible, to some conclusion about them. She left the town, therefore, and walked homeward.
What did it all mean? She knew very well they must look down on her ten times more than ever, because of the _menial_ position in which she had placed herself, sinking thereby beyond all pretense to be regarded as their equal. But, if that was what the man's behavior meant, why was he so studiously--not so much polite as respectful? That did not use to be Mr. Turnbull's way where he looked down upon one. And, then, what did the shadow preceding this behavior mean? Was there not in it something more than annoyance at the sight of her? It was with an effort he dismissed it! She had never seen that look upon him!
Then there was the impression the shop made on her! Was there anything in that? Somehow it certainly seemed to have a shabby look! Was it possible anything was wrong or going wrong with the concern? Her father had always spoken with great respect of Mr. Turnbull's business faculties, but she knew he had never troubled himself to, look into the books or know how they stood with the bank. She knew also that Mr. Turnbull was greedy after money, and that his wife was ambitious, and hated the business. But, if he wanted to be out of it, would he not naturally keep it up to the best, at least in appearance, that he might part with his share in it to the better advantage?
She turned, and, walking back to the town, sought Beenie.
The old woman being naturally a gossip, Mary was hardly seated before she began to pour out the talk of the town, in which came presently certain rumors concerning Mr. Turnbull--mainly hints at speculation and loss.
The result was that Mary went from Beenie to the lawyer in whose care her father had left his affairs. He was an old man, and had been ill; had no suspicion of anything being wrong, but would look into the matter at once. She went home, and troubled herself no more.
She had been at Durnmelling but a few days, when Mr. Redmain, wishing to see how things were on his estate in Cornwall, and making up his mind to run down, carelessly asked his wife if she would accompany him: it would be only for a few days, he said; but a breeze or two from the Atlantic would improve her complexion. This was gracious; but he was always more polite in the company of Lady Margaret, who continued to show him the kindness no one else dared or was inclined to do. For some years he had suffered increasingly from recurrent attacks of the disease to which I have already referred; and, whatever might be the motive of his mother-in-law's behavior, certainly, in those attacks, it was a comfort to him to be near her. On such occasions in London, his sole attendant was his man Mewks.
Mary was delighted to see more of her country. She had traveled very little, but was capable of gathering ten times more from a journey to Cornwall than most travelers from one through Switzerland itself. The place to which they went was lonely and lovely, and Mary, for the first few days, enjoyed it unspeakably.
But then, suddenly, as was not unusual, Mr. Redmain was taken ill. For some reason or other, he had sent his man to London, and the only other they had with them, besides the coachman, was useless in such a need, while the housekeeper who lived at the place was nearly decrepit; so that of the household Mary alone was capable of fit attendance in the sickroom. Hesper shrunk, almost with horror, certainly with disgust, from the idea of having anything to do with her husband as an invalid. When she had the choice of her company, she said, she would not choose his. Mewks was sent for at once, but did not arrive before the patient had had some experience of Mary's tendance; nor, after he came, was she altogether without opportunity of ministering to him. The attack was a long and severe one, delaying for many weeks their return to London, where Mr. Redmain declared he must be, at any risk, before the end of November.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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37
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LYDGATE STEET.
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Letty's whole life was now gathered about her boy, and she thought little, comparatively, about Tom. And Tom thought so little about her that he did not perceive the difference. When he came home, he was always in a hurry to be gone again. He had always something important to do, but it never showed itself to Letty in the shape of money. He gave her a little now and then, of course, and she made it go incredibly far, but it was ever with more of a grudge that he gave it. The influence over him of Sepia was scarcely less now that she was gone; but, if she cared for him at all, it was mainly that, being now not a little stale-hearted, his devotion reminded her pleasurably of a time when other passions than those of self-preservation were strongest in her; and her favor even now tended only to the increase of Tom's growing disappointment, for, like Macbeth, he had begun already to consider life but a poor affair. Across the cloud of this death gleamed, certainly, the flashing of Sepia's eyes, or the softly infolding dawn of her smile, but only, the next hour, nay, the next moment, to leave all darker than before. Precious is the favor of any true, good woman, be she what else she may; but what is the favor of one without heart or faith or self-giving? Yet is there testimony only too strong and terrible to the demoniacal power, enslaving and absorbing as the arms of the kraken, of an evil woman over an imaginative youth. Possibly, did he know beforehand her nature, he would not love her, but, knowing it only too late, he loves and curses; calls her the worst of names, yet can not or will not tear himself free; after a fashion he still calls love, he loves the demon, and hates her thralldom. Happily Tom had not reached this depth of perdition; Sepia was prudent for herself, and knew, none better, what she was about, so far as the near future was concerned, therefore held him at arm's length, where Tom basked in a light that was of hell--for what is a hell, or a woman like Sepia, but an inverted creation? His nature, in consequence, was in all directions dissolving. He drank more and more strong drink, fitting fuel to such his passion, and Sepia liked to see him approach with his eyes blazing. There are not many women like her; she is a rare type--but not, therefore, to be passed over in silence. It is little consolation that the man-eating tiger is a rare animal, if one of them be actually on the path; and to the philosopher a possibility is a fact. But the true value of the study of abnormal development is that, in the deepest sense, such development is not abnormal at all, but the perfected result of the laws that avenge law-breach. It is in and through such that we get glimpses, down the gulf of a moral volcano, to the infernal possibilities of the human--the lawless rot of that which, in its _attainable_ idea, is nothing less than divine, imagined, foreseen, cherished, and labored for, by the Father of the human. Such inverted possibility, the infernal possibility, I mean, lies latent in every one of us, and, except we stir ourselves up to the right, will gradually, from a possibility, become an energy. The wise man dares not yield to a temptation, were it only for the terror that, if he do, he will yield the more readily again. The commonplace critic, who recognizes life solely upon his own conscious level, mocks equally at the ideal and its antipode, incapable of recognizing the art of Shakespeare himself as true to the human nature that will not be human.
I have said that Letty did her best with what money Tom gave her; but when she came to find that he had not paid the lodging for two months; that the payment of various things he had told her to order and he would see to had been neglected, and that the tradespeople were getting persistent in their applications; that, when she told him anything of the sort, he treated it at one time as a matter of no consequence which he would speedily set right, at another as behavior of the creditor hugely impertinent, which he would punish by making him wait his time--her heart at length sank within her, and she felt there was no bulwark between her and a sea of troubles; she felt as if she lay already in the depths of a debtor's jail. Therefore, sparing as she had been from the first, she was more sparing than ever. Not only would she buy nothing for which she could not pay down, having often in consequence to go without proper food, but, even when she had a little in hand, would live like an anchorite. She grew very thin; and, in-deed, if she had not been of the healthiest, could not have stood her own treatment many weeks.
Her baby soon began to show suffering, but this did not make her alter her way, or drive her to appeal to Tom. She was ignorant of the simplest things a mother needs to know, and never imagined her abstinence could hurt her baby. So long as she went on nursing him, it was all the same, she thought. He cried so much, that Tom made it a reason with himself, and indeed gave it as one to Letty, for not coming home at night: the child would not let him sleep; and how was he to do his work if he had not his night's rest? It mattered little with semi-mechanical professions like medicine or the law, but how was a man to write articles such as he wrote, not to mention poetry, except he had the repose necessary to the redintegration of his exhausted brain? The baby went on crying, and the mother's heart was torn. The woman of the house said he must be already cutting his teeth, and recommended some devilish sirup. Letty bought a bottle with the next money she got, and thought it did him good-because, lessening his appetite, it lessened his crying, and also made him sleep more than he ought.
At last one night Tom came home very much the worse of drink, and in maudlin affection insisted on taking the baby from its cradle. The baby shrieked. Tom was angry with the weakling, rated him soundly for ingratitude to "the author of his being," and shook him roughly to teach him the good manners of the world he had come to.
Thereat in Letty sprang up the mother, erect and fierce. She darted to Tom, snatched the child from his arms, and turned to carry him to the inner room. But, as the mother rose in Letty, the devil rose in Tom. If what followed was not the doing of the real Tom, it was the doing of the devil to whom the real Tom had opened the door. With one stride he overtook his wife, and mother and child lay together on the floor. I must say for him that, even in his drunkenness, he did not strike his wife as he would have struck a man; it was an open-handed blow he gave her, what, in familiar language, is called a box on the ear, but for days she carried the record of it on her cheek in five red finger-marks.
When he saw her on the floor, Tom's bedazed mind came to itself; he knew what he had done, and was sobered. But, alas! even then he thought more of the wrong he had done to himself as a gentleman than of the grievous wound he had given his wife's heart. He took the baby, who had ceased to cry as soon as he was in his mother's arms, and laid him on the rug, then lifted the bitterly weeping Letty, placed her on the sofa, and knelt beside her--not humbly to entreat her pardon, but, as was his wont, to justify himself by proving that all the blame was hers, and that she had wronged him greatly in driving him to do such a thing. This for apology poor Letty, never having had from him fuller acknowledgment of wrong, was fain to accept. She turned on the sofa, threw her arms about his neck, kissed him, and clung to him with an utter forgiveness. But all it did for Tom was to restore him his good opinion of himself, and enable him to go on feeling as much of a gentleman as before.
Reconciled, they turned to the baby. He was pale, his eyes were closed, and they could not tell whether he breathed. In a horrible fright, Tom ran for the doctor. Before he returned with him, the child had come to, and the doctor could discover no injury from the fall they told him he had had. At the same time, he said he was not properly nourished, and must have better food.
This was a fresh difficulty to Letty; it was a call for more outlay. And now their landlady, who had throughout been very kind, was in trouble about her own rent, and began to press for part at least of theirs. Letty's heart seemed to labor under a stone. She forgot that there was a thing called joy. So sad she looked that the good woman, full of pity, assured her that, come what might, she should not be turned out, but at the worst would only have to go a story higher, to inferior rooms. The rent should wait, she said, until better days. But this kindness relieved Letty only a little, for the rent past and the rent to come hung upon her like a cloak of lead.
Nor was even debt the worst that now oppressed her. For, possibly from the fall, but more from the prolonged want of suitable nourishment and wise treatment, after that terrible night, the baby grew worse. Many were the tears the sleepless mother shed over the sallow face and wasted limbs of her slumbering treasure--her one antidote to countless sorrows; and many were the foolish means she tried to restore his sinking vitality.
Mary had written to her, and she had written to Mary; but she had said nothing of the straits to which she was reduced; that would have been to bring blame upon Tom. But Mary, with her fine human instinct, felt that things must be going worse with her than before; and, when she found that her return was indefinitely postponed by Mr. Redmain's illness, she ventured at last in her anxiety upon a daring measure: she wrote to Mr. Wardour, telling him she had reason to fear things were not going well with Letty Helmer, and suggesting, in the gentlest way, whether it might not now be time to let bygones be bygones, and make some inquiry concerning her.
To this letter Godfrey returned no answer. For all her denial, he had never ceased to believe that Mary had been Letty's accomplice throughout that miserable affair; and the very name--the Letty and the Helmer--stung him to the quick. He took it, therefore, as a piece of utter presumption in Mary to write to him about Letty, and that in the tone, as he interpreted it, of one reading him a lesson of duty. But, while he was thus indignant with Mary, he was also vexed with Letty that she should not herself have written to him if she was in any need, forgetting that he had never hinted at any door of communication open between him and her. His heart quivered at the thought that she might be in distress; he had known for certain, he said, the fool would bring her to misery! For himself, the thought of Letty was an ever-open wound--with an ever-present pain, now dull and aching, now keen and stinging. The agony of her desertion, he said, would never cease gnawing at his heart until it was laid in the grave; like most heathen Christians, he thought of death as the end of all the joys, sorrows, and interests generally of this life. But, while thus he brooded, a fierce and evil joy awoke in him at the thought that now at last the expected hour had come when he would heap coals of fire on her head. He was still fool enough to think of her as having forsaken him, although he had never given her ground for believing, and she had never had conceit enough to imagine, that he cared the least for her person. If he could but let her have a glimmer of what she had lost in losing him! She knew what she had gained in Tom Helmer.
He passed a troubled night, dreamed painfully, and started awake to renewed pain. Before morning he had made up his mind to take the first train to London. But he thought far more of being her deliverer than of bringing her deliverance.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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38
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GODFREY AND LETTY.
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It was a sad, gloomy, kindless November night, when Godfrey arrived in London. The wind was cold, the pavements were cold, the houses seemed to be not only cold but feeling it. The very dust that blow in his face was cold. Now cold is a powerful ally of the commonplace, and imagination therefore was not very busy in the bosom of Godfrey Wardour as he went to find Letty Helmer, which was just as well, in the circumstances. He was cool to the very heart when he walked up to the door indicated by Mary, and rung the bell: Mrs. Helmer was at home: would he walk up stairs?
It was not a house of ceremonies; he was shown up and up and into the room where she sat, without a word carried before to prepare her for his visit. It was so dark that he could see nothing but the figure of one at work by a table, on which stood a single candle. There was but a spark of fire in the dreary grate, and Letty was colder than any one could know, for she was at the moment making down the last woolly garment she had, in the vain hope of warming her baby.
She looked up. She had thought it was the landlady, and had waited for her to speak. She gazed for a moment in bewilderment, saw who it was, and jumped up half frightened, half ready to go wild with joy. All the memories of Godfrey rushed in a confused heap upon her, and overwhelmed her. She ran to him, and the same moment was in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, weeping tears of such gladness as she had not known since the first week of her marriage.
Neither spoke for some time; Letty could not because she was crying, and Godfrey would not because he did not want to cry. Those few moments were pure, simple happiness to both of them; to Letty, because she had loved him from childhood, and hoped that all was to be as of old between them; to Godfrey, because, for the moment, he had forgotten himself, and had neither thought of injury nor hope of love, remembering only the old days and the Letty that used to be. It may seem strange that, having never once embraced her all the time they lived together, he should do so now; but Letty's love would any time have responded to the least show of affection, and when, at the sight of his face, into which memory had called up all his tenderness, she rushed into his arms, how could he help kissing her? The pity was that he had not kissed her long before. Or was it a pity? I think not.
But the embrace could not be a long one. Godfrey was the first to relax its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her. Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, she caught his troubled gaze.
"I am not ill, Cousin Godfrey," she said. "Do not look at me so, or I shall cry again. You know you never liked to see me cry."
"My poor girl!" said Godfrey, in a voice which, if he had not kept it lower than natural, would have broken, "you are suffering."
"Oh, no, I'm not," replied Letty, with a pitiful effort at the cheerful; "I am only so glad to see you again, Cousin Godfrey."
She sat on the edge of the sofa, and had put her open hands, palm to palm, between her knees, in a childish way, looking like one chidden, who did not deserve it, but was ready to endure. For a moment Godfrey sat gazing at her, with troubled heart and troubled looks, then between his teeth muttered, "Damn the rascal!"
Letty sat straight up, and turned upon him eyes of appeal, scared, yet ready to defend. Her hands were now clinched, one on each side of her; she was poking the little fists into the squab of the sofa.
"Cousin Godfrey!" she cried, "if you mean Tom, you must not, you must not. I will go away if you speak a word against him. I will; I will. --I _must,_ you know!"
Godfrey made no reply--neither apologized nor sought to cover.
"Why, child!" he said at last, "you are half starved!"
The pity and tenderness of both word and tone were too much for her. She had not been at all pitying herself, but such an utterance from the man she loved like an elder brother so wrought upon her enfeebled condition that she broke into a cry. She strove to suppress her emotion; she fought with it; in her agony she would have rushed from the room, had not Godfrey caught her, drawn her down beside him, and kept her there. "You shall not leave me!" he said, in that voice Letty had always been used to obey. "Who has a right to know how things go with you, if I have not? Come, you must tell me all about it."
"I have nothing to tell, Cousin Godfrey," she replied with some calmness, for Godfrey's decision had enabled her to conquer herself, "except that baby is ill, and looks as if he would never get better, and it is like to break my heart. Oh, he is such a darling, Cousin Godfrey!"
"Let me see him," said Godfrey, in his heart detesting the child--the visible sign that another was nearer to Letty than he.
She jumped up, almost ran into the next room, and, coming back with her little one, laid him in Godfrey's arms. The moment he felt the weight of the little, sad-looking, sleeping thing, he grew human toward him, and saw in him Letty and not Tom.
"Good God! the child is starving, too," he exclaimed.
"Oh, no, Cousin Godfrey!" cried Letty; "he is not starving. He had a fresh-laid egg for breakfast this morning, and some arrowroot for dinner, and some bread and milk for tea--" "London milk!" said Godfrey.
"Well, it is not like the milk in the dairy at Thornwick," admitted Letty. "If he had milk like that, he would soon be well!"
But Godfrey dared not say, "Bring him to Thornwick": he knew his mother too well for that!
"When were you anywhere in the country?" he asked. In a negative kind of way he was still nursing the baby.
"Not since we were married," she answered, sadly. "You see, poor Tom can't afford it."
Now Godfrey happened to have heard, "from the best authority," that Tom's mother was far from illiberal to him.
"Mrs. Helmer allows him so much a year--does she not?" he said.
"I know he gets money from her, but it can't be much," she answered.
Godfrey's suspicions against Tom increased every moment. He must learn the truth. He would have it, if by an even cruel experiment! He sat a moment silent--then said, with assumed cheerfulness: "Well, Letty, I suppose, for the sake of old times, you will give me some dinner?"
Then, indeed, her courage gave way. She turned from him, laid her head on the end of the sofa, and sobbed so that the room seemed to shake with the convulsions of her grief. "Letty," said Godfrey, laying his hand on her head, "it is no use any more trying to hide the truth. I don't want any dinner; in fact, I dined long ago. But you would not be open with me, and I was forced to find out for myself: you have not enough to eat, and you know it. I will not say a word about who is to blame--for anything I know, it may be no one--I am sure it is not you. But this must not go on! See, I have brought you a little pocket-book. I will call again tomorrow, and you will tell me then how you like it."
He laid the pocket-book on the table. There was ten times as much in it as ever Letty had had at once. But she never knew what was in it. She rose with instant resolve. All the woman in her waked at once. She felt that a moment was come when she must be resolute, or lose her hold on life.
"Cousin Godfrey," she said, in a tone he scarcely recognized as hers--it frightened him as if it came from a sepulchre--"if you do not take that purse away, I will throw it in the fire without opening it! If my husband can not give me enough to eat, I can starve as well as another. If you loved Tom, it would be different, but you hate him, and I will have nothing from you. Take it away, Cousin Godfrey."
Mortified, hurt, miserable, Godfrey took the purse, and, without a word, walked from the room. Somewhere down in his secret heart was dawning an idea of Letty beyond anything he used to think of her, but in the mean time he was only blindly aware that his heart had been shot through and through. Nor was this the time for him to reflect that, under his training, Letty, even if he had married her, would never have grown to such dignity.
It was, indeed, only in that moment she had become capable of the action. She had been growing as none, not Mary, still less herself, knew, under the heavy snows of affliction, and this was her first blossom. Not many of my readers will mistake me, I trust. Had it been in Letty pride that refused help from such an old friend, that pride I should count no blossom, but one of the meanest rags that ever fluttered to scare the birds. But the dignity of her refusal was in this--that she would accept nothing in which her husband had and could have no human, that is, no spiritual share. She had married him because she loved him, and she would hold by him wherever that might lead her: not wittingly would she allow the finest edge, even of ancient kindness, to come between her Tom and herself! To accept from her cousin Godfrey the help her husband ought to provide her, would be to let him, however innocently, step into his place! There was no reasoning in her resolve: it was allied to that spiritual insight which, in simple natures, and in proportion to their simplicity, approaches or amounts to prophecy. As the presence of death will sometimes change even an ordinary man to a prophet, in times of sore need the childlike nature may well receive a vision sufficing to direct the doubtful step. Letty felt that the taking of that money would be the opening of a gulf to divide her and Tom for ever.
The moment Godfrey was out of the room she cast herself on the floor, and sobbed as if her heart must break. But her sobs were tearless. And, oh, agony of agonies! unsought came the conviction, and she could not send it away--to this had sunk her lofty idea of her Tom! --that he would have had her take the money! More than once or twice, in the ill-humors that followed a forced hilarity, he had forgotten his claims to being a gentleman so far as--not exactly to reproach her with having brought him to poverty--but to remind her that, if she was poor, she was no poorer than she had been when dependent on the charity of a distant relation!
The baby began to cry. She rose and took him from the sofa where Godfrey had laid him when he was getting out the pocket-book, held him fast to her bosom, as if by laying their two aching lives together they might both be healed, and, rocking him to and fro, said to herself, for the first time, that her trouble was greater than she could bear. "O baby! baby! baby!" she cried, and her tears streamed on the little wan face. But, as she sat with him in her arms, the blessed sleep came, and the storm sank to a calm.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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39
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RELIEF.
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It was dark, utterly dark, when she woke. For a minute she could not remember where she was. The candle had burned out: it must be late. The baby was on her lap--still, very still. One faint gleam of satisfaction crossed her "during dark" at the thought that he slept so peacefully, hidden from the gloom which, somehow, appeared to be all the same gloom outside and inside of her. In that gloom she sat alone.
Suddenly a prayer was in her heart. It was moving there as of itself. It had come there by no calling of it thither, by no conscious will of hers. "O God," she cried, "I am desolate! --Is there no help for me?" And therewith she knew that she had prayed, and knew that never in her life had she prayed before.
She started to her feet in an agony: a horrible fear had taken possession of her. With one arm she held the child fast to her bosom, with the other hand searched in vain to find a match. And still, as she searched, the baby seemed to grow heavier upon her arm, and the fear sickened more and more at her heart.
At last she had light! and the face of the child came out of the darkness. But the child himself had gone away into it. The Unspeakable had come while she slept--had come and gone, and taken her child with him. What was left of him was no more good to kiss than the last doll of her childhood!
When Tom came home, there was his wife on the floor as if dead, and a little way from her the child, dead indeed, and cold with death. He lifted Letty and carried her to the bed, amazed to find how light she was: it was long since he had had her thus in his arms. Then he laid her dead baby by her side, and ran to rouse the doctor. He came, and pronounced the child quite dead--from lack of nutrition, he said. To see Tom, no one could have helped contrasting his dress and appearance with the look and surroundings of his wife; but no one would have been ready to lay blame on him; and, as for himself, he was not in the least awake to the fact of his guilt.
The doctor gave the landlady, who had responded at once to Tom's call, full directions for the care of the bereaved mother; Tom handed her the little money he had in his pocket, and she promised to do her best. And she did it; for she was one of those, not a few, who, knowing nothing of religion toward God, are yet full of religion toward their fellows, and with the Son of Man that goes a long way. As soon as it was light, Tom went to see about the burying of his baby.
He betook himself first to the editor of "The Firefly," but had to wait a long time for his arrival at the office. He told him his baby was dead, and he wanted money. It was forthcoming at once; for literary men, like all other artists, are in general as ready to help each other as the very poor themselves. There is less generosity, I think, among business-men than in any other class. The more honor to the exceptions!
"But," said the editor, who had noted the dry, burning palm, and saw the glazed, fiery eye of Tom, "my dear fellow, you ought to be in bed yourself. It's no use taking on about the poor little kid: _you_ couldn't help it. Go home to your wife, and tell her she's got you to nurse; and, if she's in any fix, tell her to come to me."
Tom went home, but did not give his wife the message. She lay all but insensible, never asked for anything, or refused anything that was offered her, never said a word about her baby, or about Tom, or seemed to be more than when she lay in her mother's lap. Her baby was buried, and she knew nothing of it. Not until nine days were over did she begin to revive.
For the first few days, Tom, moved with undefined remorse, tried to take a part in nursing her. She took things from him, as she did from the landlady, without heed or recognition. Just once, opening suddenly her eyes wide upon him, she uttered a feeble wail of "_Baby! _" and, turning her head, did not look at him again. Then, first, Tom's conscience gave him a sharp sting.
He was far from well. The careless and in many respects dissolute life he had been leading had more than begun to tell on a constitution by no means strong, but he had never become aware of his weakness nor had ever felt really ill until now.
But that sting, although the first sharp one, was not his first warning of a waking conscience. Ever since he took his place at his wife's bedside, he had been fighting off the conviction that he was a brute. He would not, he could not believe it. What! Tom Helmer, the fine, indubitable fellow! such as he had always known himself! --he to cower before his own consciousness as a man unworthy, and greatly to be despised! The chaos was come again! And, verily, chaos was there, but not by any means newly come. And, moreover, when chaos begins to be conscious of itself, then is the dawn of an ordered world at hand. Nay, the creation of it is already begun, and the pangs of the waking conscience are the prophecy of the new birth.
With that pitiful cry of his wife after her lost child, disbelief in himself got within the lines of his defense; he could do no more, and began to loathe that conscious self which had hitherto been his pride.
Whatever the effect of illness may be upon the temper of some, it is most certainly an ally of the conscience. All pains, indeed, and all sorrows, all demons, yea, and all sins themselves under the suffering care of the highest minister, are but the ministers of truth and righteousness. I never came to know the condition of such as seemed exceptionally afflicted but I seemed to see reason for their affliction, either in exceptional faultiness of character or the greatness of the good it was doing them.
But conscience reacts on the body--for sickness until it is obeyed, for health thereafter. The moment conscience spoke thus plainly to Tom, the little that was left of his physical endurance gave way, his illness got the upper hand, and he took to his bed--all he could have for bed, that is--namely, the sofa in the sitting-room, widened out with chairs, and a mattress over all. There he lay, and their landlady had enough to do. Not that either of her patients was exacting; they were both too ill and miserable for that. It is the self-pitiful, self-coddling invalid that is exacting. Such, I suspect, require something sharper still.
Tom groaned and tossed, and cursed himself, and soon passed into delirium. Straightway his visions, animate with shame and confusion of soul, were more distressing than even his ready tongue could have told. Dead babies and ghastly women pursued him everywhere. His fever increased. The cries of terror and dismay that he uttered reached the ears of his wife, and were the first thing that roused her from her lethargy. She rose from her bed, and, just able to crawl, began to do what she could for him. If she could but get near enough to him, the husband would yet be dearer than any child. She had him carried to the bed, and thereafter took on the sofa what rest there was for her. To and fro between bed and sofa she crept, let the landlady say what she might, gave him all the food he could be got to take, cooled his burning hands and head, and cried over him because she could not take him on her lap like the baby that was gone. Once or twice, in a quieter interval, he looked at her pitifully, and seemed about to speak; but the back-surging fever carried far away the word of love for which she listened so eagerly. The doctor came daily, but Tom grew worse, and Letty could not get well.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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40
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GODFREY AND SEPIA.
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When the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at Durnmelling, in the expectation of joining them in London within a fortnight at latest. The illness of Mr. Redmain, however, caused her stay to be prolonged, and she was worn out with _ennui_. The self she was so careful over was not by any means good company: not seldom during her life had she found herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of suicide or repentance. This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would even, occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine, go for a solitary walk--a thing, I need not say, she hated in itself, though now it was her forlorn hope, in the poor possibility of falling in with some distraction. But the hope was not altogether a vague one; for was there not a man somewhere underneath those chimneys she saw over the roof of the laundry? She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she had often talked about him, and often watched him ride--never man more to her mind. In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the ha-ha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of a neighbor whom the family did not visit. To no such folly would Sepia be a victim.
The analysis of such a nature as hers, with her story to set it forth, would require a book to itself, and I must happily content myself with but a fact here and there in her history.
In one of her rambles on his ground she had her desire, and met Godfrey Wardour. He lifted his hat, and she stopped and addressed him by way of apology.
"I am afraid you think me very rude, Mr. Wardour," she said. "I know I am trespassing, but this field of yours is higher than the ground about Durnmelling, and seems to take pounds off the weight of the atmosphere."
For all he had gone through, Godfrey was not yet less than courteous to ladies. He assured Miss Yolland that Thornwick was as much at her service as if it were a part of Durnmelling. "Though, indeed," he added, with a smile, "it would be more correct to say, 'as if Durnmelling were a part of Thornwick'--for that was the real state of the case once upon a time."
The statement interested or seemed to interest Miss Yolland, giving rise to many questions; and a long conversation ensued. Suddenly she woke, or seemed to wake, to the consciousness that she had forgotten herself and the proprieties together: hastily, and to all appearance with some confusion, she wished him a good morning; but she was not too much confused to thank him again for the permission he had given her to walk on his ground.
It was not by any intention on the part of Godfrey that they met several times after this; but they always had a little conversation before they parted; nor did Sepia find any difficulty in getting him sufficiently within their range to make him feel the power of her eyes. She was too prudent, however, to bring to bear upon any man all at once the full play of her mesmeric battery; and things had got no further when she went to London--a week or two before the return of the Redmains, ostensibly to get things in some special readiness for Hesper; but that this may have been a pretense appears possible from the fact that Mary came from Cornwall on the same mission a few days later.
I have just mentioned an acquaintance of Sepia's, who attracted the notice and roused the peculiar interest of Mr. Redmain, because of a look he saw pass betwixt them. This man spoke both English and French with a foreign accent, and gave himself out as a Georgian--Count Galofta, he called himself: I believe he was a prince in Paris. At this time he was in London, and, during the ten days that Sepia was alone, came to see her several times--called early in the forenoon first, the next day in the evening, when they went together to the opera, and once came and staid late. Whether from her dark complexion making her look older than she was, or from the subduing air which her experience had given her, or merely from the fact that she belonged to nobody much, Miss Yolland seemed to have _carte blanche_ to do as she pleased, and come and go when and where she liked, as one knowing well enough how to take care of herself.
Mary, arriving unexpectedly at the house in Glammis Square, met him in the hall as she entered: he had just taken leave of Sepia, who was going up the stair at the moment. Mary had never seen him before, but something about him caused her to look at him again as he passed.
Somehow, Tom also had discovered Sepia's return, and had gone to see her more than once.
When Mr. and Mrs. Redmain arrived, there was so much to be done for Hesper's wardrobe that, for some days, Mary found it impossible to go and see Letty. Her mistress seemed harder to please than usual, and more doubtful of humor than ever before. This may have arisen--but I doubt it--from the fact that, having gone to church the Sunday before they left, she had there heard a different sort of sermon from any she had heard in her life before: sermons have something to do with the history of the world, however many of them may be no better than a withered leaf in the blast.
The morning after her arrival, Hesper, happening to find herself in want of Mary's immediate help, instead of calling her as she generally did, opened the door between their rooms, and saw Mary on her knees by her bedside. Now, Hesper had heard of saying prayers--night and morning both--and, when a child, had been expected, and indeed compelled, to say her prayers; but to be found on one's knees in the middle of the day looked to her a thing exceedingly odd. Mary, in truth, was not much in the way of kneeling at such a time: she had to pray much too often to kneel always, and God was too near her, wherever she happened to be, for the fancy that she must seek him in any particular place; but so it happened now. She rose, a little startled rather than troubled, and followed her mistress into her room.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you, Mary," said Hesper, herself a little annoyed, it is not quite easy to say why; "but people do not generally say their prayers in the middle of the day."
"I say mine when I need to say them," answered Mary, a little cross that Hesper should take any notice. She would rather the thing had not occurred, and it was worse to have to talk about it.
"For my part, I don't see any good in being righteous overmuch," said Hesper.
I wonder if there was another saying in the Bible she would have been so ready to quote!
"I don't know what that means," returned Mary. "I believe it is somewhere in the Bible, but I am sure Jesus never said it, for he tells us to be righteous as our Father in heaven is righteous."
"But the thing is impossible," said Hesper. "How is one with such claims on her as I have, to attend to these things? Society has claims: no one denies that."
"And has God none?" asked Mary.
"Many people think now there is no God at all," returned Hesper, with an almost petulant expression.
"If there is no God, that settles the question," answered Mary. "But, if there should be one, how then?"
"Then I am sure he would never be hard on one like me. I do just like other people. One must do as people do. If there is one thing that must be avoided more than another, it is peculiarity. How ridiculous it would be of any one to set herself against society!"
"Then you think the Judge will be satisfied if you say, 'Lord, I had so many names in my visiting-book, and so many invitations I could not refuse, that it was impossible for me to attend to those things'?"
"I don't see that I'm at all worse than other people," persisted Hesper. "I can't go and pretend to be sorry for sins I should commit again the next time there was a necessity. I don't see what I've got to repent of."
Nothing had been said about repentance: here, I imagine, the sermon may have come in.
"Then, of course, you can't repent," said Mary.
Hesper recovered herself a little.
"I am glad you see the thing as I do," she said.
"I don't see it at all as you do, ma'am," answered Mary, gently.
"Why!" exclaimed Hesper, taken by surprise, "what have I got to repent of?"
"Do you really want me to say what I think?" asked Mary.
"Of course, I do," returned Hesper, getting angry, and at the same time uneasy: she knew Mary's freedom of speech upon occasion, but felt that to draw back would be to yield the point. "What have I done to be ashamed of, pray?"
Some ladies are ready to plume themselves upon not having been guilty of certain great crimes. Some thieves, I dare say, console themselves that they have never committed murder.
"If I had married a man I did not love," answered Mary, "I should be more ashamed of myself than I can tell."
"That is the way of looking at such things in the class you belong to, I dare say," rejoined Hesper; "but with us it is quite different. There is no necessity laid upon _you. Our_ position obliges us."
"But what if God should not see it as you do?"
"If that is all you have got to bring against me! --" said Hesper, with a forced laugh.
"But that is not all," replied Mary. "When you married, you promised many things, not one of which you have ever done."
"Really, Mary, this is intolerable!" cried Hesper.
"I am only doing what you asked me, ma'am," said Mary. "And I have said nothing that every one about Mr. Redmain does not know as well as I do."
Hesper wished heartily she had never challenged Mary's judgment.
"But," she resumed, more quietly, "how could you, how could any one, how could God himself, hard as he is, ask me to fulfill the part of a loving wife to a man like Mr. Redmain? --There is no use mincing matters with _you,_ Mary."
"But you promised," persisted Mary. "It belongs, besides, to the very idea of marriage."
"There are a thousand promises made every day which nobody is expected to keep. It is the custom, the way of the world! How many of the clergy, now, believe the things they put their names to?"
"They must answer for themselves. We are not clergymen, but women, who ought never to say a thing except we mean it, and, when we have said it, to stick to it."
"But just look around you, and see how many there are in precisely the same position! Will you dare to say they are all going to be lost because they do not behave like angels to their brutes of husbands?"
"I say, they have got to repent of behaving to their husbands as their husbands behave to them."
"And what if they don't?"
Mary paused a little.
"Do you expect to go to heaven, ma'am?" she asked "I hope so."
"Do you think you will like it?"
"I must say, I think it will be rather dull."
"Then, to use your own word, you must be very like lost anyway. There does not seem to be a right place for you anywhere, and that is very like being lost--is it not?"
Hesper laughed.
"I am pretty comfortable where I am," she said.
"Husband and all!" thought Mary, but she did not say that. What she did say was: "But you know you can't stay here. God is not going to keep up this way of things for you; can you ask it, seeing you don't care a straw what he wants of you? But I have sometimes thought, What if hell be just a place where God gives everybody everything she wants, and lets everybody do whatever she likes, without once coming nigh to interfere! What a hell that would be! For God's presence in the very being, and nothing else, is bliss. That, then, would be altogether the opposite of heaven, and very much the opposite of this world. Such a hell would go on, I suppose, till every one had learned to hate every one else in the same world with her."
This was beyond Hesper, and she paid no attention to it.
"You can never, in your sober senses, Mary," she said, "mean that God requires of me to do things for Mr. Redmain that the servants can do a great deal better! That would be ridiculous--not to mention that I oughtn't and couldn't and wouldn't do them for any man!"
"Many a woman," said Mary, with a solemnity in her tone which she did not intend to appear there, "has done many more trying things for persons of whom she knew nothing."
"I dare say! But such women go in for being saints, and that is not my line. I was not made for that."
"You were made for that, and far more," said Mary.
"There are such women, I know," persisted Hesper; "but I do not know how they find it possible."
"I can tell you how they find it possible. They love every human being just because he is human. Your husband might be a demon from the way you behave to him."
"I suppose _you_ find it agreeable to wait upon him: he is civil to you, I dare say!"
"Not very," replied Mary, with a smile; "but the person who can not bear with a sick man or a baby is not fit to be a woman."
"You may go to your own room," said Hesper.
For the first time, a feeling of dislike to Mary awoke in the bosom of her mistress--very naturally, _all_ my readers will allow. The next few days she scarcely spoke to her, sending directions for her work through Sepia, who discharged the office with dignity.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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41
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THE HELPER.
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At length one morning, when she believed Mrs. Redmain would not rise before noon, Mary felt she must go and see Letty. She did not find her in the quarters where she had left her, but a story higher, in a mean room, sitting with her hands in her lap. She did not lift her eyes when Mary entered: where hope is dead, curiosity dies. Not until she had come quite near did she raise her head, and then she seemed to know nothing of her. When she did recognize her, she held out her hand in a mechanical way, as if they were two specters met in a miserable dream, in which they were nothing to each other, and neither could do, or cared to do, anything for the other.
"My poor Letty!" cried Mary, greatly shocked, "what has come to you? Are you not glad to see me? Has anything happened to Tom?"
She broke into a low, childish wail, and for a time that was all Mary heard. Presently, however, she became aware of a feeble moaning in the adjoining chamber, the sound of a human sea in trouble--mixed with a wandering babble, which to Letty was but as the voice of her own despair, and to Mary was a cry for help. She abandoned the attempt to draw anything from Letty, and went into the next room, the door of which stood wide. There lay Tom, but so changed that Mary took a moment to be certain it was he. Going softly to him, she laid her hand on his head. It was burning. He opened his eyes, but she saw their sense was gone. She went back to Letty, and, sitting down beside her, put her arm about her, and said: "Why didn't you send for me, Letty? I would have come to you at once. I will come now, to-night, and help you to nurse him. Where is the baby?"
Letty gave a shriek, and, starting from her chair, walked wildly about the room, wringing her hands. Mary went after her, and taking her in her arms, said: "Letty, dear, has God taken your baby?"
Letty gave her a lack-luster look.
"Then," said Mary, "he is not far away, for we are all in God's arms."
But what is the use of the most sovereign of medicines while they stand on the sick man's table? What is the mightiest of truths so long as it is not believed? The spiritually sick still mocks at the medicine offered; he will not know its cure. Mary saw that, for any comfort to Letty, God was nowhere. It went to her very heart. Death and desolation and the enemy were in possession. She turned to go, that she might return able to begin her contest with ruin. Letty saw that she was going, and imagined her offended and abandoning her to her misery. She flew to her, stretching out her arms like a child, but was so feeble that she tripped and fell. Mary lifted her, and laid her wailing on her couch.
"Letty," said Mary, "you didn't think I was going to leave you! But I must go for an hour, perhaps two, to make arrangements for staying with you till Tom is over the worst."
Then Letty clasped her hands in her old, beseeching way, and looked up with a faint show of comfort.
"Be courageous, Letty," said Mary. "I shall be back as soon as ever I can. God has sent me to you."
She drove straight home, and heard that Mrs. Redmain was annoyed that she had gone out.
"I offered to dress her," said Jemima; "and she knows I can quite well; but she would not get up till you came, and made me fetch her a book. So there she is, a-waiting for you!"
"I am sorry," said Mary; "but I had to go, and she was fast asleep."
When she entered her room, Hesper gave her a cold glance over the top of her novel, and went on with her reading. Mary proceeded to get her things ready for dressing. But by this time she had got interested in the story.
"I shall not get up yet," she said.
"Then, please, ma'am," replied Mary, "would you mind letting Jemima dress you? I want to go out again, and should be glad if you could do without me for some days. My friend's baby is dead, and both she and her husband are very ill."
Hesper threw down her book, and her eyes flamed.
"What do you mean by using me so, Miss Marston?" she said.
"I am very sorry to put you to inconvenience," answered Mary; "but the husband seems dying, and the wife is scarcely able to crawl."
"I have nothing to do with it," interrupted Hesper. "When you made it necessary for me to part with my maid, you undertook to perform her duties. I did not engage you as a sick-nurse for other people." " 'No, ma'am," replied Mary; "but this is an extreme case, and I can not believe you will object to my going."
"I do object. How, pray, is the world to go on, if this kind of thing be permitted! I may be going out to dinner, or to the opera to-night, for anything you know, and who is there to dress me? No; on principle, and for the sake of example, I will not let you go."
"I thought," said Mary, not a little disappointed in Hesper, "I did not stand to you quite in the relation of an ordinary servant."
"Certainly you do not: I look for a little more devotion from you than from a common, ungrateful creature who thinks only of herself. But you are all alike."
More and more distressed to find one she had loved so long show herself so selfish, Mary's indignation had almost got the better of her. But a little heightening of her color was all the show it made.
"Indeed, it is quite necessary, ma'am," she persisted, "that I should go."
"The law has fortunately made provision against such behavior," said Hesper. "You can not leave without giving me a month's notice."
"The understanding on which I came to you was very different," said Mary, sadly.
"It was; but, since then, you consented to become my maid."
"It is ungenerous to take advantage of that," returned Mary, growing angry again.
"I have to protect myself and the world in general from the consequences that must follow were such lawless behavior allowed to pass."
Hesper spoke with calm severity, and Mary, making up her mind, answered now with almost equal calmness.
"The law was made for both sides, ma'am; and, as you bring the law to me, I will take refuge in the law. It is, I believe, a month's warning or a month's wages; and, as I have never had any wages, I imagine I am at liberty to go. Good-by, ma'am."
Hesper made her no answer, and Mary left the room. She went to her own, stuffed her immediate necessities into a bag, let herself out of the house, called a cab, and, with a great lump in her throat, drove to the help of Letty.
First she had a talk with the landlady, and learned all she could tell. Then she went up, and began to make things as comfortable as she could: all was in sad disorder and neglect.
With the mere inauguration of cleanliness, and the first dawn of coming order, the courage of Letty began to revive a little. The impossibility of doing all that ought to be done, had, in her miserable weakness, so depressed her that she had not done even as much as she could--except where Tom was immediately concerned: there she had not failed of her utmost.
Mary next went to the doctor to get instructions, and then to buy what things were most wanted. And now she almost wished Mrs. Redmain had paid her for her services, for she must write to Mr. Turnbull for money, and that she disliked. But by the very next post she received, inclosed in a business memorandum in George's writing, the check for fifty pounds she had requested.
She did not dare write to Tom's mother, because she was certain, were she to come up, her presence would only add to the misery, and take away half the probability of his recovery and of Letty's, too. In the case of both, nourishment was the main thing; and to the fit providing and the administering of it she bent her energy.
For a day or two, she felt at times as if she could hardly get through what she had undertaken; but she soon learned to drop asleep at any moment, and wake immediately when she was wanted; and thereafter her strength was by no means so sorely tried.
Under her skillful nursing--skillful, not from experience, but simply from her faith, whence came both conscience of and capacity for doing what the doctor told her--things went well. It is from their want of this faith, and their consequent arrogance and conceit, that the ladies who aspire to help in hospitals give the doctors so much trouble: they have not yet learned _obedience,_ the only path to any good, the one essential to the saving of the world. One who can not obey is the merest slave--essentially and in himself a slave. The crisis of Tom's fever was at length favorably passed, but the result remained doubtful. By late hours and strong drink, he had done not a little to weaken a constitution, in itself, as I have said, far from strong; while the unrest of what is commonly and foolishly called a bad conscience, with misery over the death of his child and the conduct which had disgraced him in his own eyes and ruined his wife's happiness, combined to retard his recovery.
While he was yet delirious, and grief and shame and consternation operated at will on his poetic nature, the things he kept saying over and over were very pitiful; but they would have sounded more miserable by much in the ears of one who did not look so far ahead as Mary. She, trained to regard all things in their true import, was rejoiced to find him loathing his former self, and beyond the present suffering saw the gladness at hand for the sorrowful man, the repenting sinner. Had she been mother or sister to him, she could hardly have waited on him with more devotion or tenderness.
One day, as his wife was doing some little thing for him, he took her hand in his feeble grasp, and pressing it to his face, wet with the tears of reviving manhood, said: "We might have been happy together, Letty, if I had but known how much you were worth, and how little I was worth myself! --Oh me! oh me!"
He burst into an incontrollable wail that tortured Letty with its likeness to the crying of her baby.
"Tom! my own darling Tom!" she cried, "when you speak as if I belonged to you, it makes me as happy as a queen. When you are better, you will be happy, too, dear. Mary says you will."
"O Letty!" he sobbed--"the baby!"
"The baby's all right, Mary says; and, some day, she says, he will run into your arms, and know you for his father."
"And I shall be ashamed to look at him!" said Tom.
An hour or so after, he woke from a short sleep, and his eyes sought Letty's watching face.
"I have seen baby," he said, "and he has forgiven me. I dare say it was only a dream," he added, "but somehow it makes me happier. At least, I know how the thing might be."
"It was true, whether it was but a dream or something more," said Mary, who happened to be by.
"Thank you, Mary," he returned. "You and Letty have saved me from what I dare not think of! I could die happy now--if it weren't for one thing."
"What is that?" asked Mary.
"I am ashamed to say," he replied, "but I ought to say it and bear the shame, for the man who does shamefully ought to be ashamed. It is that, when I am in my grave--or somewhere else, for I know Mary does not like people to talk about being in their graves--you say it is heathenish, don't you, Mary? --when I am where they can't find me, then, it is horrid to think that people up here will have a hold on me and a right over me still, because of debts I shall never be able to pay them."
"Don't be too sure of that, Tom," said Mary, cheerfully. "I think you will pay them yet. --But I have heard it said," she went on, "that a man in debt never tells the truth about his debts--as if he had only the face to make them, not to talk about them: can you make a clean breast of it, Tom?"
"I don't exactly know what they are; but I always did mean to pay them, and I have some idea about them. I don't think they would come to more than a hundred pounds."
"Your mother would not hesitate to pay that for you?" said Mary.
"I know she wouldn't; but, then, I'm thinking of Letty."
He paused, and Mary waited.
"You know, when I am gone," he resumed, "there will be nothing for her but to go to my mother; and it breaks my heart to think of it. Every sin of mine she will lay to her charge; and how am I to lie still in my grave--oh, I beg your pardon, Mary."
"I will pay your debts, Tom, and gladly," said Mary, "if they don't come to much more than you say--than you think, I mean."
"But, don't you see, Mary, that would be only a shifting of my debt from them to you? Except for Letty, it would not make the thing any better."
"What!" said Mary, "is there no difference between owing a thing to one who loves you and one who does not? to one who would always be wishing you had paid him and one who is glad to have even the poor bond of a debt between you and her? All of us who are sorry for our sins are brothers and sisters."
"O Mary!" said Tom.
"But I will tell you what will be better: let your mother pay your debts, and I will look after Letty. I will care for her like my own sister, Tom."
"Then I shall die happy," said Tom; and from that day began to recover.
Many who would pay money to keep a man alive or to deliver him from pain would pay nothing to take a killing load off the shoulders of his mind. Hunger they can pity--not mental misery.
Tom would not hear of his mother being written to.
"I have done Letty wrong enough already," he said, "without subjecting her to the cruel tongue of my mother. I have conscience enough left not to have anybody else abuse her."
"But, Tom," expostulated Mary, "if you want to be good, one of your first duties is to be reconciled to your mother."
"I am very sorry things are all wrong between us, Mary," said Tom. "But, if you want her to come here, you don't know what you are talking about. She must have everything her own way, or storm from morning to night. I would gladly make it up with her, but live with her, or die with her, I could _not_. To make either possible, you must convert her, too. When you have done that, I will invite her at once."
"Never mind me, Tom," said Letty. "So long as you love me, I don't care what even your mother thinks of me. I will do everything I can to make her comfortable, and satisfied with me."
"Wait till I am better, anyhow, Letty; for I solemnly assure you I haven't a chance if my mother comes. I will tell you what, Mary: I promise you, if I get better, I will do what is possible to be a son to my mother; and for the present I will dictate a letter, if you will write it, bidding her good-by, and asking her pardon for everything I have done wrong by her, which you will please send if I should die. I can not and I will not promise more."
He was excited and exhausted, and Mary dared not say another word. Nor truly did she at the moment see what more could be said. Where all relation has been perverted, things can not be set right by force. Perhaps all we can do sometimes is to be willing and wait.
The letter was dictated and written--a lovely one, Mary thought--and it made her weep as she wrote it. Tom signed it with his own hand. Mary folded, sealed, addressed it, and laid it away in her desk.
The same evening Tom said to Letty, putting his thin, long hand in hers-- "Mary thinks we shall know each other there, Letty."
"Tom!" interrupted Letty, "don't talk like that; I _can't_ bear it. If you do, I shall die before you."
"All I wanted to say," persisted Tom, "was, that I should sit all day looking out for you, Letty."
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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42
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THE LEPER.
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The faint, sweet, luminous jar of bow and string, as betwixt them they tore the silky air into a dying sound, came hovering--neither could have said whether it was in the soul only, or there and in the outer world too.
"What _is_ that?" said Tom.
"Mary!" Letty called into the other room, "there is our friend with the violin again! Don't you think Tom would like to hear him?"
"Yes, I do," answered Mary.
"Then would you mind asking him to come and play a little to us? It would do Tom good, I do think." Mary went up the one stair--all that now divided them, and found the musician with his sister--his half-sister she was.
"I thought we should have you in upon us!" said Ann. "Joe thinks he can play so as nobody can hear him; and I was fool enough to let him try. I am sorry."
"I am glad," rejoined Mary, "and am come to ask him down stairs; for Mrs. Helmer and I think it will do her husband good to hear him. He is very fond of music."
"Much help music will be to him, poor young man!" said Ann, scornfully.
"Wouldn't you give a sick man a flower, even if it only made him a little happier for a moment with its scent and its loveliness?" asked Mary.
"No, I wouldn't. It would only be to help the deceitful heart to be more desperately wicked."
I will not continue the conversation, although they did a little longer. Ann's father had been a preacher among the followers of Whitefield, and Ann was a follower of her father. She laid hold upon the garment of a hard master, a tyrannical God. Happy he who has learned the gospel according to Jesus, as reported by John--that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all! Happy he who finds God his refuge from all the lies that are told for him, and in his name! But it is love that saves, and not opinion that damns; and let the Master himself deal with the weeds in his garden as with the tares in his field.
"I read my Bible a good deal," said Mary, at last, "but I never found one of those things you say in it."
"That's because you were never taught to look for them," said Ann.
"Very likely," returned Mary. "In the mean time I prefer the violin--that is, with one like your brother to play it."
She turned to the door, and Joseph Jasper, who had not spoken a word, rose and followed her. As soon as they were outside, Mary turned to him, and begged he would play the same piece with which he had ended on the former occasion.
"I thought you did not care for it! I am so glad!" he said.
"I care for it very much," replied Mary, "and have often thought of it since. But you left in such haste! before I could find words to thank you!"
"You mean the ten lepers, don't you?" he said. "But of course you do. I always end off with them."
"Is that how you call it?" returned Mary. "Then you have given me the key to it, and I shall understand it much better this time, I hope."
"That is what I call it," said Joseph, "--to myself, I mean, not to Ann. She would count it blasphemy. God has made so many things that she thinks must not be mentioned in his hearing!"
When they entered the room, Joseph, casting a quick look round it, made at once for the darkest corner. Three swift strides took him there; and, without more preamble than if he had come upon a public platform to play, he closed his eyes and began.
And now at last Mary understood at least this specimen of his strange music, and was able to fill up the blanks in the impression it formerly made upon her. Alas, that my helpless ignorance should continue to make it impossible for me to describe it!
A movement even and rather slow, full of unexpected chords, wonderful to Mary, who did not know that such things could be made on the violin, brought before her mind's eye the man who knew all about everything, and loved a child more than a sage, walking in the hot day upon the border be-tween Galilee and Samaria. Sounds arose which she interpreted as the stir of village life, the crying and calling of domestic animals, and of busy housewives at their duties, carried on half out of doors, in the homeliness of country custom. Presently the instrument began to tell the gathering of a crowd, with bee-like hum, and the crossing of voice with voice--but, at a distance, the sounds confused and obscure. Swiftly then they seemed to rush together, to blend and lose themselves in the unity of an imploring melody, in which she heard the words, uttered afar, with uplifted hands and voices, drawing nearer and nearer as often repeated, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." Then came a brief pause, and then what, to her now fully roused imagination, seemed the voice of the Master, saying, "Go show yourselves unto the priests." Then followed the slow, half-unwilling, not hopeful march of timeless feet; then a clang as of something broken, then a silence as of sunrise, then air and liberty--long-drawn notes divided with quick, hurried ones; then the trampling of many feet, going farther and farther--merrily, with dance and song; once more a sudden pause--and a melody in which she read the awe-struck joyous return of one. Steadily yet eagerly the feet drew nigh, the melody growing at once in awe and jubilation, as the man came nearer and nearer to him whose word had made him clean, until at last she saw him fall on his face before him, and heard his soul rushing forth in a strain of adoring thanks, which seemed to end only because it was choked in tears.
The violin ceased, but, as if its soul had passed from the instrument into his, the musician himself took up the strain, and in a mellow tenor voice, with a mingling of air and recitative, and an expression which to Mary was entrancing, sang the words, "And he was a Samaritan."
At the sound of his own voice, he seemed to wake up, hung his head for a moment, as if ashamed of having shown his emotion, tucked his instrument under his arm, and walked from the room, without a word spoken on either side. Nor, while he played, had Mary once seen the face of the man; her soul sat only in the porch of her ears, and not once looked from the windows of her eyes.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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43
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MARY AND MR. REDMAIN.
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A few rudiments of righteousness lurked, in their original undevelopment, but still in a measure active, in the being of Mr. Redmain: there had been in the soul of his mother, I suspect, a strain of generosity, and she had left a mark of it upon him, and it was the best thing about him. But in action these rudiments took an evil shape.
Preferring inferior company, and full of that suspicion which puts the last edge upon what the world calls knowledge of human nature, he thought no man his equal in penetrating the arena of motive, and reading actions in the light of motive; and, that the fundamental principle of all motive was self-interest, he assumed to be beyond dispute. With this candle, not that of the Lord, he searched the dark places of the soul; but, where the soul was light, his candle could show him nothing--served only to blind him yet further, if possible, to what was there present. And, because he did not seek the good, never yet in all his life had he come near enough to a righteous man to recognize that in something or other that man was different from himself. As for women--there was his wife--of whom he was willing to think as well as she would let him! And she, firmly did he believe, was an angel beside Sepia! --of whom, bad as she was, it is quite possible he thought yet worse than she deserved: alas for the woman who is not good, and falls under the judgment of a bad man! --the good woman he can no more hurt than the serpent can bite the adamant. He believed he knew Sepia's self, although he did not yet know her history; and he scorned her the more that he was not a hair better himself. He had regard enough for his wife, and what virtue his penetration conceded her, to hate their intimacy; and ever since his marriage had been scheming how to get rid of Sepia--only, however, through finding her out: he must unmask her: there would be no satisfaction in getting rid of her without his wife's convinced acquiescence. He had been, therefore, almost all the time more or less on the watch to uncover the wickedness he felt sure lay at no great depth beneath her surface; and in the mean time, and for the sake of this end, he lived on terms of decent domiciliation with her. She had no suspicion how thin was the crust between her and the lava.
In Cornwall, he began at length to puzzle himself about Mary. Of course she was just like the rest! but he did not at once succeed in fitting what he saw to what he entirely believed of her. She remained, like Sepia, a riddle to be solved. He was not so ignorant as his wife concerning the relations of the different classes, and he felt certain there must be some reason, of course a discreditable one, for her leaving her former, and taking her present, position. The attack he had in Cornwall afforded him unexpected opportunity of making her out, as he called it.
Upon this occasion it was also that Mary first ventured to expostulate with her mistress on her neglect of her husband. She heard her patiently; and the same day, going to his room, paid him some small attention--handed him his medicine, I believe, but clumsily, because ungraciously. The next moment, one of his fits of pain coming on, he broke into such a torrent of cursing as swept her in stately dignity from the room. She would not go near him again.
"Brought up as you have been, Mary," she said, "you can not enter into the feelings of one in my position, to whom the very tone even of coarse language is unspeakably odious. It makes me sick with disgust. Coarseness is what no lady can endure. I beg you will not mention Mr. Redmain to me again."
"Dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "ugly as such language is, there are many things worse. It seems to me worse that a wife should not go near her husband when he is suffering than that he should in his pain speak bad words."
She had been on the point of saying that a thin skin was not purity, but bethought herself in time.
"You are scarcely in a position to lay down the law for me, Mary," said Hesper. "We will, if you please, drop the subject."
Mary's words were overheard, as was a good deal in the house more than was reckoned on, and reached Mr. Redmain, whom they perplexed: what could the young woman hope from taking his part?
One morning, after the arrival of Mewks, his man, Mary heard Mr. Redmain calling him in a tone which betrayed that he had been calling for some time: the house was an old one, and the bells were neither in good trim, nor was his in a convenient position. She thought first to find Mewks, but pity rose in her heart. She ran to Mr. Redmain's door, which stood half open, and showed herself.
"Can _I_ not do something for you, sir?" she said.
"Yes, you can. Go and tell that lumbering idiot to come to me instantly. No! here, you! --there's a good girl! --Oh, damn! --Just give me your hand, and help me to turn an inch or two."
Change of posture relieved him a little. "Thank you," he said. "That is better. Wait a few moments, will you--till the rascal comes?"
Mary stood back, a little behind him, thinking not to annoy him with the sight of her.
"What are you doing there?" he cried. "I like to see what people are about in my room. Come in front here, and let me look at you."
Mary obeyed, and with a smile took the position he pointed out to her. Immediately followed another agony of pain, in which he looked beset with demons, whom he not feared but hated. Mary hurried to him, and, in the compassion which she inherited long back of Eve, took his hand, the fingers of which were twisting themselves into shapes like tree-roots. With a hoarse roar, he dashed hers from him, as if it had been a serpent. She returned to her place, and stood.
"What did you mean by that?" he said, when he came to himself. "Do you want to make a fool of me?"
Mary did not understand him, and made no reply. Another fit came. This time she kept her distance.
"Come here," he howled; "take my head in your hands."
She obeyed.
"Damned nice hands you've got!" he gasped; "much nicer than your mistress's."
Mary took no notice. Gently she withdrew her hands, for the fit was over.
"I see! that's the way of you!" he said, as she stepped back. "But come now, tell me how it is that a nice, well-behaved, handsome girl like you, should leave a position where, they tell me, you were your own mistress, and take a cursed place as lady's maid to my wife."
"It was because I liked Mrs. Redmain so much," answered Mary. "But, indeed, I was not very comfortable where I was."
"What the devil did you see to like in her? I never saw anything!"
"She is so beautiful!" said Mary.
"Is she! ho! ho!" he laughed. "What is that to another woman! You are new to the trade, my girl, if you think that will go down! One woman taking to another because 'she's so beautiful'! Ha! ha! ha!"
He repeated Mary's words with an indescribable contempt, and his laugh was insulting to a degree; but it went off in a cry of suffering.
"Hypocrisy mustn't be too barefaced," he resumed, when again his torture abated. "I didn't make you stop to amuse me! It's little of that this beastly world has got for me! Come, a better reason for waiting on my wife?"
"That she was kind to me," said Mary, "may be a better reason, but it is not a truer."
"It's more than ever she was to me! What wages does she give you?"
"We have not spoken about that yet, sir."
"You haven't had any?"
"I haven't wanted any yet."
"Then what the deuce ever made you come to this house?"
"I hoped to be of some service to Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, growing troubled.
"And you ain't of any? Is that why you don't want wages?"
"No, sir. That is not the reason."
"Then what _is_ the reason? Come! Trust me. I will be much better to you than your mistress. Out with it! I knew there was something!"
"I would rather not talk more about it," said Mary, knowing that her feeling in relation to Hesper would be altogether incredible, and the notion of it ridiculous to him.
"You needn't mind telling _me_! I know all about such things. --Look here! Give me that pocket-book on the table."
Mary brought him the pocket-book. He opened it, and, taking from it some notes, held them out to her.
"If your mistress won't pay you your wages, I will. There! take that. You're quite welcome. What matter which pays you? It all comes out of the same stocking-foot."
"I don't know yet," answered Mary, "whether I shall accept wages from Mrs. Redmain. Something might happen to make it impossible; or, if I had taken money, to make me regret it."
"I like that! There you keep a hold on her!" said Mr. Redmain, in a confidential tone, while in his heart he was more puzzled than ever. "There's no occasion, though, for all that," he went on, "to go without your money when you can have it and she be nothing the wiser. There--take it. I will swear you any oath you like not to tell my stingy wife."
"She is not stingy," said Mary; "and, if I don't take wages from her, I certainly shall not from any one else. --Besides," she added, "it would be dishonest."
"Oh! that's the dodge!" said Mr. Redmain to himself; but aloud, "Where would be the dishonesty, when the money is mine to do with as I please?"
"Where the dishonesty, sir!" exclaimed Mary, astounded. "To take wages from you, and pretend to Mrs. Redmain I was going without!"
"Ha! ha! The first time, no doubt, you ever pretended anything!"
"It would be," said Mary, "so far as I can, at the moment, remember."
"Go along," cried Mr. Redmain, losing, or pretending to lose, patience with her; "you are too unscrupulous a liar for me to deal with."
Mary turned and left the room. As she went, his keen glance caught the expression of her countenance, and noted the indignant red that flushed her cheeks, and the lightning of wronged innocence in her eyes.
"I ought not to have said it," he remarked to himself.
He did not for a moment fancy she had spoken the truth; but the look of her went to a deeper place in him than he knew even the existence of.
"Hey! stop," he cried, as she was disappearing. "Come back, will you?"
"I will find Mr. Mewks," she answered, and went.
After this, Mary naturally dreaded conference with Mr. Redmain; and he, thinking she must have time to get over the offense he had given her, made for the present no fresh attempt to come, by her own aid, at a bird's-eye view of her character and scheme of life. His curiosity, however, being in no degree assuaged concerning the odd human animal whose spoor he had for the moment failed to track, he meditated how best to renew the attempt in London. Not small, therefore, was his annoyance to find, a few days after his arrival, that she was no longer in the house. He questioned his wife as to the cause of her absence, and told her she was utterly heartless in refusing her leave to go and nurse her friend; whereupon Hesper, neither from desire to do right nor from regard to her husband's opinion, but because she either saw or fancied she saw that, now Mary did not dress her, she no longer caused the same sensation on entering a room, resolved to write to her--as if taking it for granted she had meant to return as soon as she was able. And to prick the sides of this intent came another spur, as will be seen from the letter she wrote: "Dear Mary, can you tell me what is become of my large sapphire ring? I have never seen it since you brought my case up with you from Cornwall. I have been looking for it all the morning, but in vain. You _must_ have it. I shall be lost without it, for you know it has not its equal for color and brilliance. I do not believe you intended for a moment to keep it, but only to punish me for thinking I could do without you. If so, you have your revenge, for I find I can not do without either of you--you or the ring--so you will not carry the joke further than I can bear. If you can not come at once, write and tell me it is safe, and I shall love you more than ever. I am dying to see you again. Yours faithfully, H. R." By this time, Letty was much better, and Tom no longer required such continuous attention; Mary, therefore, betook herself at once to Mr. Redmain's. Hesper was out shopping, and Mary went to her own room to wait for her, where she was glad of the opportunity of getting at some of the things she had left behind her.
"While she was looking for what she wanted, Sepia entered, and was, or pretended to be, astonished to see her. In a strange, sarcastic tone: "Ah, you there!" she said. "I hope you will find it."
"If you mean the ring, that is not likely, Miss Yolland," Mary answered.
Sepia was silent a moment or two, then said: "How is your cousin?"
"I have no cousin," replied Mary.
"The person, I mean, you have been staying with?"
"Better, thank you."
"Almost a pity, is it not--if there should come trouble about this ring?"
"I do not understand you. The ring will, of course, be found," returned Mary.
"In any case the blame will come on you: it was in your charge."
"The ring was in the case when I left."
"You will have to prove that."
"I remember quite well."
"That no one will question."
Beginning at last to understand her insinuations, Mary was so angry that she dared not speak.
"But it will hardly go to clear you," Sepia went on. "Don't imagine I mean you have taken it; I am only warning you how the matter will look, that you may be prepared. Mr. Redmain is one to believe the worst things of the best people."
"I am obliged to you," said Mary, "but I am not anxious."
"It is necessary you should know also," continued Sepia, "that there is some suspicion attaching to a female friend of yours as well, a young woman who used to visit you--the wife of the other, it is supposed. She was here, I remember, one night there was a party; I saw you together in my cousin's bedroom. She had just dressed and gone down."
"I remember," said Mary. "It was Mrs. Helmer."
"Well?"
"It is very unfortunate, certainly; but the truth must be told: a few days before you left, one of the servants, hearing some one in the house in the middle of the night, got up and went down, but only in time to hear the front door open and shut. In the morning a hat was found in the drawing-room, with the name _Thomas Helmer_ in it: that is the name of your friend's husband, I believe?"
"I am aware Mr. Helmer was a frequent visitor," said Mary, trying to keep cool for what was to come.
This that Sepia told her was true enough, though she was not accurate as to the time of its occurrence. I will relate briefly how it came about.
Upon a certain evening, a few days before Mary's return from Cornwall, Tom would have gone to see Miss Yolland had he not known that she meant to go to the play with a Mr. Emmet, a cousin of the Redmains. Before the hour arrived, however, Count Galofta called, and Sepia went out with him, telling the man who opened the door to ask Mr. Emmet to wait. The man was rather deaf, and did not catch with certainty the name she gave. Mr. Emmet did not appear, and it was late before Sepia returned.
Tom, jealous even to hatred, spent the greater part of his evening in a tavern on the borders of the city--in gloomy solitude, drinking brandy-and-water, and building castles of the most foolish type--for castles are as different as the men that build them. Through all the rooms of them glided the form of Sepia, his evil genius. He grew more and more excited as he built, and as he drank. He rose at last, paid his bill, and, a little suspicious of his equilibrium, stalked into the street. There, almost unconsciously, he turned and walked westward. It was getting late; before long the theatres would be emptying: he might have a peep of Sepia as she came out! --but where was the good when that fellow was with her! "But," thought Tom, growing more and more daring as in an adventurous dream, "why should I not go to the house, and see her after he has left her at the door?"
He went to the house and rang the bell. The man came, and said immediately that Miss Yolland was out, but had desired him to ask Mr. Helmer to wait; whereupon Tom walked in, and up the stair to the drawing-room, thence into a second and a third drawing-room, and from the last into the conservatory. The man went down and finished his second, pint of ale. From the conservatory, Tom, finding himself in danger of havoc among the flower-pots, turned back into the third room, threw himself on a couch, and fell fast asleep.
He woke in the middle of the night in pitch darkness; and it was some time before he could remember where he was. When he did, he recognized that he was in an awkward predicament. But he knew the house well, and would make the attempt to get out undiscovered. It was foolish, but Tom was foolish. Feeling his way, he knocked down a small table with a great crash of china, and, losing his equanimity, rushed for the stair. Happily the hall lamp was still alight, and he found no trouble with bolts or lock: the door was not any way secured.
The first breath of the cold night-air brought with it such a gush of joy as he had rarely experienced; and he trod the silent streets with something of the pleasure of an escaped criminal, until, alas! the wind, at the first turning, let him know that he had left his hat behind him! He felt as if he had committed a murder, and left his card-case with the body. A vague terror grew upon him as he hurried along. Justice seemed following on his track. He had found the door on the latch: if anything was missing, how should he explain the presence of his hat without his own? The devil of the brandy he had drunk was gone out of him, and only the gray ashes of its evil fire were left in his sick brain, but it had helped first to kindle another fire, which was now beginning to glow unsuspected--that of a fever whose fuel had been slowly gathering for some time.
He opened the door with his pass-key, and hurried up the stair, his long legs taking three steps at a time. Never before had he felt as if he were fleeing to a refuge when going home to his wife.
He opened the door of the sitting-room--and there on the floor lay Letty and little Tom, as I have already told.
"Why have I heard nothing of this before?" said Mary.
"I am not aware of any right you have to know what happens in this house."
"Not from you, of course, Miss Yolland--perhaps not from Mrs. Redmain; but the servants talk of most things, and I have not heard a word--" "How could you," interrupted Sepia, "when you were not in the house? --And, so long as nothing was missed, the thing was of no consequence," she added. "Now it is different."
This confused Mary a little. She stopped to consider. One thing was clear--that, if the ring was not lost till after she left--and of so much she was sure--it could not be Tom that had taken it, for he was then ill in bed. Something to this effect she managed to say.
"I told you already," returned Sepia, "that I had no suspicion of him--at least, I desire to have none, but you may be required to prove all you say; and it is as well to let you understand--though there is no reason why _I_ should take the trouble--that your going to those very people at the time, and their proving to be friends of yours, adds to the difficulty."
"How?" asked Mary.
"I am not on the jury," replied Sepia, with indifference.
The scope of her remarks seemed to Mary intended to show that any suspicion of her would only be natural. For the moment the idea amused her. But Sepia's way of talking about Tom, whatever she meant by it, was disgraceful!
"I am astonished you should seem so indifferent," she said, "if the character of a gentleman with whom you have been so intimate is so seriously threatened as you would imply. I know he has been to see you more than once while Mr. and Mrs. Redmain were not yet returned."
Sepia's countenance changed; an evil fire glowed in her eyes, and she looked at Mary as if she would search her to the bone. The poorer the character, the more precious the repute!
"The foolish fellow," she returned, with a smile of contempt, "chose to fall in love with me! --A married man, too!"
"If you understood that, how did he come to be here so often?" asked Mary, looking her in the face.
But Sepia knew better than declare war a moment before it was unavoidable.
"Have I not just told you," she said, in a haughty tone, "that the man was in love with me?"
"And have you not just told me he was a married man? Could he have come to the house so often without at least your permission?"
Mary was actually taking the upper hand with her! Sepia felt it with scarcely repressive rage.
"He deserved the punishment," she replied, with calmness.
"You do not seem to have thought of his wife!"
"Certainly not. She never gave me offense."
"Is offense the only ground for casting a regard on a fellow-creature?"
"Why should I think of her?"
"Because she was your neighbor, and you were doing her a wrong."
"Once for all, Marston," cried Sepia, overcome at last, "this kind of thing will not do with me. I may not be a saint, but I have honesty enough to know the genuine thing from humbug. You have thrown dust in a good many eyes in this house, but _none_ in mine."
By this time Mary had got her temper quite in hand, taking a lesson from the serpent, who will often keep his when the dove loses hers. She hardly knew what fear was, for she had in her something a little stronger than what generally goes by the name of faith. She was therefore able to see that she ought, if possible, to learn Sepia's object in talking thus to her.
"Why do you say all this to me?" she asked, quietly. "I can not flatter myself it is from friendship."
"Certainly not. But the motive may be worthy, for all that. You are not the only one involved. People who would pass for better than their neighbors will never believe any good purpose in one who does not choose to talk their slang."
Sepia had repressed her rage, and through it looked aggrieved. "She confesses to a purpose," said Mary to herself, and waited.
"They are not all villains who are not saints," Sepia went on. " --This man's wife is your friend?"
"She is."
"Well, the man himself is my friend--in a sort of a sense." A strange shiver went through Mary, and seemed to make her angry. Sepia went on: "I confess I allowed the poor boy--he is little more--to talk foolishly to me. I was amused at first, but perhaps I have not quite escaped unhurt; and, as a woman, you must understand that, when a woman has once felt in that way, if but for a moment, she would at least be--sorry--" Here her voice faltered, and she did not finish the sentence, but began afresh: "What I want of you is, through his wife, or any way you think best, to let the poor fellow know he had better slip away--to France, say--and stop there till the thing blow over."
"But why should you imagine he has had anything to do with the matter? The ring will be found, and then the hat will not signify."
"Well," replied Sepia, putting on an air of openness, and for that sake an air of familiarity, "I see I must tell you the whole truth. I never did for a moment believe Mr. Helmer had anything to do with the business, though, when you put me out of temper, I pretended to believe it, and that you were in it as well: that was mere irritation. But there is sure to be trouble; for my cousin is miserable about her sapphire, which she values more than anything she has; and, if it is not found, the affair will be put into the hands of the police, and then what will become of poor Mr. Helmer, be he as innocent as you and I believe him! Even if the judge should declare that he leaves the court without a blot on his character, Newgate mud is sure to stick, and he will be half looked upon as a thief for the rest of his days: the world is so unjust. Nor is that all; for they will put you in the witness-box, and make you confess the man an old friend of yours from the same part of the country; whereupon the counsel for the prosecution will not fail to hint that you ought to be standing beside the accused. Believe me, Mary, that, if Mr. Helmer is taken up for this, you will not come out of it clean."
"Still you explain nothing," said Mary. "You would not have me believe it is for my sake you are giving yourself all this trouble?"
"No. But I thought you would see where I was leading you. For--and now for the _whole_ truth--although nothing can touch the character of one in my position, it would be worse than awkward for me to be spoken of in connection with the poor fellow's visits to the house: _my_ honesty would not be called in question as yours would, but what is dear to me as my honesty might--nay, it certainly would. You see now why I came to you! --You must go to his wife, or, better still, to Mr. Helmer himself, and tell him what I have been saying to you. He will at once see the necessity of disappearing for a while."
Mary had listened attentively. She could not help fearing that something worse than unpleasant might be at hand; but she did not believe in Sepia, and in no case could consent that Tom should compromise himself. Danger of this kind must be met, not avoided. Still, whatever could be done ought to be done to protect him, especially in his present critical state. A breath of such a suspicion as this reaching him might be the death of him, and of Letty, too.
"I will think over what you have said," she answered; "but I can not give him the advice you wish me. What I shall do I can not say--the thing has come upon me with such a shock."
"You have no choice that I see," said Sepia. "It is either what I propose or ruin. I give you fair warning that I will stick at nothing where my reputation is concerned. You and yours shall be trod in the dirt before I allow a spot on my character!"
To Mary's relief they were here interrupted by the hurried entrance of Mrs. Redmain. She almost ran up to her, and took her by both hands.
"You dear creature! You have brought me my ring!" she cried.
Mary shook her head with a little sigh.
"But you have come to tell me where it is?"
"Alas! no, dear Mrs. Redmain!" said Mary.
"Then you must find it," she said, and turned away with an ominous-looking frown. "I will do all I can to help you find it."
"Oh, you _must_ find it! My jewel-case was in your charge."
"But there has been time to lose everything in it, the one after the other, since I gave it up. The sapphire ring was there, I know, when I went."
"That can not be. You gave me the box, and I put it away myself, and, the next time I looked in it, it was not there."
"I wish I had asked you to open it when I gave it you," said Mary.
"I wish you had," said Hesper. "But the ring must be found, or I shall send for the police."
"I will not make matters worse, Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, with as much calmness as she could assume, and much was needed, "by pointing out what your words imply. If you really mean what you say, it is I who must insist on the police being sent for."
"I am sure, Mary," said Sepia, speaking for the first time since Hesper's entrance, "that your mistress has no intention of accusing you."
"Of course not," said Hesper; "only, what am I to do? I must have my ring. Why did you come, if you had nothing to tell me about it?"
"How could I stay away when you were in trouble? Have you searched everywhere?"
"Everywhere I can think of."
"Would you like me to help you look? I feel certain it will be found."
"No, thank you. I am sick of looking."
"Shall I go, then? --What would you like me to do?"
"Go to your room, and wait till I send for you."
"I must not be long away from my invalids," said Mary, as cheerfully as she could.
"Oh, indeed! I thought you had come back to your work!"
"I did not understand from your letter you wished that, ma'am--though, indeed, I could not have come just yet in any case."
"Then you mean to go, and leave things just as they are?"
"I am afraid there is no help for it. If I could do anything-. But I will call again to-morrow, and every day till the ring is found, if you like."
"Thank you," said Hesper, dryly; "I don't think that would be of much use."
"I will call anyhow," returned Mary, "and inquire whether you would like to see me. --I will go to my room now, and while I wait will get some things I want."
"As you please," said Hesper.
Scarcely was Mary in her room, however, when she heard the door, which had the trick of falling-to of itself, closed and locked, and knew that she was a prisoner. For one moment a frenzy of anger overcame her; the next, she remembered where her life was hid, knew that nothing could touch her, and was calm. While she took from her drawers the things she wanted, and put them in her hand-bag, she heard the door unlocked, but, as no one entered, she sat down to wait what would next arrive.
Mrs. Redmain, as soon as she was aware of her loss, had gone in her distress to tell her husband, whose gift the ring had been. Unlike his usual self, he had showed interest in the affair. She attributed this to the value of the jewel, and the fact that he had himself chosen it: he was rather, and thought himself very, knowing in stones; and the sapphire was in truth a most rare one: but it was for quite other reasons that Mr. Redmain cared about its loss: it would, he hoped, like the famous carbuncle, cast a light all round it.
He was as yet by no means well, and had not been from the house since his return.
The moment Mary was out of the room, Hesper rose.
"I should be a fool to let her leave the house," she said.
"Hesper, you will do nothing but mischief," cried Sepia.
Hesper paid no attention, but, going after Mary, locked the door of her room, and, running to her husband's, told him she had made her a prisoner.
No sooner was she in her husband's room than Sepia hastened to unlock Mary's door; but, just as she did so, she heard some one on the stair above, and retreated without going in. She would then have turned the key again, but now she heard steps on the stair below, and once more withdrew.
Mary heard a knock at her door. Mewks entered. He brought a request from his master that she would go to his room.
She rose and went, taking her bag with her.
"You may go now, Mrs. Redmain," said her husband when Mary entered. "Get out, Mewks," he added; and both lady and valet disappeared.
"So!" he said, with a grin of pleasure. "Here's a pretty business! You may sit down, though. You haven't got the ring in that bag there?"
"Nor anywhere else, sir," answered Mary. "Shall I shake it out on the floor? --or on the sofa would be better."
"Nonsense! You don't imagine me such a fool as to suppose, if you had it, you would carry it about in your bag!"
"You don't believe I have it, sir--do you?" she returned, in a tone of appeal.
"How am I to know what to believe? There is something dubious about you--you have yourself all but admitted that: how am I to know that robbery mayn't be your little dodge? All that rubbish you talked down at Lychford about honesty, and taking no wages, and loving your mistress, and all that rot, looks devilish like something off the square! That ring, now, the stone of it alone, is worth seven hundred pounds: one might let pretty good wages go for a chance like that!"
Mary looked him in the face, and made him no answer. He spied a danger: if he irritated her, he would get nothing out of her!
"My girl," he said, changing his tone, "I believe you know nothing about the ring; I was only teasing you."
Mary could not help a sigh of relief, and her eyes fell, for she felt them beginning to fill. She could not have believed that the judgment of such a man would ever be of consequence to her. But the unity of the race is a thing that can not be broken.
Now, although Mr. Redmain was by no means so sure of her innocence as he had pretended, he did at least wish and hope to find her innocent--from no regard for her, but because there was another he would be more glad to find concerned in the ugly affair.
"Mrs. Redmain," he went on, "would have me hand you over to the police; but I won't. You may go home when you please, and you need fear nothing."
He had the house where the Helmers lodged already watched, and knew this much, that some one was ill there, and that the doctor came almost every day.
"I certainly shall fear nothing," said Mary, not quite trusting him; "my fate is in God's hands."
"We know all about that," said Mr. Redmain; "I'm up to most dodges. But look here, my girl: it wouldn't be prudent in me, lest there should be such a personage as you have just mentioned, to be hard upon any of my fellow-creatures: I am one day pretty sure to be in misfortune myself. You mightn't think it of me, but I am not quite a heathen, and do reflect a little at times. You may be as wicked as myself, or as good as Joseph, for anything I know or care, for, as I say, it ain't my business to judge you. Tell me now what you are up to, and I will make it the better for you."
Mary had been trying hard to get at what he was "up to," but found herself quite bewildered.
"I am sorry, sir," she faltered, "but I haven't the slightest idea what you mean."
"Then you go home," he said. "I will send for you when I want you."
The moment she was out of the room, he rang his bell violently. Mewks appeared.
"Go after that young woman--do you hear? You know her--Miss--damn it, what's her name? --Harland or Cranston, or--oh, hang it! you know well enough, you rascal!"
"Do you mean Miss Marston, sir?"
"Of course I do! Why didn't you say so before? Go after her, I tell you; and make haste. If she goes straight home--you know where--come back as soon as she's inside the door."
"Yes, sir."
"Damn you, go, or you'll lose sight of her!"
"I'm a-listenin' after the street-door, sir. It ain't gone yet. There it is now!"
And with the word he left the room.
Mary was too much absorbed in her own thoughts to note that she was followed by a man with the collar of his great-coat up to his eyes, and a woolen comforter round his face. She walked on steadily for home, scarce seeing the people that passed her. It was clear to Mewks that she had not a suspicion of being kept in sight. He saw her in at her own door, and went back to his master.
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{
"id": "8201"
}
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