CHAPTER XI.CARRIED BY STORM.
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;But sure am I, among the ranks that fell’Tis the firstfiende’er counselled man to rise!Anon.
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;But sure am I, among the ranks that fell’Tis the firstfiende’er counselled man to rise!Anon.
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;But sure am I, among the ranks that fell’Tis the firstfiende’er counselled man to rise!Anon.
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;
But sure am I, among the ranks that fell
’Tis the firstfiende’er counselled man to rise!
Anon.
Manton had reckoned without his host, in supposing that his self-constituted patroness had any idea whatever of being frozen off: on the contrary, her benevolent ardor had been only warmed still more, as he had abundant evidence, when, on returningfrom his office next morning, he found yet another snowy missive crowning the centre of his table.
“Monsieur Tonson, come again!” he exclaimed, as he seized the note, and opened it this time without hesitation, “what can the incredible woman have to say now? Well, here it is!”
My Friend—You heaped ice upon my heart yesterday. To-day, I feel chilled and stiffened, as if my very soul-wings had been frosted through your lips! Why did you do so? It was not magnanimous in you.Youare proud, and beautiful, and strong, while I am plain, and weak, and lowly. Was it worthy of a noble soul to treat with such harsh and cutting coldness a poor, feeble, and wayworn daughter of sorrow like myself, who had come merely in the meek and matronly overflow of tenderness and appreciation for a poisoned, sick and erring child of genius, to offer him her sympathy in his dreary and unrelieved immolation of glorious powers at the unholy altar of ambition? Was it not unkind of you? Can you suppose that had you not been poisoned, body and soul, the demon pride would have thus overruled your better and your angel nature to such harsh rejection of the comforter, the Father had sent you in his mercy? What have I asked of you, but that you should unbend this fatal pride, and accept of mortal genialities? That you should spare yourself from yourself, and give something to others. Ah! you will not always thus repulse the sympathies of your race—naughty, naughty boy! hasten to be good and come to see me!Marie.
My Friend—You heaped ice upon my heart yesterday. To-day, I feel chilled and stiffened, as if my very soul-wings had been frosted through your lips! Why did you do so? It was not magnanimous in you.Youare proud, and beautiful, and strong, while I am plain, and weak, and lowly. Was it worthy of a noble soul to treat with such harsh and cutting coldness a poor, feeble, and wayworn daughter of sorrow like myself, who had come merely in the meek and matronly overflow of tenderness and appreciation for a poisoned, sick and erring child of genius, to offer him her sympathy in his dreary and unrelieved immolation of glorious powers at the unholy altar of ambition? Was it not unkind of you? Can you suppose that had you not been poisoned, body and soul, the demon pride would have thus overruled your better and your angel nature to such harsh rejection of the comforter, the Father had sent you in his mercy? What have I asked of you, but that you should unbend this fatal pride, and accept of mortal genialities? That you should spare yourself from yourself, and give something to others. Ah! you will not always thus repulse the sympathies of your race—naughty, naughty boy! hasten to be good and come to see me!
Marie.
“Well! well! by heaven, the audacity of this thing soars to the sublime! and yet there is some truth as well as pathos in it, too! Now, I come to think of it, it was unmanly of me to treat the poor woman so, just as if I expected she carried stilettoes or revolvers under her petticoats, or wore aromatic poison in her bosom, with a foul and treacherous design upon my life! The fact is, I have made a bugbear of this creature in my imagination, when she is nothing, in fact, but fool and fanatic combined,with a little disjointed mother-wit. Curse the whole affair! I wish she and her endless letters were in the bottom of the sea! By these persistent impertinences she disturbs me in my work; these distractions are unendurable! I wish she were only safe in heaven.
It is useless to giveallthe letters which poor Manton received within the next four or five days, but it is sufficient to say that at last, in a fit of veritable desperation, spleen and humor, he answered one of the last in a tone of hyperbolical exaggeration that would have put to shame, not Mercutio only, but the veritable Bombastes Furioso himself. The effect was coldly studied, and behold the result.
The next morning a servant informed him that a lady desired to see him in the parlor.
Terror-stricken by the announcement, he nevertheless knew, in his conscience, that he had brought down the judgment upon his own head. He therefore felt it to be his duty to abide the consequences of his own imprudence, and went down to wait upon his caller, who, of course, was no other than his correspondent.
She received him with a flushing face, as seemed to be usual to her shrinking nature. She was this time without her daughter. There were other persons in the parlor, and this seemed to disconcert her somewhat, for she had evidently come full of some important disclosure. Although it was the latter part of winter, and a heavy snow had just commenced breaking up, which rendered the streets of New York almost impassable, she nevertheless proposed that they should go out for a long walk. Manton looked through the window into the sloppy street, opened his eyes a little, and assented.
There was something wonderfully rare in the idea of a woman’s proposing a long walk on such a day, and Manton relished the hardiness and originality of the thing.
“Well!” said he to himself, “I like her spunk, anyhow! She has shown herself in every way to be in earnest in what sheundertakes. Phew! I shall enjoy it! a woman in long petticoats, wading a mile or two through a cold slush such as this! After this, what is it that Madame won’t do? I’ll lead her something of a round, at any rate, before she gets back.”
These thoughts passed through his mind as he ran up-stairs for his cap. She met him as he came down, in the passage-way, and they passed out at the front door.
“You are a droll person,” said Manton, as they reached the street.
“Why?” asked she, with a covert gleam in her eye.
“Why? Because few women would have thought of choosing such a day as this for a walk.”
“I care nothing for trifles! Misfortune has taught me to disregard them. Suffering makes us hardy.”
Manton looked down at her with surprise; for, of all things on earth, the most disagreeable to him, was that commonplace timidity, and shrinking from trifles, which is so ludicrously characteristic of American women. He did not wish to see woman unsexed, but contemned her puerile and unnecessary cowardice.
His companion now proceeded with great animation to follow up the favorable opening thus effected, with a rapid and pathetic sketch, in outline, of her sad and suffering life.
She had been married by her parents to a sordid lout of a Quaker, in New England, whose horrid barbarities and persecutions had finally compelled the weak and hitherto unresisting woman to seek a separation, the scandal of which had roused against her the relentless animosity of the whole body of New England Quakers, who finally carried their brutal persecution to the extreme of assisting her yet more brutal husband, in robbing her of her dear and only child, under the plea that she was neither a suitable nor capable person to have charge of it. That, after a long period, spent by the distracted mother in roaming up and down the land, in search of aid and comfort, she had at length succeeded in enlisting some noble and benevolent soulsin her cause, who finally rescued the child, by strategy or force, and restored it to its weeping mother’s arms.
In addition to this sad tale of suffering connected with her private history, which was most skilfully and artistically worked up, she had another, of public martyrdom, which was, to Manton, far more impressive.
Through obscurity and poverty, this resolute and daring woman had dedicated herself to the amelioration of the physical evils of her helpless sex. She had, with unflagging ardor, studied the books of anatomical science, the diseases of her sex, and the wisest means of cure. And thus, in addition to having been the first woman in New England to publicly assert that there is no true marriage but in love, she had also led the way in announcing to women their sanitary duties to themselves; that they must learn to heal their bodies, and leave the other sex to take care of their own diseases; that delicacy as well as utility prompted this course.
This idea at once met the approbation of Manton, to whom its assertion was comparatively novel, but who had always deeply felt the lamentable helplessness of woman, and the unnatural relation of the male members of the profession to them.
The brave and hearty manner in which this singular woman had evidently breasted alone the popular prejudice, in a cause which he saw, at a glance, to be so just and nobly utilitarian, for the first time moved his sympathies somewhat in her favor, in spite of his contempt and disgust for women who ventured beyond their sphere.
The vocation of a learned nurse to diseased persons of her own sex, was clearly to himnotbeyond the proper sphere of woman, but a most important, legitimate, and—however little recognised, conventionally—the most honorable and useful. He could not but respect the woman, whatever her eccentricities might be, who could be brave and true enough to assert effectively to her sex, the natural and inevitable mandate, “Know thyself!”
There was something chivalrous in the thought—a generous daring, a martyr spirit, that could not fail to arrest a nature in itself, rashly scornful of all that was merely conventional, and whose untamed, half-savage soul rejoiced in all novelties that expressed to him a higher utility than mere forms conveyed.
The walk was continued for hours; and still further to try her nerves, during this long conversation, Manton turned through many intricacies into the most darkened labyrinths of the vice-profaned metropolis.
The woman never flinched; nothing seemed to appal her, and, as they threaded rapidly the dingy alleys of the “Five Points,” she had an acute theory or a daring speculation for each evil, the external form of which they successively encountered.
There was a vigor and originality in all this, as coming from a woman, that interested Manton in spite of himself. Plain, uncouth, and eccentric as was this scorned “lecture-woman,” he could not but confess to himself, as they returned mud-bedraggled and tired enough from that long walk, that his respect for her had very much increased.