CHAPTER XII.SPIRITUAL CONFIDENCES.

CHAPTER XII.SPIRITUAL CONFIDENCES.

And under fair pretence of friendly ends,And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,Baited with reasons not unplausible,Wind me into easy-hearted man,And hug him into snares.Mask of Comus.

And under fair pretence of friendly ends,And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,Baited with reasons not unplausible,Wind me into easy-hearted man,And hug him into snares.Mask of Comus.

And under fair pretence of friendly ends,And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,Baited with reasons not unplausible,Wind me into easy-hearted man,And hug him into snares.Mask of Comus.

And under fair pretence of friendly ends,

And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,

Baited with reasons not unplausible,

Wind me into easy-hearted man,

And hug him into snares.

Mask of Comus.

We shall follow the bedraggled heroine of the last chapter, begging leave of the reader to “see her home.”

Mark with what an elate and vigorous step she trips it up Barclay Street into Broadway, after taking leave of Manton at the door of the Graham House. One would think that she should surely be tired, after that tremendous morning’s work, trudging and splashing through the dirtiest mire of three-fourths of the great city. But no—she springs in her gait, and her strange, animal eye, glitters fairly with a devilish obliquity, which has for the moment usurped its expression. She does not mind that people turn and stare after her dragging and bespattered skirts—not she!—her very soul is possessed with the pre-occupation of an ecstatic gloating over some great conquest achieved, or closely perceived already in the prospective future into which she glares.

We shall see what we shall see—only follow, still follow. She has turned up Broadway, and threads the great throng there with rapid glide, as street after street is passed. Ah, now we have it! She crosses—this is Eighth Street! There, in Broadway, near the corner, stands a great house, with wide-open door; the smeared and dirty lintels, the greasy latch, the wide, uncarpeted hall of which, at once reveals it to be one of those miscellaneous and incomprehensible edifices, which are notunfrequently met with on the great thoroughfare, and the uses of which are not generally more specifically known, than that they are fashionable boarding-houses.

Into this ever-gaping entrance she wheeled, and darted up the broad, uncarpeted stairway, which she continued to ascend with almost incredible ease and swiftness to the fifth story. When near the end of a long and narrow passage, she paused before one of the doors, and tapping it slightly, entered without farther ceremony.

A handsome and well-dressed woman, who was engaged in writing at a small escritoire, looked up indifferently as she entered, but the moment she caught the expression of the newcomer’s face, she sprang to her feet, throwing down the pen, and with a strangely shrill and unmusical laugh, screamed out in a most inconceivably voluble style—

“Why, I declare! Marie, what’s the matter? Your eyes are almost bursting out of your head! You look as if you had found a bag of gold, and meant to give me half! Why, bless the woman, how she looks! Have you caught him at last? Well, we’re in luck! I’ve caught my man for sure! He’s been here all the morning, he’s just left! Why, how the woman looks! She keeps staring so! You haven’t gone crazy for joy, have you? Now, do tell! how have you managed to catch that insolent baby, you seemed to have set your heart on so? Why, how muddy the woman is!” she shrieked, looking down at the condition of her dress. “Ha! ha! ha! ha! Do tell, what sort of a game have you been playing? Did you have to hunt him through a pig-sty?”

The woman had been standing motionless, in the meantime, with distended eyes and compressed mouth, stretched in a rigid smile of supernaturally savage exultation. She gazed towards the face of the speaker, but did not seem to listen to her, or see her features. She looked the abstracted embodiment of triumphing evil. Very soon her stiffened lips quivered slightly,while the voluble lady stepping forward, shook her sharply by the shoulder, shrilling out again—

“Do look at the woman! Why, what can be the matter? Can’t you talk? The cat’s got the woman’s tongue surely! I did not think you were so much in earnest about that green boy! Why, I could twist him about my finger like a tow-string! I have achieved something in conqueringmyman!”

“Y-your man!” said the woman slowly, interrupting her. But these words were accompanied by a look of such strange and taunting significance, that the other turned instantly pale and sprang back, as if she had received an electric shock from those singular eyes, that fell upon her for a moment with their evil obliquity, and then returned instantly to their natural expression. “Wh-why, what do you mean?” stammered the other angrily.

The woman only answered with a pleasant smile—“Now don’t be a jealous fool, Jeannette Shrewell—I shall never interfere with your schemes if you don’t with mine.”

“Yes! but because you knew Edmond long ago,” continued the other in a fierce and shrewish voice, “you dare to insinuate to me that he too has passed through your hands!”

The woman broke out into a loud laugh—“Why, what a child you are! You know what my relations to Edmond are, perfectly. Spiritual—purely and spotlessly spiritual. I should no more think of him than of my grandfather.”

“Spiritual!” shrieked the other, springing forward; “do you dare to use that stupid cant to me? Keep it for the sap-headed boys and senile drivellers that you decoy with such bait, to plunder. You shan’t insult me to my teeth with it.”

The speaker, whose physical energies were far more vehement and overbearing than the other, seemed to have entirely awed her. She sank meekly into a chair, turned very pale, and lifting her eyes with an humble look, she said, in a low imploring voice, “Now, Jeannette, please don’t be so violent. I did not mean to taunt or insult you. You have altogether mistaken me, dear friend. Now, please be calm.”

But the other, whose long black curls still writhed and quivered, like the snakes of the Gorgon head, with rage, stood towering before the suppliant, as if she meant to crush her; and as she thus stood, she really looked superb.

Her profile was delicately chiselled and Roman, with large, dark gray eyes, thin lips, and fine chin; and now that every feature was inspired with anger, the eye ceased to be offended by their habitual expression of selfish, cold, and sharp intellection. She continued, quite as vehemently—

“You have sown the wind, and you must reap. I have heard this vile insinuation before of something between you and Edmond at B.”

“Jeannette! Jeannette! it is false! every word of it. It is a vile slander of my enemies. Ask Edmond himself—he will tell you it is so.”

“Yes! yes! I know it is false. But who gave circulation to these reports? Hey? Your enemies, were they? Your enemies must have a great deal to do, that they keep themselves busy with these manifold stories of your adventures. Who was it aspired to the eclat of any affair with the rich, generous, learned, and travelled Edmond? Who was it dragged him, through his unsuspecting recklessness of conventional usages, into conditions which rendered him liable to such an imputation? Who boasted of it, and attempted to place him in the same category with the dupes and gulls and fools she had already ruined and plundered? Hey? Who was it? Marie ——, I know you,” and she stretched herself to her full height; but, had her vision not been blinded by passion, she might have perceived a cold and scarcely perceptible smile of scornful incredulity pass over the face at which she pointed her sharp finger. “I know you, woman! Beware! beware how you cross my track with Edmond! You had better rouse the sleeping tigress with her young in your arms. He shall be mine! I have sworn it! One year ago, when I heard of his return from Europe, and left everything, mother, sisters, friends, and cameon to this city, a thousand miles, alone and unprotected, that I might throw myself in his way, I swore that he should be mine. I had watched his career for years, from a distance, and he had grown to be my ideal. When he became, first the pupil and then the expounder of the new philosophy in France, I too became its student; with unwearied labor I mastered its prodigious science, for I divined the purpose of the man. I knew he must return to his own country, and become its exponent here, and that then my time would come.

“I studied the German, the French, and the Italian; with all which languages I knew him to be familiar. I acquainted myself with the literature of each, that I might be able always to speak with him in the tongues and of the themes of which his long residence in Europe had made the associations most pleasant. Armed thus, cap-a-pie, I have met him at last, as I felt it was my destiny to do.

“I have attracted him; I have all but conquered him. That man shall be my lover! Ay, woman, he shall be my lawful husband! Cross my track in any way, if you d-a-a-r-e! I know your arts; I will render them for ever unavailing to you; I will explain them, and expose them. Cross my track, then, if you d-a-a-r-e!” and, as she hissed out the words between her teeth, she stooped forward and shook her finger in the face of the now actually trembling woman. “Remember! our compact is, you let me alone, and I will let you alone; you help me, I’ll help you; cross me, I destroy you!”

“Is that all?” murmured the woman, in a soft voice, opening her eyes, which had been closed during the greater part of this tirade, while, at the same time, the old obliquity became for a moment apparent.

“Why, Jeannette, I never dreamed of any thing else. I would sooner cut off my right hand than interfere with you, in any respect. Our two courses are entirely different. You have one object and one species of game to hunt down, while I have another. We shall not clash!” and seeing the features of theother relax from exhausted passion, she leaned forward with a pleasing smile.

“Just to think, you stormy child! I had hastened home to tell you of my good fortune, and you so overpower me as to make me forget all I had to tell. You have frightened me sadly, Jeannette, and all about nothing. But I’ve got him—I think he’s booked at last!”

“Pooh!” said the other, sinking into a chair. “Well, I asked you ever so long ago; how did you manage it? You seem to have had a great deal more trouble this time than usual. He does not seem to have been very civil to you heretofore, I should think.”

“No!” said the other, in a low, hoarsened tone, while the blood mounted in crimson flush to herforehead,notto her cheeks. This nice discrimination is very necessary to a true apprehension of such a character. “No, he has acted like a sullen cub, heretofore, a perfect young white bear, with his insolent pride, and clumsy haughtiness! He is the most insulting and impracticable boor I ever took hold of!”

“Ah! I perceive you are splenetic!”

“No! It is simply annoying, that the insufferable fellow should give me so much trouble. Why, only think, he positively refused to be introduced to me—said I was a shallow adventuress, and that he did not wish to know me—even when our Doctor Weasel went to him, with a special request on my part for such an introduction!”

“Oh, yes! but our Doctor is proverbially awkward in such matters. No doubt he spoiled it all in the manner of the request.”

“Well, but you know, if the Doctor is awkward, he’s got money, and as long as he believes in Fourier and Swedenborg as devotedly as he does now, we can use his purse. But to proceed: That sullen Southerner not only refused to be introduced to me, in the most insulting terms, but when I wrote him three or four of my most irresistible billet-doux, that neverfailed before, he treated them with what I suppose he meant to be silent contempt, for he did not answer one of them, though I had taken the pains to place them all upon his table with my own hands, during his absence, and find out all I could concerning him at the same time.

“I found the key-note, however; the boy loved his mother, and has been playing hyæna with the rest of the world ever since she died, and been endeavoring to imagine himself a misanthrope, with a life dedicated since solely to the ambition of achieving, in her name, good for mankind. This discovery, privately made, put me fully in possession of all I wanted to know of his weakness. I saw he was earnest and chivalrous, as his origin implies, and proudly secretive, so far as the privacies of his life were concerned. So I at once felt that this incrustation of reserve with which he had fenced about his life, could only be broken down by acoup de main.

“I determined to come down upon him, by surprise, in spite of everything. I called on him, and sent our trusty Doctor up to bring him to the parlorper force. Therusesucceeded so far as to effect an introduction; but, to tell you the truth,” and her forehead fairly blazed while she spoke, “I never was treated with such insolent and frozen hauteur in my life before! I went away with my ears tingling and blood on fire, but I cursed him in my very heart, and swore to have a woman’s vengeance! You remember how sick I was that night. Oh, God! such furies as tortured me! I scarcely slept; but a happy thought came to me just about morning.

“He was a poet—his brow revealed that—but with characteristic sternness he had yet published nothing which could be accounted the highest expression of his inmost life. He had made his way in literature rapidly and brilliantly through a novel combination of style, in which the essential elements of prose and poetry were combined; but had never yet ventured to associate his proper name with anything bearing the forms of poetry.

“Now, the Doctor had told me that the poem, under thesoubriquet of ‘De Noto,’ in the last number of the Journal, was his, and it at once flashed across me—appreciation! appreciation! The young poet has stolen timidly forth, under disguise, with this myth clear from his soul! He does not expect to be understood at once, and any prompt appreciation will overwhelm him from the very suddenness of the thing; and in his delighted surprise he would yearn towards the acknowledged devil himself.

“I sent him another note expressing that intense appreciation for which I knew he was craving. He treated it with the neglect that he had the others; but I somehow felt that I had made my mark. I called this morning, and as I knew his contempt for mere conventional forms, I ventured upon a dashingruse de guerre.

“I challenged him, for I knew his own personal hardiness, to take a long walk through all the slop of the thaw. With a stare of surprise he accepted it. I felt even then that my point was half gained. There were people in the parlor, and my object was to get him alone with myself. I felt that I had already touched one weakness, and my object now was to arrest his chivalrous sympathies in behalf of my forlorn and unprotected martyrdom to the cause of woman in her resistance to the brutalities of the marital law, and her right of proclaiming to her sisterhood the sanitary laws of health, in which they have been kept in profound ignorance by the ‘profession.’

“At first, I arrested his attention by the daring of the position which I had assumed, and then aroused his sympathies by a fervent relation of the wrongs inflicted on me by my brutal husband. The story was old, but I managed to throw into it a great deal of feeling, for there is nothing like a tale of persecution to arrest chivalrous minds all over the world.Weunderstand all these propositions as scientific! When I parted with him he smiled upon me, for the first time, genially. I am sure of him now!”

“I should think you might be!”

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