CHAPTER XXIII.ANOTHER INTRIGUE.
With all the apparent amount of suffering which we have attempted to describe above, Manton was no little astonished, not only at the promptness and completeness of the recovery of the woman Marie, but at the shortness of the time which she permitted to elapse before he found her again engaged deep in a bold and characteristic intrigue.
He had immediately determined that Elna should be separated from him until the time of the proposed marriage had approached. While she was to be sent to New England to prosecute her studies under the charge of an artist friend, he himself proposed to spend the greater part of the year in the northern mountains, hunting, fishing and exploring.
But before this prudent and proper step could be taken, a week or so of preparation became necessary. It was only a week since the woman had risen from her bed, a showery Niobe, as we have seen, when Manton entered the house one morning at an hour when he was not expected, he met the woman gliding hastily through a passage, with one of the sleeves of her dress gone. The meaning of this sign at once flashed across him, for he remembered to have seen that fair and beautifularm, by skilful accident, exposed to his own gaze during her first attempts at diverting and exciting his passions, and he shrewdly conceived that there must be some new victim on hand, even already.
“Ha!” said he maliciously, as she was hurrying past. “Why, what’s become of your sleeve this morning?”
The woman flushed very red, and her eye turned obliquely upon him as she muttered confusedly—
“I—I’ve lost it!”
“Ah, well, come! Let us look for it! Let us find it! The morning is too cold! I will help you! I fear you will suffer!”
“No, no, never mind! I will find it myself!”
“But I insist! We must find it at once, before you take cold! Come, we will look in the parlor!” And he made a movement of his outstretched hand as if to open the door.
She clutched him nervously, saying in a low whisper—
“Don’t go in there, I have a visitor!”
But as Manton only smiled at this and showed no disposition to desist, she continued in an imploring voice—
“Don’t go in! Mr. Narcissus, the editor, is there! I will get the sleeve and put it on immediately! Don’t disturb us now; I am just reading to him the MS. of my new novel, which I hope he will undertake to publish in his paper!”
“Well,” said Manton, quietly stepping back, “it must be confessed you are prompt in finding alternatives! I wish you success in your new publishing enterprise! And I suppose this bare arm is to have nothing to do with his anticipated commentary upon your text!”
Manton turned away with a light laugh, but the look which was sent after him would have chilled his very soul could he have met it. His sneering conjecture was only too true. She had already fastened upon a new victim. But for once it turned out that it was “file cut file.” She had at last met her equal in all that was detestable—her peer in baseness, and only an under-graduate toherin cunning.
She had selected him as she did all her victims, with reference to social and pecuniary position. He was at the time a co-editor and ostensible part-owner of one of the most brilliant and successful weekly papers of New York. She had always aspired to command an “organ.” And anything in that line, from a review down to a thumb-paper, to her restless ambition, was better than nothing. For by a process more hideous to the world than anomalous in fact, she had come to reconcile any degree of private intrigue, by balancing it with the value of abstract teachings for the public good, under that liberal postulate of the school to which she belonged, that the end justifies the means.
In setting herself down for a regular siege before this newspaper establishment, she had first in her eye, all three of the associate owners. It was a matter of entire indifference to her, through which she succeeded in obtaining an entrance to its columns, which might lead to her control of the future tone of the paper. She opened the investment in the usual form; first, by visiting them alone, in their offices; then by bombarding them, from the distance of her own writing-table, with a constant hail of those snow-white missives, with the sugared contents of which we have before been made acquainted.
They were each privately and successively pronounced in their own ears, and under seal of those crow-quilled envelopes, to be “naughty boys,” whose proud and wilful natures were driving them headlong to ruin—to be sons of genius, who only required to be saved from themselves and their own vices, by her, to become the illustrious reformers of the age! One of them smoked too much—was making a “chimney of his nose,” through which he was exhaling spiritual mightiness, that might equalise him with the cherubim, if only free! But this unhappily did not tell; the shrewd and wary business-man, who knew more about coppers than cherubim, and was by no means conscious of the spiritual prowess she so pathetically attributed tohim, “smoked” her, or her motive at least, and threw the dainty correspondence aside, with a jeering laugh.
The other, who was really chief editor, and a handsome and talented fellow, might not have got off so well, had he not been pre-occupied, and predisposed to bestow the exalted attributes which she had discovered in him, in another direction. He was duly grateful to her, however, for the discovery that he was a child of genius; and, though a little disposed to be suspicious, could not, for some time, restrain the expression of his delight at having met with a lady possessing such unquestionable and extraordinary discrimination.
He was a jovial and generous fellow, though very shrewd and suspicious withal. She was not quite aware of the last two attributes, and therefore expected a great deal from him, as he proverbially drank too much. She therefore opened her batteries mercilessly upon this weakness, which, as she affirmed, combined with the horrible practice of chewing to excess, was demonising an “Archangel! Dragging down the loftiest spirit of his age! A spirit that might guide the destinies of the human race, and rule it, whether for evil or for good.” She particularly desired his salvation. She prayed for it, day and night! She had a spiritual monition that he could be saved; and the fact was, he would be saved, if he would only listen to her counsel! Indeed, she might guarantee heshouldbe saved, if he would only give up his poisons, and dedicate the columns of his paper to the great cause of progressive hygiene and popular physiology. In a word, the fact was, hemustbe saved, whether he wanted to be or not!
But the trouble was, our editor was a person who would do nothing on compulsion. And when he found that such a powerful edict had gone forth, that hemustbe saved, he swore, in his benighted obstinacy, that he would be —— if he would!
This led, through his spleen, to an explanation between himself and the business-man of the firm, and what was their mutual astonishment, on privately comparing “notes,” to find thatone was absolutely a “Cherubim,” and the other an “Archangel!” They looked at each other with a blank stare of surprise. The tawney, lean, angular, iron-jawed face of the business-man suggested anything but the plump and dimpled outlines of that prolific progeny of winged infants, which Raphael has rendered so illustrious. While, in contrast, the features of the young editor were remarkable for their plump and childlike freshness.
“Why!” shouted the business-man, with a tremendous guffaw, “there’s a great mistake here—she has clearly misdirected the notes. You should be the cherub!”
The breath of a simultaneous roar of laughter dissipated all her fine-spun web, in these two directions at least. She was more successful, however, with the third party.
Manton had been deceived, egregiously, in regard to this man’s past history, or he would never have permitted him to pass the threshold of the house where he lived. He had known him only as ostensibly associate editor of a highly-respectable paper, and therefore had not felt himself called upon to interfere in any way. Although he had, as we have perceived, early indications of his having become a frequent visitor at the house.
To have gone any higher in her classification of him than she had already gone in that of his associates, would have puzzled any less versatile genius than hers. But as cherubim and archangel had already been used up, she placed him among the “principalities and powers in heavenly places,” and there he decided to stick. It was certainly time for him to be pleased with elevation of some sort, for, as it turned out afterwards, when his history became better understood by Manton, he was one of those slugs, or barnacles of the press, that cling about and slime the keels of every noble and thought-freighted bark. From the precarious and eminently honourable occupation of writing obscene books forprivatecirculation, “getting up” quack advertisements, interpolating the pages of Paul De Kockwith smearings of darker filth than ever his mousing vision had yet discovered in the sinks and gutters of Paris, he had gradually risen, through his facile availability, to thesub rosarespectability of a well-paid “sub” in a respectable office—I saysub rosa, for it seems to have been well understood, in New York, that the appearance of his name, at the head of the columns of any paper, would be sufficient to damn it, outright, so linked had it become with sneaking infamy of every sort.
However,this“child of genius” and Madame progressed bravely towards a mutual understanding; and billets-doux flew between them thick as snow-flakes. As for their contents, the reader is, by this time, pretty well prepared to conjecture. Interviews, from weekly to semi-weekly, crowded fast upon each other’s heels; until, at last, Manton began to perceive that, not only was the sleeve lost every day, but that the new novel, like the pious labor of the needle of Penelope, “grew with its growth.”
About this time, however, it came to his knowledge, that this highly respectable literary personage, Mr. Narcissus, had been as notoriously abject in his private relations as he had been in those to the press. However, as he had determined to drag Elna from beneath the clutches of her mother, and to sever all remote, or even possible connection between them, he did not feel himself called upon to do more than announce the fact to Madame that the fellow was even now an infamous stipendiary to a party no less infamous than himself, who had privately furnished him, out of her ill-gotten gains, the money to buy his share in the weekly paper she was so ambitious of controlling, through him. As he had now to expect, she received the news with the most refreshing coolness, and merely remarked, that it was no fault of hers that this bad woman had loved Mr. Narcissus; that he possessed great talent in affairs; could be made of much use in the cause of human progress and advancement—in a word, deserved to be saved, and to save him she meant. She should rescue him from such gross and debasing associations,and give to his astonishing energies a nobler bent; that his future life, under her inspiration and guidance, should be made to atone for the past.
This logic seemed so very conclusive and characteristic, that Manton made no reply, but a shudder, at the thought of thatsavingprocess, to which, despicable as he was, a new victim was to be subjected. But it was no part of his plan to divert her from her purpose; for he wished, by all means, to see her active and dangerous energies employed in any direction, save that of the subversion and counteraction of his own design in regard to her daughter.
Elna, in a few days after, was sent to New England, with the understanding between Manton and herself, that she would by no means consent to return to her mother, until he himself should come back from his tour, and should send for her. He did not dare to trust her for an hour beneath the accursed shadow of this domestic Upas, that had given her birth; and more particularly did he dread the hideous combination of influences which were likely now to be brought to bear upon her, as Madam had openly announced her intention, since she had obtained a divorce from her former husband, to marry the delectable Narcissus.
We may as well dispose of this affair at once, by remarking, that in a few months afterward she did marry him; that the unfortunate woman, who had heretofore so long lived with and loved Narcissus, instantly withdrew the support which her ill-gotten gains furnished; and that, asserting her right to the share which he had pretended to own in the property of the paper, and disclosing the whole of his infamy to his former partners, the cherubim and archangel indignantly kicked him out of doors, and at once toppled about the astonished ears of Madame all her castles in the air reared, with regard to “controlling a powerful organ.”
But Madame, as we have perceived, was possessed of one of those elastic natures which always rebound from collisions,or which, in a word, “never say die;” so that, instead of being discouraged by this untoward conclusion of her ambitious schemes, she set herself to work forthwith to make the best of a bad bargain; and, as she had already exhibited her passion for professional spouses, in immediately converting her first and dear Ebenezer, into an M. D., she could not do less than make a Doctor out of her beloved Narcissus.
It did not matter to her that both of them were ludicrously ignorant—that neither of them had probably ever read a book clear through in their lives; parchments were dog-cheap in New York, and could be had any day for an equivalent in hard coin. She accordingly “put him through;” and in something less than three months, one more legalised murderer was turned loose upon society, under the cabalistic ægis of M. D.