The crisis of 1857 brought a general collapse. Scores and scores of jobbers failed; very few dared to buy goods. Mills were compelled to run on short time, or to cease altogether. The country became bare of the common necessaries of life. In process of time trade rallied. Manufacturing recommenced; orders for goods poured in; and for a twelve-month and more the manufacturer has had it all his own way. His goods are all sold ahead, months ahead of his ability to manufacture. He makes his own price, and chooses his customer. This operates not unkindly on the jobbers who are wealthy and independent; but for those who have but lately begun to mount the hill of difficulty, it offers one more impediment. For, to men who have a great many goods to sell, it is a matter of moment to secure the customers who can buy in large quantities, and whose notes will bring the money of banks or private capitalists as soon as offered. Against such buyers, men of limited means and of only average business-ability have but a poor chance. There will always be some articles of merchandise in the buying or selling of which they cannot compete.
When a financial crisis overtakes the community, we hear much and sharp censure of allspeculation. Speculators, one and all, are forthwith consigned to an abyss of obloquy. The virtuous public outside of trade washes its hands of all participation in the iniquity. This same virtuous public knows very little of what it is talking about. What is speculation? Shall we say, in brief and in general, that it consists in running risks, in taking extra-hazardous risks, on the chance of making unusually large profits? Is it that men have abandoned the careful ways of the fathers, and do not confine themselves to small stores, small stocks, and cash transactions? And do you know who it is that has compelled this change? That same public who denounce speculation in one breath, and in the next clamor for goods at low prices, and force the jobber into large stores and large sales at small profits as the indispensable condition of his very existence.
Those who thus rail at speculation are generally quite unaware that their own inexorable demand for goods at low prices is one of the principal efficient causes of that of which they complain. They do not know that the capacious maw of the insatiable public is yearly filled with millions on millions of shirtings and sheetings, and other articles of prime necessity, without one farthing of profit to the jobber. The outside world reason from the assumption, that the jobber might, but will not, avoid taking considerable risks. They do not consider, for they do not know, how entirely all is changed from the days and circumstances in which a very small business would suffice to maintain the merchant. They do not consider, that, an immense amount of goods being of compulsion sold without profit, a yet other huge amount must be so sold as to compensate for this. Nor do they consider that the possibility of doing this is often contingent upon the buyer's carefully calculated probability of a rise in the article he is purchasing. Many a time is the jobber enabled and inclined to purchase largely only by the assurance that from the time of his purchase the price will be advanced.
Thesellingof dry-goods is another department in high art about which the ignorance of outsiders is ineffable. I was once asked, in the way of courtesy and good neighborhood, to call on a clergyman in our vicinity,—which I did. Desirous of doing his part in the matter of good fellowship and smooth conversation, he began thus:—
"Well, now, Mr. Smith, you know all about business: I suppose, if I were to go into a store to buy goods, nineteen men out of twenty would cheat me, if they could; wouldn't they?"
"No, Sir!" I answered, with a swelling of indignation at the injustice, a mingling of pity for the ignorance, and a foreboding of small benefit from the preaching of a minister of the gospel who knew so little of the world he lived in. "No, Sir; nineteen men in twenty would not cheat you, if they could; for the best of all reasons,—it would be dead against their own interest."
Not a day passes but the question is asked by our youths who are being initiated in the routine of selling goods,—"Is this honest? Is that honest? Is it honest to mark your goods as costing more than they do cost? Is it honest to ask one man more than you ask another? Ought not the same price to be named to every buyer? Isn't it cheating to get twenty-five per cent. profit? Can a man sell goods without lying? Are men compelled to lie and cheat a little in order to earn an honest living?" What is the reason that these questions will keep coming up? That they can no more be laid than Banquo's ghost? Here are some of the reasons. First, and foremost, multitudes of young men, whose parents followed the plough, the loom, or the anvil, have taken it into their heads, that they will neither dig, hammer, nor ply the shuttle. To soil their hands with manual labor they cannot abide. The sphere of commerce looks to their longing eyes a better thing than lying down in green pastures, or than a peaceful life beside still waters, procured by laborious farming, or by any mechanical pursuit. Clean linen and stylish apparel are inseparably associated in their minds with an easy and elegant life, and so they pour into our cities, and the ranks of the merchants are filled, and over-filled, many times. Once, the merchant had only to procure an inviting stock, and his goods sold themselves. He did not go after customers; they came to him; and it was a matter of favor to them to supply their wants. Now, all that is changed. There are many more merchants than are needed; buyers are in request; and buyers whose credit is the best, to a very great extent, dictate the prices at which they will buy. The question is no longer, How large a profit can I get? but, How small a profit shall I accept? The competition for customers is so fierce that the seller hardly dares ask any profit, for fear his more anxious neighbor will undersell him. In order to attract customers, one thing after another has been made "a leading article," a bait to be offered at cost or even less than cost,—that being oftentimes the condition on which alone the purchaser will make a beginning of buying.
"Jenkins," cried an anxious seller, "you don't buy anything of me, and I can sell you as cheap as any. Here's a bale of sheetings now, at eight cents, will do you good."
"How many have you got?"
"Oh, plenty."
"Well, how many?"
"Fifteen bales."
"Well, I'll take them."
"Come in and buy something more."
"No, nothing more to-day."
There was a loss of seventy-five dollars, and he did not dare buy more.
It will be obvious that the selling a part of one's goods at less than cost enhances the necessity of getting a profit on the rest. But how to do this, under the sharp scrutiny of a buyer who knows that his own success, not to say his very existence, depends upon his paying no profit possible to be avoided,—no profit, at all events, not certainly paid by some sharp neighbor who is competing with him for the same trade?
"But is there anything in all this," you are asking, "to preclude the jobber's telling the truth?" Nothing. "Anything to preclude strict honesty?" Nothing. "Why, then, do the questions you have quoted continually recur?"
I answer: In order to get his share of the best custom in his line, the dry-goods jobber has taken a store in the best position in town, at a rent of from three to fifty thousand dollars a year; has hired men and boys at all prices, from fifty dollars to five thousand,—and enough of these to result in an aggregate of from five to fifty thousand dollars a year for help, without which his business cannot be done. Add to this the usual average for store-expenses of every name, and for the family-expenses of two, five, or seven partners, and you find a dry-goods firm under the necessity of getting out of their year's sales somewhere from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars profit, before they shall have saved one cent to meet the losses of an unfavorable season.
Now, though there is nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the sale of his goods,—much to educate him in all manner of expedients to baffle the inquiries of customers who would be offended, if they could discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could never meet his expenses. And the jobber's problem is complicated by the folly, universally prevalent among buyers, of expecting some partiality or peculiarity of favor over their neighbors who are just as good as themselves. Every dry-goods jobber knows that his customer's foolish hope and expectation often demand three absurdities of him: first, the assurance that he has the advantage over all other jobbers in a better stock of goods, better bought; secondly, that he has a peculiar friendship for himself; and thirdly, that, though of other men he must needs get a profit, in his special instance he shall ask little or none; and that, such is his regard for him, it is a matter of no moment whether he live in Lowell or Louisiana, in New Bedford or Nebraska, or whether he pay New England bank-notes within thirty days, or wild-cat money and wild lands, which may be converted into cash, with more or less expense and loss, somewhere between nine months and nine-and-twenty years.
And yet the uninitiated "can't understand how an honest merchant can have two prices for the same goods." An honest man has but one price for the same goods, and that is the cash price. All outside of that is barter,—goods for notes. His first inquiry is, What is the market-value of the note offered? True, he knows that many of the notes he takes cannot be sold at all; but he also knows that the notes he is willing to take will in the aggregate be guarantied by a reservation of one, two, or three per cent., and that the note of the particular applicant for credit will tend to swell or to diminish the rate; and he cannot afford to exchange his goods for any note, except at a profit which will guaranty its payment when due,—which, in other words, will make the note equal in value to cash.
Now it is just because all business-contingencies cannot be worked into an unvarying form, as regular as the multiplication-table, and as plain to the apprehension of all men, that a vast amount of lying and of dishonesty is imputed, where it does not exist. Merchants are much like other men,—wise and unwise, far-sighted and short-sighted, selfish and unselfish, honest and dishonest. But that they are as a class more dishonest than other men is so far from being true, that I much doubt if we should overstrain the matter, if we should affirm that they are the most honest class of men in the community. There is much in their training which contributes directly, and most efficiently, to this result. Their very first lessons are in feet and inches, in pounds and ounces, in exact calculations, in accounts and balances. Carelessness, mistakes, inaccuracies, they are made to understand, are unpardonable sins. The boy who goes into a store learns, for the first time, that half a cent, a quarter of a cent, an eighth of a cent, may be a matter of the gravest import. He finds a thorough book-keeper absolutely refusing himself rest till he has detected an error of ten cents in a business of six months. And every day's experience enforces the lesson. It is giving what is due, and claiming what is due, from year's end to year's end. Among merchants it is matter of common notoriety, that the prompt and exact adherence to orders insisted on by merchants, and prompt advice of receipt of business and of progress, cannot be expected from our worthy brethren at the bar. (The few honorable exceptions are respectfully informed that they are not referred to.) We do not expect them to weigh or measure the needless annoyance to which they often subject us, because they have never been, like ourselves, trained to the use of weights and measures; and therefore we are not willing to stigmatize them as dishonest, though they do, in fact, often steal our time and strength and patience, by withholding an answer to a business-letter.
None but those who are in the business know the assiduous attention with which the dry-goods jobber follows up his customers. None but they know the urgent necessity of doing this. The jobber may have travelled a thousand miles to make his customer's acquaintance, and to prevail upon him to come to Boston to make his purchases; and some neighbor, who boards at the hotel he happens to make his resting-place, lights upon him, shows him attention, tempts him with bargains not to be refused, prevails upon him to make the bulk of his purchases of him, before his first acquaintance even hears of his arrival. To guard against disappointments such as this, the jobber sends his salesmen to live at hotels, haunts the hotels himself, studies the hotel-register far more assiduously than he can study his own comfort, or the comfort of his wife and children. Of one such jobber it was said, facetiously,—"He goes the round of all the hotels every morning with a lantern, to wake up his customers." I had an errand one day at noon to such a devotee. Inquiring for him in the counting-room, I was told by his book-keeper to follow the stairs to the top of the store, and I should find him. I mounted flight after flight to the attic, and there I found, not only the man, but also one or two of his customers, surrounding a huge packing-case, upon which they had extemporized a dinner, cold turkey and tongue, and other edibles, taken standing, with plenty of fun for a dessert. The next time we happened to meet, I said,—"So you take not only time, but also customers, by the forelock!"
"Yes, to be sure," was his answer; "let 'em go to their hotel to dinner in the middle of a bill, and somebody lights upon 'em, and carries 'em off to buy elsewhere; or they begin to remember that it is a long way home, feel homesick, slip off to New York as being so far on the way, and that's the last you see of 'em. No, we're bound to see 'em through, and no let-up till they've bought all they've got on their memorandum."
We have not yet touched the question of credit. To whom shall the jobber sell his goods? It is the question of questions. Many a man who has bought well, who in other respects has sold well, who possessed all the characteristics which recommend a man to the confidence and to the good-will of his fellows, has made shipwreck of his fortunes because of his inability to meet this question. He sold his goods to men who never paid him. To say that in this the most successful jobbers are governed by an instinct, by an intuitive conviction which is superior to all rules of judgment, would be to allege what it would be difficult to prove. It would be less difficult to maintain that every competent merchant, however unconscious of the fact, has a standard of judgment by which he tries each applicant for credit. There are characteristics of men who can safely be credited, entirely familiar to his thoughts. He looks upon the man and instantly feels that he is or is not the man for him. He thinks his decision an instinct, or an intuition, because, through much practice, these mental operations have become so rapid as to defy analysis. Not being infallible, he sometimes mistakes; and when he so mistakes, he will be sure to say,—I made that loss because I relied too much upon this characteristic, or because I did not allow its proper weight to the absence of some other,—because I thought his shrewdness or his honesty, his enterprise or his economy, would save him: implying that he had observed some non-conformity to his standard, but had relied upon some excellency in excess to make up for it.
What are the perplexities which beset the question, To whom shall the jobber sell his goods? They are manifold; and some of them are peculiar to our country. Our territory is very extensive; our population very heterogeneous; the economy and close calculation which recommend a man in Massachusetts may discredit him in Louisiana. The very countenance is often a sure indication of character and of capacity, when it is one of a class and a region whose peculiarities we thoroughly understand; but coming to us from other classes and regions, we are often at fault,—more especially in these latter days, when all strong-mindedness is presumed to be foreshadowed in a stiff beard. Time was when something could be inferred from a lip, a mouth, a chin,—when character could be found in the contour and color of a cheek; but that time has passed. The time was, when, among a homogeneous people, a few time-honored characteristics were both relied on and insisted on: for example, good parentage, good moral character, a thorough training, and superior capacity, joined to industry, economy, sound judgment, and good manners. But Young America has learned to make light of some of these, and to dispense altogether with others of them.
Once the buyer was required to prove himself an honest, worthy, and capable man. If he wanted credit, he must humbly sue for it, and prove himself deserving of it; and no man thought of applying for it who was not prepared to furnish irrefragable evidence. Once, a reference to some respectable acquaintance would serve the purpose; and neighbors held themselves bound to tell all they knew. The increase of merchants, and fierce competition for customers, have changed this. Men now regard their knowledge of other men as a part of their capital or stock-in-trade. Their knowledge has been acquired at much cost of labor and money; and they hold themselves absolved from all obligation to give away what they have thus expensively acquired. Moreover, their confidence has sometimes been betrayed, and their free communications have been remorselessly used to their disadvantage. Alas, it cannot be denied that even dry-goods jobbers, with all their extraordinary endowments, are not quite perfect! for some of them will "state the thing that is not," and others "convey" their neighbor's property into their own coffers: men who prefer gain to godliness, and mistake much money for respectability.
There are very few men, in certain sections of the country, who will absolutely refuse to give a letter of introduction to a neighbor on the simple ground of ill-desert. Men dread the ill-will of their neighbor, and particularly the ill-will of an unscrupulous neighbor; so, when such a neighbor asks a letter, they give it. I remember such a one bringing a dozen or more letters, some of which contained the highest commendation. The writer of one of these letters sent a private note, through the mail, warning one of the persons addressed against the bearer of his own commendatory letter. Those who had no warning sold, and lost. It would be difficult to find a man, however unworthy, who could not, from some quarter, obtain a very respectable letter of introduction. One of the greatest rogues that ever came to Boston brought letters from two of the foremost houses in New York to two firms second to none in Boston. Neither of these gentlemen was in fault in the matter; the train had been laid by some obliging cousin in a banking-house in London.
In making up our account of the difficulties with which a dry-goods jobber has to deal, in conducting a successful business, it must be distinctly stated, that on no man can he count for information which will, however remotely or slightly, compromise the interest of the one inquired of. Never, perhaps, was it so true as now, that "the seller has need of a hundred eyes." The competent jobber uses his eyes first of all upon the person of the man who desires to buy of him. He questions him about himself, with such directness or indirectness as instinct and experience dictate. He learns to discriminate between the sensitiveness of the high-toned honest man and the sensitiveness of the rogue. Many men of each class are inclined to resent and resist the catechism. Strange as it may seem, the very men who would inexorably refuse a credit to those who should decline to answer their inquiries are the men most inclined to resent any inquiry about themselves. While they demand the fullest and most particular information from their customers, they wonder that others will not take them on their own estimate of themselves.
The jobber next directs his attention to the buyer's knowledge of goods: of their quality, their style, their worth in market, and their fitness for his own market; all of which will come to light, as he offers to his notice the various articles he has for sale. He will improve the opportunity to draw him out in general conversation, so guiding it as to touch many points of importance, and yet not so as to betray a want of confidence. He sounds him as to his knowledge of other merchants at home and in the city; takes the names of his references,—of several, if he can get them; puts himself in communication with men who know him, both at his home and in the city. If he can harmonize the information derived from all these sources into a consistent and satisfactory whole, he will then do his utmost to secure his customer, both by selling him his goods at a profit so small that he need have little fear of any neighbor's underselling him, and also by granting every possible accommodation as to the time and manner of payment.
A moderately thoughtful man will by this time begin to think the elements of toil and of perplexity already suggested sufficient for the time and strength of any man, and more than he would wish to undertake. But experience alone could teach him in how many ways indulged customers can and do manage to make the profit they pay so small, and the toil and vexation they occasion so great, that the jobber is often put upon weighing the question, Should I not be richer without them? Thus, for example, some of them will affect to doubt that the jobber wishes to sell to them, and propose, as a test, that he shall let them have some choice article at the cost, or at less than the cost, now on one pretext, and now on another,—intimating an indisposition to buy, if they cannot be indulged in that one thing. If they carry their point, that exceptional price is thenceforth claimed as the rule. Another day the concession will be asked on something else; and by extending this game so as to include a number of jobbers, these shrewd buyers will manage to lay in an assorted stock on which there will have been little or no profit to the sellers. To cap the climax of vexation, these persons will very probably come in, after not many days, and propose to cash their notes at double interest off. Only an official of the Inquisition could turn the thumb-screw so many times, and so remorselessly.
But we have yet to consider the collection of debts. The jobber who has not capital so ample as to buy only for cash is expected invariably to settle his purchases by giving his note, payable at bank on a fixed day. He pays it when due, or fails. Not so with his customers: multitudes of them shrink from giving a note payable at bank, and some altogether refuse to do so. They wish to buy on open account; or to give a note to be paid at maturity, if convenient,—otherwise not. The number of really prompt and punctual men, as compared with those who are otherwise, is very small. The number of those who never fail is smaller still. The collection-laws are completely alike, probably, in no two States. Some of them appear to have been constructed for the accommodation, not of honest creditors, but of dishonest debtors. In others, they are such as to put each jobber in fear of every other,—a first attachment taking all the property, if the debt be large enough, leaving little or nothing, usually, for those who have been willing to give the debtor such indulgence as might enable him to pay in full, were it granted by all his creditors.
No jobber can open his letters in the morning in the certainty of finding no tidings of a failure. No jobber, leaving his breakfast-table, can assure his wife and children, sick or well, that he will dine or sup with them; any one of a dozen railroad-trains may, for aught he knows, be sweeping him away to some remote point, to battle with the mischances of trade, the misfortunes of honest men, or the knavery of rogues and the meshes of the law. Once in the cars, he casts his eye around in uneasy expectation of finding some one or more of his neighbors bound on the same errand. While yet peering over the seats in front of him, he is unpleasantly startled by a slap on the shoulder, and, "Ah, John! bound East? What's in the wind? Any ducks in these days?" "Why,—yes,—no,—that is, I'm going down along,—little uncertain how far,—depends on circumstances." "So, so,—I see,—mum's the word." Well, neither is quite ready to trust the other,—neither quite ready to know the worst; so long as a blow is suspended, it may not fall; and so, with desperate exertions, they change the subject, converse on things indifferent,—or subside into more or less moody meditations upon their respective chances and prospects.
Any jobber who has seen service will tell you stories without number of these vexatious experiences, sometimes dashed with the comical in no common measure. He will tell you of how they arrived at the last town on the railroad, some six or seven of them; of how not a word had been lisped of their destination; of the stampede from the railroad-station to the tavern; of the spirited bids for horses and wagons; of the chop-fallen disappointment of the man for whom no vehicle remained; of his steeple-chase a-bareback; and of their various successes with writs and officers, in their rush for the store of the delinquent debtor. Of three such Jehus, the story goes, that, two of them having bought the monopoly of the inside of the only vehicle, and, in so doing, as they thought, having utterly precluded any chance for the third, their dauntless competitor instantly mounted with the driver, commenced negotiations for the horse, which speedily resulted in a purchase, and thereupon detached the horse from the vehicle, drove on, and effected a first attachment, which secured his debt.
The occurrence of "a bad year" compels many a jobber to abandon his store and home for one, two, or three months together, and visit his customers scattered all over the land, to make collections. Then it is that the power of persuasion, if possessed, is brought into efficient use; discrimination, too, is demanded; good judgment, and power of combination. For a debt that cannot be paid in money may possibly be paid partly in money, or in merchandise of some sort, and in part secured; and, among the securities offered, to choose those which will involve the least delay is generally no easy matter.
To those who, without experience, are commencing a jobbing-business, a capital of thirty, forty, or fifty thousand dollars seems an inexhaustible fund. Experience teaches that an incautious and unskilful man may easily bury even the largest of these sums in a single season. If not actually lost, it has in effect ceased to be capital, because it cannot be collected, and the notes he has taken are such as will not be discounted.
Success in the jobbing-business makes such demand on talent and capacity as outsiders seldom dream of. Half-a-dozen Secretaries of State, with a Governor and a President thrown in, would not suffice to constitute a first-class jobbing-firm. The general or special incompetency of these distinguished functionaries in their several spheres may probably be covered by the capacity of their subordinates. The President of these United States—of late years, at all events—is not supposed to be in a position to know whether the will is or is not "a self-determining power." But no jobbing-firm can thus cloak its deficiencies, or shirk its responsibilities. Goods must be bought, and sold, and paid for; and a master-spirit in each department, capable of penetrating to every particular, and of controlling every subordinate, cannot be dispensed with. He must know that every man to whom he delegates any portion of his work is competent and trustworthy. He must be able to feel that the thing which he deputes to each will be as surely and as faithfully done as though done by his own hand. No criticism is more common or more depreciatory than that "Such a one will not succeed, because he has surrounded himself with incompetent men."
It is much to be regretted that it cannot be said, that no man can succeed in the jobbing-business who is not a model of courtesy. Unhappily, our community has not yet reached that elevation. But this may with truth be affirmed,—that many a man fails for the want of courtesy, and for the want of that good-will to his fellows from which all real courtesy springs. There is small chance for any man to succeed who does not command his own spirit. There is no chance whatever for an indolent man; and, in the long run, little or no chance for the dishonest man. The same must be said for the timid and for the rash man. Nor can we offer any encouragement to the intermittent man. From year's end to year's end, the dry-goods jobber finds himself necessitated to be studying his stock and his ledger. He knows, that, while men sleep, the enemy will be sowing tares. In his case, the flying moments are the enemy, and bad stock and bad debts are the tares. To weed out each of these is his unceasing care. And as both the one and the other are forever choking the streams of income which should supply the means of paying his own notes, his no less constant care is to provide such other conduits as shall insure him always a full basin at the bank. Nobody but a jobber can know the vexation of a jobber who cannot find money to cash his notes when they are beginning to be thrown into the market at a price a shade lower than his neighbor's notes are sold at.
In conclusion, a few material facts should be stated.
As a general proposition, it is not to be denied, that those who are in haste to get rich will find in the dry-goods jobbing-business many temptations and snares into which one may easily fall. A young man who is not fortified by a faithful home-training, and by sound religious principle, will be likely enough to degenerate into a heartless money-maker.
While the young man who has been well trained at home, who appreciates good manners, good morals, and good books, will derive immense advantage in acquiring that quick discernment, that intuitive apprehension of the rights and of the pleasure of others, and that nice tact, which characterize the highest style of merchants,—he who has not been thus prepared will be more than likely to mistakebrusqueriefor manliness, and brutality for the sublime of independence. As in a great house there are vessels unto honor and also unto dishonor, so in the purlieus of the dry-goods trade there are gentlemen who would honor and adorn any society, and also men whose manners would shame Hottentots,—whose language, innocent of all preference for Worcester or Webster, a terror to all decent ideas, like scarecrows in corn-fields, is dressed in the cast-off garments of the refuse of all classes.
Success in retailing does not necessarily qualify a man to succeed in the dry-goods jobbing-business. The game is played on a much larger scale; it includes other chances, and demands other qualifications, natural and acquired. Instances are not wanting of men who, in the smaller towns, had made to themselves a name and acquired an honorable independence, sinking both capital and courage in their endeavors to manage the business of a city-jobber.
It should be well remembered, that, while it is not indispensable to success in the jobbing-business that each partner should be an expert in every department of the business, in buying, selling, collecting, paying, and book-keeping, it is absolutely necessary that each should be such in his own department,—and that the firm, as a unit, should include a completely competent man for each and every one of these departments. The lack of the qualities which are indispensable to any one of these may, and probably will, prove an abyss deep enough to ingulf the largest commercial ship afloat.
Finally, to avoid disappointment, the man who would embark in the dry-goods trade should make up his mind to meet every variety of experience known to mortals, and to be daunted by nothing. He will assuredly find fair winds and head winds, clear skies and cloudy skies, head seas and cross seas as well as stern seas. A wind that justifies studding-sails may change, without premonition, to a gale that will make ribbons of top-sails and of storm-sails. The best crew afloat cannot preclude all casualties, or exclude sleepless nights and cold sweats now and then; but a quick eye, a cool head, a prompt hand, and indomitable perseverance will overcome almost all things.
The wet trees hang above the walksPurple with damps and earthish stains,And strewn by moody, absent rainsWith rose-leaves from the wild-grown stalks.
Unmown, in heavy, tangled swaths,The ripe June-grass is wanton blown;Snails slime the untrodden threshold-stone,Along the sills hang drowsy moths.
Down the blank visage of the wall,Where many a wavering trace appearsLike a forgotten trace of tears,From swollen caves the slow drops crawl.
Where everything was wide before,The curious wind, that comes and goes,Finds all the latticed windows close,Secret and close the bolted door.
And with the shrewd and curious wind,That in the arched doorway cries,And at the bolted portal tries,And harks and listens at the blind,—
Forever lurks my thought about,And in the ghostly middle-nightFinds all the hidden windows bright,And sees the guests go in and out,—
And lingers till the pallid dawn,And feels the mystery deeper thereIn silent, gust-swept chambers, bare,With all the midnight revel gone;
But wanders through the lonesome rooms,Where harsh the astonished cricket calls,And, from the hollows of the wallsVanishing, stare unshapen glooms;
And lingers yet, and cannot comeOut of the drear and desolate place,So full of ruin's solemn grace,And haunted with the ghost of home.
Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made his appearance at Dudley Venner's, and requested to see the maän o' the haouse abaout somethin' o' consequence. Mr. Venner sent word that the messenger should wait below, and presently appeared in the study, where Abel was making himself at home, as is the wont of the republican citizen, when he hides the purple of empire beneath the apron of domestic service.
"Good mornin', Squire!" said Abel, as Mr. Venner entered. "My name'sStebbins, 'n' I'm stoppin' f'r a spell 'ith ol' Doctor Kittredge."
"Well, Stebbins," said Mr. Dudley Venner, "have you brought any special message from the Doctor?"
"Y' ha'n't heerd nothin' abaout it, Squire, d' ye mean t' say?" said Abel,—beginning to suspect that he was the first to bring the news of last evening's events.
"About—what?" asked Mr. Venner, with some interest.
"Dew tell, naow! Waal, that beats all! Why, that 'ere Portagee relation o' yourn 'z been tryin' t' ketch a fellah 'n a slippernoose, 'n' got ketched himself,—that's all. Y' ha'n't heerd noth'n' abaout it?"
"Sit down," said Mr. Dudley Venner, calmly, "and tell me all you have to say."
So Abel sat down and gave him an account of the events of the last evening. It was a strange and terrible surprise to Dudley Venner to find that his nephew, who had been an inmate of his house and the companion of his daughter, was to all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over than he began to think what effect the news would have on Elsie. He imagined that there was a kind of friendly feeling between them, and he feared some crisis would be provoked in his daughter's mental condition by the discovery. He would wait, however, until she came from her chamber, before disturbing her with the evil tidings.
Abel did not forget his message with reference to the equipments of the dead mustang.
"The' was some things on the hoss, Squire, that the man he ketched said he didn' care no gre't abaout; but perhaps you'd like to have 'em fetched to the mansion-haouse. Ef y'didn'care abaout 'em, though, I shouldn' min' keepin' on 'em; they might come handy some time or 'nother: they say, holt on t' anything for ten year 'n' there'll be some kin' o' use for't."
"Keep everything," said Dudley Venner. "I don't want to see anything belonging to that young man."
So Abel nodded to Mr. Venner, and left the study to find some of the men about the stable to tell and talk over with them the events of the last evening. He presently came upon Elbridge, chief of the equine department, and driver of the family-coach.
"Good mornin', Abe," said Elbridge. "What's fetched y' daown here so all-fired airly?"
"You're a darned pooty lot daown here, you be!" Abel answered. "Better keep your Portagees t' home nex' time, ketchin' folks 'ith slippernooses raoun' their necks, 'n' kerryin' knives 'n their boots!"
"What 'r' you jawin' abaout?" Elbridge said, looking up to see if he was in earnest, and what he meant.
"Jawin' abaout? You'll find aout 'z soon 'z y' go into that 'ere stable o' yourn! Y' won't curry that 'ere long-tailed black hoss no more; 'n' y' won't set y'r eyes on the fellah that rid him, ag'in, in a hurry!"
Elbridge walked straight to the stable, without saying a word, found the door unlocked, and went in.
"Th' critter's gone, sure enough!" he said. "Glad on't! The darndest, kickin'est, bitin'est beast th't ever I see, 'r ever wan' t' see ag'in! Good reddance! Don' wan' no snappin'-turkles in my stable! Whar's the man gone th't brought the critter?"
"Whar he's gone? Guess y' better go 'n aäsk my ol' man; he kerried him off laäs' night; 'n' when he comes back, mebbe he'll tell ye whar he's gone tew!"
By this time Elbridge had found out that Abel was in earnest, and had something to tell. He looked at the litter in the mustang's stall, then at the crib.
"Ha'n't ëat b't haälf his feed. Ha'n't been daown on his straw. Must ha' been took aout somewhere abaout ten 'r 'leven o'clock. I know that 'ere critter's ways. The fellah's had him aout nights afore; b't I never thought nothin' o' no mischief. He's a kin' o' haälf Injin. What is 't the chap's been a-doin' on? Tell 's all abaout it."
Abel sat down on a meal-chest, picked up a straw and put it into his mouth. Elbridge sat down at the other end, pulled out his jackknife, opened the penknife-blade, and began sticking it into the lid of the meal-chest. The Doctor's man had a story to tell, and he meant to get all the enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every luxury of circumstance. Mr. Venner's man heard it all with open mouth. No listener in the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a tale heard amidst the perfume of roses and the voices of birds and tinkling of fountains than Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as they sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere of the stable, the grinding of the horses' jaws keeping evenly on through it all, with now and then the interruption of a stamping hoof, and at intervals a ringing crow from the barnyard.
Elbridge stopped a minute to think, after Abel had finished.
"Who's took care o' them things that was on the hoss?" he said, gravely.
"Waäl, Langden, he seemed to kin' o' think I'd ought to have 'em,—'n' the Squire, he didn' seem to have no 'bjection; 'n' so,—waäl, I cal'late I sh'll jes' holt on to 'em myself; they a'n't good f'r much, but they're cur'ous t' keep t' look at."
Mr. Venner's man did not appear much gratified by this arrangement, especially as he had a shrewd suspicion that some of the ornaments of the bridle were of precious metal, having made occasional examinations of them with the edge of a file. But he did not see exactly what to do about it, except to get them from Abel in the way of bargain.
"Waäl, no,—theya'n'tgood for much 'xcep' to look at. 'F y' ever rid on that seddle once, y' wouldn' try it ag'in, very spry,—not 'f y' c'd haälp y'rsaälf. I tried it,—darned 'f I sot daown f'r th' nex' week,—ëat all my victuals stan'in'. I sh'd like t' hev them things wal enough to heng up 'n the stable; 'f y' want t' trade some day, fetch 'em along daown."
Abel rather expected that Elbridge would have laid claim to the saddle and bridle on the strength of some promise or other presumptive title, and thought himself lucky to get off with only promising that he would think abaout tradin'.
When Elbridge returned to the house, he found the family in a state of great excitement. Mr. Venner had told Old Sophy, and she had informed the other servants. Everybody knew what had happened, excepting Elsie. Her father had charged them all to say nothing about it to her; he would tell her, when she came down.
He heard her step at last,—a light, gliding step,—so light that her coming was often unheard, except by those who perceived the faint rustle that went with it. She was paler than common this morning, as she came into her father's study.
After a few words of salutation, he said, quietly,—
"Elsie, my dear, your cousin Richard has left us."
She grew still paler, as she asked,—
"Is he dead?"
Dudley Venner started to see the expression with which Elsie put this question.
"He is living,—but dead to us from this day forward," said her father.
He proceeded to tell her, in a general way, the story he had just heard from Abel. There could be no doubting it;—he remembered him as the Doctor's man; and as Abel had seen all with his own eyes,—as Dick's chamber, when unlocked with a spare key, was found empty, and his bed had not been slept in, he accepted the whole account as true.
When he told of Dick's attempt on the young schoolmaster, ("You know Mr. Langdon very well, Elsie,—a perfectly inoffensive young man, as I understand,") Elsie turned her face away and slid along by the wall to the window which looked out on the little grass-plot with the white stone standing in it. Her father could not see her face, but he knew by her movements that her dangerous mood was on her. When she heard the sequel of the story, the discomfiture and capture of Dick, she turned round for an instant, with a look of contempt and of something like triumph upon her face. Her father saw that her cousin had become odious to her. He knew well, by every change of her countenance, by her movements, by every varying curve of her graceful figure, the transitions from passion to repose, from fierce excitement to the dull languor which often succeeded her threatening paroxysms.
She remained looking out at the window. A group of white fan-tailed pigeons had lighted on the green plot before it and clustered about one of their companions who lay on his back, fluttering in a strange way, with outspread wings and twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry; these were her special favorites, and often fed from her hand. She threw open the long window, sprang out, caught up the white fan-tail, and held it to her bosom. The bird stretched himself out, and then lay still, with open eyes, lifeless. She looked at him a moment, and, sliding in through the open window and through the study, sought her own apartment, where she locked herself in, and began to sob and moan like those that weep. But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be denied her, and her grief, like her anger, was a dull ache, longing, like that, to finish itself with a fierce paroxysm, but wanting its natural outlet.
This seemingly trifling incident of the death of her favorite appeared to change all the current of her thought. Whether it were the sight of the dying bird, or the thought that her own agency might have been concerned in it, or some deeper grief, which took this occasion to declare itself,—some dark remorse or hopeless longing,—whatever it might be, there was an unwonted tumult in her soul. To whom should she go in her vague misery? Only to Him who knows all His creatures' sorrows, and listens to the faintest human cry. She knelt, as she had been taught to kneel from her childhood, and tried to pray. But her thoughts refused to flow in the language of supplication. She could not plead for herself as other women plead in their hours of anguish. She rose like one who should stoop to drink, and find dust in the place of water. Partly from restlessness, partly from an attraction she hardly avowed to herself, she followed her usual habit and strolled listlessly along to the school.
* * * * *
Of course everybody at the Institute was full of the terrible adventure of the preceding evening. Mr. Bernard felt poorly enough; but he had made it a point to show himself the next morning, as if nothing had happened. Helen Darley knew nothing of it all until she had risen, when the gossipy matron of the establishment made her acquainted with all its details, embellished with such additional ornamental appendages as it had caught up in transmission from lip to lip. She did not love to betray her sensibilities, but she was pale and tremulous and very nearly tearful when Mr. Bernard entered the sitting-room, showing on his features traces of the violent shock he had received and the heavy slumber from which he had risen with throbbing brows. What the poor girl's impulse was, on seeing him, we need not inquire too curiously. If he had been her own brother, she would have kissed him and cried on his neck; but something held her back. There is no galvanism in kiss-your-brother; it is copper against copper: but alien bloods develop strange currents, when they flow close to each other, with only the films that cover lip and cheek between them. Mr. Bernard, as some of us may remember, violated the proprieties and laid himself open to reproach by his enterprise with a bouncing village-girl, to whose rosy cheek an honest smack was not probably an absolute novelty. He made it all up by his discretion and good behavior now. He saw by Helen's moist eye and trembling lip that her woman's heart was off its guard, and he knew, by the infallible instinct of sex, that he should be forgiven, if he thanked her for her sisterly sympathies in the most natural way,—expressive, and at the same time economical of breath and utterance. He would not give a false look to their friendship by any such demonstration. Helen was a little older than he was, but the aureole of young womanhood had not yet begun to fade from around her. She was surrounded by that enchanted atmosphere into which the girl walks with dreamy eyes, and out of which the woman passes with a story written on her forehead. Some people think very little of these refinements; they have not studied magnetism, and the law of the square of the distance.
So Mr. Bernard thanked Helen for her interest without the aid of the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet,—the love labial,—the limping consonant which it takes two to speak plain. Indeed, he scarcely let her say a word, at first; for he saw that it was hard for her to conceal her emotion. No wonder; he had come within a hair's-breadth of losing his life, and he had been a very kind friend and a very dear companion to her.
There were some curious spiritual experiences connected with his last evening's adventure, which were working very strongly in his mind. It was borne in upon him irresistibly that he had beendeadsince he had seen Helen,—as dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was touched and he sat up and began to speak. There was an interval between two conscious moments which appeared to him like a temporary annihilation, and the thoughts it suggested were worrying him with strange perplexities.
He remembered seeing the dark figure on horseback rise in the saddle and something leap from its hand. He remembered the thrill he felt as the coil settled on his shoulders, and the sudden impulse which led him to fire as he did. With the report of the pistol all became blank, until he found himself in a strange, bewildered state, groping about for the weapon, which he had a vague consciousness of having dropped. But, according to Abel's account, there must have been an interval of some minutes between these recollections, and he could not help asking, Where was the mind, the soul, the thinking principle, all this time?
A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on the head. He becomes unconscious. Another man gets a harder blow on the head from a bigger stick, and it kills him. Does he become unconscious, too? If so,when does he come to his consciousness? The man who has had a slight or moderate blow comes to himself when the immediate shock passes off and the organs begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull is pried up, if that happens to be broken. Suppose the blow is hard enough to spoil the brain and stop the play of the organs, what happens then?
A British captain was struck by a cannon-ball on the head, just as he was giving an order, at the Battle of the Nile. Fifteen months afterwards he was trephined at Greenwich Hospital, having been insensible all that time. Immediately after the operation his consciousness returned, and he at once began carrying out the order he was giving when the shot struck him. Suppose he had never been trephined, when would his intelligence have returned? When his breath ceased and his heart stopped beating?
When Mr. Bernard said to Helen, "I have been dead since I saw you," it startled her not a little; for his expression was that of perfect good faith, and she feared that his mind was disordered. When he explained, not as has been done just now, at length, but in a hurried, imperfect way, the meaning of his strange assertion, and the fearful Sadduceeisms which it had suggested to his mind, she looked troubled at first, and then thoughtful. She did not feel able to answer all the difficulties he raised, but she met them with that faith which is the strength as well as the weakness of women,—which makes them weak in the hands of man, but strong in the presence of the Unseen.
"It is a strange experience," she said; "but I once had something like it. I fainted, and lost some five or ten minutes out of my life, as much as if I had been dead. But when I came to myself, I was the same person every way, in my recollections and character. So I suppose that loss of consciousness is not death. And if I was born out of unconsciousness into infancy with manyfamily-traits of mind and body, I can believe, from my own reason, even without help from Revelation, that I shall be born again out of the unconsciousness of death with myindividualtraits of mind and body. If death is, as it should seem to be, a loss of consciousness, that does not shake my faith; for I have been put into a body once already to fit me for living here, and I hope to be in some way fitted after this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all trust in God and in his Word. These are enough for me; I hope they are for you."
Helen was a minister's daughter, and familiar from her childhood with this class of questions, especially with all the doubts and perplexities which are sure to assail every thinking child bred in any inorganic or not thoroughly vitalized faith,—as is too often the case with the children of professional theologians. The kind of discipline they are subjected to is like that of the Flat-Head Indian pappooses. At five or ten or fifteen years old they put their hands up to their foreheads and ask, What are they strapping down my brains in this way for? So they tear off the sacred bandages of the great Flat-Head tribe, and there follows a mighty rush of blood to the long-compressed region. This accounts, in the most lucid manner, for those sudden freaks with which certain children of this class astonish their worthy parents at the period of life when they are growing fast, and, the frontal pressure beginning to be felt as something intolerable, they tear off the holy compresses.
The hour for school came, and they went to the great hall for study. It would not have occurred to Mr. Silas Peckham to ask his assistant whether he felt well enough to attend to his duties; and Mr. Bernard chose to be at his post. A little headache and confusion were all that remained of his symptoms.
Later, in the course of the forenoon, Elsie Venner came and took her place. The girls all stared at her,—naturally enough; for it was hardly to have been expected that she would show herself, after such an event in the household to which she belonged. Her expression was somewhat peculiar, and, of course, was attributed to the shock her feelings had undergone on hearing of the crime attempted by her cousin and daily companion. When she was looking on her book, or on any indifferent object, her countenance betrayed some inward disturbance, which knitted her dark brows, and seemed to throw a deeper shadow over her features. But, from time to time, she would lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and let them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she herself was the subject of observation or remark. Then they seemed to lose their cold glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness. The deep instincts of womanhood were striving to grope their way to the surface of her being through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dangerous impulses, but she did not know how to mask the unwonted feeling which fixed her eyes and her thoughts upon the only person who had ever reached the spring of her hidden sympathies.
The girls all looked at Elsie, whenever they could steal a glance unperceived, and many of them were struck with this singular expression her features wore. They had long whispered it around among each other that she had a liking for the master; but there were too many of them of whom something like this could be said, to make it very remarkable. Now, however, when so many little hearts were fluttering at the thought of the peril through which the handsome young master had so recently passed, they were more alive than ever to the supposed relation between him and the dark school-girl. Some had supposed there was a mutual attachment between them; there was a story that they were secretly betrothed, in accordance with the rumor which had been current in the village. At any rate, some conflict was going on in that still, remote, clouded soul, and all the girls who looked upon her face were impressed and awed as they had never been before by the shadows that passed over it.
One of these girls was more strongly arrested by Elsie's look than the others. This was a delicate, pallid creature, with a high forehead, and wide-open pupils, which looked as if they could take in all the shapes that flit in what, to common eyes, is darkness,—a girl said to beclairvoyantunder certain influences. In therecess, as it was called, or interval of suspended studies in the middle of the forenoon, this girl carried her autograph-book,—for she had one of those indispensable appendages of the boarding-school miss of every degree,—and asked Elsie to write her name in it. She had an irresistible feeling, that, sooner or later, and perhaps very soon, there would attach an unusual interest to this autograph. Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp Italian hand,
Elsie Venner, Infelix.
It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn queen of the "Aeneid"; but its coming to her thought in this way confirmed the sensitive school-girl in her fears for Elsie, and she let fall a tear upon the page before she closed it.
Of course, the keen and practised observation of Helen Darley could not fail to notice the change of Elsie's manner and expression. She had long seen that she was attracted to the young master, and had thought, as the old Doctor did, that any impression which acted upon her affections might be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly isolated nature. Now, however, the concentration of the poor girl's thoughts upon the one object which had had power to reach her deeper sensibilities was so painfully revealed in her features, that Helen began to fear once more, lest Mr. Bernard, in escaping the treacherous violence of an assassin, had been left to the equally dangerous consequences of a violent, engrossing passion in the breast of a young creature whose love it would be ruin to admit and might be deadly to reject. She knew her own heart too well to fear that any jealousy might mingle with her new apprehensions. It was understood between Bernard and Helen that they were too good friends to tamper with the silences and edging proximities of love-making. She knew, too, the simply human, not masculine, interest which Mr. Bernard took in Elsie; he had been frank with Helen, and more than satisfied her that with all the pity and sympathy which overflowed his soul, when he thought of the stricken girl, there mingled not one drop of such love as a youth may feel for a maiden.
It may help the reader to gain some understanding of the anomalous nature of Elsie Venner, if we look with Helen into Mr. Bernard's opinions and feelings with reference to her, as they had shaped themselves in his consciousness at the period of which we are speaking.
At first he had been impressed by her wild beauty, and the contrast of all her looks and ways with those of the girls around her. Presently a sense of some ill-defined personal element, which half attracted and half repelled those who looked upon her, and especially those on whom she looked, began to make itself obvious to him, as he soon found it was painfully sensible to his more susceptible companion, the lady-teacher. It was not merely in the cold light of her diamond eyes, but in all her movements, in her graceful postures as she sat, in her costume, and, he sometimes thought, even in her speech, that this obscure and exceptional character betrayed itself. When Helen had said, that, if they were living in times when human beings were subject to possession, she should have thought there was something not human about Elsie, it struck an unsuspected vein of thought in his own mind, which he hated to put in words, but which was continually trying to articulate itself among the dumb thoughts which lie under the perpetual stream of mental whispers.
Mr. Bernard's professional training had made him slow to accept marvellous stories and many forms of superstition. Yet, as a man of science, he well knew that just on the verge of the demonstrable facts of physics and physiology there is a nebulous border-land which what is called "common sense" perhaps does wisely not to enter, but which uncommon sense, or the fine apprehension of privileged intelligences, may cautiously explore, and in so doing find itself behind the scenes which make up for the gazing world the show which is called Nature.
It was with something of this finer perception, perhaps with some degree of imaginative exaltation, that he set himself to solving the problem of Elsie's influence to attract and repel those around her. His letter already submitted to the reader hints in what direction his thoughts were disposed to turn. Here was a magnificent organization, superb in vigorous womanhood, with a beauty such as never comes but after generations of culture; yet through all this rich nature there ran some alien current of influence, sinuous and dark, as when a clouded streak seams the white marble of a perfect statue.
It would be needless to repeat the particular suggestions which had come into his mind, as they must probably have come into those of the reader who has noted the singularities of Elsie's tastes and personal traits. The images which certain poets had dreamed of seemed to have become a reality before his own eyes. Then came that unexplained adventure of The Mountain,—almost like a dream in recollection, yet assuredly real in some of its main incidents,—with all that it revealed or hinted. This girl did not fear to visit the dreaded region, where danger lurked in every nook and beneath every tuft of leaves. Did the tenants of the fatal ledge recognize some mysterious affinity which made them tributary to the cold glitter of her diamond eyes? Was she from her birth one of those frightful children, such as he had read about, and the Professor had told him of, who form unnatural friendships with cold, writhing ophidians? There was no need of so unwelcome a thought as this; she had drawn him away from the dark opening in the rock at the moment when he seemed to be threatened by one of its malignant denizens; that was all he could be sure of; the counter-fascination might have been a dream, a fancy, a coincidence. All wonderful things soon grow doubtful in our own minds, as do even common events, if great interests prove suddenly to attach to their truth or falsehood.
—I, who am telling of these occurrences, saw a friend in the great city, on the morning of a most memorable disaster, hours after the time when the train which carried its victims to their doom had left. I talked with him, and was for some minutes, at least, in his company. When I reached home, I found that the story had gone before that he was among the lost, and I alone could contradict it to his weeping friends and relatives. I did contradict it; but, alas! I began soon to doubt myself, penetrated by the contagion of their solicitude; my recollection began to question itself; the order of events became dislocated; and when I heard that he had reached home in safety, the relief was almost as great to me as to those who had expected to see their own brother's face no more.
Mr. Bernard was disposed, then, not to accept the thought of any odious personal relationship of the kind which had suggested itself to him when he wrote the letter referred to. That the girl had something of the feral nature, her wild, lawless rambles in forbidden and blasted regions of The Mountain at all hours, her familiarity with the lonely haunts where any other human foot was so rarely seen, proved clearly enough. But the more he thought of all her strange instincts and modes of being, the more he became convinced that whatever alien impulse swayed her will and modulated or diverted or displaced her affections came from some impression that reached far back into the past, before the days when the faithful Old Sophy had rocked her in the cradle. He believed that she had brought her ruling tendency, whatever it was, into the world with her.
When the school was over and the girls had all gone, Helen lingered in the school-room to speak with Mr. Bernard.
"Did you remark Elsie's ways this forenoon?" she said.
"No, not particularly; I have not noticed anything as sharply as I commonly do; my head has been a little queer, and I have been thinking over what we were talking about, and how near I came to solving the great problem which every day makes clear to such multitudes of people. What about Elsie?"
"Bernard, her liking for you is growing into a passion. I have studied girls for a long while, and I know the difference between their passing fancies and their real emotions. I told you, you remember, that Rosa would have to leave us; we barely missed a scene, I think, if not a whole tragedy, by her going at the right moment. But Elsie is infinitely more dangerous to herself and others. Women's love is fierce enough, if it once gets the mastery of them, always; but this poor girl does not know what to do with a passion."
Mr. Bernard had never told Helen the story of the flower in his Virgil, or that other adventure which he would have felt awkwardly to refer to; but it had been perfectly understood between them that Elsie showed in her own singular way a well-marked partiality for the young master.
"Why don't they take her away from the school, if she is in such a strange, excitable state?" said Mr. Bernard.
"I believe they are afraid of her," Helen answered. "It is just one of those cases that are ten thousand thousand times worse than insanity. I don't think, from what I hear, that her father has ever given up hoping that she will outgrow her peculiarities. Oh, these peculiar children for whom parents go on hoping every morning and despairing every night! If I could tell you half that mothers have told me, you would feel that the worst of all diseases of the moral sense and the will are those which all the Bedlams turn away from their doors as not being the subjects of insanity!"
"Do you think her father has treated her judiciously?" said Mr. Bernard.
"I think," said Helen, with a little hesitation, which Mr. Bernard did not happen to notice,—"I think he has been very kind and indulgent, and I do not know that he could have treated her otherwise with a better chance of success."
"He must of course be fond of her," Mr. Bernard said; "there is nothing else in the world for him to love."
Helen dropped a book she held in her hand, and, stooping to pick it up, the blood rushed into her cheeks.
"It is getting late," she said; "you must not stay any longer in this close school-room. Pray, go and get a little fresh air before dinner-time."
The events told in the last two chapters had taken place toward the close of the week. On Saturday evening the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather received a note which was left at his door by an unknown person who departed without saying a word. Its words were these:—
"One who is in distress of mind requests the prayers of this congregation that God would be pleased to look in mercy upon the soul that he has afflicted."
There was nothing to show from whom the note came, or the sex or age or special source of spiritual discomfort or anxiety of the writer. The handwriting was delicate and might well be a woman's. The clergyman was not aware of any particular affliction among his parishioners which was likely to be made the subject of a request of this kind. Surely neither of the Venners would advertise the attempted crime of their relative in this way. But who else was there? The more he thought about it, the more it puzzled him; and as he did not like to pray in the dark, without knowing for whom he was praying, he could think of nothing better than to step into old Doctor Kittredge's and see what he had to say about it.
The old Doctor was sitting alone in his study when the Reverend Mr. Fairweather was ushered in. He received his visitor very pleasantly, expecting, as a matter of course, that he would begin with some new grievance, dyspeptic, neuralgic, bronchitic, or other. The minister, however, began with questioning the old Doctor about the sequel of the other night's adventure; for he was already getting a little Jesuitical, and kept back the object of his visit until it should come up as if accidentally in the course of conversation.
"It was a pretty bold thing to go off alone with that reprobate, as you did," said the minister.
"I don't know what there was bold about it," the Doctor answered. "All he wanted was to get away. He was not quite a reprobate, you see; he didn't like the thought of disgracing his family or facing his uncle. I think he was ashamed to see his cousin, too, after what he had done."
"Did he talk with you on the way?"
"Not much. For half an hour or so he didn't speak a word. Then he asked where I was driving him. I told him, and he seemed to be surprised into a sort of grateful feeling. Bad enough, no doubt,—but might be worse. Has some humanity left in him yet. Let him go. God can judge him,—I can't."
"You are too charitable, Doctor," the minister said. "I condemn him just as if he had carried out his project, which, they say, was to make it appear as if the schoolmaster had committed suicide. That's what people think the rope found by him was for. He has saved his neck,—but his soul is a lost one, I am afraid, beyond question."
"I can't judge men's souls," the Doctor said. "I can judge their acts, and hold them responsible for those,—but I don't know much about their souls. If you or I had found our soul in a half-breed body, and been turned loose to run among the Indians, we might have been playing just such tricks as this fellow has been trying. What if you or I had inherited all the tendencies that were born with his cousin Elsie?"
"Oh, that reminds me,"—the minister said, in a sudden way,—"I have received a note, which I am requested to read from the pulpit to-morrow. I wish you would just have the kindness to look at it and see where you think it came from."
The Doctor examined it carefully. It was a woman's or girl's note, he thought. Might come from one of the school-girls who was anxious about her spiritual condition. Handwriting was disguised; looked a little like Elsie Venner's, but not characteristic enough to make it certain. It would be a new thing, if she had asked public prayers for herself, and a very favorable indication of a change in her singular moral nature. It was just possible Elsie might have sent that note. Nobody could foretell her actions. It would be well to see the girl and find out whether any unusual impression had been produced on her mind by the recent occurrence or by any other cause.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into his pocket.
"I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately, myself," he said.
The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and said, in his usual professional tone,—
"Put out your tongue."
The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with persons of weak character,—for people differ as much in their mode of performing this trifling act as Gideon's soldiers in their way of drinking at the brook. The Doctor took his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist.
"It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily," said the Reverend Mr.Fairweather.
"Is your appetite as good as usual?" the Doctor asked.
"Pretty good," the minister answered; "but my sleep, my sleep, Doctor,—I am greatly troubled at night with lying awake and thinking of my future,—I am not at ease in mind."
He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were shut, and moved his chair up close to the Doctor's.
"You do not know the mental trials I have been going through for the last few months."
"I think I do," the old Doctor said. "You want to get out of the new church into the old one, don't you?"
The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been going on in a very quiet way, and that nobody suspected his secret. As the old Doctor was his counsellor in sickness, and almost everybody's confidant in trouble, he had intended to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of sentiments through which he had been passing. He was too late with his information, it appeared; and there was nothing to be done but to throw himself on the Doctor's good sense and kindness, which everybody knew, and get what hints he could from him as to the practical course he should pursue. He began, after an awkward pause,—
"You would not have me stay in a communion which I feel to be alien to the true church, would you?"
"Have you stay, my friend?" said the Doctor, with a pleasant, friendly look,—"have you stay? Not a month, nor a week, nor a day, if I could help it. You have got into the wrong pulpit, and I have known it from the first. The sooner you go where you belong, the better. And I'm very glad you don't mean to stop half-way. Don't you know you've always come to me when you've been dyspeptic or sick anyhow, and wanted to put yourself wholly into my hands, so that I might order you like a child just what to do and what to take? That's exactly what you want in religion. I don't blame you for it. You never liked to take the responsibility of your own body; I don't see why you should want to have the charge of your own soul. But I'm glad you're going to the Old Mother of all. You wouldn't have been contented short of that."