'The co-partnership heretofore existing under the name and style ofRussell, Rollins& Co., has been dissolved by the death ofDavid Gray, Jr.'The outstanding affairs will be settled, and the business continued, by the surviving partners, who have this day admitted Mr.John Halletto an interest in their firm.'
'The co-partnership heretofore existing under the name and style ofRussell, Rollins& Co., has been dissolved by the death ofDavid Gray, Jr.
'The outstanding affairs will be settled, and the business continued, by the surviving partners, who have this day admitted Mr.John Halletto an interest in their firm.'
The truth had been gradually dawning upon me, yet when she mentioned his name, I sprang involuntarily to my feet, exclaiming:
'John Hallet! and wereyoubetrothed tohim?'
The sick woman had paused from exhaustion, but when I said that, she made a feeble effort to raise herself, and said in a stronger voice than before:
'Do you know him—sir?'
'Know him! Yes, madam;' and I paused and spoke in a lower tone, for I saw that my manner was unduly exciting her; 'I know him well.'
I did know himwell, and it was on the evening of the day that notice was written, and just one month after David had followed his only son to the grave, that I, a boy of sixteen, with my hat in my hand, entered the inner office of the old counting-room to which I have already introduced the reader. Mr. Russell, a genial, gentle, good old man, was seated at his desk, writing; and Mr. Rollins sat at his, poring over some long accounts.
'Mr. Russell and Mr. Rollins,' I said very respectfully, 'I have come to bid you good-by. I am going to leave you.'
'Thee going to leave!' exclaimed Mr. Russell, laying down his spectacles; 'what does thee mean, Edmund?'
'I mean, I don't want to stay any longer, sir,' I replied, my voice trembling with emotion.
'But you must stay, Edmund,' said Mr. Rollins, in his harsh, imperative way. 'Your uncle indentured you to us till you are twenty-one, and you can't go.'
'Ishallgo, sir,' I replied, with less respect than he deserved. 'My uncle indentured me to the old firm; I am not bound to stay with the new.'
Mr. Russell looked grieved, but in the same mild tone as before, he said:
'I am sorry, Edmund, very sorry, to hear thee say that. Thee can go if thee likes; but it grieves me to hear thee quibble so. Thee will not prosper, my son, if thee follows this course in life.' And the moisture came into the old man's eyes as he spoke. It filled mine, and rolled in large drops down my cheeks, as I replied:
'Forgive me, sir, for speaking so. I do not want to do wrong, but Ican'tstay with John Hallet.'
'Why can't thee stay with John?'
'He don't like me, sir. We are not friends.'
'Why are you not friends?'
'Because I know him, sir.'
'What do you know of him?' asked Mr. Rollins, in the same harsh, abrupttone. I had never liked Mr. Rollins, and his words just then stung me to the quick, I forgot myself, for I replied:
'I know him to be a lying, deceitful, hypocritical scoundrel, sir.'
Some two years before, Hallet had joined the church in which Mr. Rollins was a deacon, and was universally regarded as a pious, devout young man. The opinion I expressed was, therefore, rank heterodoxy. To my surprise, Mr. Rollins turned to Mr. Russell and said:
'I believe the boy is right, Ephraim; John professes too much to be entirely sincere; I've told you so before.'
'I can't think so, Thomas; but it's too late to alter things now. We shall see. Time will prove him.'
I soon left, but not till they had shaken me warmly by the hand, wished me well, and tendered me their aid whenever I required it. In after-years they kept their word.
Yes, I did know John Hallet. The old gentleman never knew him, but time proved him, and those whom that good old man loved with all the love of his large, noble heart, suffered because he did not know him as I did.
After I had given her some of the cordial, and she had rested awhile, the sick girl resumed her story.
In about a month Hallet came. He pictured to her his new position; the wealth and standing it would give him, and he told her that he was preparing a little home for her, and would soon return and take her with him forever.
[When he said that, he had been for over a year affianced to another—a rich man's only child—a woman older than he, whose shriveled, jaundiced face, weak, scrawny body, and puny, sickly soul, would have been repulsive even to him, had not money been his god.]
The simple, trusting girl believed him. He importuned her—she loved him—and she fell!
About a month afterward, taking up a Boston paper, she read the marriage of Mr. John Hallet, merchant, to Miss ——. 'Some other person has his name,' she thought. 'It can not be he, yet it is strange!' Itwasstrange, but it wastrue, for there, in another column, she saw that: 'Mr. John Hallet, of the house of Russell, Rollins & Co., and his accomplished lady, were passengers by the steamer Cambria, which sailed from this port yesterday for Liverpool.'
The blow crushed her. But why need I tell of her grief, her agony, her despair? For months she did not leave her room; and when at last she crawled into the open air, the nearest neighbors scarcely recognized her.
It was long, however, before she knew all the wrong that Hallet had done her. Her aunt noticed her altered appearance, and questioned her. She told her all. At first, the cold, hard woman blamed her, and spoke harshly to her; but, though cold and harsh, she had a woman's heart, and she forgave her. She undertook to tell the story to her brother. He had his sister's nature; was a strict, pious, devout man; prayed every morning and evening in his family, and, rain or shine, went every Sunday to hear two dull, cast-iron sermons at the old meeting-house, but he had not her woman's heart. He stormed and raved for a time, and then he cursed his only child, and drove her from his house. The aunt had forty dollars—the proceeds of sock-knitting and straw-braiding not yet invested in hymn-books, and with one sigh for the poor heathen, she gave it to her. With that, and a small satchel of clothes, and with two little hearts beating under her bosom, she went out into the world. Where could she go? She knew not, but she wandered on till she reached the village. The stage was standing before the tavern-door, and the driver was mounting the box to start. She thought for a moment. She could not stay there. It would anger her father, if she did—no one would take her in—and besides, she could not meet, in her misery and her shame, those who had known her since childhood. She spoke to the driver; he dismounted, opened the door, and she took a seat in the coach to go—she did not know whither, she did not care where.
They rode all night, and in the morning reached Concord. As she stepped from the stage, the red-faced landlord asked her if she was going further. She said, 'I do not know, sir;' but then a thought struck her. It was five months since Hallet had started for Europe, and perhaps he had returned. She would go to him. Though he could not undo the wrong he had done, he still could aid and pity her. She asked the route to Boston, and after a light meal, was on the way thither.
She arrived after dark, and was driven to the Marlboro Hotel—that Eastern Eden for lone women and tobacco-eschewing men—and there she passed the night. Though weak from recent illness, and worn and wearied with the long journey, she could not rest or sleep. The great sorrow that had fallen on her had driven rest from her heart, and quiet sleep from her eye-lids forever. In the morning she inquired the way to Russell, Rollins & Co.'s, and after a long search found the grim, old warehouse. She started to go up the rickety old stairs, but her heart failed her. She turned away and wandered off through the narrow, crooked streets—she did not know for how long. She met the busy crowd hurrying to and fro, but no one noticed or cared for her. She looked at the neat, cheerful homes smiling around her, and she thought how every one had shelter and friends but her. She gazed up at the cold, gray sky, and oh! how she longed that it might fall down and bury her forever. And still she wandered till her limbs grew weary and her heart grew faint. At last she sank down exhausted, and wept—wept as only the lost and the utterly forsaken can weep. Some little boys were playing near, and after a time they left their sports, and came to her. They spoke kindly to her, and it gave her strength. She rose and walked on again. A livery-carriage passed her, and she spoke to the coachman. After a long hour she stood once more before the old warehouse. It was late in the afternoon, and she had eaten nothing all day, and was very faint and tired. As she turned to go up the old stairway, her heart again failed her, but summoning all her strength, she at last entered the old counting-room.
A tall, spare, pleasant-faced man, was standing at the desk, and she asked him if Mr. John Hallet was there.
'No, madam, he's in Europe.'
'When will he come back, sir?'
'Not for a year, madam;' and David raised his glasses and looked at her. He had not done it before.
Her last hope had failed, and with a heavy, crushing pain in her heart, and a dull, dizzy feeling in her head, she turned to go. As she staggered away a hand was gently placed on her arm, and a mild voice said:
'You are ill, madam; sit down.'
She took the proffered seat, and an old gentleman came out of the inner office.
'What! what's this, David?' he asked. 'What ails the young woman?'
(She was then not quite seventeen.)
'She's ill, sir,' said David.
'Only a little tired, sir; I shall be better soon.'
'But theeisill, my child; thee looks so. Come here, Kate!' and the old gentleman raised his voice as if speaking to some one in the inner room. The sick girl lifted her eyes, and saw a blue-eyed, golden-haired young woman, not so old as she was.
'She seems very sick, father. Please, David, get me some water;' and the young lady undid the poor girl's bonnet, and bathed her temples with the cool, grateful fluid. After a while the old gentleman asked:
'What brought thee here, young woman?'
'I came to see John—Mr. Hallet, I mean, sir.'
'Thee knows John, then?'
'Oh! yes, sir.'
'Where does thee live?'
She was about to say that she had no home, but checking herself, for it would seem strange that a young girl who knew John Hallet, should be homeless, she answered:
'In New-Hampshire. I live near old Mr. Hallet's, sir. I came to see John because I've known him ever since I was a child.'
She drank of the water, and after a little time rose to go. As she turned toward the door, the thought of going out alone, with her great sorrow, into the wide, desolate world, crossed her mind, the heavy, crushing pain came again into her heart, the dull, dizzy feeling into her head, the room reeled, and she fell to the floor.
It was after dark when she came to herself. She was lying on a bed in a large, splendidly furnished room, and the same old gentleman and the same young woman were with her. Another old gentleman was there, and as she opened her eyes, he said:
'She will be better soon; her nervous system has had a severe shock; the difficulty is there. If you could get her to confide in you, 'twould relieve her; it ishiddengrief that kills people. She needs rest, now. Come, my child, take this,' and he held a fluid to her lips. She drank it, and in a few moments sank into a deep slumber.
It was late on the following morning when she awoke, and found the same young woman at her bedside.
'You are better, now, my sister. A few days of quiet rest will make you well,' said the young lady.
The kind, loving words, almost the first she had ever heard from woman, went to her heart, and she wept bitterly as she replied:
'Oh! no, there is no rest, no more rest for me!'
'Why so? What is it that grieves you? Tell me; it will ease your pain to let me share it with you.'
She told her, but she withheld his name. Once it rose to her lips, but she thought how those good people would despise him, how Mr. Russell would cast him off, how his prospects would be blasted, and she kept it back.
'And that is the reason you went to John? You knew what a good, Christian young man he is, and you thought he would aid you?'
'Yes!' said the sick girl.
Thus she punished him for the great wrong he had done her; thus she recompensed him for robbing her of home, of honor, and of peace!
Kate told her father the story, and the good old man gave her a room in one of his tenement houses, and there, a few months later, she gave birth to a little boy and girl. She was very sick, but Kate attended to her wants, procured her a nurse, and a physician, and gave her what she needed more than all else—kindness and sympathy.
Previous to her sickness she had earned a support by her needle, and when she was sufficiently recovered, again had recourse to it. Her earnings were scanty, for she was not yet strong, but they were eked out by an occasional remittance from her aunt, which good lady still adhered to her sock-knitting, straw-braiding habits, but had turned her back resolutely on her benighted brethren and sisters of the Feejee Islands.
Thus nearly a year wore away, when her little girl sickened and died. She felt a mother's pang at first, but she shed no tears, for she knew it was 'well with the child;' that it had gone where it would never know a fate like hers.
The watching with it, added to her other labors, again undermined her health. The remittance from her aunt did not come as usual, and though she paid no rent, she soon found herself unable to earn a support. The Russells had been so good, so kind, had done so much for her, that she could not ask them for more. What, then, should she do? One day, while she was in this strait, Kate called to see her, and casually mentioned that John Hallet had returned. She struggled with her pride for a time, but at last made up her mind to apply to him. She wrote to him; told him of her struggles, of her illness, of her many sufferings, of her little boy—his image, his child—then playing at her feet, and she besought him by the love he bore her in their childhood, not to let his once affianced wife, and his poor, innocent child STARVE!
Long weeks went by, but no answer came; and again she wrote him.
One day, not long after sending this last letter, as she was crossing the Common to her attic in Charles street, she met him. He was alone, and saw her, but attempted to pass her without recognition. She stood squarely in his way, and told him shewouldbe heard. He admitted having received her letters, but said he could do nothing for her; that the brat was nothis; that she must not attempt to fasten onhimthe fruit of her debaucheries; that no one would believe her if she did; and he added, as he turned away, that he was a married man, and a Christian, and could not be seen talking with a lewd woman like her.
She was stunned. She sank down on one of the benches on the Common, and tried to weep; but the tears would not come. For the first time since he so deeply, basely wronged her, she felt a bitter feeling rising in her heart. She rose, and turned her steps up Beacon Hill toward Mr. Russell's, fully determined to tell Kate all. She was admitted, and shown to Miss Russell's room. She told her that she had met her seducer, and how he had cast her off.
'Who is he?' asked Kate. 'Tell me, and father shall publish him from one end of the universe to the other! He does not deserve to live.'
His name trembled on her tongue. A moment more, and John Hallet would have been a ruined man, branded with a mark that would have followed him through the world. But she paused; the vision of his happy wife, of the innocent child just born to him, rose before her, and the words melted away from her lips unspoken.
Kate spoke kindly and encouragingly to her, but she heeded her not. One only thought had taken possession of her: how could she throw off the mighty load that was pressing on her soul?
After a time, she rose and left the house. As she walked down Beacon street, the sun was just sinking in the West, and its red glow mounted midway up the heavens. As she looked at it, the sky seemed one great molten sea, with its hot, lurid waves surging all around her. She thought it came nearer; that it set on fire the green Common and the great houses, and shot fierce, hot flames through her brain and into her very soul. For a moment, she was paralyzed and sank to the ground; then springing to her feet, she flew to her child. She bounded down the long hill, and up the steep stairways, and burst into the room of the good woman who was tending him, shouting:
'Fire! fire! The world is on fire! Run! run! the world is on fire!'
She caught up her babe and darted away. With him in her arms, she flew down Charles street, across the Common, and through the crowded thoroughfares, till she reached India Wharf, all the while muttering, 'Water, water;' water to quench the fire in her blood, in her brain, in her very soul.
She paused on the pier, and gazed for a moment at the dark, slimy flood; then she plunged down, down, where all is forgetfulness!
She had a dim recollection of a storm at sea; of a vessel thrown violently on its beam-ends; of a great tumult, and of voices louder than she ever heard before—voices that rose above the howling of the tempest and the surging of the great waves—calling out: 'All hands to clear away the foremast!' But she knew nothing certain. All was chaos.
The next thing she remembered was waking one morning in a little room about twelve feet square, with a small grated opening in the door. The sun had just risen, and by its light she saw she was lying on a low, narrow bed, whose clothing was spotlessly white and clean. Her little boy was sleeping by her side. His little cheeks had arosier, healthier hue than they ever wore before; and as she turned down the sheet, she saw he had grown wonderfully. She could hardly credit her senses. Could that beherchild?
She spoke to him. He opened his eyes and smiled, and put his little mouth up to hers, saying, 'Kiss, mamma, kiss Fanky.' She took him in her arms, and covered him with kisses. Then she rose to dress herself. A strange but neat and tidy gown was on the chair, and she put it on; it fitted exactly. Franky then rolled over to the front of the bed, and putting first one little foot out and then the other, let himself down to the floor. 'Can it be?' she thought, 'can he both walk and talk?' Soon she heard the bolt turning in the door. It opened, and a pleasant, elderly woman, with a large bundle of keys at her girdle, entered the room.
'And how do you do this morning, my daughter?' she asked.
'Very well, ma'am. Where am I, ma'am?'
'You ask where? Then youarewell. You haven't been for a long, long time, my child.'
'Andwheream I, ma'am?'
'Why, you are here—at Bloomingdale.'
'How long have I been here?'
'Let me see; it must be near fifteen months, now.'
'And who brought me?'
'A vessel captain. He said that just as he was hauling out of the dock at Boston, you jumped into the water with your child. One of his men sprang overboard and saved you. The vessel couldn't put back, so he brought you here.'
'Merciful heaven! did I do that?'
'Yes. You must have been sorely troubled, my child. But never mind—it is all over now. But hasn't Franky grown? Isn't he a handsome boy? Come here to grandma, my baby.' And the good woman sat down on a chair, while the little fellow ran to her, put his small arms around her neck, and kissed her over and over again. Children are intuitive judges of character; no really bad man or woman ever had the love of a child.
'Yes, hehasgrown. You call him Franky, do you?'
'Yes; we didn't know his name. What had you named him?'
'John Hallet.'
As she spoke those words, a sharp pang shot through her heart. It was well that her child had another name!
She was soon sufficiently recovered to leave the asylum. By the kind offices of the matron, she got employment in a cap-factory, and a plain but comfortable boarding-place in the lower part of the city. She worked at the shop, and left Franky during the day with her landlady, a kind-hearted but poor woman. Her earnings were but three dollars a week, and their board was two and a quarter; but on the balance she contrived to furnish herself and her child with clothes. The only luxury she indulged in was an occasionalwalk, on Sunday to Bloomingdale, to see her good friend the kind-hearted matron.
Thus things went on for two years; and if not happy, she was at least comfortable. Her father never relented; but her aunt wrote her often, and there was comfort in the thought that, at least, one of her early friends had not cast her off. The good lady, too, sent her now and again small remittances, but they came few and far between; for as the pious woman grew older, her heart gradually returned to its first love—the poor heathen.
To Kate Russell Fanny wrote as soon she left the asylum, telling her of all that had happened as far as she knew, and thanking her for all her goodness and kindness to her. She waited some weeks, but no answer came; then she wrote again, but still no answer came, though that time she waited two or three months. Fearing then that something had befallen her, she mustered courage to write Mr. Russell. Still she got no reply, and she reluctantly concluded—though she had not asked them for aid—that they had ceased to feel interested in her.
'They had not, madam. Kate has often spoken very kindly of you. She wanted to come here to-day, but I did not know this, and I could not bring herhere!'
She looked at me with a strange surprise. Her eyes lighted, and her face beamed, as she said: 'And you knowher, too!'
'Know her! She is to be my wife very soon.'
She wept as she said: 'And you will tell her how much I love her—how grateful I am to her?'
'I will,' I replied. I did not tell the poor girl, as I might have done, that Hallet had at that time access to Mr. Russell's mails, and that, knowing her hand-writing, he had undoubtedly intercepted her letters.
After a long pause, she resumed her story.
At the end of those two years, a financial panic swept over the country, prostrating the great houses, and sending want and suffering into the attics—not homes, for they have none—of the poor sewing-women. The firm that employed her failed, and Fanny was thrown out of work. She went to her good friend the matron, who interested some 'benevolent' ladies in her behalf, and they procured her shirts to make at twenty-five cents apiece! She could hardly do enough of them to pay her board; but she could do the work at home with Franky, and that was a comfort, for he was growing to be a bright, intelligent, affectionate boy.
About this time, her aunt and the good matron died. She mourned for them sincerely, for they were all the friends she had.
The severe times affected her landlady. Being unable to pay her rent, she was sold out by the sheriff, and Fanny had to seek other lodgings. She then took a little room by herself, and lived alone.
The death of the matron was a great calamity to her, for her 'benevolent' friends soon lost interest in her, and took from her the poor privilege of making shirts at twenty-five cents apiece! When this befell her, she had but four dollars and twenty cents in the world. This she made furnish food to herself and her child for four long weeks, while she vainly sought for work. She offered to do any thing—to sew, scrub, cook, wash—any thing; but no! there was nothing for her—NOTHING! She must drain the cup to the very dregs, that the vengeance of God—and He would not be just if He did not take terrible vengeance for crime like his—might sink John Hallet to the lowest hell!
For four days she had not tasted food. Her child was sick. She hadbeggeda few crumbs for him, but evenhehad eaten nothing all day. Then the tempter came, and—why need I say it?—she sinned. Turn not away from her, O you, her sister, who have never known a want or felt a woe! Turn not away. It was not for herself; she would have died—gladly have died! It was for her sick, starving child that she did it. Could she,shouldshe have seen him STARVE?
Some months after that, she noticed in the evening paper, among the arrivals at the Astor House, the name of John Hallet. That night she went to him. She was shown to his room, and rapping at the door, was asked to 'walk in.' She stepped inside and stood before him. He sprang from his seat, and told her to leave him. She begged him to hear her—for only one moment to hear her. He stamped on the floor in his rage, and told her again to go! She did not go, for she told him of the pit of infamy into which she had fallen, and she prayed him, as he hoped for heaven, as he loved his own child, to save her! Then, with terrible curses, he opened the door, laid his hands upon her, and—thrust her from the room!
Why should I tell how, step by step, she went down; how want came upon her; how a terrible disease fastened its fangs on her vitals; how Death walked with her up and down Broadway in the gas-light; how, in her very hours ofshame, there came to her visions of the innocent past—thoughts of what she MIGHT HAVE BEEN and of what SHE WAS? The mere recital of such misery harrows the very soul; and, O God! what must be the REALITY!
As she finished the tale which, in broken sentences, with long pauses and many tears, she had given me, I rose from my seat, and pacing the room, while the hot tears ran from my eyes, I said; 'Rest easy, my poor girl! As sure as God lives, you shall be avenged. John Hallet shall feel the misery he has made you feel. I will pull him down—down so low, that the very beggars shall hoot at him in the streets!'
'Oh! no; do not harm him! Leave him to God. He may yet repent!'
The long exertion had exhausted her. The desire to tell me her story had sustained her; but when she had finished, she sank rapidly. I felt of her pulse—it scarcely beat; I passed my hand up her arm—it was icy cold to the elbow! She was indeed dying. Giving her some of the cordial, I called her child.
When I returned, she took each of us by the hand, and said to Franky: 'My child—your mother is going away—from you. Be a good boy—love this gentleman—he will take care of you!' Then to me she said: 'Be kind to him, sir. He is—a good child!'
'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!'
'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing—will be on you both! The blessing of God—will be on you—and if the dead can come back—to comfort those they love—I will come back—and comfortyou!'
I do not know—I can not know till the veil which hides her world from ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times—many times—since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING HER WORD!
For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in hers. Then, in a low tone—so low that I had to bend down to hear—she said:
'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!'
The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the better land!
In a moment she said:
'Farewell my friend—my child—I will come——' Then a low sound rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever.
And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up, and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we placed over her in the long ago:
When the blades of shears are biting,Finger not their edges keen;When man and wife are fighting,He faces ill who comes between.John Bull, in our grief delighting,Take care how you intervene!
When the blades of shears are biting,Finger not their edges keen;When man and wife are fighting,He faces ill who comes between.John Bull, in our grief delighting,Take care how you intervene!
INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL—MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES, AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS.
INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL—MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES, AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS.
This is going to be an odd jumble.
Without being an odd jumble, it could not possibly reflect American life and manners at the present time with any degree of fidelity; for the foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually, within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time of Noah's flood, and the disruption has not taken place long enough ago for the new to have assumed any appearance of stability. The old deities of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution, and the new which are eventually to take their place have scarcely yet made themselves apparent through the general confusion. The millionaire of two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky adventures in government transportations or army contracts; and the jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut street are busy resetting the diamonds of decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a little while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that have this year been flashing at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the bathing-beach and Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, in the old days; and if opera should ever revive, and the rich notes of melody repay theimpresario, as they enrapture the audience at the Academy, there will be new faces in the most prominent boxes, almost asoutreand unaccustomed in their appearance there as was that of the hard-featured Western President, framed in a shock head and a turn-down collar, meeting the gaze of astonished Murray Hill, when he passed an hour here on his way to the inauguration.
Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly—impotent for good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the estimation men have held of themselves, and the light in which they presented themselves to each other.
Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we know to be truth. What seemed the fixedand immutable purpose of God only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through any thing more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live, has fallen and been destroyed; and yet the nation does not die, but gives promise of a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete old is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days?
All this is obtrusively philosophical, of course, and correspondingly out of place. But it may serve as a sort of forlorn hope—mental food for powder—while the narrative reserve is brought forward; and there is a dim impression on the mind of the writer that it may be found to have some connection with that which is necessarily to follow.
So let the odd jumble be prepared, perhaps with ingredients as incongruous as those which at present compose what we used to call the republic, and as unevenly distributed as have been honors and emoluments during a struggle which should have found every man in his place, and every national energy employed to its best purpose.
I was crossing the City Hall Park to dinner at Delmonico's, one afternoon early in July, in company with a friend who had spent some years in Europe, and only recently returned. He may be called Ned Martin, for the purposes of this narration. He had left the country in its days of peace and prosperity, a frank, whole-souled young artist, his blue eyes clear as the day, and his faith in humanity unbounded. He had resided for a long time at Paris, and at other periods been sojourning at Rome, Florence, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and other places where art studies called him or artist company invited him. He had come back to his home and country after the great movements of the war were inaugurated, and when the great change which had been initiated was most obvious to an observing eye. I had heard of his arrival in New York, but failed to meet him, and not long after heard that he had gone down to visit the lines of our army on the Potomac. Then I had heard of his return some weeks after, and eventually I had happened upon him drinking a good-will glass with a party of friends at one of the popular down-town saloons, when stepping in for a post-prandial cigar. The result of that meeting had been a promise that we would dine together one evening, and the after-result was, that we were crossing the Park to keep that promise.
I have said that Ned Martin left this country a frank, blue-eyed, happy-looking young artist, who seemed to be without a care or a suspicion. It had only needed a second glance at his face, on the day when I first met him at the bar of the drinking-saloon, to know that a great change had fallen upon him. He was yet too young for age to have left a single furrow upon his face; not a fleck of silver had yet touched his brown hair, nor had his fine, erect form been bowed by either over-labor or dissipation. Yet he was changed, and the second glance showed that the change was in theeyes. Amid the clear blue there lay a dark, sombre shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that have been turnedinward. We usually say of the wearer of such eyes, after looking into them a moment, 'That man has studied much;' 'has suffered much;' or, 'he is a spiritualist.' By the latter expression, we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that meet him in the world—that he is more or less a student of the spiritual in mentality, and of the supernatural in cause and effect. Such eyes do not stare, they merely gaze. When they look at you, they look at something else through you and behind you, of which you may or may not be a part.
Let me say here, (this chapter being professedly episodical,) that the painter who can succeed in transferring to canvas that expression ofseeing more than is presented to the physical eye, has achieved a triumph over great difficulties. Frequent visitors to the old Dusseldorf Gallery will remember two instances, perhaps by the same painter, of the eye being thus made to reveal the inner thought and a life beyond that passing at the moment. The first and most notable is in the 'Charles the Second Fleeing from the Battle of Worcester.' The king and two nobles are in the immediate foreground, in flight, while far away the sun is going down in a red glare behind the smoke of battle, the lurid flames of the burning town, and the royal standard just fluttering down from the battlements of a castle lost by the royal arms at the very close of Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' Through the smoke of the middle distance can be dimly seen dusky forms in flight, or in the last hopeless conflict. Each of the nobles at the side of the fugitive king is heavily armed, with sword in hand, mounted on heavy, galloping horses going at high speed; and each is looking out anxiously, with head turned aside as he flies, for any danger which may menace—not himself, but the sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between them, is mounted upon a dark, high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse. He wears the peaked hat of the time, and his long hair—that which afterward became so notorious in the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and in the prosecution of his amours in the purlieus of the capital—floats out in wild dishevelment from his shoulders. He is dressed in the dark velvet, short cloak, and broad, pointed collar peculiar to pictures of himself and his unfortunate father; shows no weapon, and is leaning ungracefully forward, as if outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his horse. But the true interest of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his periled head in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read the great question offate! Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: is he to be henceforth a crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has the future its compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are saying to every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the question with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering thought: 'The king shall have his own again!'
The second picture in the same collection is much smaller, and commands less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, both on horseback, and a third on foot, withmusquetoonon shoulder. The cavalier's garments are rent and blood-stained, and there is a bloody handkerchief binding his brow and telling how, when his house was surprised and his dependents slaughtered, he himself fought till hewas struck down, bound and overpowered. He strides sullenly along, looking neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes, fixed and steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand beneath, we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they would set spurs and flee away like the wind—a calm, silent, but irrevocable prophecy: 'I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that hewillhave his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead instead of the wounded and captive cavalier!
I said, before this long digression broke the slender chain of narration, that some strange, spiritualistic shadow lay in the eyes of Ned Martin; and I could have sworn, without the possibility of an error, that he had become an habitual reader of the inner life, and almost beyond question a communicant with influences which some hold to be impossible and others unlawful.
The long measuring-worms hung pendent from their gossamer threads, as we passed through the Park, as they have done, destroying the foliage, in almost every city of the Northern States. One brushed my face as I passed, and with the stick in my hand I struck the long threads of gossamer and swept several of the worms to the ground. One, a very large and long one, happened to fall on Martin's shoulder, lying across the blue flannel of his coat in the exact position of a shoulder-strap.
'I say, Martin,' I said, 'I have knocked down one of the worms uponyou.'
'Have you?' he replied listlessly, 'then be good enough to brush it off, if it does not crawl off itself. I do not like worms.'
'I do not know whodoeslike them,' I said, 'though I suppose, being 'worms of the dust,' we ought to bear affection instead of disgust toward our fellow-reptiles. But, funnily enough,' and I held him still by the shoulder for a moment to contemplate the oddity, 'this measuring-worm, which is a very big one, has fallen on your shoulder, and seems disposed to remain there, in the very position of ashoulder-strap! You must belong to the army!'
It is easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its deadly fangs into the neck. But it is not easy to imagine that even a nervous woman, afraid of a cockroach and habitually screaming at a mouse, would display any extraordinary emotion on being told that a harmless measuring-worm had fallen upon the shoulder of her dress. What was my surprise, then, to see the face of Martin, that had been so impassive the moment before when told that the worm had fallen upon his coat, suddenly assume an expression of the most awful fear and agony, and his whole form writhe with emotion, as he shrunk to one side in the effort to eject the intruder instantaneously!
'Good God! Off with it—quick! Quick, for heaven's sake!' he cried, in a frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost sinking to the ground as he spoke.
Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite a moment before he assumed an erectposition, and I saw two or three quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and broken:
'Is it gone?'
'Certainly it is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned theshapeit had assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you afraid of worms, or only ofshoulder-straps?' And I laughed at the absurdity of the latter supposition.
'Humph!' said Martin, who seemed to have recovered his equanimity, but not shaken off the impression. 'You laugh. Perhaps you will laugh more when I tell you that it was not the worm,asa worm, of which I was thinking at all, and that my terror—yes, I need not mince words, I was for the moment in abject terror—had to do altogether with the shape that little crawling pest had assumed, and the part of my coat on which he had taken a fancy to lodge himself!'
'No, I should not laugh,' I said; 'but Ishouldask an explanation of what seems very strange and unaccountable. Shall I lacerate a feeling, or tread upon ground made sacred by a grief, if I do so?'
'Not at all,' was the reply. 'In fact, I feel at this moment very much as the Ancient Mariner may have done the moment before he met the wedding-guest—when, in fact, he had nobody to button-hole, and felt the strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be; and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular episode in an odd life.'
Half an hour after, the conditions of which he spoke had been accomplished, over the marble at Delmonico's, and he made me the following very singular relation:
'I had returned from a somewhat prolonged stay at Vienna,' he said, 'to Paris, late in 1860. During the fall and winter of that year I spent a good deal of time at the Louvre, making a few studies, and satisfying myself as to some identities that had been called in question during my rambles through the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. I lodged in the little Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the Rue Montorgeuil, and only two or three minutes' walk from the Louvre, having a baker with a pretty wife for my landlord, and a cozy little room in which three persons could sit comfortably, for my domicil. As I did not often have more than two visitors, my room was quite sufficient; and as I spent a large proportion of my evenings at other places than my lodgings, the space was three quarters of the time more than I needed.
'I do not know that I can have any objection to your knowing, before I go any further, that I am and have been for some years a believer in that of which Hamlet speaks when he says: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' You may call me aSpiritualist, if you like, for I have no reverence for or aversion to names. I do not callmyselfso; I only say that I believe that more things come to us in the way of knowledge, than we read, hear, see, taste, smell, or feel with the natural and physical organs. I know, from the most irrefragable testimony, that there are communications made between one and another, when too far apart to reach each other by any of the recognized modes of intercourse; though how or why they are made I have nodefinite knowledge. Electricity—that 'tongs with which God holds the world'—as a strong but odd thinker once said in my presence, may be the medium of communication; but even this must be informed by a living and sentient spirit, or it can convey nothing. People learn what they would not otherwise know, through mediums which they do not recognize and by processes which they can not explain; and to know this is to have left the beaten track of old beliefs, and plunged into a maze of speculation, which probably makes madmen of a hundred while it is making a wise man ofone. But I am wandering too far and telling you nothing.
'One of my few intimates in Paris, a young Prussian by the name of Adolph Von Berg, had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in company with clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my return to Paris in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those places in which professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. It was early in September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of Von Berg, who had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I went with him, late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the Rue La Reynie Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward the quays of the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue Saint Martin. The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, although built of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the front was eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hallway, that night, well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow-candle in a tin sconce was burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story.
'My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered table in the hall, (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to all appearance,) and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the way without a word to the same room she had herself just quitted. There was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did not allow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in that apartment sacred to the divine mysteries.
'Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed, and I had grown fearfully tired of waiting, when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back, and the figure of a woman stood in the space thus created. Every thing behind her seemed to be in darkness; but some description of bright light, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemed almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directly upon her side-face, throwing every feature from brow to chin into bold relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag—it being the general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long past the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not have been over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, and a face that would have been, but for one circumstance, beautiful beyond description. Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiseled nose or browof more classic perfection, and I have never seen the bow of Cupid in the mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature of the countenance of the sorceress.
'I said that but for one circumstance, that face would have been beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that you can catch the full force of the idea—I must try, however. You have often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid character of the dress and by the Satanic penciling of the eyebrows! You have? Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. It was redder than blood-red as fire, and yet so strangely did the flame-color play through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin could have produced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the whole mass of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from some kind of fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's window might glow when you were standing full in front of it, and the gas was turned on to full height behind. Every feature—brow, nose, lips, chin, even the eyes themselves, and their very pupil seemed to be pervaded and permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits of flame—salamandrines—who sometimes existed out of their own element and lived and moved as mortals.
'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!—I would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human calculation!'