Morton walked the street, on the next day, in a mood less grave than had lately been his wont, but in one of any thing but self-approval.
"It is singular," he thought, "I could never meet her without forgetting myself,—without being betrayed into some absurdity or other. I thought by this time that I had grown wiser, or, at least, was well fenced against that kind of risk. But it is the same now as ever. I was a fool at New Baden, and I was a fool again last night, though after a different fashion. After all, when a fresh breeze comes, why should I not breathe it? when a ray of sun comes, why should I not bask in it? But what impelled me to insult that wretch, who I knew dared not and could not answer me?"
He pondered for a moment, then turned and walked slowly towards Vinal's place of business.
"Is Mr. Vinal here?" he asked of one of the clerks.
"Yes, sir, he is in that inner room."
"Is any one with him?"
"No, sir." And Morton opened the door and entered.
Vinal sat before a table, on which letters and papers were lying; but he was leaning backward in his chair, with a painfully knit brow, and a face of ghastly paleness. It flushed of a sudden as Morton appeared, and his whole look and mien showed an irrepressible agitation.
Morton closed the door. "Vinal," he said, "you need not fear that I have come with any hostile purpose. On the contrary, I will serve you, if I can. Last night I used words to you which I have since regretted. I beg you to accept my apology."
Vinal made no reply.
"I saw Speyer in the street last evening, and tried to speak with him, but could not stop him. He can hardly have any other purpose in breaking his oath and coming here again, than to get more money from you. Has he been to you?"
Still Vinal was silent.
"I think," continued Morton, "that you cannot fail to see my motive. I wish to keep him from you, not on your account, but on your wife's. If you let him, he will torment you to your death. Have you seen him since last evening?"
Vinal inclined his head.
"Where is he now?"
"I don't know."
"Has he left the city?"
"I don't know. I suppose so."
"And you gave him money?"
Vinal was silent again. Morton took his silence for assent.
"When he comes again, tell me of it, and let me speak to him. Possibly I may find means to rid you of him. Meantime remember this. He has given your letter up to me. He has no proofs to show against you, unless he has other letters of yours;—is that the case?"
Vinal shook his head.
"Then, if he proclaims you, his word will not be taken, unless I sustain it; and I shall keep silent unless you give me some new cause to speak. I do not see that he can harm you much without my help; so give him no more money, and set him at defiance."
Morton left the room; but his words had brought no relief to the wretched Vinal. Speyer had shown him his letter, and told him the artifice by which he had kept it, and palmed off a counterfeit on Morton. He felt himself at the mercy of a miscreant as rapacious, fierce, and pitiless, as a wolverene dropping on its prey.
Some few days after, riding, as usual, in the afternoon, Morton saw on the road before him a lady on horseback, riding in the same direction. At a glance, he recognized the air and figure of Fanny Euston. This remnant, at least, of her former spirit remained to her,—she did not hesitate to ride unattended. Morton checked his horse, reflected for a little, then touched him with the spur, and in a moment was at her side. After they had conversed for a while, she said,—
"I have heard a great deal of your imprisonment from others, but nothing from yourself. Will you not let me hear your story from your own lips?"
"It was a long and dull history to live through, and will be a short and dull one to tell."
"I have never been able to hear clearly why you were arrested at all."
"It was a simple matter. The Austrian government is like a tyrant and a coward, frightened at shadows. I had one or two acquaintances at Vienna who had been implicated, though I did not know it, in plots against the government. I, being an American, was imagined to be, as a matter of course, a democrat, and in league with them. It needed very little more; and they shut me up, as they have done many an innocent man before me."
"Looking back at your imprisonment, it must seem to you a broad, dark chasm in your life."
"Broad and black enough; but not quite so void as I once thought."
"No; in struggling through it, I can see that you have not come out empty handed."
"Not I; I should be glad to rid myself of the larger part of the load. One is sometimes punished with the fulfilment of his own whims. I remember wishing—and that not so many years back—that I might sound all the strings of human joys and sufferings,—try life in all its phases,—in peace and war, a dungeon, if I remember right, inclusive. I have had my fill of it, and do not care to repeat the experiment."
"Some of the damp and darkness of your dungeon still clings about you, and out of the midst of it, you look back over the gulf to a shore of light and sunshine, where you were once standing."
"You read me like a sibyl, as you always do. None but a child or a fool will seriously regret any shape of experience out of which he has come with mind and senses still sound, though it may have changed the prismatic colors of life into a neutral tint, a universal gray, a Scotch mist, with light enough to delve by, and nothing more."
"One's life is a series of compromises, at best. One must capitulate with Fate, gain from her as much good as may be, and as little evil."
"And then set his teeth and endure. As for myself, though, if gifts were portioned out among mankind in equal allotments, I should count myself, even now, as having more than my share."
"That idea of equalized happiness is a great fallacy."
"Every idea of mortal equality is a great fallacy; and all the systems built on it are built on a quicksand. There is no equality in nature. There are mountains and valleys, deserts and meadows, the fertile and the barren. There is no equality in human minds or human character. Who shall measure the distance from the noblest to the meanest of men, or the yet vaster distance from the noblest to the meanest of women? The differences among mankind are broader than any but the greatest of men can grasp. With pains enough, one may comprehend, in a measure, the minds on a level with his own or below it; but, above, he sees nothing clearly. To follow the movements of a great man's mind, he must raise himself almost to an equal greatness."
"A hopeless attempt with most. Every one has a limit."
"But men make more limits for themselves than Nature makes for them."
"You seem to me a person with a singular capacity of growth. You push forth fibres into every soil, and draw nutriment from sources most foreign to you."
"An indifferent stock needs all the aliment it can find. I am fortunate in my planting. Companionship is that which shapes us; and I have found men, and what is more to the purpose, women, who have met my best requirement. One's friends have all their special influence with which they affect him. Yours, to me, was always a rousing and wakening influence, an electric life. You have shot a ray of sun down into my shadow, and I am bound at least to thank you for it."
"I hope, for old friendship's sake, that your shadow may soon cease to need such farthing-candle illumination.—Here is my mother's house. She will be glad to see you."
"I thank you: I will come soon, but not to-day."
And, taking leave of his companion, he turned his horse homeward.
"A vain attempt! I thought a light might kindle again; but it is all dust and ashes, with only a sparkle or two. No more flame; the fuel is burnt out. Shall I go on? Shall I offer what is left of my heart? A poor tribute for her. She should command a better; and there is something in her manner, warm and cordial as she is, that tells me that I should offer it in vain."
A few days later, Morton was seated with his friend Meredith.
"Ned, this is a slow life. Do you know, I have made up my mind to change it."
"You have been so busy this year past, that I thought you would be content to stay where you are."
"On the contrary, my vocation takes me abroad."
"Where will you go?"
"To Egypt, Arabia, India, the East Indies, the South Sea Islands."
"All in the cause of science?"
"At any rate, the thing is necessary to my plans."
"The old Adam sticks to you still. Are you sure that no Pequot blood ever got into your veins?"
"I don't know as to that. My ancestors were Puritans to the backbone, witch-burners, Quaker-killers, and Indian-haters. I only know that when I am bored, my first instinct is to cut loose, and take to the woods. It comes over me like an ague-fit. There are two places where a man finds sea room enough; one is a great metropolis, the other is a wilderness. There is no freedom in a place like this. One can only be independent here by living out of the world as I have been doing."
"Here in America, we have political freedomad nauseam;and we pay for it with a loss of social freedom."
"You remember an agreement of ours, years ago, that you and I should travel together. Now, will you stand to it, and go with me?"
"Other considerations apart, I should like nothing better; but, as matters stand with me now, it's quite out of the question."
Morton was silent for a moment. "Ned," he said, at length, "I heard a rumor yesterday. It is no part of mine to obtrude myself into your private affairs, and I should not speak if I had not a reason, the better half of which is, that I think I can serve you. I heard that you were paying your addresses to Miss Euston."
"One cannot look twice at a lady without having it noted down in black and white, and turned into tea-table talk."
"I met Miss Euston a few evenings ago. I used to know her before I went to Europe, but had not seen her since. If what I heard is true, I think you have shown something more than good taste."
"You remember her," said Meredith, after a pause, "as she was the summer when you and I went to New Baden."
"Yes, I knew her then very well."
"I liked her better at that time than you ever supposed. She was very young; just out of school, in fact. She had lived all her life in the suburbs, and had grown up like an unpruned rose bush,—a fine stock in a strong soil, but throwing out its shoots quite wildly and at random."
"I know it; but all that is changed, I can't conceive how."
"I can tell you. The one person whom she loved and stood in awe of was her father. He was a man, and a strong one. He died suddenly about the time you went away. It was the first blow she had ever felt; and his death was only the beginning of greater troubles. You remember her brother Henry."
"I remember him when he was at school—a good-natured, high-spirited little fellow, whom every body liked."
"With wild blood enough for a regiment, and as careless, thoughtless, and easy-tempered as a child, such as he was, in fact. His father, being out of the country on his affairs, sent him to New York, where he fell in with a bad set, and grew very dissipated. Then, to get him out of harm's way, they shipped him off to Canton, where he soon began to ruin himself, hand over hand. At last, a few months after his father's death, his mother and sister heard that he was on his way home, with his health completely broken. The next news was, that he was at Alexandria, dangerously ill of a slow fever. His mother, who, with all respect, is the weakest of mortals, broke down at once into a state of helplessness, and could do nothing but weep and lament. The whole burden fell upon his sister. She went with her mother and a man servant to Alexandria, and took charge of her brother, whose fever left him in such an exhausted state that he fell into a decline. She brought him as far as Naples, but he could go no farther; and here she attended him for five months, till he died; her mother sinking, meanwhile, into a kind of moping imbecility. By that time, her uncle had found grace to come and join them. Then her turn came; her strength failed her, and she fell violently ill. For a week, her life was despaired of; but she rallied, against all hope. I was in Naples soon after, and used to meet her every morning, as she drove in an open carriage to Baiæ. I never saw such a transformation. She was pale as death, but very beautiful; and her whole expression was changed. She had always been very fond of her brother. There were some points of likeness between them. He had her wildness, and her kindliness of disposition, but none of her vigorous good sense, and was altogether inferior to her in intellect. Now you can have some idea why you find her so different from what you once knew her to be."
"I knew," said Morton, "that she had passed through the fire in some way; but how I could not tell. I think, now, still better of your judgment, Ned."
"Then you see why I will not go with you. I must bring this matter to an issue. For good or evil, I must know how it goes with me. It is not a new thing. It is of longer date than you imagined, or she either. What the end of it may be, Heaven only knows; but one thing is certain,—you will not see me in the South Seas before this point is cleared."
"Then I shall never see you there."
"Why do you say that?"
"Your travelling days are over. At least I think so."
"Do you mean——?"
"That you are playing at a game where I think you will win."
"What reason have you to think so?" demanded Meredith, nervously.
"Take the opinion, and let the reason go. On such an argument a good reason will sometimes dwindle into nothing when one tries to explain it."
His hand was on the door as he spoke, and bidding his friend good morning, he left him to his meditations.
Morton mounted his horse, and rode to the house of Mrs. Euston. He found her daughter alone.
"I have come to take leave of you. I am on my travels again."
"Again! You are always on the wing. I supposed that you must have learned, by this time, to value home, or, at least, be reconciled to staying there in peace."
"My home is a little lonely, and none of the liveliest. Movement is my best repose."
"You are wholly made up of restlessness."
"That is Nature's failing, not mine; or if Nature declines to bear the burden of my shortcomings, I will put them upon Destiny, and with much better cause. But this is not restlessness; or, if it is, it has method in it. This journey is a plan of eight years' standing. I concocted it when I was a junior, half fledged, at college, and never lost sight of it but once, and then for a cause that does not exist now."
"Where are you going?"
Morton gave the outline of his journey.
"But is not that very difficult and dangerous?"
"Not very."
"You will not be alone, surely."
"I provided for a companion years ago. My friend Meredith and I struck an agreement, that when I went on this journey he should go with me."
An instant shadow passed across the face of Fanny Euston.
"So you will have a companion," she replied, with a nonchalance too distinct to be genuine.
"Not at all. He breaks his word. He won't hear of going."
The cloud vanished.
"I take it ill of him; for I had relied on having him with me. He and I are old fellow-travellers. I have tried him in sunshine and rain, and know his metal." And he launched into an emphatic eulogy of his friend, to which Fanny Euston listened with a pleasure which she could not wholly hide.
"He best knows why he fails me. It is some cogent and prevailing reason; no light cause, or sudden fancy. Some powerful motive, mining deep and moving strongly, has shaken him from his purpose; so I forgive him for his falling off."
As Morton spoke, he was studying his companion's features, and she, conscious of his scrutiny, visibly changed color.
"Dear cousin," he said, with a changed tone, "if I must lose my friend, let me find, when I return, that my loss has been overbalanced by his gain. I will reconcile myself to it, if it may help to win for him the bounty that he aspires to."
The blush deepened to crimson on Fanny Euston's cheek; and without waiting for more words, Morton bade her farewell.
With a slow step and a sinking heart, Morton entered Mrs. Ashland's drawing room. He told her of his proposed journey; told her that he should leave the country within a few days, to be absent for a year or two at least, and asked her mediation to gain for him a parting interview with Edith Leslie.
Mrs. Ashland, and she only, knew the whole misery of her friend's position, and feared lest, exhausted as she was by mental pain and long watching, and divided between her unextinguished love for Morton, and her abhorrence of the criminal who by name and the letter of the law was her husband, the meeting might put her self-mastery to too painful a proof. She therefore, though with a very evident reluctance, dissuaded Morton from it.
"Edith has been taxed already to the farthest limit of her strength. She is not ill, but quite worn and spent. She is almost constantly with her father, who, now, can hardly be said to live, and needs constant care. To see you at this time would agitate her too much."
"Can the sight of me still have so much power to move her?"
"You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her mind does not loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend her. Her character is so balanced and so harmonious, so quiet and noiseless in its movement, that no one suspects the force, and faith, and energy that are in it. It is not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It is in action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself and over others."
Morton's passion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.
"I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full already, and you can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing. It is impossible that her father should linger many days more; and when that is over, it will bring her a relief, though she may not think it so, in more ways than one."
Morton assented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his farewell for Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.
Leslie was dead; beyond the reach of wounds and sorrow; and the only tie which held his daughter to Vinal was at last broken. She left him, as she had promised, and made her abode with Mrs. Ashland, in her cottage by the sea shore.
She sat alone at an open window, looking out upon the sea, an illimitable dreariness, waveless and dull as tarnished lead; clouded with sullen mists, but still rocking in long, dead swells with the motion of a past storm.
Her thoughts followed on the track of the absent Morton.
"It is best for you to have gone; to have made for yourself a relief in your man's element of action and struggle. Such a change is happiness, after the misery you have known. It was a bitter schooling; a long siege, and a dreary one; but you have triumphed, and you wear its trophy,—the heroic calm, the mind tranquil with consciousness of power. You have wrung a proud tribute out of sorrow; but has it yielded you all its treasure? Could you but have rested less loftily on your own firm resolve and unbending pride of manhood! Could you but have learned that gentler, deeper, higher philosophy which builds for itself a temple out of ruin, and makes weakness invincible with binding its tendrils to the rock!
"Your fate and mine have not been a bed of roses; but the fierceness of yours is past, and I must still wait the issues of mine. I have renounced this fraud and mockery of empty words which was to have bound me to a life-long horror. The world will think very strangely of me. That must be borne, too; and such a load is light, to the burden I have borne already."
A few days later, tidings came that Vinal was ill. Edith Leslie rejoined him; but, finding that her presence was any thing but soothing to him, she left him in the care of others, and returned to her friend's house. It was but a sudden and short attack, from which he recovered in a week or two.
Fal.—Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul gratis?—Merry Wives of Windsor.
Pistol.—Base is the slave that pays.—Henry V.
Pistol.—Base is the slave that pays.—Henry V.
Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a beaming star in the commercial heaven. On 'change,
"His name was great,In mouths of wisest censure."
"His name was great,In mouths of wisest censure."
The astutest broker pronounced him good; the sagest money lender took his paper without a question. But of late, his signature had lost a little of its efficacy. It was whispered that he was not as sound as his repute gave out; that his operations were no longer marked by his former clear-headed forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and dangerous speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it had stood a twelvemonth earlier.
Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on 'change, but at tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's separation from him had given ample food to speculation; and gossip had for once been just, asserting, with few dissenting voices, that there must needs be some fault, and a grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to be a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its mysterious cause.
Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses. Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But, meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him, bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune.
There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with desperation.
The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself. Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street door, and a man's voice pronouncing his name. The moment after, his evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer.
Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.
"Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?"
"I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed."
"Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have been supporting you in your extravagance—you and your mistresses; you have been living on me like princes,—dress, drinking, feasting, horses, gambling!—among you, you make my money spin away like water. Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of mine."
Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.
"Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use. More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine. You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on Monday—that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this."
"It won't do. I must have it now."
"I tell you, I have none to give you."
"Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers, and giving one to Vinal.
It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously filled in by himself with a pen.
"Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will have you posted up at every street corner in town. I have your letter here. I shall send it to your friend, the editor of the Sink."
The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous Vinal, always anxious for the morals of the city, had once caused to be prosecuted as a nuisance, for which the editor bore him a special grudge.
But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said desperately, "Do what you will."
Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.
"Will you give me the money?"
"By G—, no!"
"By G—, you shall!"
And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.
Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a rattlesnake's.
"Take off your hand!"
The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.
"Take off your hand."
Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to and fro. Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face. Speyer glared and grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger. For a moment, he shook him as a terrier shakes a rat; then flung him backward against the farther side of the room. Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless, among the window curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably have followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who, by a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood of the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from more serious discomfiture.
Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder in his look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the room, whence the servant's valor did not mount to the point of following him.
Edward Meredith, the affianced bridegroom of Miss Fanny Euston, sailing on a smooth sea, under full canvas, towards the pleasing but perilous bounds of matrimony, was walking in the morning towards the post office, in the frame of mind proper to his condition. He passed that place of unrest where the Law hangs her blazons from every window, and approached the heart and brain of the city, the precinct sacred to commerce and finance. Here, gathered about a corner, he saw a crowd, elbowing each other with unusual vehemence. Meredith, with all despatch, crossed over to the opposite side. But here, again, his attention was caught by a singular clamor among the rabble of newsboys, as noisy and intrusive as a flight of dorr-bugs on a June evening. And, not far off, another crowd was gathered at the office of the Weekly Sink. Curiosity became too strong for his native antipathy. He saw an acquaintance, with a crushed hat, and a face of bewildered amazement, just struggling out of the press.
"What's the row?" demanded Meredith.
"Go and read that paper," returned the other, with an astonished ejaculation, of more emphasis than unction.
Meredith shouldered into the crowd, looked over the hats of some, between the hats of others, and saw, pasted to the stone door post, a placard large as the handbill of a theatre. Over it was displayed a sheet of paper, on which was daubed, in ink, the words,Astounding Disclosures!!! Crime in High Life!!!!And on the placard he beheld the names of his classmate Horace Vinal, and his friend Vassall Morton.
Meredith pushed and shouldered with the boldest, gained a favorable position, braced himself there, and ran his eye through the whole. Then, with a convulsive effort, he regained his liberty, beckoned a newsboy, and purchased the extra sheet of the Weekly Sink. Here, however, he learned very little. The editor, taught wisdom by experience, had tempered malice with caution. He spoke of the duty he owed to the public, his position as guardian and censor of the public morals, and affirmed that, in this capacity, he had that morning received through the post office the original of the letter of which a copy was printed on the placards posted in various parts of the city. With the letter had come also an anonymous note, highly complimentary to himself in his official capacity, a copy of which he subjoined. As for the letter, he did not think himself called upon to give it immediate publicity in his columns; but he would submit it for inspection to any persons anxious to see it, after which he should place it in the hands of the police.
Though the editor of the Sink was thus discreet, the letter, in the course of the day, found its way into several of the penny papers, to which copies of the placard containing it had been mailed. From the dram shop to the drawing room, the commotion was unspeakable. The mass of readers floundered in a sea of crude conjecture; but those who knew the parties, recalling a faint and exploded rumor of Morton's engagement to Miss Leslie, and connecting it with her separation from Vinal, gained a glimpse of something like the truth.
The only new light thrown upon the matter came from the servant, who told all that he knew, and much more, of the nocturnal scene between Speyer and Vinal, affirming, with much complacency, that he had saved his master's life. Miss Leslie and Mrs. Ashland studiously kept silent. Morton was at the antipodes; while the unknown divulger of the mystery eluded all attempts to trace him. Speyer, in fact, having sprung his mine, had fled from his danger and his debts, and taking passage for New Orleans, sailed thence to Vera Cruz.
Meredith, perplexed and astounded, wrote a letter to Morton, directing it to Calcutta, whither the latter was to repair, after voyaging among the East India Islands.
Meanwhile, great search was made for Vinal; but Vinal was nowhere to be found.
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.—Tempest.
At one o'clock at night, in the midst of the Atlantic, a hundred leagues west of the Azores, the bark Swallow, freighted with salt cod for the Levant, was scudding furiously, under a close-reefed foresail, before a fierce gale. On board were her captain, two mates, seven men, a black steward, a cabin boy, and Mr. John White, a passenger.
The captain and his mates were all on deck. John White, otherwise Horace Vinal, occupied a kind of store room, opening out of the cabin. Here a temporary berth had been nailed up for him, while on the opposite side were stowed a trunk belonging to him, and three barrels of onions belonging to the vessel's owners, all well lashed in their places.
The dead lights were in, but the seas, striking like mallets against the stern, pierced in fine mist through invisible crevices, bedrizzling every thing with salt dew. The lantern, hanging from the cabin roof, swung angrily with the reckless plungings of the vessel.
Vinal was a good sailor; that is to say, he was not very liable to that ocean scourge, seasickness, and the few qualms he had suffered were by this time effectually frightened out of him. As darkness closed, he had lain down in his clothes; and flung from side to side till his bones ached with the incessant rolling of the bark, he listened sleeplessly to the hideous booming of the storm. Suddenly there came a roar so appalling, that he leaped out of his berth with terror. It seemed to him as if a Niagara had broken above the vessel, and was crushing her down to the nethermost abyss. The rush of waters died away. Then came the bellow of the speaking trumpet, the trampling of feet, the shouts of men, the hoarse fluttering of canvas. In a few moments he felt a change in the vessel's motion. She no longer rocked with a constant reel from side to side, but seemed flung about at random, hither and thither, at the mercy of the storm.
She had been, in fact, within a hair's breadth of foundering. A huge wave, chasing on her wake, swelling huger and huger, towering higher and higher, had curled, at last, its black crest above her stern, and, breaking, fallen on her in a deluge. The captain, a Barnstable man of the go-ahead stamp, was brought at last to furl his foresail and lie to.
Vinal, restless with his fear, climbed the narrow stairway which led up to the deck, and pushed open the door at the top; but a blast of wind and salt spray clapped it in his face, and would have knocked him to the foot of the steps, if he had not clung to the handrail. He groped his way as he could back to his berth. Here he lay for a quarter of an hour, when the captain came down, enveloped in oilcloths, and dripping like a Newfoundland dog just out of the water. Vinal emerged from his den, and presenting himself with his haggard face, and hair bristling in disorder, questioned the bedrenched commander touching the state of things on deck. But the latter was in a crusty and savage mood.
"Hey! what is it?"—surveying the apparition by the light of the swinging lantern,—"well, youbea beauty, I'll be damned if you ain't."
"I did not ask you how I looked; I asked you about the weather."
"Well, it ain't the sweetest night I ever see; but I guess you won't drown this time."
"My friend," said Vinal, "learn to mend your way of speaking, and use a civil tongue."
The captain stared at him, muttered an oath or two, and then turned away.
Day broke, and Vinal went on deck. It was a wild dawning. The storm was at its height. One rag of a topsail was set to steady the vessel; all the rest was bare poles and black dripping cordage, through which the gale yelled like a forest in a tornado. The sky was dull gray; the ocean was dull gray. There was no horizon. The vessel struggled among tossing mountains, while tons of water washed her decks, and the men, half drowned, clung to the rigging. Vast misshapen ridges of water bore down from the windward, breaking into foam along their crests, struck the vessel with a sullen shock, burst over her bulwarks, deluged her from stem to stern, heaved her aloft as they rolled on, and then left her to sink again into the deep trough of the sea.
Vinal was in great fear; but nothing in his look betrayed it. He soon went below to escape the drenching seas; but towards noon, Hansen, the second mate, a good-natured old sea dog, came down with the welcome news that the gale had suddenly abated. Vinal went on deck again, and saw a singular spectacle. The wind had strangely lulled; but the waves were huge and furious as ever; and the bark rose and pitched, and was flung to and fro with great violence, but in a silence almost perfect. Water, in great quantities, still washed the deck, but found ready escape through a large port in the after part of the vessel, the lid of which, hanging vertically, had been left unfastened.
The lull was of short space. A hoarse, low sound began to growl in the distance like muffled thunder. It grew louder,—nearer,—and the gale was on them again. This time it blew from the north-west, and less fiercely than before. The venturous captain made sail. The yards were braced round; and leaning from the wind till her lee gunwale scooped the water, the vessel plunged on her way like a racehorse. The clouds were rent; blue sky appeared. Strong winds tore them apart, and the sun blazed out over the watery convulsion, changing its blackness to a rich blue, almost as dark, where the whirling streaks of foam seemed like snow wreaths on the mountains. Jets of foam, too, spouted from under the vessel's bows, as she dashed them against the opposing seas; and the prickling spray flew as high as the main top. The ocean was like a viking in his robust carousals,—terror and mirth, laughter and fierceness, all in one.
But the mind of Vinal was blackness and unmixed gall. His game was played and lost. The worst that he feared had befallen him. Suspense was over, and he was freed from the incubus that had ridden him so long. A something like relief mixed itself with his bitter and vindictive musings. He had not fled empty handed. He and Morton's friend Sharpe had been joint trustees of a large estate, a part of which, in a form that made it readily available, happened to be in Vinal's hands at the time of his crisis. Dread of his quick-sighted and vigilant colleague had hitherto prevented him from applying it to his own uses. But this fear had now lost its force. He took it with him on his flight, and converted it into money in New York, where he had embarked.
At night the descent of Hansen to supper was a welcome diversion to his lonely thoughts. The old sailor seated himself at the table:—
"I've lost all my appetite, and got a horse's. Here, steward, you nigger, where be yer? Fetch along that beefsteak. What do you call this here? Well, never mind what you call it, here goes into it, any how."
A silent and destructive onslaught upon the dish before him followed. Then, laying down his knife and fork for a moment,—
"I've knowed the time when I could have ate up the doctor there,"—pointing to the steward,—"bones and all, and couldn't get a mouthful, no way you could fix it." Then, resuming his labors, "Tell you what, squire, this here agrees with me. Come out of that berth now, and sit down here alongside o' me. Just walk into that beefsteak, like I do. That 'ere beats physicking all holler."
Thus discoursing, partly to himself and partly to Vinal, and, by turns, berating the grinning steward in a jocular strain, Mr. Hansen continued his repast. When, at last, he left the cabin, Vinal found the solitude too dreary for endurance; and, to break its monotony, he also went on deck.
The vessel still scoured wildly along; and as she plunged through the angry seas, so the moon was sailing among stormy clouds, now eclipsed and lost, now shining brightly out, silvering the seething foam, and casting the shadows of spars and rigging on the glistening deck. Vinal bent over the bulwark and looked down on the bubbles, as they fled past, flashing in the moon.
His thoughts flew backward with them, and dwelt on the hated home from which he was escaping.
"What an outcry! what gapes of wonder, and eyes turned up to heaven! Gulled, befooled, hoodwinked! and now, at last, you have found it out, and make earth and heaven ring with your virtuous spite. I knew you all, and played you as I would play the pieces on a chess board. The game was a good one in the main, but with some blunders, and for those I pay the price. If I had had that villain's brute strength, and the brute nerve that goes with it, there would have been a different story to tell. Before this, I would have found a way to grind him to the earth, and set my foot on his neck. They think him virtuous. He thinks himself so. The shallow-witted idiots! Their eyes can only see skin-deep. They love to be cheated. They swallow fallacies as a child swallows sweetmeats. The tinsel dazzles them, and they take it for gold. Virtue! a delusion of self-interest—self-interest, the spring, lever, and fulcrum of the world. It is for my interest, for every body's interest, that his neighbors should be honest, candid, open, forgiving, charitable, continent, sober, and what not. Therefore, by the general consent of mankind,—the inevitable instinct of self-interest,—such qualities are exalted into sanctity; christened with the name of virtues; draped in white, and crowned with halos; rewarded with praises here and paradise hereafter. Drape the skeleton as you will, the bare skeleton is still there. Paint as thick as you will, the bare skull grins under it,—to all who have the eyes to see, and the hardihood to use them. How many among mankind have courage to face the naked truth? Not one in a thousand. Cannot the fools draw reason out of the analogy of things? Can they not see that, as their bodies will be melted and merged into the bodily substance of the world, so their minds will be merged in the great universal mind,—theanimus mundi,—out of which they sprang, like bubbles on the water, and into which they will sink again, like bubbles when they burst? Immortality! They may please themselves with the name; but of what worth is an immortality where individuality is lost, and each conscious atom drowned in the vast immensity? What a howling and screeching the wind makes in the rigging! If I were given to superstition, I could fancy that a legion from the nether world were bestriding the ropes, yelping in grand jubilation at the sight of——"
Here his thoughts were abruptly cut short. A combing wave struck the vessel. She lurched with violence, and a shower of foam flew over her side. Vinal lost his balance. His feet slipped from under him. He fell, and slid quickly across the wet and tossing deck. Instinctively he braced his feet to stop himself against the bulwark on the lee side. But at the point where they touched it was the large port before mentioned. Though closed to all appearance, the bolt was still unfastened. It flew open at his touch. Vinal clutched to save himself. His fingers slipped on the wet timbers, and with a cry of horror, he was shot into the bubbling surges. There was a blinding in his eyes, a ringing in his ears; then, for an instant, he saw the light, and the black hulk of the vessel fled past like a shadow. Then a wave swept over him: all was darkness and convulsion, and a maddened sense of being flung high aloft, as the wave rolled him towards its crest like a drift sea weed. Here again light broke upon him; and flying above the merciless chaos, he saw something like the white wing of a huge bird. It was the reefed main-topsail of the receding vessel. He shrieked wildly. A torrent of brine dashed back the cry, and foaming over his head, plunged him down into darkness again. Again he rose, gasping and half senseless; and again the ravenous breakers beat him down. A moment of struggle and of agony; then a long nightmare of dreamy horror, while, slowly settling downward, he sank below the turmoil of the storm; slowly and more slowly still, till the denser water sustained his weight. Then with limbs outstretched, he hovered in mid ocean, lonely, void, and vast, like a hawk poised in mid-air, while his felon spirit, bubbling to the surface, winged its dreary flight through the whistling storm.