After some days' delay, the brig put to sea, Morton on board. The cliffs behind Gibraltar came in sight at last, and a fresh levanter blew her out like an arrow upon the Atlantic. They were becalmed off the Azores. The sea was like glass; the turtles came up to sleep at the top; the tar melted out of the seams; and as the vessel moved on the long, lazy swells, the masts kept up their weary creaking from morning till night, and from night till morning. Morton walked the deck in a fever of impatience.
At length an east wind sprang up, and with studding sails spread like wings, the brig ran before it, reeling like a drunken sea-gull.
On the forty-first day, the Neversink heights rose on the horizon. Vessels innumerable passed—steamers, merchantmen, war ships. The highlands of Staten Island, with its villages and villas, lay close on their left, and the Bay of New York opened before them, sparkling in the morning sun, and alive with moving sails. On the right lay a forest of masts; in front, the Castle lifted its ugly familiar front; and farther on, the spire of Trinity towered over the wilderness of brick.
Morton called a boat alongside, embarked his luggage, and went on shore. And, in spite of that depression which follows long and deep excitement, in spite of the anxieties that engrossed him, he felt a thrill of delight as his foot pressed American soil.
This pleasure, however, was short. The thought of Edith Leslie had been so long the solace of his confinement, that it seemed to have grown into a part of himself; at all events, now that his doubts were on the verge of decision, for good or evil, it drove every other thought from his mind. Reaching his hotel, he found that he could not set out for Boston till the afternoon; and to get rid of the interval, he turned over the Boston newspapers in the reading room, searching for the mention of any familiar names. Here he was more successful than he cared to be; for he presently discovered the name of Horace Vinal, figuring in the list of directors of a joint stock company.
"The hound!" muttered Morton; "so he is alive yet!"
And leaving the hotel, he walked up the crowded sidewalk of Broadway, in a mood any thing but tranquil.
He had not gone far, when he became aware of a footstep closely following him. He was about to look back, when a little man passed before him, glancing furtively in his face with a ludicrous expression of doubt, amazement, and curiosity. Morton at once recognized the features of an odd, simple-minded classmate, named Shingles. "Charley," he exclaimed, "how do you do?"
"Itisyou," cried Shingles, with an ejaculation of profound astonishment; "solid flesh and blood!"—grasping Morton's extended hand—"and not your ghost. Why, we all thought you were dead!"
"Not quite," said Morton.
"Dead and buried," repeated Shingles, "off in Transylvania, or some such place."
"Iwasburied, but they buried me alive."
Shingles, who had a taste for the horrible, took the assertion literally, and dilated his eyes like an owl on the lookout for a mouse.
"But how did you manage to get out?"
"I contrived to break loose, after a few years."
Shingles stared in horror and perplexity.
"Don't be frightened, Charley. I'm all right,—neither ghost nor vampire. But we shall be pushed off the sidewalk, if we stand here."
"Come down into Florence's, then, and let me hear about it. Hang me if I ever expected to see you again. I shouldn't like to have met you alone, at night, any where near a graveyard. At our last class meeting, we were all talking about you, and saying you were a deused good fellow, and what a pity it was. And here you are alive; it was all for nothing!"
"That's very unlucky," said Morton, as they descended into the restaurant.
"By Jove," exclaimed Shingles, whose amazement was still strong upon him, "I was never so much astonished in my life as when I saw you just now. I was coming out of a shop, as you passed along the sidewalk. I felt as if I had seen a spirit. I followed behind you, and wasn't quite sure it was you, till I saw your trick of rapping your cane against the bricks as you walked along. Then I said to myself, it's he, or else old Beelzebub, in his likeness. But come, tell us how it was. How did you get off alive?"
Morton briefly recounted his imprisonment and escape, interrupted by the wondering ejaculations of his auditor.
"Who would have thought," exclaimed Shingles, "when you and I used to go up to Elk Pond, on Saturdays, to catch perch and pickerel, that you would ever have been shut up in the dungeon of an Austrian castle? You remember those old times—don't you?"
"That I do," said Morton.
"Do you remember the old tavern, where we used to lunch, and the pretty girl that waited on the table?"
"The girl that you raved about all the way home? Yes, I remember."
"By Jove, to think you've been shut up in a dungeon! Well, I haven't any very brilliant account to give ofmyself. I began to practise law, but I was never meant for a lawyer; so I gave it up, and have been ever since at my father's old place, just pottering about, you know. I was born in the country, and brought up there, and I mean to live there, only now and then I come down to New York, on a bend,—just for a change."
"I suppose you can tell me the news. How are all the fellows? How is Meredith?"
"Very well, I believe. He is living in Boston."
"Married, or single?"
"Single. We are not much of a marrying class. Wren was the first. Was that before you went away, or after? We voted to send him a cradle; but he did not know how to take it. He thought we were fooling him, and got quite angry. No, we are not at all a marrying class, nor a dying class either, for that matter. There are not more than five or six dead, and twelve or fourteen married; we reckoned them up last class meeting."
"Vinal—what of him?"
"O, he's alive, and married, too."
Morton turned pale. "Married!—to whom?"
"Well, they say he's made a first-rate match. I don't know her myself. I'm not a party-going man; I never was, you know. I haven't been thrown in much with that kind of people. But they tell me he couldn't have done better."
"What's her name?" demanded Morton.
"Miss Leslie—Colonel Leslie's daughter. But what's the matter? Are you ill?"
"It's nothing," gasped Morton; "I had a fever in prison, and have never been quite well since. I grow dizzy, sometimes."
"Youwillgrow dizzy, with a vengeance, if you drink wine in that way."
"It's nothing," repeated Morton; "it will be over in a minute. What were you saying?"
"About the fellows that have married,—O, Vinal,—I was saying that he had just got married."
"Well, what about it?"
"Why, nothing particular."
"When was it?"
"Last month."
"Within a month! Are you sure?"
"O, yes. I was in Boston myself at the time, and heard all about it. Her father was ill; so the marriage was private. Vinal is a sort of fellow that somehow I never cottoned to much. I don't think he's very disinterested. I like a fellow that will swear when he is angry, and not keep close shut up, like an oyster."
The tattle of his rustic companion was become intolerable to Morton. He had received his stab, and wished to hear no more. In a few minutes, he rose from the table. "Charley, I am sorry to leave you so suddenly, but I am not well. The fresh air and a hard walk are all that will set me up. I shall see you again."
"But where are you staying?"
"At Blancard's. Good morning, old fellow."
Fab.. . . Elle est——.Sev.Quoi?Fab.Mariée!Sev.. . . . . Ce coup de foudre est grand!—Polyeucte.
The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.—Henry IV.Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.—Othello.
The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.—Henry IV.Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.—Othello.
Morton walked down Broadway at a rapid pace, entered his hotel, mounted to his room, seated himself, rested his forehead on his hand, and, with fixed eyes and compressed lips, remained in this position for some minutes, motionless as if carved out of oak. Then, rising, he paced the room, buried his face in his hands, and groaned with irrepressible anguish. Suddenly the door was burst open, and an Irish servant, apparently in a great hurry, bolted in, and tossed a card on the table, saying at the same time,—"Gen'lman down stairs wants to see you."
Morton broke into a rage, to hide the traces of a different passion.
"Why do you come in without knocking? Learn better manners, or I shall teach them to you."
"I beg pardon, sir," said the servant, reduced at once to the depth of obsequiousness, "there's a gentleman, sir—an officer, sir,—would like to see you, sir."
"An officer!—I don't know any officers. There's some mistake."
"HesaidMr. Morton, sir. This is his card, sir."
Morton looked at the card, and read the name of his classmate Rosny.
"Very well. Ask the gentleman to come up.—No,—here,"—as the servant was retreating along the passage,—"where is he?"
"In the reading room, sir."
"Tell him I will come down in a moment."
"Yes, sir, I will, sir."
Morton adjusted his dress, strove to banish from his features all traces of the emotion which had just overwhelmed him, went down stairs, and met Rosny with an air of as much cordiality as if there were nothing in his mind but the pleasure of seeing an old friend. Rosny, his first welcome over, surveyed him from head to foot.
"A good deal changed! Thinner,—darker complexioned, decidedly older. And yet you've weathered it well. It's a thing that I could never stand,—to be boxed up in four stone walls. I would throttle the jailer first, and then knock my brains out against the stones."
"Did Shingles tell you of my being here?"
"Yes, I met him just now, with his eyes bigger than ever. When I saw him making a dive at me across the street, among the omnibuses and carriages, I knew that something extraordinary was to pay."
"Youhave changed your outward man, too, since I saw you last," said Morton, looking at his companion's costume, which consisted of a gray volunteer uniform.
"Yes, I'm in Uncle Sam's pay now.—Off for Mexico in a day or two;—revel in the Halls of the Montezumas, you know."
"What rank do you hold in the service, Dick?"
"You'll please to address me as Major Rosny; that is, till good luck and the Mexican bullets make a colonel of me.—I have just dropped in to shake hands with you. I have an appointment to keep in five minutes. You have nothing particular to do to-day—have you?"
"Nothing very particular," said Morton, hesitating.
"Then come and dine with me at Delmonico's at four o'clock. What!—you don't mean to say no, do you?—Is that the way you treat your friends? Come, I shall be here at four, precisely.Au revoir."
And, with his usual celerity of motion, Rosny left the hotel.
Morton slowly remounted to his room, locked the door this time, to keep out intruders, seated himself, and gave himself up to his dark and morbid reveries.
"God! of what is this world made! Villany thrives, and innocent men are racked with the pangs of hell. Poverty starving its victims,—luxury poisoning them;—the passions of tigers and the mean vices of reptiles;—treacherous hatred, faithless love;—deceitful hope, vain struggles, endless suffering,—a hell of misery and darkness. A fair sunrise, to cheat the eye;—then clouds and storms, blackness and desolation! To look back over the last five years! Then I was basking in sunshine; and out of that brightness what a doom is fallen on me! My life—my guiding star quenched in a vile morass—lost forever in the arms of this accursed villain!"
Morton rose abruptly, went to the window, and stood looking out with a fixed gaze, wholly unconscious of what was before him. In a moment he turned again, and there was a wild and deadly light in his eyes. A thought had struck him, shooting an electric life through all his veins, and kindling him into a kind of fierce ecstasy. He would go to Vinal, charge him with his perfidy, challenge him, and put him to death. He paced the room in great disorder. A resistless power seemed to have seized upon him, sweeping him forward with the force of a torrent. He clinched his teeth and breathed deeply. The thought of action and of vengeance lighted up his perturbed and gloomy mind as the baleful glare of a conflagration lights up a stormy midnight. Suddenly he stopped, seated himself again, and remained for some minutes in violent mental conflict. "I thank God," he murmured at length, apostrophizing his enemy, "that you were not just now within my reach. You have ruined me for this life; you shall not ruin me for the next. Live, and work out your own destruction."
He walked the room again, calmly enough, but in great dejection. "It may be," he thought, "that I am not his only victim. Perhaps the same art that snared me, has, by some infernal machination, entrapped her also. I believe it;—at least, I will try to believe it."
He looked from the window upon the keen and busy crowds passing below in unbroken streams, to and from their places of business; and his mind tinged them with its own moody coloring.
"You flight of human vultures! How many of you can show lives governed by any generous purpose or noble thought? Behind how many of those sharp and sallow features, furrowed with early wrinkles, lies the soul of a man? Desperate chasers after wealth, which, when you have won it, you have never been taught to use;—reckless pleasure hunters, beguiling others that your victims may beguile in turn, and both sink to perdition together. What you win with trickery, you throw away in vanity or debauch. The counting room or the broker's board by day;—brandy, billiards, and the rendezvous by night;—so you go,—a short, quick road;—driving to your doom with a high-pressure power of rapacity, vain glory, and lust. Man!—the thistledown of fortune, the shuttlecock of passion;—whirled on to destruction by the wildfire in his veins, unless by struggling and by prayer he can keep the narrow adamantine track laid down for his career!"
In such distempered reflections he passed some time. Even in the darkest passages of his imprisonment, his mind had scarcely been shaken so far from its habitual poise. Growing weary at length of solitude, he went out of the house; and, avoiding the great thoroughfares, where he might perhaps meet an acquaintance, he threaded at a rapid pace those meaner streets and lanes, where even the best balanced mind may find abundant food for gloomy meditation. From time to time, as the image of his enemy rose before him, the desire for vengeance came upon him afresh, like a fever fit. He burned to seize Vinal by the throat, and, at least, force him to unmask his iniquity to the world.
As he was passing down Water Street, he recollected, with some vexation, that Rosny had promised to call for him at four o'clock, and retraced his steps to the hotel, where, true to the minute, that punctual adventurer presently appeared.
"Come," said Rosny; "if you are ready, we will walk down street."
They repaired to Delmonico's, where, in a private room, a sumptuous repast had been made ready. Morton, over his companion's claret, was obliged to recount the circumstances of his imprisonment. Rosny, on his part, gave an outline of his own fortunes since they had last met. He had been once or twice on the point of very considerable success, but his vaulting ambition had always overleaped itself, and by too great eagerness and grasping at too much, he had repeatedly failed of his prize, only, however, to rally after every reverse with undiminished confidence and spirit. Such, at least, were the conclusions which Morton drew from his companion's somewhat inflated account of himself.
After the cloth had been removed, Rosny bit off the end of a cigar, lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, and then, holding it between his fingers, went on with an harangue which the operations of the waiter had interrupted.
"I tell you, these are great times that we live in. The world has seen nothing like them since the days of Columbus and Cortes. These are the times and this is the country for a man of merit to thrive in. Let him identify himself with the progressive movements of the age,—yes, faith, let him be a leader of them,—and there's nothing too large for him to hope for. Why, sir, the day is not far off, when the stars and stripes will be seen from Hudson's Bay to Panama. Cuba will come next; Brazil next. Lord knows where we shall stop. There's a field for a man of ability and pluck!"
Morton smiled. Rosny relighted his cigar, which, in the fervor of his declamation, he had allowed to go out, gave a vigorous whiff or two, and proceeded.
"We have just lost a splendid chance. Ididflatter myself that there was going to be a row with England, on the Oregon question; but it was a flash in the pan; it all ended in smoke."
"Why do you want to fight with John Bull?" asked Morton.
"For two good reasons. In the first place, I hate him. I hate him in right of my French ancestors, and I hate him as a true American democrat. Then, over and above all that, a war with the English would be the making of me. I should rise then. I would be their Hannibal. But now we have nothing better to do than giving fits to these yellow Mexican vagabonds."
"A shabby employment," said Morton, "and yet I think I should like it."
"You would, ey?—then go with me to Mexico."
"It's a temptation," said Morton, his eyes lighted with a sudden gleam,—"I am in a mood for any thing, I do not care what."
"I knew there was something ailing you," said Rosny; "why, you have had no appetite. You've lost all your spirits. Has any thing happened? Are you ill?"
"Nothing to speak of. I am well enough in health."
"Well, come with me to Mexico. When a man is under a cloud, he always makes the better soldier for it. If you have had bad luck, why, you can fight like a Trojan."
"I could storm Hell Gates to-day," exclaimed Morton, giving a momentary vent to his long pent up emotion.
"Good! I always knew that there was stuff in you, though youareworth half a million. It isn't that, though—is it? You haven't lost property—have you?"
"Not that I know. Never mind, Dick; every man has his little vexations, sometimes, and is entitled to the privilege of swearing at them."
"Well, I am not the man to pry into your private affairs. Come with me to Mexico. I can promise you a captain's commission,—perhaps I can get you a major's. I am not a cipher in the democratic party, I'd have you know, though I am not yet what I shall be soon. I helped Polk to his election, and my word will go for something. But, pshaw!—what am I talking about? With your money, and a little management, you can get any thing you want."
"I have more than half a mind," said Morton, hesitating; "but, no,—I won't go."
"Pshaw, man! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what chances you are throwing away. Look at it. It isn't the military fame,—the glorification in the newspapers,—seeing pictures of yourself in the shop windows, charging full tilt among the Mexicans, and all that. You can take that for what it's worth. Tastes differ in such matters. But, I tell you, the men who distinguish themselves in Mexico are going to carry all before them in the political world. The people will go for them, neck or nothing. I know what our enlightened democracy is made of."—Here a slight grin flickered for an instant about the corners of his mouth; but he grew serious again at once.—"Yes, sir, a new world is going to begin. The old incumbents—Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and the rest—will pass off the stage, before long, and make room for younger men—men who will keep up with the times. Then will be our chance! Put brass in your forehead,—you have money enough in your purse already,—get a halo of Mexican glory round your head,—and you will shoot up like a rocket. First go to the war, then dive into politics, and you and I will be the biggest frogs in the puddle."
"There's a fallacy in your conclusions," said Morton; "the officers of rank, the generals and colonels, will carry off the glory; and we shall have nothing but the blows."
"The Mexican bullets will make that all right. I tell you, they are going to fly like hail. They will dock off the heads above us, and make a clear path for us to mount by."
"Suppose that they should hit the wrong man," suggested Morton.
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Rosny, "we won't look at the matter in that light."
There was a momentary pause.
"Now's your time," urged Rosny. "Come, say the word."
Morton paced the room with knit brows and lips pressed together.
"Glory,"—exclaimed his military friend, summing up the advantages of a Mexican campaign,—"glory,—preferment,—life, of the fastest kind,—what more would you have?"
Morton had a strong native thirst for adventure, and apenchantfor military exploit. In his present frame of mind, he felt violently impelled to cut loose from all his old ideas and scruples, and launch at once upon a new life, fresh, unshackled, and reckless,—to plunge headlong into the tumult of the active world; fight its battles, run its races, give and take its blows, strain after its prizes,—forget the past and all its associations in the fever of the present. Mexico rose before his thoughts—snowy volcanoes, and tropical forests; the cocoa, the palm, and the cactus; bastioned cities and intrenched heights; the rush and din of battle; war with its fierce excitements and unbounded license. To his disordered mood, the scene had fascinations almost resistless, and he burned to play his part in the fiery drama.
"And why not?"—so his thoughts ran,—"why not obey what fate and nature dictate? Calm, and peace, and happiness,—farewell to them! That stake is played and lost. I am no more fit now for domestic life than a prairie wolf. I should answer better for an Ishmaelite or a Pawnee.Deus vult.Why should I fly in the face of Providence?"
Rosny, his uniform coat half unbuttoned for the sake of ease, sat lolling back in his chair, puffing wreaths of cigar smoke from his lips, eying Morton as he paced the room, and throwing out, from time to time, a word of encouragement to stimulate his resolution. He was about to lose all patience at his companion's pertinacious silence, when the latter stopped, and turned towards him with the air of one whose mind is made up.
"Dick," said Morton, "when I was in college, I laid down my plan of life, and adopted one maxim—to which I mean to hold fast."
"Well, what was that?" demanded the impatient Rosny.
"Never to abandon an enterprise once begun; to push on till the point is gained, in spite of pain, delay, danger, disappointment,—any thing."
"Good, so far. What next?"
"Some years ago, I entered upon certain plans, which have not yet been accomplished. I have been interrupted, balked, kicked and cuffed by fortune, till I am more than half disgusted with the world. But I mean still to take up the broken thread where I left it, and carry it forward as before."
"The moral of that is, I suppose, that you won't go to Mexico."
"Precisely."
"Well, I shan't try to debate the matter with you. I know you of old. When your foot is once down, it's useless for me to try to make you lift it up again. But remember what I say,—you will repent not taking my advice."
Rosny finished his cigar, and they left the restaurant together. On their way up the street, they stopped at a recruiting office. "Captain Rumbold, my friend Mr. Morton," said Rosny, who soon after, however, entered into an earnest conversation with the officer upon some affair of business, leaving Morton at leisure to observe six or eight volunteers, who were about to be sent to Governor's Island, in charge of a sergeant.
"What do you think of our boys?" asked Rosny, casting a comical look at Morton, as they went down stairs.
"I never saw such a gang of tobacco-chewing, soap-locked rascals."
"Food for powder," said Rosny, "they'll fill a ditch as well as better. The country needs a little blood-letting. These fellows are not like Falstaff's, though. They will fight. Not a man of them but will whip his weight in wildcats."
A raconter ses maux, souvent on les soulage.—Polyeucte.
A raconter ses maux, souvent on les soulage.—Polyeucte.
"Do you remember Buckland?" asked Rosny, as they walked up Broadway.
"The Virginian? Yes, perfectly."
"There he is."
Morton, following the direction of his companion's eye, saw, a little in advance, a tall man, slenderly but gracefully formed, walking slowly, with a listless air, as if but half conscious of what was going on around him. They checked their pace, to avoid overtaking him.
"Poor fellow!" said Rosny; "he's in a bad way."
"I am sorry to hear it. He was a lively, pleasant fellow when I knew him,—very fond of the society of ladies."
"That's all over now. He has been very dissipated for the last two or three years, and is broken down completely, body and mind. It's a great pity. I am very sorry for him," said Rosny, in whom, notwithstanding his restless ambition, there was a vein of warm and kindly feeling.
"Is he living in New York?"
"Yes, he has been here ever since leaving college. He began to practise as a lawyer. It's much he ever did or ever will do at the law! There was never any go-ahead in him—no energy, no decision—and he does nothing now, but read a little, and lounge about, in a moody, abstracted way, with his wits in the clouds. Get him into good company, and wind him up with a glass of brandy, and he is himself again for a while,—tells a story and sings a song as he used to do,—but it is soon over. Do you want to speak to him?"
"Yes."
"Come on, then. How are you, Buckland? Here's an old friend, redivivus."
Hearing himself thus accosted, Buckland turned towards the speaker a face which, though pale and sallow, was still handsome. His dress, contrary to his former habit, was careless and negligent; and, though he could not have been more than thirty, a few gray hairs had begun to mingle with his long, black moustache. Changed as he was, he had that air of quiet and graceful courtesy which can only be acquired by habitual intercourse with polished society in early life; and Morton saw in him the melancholy wreck of a highly-bred gentleman.
When the first surprise of the meeting was over, Rosny related the story of Morton's imprisonment to the wondering ear of Buckland. Having urgent business on his hands, he soon after took leave of his two companions. Morton and Buckland, after strolling for a time up and down Broadway, entered the restaurant attached to Blancard's hotel, and took a table in a remote corner of the room, which was nearly empty.
Buckland was, as Rosny had described him, moody and abstracted, often seeming at a loss to collect his thoughts. He sipped his chocolate in silence, and, even when spoken to, sometimes returned no answer. Morton, in little better spirits than his companion, sat leaning his forehead dejectedly on his hand.
"I am sorry," said Buckland, after one of his silent fits, "to be so wretched a companion; but I am not the man I used to be."
"We are but a melancholy pair," replied Morton.
"I saw from the first that you were very much out of spirits,—not at all what one would expect a man to be who had just escaped from sufferings like yours. There is some trouble on your mind."
Morton was fatigued and sick at heart. He had practised self-control till he was tired of it; and he allowed a shade of emotion to pass across his face.
"There is a woman in it," said Buckland, regarding him with a scrutinizing eye.
"Why do you say that?" demanded Morton, startled and dismayed at this home thrust.
"Are not women the source of nine tenths of our sufferings?" replied Buckland. "The world is a huge, clashing, jangling, disjointed piece of mechanism, and they are the authors of its worst disorder."
"Sometimes," said Morton, "men will blame women for sufferings which they might, with better justice, lay at their own doors."
Buckland raised his head quickly, and looked in his companion's face. "It may be so," he said, after a moment's pause. "Perhaps you are right,—perhaps you are right. But, let that be as it will, there are no miseries in life to match those which spring out of the relation of the sexes."
Morton, for reasons of his own, did not care to pursue the subject, and his companion relapsed into his former silence. After a time, they went into the smoking room, where Buckland lighted a cigar. Morton observed that, as he did so, his fingers trembled in a manner which showed that his whole nervous system was shattered and unstrung.
"I would not advise you to smoke much," said Morton; "you have not the constitution to bear it."
Buckland smiled bitterly. He had grown reckless whether he injured himself or not.
They seated themselves near the window; but Buckland soon grew uneasy, alternately looking at his watch and gazing into the street. At length he rose, and asked Morton to walk out with him. The latter, on the principle that misery loves company, readily complied; and they went down Broadway nearly to the Bowling Green. Here Buckland turned, and they retraced their steps to within a few squares of the Astor House. This they repeated several times, Morton's companion constantly resisting every movement on his part to vary in the least the course of their promenade. While their walk was up the street, Buckland, though evidently restless and uneasy, had the same abstracted air as before; but when they moved in the opposite direction, his whole manner changed, and he seemed anxiously on the watch, as if for some person whom he expected every moment to meet. It was about eight in the evening. The street was brilliant with gas; crowds of people, men and women, were moving along the sidewalk; and upon each group, as it approached, Buckland bent a gaze of eager scrutiny.
They were passing a large bookstore, when Morton felt his companion suddenly press the arm on which he was leaning. Hastily stepping aside, and dragging Morton with him, he ensconced himself behind the board on which the bookseller pasted his advertising placards, which partially concealed him, and, together with the projection over the shop door, screened him from the light of the neighboring gas lamp. Here he stood motionless, his eyes riveted on some approaching object. Following the direction of his gaze, Morton saw a tall man in the uniform of an army officer of rank, and, leaning on his arm, a light and delicate female figure, elegantly, but not showily dressed. They were close at hand when he discovered them, and in a moment they had passed on under the glare of the lamp, and mingled with the throng beyond; but Morton retained a vivid impression of features beautifully moulded, and a pair of restless dark eyes, roving from side to side with piercing, yet furtive glances.
Buckland, stepping from his retreat, made a hesitating, forward movement, as if undecided whether to follow them or not. He stopped with a kind of suppressed groan, and taking Morton's arm again, moved slowly with him down the street. Two or three times, Morton spoke to him, but he seemed not to hear, or, at best, answered in monosyllables, with an absent air. When they reached the hotel, then recently established on the European plan, near the Bowling Green, Buckland entered, called for brandy, and, his companion declining to join him, hastily drank the liquor with the same trembling hand which Morton had before remarked. On leaving the house, they continued their walk downward till they reached the Battery. And as they entered the shaded walks of that promenade, the moon was shining on the trees, and on the quiet waters of the adjacent bay.
"You must think very strangely of me," said Buckland, at length breaking his long silence; "in fact, I scarcely know myself. I am a changed man,—a lost and broken man, body and soul,—a sea-weed drifting helplessly on the water."
"You take too dark a view," said Morton, greatly moved; "there is good hope for you yet, if you will not fling it away."
Buckland shook his head. "I wish I had been born such a man as Rosny. He is a practical man of the world, always in pursuit of something, with nothing to excite or trouble him but the success or failure of his schemes. He cannot understand my feelings. Yes, I wish to Heaven I had been born a practical, hard-headed man,—such, for instance, as your cool, common sense Yankees. What do they know or care for the troubles that are wearing me away by inches?"
"Buckland," said Morton, "your nerves are very much weakened and disordered, and particular troubles weigh upon and engross you, as they could not if you were well. What you most need is a good physician."
"'Could he minister to a mind diseased?' Come, sit down here—on this bench. Perhaps you have never felt—I hope you have never had occasion to feel—impelled to relieve some torment pressing on your mind, by telling it to a friend. Genuine friends are rare. When one meets them, he knows them by instinct. I need not fear you; you will not laugh at me to yourself, and tell me, as some others do, that a man of force and energy would fling off an affair like mine, and not suffer it to weigh upon him like a nightmare."
"When you have recovered your health, perhaps I may tell you so; but not till then."
"I am like the Ancient Mariner," continued Buckland, with a faint smile; "when I find the man who must hear my story, I know him the moment I see his face. Your good sense will tell you that I have been a knave and a fool; but your good heart will prevent your showing me that you think so."
Morton looked with deep compassion on his old comrade, and wondered what follies or misfortunes could have sunk his former gallant spirit so far. In his weakened and depressed condition, Buckland seemed to lean for support on his friend's firmer and better governed nature, and to draw strength from the contact.
"After all," he said in a livelier tone, "what right have I to bore you with this story of mine?"
"Any thing that you are willing to tell," answered Morton, "I shall be glad to hear."
"I had an old friend," Buckland began, with some glimmering of his former vivacity,—"De Ruyter,—I don't think you ever knew him. He was the representative of a family great in its day and generation, but broken in fortune, and without means to support its pretensions. This did not at all tend to diminish their pride,—precisely of that kind which goeth before destruction. De Ruyter was a good fellow, however, and, if he had had twenty thousand a year, he would have spent it all. One summer, four years ago, he went with his child—his wife had died the year before—and his two sisters to spend a few weeks at a quiet little watering-place on the Jersey shore, frequented by people of good standing, but not fashionably inclined. De Ruyter praised the sporting in the neighborhood, and persuaded me to go with him.
"His sisters were very agreeable women,—cultivated and lively, but proud as Lucifer, and desperately exclusive. Anouveau richewas, in their eyes, equivalent to every thing that is odious and detestable; and to call a man aparvenuwas to steep him in infamy forever. The men at the house were, for the most part, of no great account—chiefly old bachelors, or sober family men run to seed, with a number of awkward young boobies not yet in bloom. The two ladies liked the company of a lazy fellow like me, a butterfly of society, with the poets, at least the sentimental ones, on my tongue's end, and the latest advices from the fashionable world. I staid there a week, and when that was over they persuaded me to stay another.
"On the day after, there was a fresh arrival,—a gentleman from Philadelphia, with his sister and his daughter. He only remained for the night, and went away in the morning, leaving the ladies behind. The sister was a starched old person,—a sort of purblind duenna, with grizzled hair, gold spectacles, and cap. The daughter I need not describe, for you saw her half an hour ago.
"Her family was good enough; her father a lawyer in Philadelphia. She was well educated—played admirably, and spoke excellent French and Italian. How much or how little she had frequented cultivated society, I do not know,—her own assertions went for nothing; but she had the utmost ease and grace of manner, and an invincible self-possession. Her ruling passion was a compound of vanity and pride, an insatiable craving for admiration and power. Whatever associates she happened to be among, nothing satisfied her but to be the cynosure of all eyes, the centre of all influence. I have known women enough,—women of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but such a one as she I never met but once. I shall not soon forget the evening when I first saw her, seated opposite me at the tea table. She was a small, light figure,—as you saw her just now,—the features, perhaps, a trifle too large. I never recall her, as she appeared at that time, without thinking of Byron's description of one of his mischief-making heroines:—
"She was utterly unscrupulous. The depth of her artifice was unfathomable. She soon became the moving spirit of that little cockney watering-place—some admiring her, some hating her, some desperately smitten with her. I can see through her manoeuvres now, but then I was blind as a mole. She understood every body about her, and held out to each the kind of bait which was most likely to attract him. There was a sort ofdilettantethere whose heart she won by talking to him of the Italian poets, which, by the way, she really loved, for there was a dash of genius in her. She aimed to impress each one with the idea that in her heart she liked him better than any one else; and it was her game to appear on all occasions perfectly impulsive and spontaneous, while, in fact, every look, word, or act of hers had an object in it. In short, she was an accomplished actress; and, had her figure been more commanding, she might have rivalled Rachel on the stage. No two people were exactly agreed in opinion concerning her; but all—I mean all the men—thought her excessively interesting; and I remember that two young collegians had nearly fought a duel about her, each thinking that she was in love with him. Nothing delighted her more than to become the occasion of the jealousy of married women towards their husbands,—nothing, that is, except the still greater delight of fascinating a certain young New Yorker who had come to the house on a visit to his betrothed.
"For some time every one supposed her to be unmarried. She did her best, indeed, to encourage the idea, since she thus gained to herself more notice and more marked attentions. At length, to the astonishment of every body, it came out that she had been, for more than a year, married to a cousin of her own, a weak and imbecile youngster, as I afterwards learned, who was then absent on an East India voyage, and who, happily for himself, has since died.
"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision; and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company, where they would tell with the sharpest effect.
"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in her. Her passions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the feeling she expressed were real or pretended.
"The grace and apparentabandonof her manner, her beauty, her wit, her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put forth all her arts, and caught me.
"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is precisely analogous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately. Her passions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane. She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land on board one of the Cunard steamers.
"For the next two months, I was in paradise. Then came a purgatory, or something worse. Her passion for me subsided as quickly as it had arisen. She was herself again. Her vanity and artifice, her insatiable love of intrigue and adventure, returned with double force. I wore myself out with watching, vexation, and anxiety. She tried every means to attract attention and draw admirers, and every where she succeeded. I remember that one night at Naples she insisted on going with me to the theatre of San Carlo, in the dress of a young man, and wearing a moustache. The disguise was detected, as she meant it should be, and eyes centred upon her from all the boxes. I tried to travel with her through remote and unfrequented countries, such as the interior of Sicily; but it was all in vain. There was no resisting her fiery will, and I was compelled to go wherever she wished.
"One afternoon, at Messina, at thetable d'hôte, we met a lively young Spanish nobleman. She caught his eye; I saw them exchange glances. In spite of all my precautions, messages, billets, and momentary interviews passed between them. I challenged the Spaniard, gave him a severe flesh wound, and thought I had taught him a lesson. Not at all. On the next day, coming to my lodgings, I found her gone, no one could tell whither. I was desperate, and could have done any thing; but there was nothing to be done. I could not find her, and if I had it would have availed me nothing.
"I returned to America, wrought up to the verge of a nervous fever; and, by mingling in amusements of every kind, tried to forget her. In six or eight months I had partially succeeded. My health was not good, and I had made a journey of a few weeks to the west; when, on returning,—it was a sultry July afternoon,—I remember it as if it were yesterday,—sitting in the reading room window of the New York Hotel, I saw her passing down Broadway in an open carriage; and, with the sight, my passion awoke again at fever heat. She had left the Spaniard, and come to America with a New York gentleman, who had lived for some time in Paris. I had an interview with her, and she promised to join me again; but she broke her word. She saw at once what a power she still held over me; and she has used it most mercilessly ever since. She practises all her arts on me, as if I were a new lover, whom she wished to insnare. Sometimes she flatters me; sometimes she repels me; now and then she allows me stolen interviews, or long walks or rides with her. She plays me as an angler plays a salmon that he has hooked, till he brings him gasping to his death. I have plunged into dissipations of all kinds, to drown the memory of her. It is all useless. She knows the torments I am suffering, and she rejoices in them. Perhaps she remembers that it was I who made her what she is, and takes this for her revenge. But, pshaw!—if I had not eloped with her, some one else would have done so soon; and that she perfectly well knows. It is her vanity—nothing but her vanity: she delights to hold me in bondage; she knows that I am her slave, and she glories in it."
"But why, in Heaven's name," demanded Morton, "do you not break away from this miserable fascination?"
"There it is!" Buckland answered; "I only wish that I had the power. I have resolved twenty times to leave New York, and my resolution has failed me as often."
"Who takes charge of her now?"
"Colonel ——. He seems as crazy after her as I was."
"I can hardly comprehend," pursued Morton, "how, understanding her character as you do, you can still remain so infatuated with her."
"Neither can I comprehend it. I can only feel it. Strange—is it not?—that I, who used to be regarded as a mere flirt; who, as a lady acquaintance once told me, had a great deal too much sentiment, but no heart at all; I, who, in my time, have written love verses to twenty different ladies,—should be so enchained at last by this black-eyed witch!"
"Very strange."
"And now what would you recommend? what advice do you give me? You see in what a predicament I stand. What ought I to do?"
"With your broken health and weakened nerves," said Morton, "it is useless for you to attempt contending against this fancy that has taken possession of you. You must run away from it. Take a long voyage; the longer the better. I will go with you to engage your passage to-morrow."
Buckland hesitated at first, slowly shaking his head; but in a moment he said, with some animation, "Yes, I will go, on one condition; you must promise to go with me."
The will, the motive power,—never very strong in him,—was now completely relaxed. He was unfitted for action of any kind, and was, as he himself said, no better than a sea weed drifting on the water. Morton walked the streets with him for some hours. He seemed to cling to his companion, like an ivy to the supporting trunk, and was evidently reluctant to resign his company. At length, Morton, who was exhausted with the excitements of the day, pleaded fatigue, and bade him good night. He turned again, however, and, by the blaze of the gas lamps, followed with his eye Buckland's slowly receding figure.
"A few hours ago," he said to himself, "I thought myself unhappy; but what is my suffering compared to his? I am not, thank God, the builder of my own misfortunes, nor pursued with the reflection that they are a just retribution for my own misdeeds. With health, liberty, self-respect, and a good conscience, what man has a right to call himself miserable?"