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Elsie Venner

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elsie Venner, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

[The Physician and Poet, Not the Jurist O. W. Holmes, Jr.]

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Title: Elsie Venner

Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Release Date: September 28, 2004 [EBook #2696]

Language: English

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ELSIE VENNER

By Oliver Wendell Holmes

PREFACE.

This tale was published in successive parts in the "Atlantic Monthly,"

under the name of "The Professor's Story," the first number having

appeared in the third week of December, 1859. The critic who is curious

in coincidences must refer to the Magazine for the date of publication of

the chapter he is examining.

In calling this narrative a "romance," the Author wishes to make sure of

being indulged in the common privileges of the poetic license. Through

all the disguise of fiction a grave scientific doctrine may be detected

lying beneath some of the delineations of character. He has used this

doctrine as a part of the machinery of his story without pledging his

absolute belief in it to the extent to which it is asserted or implied.

It was adopted as a convenient medium of truth rather than as an accepted

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scientific conclusion. The reader must judge for himself what is the

value of various stories cited from old authors. He must decide how much

of what has been told he can accept either as having actually happened,

or as possible and more or less probable. The Author must be permitted,

however, to say here, in his personal character, and as responsible to

the students of the human mind and body, that since this story has been

in progress he has received the most startling confirmation of the

possibility of the existence of a character like that which he had drawn

as a purely imaginary conception in Elsie Venner.

BOSTON, January, 1861.

A SECOND PREFACE.

This is the story which a dear old lady, my very good friend, spoke of as

"a medicated novel," and quite properly refused to read. I was always

pleased with her discriminating criticism. It is a medicated novel, and

if she wished to read for mere amusement and helpful recreation there was

no need of troubling herself with a story written with a different end in

view.

This story has called forth so many curious inquiries that it seems worth

while to answer the more important questions which have occurred to its

readers.

In the first place, it is not based on any well-ascertained physiological

fact. There are old fables about patients who have barked like dogs or

crowed like cocks, after being bitten or wounded by those animals. There

is nothing impossible in the idea that Romulus and Remus may have imbibed

wolfish traits of character from the wet nurse the legend assigned them,

but the legend is not sound history, and the supposition is nothing more

than a speculative fancy. Still, there is a limbo of curious evidence

bearing on the subject of pre-natal influences sufficient to form the

starting-point of an imaginative composition.

The real aim, of the story was to test the doctrine of "original sin" and

human responsibility for the disordered volition coming under that

technical denomination. Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by the venom of a

crotalus before she was born, morally responsible for the "volitional"

aberrations, which translated into acts become what is known as sin, and,

it may be, what is punished as crime? If, on presentation of the

evidence, she becomes by the verdict of the human conscience a proper

object of divine pity and not of divine wrath, as a subject of moral

poisoning, wherein lies the difference between her position at the bar of

judgment, human or divine, and that of the unfortunate victim who

received a moral poison from a remote ancestor before he drew his first

breath?

It might be supposed that the character of Elsie Veneer was suggested by

some of the fabulous personages of classical or mediaeval story. I

remember that a French critic spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine. I

ought to have been ashamed, perhaps, but I had, not the slightest idea

who Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that she was a

fairy, who for some offence was changed every Saturday to a serpent from

her waist downward. I was of course familiar with Keats's Lamia, another

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imaginary being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent.

My story was well advanced before Hawthorne's wonderful "Marble Faun,"

which might be thought to have furnished me with the hint of a mixed

nature,--human, with an alien element,--was published or known to me. So

that my poor heroine found her origin, not in fable or romance, but in a

physiological conception fertilized by a theological dogma.

I had the dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner a well-meant

effort to dramatize "Elsie Veneer." Unfortunately, a physiological

romance, as I knew beforehand, is hardly adapted for the melodramatic

efforts of stage representation. I can therefore say, with perfect

truth, that I was not disappointed. It is to the mind, and not to the

senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to render the

character and events objective on the stage, or to make them real by

artistic illustrations, are almost of necessity failures. The story has

won the attention and enjoyed the favor of a limited class of readers,

and if it still continues to interest others of the same tastes and

habits of thought I can ask nothing more of it.

January 23, 1883.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

I have nothing of importance to add to the two preceding Prefaces. The

continued call for this story, which was not written for popularity, but

with a very serious purpose, has somewhat surprised and, I need not add,

gratified me. I can only restate the motive idea of the tale in a little

different language. Believing, as I do, that our prevailing theologies

are founded upon an utterly false view of the relation of man to his

Creator, I attempted to illustrate the doctrine of inherited moral

responsibility for other people's misbehavior. I tried to make out a

case for my poor Elsie, whom the most hardened theologian would find it

hard to blame for her inherited ophidian tastes and tendencies. How,

then, is he to blame mankind for inheriting "sinfulness" from their first

parents? May not the serpent have bitten Eve before the birth of Cain,

her first-born? That would have made an excuse for Cain's children, as

Elsie's ante-natal misfortune made an excuse for her. But what

difference does it make in the child's responsibility whether his

inherited tendencies come from a snake-bite or some other source which he

knew nothing about and could not have prevented from acting? All this is

plain enough, and the only use of the story is to bring the dogma of

inherited guilt and its consequences into a clearer point of view.

But, after all, the tale must have proved readable as a story to account

for the large number of editions which it has reached.

Some readers have been curious about the locality the writer was thought

to have in view. No particular place was intended. Some of the

characters may have been thought to have been drawn from life; but the

personages mentioned are mostly composites, like Mr. Galton's compound

photographic likenesses, and are not calculated to provoke scandal or

suits for libel.

O. W. H.

BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 3, 1891.

ELSIE VENNER.

CHAPTER I.

THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND.

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal

aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from

which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions,

or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp

line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and the

unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for

an abstraction,--whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here

as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.

What we mean by "aristocracy" is merely the richer part of the community,

that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not "kerridges,")

kidglove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies' heads, give parties

where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and

have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to

people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in

the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United

States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred,

some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,--but they form a class,

and are named as above in the common speech.

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when

subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and

here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these

into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for

four ancient maidens,--with whom it is best the family should die out,

unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did. Now a million is

a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the

summer's growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of

meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons

and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they

milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the

millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of

persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human

element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration without

falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and, fugitive fact

of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, unless some special

means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the third

generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that one need

not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he knew in

childhood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into the hands

of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels when

the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating their venison

over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers,

wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in long boots with

silken tassels.

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call

it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown to

be a caste,--not in any odious sense;--but, by the repetition of the same

influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct

organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity,

and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the

good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all

we can and tell all we see.

If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our

colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two

different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme

cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure

is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,--inelegant, partly from careless

attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,--the face is uncouth in feature, or

at least common,--the mouth coarse and unformed,--the eye unsympathetic,

even if bright,--the movements of the face are clumsy, like those of the

limbs,--the voice is unmusical,--and the enunciation as if the words were

coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect

is commonly slender, his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,--his

features are regular and of a certain delicacy,--his eye is bright and

quick,--his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers

dance over their music, and his whole air, though it may be timid, and

even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what

to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the

first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a

pointer or a setter to his field-work.

The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to

bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of

life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than

their share of development,--the organs of thought and expression less

than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed.

A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.

You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will

and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few

of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is, in a large proportion

of cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons.

That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the Brahmin

caste of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled

aristocracy referred to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge.

There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and

all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary.

Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break

out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up

after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their

place, it maybe,--but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood

of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of the old

historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female

descendant.

There probably is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern

States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general

distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very

probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come

direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,--and he may, perhaps,

even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the

English alphabet, but of no other.

It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude

of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual

classes. The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training

are occasionally brought about without it. There are natural filters as

well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or

less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that

sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and

sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual

aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual

acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain

of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large

uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary

class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's republicanism;

thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical. The race of the

hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor

for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of

animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an

unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always

overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality.

A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add

muscular) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as his

thinking organs. You broke down in your great speech, did you? Yes,

your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia in '82, after working too

hard on his famous Election Sermon. All this does not touch the main

fact: our scholars come chiefly from a privileged order, just as our best

fruits come from well-known grafts, though now and then a seedling apple,

like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from

a nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in the

land.

Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin caste of

New England.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE.

Bernard C. Langdon, a young man attending Medical Lectures at the school

connected with one of our principal colleges, remained after the Lecture

one day and wished to speak with the Professor. He was a student of

mark,--first favorite of his year, as they say of the Derby colts. There

are in every class half a dozen bright faces to which the teacher

naturally, directs his discourse, and by the intermediation of whose

attention he seems to hold that of the mass of listeners. Among these

some one is pretty sure to take the lead, by virtue of a personal

magnetism, or some peculiarity of expression, which places the face in

quick sympathetic relations with the lecturer. This was a young man with

such a face; and I found,--for you have guessed that I was the

"Professor" above-mentioned,--that, when there was anything difficult to

be explained, or when I was bringing out some favorite illustration of a

nice point, (as, for instance; when I compared the cell-growth, by which

Nature builds up a plant or an animal, to the glassblower's similar mode

of beginning,--always with a hollow sphere, or vesicle, whatever he is

going to make,) I naturally looked in his face and gauged my success by

its expression.

It was a handsome face,--a little too pale, perhaps, and would have borne

something more of fulness without becoming heavy. I put the organization

to which it belongs in Section B of Class 1 of my Anglo-American

Anthropology (unpublished). The jaw in this section is but slightly

narrowed,--just enough to make the width of the forehead tell more

decidedly. The moustache often grows vigorously, but the whiskers are

thin. The skin is like that of Jacob, rather than like Esau's. One

string of the animal nature has been taken away, but this gives only a

greater predominance to the intellectual chords. To see just how the

vital energy has been toned down, you must contrast one of this section

with a specimen of Section A of the same class,--say, for instance, one

of the old-fashioned, full-whiskered, red-faced, roaring, big Commodores

of the last generation, whom you remember, at least by their portraits,

in ruffled shirts, looking as hearty as butchers and as plucky as

bull-terriers, with their hair combed straight up from their foreheads,

which were not commonly very high or broad. The special form of physical

life I have been describing gives you a right to expect more delicate

perceptions and a more reflective, nature than you commonly find in

shaggy-throated men, clad in heavy suits of muscles.

The student lingered in the lecture-room, looking all the time as if he

wanted to say something in private, and waiting for two or three others,

who were still hanging about, to be gone.

Something is wrong!--I said to myself, when I noticed his

expression.--Well, Mr. Langdon,--I said to him, when we were alone,--can

I do anything for you to-day?

You can, Sir,--he said.--I am going to leave the class, for the present,

and keep school.

Why, that 's a pity, and you so near graduating! You'd better stay and

finish this course and take your degree in the spring, rather than break

up your whole plan of study.

I can't help myself, Sir,--the young man answered.--There 's trouble at

home, and they cannot keep me here as they have done. So I must look out

for myself for a while. It's what I've done before, and am ready to do

again. I came to ask you for a certificate of my fitness to teach a

common school, or a high school, if you think I am up to that. Are you

willing to give it to me?

Willing? Yes, to be sure,--but I don't want you to go. Stay; we'll make

it easy for you. There's a fund will do something for you, perhaps.

Then you can take both the annual prizes, if you like,--and claim them in

money, if you want that more than medals.

I have thought it all over,--he answered,--and have pretty much made up

my mind to go.

A perfectly gentlemanly young man, of courteous address and mild

utterance, but means at least as much as he says. There are some people

whose rhetoric consists of a slight habitual under-statement. I often

tell Mrs. Professor that one of her "I think it's sos" is worth the

Bible-oath of all the rest of the household that they "know it's so."

When you find a person a little better than his word, a little more

liberal than his promise, a little more than borne out in his statement

by his facts, a little larger in deed than in speech, you recognize a

kind of eloquence in that person's utterance not laid down in Blair or

Campbell.

This was a proud fellow, self-trusting, sensitive, with

family-recollections that made him unwilling to accept the kind of aid

which many students would have thankfully welcomed. I knew him too well

to urge him, after the few words which implied that he was determined to

go. Besides, I have great confidence in young men who believe in

themselves, and are accustomed to rely on their own resources from an

early period. When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully,

the World, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to

find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away

timid adventurers. I have seen young men more than once, who came to a

great city without a single friend, support themselves and pay for their

education, lay up money in a few years, grow rich enough to travel, and

establish themselves in life, without ever asking a dollar of any person

which they had not earned. But these are exceptional cases. There are

horse-tamers, born so,--as we all know; there are woman-tamers, who

bewitch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the children of Hamelin; and

there are world-tamers, who can make any community, even a Yankee one,

get down and let them jump on its back as easily as Mr. Rarey saddled

Cruiser.

Whether Langdon was of this sort or not I could not say positively; but

he had spirit, and, as I have said, a family-pride which would not let

him be dependent. The New England Brahmin caste often gets blended with

connections of political influence or commercial distinction. It is a

charming thing for the scholar, when his fortune carries him in this way

into some of the "old families" who have fine old houses, and city-lots

that have risen in the market, and names written in all the stock-books

of all the dividend-paying companies. His narrow study expands into a

stately library, his books are counted by thousands instead of hundreds,

and his favorites are dressed in gilded calf in place of plebeian

sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of cloth and paper.

The Reverend Jedediah Langdon, grandfather of our young gentleman, had

made an advantageous alliance of this kind. Miss Dorothea Wentworth had

read one of his sermons which had been printed "by request," and became

deeply interested in the young author, whom she had never seen. Out of

this circumstance grew a correspondence, an interview, a declaration, a

matrimonial alliance, and a family of half a dozen children. Wentworth

Langdon, Esquire, was the oldest of these, and lived in the old

family-mansion. Unfortunately, that principle of the diminution of

estates by division, to which I have referred, rendered it somewhat

difficult to maintain the establishment upon the fractional income which

the proprietor received from his share of the property. Wentworth

Langdon, Esq., represented a certain intermediate condition of life not

at all infrequent in our old families. He was the connecting link

between the generation which lived in ease, and even a kind of state,

upon its own resources, and the new brood, which must live mainly by its

wits or industry, and make itself rich, or shabbily subside into that

lower stratum known to social geologists by a deposit of Kidderminster

carpets and the peculiar aspect of the fossils constituting the family

furniture and wardrobe. This slack-water period of a race, which comes

before the rapid ebb of its prosperity, is familiar to all who live in

cities. There are no more quiet, inoffensive people than these children

of rich families, just above the necessity of active employment, yet not

in a condition to place their own children advantageously, if they happen

to have families. Many of them are content to live unmarried. Some mend

their broken fortunes by prudent alliances, and some leave a numerous

progeny to pass into the obscurity from which their ancestors emerged; so

that you may see on handcarts and cobblers' stalls names which, a few

generations back, were upon parchments with broad seals, and tombstones

with armorial bearings.

In a large city, this class of citizens is familiar to us in the streets.

They are very courteous in their salutations; they have time enough to

bow and take their hats off,--which, of course, no businessman can afford

to do. Their beavers are smoothly brushed, and their boots well

polished; all their appointments are tidy; they look the respectable

walking gentleman to perfection. They are prone to habits,--they

frequent reading-rooms,--insurance-offices,--they walk the same streets

at the same hours,--so that one becomes familiar with their faces and

persons, as a part of the street-furniture.

There is one curious circumstance, that all city-people must have

noticed, which is often illustrated in our experience of the slack-water

gentry. We shall know a certain person by his looks, familiarly, for

years, but never have learned his name. About this person we shall have

accumulated no little circumstantial knowledge;--thus, his face, figure,

gait, his mode of dressing, of saluting, perhaps even of speaking, may be

familiar to us; yet who he is we know not. In another department of our

consciousness, there is a very familiar name, which we have never found

the person to match. We have heard it so often, that it has idealized

itself, and become one of that multitude of permanent shapes which walk

the chambers of the brain in velvet slippers in the company of Falstaff

and Hamlet and General Washington and Mr. Pickwick. Sometimes the person

dies, but the name lives on indefinitely. But now and then it happens,

perhaps after years of this independent existence of the name and its

shadowy image in the brain, on the one part, and the person and all its

real attributes, as we see them daily, on the other, that some accident

reveals their relation, and we find the name we have carried so long in

our memory belongs to the person we have known so long as a

fellow-citizen. Now the slack--water gentry are among the persons most

likely to be the subjects of this curious divorce of title and

reality,--for the reason, that, playing no important part in the

community, there is nothing to tie the floating name to the actual

individual, as is the case with the men who belong in any way to the

public, while yet their names have a certain historical currency, and we

cannot help meeting them, either in their haunts, or going to and from

them.

To this class belonged Wentworth Langdon, Esq. He had been "dead-headed"

into the world some fifty years ago, and had sat with his hands in his

pockets staring at the show ever since. I shall not tell you, for

reasons before hinted, the whole name of the place in which he lived. I

will only point you in the right direction, by saying that there are

three towns lying in a line with each other, as you go "down East," each

of them with a Port in its name, and each of them having a peculiar

interest which gives it individuality, in addition to the Oriental

character they have in common. I need not tell you that these towns are

Newburyport, Portsmouth, and Portland. The Oriental character they have

in common consists in their large, square, palatial mansions, with sunny

gardens round them. The two first have seen better days. They are in

perfect harmony with the condition of weakened, but not impoverished,

gentility. Each of them is a "paradise of demi-fortunes." Each of them

is of that intermediate size between a village and a city which any place

has outgrown when the presence of a well-dressed stranger walking up and

down the main street ceases to be a matter of public curiosity and

private speculation, as frequently happens, during the busier months of

the year, in considerable commercial centres like Salem. They both have

grand old recollections to fall back upon,--times when they looked

forward to commercial greatness, and when the portly gentlemen in cocked

hats, who built their now decaying wharves and sent out their ships all

over the world, dreamed that their fast-growing port was to be the Tyre

or the Carthage of the rich British Colony. Great houses, like that once

lived in by Lord Timothy Dexter, in Newburyport, remain as evidence of

the fortunes amassed in these places of old. Other mansions--like the

Rockingham House in Portsmouth (look at the white horse's tail before you

mount the broad staircase)--show that there was not only wealth, but

style and state, in these quiet old towns during the last century. It is

not with any thought of pity or depreciation that we speak of them as in

a certain sense decayed towns; they did not fulfil their early promise of

expansion, but they remain incomparably the most interesting places of

their size in any of the three northernmost New England States. They have

even now prosperity enough to keep them in good condition, and offer the

most attractive residences for quiet families, which, if they had been

English, would have lived in a palazzo at Genoa or Pisa, or some other

Continental Newburyport or Portsmouth.

As for the last of the three Ports, or Portland, it is getting too

prosperous to be as attractive as its less northerly neighbors. Meant for

a fine old town, to ripen like a Cheshire cheese within its walls of

ancient rind, burrowed by crooked alleys and mottled with venerable

mould, it seems likely to sacrifice its mellow future to a vulgar

material prosperity. Still it remains invested with many of its old

charms, as yet, and will forfeit its place among this admirable trio only

when it gets a hotel with unequivocal marks of having been built and

organized in the present century.

--It was one of the old square palaces of the North, in which Bernard

Langdon, the son of Wentworth, was born. If he had had the luck to be an

only child, he might have lived as his father had done, letting his

meagre competence smoulder on almost without consuming, like the fuel in

an air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea

Elizabeth Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William Pepperell Langdon,

and others, equally well named,--a string of them, looking, when they

stood in a row in prayer-time, as if they would fit a set of Pandean

pipes, of from three feet upward in dimensions. The door of the air-tight

stove has to be opened, under such circumstances, you may well suppose!

So it happened that our young man had been obliged, from an early period,

to do something to support himself, and found himself stopped short in

his studies by the inability of the good people at home to furnish him

the present means of support as a student.

You will understand now why the young man wanted me to give him a

certificate of his fitness to teach, and why I did not choose to urge him

to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without

ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received. Go he

must,--that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise. He was

not, however, to give up his studies; and as it is customary to allow

half-time to students engaged in school-keeping,--that is, to count a

year, so employed, if the student also keep on with his professional

studies, as equal to six months of the three years he is expected to be

under an instructor before applying for his degree,--he would not

necessarily lose more than a few months of time. He had a small library

of professional books, which he could take with him.

So he left my teaching and that of my estimable colleagues, carrying with

him my certificate, that Mr. Bernard C. Langdon was a young gentleman of

excellent moral character, of high intelligence and good education, and

that his services would be of great value in any school, academy, or

other institution, where young persons of-either sex were to be

instructed.

I confess, that expression, "either sex," ran a little thick, as I may

say, from my pen. For, although the young man bore a very fair

character, and there was no special cause for doubting his discretion, I

considered him altogether too good-looking, in the first place, to be let

loose in a roomful of young girls. I didn't want him to fall in love

just then--and if half a dozen girls fell in love with him, as they most

assuredly would, if brought into too near relations with him, why, there

was no telling what gratitude and natural sensibility might bring about.

Certificates are, for the most part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never

knows what is hatched out of them. But once in a thousand times they act

as curses are said to,--come home to roost. Give them often enough,

until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you

will get caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or

somebody's razors to be safe in the hands of the youngest children.

I had an uneasy feeling, after giving this certificate. It might be all

right enough; but if it happened to end badly, I should always reproach

myself. There was a chance, certainly, that it would lead him or others

into danger or wretchedness. Any one who looked at this young man could

not fail to see that he was capable of fascinating and being fascinated.

Those large, dark eyes of his would sink into the white soul of a young

girl as the black cloth sunk into the snow in Franklin's famous

experiment. Or, on the other hand, if the rays of a passionate nature

should ever be concentrated on them, they would be absorbed into the very

depths of his nature, and then his blood would turn to flame and burn his

life out of him, until his cheeks grew as white as the ashes that cover a

burning coal.

I wish I had not said either sex in my certificate. An academy for young

gentlemen, now; that sounds cool and unimaginative. A boys' school, that

would be a very good place for him;--some of them are pretty rough, but

there is nerve enough in that old Wentworth strain of blood; he can give

any country fellow, of the common stock, twenty pounds, and hit him out

of time in ten minutes. But to send such a young fellow as that out a

girl's-nesting! to give this falcon a free pass into all the dove-cotes!

I was a fool,--that's all.

I brooded over the mischief which might come out of these two words until

it seemed to me that they were charged with destiny. I could hardly

sleep for thinking what a train I might have been laying, which might

take a spark any day, and blow up nobody knows whose peace or prospects.

What I dreaded most was one of those miserable matrimonial misalliances

where a young fellow who does not know himself as yet flings his

magnificent future into the checked apron-lap of some fresh-faced,

half-bred country-girl, no more fit to be mated with him than her

father's horse to go in double harness with Flora Temple. To think of

the eagle's wings, being clipped so that he shall never lift himself over

the farm-yard fence! Such things happen, and always must,--because, as

one of us said awhile ago, a man always loves, a woman, and a woman a

man, unless some good reason exists to the contrary. You think yourself

a very fastidious young man, my friend; but there are probably at least

five-thousand young women in these United States, any one of whom you

would certainly marry, if you were thrown much into her company, and

nobody more attractive were near, and she had no objection. And you, my

dear young lady, justly pride yourself on your discerning delicacy; but

if I should say that there are twenty thousand young men, any one of

whom, if he offered his hand and heart under favorable circumstances, you

would

"First endure, then pity, then embrace,"

I should be much more imprudent than I mean to be, and you would, no

doubt, throw down a story in which I hope to interest you.

I had settled it in my mind that this young fellow had a career marked

out for him. He should begin in the natural way, by taking care of poor

patients in one of the public charities, and work his way up to a better

kind of practice,--better, that is, in the vulgar, worldly sense. The

great and good Boerhaave used to say, as I remember very well, that the

poor were his best patients; for God was their paymaster. But everybody

is not as patient as Boerhaave, nor as deserving; so that the rich,

though not, perhaps, the best patients, are good enough for common

practitioners. I suppose Boerhaave put up with them when he could not

get poor ones, as he left his daughter two millions of florins when he

died.

Now if this young man once got into the wide streets, he would sweep them

clear of his rivals of the same standing; and as I was getting

indifferent to business, and old Dr. Kilham was growing careless, and had

once or twice prescribed morphine when he meant quinine, there would soon

be an opening into the Doctor's Paradise,--the streets with only one side

to them. Then I would have him strike a bold stroke,--set up a nice

little coach, and be driven round like a first-class London doctor,

instead of coasting about in a shabby one-horse concern and casting

anchor opposite his patients' doors like a Cape Ann fishing-smack. By

the time he was thirty, he would have knocked the social pawns out of his

way, and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of great pieces in the

background. I would not have a man marry above his level, so as to

become the appendage of a powerful family-connection; but I would not

have him marry until he knew his level,--that is, again, looking at the

matter in a purely worldly point of view, and not taking the sentiments

at all into consideration. But remember, that a young man, using large

endowments wisely and fortunately, may put himself on a level with the

highest in the land in ten brilliant years of spirited, unflagging labor.

And to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city is something

in itself,--that is, if you like money, and influence, and a seat on the

platform at public lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of

places where you don't want to go, and, what is a good deal better than

any of these things, a sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute

in its range, so that all the Caesars and Napoleons would have to stand

aside, if they came between you and the exercise of your special

vocation.

That is what I thought this young fellow might have come to; and now I

have let him go off into the country with my certificate, that he is fit

to teach in a school for either sex! Ten to one he will run like a moth

into a candle, right into one of those girls'-nests, and get tangled up

in some sentimental folly or other, and there will be the end of him.

Oh, yes! country doctor,--half a dollar a visit,--drive, drive, drive

all day,--get up at night and harness your own horse,--drive again ten

miles in a snow-storm, shake powders out of two phials, (pulv.

glycyrrhiz., pulv. gum. acac. as partes equates,)--drive back again,

if you don't happen to get stuck in a drift, no home, no peace, no

continuous meals, no unbroken sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social

intercourse, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, until you feel

like the mummy of an Indian who had been buried in the sitting posture,

and was dug up a hundred years afterwards! Why did n't I warn him about

love and all that nonsense? Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do

with it, yet awhile? Why did n't I hold up to him those awful examples I

could have cited, where poor young fellows who could just keep themselves

afloat have hung a matrimonial millstone round their necks, taking it for

a life-preserver? All this of two words in a certificate!

CHAPTER III.

MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND.

Whether the Student advertised for a school, or whether he fell in with

the advertisement of a school-committee, is not certain. At any rate, it

was not long before he found himself the head of a large district, or, as

it was called by the inhabitants, "deestric" school, in the flourishing

inland village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly spelt, Pigwacket

Centre. The natives of this place would be surprised, if they should

hear that any of the readers of a work published in Boston were

unacquainted with so remarkable a locality. As, however, some copies of

it may be read at a distance from this distinguished metropolis, it may

be well to give a few particulars respecting the place, taken from the

Universal Gazetteer.

"PIGWACKET, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and township in

_________ Co., State of _________,situated in a fine agricultural region,

2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and Smithville, 3 churches, several

school houses, and many handsome private residences. Mink River runs

through the town, navigable for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy

Pond at N. E. section, well stocked with horn pouts, eels, and shiners.

Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs,

clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373."

The reader may think there is nothing very remarkable implied in this

description. If, however he had read the town-history, by the Rev. Jabez

Grubb, he would have learned, that, like the celebrated Little

Pedlington, it was distinguished by many very remarkable advantages.

Thus:

"The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking down the

lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Musquash. The air is

salubrious, and many of the inhabitants have attained great age, several

having passed the allotted period of 'three-score years and ten' before

succumbing to any of the various 'ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow

Comfort Leevins died in 1836 AEt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African,

died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are distinguished

for intelligence, as has been frequently remarked by eminent

lyceum-lecturers, who have invariably spoken in the highest terms of a

Pigwacket audience. There is a public library, containing nearly a

hundred volumes, free to all subscribers. The preached word is well

attended, there is a flourishing temperance society, and the schools are

excellent. It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families who

relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. The Honorable

John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate, was a native of this

town."

That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably pretty much

like other inland New England towns in point of "salubrity,"--that is,

gives people their choice of dysentery or fever every autumn, with a

season-ticket for consumption, good all the year round. And so of the

other pretences. "Pigwacket audience," forsooth! Was there ever an

audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair of eyes in it brighter than

pickled oysters, that did n't think it was "distinguished for

intelligence"?--"The preached word"! That means the Rev. Jabez Grubb's

sermons. "Temperance society"! "Excellent schools"! Ah, that is just

what we were talking about.

The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, had had a good deal

of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. The committee had done their

best, but there were a number of well-grown and pretty rough young

fellows who had got the upper-hand of the masters, and meant to keep it.

Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce democracy.

This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so

"intelligent" a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of

public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.

The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth

from a country college, underfed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered,

knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled,

half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to

pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this

sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many

again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet

of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up, as

Master Weeks had done.

It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal punishment

on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one of the "hardest

customers" in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that there were

anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would have been

better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events which took place

when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his authority. Abner

Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had been bred to

butchering, but urged by his parents to attend school, in order to learn

the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing, in which he was sadly

deficient. He was in the habit of talking and laughing pretty loud in

school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced to a pulp by a natural

and easy process, of occasional insolence and general negligence. One of

the soft, but unpleasant missiles just alluded to flew by the master's

head one morning, and flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered

in the form of a convex mass in alto rilievo. The master looked round

and saw the young butcher's arm in an attitude which pointed to it

unequivocally as the source from which the projectile had taken its

flight.

Master Weeks turned pale. He must "lick" Abner Briggs, Junior, or

abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.

"Come here, Sir!" he said; "you have insulted me and outraged the decency

of the schoolroom often enough! Hold out your hand!"

The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master struck at it with

his black ruler, with a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes, as

much as to say that he meant to make him smart this time. The young

fellow pulled his hand back as the ruler came down, and the master hit

himself a vicious blow with it on the right knee. There are things no

man can stand. The master caught the refractory youth by the collar and

began shaking him, or rather shaking himself against him.

"Le' go o' that are coat, naow," said the fellow, "or I 'll make ye! 'T

'll take tew on yet' handle me, I tell ye, 'n' then ye caant dew

it!"--and the young pupil returned the master's attention by catching

hold of his collar.

When it comes to that, the best man, not exactly in the moral sense, but

rather in the material, and more especially the muscular point of view,

is very apt to have the best of it, irrespectively of the merits of the

case. So it happened now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found himself

taking the measure of the sanded floor, amidst the general uproar of the

school. From that moment his ferule was broken, and the school-committee

very soon had a vacancy to fill.

Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, was of better stature, but

loosely put together, and slender-limbed. A dreadfully nervous kind of

man he was, walked on tiptoe, started at sudden noises, was distressed

when he heard a whisper, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always

saying, "Hush?" and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were not

long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. In less than a week

a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most diabolical

malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators varied from day

to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil,

(making it screech on the slate,) falling of heavy books, attacks of

coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with sounds as of drawing

a cork from time to time, followed by suppressed chuckles.

Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflictions. The rascally

boys always had an excuse for any one trick they were caught at. "Could

n' help coughin', Sir." "Slipped out o' m' han', Sir." "Did n' go to,

Sir." "Did n' dew't o' purpose, Sir." And so on,--always the best of

reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself

at the grocer's on a platform balance, some ten days after he began

keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He

had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He

made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned

that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should come

to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in subtraction

he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took to himself

wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter of

resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.

This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found himself appointed

as master. He accepted the place conditionally, with the understanding

that he should leave it at the end of a month, if he were tired of it.

The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Centre created a much more

lively sensation than had attended that of either of his predecessors.

Looks go a good way all the world over, and though there were several

good-looking people in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of

the town called a "hahnsome mahn," that is, big, fat, and red, yet the

sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the natural air which grows

up with carefully-bred young persons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood

which came from his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct

descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the famous tutor, Henry

Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enlivened and enriched by

that of the Wentworths, which had had a good deal of ripe old Madeira and

other generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran to gout sometimes

in the old folks and to high spirit, warm complexion, and curly hair in

some of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr. Bernard had

inherited,--something, perhaps, of the high spirit; but that we shall

have a chance of finding out by and by. But the long sermons and the

frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits of study, had

told upon his color, which was subdued to something more of delicacy than

one would care to see in a young fellow with rough work before him.

This, however, made him look more interesting, or, as the young ladies at

Major Bush's said, "interestin'."

When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meeting, on the first Sunday after his

arrival, it may be supposed that a good many eyes were turned upon the

young schoolmaster. There was something heroic in his coming forward so

readily to take a place which called for a strong hand, and a prompt,

steady will to guide it. In fact, his position was that of a military

chieftain on the eve of a battle. Everybody knew everything in Pigwacket

Centre; and it was an understood thing that the young rebels meant to put

down the new master, if they could. It was natural that the two

prettiest girls in the village, called in the local dialect, as nearly as

our limited alphabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and Arvilly

Braowne, should feel and express an interest in the good-looking

stranger, and that, when their flattering comments were repeated in the

hearing of their indigenous admirers, among whom were some of the older

"boys" of the school, it should not add to the amiable dispositions of

the turbulent youth.

Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was in his chair at the upper end

of the schoolhouse, on the raised platform. The rustics looked at his

handsome face, thoughtful, peaceful, pleasant, cheerful, but sharply cut

round the lips and proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader of the

mischief-makers, the young butcher who has before figured in this

narrative, looked at him stealthily, whenever he got a chance to study

him unobserved; for the truth was, he felt uncomfortable, whenever he

found the large, dark eyes fixed on his own little, sharp, deep-set, gray

ones. But he managed to study him pretty well,--first his face, then his

neck and shoulders, the set of his arms, the narrowing at the loins, the

make of his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he examined him as he

would have examined a steer, to see what he could do and how he would cut

up. If he could only have gone to him and felt of his muscles, he would

have been entirely satisfied. He was not a very wise youth, but he did

know well enough, that, though big arms and legs are very good things,

there is something besides size that goes to make a man; and he had heard

stories of a fighting-man, called "The Spider," from his attenuated

proportions, who was yet a terrible hitter in the ring, and had whipped

many a big-limbed fellow, in and out of the roped arena.

Nothing could be smoother than the way in which everything went on for

the first day or two. The new master was so kind and courteous, he

seemed to take everything in such a natural, easy way, that there was no

chance to pick a quarrel with him. He in the mean time thought it best

to watch the boys and young men for a day or two with as little show of

authority as possible. It was easy enough to see that he would have

occasion for it before long.

The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one-story building, perched on a

bare rock at the top of a hill,--partly because this was a conspicuous

site for the temple of learning, and partly because land is cheap where

there is no chance even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find

nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and

dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen.

Inside were old unpainted desks,--unpainted, but browned with the umber

of human contact,--and hacked by innumerable jack-knives. It was long

since the walls had been whitewashed, as might be conjectured by the

various traces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads could

reach them. A curious appearance was noticeable on various higher parts

of the wall: namely, a wart-like eruption, as one would be tempted to

call it, being in reality a crop of the soft missiles before mentioned,

which, adhering in considerable numbers, and hardening after the usual

fashion of papier-mache, formed at last permanent ornaments of the

edifice.

The young master's quick eye soon noticed that a particular part of the

wall was most favored with these ornamental appendages. Their position

pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of the room they came from. In

fact, there was a nest of young mutineers just there, which must be

broken up by a coup d'etat. This was easily effected by redistributing

the seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that a

mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should

find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of

studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort

of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon

felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the

throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by

preliminary a'h'ms! to call the attention of the distant youth addressed.

Some of these were incendiary documents, devoting the schoolmaster to the

lower divinities, as "a stuck-up dandy," as "a purse-proud aristocrat,"

as "a sight too big for his, etc.," and holding him up in a variety of

equally forcible phrases to the indignation of the youthful community of

School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre.

Presently the draughtsman of the school set a caricature in circulation,

labelled, to prevent mistakes, with the schoolmaster's name. An immense

bell-crowned hat, and a long, pointed, swallow-tailed coat showed that

the artist had in his mind the conventional dandy, as shown in prints of

thirty or forty years ago, rather than any actual human aspect of the

time. But it was passed round among the boys and made its laugh, helping

of course to undermine the master's authority, as "Punch" or the

"Charivari" takes the dignity out of an obnoxious minister. One morning,

on going to the schoolroom, Master Langdon found an enlarged copy of this

sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He took it down, smiled a

little, put it into his pocket, and entered the schoolroom. An insidious

silence prevailed, which looked as if some plot were brewing. The boys

were ripe for mischief, but afraid. They had really no fault to find

with the master, except that he was dressed like a gentleman, which a

certain class of fellows always consider a personal insult to themselves.

But the older ones were evidently plotting, and more than once the

warning a'h'm! was heard, and a dirty little scrap of paper rolled into a

wad shot from one seat to another. One of these happened to strike the

stove-funnel, and lodged on the master's desk. He was cool enough not to

seem to notice it. He secured it, however, and found an opportunity to

look at it, without being observed by the boys. It required no immediate

notice.

He who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking upon Mr. Bernard

Langdon the next morning, when his toilet was about half finished, would

have had a very pleasant gratuitous exhibition. First he buckled the

strap of his trousers pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy

dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes; then two great "Indian

clubs," with which he enacted all sorts of impossible-looking feats. His

limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders remarkably broad; but if you

knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and

pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,--if you knew the

trapezius, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a monk's

cowl,--or the deltoid, which caps the shoulder like an epaulette,--or the

triceps, which furnishes the calf of the upper arm,--or the hard-knotted

biceps,--any of the great sculptural landmarks, in fact,--you would have

said there was a pretty show of them, beneath the white satiny skin of

Mr. Bernard Langdon. And if you had seen him, when he had laid down the

Indian clubs, catch hold of a leather strap that hung from the beam of

the old-fashioned ceiling,--and lift and lower himself over and over

again by his left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple and

easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked

at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;--"not so

much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very

knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers

and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to

make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the

drawers in his old veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two

hands. Then he placed it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly.

The springs creaked and cracked; the index swept with a great stride far

up into the high figures of the scale; it was a good lift. He was

satisfied. He sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at his

cleanly-shaped arms. "If I strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I

shall spoil him," he said. Yet this young man, when weighed with his

class at the college, could barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds

in the scale,--not a heavy weight, surely; but some of the middle

weights, as the present English champion, for instance, seem to be of a

far finer quality of muscle than the bulkier fellows.

The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that morning, but was

perhaps rather more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went up-stairs

and put, on a light loose frock, instead of that which he commonly wore,

which was a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to school

he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the other direction.

"Good-morning, Miss Cutter," he said; for she and another young lady had

been introduced to him, on a former occasion, in the usual phrase of

polite society in presenting ladies to gentlemen,--"Mr. Langdon, let me

make y' acquainted with Miss Cutterr;--let me make y' acquainted with

Miss Braowne." So he said, "Good-morning"; to which she replied,

"Good-mornin', Mr. Langdon. Haow's your haalth?" The answer to this

question ought naturally to have been the end of the talk; but Alminy

Cutterr lingered and looked as if she had something more on her mind.

A young fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple

country-girl's face as if it were a sign-board. Alminy was a good soul,

with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it was

out of the question for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a fine

lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than their

wont, as she said, with her lips quivering, "Oh, Mr. Langdon, them boys

'll be the death of ye, if ye don't take caar!"

"Why, what's the matter, my dear?" said Mr. Bernard.--Don't think there

was anything very odd in that "my dear," at the second interview with a

village belle;--some of these woman-tamers call a girl "My dear," after

five minutes' acquaintance, and it sounds all right as they say it. But

you had better not try it at a venture.

It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard said it.--"I 'll tell ye

what's the mahtterr," she said, in a frightened voice. "Ahbner 's go'n'

to car' his dog, 'n' he'll set him on ye'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive. 'T's

the same cretur that haaf eat up Eben Squires's little Jo, a year come

nex' Faast day."

Now this last statement was undoubtedly overcolored; as little Jo Squires

was running about the village,--with an ugly scar on his arm, it is true,

where the beast had caught him with his teeth, on the occasion of the

child's taking liberties with him, as he had been accustomed to do with a

good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who seemed to like being pulled and

hauled round by children. After this the creature was commonly muzzled,

and, as he was fed on raw meat chiefly, was always ready for a fight,

which he was occasionally indulged in, when anything stout enough to

match him could be found in any of the neighboring villages.

Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of Abner Briggs, Junior,

belonged to a species not distinctly named in scientific books, but well

known to our country-folks under the name "Yallah dog." They do not use

this expression as they would say black dog or white dog, but with almost

as definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a spaniel. A

"yallah dog" is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel color, of no

particular breed except his own, who hangs round a tavern or a butcher's

shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were disgusted with

the world, and the world with him. Our inland population, while they

tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old ______, of Meredith

Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on cloudy days, swearing,

that, if he hung up his "yallah dog," he would make a better show of

daylight. A country fellow, abusing a horse of his neighbor's, vowed,

that, "if he had such a hoss, he'd swap him for a `yallah dog,'--and then

shoot the dog."

Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had not improved him

by cropping his ears and tail and investing him with a spiked collar. He

bore on his person, also, various not ornamental scars, marks of old

battles; for Tige had fight in him, as was said before, and as might be

guessed by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with a projection of the

lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a bull-dog stripe among the

numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage.

It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr waiting while this

piece of natural history was telling.--As she spoke of little Jo, who had

been "haaf eat up" by Tige, she could not contain her sympathies, and

began to cry.

"Why, my dear little soul," said Mr. Bernard, "what are you worried

about? I used to play with a bear when I was a boy; and the bear used to

hug me, and I used to kiss him,--so!"

It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he had seen Alminy;

but her kind feelings had touched him, and that seemed the most natural

way of expressing his gratitude. Ahniny looked round to see if anybody

was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to "holler."

She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled,

saw her through a crack in a picket fence, not a great way off the road.

Many a year he had been "hangin' 'raoun'" Alminy, and never did he see

any encouraging look, or hear any "Behave, naow!" or "Come, naow, a'n't

ye 'shamed?" or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as village

belles under stand as well as ever did the nymph who fled to the willows

in the eclogue we all remember.

No wonder he was furious, when he saw the school master, who had never

seen the girl until within a week, touching with his lips those rosy

cheeks which he had never dared to approach. But that was all; it was a

sudden impulse; and the master turned away from the young girl, laughing,

and telling her not to fret herself about him,--he would take care of

himself.

So Master Langdon walked on toward his school-house, not displeased,

perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely elated by it; for he

was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, and had had many a

smile without asking, which had been denied to the feeble youth who try

to win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the more

formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer companies,

considered by many to be quite irresistible to the fair who have once

beheld them from their windows in the epaulettes and plumes and sashes of

the "Pigwacket Invincibles," or the "Hackmatack Rangers."

Master Langdon took his seat and began the exercises of his school. The

smaller boys recited their lessons well enough, but some of the larger

ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one or two of them looking

toward the door, as if expecting somebody or something in that direction.

At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who had not yet shown

himself, made his appearance. He was followed by his "yallah dog,"

without his muzzle, who squatted down very grimly near the door, and gave

a wolfish look round the room, as if he were considering which was the

plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, meanwhile, went to his

seat, looking somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which were hardly

as red as common, and set pretty sharply.

"Put out that dog, Abner Briggs!"--The master spoke as the captain speaks

to the helmsman, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, right under

his lee.

Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, when he knows he has a

mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is one

of the mutineers himself. "Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard on

him!"

The master stepped into the aisle: The great cur showed his teeth,--and

the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes,

and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in his wide mouth and deep

red gullet.

The movements of animals are so much quicker than those of human beings

commonly are, that they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out of

the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be

run over by a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel's way

after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is lifting a stick

to strike or drawing back his foot to kick, the beast makes his spring,

and the blow or the kick comes too late.

It was not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a

boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an

adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory

symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what mischief

they meditate.

"Out with you!" he said, fiercely,--and explained what he meant by a

sudden flash of his foot that clashed the yellow dog's white teeth

together like the springing of a bear-trap. The cur knew he had found

his master at the first word and glance, as low animals on four legs, or

a smaller number, always do; and the blow took him so by surprise, that

it curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of the open

schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and his stump of a tail shut

down as close as his owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his

jack-knife.

It was time for the other cur to find who his master.

"Follow your dog, Abner Briggs!" said Master Langdon.

The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the rebels were all cowed and

sat still.

"I'll go when I'm ready," he said,--"'n' I guess I won't go afore I'm

ready."

"You're ready now," said Master Langdon, turning up his cuffs so that the

little boys noticed the yellow gleam of a pair of gold sleeve-buttons,

once worn by Colonel Percy Wentworth, famous in the Old French War.

Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think he was ready, at any rate;

for he rose up in his place, and stood with clenched fists, defiant, as

the master strode towards him. The master knew the fellow was really

frightened, for all his looks, and that he must have no time to rally.

So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, with one great pull, had

him out over his desk and on the open floor. He gave him a sharp fling

backwards and stood looking at him.

The rough-and-tumble fighters all clinch, as everybody knows; and Abner

Briggs, Junior, was one of that kind. He remembered how he had floored

Master Weeks, and he had just "spunk" enough left in him to try to repeat

his former successful experiment an the new master. He sprang at him,

open-handed, to clutch him. So the master had to strike,--once, but very

hard, and just in the place to tell. No doubt, the authority that doth

hedge a schoolmaster added to the effect of the blow; but the blow was

itself a neat one, and did not require to be repeated.

"Now go home," said the master, "and don't let me see you or your dog

here again." And he turned his cuffs down over the gold sleeve-buttons.

This finished the great Pigwacket Centre School rebellion. What could be

done with a master who was so pleasant as long as the boys behaved

decently, and such a terrible fellow when he got "riled," as they called

it? In a week's time everything was reduced to order, and the

school-committee were delighted. The master, however, had received a

proposition so much more agreeable and advantageous, that he informed the

committee he should leave at the end of his month, having in his eye a

sensible and energetic young college-graduate who would be willing and

fully competent to take his place.

So, at the expiration of the appointed time, Bernard Langdon, late master

of the School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, took his departure from

that place for another locality, whither we shall follow him, carrying

with him the regrets of the committee, of most of the scholars, and of

several young ladies; also two locks of hair, sent unbeknown to payrents,

one dark and one warmish auburn, inscribed with the respective initials

of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly Braowne.

CHAPTER IV

THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE.

The invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon had accepted came from the Board

of Trustees of the "Apollinean Female Institute," a school for the

education of young ladies, situated in the flourishing town of Rockland.

This was an establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred

scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English branches,

several of the modern languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a

little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric, to finish off with

in the last year, and music at any time when they would pay for it. At

the close of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a

grand public examination, and received diplomas tied in blue ribbons,

which proclaimed them with a great flourish of capitals to be graduates

of the Apollinean Female Institute.

Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pretensions. It was ennobled by

lying at the foot of a mountain,--called by the working-folks of the

place "the Maounting,"--which sufficiently showed that it was the

principal high land of the district in which it was situated. It lay to

the south of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy stretches herself

before the Alps. To pass from the town of Tamarack on the north of the

mountain to Rockland on the south was like crossing from Coire to

Chiavenna.

There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and romance and mystery to a

place like the impending presence of a high mountain. Our beautiful

Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but

owes its surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over it

like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were its

tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines, robing

themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing penance

in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts under their

rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the soil at their

feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and frowns. Happy

is the child whose first dreams of heaven are blended with the evening

glories of Mount Holyoke, when the sun is firing its treetops, and

gilding the white walls that mark its one human dwelling! If the other

and the wilder of the two summits has a scowl of terror in its

overhanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to look upon its savage

solitudes through the barred nursery-windows in the heart of the sweet,

companionable village.--And how the mountains love their children! The

sea is of a facile virtue, and will run to kiss the first comer in any

port he visits; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and show their faces

only in the midst of their own families.

The Mountain which kept watch to the north of Rockland lay waste and

almost inviolate through much of its domain. The catamount still glared

from the branches of its old hemlocks on the lesser beasts that strayed

beneath him. It was not long since a wolf had wandered down, famished in

the winter's dearth, and left a few bones and some tufts of wool of what

had been a lamb in the morning. Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in

the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken;--the

black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little

children must come home early from school and play, for he is an

indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not

come amiss when other game was wanting.

But these occasional visitors may have been mere wanderers, which,

straying along in the woods by day, and perhaps stalking through the

streets of still villages by night, had worked their way along down from

the ragged mountain-spurs of higher latitudes. The one feature of The

Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was the existence of

the terrible region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted by

those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer venom under our cold

northern sky than the cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and

poisons.

From the earliest settlement of the place, this fact had been, next to

the Indians, the reigning nightmare of the inhabitants. It was easy

enough, after a time, to drive away the savages; for "a screeching Indian

Divell," as our fathers called him, could not crawl into the crack of a

rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population of

Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have

defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep

embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they

met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed

defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time

died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and many a

stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,--nay, there were families where the

children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once

vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of

them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside

into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,--worse than this, into

the long grass, where the barefooted mowers would soon pass with their

swinging scythes,--more rarely into houses, and on one memorable

occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house, where he

took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the "Account of

Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested that a strong

tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the

Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it, and that the

Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false

show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen to a

Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not

being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,

though there was good Reason to think it was a Damon, yet he did come

with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.

One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this town

early in the present century. After this there was a great snake-hunt,

in which very many of these venomous beasts were killed,--one in

particular, said to have been as big round as a stout man's arm, and to

have had no less than forty joints to his rattle,--indicating, according

to some, that he had lived forty years, but, if we might put any faith in

the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty human beings,--an idle

fancy, clearly. This hunt, however, had no permanent effect in keeping

down the serpent population. Viviparous, creatures are a kind of

specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones only give their notes, as it were,

for a future brood,--an egg being, so to speak, a promise to pay a young

one by and by, if nothing happen. Now the domestic habits of the

rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for obvious reasons; but it is,

no doubt, to all intents and purposes oviparous. Consequently it has

large families, and is not easy to kill out.

In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of

Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated.

A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by

the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a

rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the

almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove

immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she

was bitten.

All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet,

as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively

careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of interest

to the romantic hillside, that the banded reptiles, which had been the

terror of the red men for nobody knows how many thousand years, were

there still, with the same poison-bags and spring-teeth at the white

men's service, if they meddled with them.

The other natural features of Rockland were such as many of our pleasant

country-towns can boast of. A brook came tumbling down the mountain-side

and skirted the most thickly settled portion of the village. In the

parts of its course where it ran through the woods, the water looked

almost as brown as coffee flowing from its urn,--to say like smoky quartz

would perhaps give a better idea,--but in the open plain it sparkled over

the pebbles white as a queen's diamonds. There were huckleberry-pastures

on the lower flanks of The Mountain, with plenty of the sweet-scented

bayberry mingled with the other bushes. In other fields grew great store

of high-bush blackberries. Along the roadside were bayberry-bushes, hung

all over with bright red coral pendants in autumn and far into the

winter. Then there were swamps set thick with dingy alders, where the

three-leaved arum and the skunk's-cabbage grew broad and succulent,

shelving down into black boggy pools here and there at the edge of which

the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by

boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy and agile leopard-frog had

taken the six-foot spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool.

And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of

embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened polished and

brown as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, cheated by the

cold skies of their hues and perfume, sunned themselves like

white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old forest-trees,--the

maple, scarred with the wounds which had drained away its sweet

life-blood,--the beech, its smooth gray bark mottled so as to look like

the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to frighten

armies, always the mark of lovers' knives, as in the days of Musidora and

her swain,--the yellow birch, rough as the breast of Silenus in old

marbles,--the wild cherry, its little bitter fruit lying unheeded at its

foot,--and, soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked, splintery-limbed,

dark-mantled hemlock, in the depth of whose aerial solitudes the crow

brooded on her nest unscared, and the gray squirrel lived unharmed till

his incisors grew to look like ram's-horns.

Rockland would have been but half a town without its pond; Guinnepeg Pond

was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were

very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that

the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too,

those queer, old, rum-scented good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling,

half-vagabonds, who sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and

then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish

through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young

people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat

in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of these smiling ponds which

has not devoured more youths and maidens than any of those monsters the

ancients used to tell such lies about. But it was a pretty pond, and

never looked more innocent--so the native "bard" of Rockland said in his

elegy--than on the morning when they found Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria

floating among the lily-pads.

The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it was more commonly called,

was, in the language of its Prospectus, a "first-class Educational

Establishment." It employed a considerable corps of instructors to rough

out and finish the hundred young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its

roof. First, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the Principal and the Matron of the

school. Silas Peckham was a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the

coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. Everybody knows the type of

Yankee produced by this climate and diet: thin, as if he had been split

and dried; with an ashen kind of complexion, like the tint of the food he

is made of; and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal with

as the other is to the taste. Silas Peckham kept a young ladies' school

exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle,--for the simple,

unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few years as

could be safely done. Mr. Peckham gave very little personal attention to

the department of instruction, but was always busy with contracts for

flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other nutritive staples, the

amount of which required for such an establishment was enough to frighten

a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised on Indian corn

and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but

may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred. Her

specialty was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising,

and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman,

she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class. So this

distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a

housekeeper, and its real business was making money by taking young girls

in as boarders.

Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public

took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction. Mr.

Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good

instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal

better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. He tried to get

the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to screw

all the work out of them that could possibly be extracted.

There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady assistant.

There was another young lady who taught French, of the ahvaung and

baundahng style, which does not exactly smack of the asphalt of the

Boulevards. There was also a German teacher of music, who sometimes

helped in French of the ahfaung and bauntaung style,--so that, between

the two, the young ladies could hardly have been mistaken for Parisians,

by a Committee of the French Academy. The German teacher also taught a

Latin class after his fashion,--benna, a ben, gahboot, ahead, and so

forth.

The master for the English branches had lately left the school for

private reasons, which need not be here mentioned,--but he had gone, at

any rate, and it was his place which had been offered to Mr. Bernard

Langdon. The offer came just in season,--as, for various causes, he was

willing to leave the place where he had begun his new experience.

It was on a fine morning that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham,

made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute.

A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was

introduced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady

English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.

There was not a great deal of study done that day. The young lady

assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine in which

the classes were engaged when their late teacher left, and which had gone

on as well as it could since. Then Master Langdon had a great many

questions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and some, perhaps,

implying a degree of curiosity not very unnatural under the

circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with

its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with

fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man

like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, as

we have already seen.

You cannot get together a hundred girls, taking them as they come, from

the comfortable and affluent classes, probably anywhere, certainly not in

New England, without seeing a good deal of beauty. In fact, we very

commonly mean by beauty the way young girls look when there is nothing to

hinder their looking as Nature meant them to. And the great schoolroom

of the Apollinean Institute did really make so pretty a show on the

morning when Master Langdon entered it, that he might be pardoned for

asking Miss Darley more questions about his scholars than about their

lessons.

There were girls of all ages: little creatures, some pallid and

delicate-looking, the offspring of invalid parents,--much given to books,

not much to mischief, commonly spoken of as particularly good children,

and contrasted with another sort, girls of more vigorous organization,

who were disposed to laughing and play, and required a strong hand to

manage them; then young growing misses of every shade of Saxon

complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: blondes, some of

them so translucent-looking that it seemed as if you could see the souls

in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if souls were objects of sight;

brunettes, some with rose-red colors, and some with that swarthy hue

which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, and which, with pure

outlines and outspoken reliefs, gives us some of our handsomest

women,--the women whom ornaments of plain gold adorn more than any other

parures; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and gray

or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock

occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel,

brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter,

where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at

intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening

buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear

during the period when they never meet a single man without having his

monosyllable ready for him,--tied as they are, poor things! on the rock

of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus.

"Who is that girl in ringlets,--the fourth in the third row on the

right?" said Master Langdon.

"Charlotte Ann Wood," said Miss Darley; "writes very pretty poems."

"Oh!--And the pink one, three seats from her? Looks bright; anything in

her?"

"Emma Dean,--day-scholar,--Squire Dean's daughter,--nice girl,--second

medal last year."

The master asked these two questions in a careless kind of way, and did

not seem to pay any too much attention to the answers.

"And who and what is that," he said,--"sitting a little apart

there,--that strange, wild-looking girl?"

This time he put the real question he wanted answered;--the other two

were asked at random, as masks for the third.

The lady-teacher's face changed;--one would have said she was frightened

or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the

master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up;--she was

winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a

kind of reverie.

Miss Darley drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide

her lips. "Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she

whispered softly; "that is Elsie Venner."

CHAPTER V.

AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER.

It was a comfort to get to a place with something like society, with

residences which had pretensions to elegance, with people of some

breeding, with a newspaper, and "stores" to advertise in it, and with two

or three churches to keep each other alive by wholesome agitation.

Rockland was such a place.

Some of the natural features of the town have been described already. The

Mountain, of course, was what gave it its character, and redeemed it from

wearing the commonplace expression which belongs to ordinary

country-villages. Beautiful, wild, invested with the mystery which

belongs to untrodden spaces, and with enough of terror to give it

dignity, it had yet closer relations with the town over which it brooded

than the passing stranger knew of. Thus, it made a local climate by

cutting off the northern winds and holding the sun's heat like a

garden-wall. Peachtrees, which, on the northern side of the mountain,

hardly ever came to fruit, ripened abundant crops in Rockland.

But there was still another relation between the mountain and the town at

its foot, which strangers were not likely to hear alluded to, and which

was oftener thought of than spoken of by its inhabitants. Those

high-impending forests,--"hangers," as White of Selborne would have

called them,--sloping far upward and backward into the distance, had

always an air of menace blended with their wild beauty. It seemed as if

some heaven-scaling Titan had thrown his shaggy robe over the bare,

precipitous flanks of the rocky summit, and it might at any moment slide

like a garment flung carelessly on the nearest chance-support, and, so

sliding, crush the village out of being, as the Rossberg when it tumbled

over on the valley of Goldau.

Persons have been known to remove from the place, after a short residence

in it, because they were haunted day and night by the thought of this

awful green wall, piled up into the air over their heads. They would lie

awake of nights, thinking they heard the muffed snapping of roots, as if

a thousand acres of the mountain-side were tugging to break away, like

the snow from a house-roof, and a hundred thousand trees were clinging

with all their fibres to hold back the soil just ready to peel away and

crash down with all its rocks and forest-growths. And yet, by one of

those strange contradictions we are constantly finding in human nature,

there were natives of the town who would come back thirty or forty years

after leaving it, just to nestle under this same threatening

mountainside, as old men sun themselves against southward-facing walls.

The old dreams and legends of danger added to the attraction. If the

mountain should ever slide, they had a kind of feeling as if they ought

to be there. It was a fascination like that which the rattlesnake is

said to exert.

This comparison naturally suggests the recollection of that other source

of danger which was an element in the every-day life of the Rockland

people. The folks in some of the neighboring towns had a joke against

them, that a Rocklander could n't hear a beanpod rattle without saying,

"The Lord have mercy on us!" It is very true, that many a nervous old

lady has had a terrible start, caused by some mischievous young rogue's

giving a sudden shake to one of these noisy vegetable products in her

immediate vicinity. Yet, strangely enough, many persons missed the

excitement of the possibility of a fatal bite in other regions, where

there were nothing but black and green and striped snakes, mean

ophidians, having the spite of the nobler serpent without his

venom,--poor crawling creatures, whom Nature would not trust with a

poison-bag. Many natives of Rockland did unquestionably experience a

certain gratification in this infinitesimal sense of danger. It was

noted that the old people retained their hearing longer than in other

places. Some said it was the softened climate, but others believed it

was owing to the habit of keeping their ears open whenever they were

walking through the grass or in the woods. At any rate, a slight sense

of danger is often an agreeable stimulus. People sip their creme de

noyau with a peculiar tremulous pleasure, because there is a bare

possibility that it may contain prussic acid enough to knock them over;

in which case they will lie as dead as if a thunder-cloud had emptied

itself into the earth through their brain and marrow.

But Rockland had other features which helped to give it a special

character. First of all, there was one grand street which was its chief

glory. Elm Street it was called, naturally enough, for its elms made a

long, pointed-arched gallery of it through most of its extent. No

natural Gothic arch compares, for a moment, with that formed by two

American elms, where their lofty jets of foliage shoot across each

other's ascending curves, to intermingle their showery flakes of green.

When one looks through a long double row of these, as in that lovely

avenue which the poets of Yale remember so well,

"Oh, could the vista of my life but now as bright appear

As when I first through Temple Street looked down thine espalier!"

he beholds a temple not built with hands, fairer than any minster, with

all its clustered stems and flowering capitals, that ever grew in stone.

Nobody knows New England who is not on terms of intimacy with one of its

elms. The elm comes nearer to having a soul than any other vegetable

creature among us. It loves man as man loves it. It is modest and

patient. It has a small flake of a seed which blows in everywhere and

makes arrangements for coming up by and by. So, in spring, one finds a

crop of baby-elms among his carrots and parsnips, very weak and small

compared to those succulent vegetables. The baby-elms die, most of them,

slain, unrecognized or unheeded, by hand or hoe, as meekly as Herod's

innocents. One of them gets overlooked, perhaps, until it has

established a kind of right to stay. Three generations of carrot and

parsnip consumers have passed away, yourself among them, and now let your

great-grandson look for the baby-elm. Twenty-two feet of clean girth,

three hundred and sixty feet in the line that bounds its leafy circle, it

covers the boy with such a canopy as neither glossy-leafed oak nor

insect-haunted linden ever lifted into the summer skies.

Elm Street was the pride of Rockland, but not only on account of its

Gothic-arched vista. In this street were most of the great houses, or

"mansion-houses," as it was usual to call them. Along this street, also,

the more nicely kept and neatly painted dwellings were chiefly

congregated. It was the correct thing for a Rockland dignitary to have a

house in Elm Street. A New England "mansion-house" is naturally square,

with dormer windows projecting from the roof, which has a balustrade with

turned posts round it. It shows a good breadth of front-yard before its

door, as its owner shows a respectable expanse of a clean shirt-front.

It has a lateral margin beyond its stables and offices, as its master

wears his white wrist bands showing beyond his coat-cuffs. It may not

have what can properly be called grounds, but it must have elbow-room, at

any rate. Without it, it is like a man who is always tight-buttoned for

want of any linen to show. The mansion-house which has had to "button

itself up tight in fences, for want of green or gravel margin," will be

advertising for boarders presently. The old English pattern of the New

England mansion-house, only on a somewhat grander scale, is Sir Thomas

Abney's place, where dear, good Dr. Watts said prayers for the family,

and wrote those blessed hymns of his that sing us into consciousness in

our cradles, and come back to us in sweet, single verses, between the

moments of wandering and of stupor, when we lie dying, and sound over us

when we can no longer hear them, bringing grateful tears to the hot,

aching eyes beneath the thick, black veils, and carrying the holy calm

with them which filled the good man's heart, as he prayed and sung under

the shelter of the old English mansion-house. Next to the

mansion-houses, came the two-story trim, white-painted, "genteel" houses,

which, being more gossipy and less nicely bred, crowded close up to the

street, instead of standing back from it with arms akimbo, like the

mansion-houses. Their little front-yards were very commonly full of lilac

and syringa and other bushes, which were allowed to smother the lower

story almost to the exclusion of light and airy so that, what with small

windows and small windowpanes, and the darkness made by these choking

growths of shrubbery, the front parlors of some of these houses were the

most tomb-like, melancholy places that could be found anywhere among the

abodes of the living. Their garnishing was apt to assist this

impression. Large-patterned carpets, which always look discontented in

little rooms, haircloth furniture, black and shiny as beetles' wing

cases, and centre-tables, with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called

astral by our imaginative ancestors, in the centre,--these things were

inevitable. In set piles round the lamp was ranged the current

literature of the day, in the form of Temperance Documents, unbound

numbers of one of the Unknown Public's Magazines with worn-out steel

engravings and high-colored fashion-plates, the Poems of a distinguished

British author whom it is unnecessary to mention, a volume of sermons, or

a novel or two, or both, according to the tastes of the family, and the

Good Book, which is always Itself in the cheapest and commonest company.

The father of the family with his hand in the breast of his coat, the

mother of the same in a wide-bordered cap, sometimes a print of the Last

Supper, by no means Morghen's, or the Father of his Country, or the old

General, or the Defender of the Constitution, or an unknown clergyman

with an open book before him,--these were the usual ornaments of the

walls, the first two a matter of rigor, the others according to politics

and other tendencies.

This intermediate class of houses, wherever one finds them in New England

towns, are very apt to be cheerless and unsatisfactory. They have

neither the luxury of the mansion-house nor the comfort of the

farm-house. They are rarely kept at an agreeable temperature. The

mansion-house has large fireplaces and generous chimneys, and is open to

the sunshine. The farm-house makes no pretensions, but it has a good

warm kitchen, at any rate, and one can be comfortable there with the rest

of the family, without fear and without reproach. These lesser

country-houses of genteel aspirations are much given to patent

subterfuges of one kind and another to get heat without combustion. The

chilly parlor and the slippery hair-cloth seat take the life out of the

warmest welcome. If one would make these places wholesome, happy, and

cheerful, the first precept would be,--The dearest fuel, plenty of it,

and let half the heat go up the chimney. If you can't afford this, don't

try to live in a "genteel" fashion, but stick to the ways of the honest

farm-house.

There were a good many comfortable farm-houses scattered about Rockland.

The best of them were something of the following pattern, which is too

often superseded of late by a more pretentious, but infinitely less

pleasing kind of rustic architecture. A little back from the road,

seated directly on the green sod, rose a plain wooden building, two

stories in front, with a long roof sloping backwards to within a few feet

of the ground. This, like the "mansion-house," is copied from an old

English pattern. Cottages of this model may be seen in Lancashire, for

instance, always with the same honest, homely look, as if their roofs

acknowledged their relationship to the soil out of which they sprung.

The walls were unpainted, but turned by the slow action of sun and air

and rain to a quiet dove or slate color. An old broken millstone at the

door,--a well-sweep pointing like a finger to the heavens, which the

shining round of water beneath looked up at like a dark unsleeping

eye,--a single large elm a little at one side,--a barn twice as big as

the house,--a cattle-yard, with

"The white horns tossing above the wall,"--

some fields, in pasture or in crops, with low stone walls round them,--a

row of beehives,--a garden-patch, with roots, and currant-bushes, and

many-hued hollyhocks, and swollen-stemmed, globe-headed, seedling onions,

and marigolds and flower-de-luces, and lady's-delights, and peonies,

crowding in together, with southernwood in the borders, and woodbine and

hops and morning-glories climbing as they got a chance,--these were the

features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house,

when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over

poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their

vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images

that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as

they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the

red wave out of which Memory arises, as Aphrodite arose from the green

waves of the ocean.

Two meeting-houses stood on two eminences, facing each other, and looking

like a couple of fighting-cocks with their necks straight up in the

air,--as if they would flap their roofs, the next thing, and crow out of

their upstretched steeples, and peck at each other's glass eyes with

their sharp-pointed weathercocks.

The first was a good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England

meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square

tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out

of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its

summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery

running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the

pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached

the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., successor, after a number of

generations, to the office and the parsonage of the Reverend Didymus

Bean, before mentioned, but not suspected of any of his alleged heresies.

He held to the old faith of the Puritans, and occasionally delivered a

discourse which was considered by the hard-headed theologians of his

parish to have settled the whole matter fully and finally, so that now

there was a good logical basis laid down for the Millennium, which might

begin at once upon the platform of his demonstrations. Yet the Reverend

Dr. Honeywood was fonder of preaching plain, practical sermons about the

duties of life, and showing his Christianity in abundant good works among

his people. It was noticed by some few of his flock, not without

comment, that the great majority of his texts came from the Gospels, and

this more and more as he became interested in various benevolent

enterprises which brought him into relations with-ministers and

kindhearted laymen of other denominations. He was in fact a man of a

very warm, open, and exceedingly human disposition, and, although bred by

a clerical father, whose motto was "Sit anima mea cum Puritanis," he

exercised his human faculties in the harness of his ancient faith with

such freedom that the straps of it got so loose they did not interfere

greatly with the circulation of the warm blood through his system. Once

in a while he seemed to think it necessary to come out with a grand

doctrinal sermon, and them he would lapse away for a while into preaching

on men's duties to each other and to society, and hit hard, perhaps, at

some of the actual vices of the time and place, and insist with such

tenderness and eloquence on the great depth and breadth of true Christian

love and charity, that his oldest deacon shook his head, and wished he

had shown as much interest when he was preaching, three Sabbaths back, on

Predestination, or in his discourse against the Sabellians. But he was

sound in the faith; no doubt of that. Did he not preside at the council

held in the town of Tamarack, on the other side of the mountain, which

expelled its clergyman for maintaining heretical doctrines? As presiding

officer, he did not vote, of course, but there was no doubt that he was

all right; he had some of the Edwards blood in him, and that couldn't

very well let him go wrong.

The meeting-house on the other and opposite summit was of a more modern

style, considered by many a great improvement on the old New England

model, so that it is not uncommon for a country parish to pull down its

old meeting-house, which has been preached in for a hundred years or so,

and put up one of these more elegant edifices. The new building was in

what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner. Its pinnacles and

crockets and other ornaments were, like the body of the building, all of

pine wood,--an admirable material, as it is very soft and easily worked,

and can be painted of any color desired. Inside, the walls were stuccoed

in imitation of stone,--first a dark brown square, then two light brown

squares, then another dark brown square, and so on, to represent the

accidental differences of shade always noticeable in the real stones of

which walls are built. To be sure, the architect could not help getting

his party-colored squares in almost as regular rhythmical order as those

of a chess-board; but nobody can avoid doing things in a systematic and

serial way; indeed, people who wish to plant trees in natural chimps know

very well that they cannot keep from making regular lines and symmetrical

figures, unless by some trick or other, as that one of throwing a peck of

potatoes up into the air and sticking in a tree wherever a potato happens

to fall. The pews of this meeting-house were the usual oblong ones,

where people sit close together, with a ledge before them to support

their hymn-books, liable only to occasional contact with the back of the

next pew's heads or bonnets, and a place running under the seat of that

pew where hats could be deposited,--always at the risk of the owner, in

case of injury by boots or crickets.

In this meeting-house preached the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, a divine

of the "Liberal" school, as it is commonly called, bred at that famous

college which used to be thought, twenty or thirty years ago, to have the

monopoly of training young men in the milder forms of heresy. His

ministrations were attended with decency, but not followed with

enthusiasm. "The beauty of virtue" got to be an old story at last. "The

moral dignity of human nature" ceased to excite a thrill of satisfaction,

after some hundred repetitions. It grew to be a dull business, this

preaching against stealing and intemperance, while he knew very well that

the thieves were prowling round orchards and empty houses, instead of

being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely

church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of

the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather

let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked

his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at best,--very

apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, and not at all given to

extra evening services. The minister, unlike his rival of the other side

of the way, was a down-hearted and timid kind of man. He went on

preaching as he had been taught to preach, but he had misgivings at

times. There was a little Roman Catholic church at the foot of the hill

where his own was placed, which he always had to pass on Sundays. He

could never look on the thronging multitudes that crowded its pews and

aisles or knelt bare-headed on its steps, without a longing to get in

among them and go down on his knees and enjoy that luxury of devotional

contact which makes a worshipping throng as different from the same

numbers praying apart as a bed of coals is from a trail of scattered

cinders.

"Oh, if I could but huddle in with those poor laborers and working-women!"

he would say to himself. "If I could but breathe that atmosphere,

stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with

the smoke of hallowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over

these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation!" The intellectual

isolation of his sect preyed upon him; for, of all terrible things to

natures like his, the most terrible is to belong to a minority. No

person that looked at his thin and sallow cheek, his sunken and sad eye,

his tremulous lip, his contracted forehead, or who heard his querulous,

though not unmusical voice, could fail to see that his life was an uneasy

one, that he was engaged in some inward conflict. His dark, melancholic

aspect contrasted with his seemingly cheerful creed, and was all the more

striking, as the worthy Dr. Honeywood, professing a belief which made him

a passenger on board a shipwrecked planet, was yet a most good-humored

and companionable gentleman, whose laugh on week-days did one as much

good to listen to as the best sermon he ever delivered on a Sunday.

A mile or two from the centre of Rockland was a pretty little Episcopal

church, with a roof like a wedge of cheese, a square tower, a stained

window, and a trained rector, who read the service with such ventral

depth of utterance and rrreduplication of the rrresonant letter, that his

own mother would not have known him for her son, if the good woman had

not ironed his surplice and put it on with her own hands.

There were two public-houses in the place: one dignified with the name of

the Mountain House, somewhat frequented by city people in the summer

months, large-fronted, three-storied, balconied, boasting a distinct

ladies'-drawing-room, and spreading a table d'hote of some pretensions;

the other, "Pollard's Tahvern," in the common speech,--a two-story

building, with a bar-room, once famous, where there was a great smell of

hay and boots and pipes and all other bucolic-flavored elements,--where

games of checkers were played on the back of the bellows with red and

white kernels of corn, or with beans and coffee, where a man slept in a

box-settle at night, to wake up early passengers,--where teamsters came

in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic

flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male gossips, sometimes

including the squire of the neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange

a question or two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state of

suspended animation which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days produce

in human beings, as the Grotta del Cane does in dogs in the well-known

experiments related by travellers. This bar-room used to be famous for

drinking and storytelling, and sometimes fighting, in old times. That was

when there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind the bar, and a

hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make punch, and three or four

loggerheads (long irons clubbed at the end) were always lying in the fire

in the cold season, waiting to be plunged into sputtering and foaming

mugs of flip,--a goodly compound; speaking according to the flesh, made

with beer and sugar, and a certain suspicion of strong waters, over which

a little nutmeg being grated, and in it the hot iron being then allowed

to sizzle, there results a peculiar singed aroma, which the wise regard

as a warning to remove themselves at once out of the reach of temptation.

But the bar of Pollard's Tahvern no longer presented its old attractions,

and the loggerheads had long disappeared from the fire. In place of the

decanters, were boxes containing "lozengers," as they were commonly

called, sticks of candy in jars, cigars in tumblers, a few lemons, grown

hard-skinned and marvellously shrunken by long exposure, but still feebly

suggestive of possible lemonade,--the whole ornamented by festoons of

yellow and blue cut flypaper. On the front shelf of the bar stood a

large German-silver pitcher of water, and scattered about were

ill-conditioned lamps, with wicks that always wanted picking, which

burned red and smoked a good deal, and were apt to go out without any

obvious cause, leaving strong reminiscences of the whale-fishery in the

circumambient air.

The common schoolhouses of Rockland were dwarfed by the grandeur of the

Apollinean Institute. The master passed one of them, in a walk he was

taking, soon after his arrival at Rockland. He looked in at the rows of

desks, and recalled his late experiences. He could not help laughing, as

he thought how neatly he had knocked the young butcher off his pins.

"A little science is a dangerous thing, 'as well as a little 'learning,'"

he said to himself; "only it's dangerous to the fellow you' try it on."

And he cut him a good stick, and began climbing the side of The Mountain

to get a look at that famous Rattlesnake Ledge.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW.

The virtue of the world is not mainly in its leaders. In the midst of

the multitude which follows there is often something better than in the

one that goes before. Old generals wanted to take Toulon, but one of

their young colonels showed them how. The junior counsel has been known

not unfrequently to make a better argument than his senior fellow,--if,

indeed, he did not make both their arguments. Good ministers will tell

you they have parishioners who beat them in the practice of the virtues.

A great establishment, got up on commercial principles, like the

Apollinean Institute, might yet be well carried on, if it happened to get

good teachers. And when Master Langdon came to see its management, he

recognized that there must be fidelity and intelligence somewhere among

the instructors. It was only necessary to look for a moment at the fair,

open forehead, the still, tranquil eye of gentle, habitual authority, the

sweet gravity that lay upon the lips, to hear the clear answers to the

pupils' questions, to notice how every request had the force without the

form of a command, and the young man could not doubt that the good genius

of the school stood before him in the person of Helen barley.

It was the old story. A poor country-clergyman dies, and leaves a widow

and a daughter. In Old England the daughter would have eaten the bitter

bread of a governess in some rich family. In New England she must keep a

school. So, rising from one sphere to another, she at length finds

herself the prima donna in the department of instruction in Mr. Silas

Peckham's educational establishment.

What a miserable thing it is to be poor. She was dependent, frail,

sensitive, conscientious. She was in the power of a hard, grasping,

thin-blooded, tough-fibred, trading educator, who neither knew nor cared

for a tender woman's sensibilities, but who paid her and meant to have

his money's worth out of her brains, and as much more than his money's

worth as he could get. She was consequently, in plain English,

overworked, and an overworked woman is always a sad sight,--sadder a

great deal than an overworked man, because she is so much more fertile in

capacities of suffering than a man. She has so many varieties of

headache,--sometimes as if Jael were driving the nail that killed Sisera

into her temples,--sometimes letting her work with half her brain while

the other half throbs as if it would go to pieces,--sometimes tightening

round the brows as if her cap-band were a ring of iron,--and then her

neuralgias, and her backaches, and her fits of depression, in which she

thinks she is nothing and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which

men speak slightingly of as hysterical,--convulsions, that is all, only

not commonly fatal ones,--so many trials which belong to her fine and

mobile structure,--that she is always entitled to pity, when she is

placed in conditions which develop her nervous tendencies.

The poor young lady's work had, of course, been doubled since the

departure of Master Langdon's predecessor. Nobody knows what the

weariness of instruction is, as soon as the teacher's faculties begin to

be overtasked, but those who have tried it. The relays of fresh pupils,

each new set with its exhausting powers in full action, coming one after

another, take out all the reserved forces and faculties of resistance

from the subject of their draining process.

The day's work was over, and it was late in the evening, when she sat

down, tired and faint, with a great bundle of girls' themes or

compositions to read over before she could rest her weary head on the

pillow of her narrow trundle-bed, and forget for a while the treadmill

stair of labor she was daily climbing.

How she dreaded this most forlorn of all a teacher's tasks! She was

conscientious in her duties, and would insist on reading every

sentence,--there was no saying where she might find faults of grammar or

bad spelling. There might have been twenty or thirty of these themes in

the bundle before her. Of course she knew pretty well the leading

sentiments they could contain: that beauty was subject to the accidents

of time; that wealth was inconstant, and existence uncertain; that virtue

was its own reward; that youth exhaled, like the dewdrop from the flower,

ere the sun had reached its meridian; that life was o'ershadowed with

trials; that the lessons of virtue instilled by our beloved teachers were

to be our guides through all our future career. The imagery employed

consisted principally of roses, lilies, birds, clouds, and brooks, with

the celebrated comparison of wayward genius to meteor. Who does not know

the small, slanted, Italian hand of these girls'-compositions, their

stringing together of the good old traditional copy-book phrases; their

occasional gushes of sentiment, their profound estimates of the world,

sounding to the old folks that read them as the experience of a bantam

pullet's last-hatched young one with the chips of its shell on its head

would sound to a Mother Cary's chicken, who knew the great ocean with all

its typhoons and tornadoes? Yet every now and then one is liable to be

surprised with strange clairvoyant flashes, that can hardly be explained,

except by the mysterious inspiration which every now and then seizes a

young girl and exalts her intelligence, just as hysteria in other

instances exalts the sensibility,--a little something of that which made

Joan of Arc, and the Burney girl who prophesied "Evelina," and the

Davidson sisters. In the midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss

Darley read over so carefully were two or three that had something of

individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an

epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen

scarlet feather marks the path the wild flamingo has trodden.

The young lady-teacher read them with a certain indifference of manner,

as one reads proofs--noting defects of detail, but not commonly arrested

by the matters treated of. Even Miss Charlotte Ann Wood's poem,

beginning--

"How sweet at evening's balmy hour,"

did not excite her. She marked the inevitable false rhyme of Cockney and

Yankee beginners, morn and dawn, and tossed the verses on the pile of

papers she had finished. She was looking over some of the last of them

in a rather listless way,--for the poor thing was getting sleepy in spite

of herself,--when she came to one which seemed to rouse her attention,

and lifted her drooping lids. She looked at it a moment before she would

touch it. Then she took hold of it by one corner and slid it off from

the rest. One would have said she was afraid of it, or had some

undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are

common enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many of these young

people will jump up twenty times a day and run to dabble the tips of

their fingers in water, after touching the most inoffensive objects.

This composition was written in a singular, sharp-pointed, long, slender

hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something strangely

suggestive about the look of it, but exactly of what, Miss barley either

could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The

Mountain,--the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It

showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the

region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its

wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well as by day.

As the teacher read on, her color changed, and a kind of tremulous

agitation came over her. There were hints in this strange paper she did

not know what to make of. There was something in its descriptions and

imagery that recalled,--Miss Darley could not say what,--but it made her

frightfully nervous. Still she could not help reading, till she came to

one passage which so agitated her, that the tired and over-wearied girl's

self-control left her entirely. She sobbed once or twice, then laughed

convulsively; and flung herself on the bed, where she worked out a set

hysteric spasm as she best might, without anybody to rub her hands and

see that she did not hurt herself.

By and by she got quiet, rose and went to her bookcase, took down a

volume of Coleridge, and read a short time, and so to bed, to sleep and

wake from time to time with a sudden start out of uneasy dreams.

Perhaps it is of no great consequence what it was in the composition

which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a state

that almost any slight agitation would have brought on the attack, and it

was the accident of her transient excitability, very probably, which made

a trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. The theme

was signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, E. Venner, and

was, of course, written by that wild-looking girl who had excited the

master's curiosity and prompted his question, as before mentioned. The

next morning the lady-teacher looked pale and wearied, naturally enough,

but she was in her place at the usual hour, and Master Langdon in his

own.

The girls had not yet entered the school room.

"You have been ill, I am afraid," said Mr. Bernard.

"I was not well yesterday," she, answered. "I had a worry and a kind of

fright. It is so dreadful to have the charge of all these young souls

and bodies. Every young girl ought to walk locked close, arm in arm,

between two guardian angels. Sometimes I faint almost with the thought

of all that I ought to do, and of my own weakness and wants.--Tell me,

are there not natures born so out of parallel with the lines of natural

law that nothing short of a miracle can bring them right?"

Mr. Bernard had speculated somewhat, as all thoughtful persons of his

profession are forced to do, on the innate organic tendencies with which

individuals, families, and races are born. He replied, therefore, with a

smile, as one to whom the question suggested a very familiar class of

facts.

"Why, of course. Each of us is only the footing-up of a double column of

figures that goes back to the first pair. Every unit tells,--and some of

them are plus, and some minus. If the columns don't add up right, it is

commonly because we can't make out all the figures. I don't mean to say

that something may not be added by Nature to make up for losses and keep

the race to its average, but we are mainly nothing but the answer to a

long sum in addition and subtraction. No doubt there are people born

with impulses at every possible angle to the parallels of Nature, as you

call them. If they happen to cut these at right angles, of course they

are beyond the reach of common influences. Slight obliquities are what

we have most to do with in education. Penitentiaries and insane asylums

take care of most of the right-angle cases.--I am afraid I have put it

too much like a professor, and I am only a student, you know. Pray, what

set you to asking me this? Any strange cases among the scholars?"

The meek teacher's blue eyes met the luminous glance that came with the

question. She, too, was of gentle blood,--not meaning by that that she

was of any noted lineage, but that she came of a cultivated stock, never

rich, but long trained to intellectual callings. A thousand decencies,

amenities, reticences, graces, which no one thinks of until he misses

them, are the traditional right of those who spring from such families.

And when two persons of this exceptional breeding meet in the midst of

the common multitude, they seek each other's company at once by the

natural law of elective affinity. It is wonderful how men and women know

their peers. If two stranger queens, sole survivors of two shipwrecked

vessels, were cast, half-naked, on a rock together, each would at once

address the other as "Our Royal Sister."

Helen Darley looked into the dark eyes of Bernard Langdon glittering with

the light which flashed from them with his question. Not as those

foolish, innocent country-girls of the small village did she look into

them, to be fascinated and bewildered, but to sound them with a calm,

steadfast purpose. "A gentleman," she said to herself, as she read his

expression and his features with a woman's rapid, but exhausting glance.

"A lady," he said to himself, as he met her questioning look,--so brief,

so quiet, yet so assured, as of one whom necessity had taught to read

faces quickly without offence, as children read the faces of parents, as

wives read the faces of hard-souled husbands. All this was but a few

seconds' work, and yet the main point was settled. If there had been any

vulgar curiosity or coarseness of any kind lurking in his expression, she

would have detected it. If she had not lifted her eyes to his face so

softly and kept them there so calmly and withdrawn them so quietly, he

would not have said to himself, "She is a LADY," for that word meant a

good deal to the descendant of the courtly Wentworths and the scholarly

Langdons.

"There are strange people everywhere, Mr. Langdon," she said, "and I

don't think our schoolroom is an exception. I am glad you believe in the

force of transmitted tendencies. It would break my heart, if I did not

think that there are faults beyond the reach of everything but God's

special grace. I should die, if I thought that my negligence or

incapacity was alone responsible for the errors and sins of those I have

charge of. Yet there are mysteries I do not know how to account for."

She looked all round the schoolroom, and then said, in a whisper, "Mr.

Langdon, we had a girl that stole, in the school, not long ago. Worse

than that, we had a girl who tried to set us on fire. Children of good

people, both of them. And we have a girl now that frightens me so"--

The door opened, and three misses came in to take their seats: three

types, as it happened, of certain classes, into which it would not have

been difficult to distribute the greater number of the girls in the

school.--Hannah Martin. Fourteen years and three months old.

Short-necked, thick-waisted, round-cheeked, smooth, vacant forehead,

large, dull eyes. Looks good-natured, with little other expression.

Three buns in her bag, and a large apple. Has a habit of attacking her

provisions in school-hours.--Rosa Milburn. Sixteen. Brunette, with a

rare-ripe flush in her cheeks. Color comes and goes easily. Eyes

wandering, apt to be downcast. Moody at times. Said to be passionate,

if irritated. Finished in high relief. Carries shoulders well back and

walks well, as if proud of her woman's life, with a slight rocking

movement, being one of the wide-flanged pattern, but seems restless,--a

hard girl to look after. Has a romance in her pocket, which she means to

read in school-time.--Charlotte Ann Wood. Fifteen. The poetess before

mentioned. Long, light ringlets, pallid complexion, blue eyes. Delicate

child, half unfolded. Gentle, but languid and despondent. Does not go

much with the other girls, but reads a good deal, especially poetry,

underscoring favorite passages. Writes a great many verses, very fast,

not very correctly; full of the usual human sentiments, expressed in the

accustomed phrases. Under-vitalized. Sensibilities not covered with

their normal integuments. A negative condition, often confounded with

genius, and sometimes running into it. Young people who fall out of line

through weakness of the active faculties are often confounded with those

who step out of it through strength of the intellectual ones.

The girls kept coming in, one after another, or in pairs or groups, until

the schoolroom was nearly full. Then there was a little pause, and a

light step was heard in the passage. The lady-teacher's eyes turned to

the door, and the master's followed them in the same direction.

A girl of about seventeen entered. She was tall and slender, but

rounded, with a peculiar undulation of movement, such as one sometimes

sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom Nature, the queen of

graces, has taken in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very

highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a

splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which

was always like a surprise when her lips parted. She wore a checkered

dress, of a curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little

fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a

short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing

listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common habit with her, coiling

it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist, and braiding it in with her

long, delicate fingers. Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes,

not large,--a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie in the Townley

bust,--black hair, twisted in heavy braids,--a face that one could not

help looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to look away from for

something in its expression, and could not for those diamond eyes. They

were fixed on the lady-teacher now. The latter turned her own away, and

let them wander over the other scholars. But they could not help coming

back again for a single glance at the wild beauty. The diamond eyes were

on her still. She turned the leaves of several of her books, as if in

search of some passage, and, when she thought she had waited long enough

to be safe, once more stole a quick look at the dark girl. The diamond

eyes were still upon her. She put her kerchief to her forehead, which

had grown slightly moist; she sighed once, almost shivered, for she felt

cold; then, following some ill-defined impulse, which she could not

resist, she left her place and went to the young girl's desk.

"What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?" It was a strange question to

put, for the girl had not signified that she wished the teacher to come

to her.

"Nothing," she said. "I thought I could make you come." The girl spoke

in a low tone, a kind of half-whisper. She did not lisp, yet her

articulation of one or two consonants was not absolutely perfect.

"Where did you get that flower, Elsie?" said Miss Darley. It was a rare

alpine flower, which was found only in one spot among the rocks of The

Mountain.

"Where it grew," said Elsie Veneer. "Take it." The teacher could not

refuse her. The girl's finger tips touched hers as she took it. How

cold they were for a girl of such an organization!

The teacher went back to her seat. She made an excuse for quitting the

schoolroom soon afterwards. The first thing she did was to fling the

flower into her fireplace and rake the ashes over it. The second was to

wash the tips of her fingers, as if she had been another Lady Macbeth. A

poor, over-tasked, nervous creature,--we must not think too much of her

fancies.

After school was done, she finished the talk with the master which had

been so suddenly interrupted. There were things spoken of which may

prove interesting by and by, but there are other matters we must first

attend to.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EVENT OF THE SEASON.

"Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's compliments to Mr. Langdon and requests

the pleasure of his company at a social entertainment on Wednesday

evening next.

"Elm St. Monday."

On paper of a pinkish color and musky smell, with a large "S" at the top,

and an embossed border. Envelop adherent, not sealed. Addressed

LANGDON ESQ.

Present.

Brought by H. Frederic Sprowle, youngest son of the Colonel,--the H. of

course standing for the paternal Hezekiah, put in to please the father,

and reduced to its initial to please the mother, she having a marked

preference for Frederic. Boy directed to wait for an answer.

"Mr. Langdon has the pleasure of accepting Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's

polite invitation for Wednesday evening."

On plain paper, sealed with an initial.

In walking along the main street, Mr. Bernard had noticed a large house

of some pretensions to architectural display, namely, unnecessarily

projecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, wooden mouldings at

various available points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a

little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that

were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had

rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted

in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman implied a

defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising in people who

lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof and a triumphal arch for

its entrance.

This place was known as "Colonel Sprowle's villa," (genteel friends,)--as

"the elegant residence of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Colonel

Sprowle," (Rockland Weekly Universe,)--as "the neew haouse," (old

settlers,)--as "Spraowle's Folly," (disaffected and possibly envious

neighbors,)--and in common discourse, as "the Colonel's."

Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle of the Commonwealth's Militia,

was a retired "merchant." An India merchant he might, perhaps, have been

properly called; for he used to deal in West India goods, such as coffee,

sugar, and molasses, not to speak of rum,--also in tea, salt fish,

butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit, agricultural "p'doose"

generally, industrial products, such as boots and shoes, and various

kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end of the establishment in

calicoes and other stuffs,--to say nothing of miscellaneous objects of

the most varied nature, from sticks of candy, which tempted in the

smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles of

apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery, in

short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural

population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony.

He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan,

Esq., an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his name to

posterity in large gilt letters as a generous benefactor of his native

place. In due time the Colonel reaped the reward of well-placed

affections. When his wife's inheritance fell in, he thought he had money

enough to give up trade, and therefore sold out his "store," called in

some dialects of the English language shop, and his business.

Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, as soon as he had nothing

particular to do. Country people with money enough not to have to work

are in much more danger than city people in the same condition. They get

a specific look and character, which are the same in all the villages

where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the

basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a

reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and

wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news

perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall

silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this

regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if

the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water,

which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments,

and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed

future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and

though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at

night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three

times over, it had always been in very cold weather,--and everybody knows

that no one is safe to drink a couple of glasses of wine in a warm room

and go suddenly out into the cold air.

Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at

which young ladies are supposed in technical language to have come out,

and thereafter are considered to be in company.

"There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel to his wife, "that we

ha'n't disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. That 's Matildy. I

don't mean to set HER up at vaandoo. I guess she can have her pick of a

dozen."

"She 's never seen anybody yet," said Mrs. Sprowle, who had had a certain

project for some time, but had kept quiet about it. "Let's have a party,

and give her a chance to show herself and see some of the young folks."

The Colonel was not very clear-headed, and he thought, naturally enough,

that the party was his own suggestion, because his remark led to the

first starting of the idea. He entered into the plan, therefore, with a

feeling of pride as well as pleasure, and the great project was resolved

upon in a family council without a dissentient voice. This was the

party, then, to which Mr. Bernard was going. The town had been full of it

for a week. "Everybody was asked." So everybody said that was invited.

But how in respect of those who were not asked? If it had been one of

the old mansion-houses that was giving a party, the boundary between the

favored and the slighted families would have been known pretty well

beforehand, and there would have been no great amount of grumbling. But

the Colonel, for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and a

brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to fortune,

and now the time was come when he must define his new social position.

This is always an awkward business in town or country. An exclusive

alliance between two powers is often the same thing as a declaration of

war against a third. Rockland was soon split into a triumphant minority,

invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party, and a great majority, uninvited, of

which the fraction just on the border line between recognized "gentility"

and the level of the ungloved masses was in an active state of excitement

and indignation.

"Who is she, I should like to know?" said Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's

wife. "There was plenty of folks in Rockland as good as ever Sally

Jordan was, if she had managed to pick up a merchant. Other folks could

have married merchants, if their families was n't as wealthy as them old

skinflints that willed her their money," etc., etc. Mrs. Saymore

expressed the feeling of many beside herself. She had, however, a

special right to be proud of the name she bore. Her husband was own

cousin to the Saymores of Freestone Avenue (who write the name Seymour,

and claim to be of the Duke of Somerset's family, showing a clear descent

from the Protector to Edward Seymour, (1630,)--then a jump that would

break a herald's neck to one Seth Saymore,(1783,)--from whom to the head

of the present family the line is clear again). Mrs. Saymore, the

tailor's wife, was not invited, because her husband mended clothes. If

he had confined himself strictly to making them, it would have put a

different face upon the matter.

The landlord of the Mountain House and his lady were invited to Mrs.

Sprowle's party. Not so the landlord of Pollard's Tahvern and his lady.

Whereupon the latter vowed that they would have a party at their house

too, and made arrangements for a dance of twenty or thirty couples, to be

followed by an entertainment. Tickets to this "Social Ball" were soon

circulated, and, being accessible to all at a moderate price, admission

to the "Elegant Supper" included, this second festival promised to be as

merry, if not as select, as the great party.

Wednesday came. Such doings had never been heard of in Rockland as went

on that day at the "villa." The carpet had been taken up in the long

room, so that the young folks might have a dance. Miss Matilda's piano

had been moved in, and two fiddlers and a clarionet-player engaged to

make music. All kinds of lamps had been put in requisition, and even

colored wax-candles figured on the mantel-pieces. The costumes of the

family had been tried on the day before: the Colonel's black suit fitted

exceedingly well; his lady's velvet dress displayed her contours to

advantage; Miss Matilda's flowered silk was considered superb; the eldest

son of the family, Mr. T. Jordan Sprowle, called affectionately and

elegantly "Geordie," voted himself "stunnin'"; and even the small youth

who had borne Mr. Bernard's invitation was effective in a new jacket and

trousers, buttony in front, and baggy in the reverse aspect, as is wont

to be the case with the home-made garments of inland youngsters.

Great preparations had been made for the refection which was to be part

of the entertainment. There was much clinking of borrowed spoons, which

were to be carefully counted, and much clicking of borrowed china, which

was to be tenderly handled, for nobody in the country keeps those vast

closets full of such things which one may see in rich city-houses. Not a

great deal could be done in the way of flowers, for there were no

greenhouses, and few plants were out as yet; but there were paper

ornaments for the candlesticks, and colored mats for the lamps, and all

the tassels of the curtains and bells were taken out of those brown linen

bags, in which, for reasons hitherto undiscovered, they are habitually

concealed in some households. In the remoter apartments every imaginable

operation was going on at once,--roasting, boiling, baking, beating,

rolling, pounding in mortars, frying, freezing; for there was to be

ice-cream to-night of domestic manufacture;--and in the midst of all

these labors, Mrs. Sprowle and Miss Matilda were moving about, directing

and helping as they best might, all day long. When the evening came, it

might be feared they would not be in just the state of mind and body to

entertain company.

--One would like to give a party now and then, if one could be a

billionnaire.--"Antoine, I am going to have twenty people to dine

to-day." "Biens, Madame." Not a word or thought more about it, but get

home in season to dress, and come down to your own table, one of your own

guests.--"Giuseppe, we are to have a party a week from to-night,--five

hundred invitations--there is the list." The day comes. "Madam, do you

remember you have your party tonight?" "Why, so I have! Everything

right? supper and all?" "All as it should be, Madam."

"Send up Victorine." "Victorine, full toilet for this evening,--pink,

diamonds, and emeralds. Coiffeur at seven. Allez."--Billionism, or

even millionism, must be a blessed kind of state, with health and clear

conscience and youth and good looks,--but most blessed is this, that it

takes off all the mean cares which give people the three wrinkles between

the eyebrows, and leaves them free to have a good time and make others

have a good time, all the way along from the charity that tips up

unexpected loads of wood before widows' houses, and leaves foundling

turkeys upon poor men's door-steps, and sets lean clergymen crying at the

sight of anonymous fifty-dollar bills, to the taste which orders a

perfect banquet in such sweet accord with every sense that everybody's

nature flowers out full--blown in its golden--glowing, fragrant

atmosphere.

--A great party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of

solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,--its

spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of

every-day family-life,--it is such a formidable matter to break in the

raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,--there is

such a terrible uncertainty in the results of unfamiliar culinary

operations,--so many feuds are involved in drawing that fatal line which

divides the invited from the uninvited fraction of the local

universe,--that, if the notes requested the pleasure of the guests'

company on "this solemn occasion," they would pretty nearly express the

true state of things.

The Colonel himself had been pressed into the service. He had pounded

something in the great mortar. He had agitated a quantity of sweetened

and thickened milk in what was called a cream-freezer. At eleven

o'clock, A. M., he retired for a space. On returning, his color was

noted to be somewhat heightened, and he showed a disposition to be

jocular with the female help,--which tendency, displaying itself in

livelier demonstrations than were approved at head-quarters, led to his

being detailed to out-of-door duties, such as raking gravel, arranging

places for horses to be hitched to, and assisting in the construction of

an arch of wintergreen at the porch of the mansion.

A whiff from Mr. Geordie's cigar refreshed the toiling females from time

to time; for the windows had to be opened occasionally, while all these

operations were going on, and the youth amused himself with inspecting

the interior, encouraging the operatives now and then in the phrases

commonly employed by genteel young men,--for he had perused an odd volume

of "Verdant Green," and was acquainted with a Sophomore from one of the

fresh-water colleges. "Go it on the feed!" exclaimed this spirited young

man. "Nothin' like a good spread. Grub enough and good liquor, that's

the ticket. Guv'nor'll do the heavy polite, and let me alone for

polishin' off the young charmers." And Mr. Geordie looked expressively at

a handmaid who was rolling gingerbread, as if he were rehearsing for "Don

Giovanni."

Evening came at last, and the ladies were forced to leave the scene of

their labors to array themselves for the coming festivities. The tables

had been set in a back room, the meats were ready, the pickles were

displayed, the cake was baked, the blanc-mange had stiffened, and the

ice-cream had frozen.

At half past seven o'clock, the Colonel, in costume, came into the front

parlor, and proceeded to light the lamps. Some were good-humored enough

and took the hint of a lighted match at once. Others were as vicious as

they could be,--would not light on any terms, any more than if they were

filled with water, or lighted and smoked one side of the chimney, or

spattered a few sparks and sulked themselves out, or kept up a faint show

of burning, so that their ground glasses looked as feebly phosphorescent

as so many invalid fireflies. With much coaxing and screwing and

pricking, a tolerable illumination was at last achieved. At eight there

was a grand rustling of silks, and Mrs. and Miss Sprowle descended from

their respective bowers or boudoirs. Of course they were pretty well

tired by this time, and very glad to sit down,--having the prospect

before them of being obliged to stand for hours. The Colonel walked

about the parlor, inspecting his regiment of lamps. By and by Mr.

Geordie entered.

"Mph! mph!" he sniffed, as he came in. "You smell of lamp-smoke here."

That always galls people,--to have a new-comer accuse them of smoke or

close air, which they have got used to and do not perceive. The Colonel

raged at the thought of his lamps' smoking, and tongued a few anathemas

inside of his shut teeth, but turned down two or three wicks that burned

higher than the rest.

Master H. Frederic next made his appearance, with questionable marks upon

his fingers and countenance. Had been tampering with something brown and

sticky. His elder brother grew playful, and caught him by the baggy

reverse of his more essential garment.

"Hush!" said Mrs. Sprowle,--"there 's the bell!"

Everybody took position at once, and began to look very smiling and

altogether at ease.--False alarm. Only a parcel of spoons,--"loaned,"

as the inland folks say when they mean lent, by a neighbor.

"Better late than never!" said the Colonel, "let me heft them spoons."

Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again as if all her bones had been

bewitched out of her.

"I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, "before any of the folks

has come."

They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. How nervous they

got! and how their senses were sharpened!

"Hark!" said Miss Matilda,--"what 's that rumblin'?"

It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off, which at any

other time they would not have heard. After this there was a lull, and

poor Mrs. Sprowle's head nodded once or twice. Presently a crackling and

grinding of gravel;--how much that means, when we are waiting for those

whom we long or dread to see! Then a change in the tone of the

gravel-crackling.

"Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They're comin'! Mother! mother!"

Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. Bell rings. Enter the first

set of visitors. The Event of the Season has begun.

"Law! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks! I do believe Mahala 's come in

that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!"

Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this

observation and the remark founded thereon. Continuing her attitude of

attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her two daughters conversing in

the attiring-room, up one flight.

"How fine everything is in the great house!" said Mrs. Crane,--"jest

look at the picters!"

"Matildy Sprowle's drawin's," said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.

"I should think so," said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,--a wide-awake

girl, who had n't been to school for nothing, and performed a little on

the lead pencil herself. "I should like to know whether that's a

hay-cock or a mountain!"

Miss Matilda winced; for this must refer to her favorite monochrome,

executed by laying on heavy shadows and stumping them down into mellow

harmony,--the style of drawing which is taught in six lessons, and the

kind of specimen which is executed in something less than one hour.

Parents and other very near relatives are sometimes gratified with these

productions, and cause them to be framed and hung up, as in the present

instance.

"I guess we won't go down jest yet," said Mrs. Crane, "as folks don't

seem to have come."

So she began a systematic inspection of the dressing-room and its

conveniences.

"Mahogany four-poster;--come from the Jordans', I cal'la,te. Marseilles

quilt. Ruffles all round the piller. Chintz curtings,--jest put

up,--o' purpose for the party, I'll lay ye a dollar.--What a nice

washbowl!" (Taps it with a white knuckle belonging to a red finger.)

"Stone chaney.--Here's a bran'-new brush and comb,--and here's a

scent-bottle. Come here, girls, and fix yourselves in the glass, and

scent your pocket-handkerchers."

And Mrs. Crane bedewed her own kerchief with some of the eau de Cologne

of native manufacture,--said on its label to be much superior to the

German article.

It was a relief to Mrs. and the Miss Cranes when the bell rang and the

next guests were admitted. Deacon and Mrs. Soper,--Deacon Soper of the

Rev. Mr. Fairweather's church, and his lady. Mrs. Deacon Soper was

directed, of course, to the ladies' dressing-room, and her husband to the

other apartment, where gentlemen were to leave their outside coats and

hats. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and then the three Miss Spinneys,

then Silas Peckham, Head of the Apollinean Institute, and Mrs. Peckham,

and more after them, until at last the ladies' dressing-room got so full

that one might have thought it was a trap none of them could get out of.

In truth, they all felt a little awkwardly. Nobody wanted to be first to

venture down-stairs. At last Mr. Silas Peckham thought it was time to

make a move for the parlor, and for this purpose presented himself at the

door of the ladies' dressing-room.

"Lorindy, my dear!" he exclaimed to Mrs. Peckham,--"I think there can be

no impropriety in our joining the family down-stairs."

Mrs. Peckham laid her large, flaccid arm in the sharp angle made by the

black sleeve which held the bony limb her husband offered, and the two

took the stair and struck out for the parlor. The ice was broken, and

the dressing-room began to empty itself into the spacious, lighted

apartments below.

Mr. Silas Peckham slid into the room with Mrs. Peckham alongside, like a

shad convoying a jelly-fish.

"Good-evenin', Mrs. Sprowle! I hope I see you well this evenin'. How 's

your haalth, Colonel Sprowle?"

"Very well, much obleeged to you. Hope you and your good lady are well.

Much pleased to see you. Hope you'll enjoy yourselves. We've laid out

to have everything in good shape,--spared no trouble nor ex"--

"pence,"--said Silas Peckham.

Mrs. Colonel Sprowle, who, you remember, was a Jordan, had nipped the

Colonel's statement in the middle of the word Mr. Peckham finished, with

a look that jerked him like one of those sharp twitches women keep giving

a horse when they get a chance to drive one.

Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Miss Ada Azuba, and Miss Mahala Crane made their

entrance. There had been a discussion about the necessity and propriety

of inviting this family, the head of which kept a small shop for hats and

boots and shoes. The Colonel's casting vote had carried it in the

affirmative.--How terribly the poor old green de-laine did cut up in the

blaze of so many lamps and candles.

--Deluded little wretch, male or female, in town or country, going to

your first great party, how little you know the nature of the ceremony in

which you are to bear the part of victim! What! are not these garlands

and gauzy mists and many-colored streamers which adorn you, is not this

music which welcomes you, this radiance that glows about you, meant

solely for your enjoyment, young miss of seventeen or eighteen summers,

now for the first time swimming unto the frothy, chatoyant, sparkling,

undulating sea of laces and silks and satins, and white-armed,

flower-crowned maidens struggling in their waves beneath the lustres that

make the false summer of the drawing-room?

Stop at the threshold! This is a hall of judgment you are entering; the

court is in session; and if you move five steps forward, you will be at

its bar.

There was a tribunal once in France, as you may remember, called the

Chambre Ardente, the Burning Chamber. It was hung all round with lamps,

and hence its name. The burning chamber for the trial of young maidens

is the blazing ball-room. What have they full-dressed you, or rather

half-dressed you for, do you think? To make you look pretty, of course!

Why have they hung a chandelier above you, flickering all over with

flames, so that it searches you like the noonday sun, and your deepest

dimple cannot hold a shadow? To give brilliancy to the gay scene, no

doubt!--No, my clear! Society is inspecting you, and it finds

undisguised surfaces and strong lights a convenience in the process. The

dance answers the purpose of the revolving pedestal upon which the "White

Captive" turns, to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks as if it

had never been hard, in all its manifold aspects of living loveliness.

No mercy for you, my love! Justice, strict justice, you shall certainly

have,--neither more nor less. For, look you, there are dozens, scores,

hundreds, with whom you must be weighed in the balance; and you have got

to learn that the "struggle for life" Mr. Charles Darwin talks about

reaches to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mollusks in

shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or anything that fights for

breathing-room and food and love in any coat of fur or feather! Happy

they who can flash defiance from bright eyes and snowy shoulders back

into the pendants of the insolent lustres!

--Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; and no young girl

ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven! Her keen eyes sparkled under her

plainly parted hair and the green de-laine moulded itself in those

unmistakable lines of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small

shopkeeper's daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer's young

ladies. She would have liked a new dress as much as any other girl, but

she meant to go and have a good time at any rate.

The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty fast, and the

Colonel's hand began to burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which

many of the visitors gave it. Conversation, which had begun like a

summer-shower, in scattering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and

occasionally rising into gusty swells, with now and then a broad-chested

laugh from some Captain or Major or other military personage,--for it may

be noted that all large and loud men in the unpaved districts bear

military titles.

Deacon Soper came up presently, and entered into conversation with

Colonel Sprowle.

"I hope to see our pastor present this evenin'," said the Deacon.

"I don't feel quite sure," the Colonel answered. "His dyspepsy has been

bad on him lately. He wrote to say, that, Providence permittin', it

would be agreeable to him to take a part in the exercises of the evenin';

but I mistrusted he did n't mean to come. To tell the truth, Deacon

Soper, I rather guess he don't like the idee of dancin', and some of the

other little arrangements."

"Well," said the Deacon, "I know there's some condemns dancin'. I've

heerd a good deal of talk about it among the folks round. Some have it

that it never brings a blessin' on a house to have dancin' in it. Judge

Tileston died, you remember, within a month after he had his great ball,

twelve year ago, and some thought it was in the natur' of a judgment. I

don't believe in any of them notions. If a man happened to be struck

dead the night after he'd been givin' a ball," (the Colonel loosened his

black stock a little, and winked and swallowed two or three times,) "I

should n't call it a judgment,--I should call it a coincidence. But I 'm

a little afraid our pastor won't come. Somethin' or other's the matter

with Mr. Fairweather. I should sooner expect to see the old Doctor come

over out of the Orthodox parsonage-house."

"I've asked him," said the Colonel.

"Well?" said Deacon Soper.

"He said he should like to come, but he did n't know what his people

would say. For his part, he loved to see young folks havin' their sports

together, and very often felt as if he should like to be one of 'em

himself. 'But,' says I, 'Doctor, I don't say there won't be a little

dancin'.' 'Don't!' says he, 'for I want Letty to go,' (she's his

granddaughter that's been stayin' with him,) 'and Letty 's mighty fond of

dancin'. You know,' says the Doctor, 'it is n't my business to settle

whether other people's children should dance or not.' And the Doctor

looked as if he should like to rigadoon and sashy across as well as the

young one he was talkin' about. He 's got blood in him, the old Doctor

has. I wish our little man and him would swop pulpits."

Deacon Soper started and looked up into the Colonel's face, as if to see

whether he was in earnest.

Mr. Silas Peckham and his lady joined the group.

"Is this to be a Temperance Celebration, Mrs. Sprowle?" asked Mr. Silas

Peckham.

Mrs. Sprowle replied, "that there would be lemonade and srub for those

that preferred such drinks, but that the Colonel had given folks to

understand that he did n't mean to set in judgment on the marriage in

Canaan, and that those that didn't like srub and such things would find

somethin' that would suit them better."

Deacon Soper's countenance assumed a certain air of restrained

cheerfulness. The conversation rose into one of its gusty paroxysms just

then. Master H. Frederic got behind a door and began performing the

experiment of stopping and unstopping his ears in rapid alternation,

greatly rejoicing in the singular effect of mixed conversation chopped

very small, like the contents of a mince-pie, or meat-pie, as it is more

forcibly called in the deep-rutted villages lying along the unsalted

streams. All at once it grew silent just round the door, where it had

been loudest,--and the silence spread itself like a stain, till it hushed

everything but a few corner-duets. A dark, sad-looking, middle-aged

gentleman entered the parlor, with a young lady on his arm,--his

daughter, as it seemed, for she was not wholly unlike him in feature, and

of the same dark complexion.

"Dudley Venner," exclaimed a dozen people, in startled, but

half-suppressed tones.

"What can have brought Dudley out to-night?" said Jefferson Buck, a young

fellow, who had been interrupted in one of the corner-duets which he was

executing in concert with Miss Susy Pettingill.

"How do I know, Jeff?" was Miss Susy's answer. Then, after a

pause,--"Elsie made him come, I guess. Go ask Dr. Kittredge; he knows

all about 'em both, they say."

Dr. Kittredge, the leading physician of Rockland, was a shrewd old man,

who looked pretty keenly into his patients through his spectacles, and

pretty widely at men, women, and things in general over them.

Sixty-three years old,--just the year of the grand climacteric. A bald

crown, as every doctor should have. A consulting practitioner's mouth;

that is, movable round the corners while the case is under examination,

but both corners well drawn down and kept so when the final opinion is

made up. In fact, the Doctor was often sent for to act as "caounsel,"

all over the county, and beyond it. He kept three or four horses,

sometimes riding in the saddle, commonly driving in a sulky, pretty fast,

and looking straight before him, so that people got out of the way of

bowing to him as he passed on the road. There was some talk about his

not being so long-sighted as other folks, but his old patients laughed

and looked knowing when this was spoken of.

The Doctor knew a good many things besides how to drop tinctures and

shake out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to

understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for him. He knew what a

nervous woman is, and how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when

she is in that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough word is

like a blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers reverses all

her nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul of

Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B

flat, and other low, sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as a

hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical mysteries. The

Doctor knew the difference between what men say and what they mean as

well as most people. When he was listening to common talk, he was in the

habit of looking over his spectacles; if he lifted his head so as to look

through them at the person talking, he was busier with that person's

thoughts than with his words.

Jefferson Buck was not bold enough to confront the Doctor with Miss

Susy's question, for he did not look as if he were in the mood to answer

queries put by curious young people. His eyes were fixed steadily on the

dark girl, every movement of whom he seemed to follow.

She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, so unlike the girls about

her that it seemed nothing more than natural, that, when she moved, the

groups should part to let her pass through them, and that she should

carry the centre of all looks and thoughts with her. She was dressed to

please her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the modes declared

correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers. Her heavy black

hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shat through it like a

javelin. Round her neck was a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain,

such as the Gaols used to wear; the "Dying Gladiator" has it. Her dress

was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing diamond

brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but the silver

setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender

rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists

she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other

looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to

gold and its, eyes to emeralds.

Her father--for Dudley Venner was her father--looked like a man of

culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one

whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. He saluted hardly anybody

except his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at

him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to

think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark

girl's which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and

sad-hearted recluse.

It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner to the party.

Hardly anybody seemed to know her, and she seemed not at all disposed to

make acquaintances. Here and there was one of the older girls from the

Institute, but she appeared to have nothing in common with them. Even in

the schoolroom, it may be remembered, she sat apart by her own choice,

and now in the midst of the crowd she made a circle of isolation round

herself. Drawing her arm out of her father's, she stood against the

wall, and looked, with a strange, cold glitter in her eyes, at the crowd

which moved and babbled before her.

The old Doctor came up to her by and by.

"Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you here. Do tell me how you

happened to do such a good-natured thing as to let us see you at such a

great party."

"It's been dull at the mansion-house," she said, "and I wanted to get out

of it. It's too lonely there,--there's nobody to hate since Dick's

gone."

The Doctor laughed good-naturedly, as if this were an amusing bit of

pleasantry,--but he lifted his head and dropped his eyes a little, so as

to see her through his spectacles. She narrowed her lids slightly, as

one often sees a sleepy cat narrow hers,--somewhat as you may remember

our famous Margaret used to, if you remember her at all,--so that her

eyes looked very small, but bright as the diamonds on her breast. The

old Doctor felt very oddly as she looked at him; be did not like the

feeling, so he dropped his head and lifted his eyes and looked at her

over his spectacles again.

"And how have you all been at the mansion house?" said the Doctor.

"Oh, well enough. But Dick's gone, and there's nobody left but Dudley

and I and the people. I'm tired of it. What kills anybody quickest,

Doctor?" Then, in a whisper, "I ran away again the other day, you know."

"Where did you go?" The Doctor spoke in a low, serious tone.

"Oh, to the old place. Here, I brought this for you."

The Doctor started as she handed him a flower of the Atragene Americana,

for he knew that there was only one spot where it grew, and that not one

where any rash foot, least of all a thin-shod woman's foot, should

venture.

"How long were you gone?" said the Doctor.

"Only one night. You should have heard the horns blowing and the guns

firing. Dudley was frightened out of his wits. Old Sophy told him she'd

had a dream, and that I should be found in Dead-Man's Hollow, with a

great rock lying on me. They hunted all over it, but they did n't find

me,--I was farther up."

Doctor Kittredge looked cloudy and worried while she was speaking, but

forced a pleasant professional smile, as he said cheerily, and as if

wishing to change the subject,

"Have a good dance this evening, Elsie. The fiddlers are tuning up.

Where 's the young master? has he come yet? or is he going to be late,

with the other great folks?"

The girl turned away without answering, and looked toward the door.

The "great folks," meaning the mansion-house gentry, were just beginning

to come; Dudley Venner and his daughter had been the first of them.

Judge Thornton, white-headed, fresh-faced, as good at sixty as he was at

forty, with a youngish second wife, and one noble daughter, Arabella,

who, they said, knew as much law as her father, a stately, Portia like

girl, fit for a premier's wife, not like to find her match even in the

great cities she sometimes visited; the Trecothicks, the family of a

merchant, (in the larger sense,) who, having made himself rich enough by

the time he had reached middle life, threw down his ledger as Sylla did

his dagger, and retired to make a little paradise around him in one of

the stateliest residences of the town, a family inheritance; the

Vaughans, an old Rockland race, descended from its first settlers,

Toryish in tendency in Revolutionary times, and barely escaping

confiscation or worse; the Dunhams, a new family, dating its gentility

only as far back as the Honorable Washington Dunham, M. C., but turning

out a clever boy or two that went to college; and some showy girls with

white necks and fat arms who had picked up professional husbands: these

were the principal mansion-house people. All of them had made it a point

to come; and as each of them entered, it seemed to Colonel and Mrs.

Sprowle that the lamps burned up with a more cheerful light, and that the

fiddles which sounded from the uncarpeted room were all half a tone

higher and half a beat quicker.

Mr. Bernard came in later than any of them; he had been busy with his new

duties. He looked well and that is saying a good deal; for nothing but a

gentleman is endurable in full dress. Hair that masses well, a head set

on with an air, a neckerchief tied cleverly by an easy, practised hand,

close-fitting gloves, feet well shaped and well covered,--these

advantages can make us forgive the odious sable broadcloth suit, which

appears to have been adopted by society on the same principle that

condemned all the Venetian gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness.

Mr. Bernard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow to the Colonel and

his lady and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gracious

curtsy, and then began looking about him for acquaintances. He found two

or three faces he knew,--many more strangers. There was Silas

Peckham,--there was no mistaking him; there was the inelastic amplitude

of Mrs. Peckham; few of the Apollinean girls, of course, they not being

recognized members of society,--but there is one with the flame in her

cheeks and the fire in her eyes, the girl of vigorous tints and emphatic

outlines, whom we saw entering the schoolroom the other day. Old Judge

Thornton has his eyes on her, and the Colonel steals a look every now and

then at the red brooch which lifts itself so superbly into the light, as

if he thought it a wonderfully becoming ornament. Mr. Bernard himself

was not displeased with the general effect of the rich-blooded

schoolgirl, as she stood under the bright lamps, fanning herself in the

warm, languid air, fixed in a kind of passionate surprise at the new life

which seemed to be flowering out in her consciousness. Perhaps he looked

at her somewhat steadily, as some others had done; at any rate, she

seemed to feel that she was looked at, as people often do, and, turning

her eyes suddenly on him, caught his own on her face, gave him a

half-bashful smile, and threw in a blush involuntarily which made it more

charming.

"What can I do better," he said to himself, "than have a dance with Rosa

Milburn?" So he carried his handsome pupil into the next room and took

his place with her in a cotillon. Whether the breath of the Goddess of

Love could intoxicate like the cup of Circe,--whether a woman is ever

phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she exhales,--these

and other questions which relate to occult influences exercised by

certain women we will not now discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was

sensible of a strange fascination, not wholly new to him, nor

unprecedented in the history of human experience, but always a revelation

when it comes over us for the first or the hundredth time, so pale is the

most recent memory by the side of the passing moment with the flush of

any new-born passion on its cheek. Remember that Nature makes every man

love all women, and trusts the trivial matter of special choice to the

commonest accident.

If Mr. Bernard had had nothing to distract his attention, he might have

thought too much about his handsome partner, and then gone home and

dreamed about her, which is always dangerous, and waked up thinking of

her still, and then begun to be deeply interested in her studies, and so

on, through the whole syllogism which ends in Nature's supreme quod erat

demonstrandum. What was there to distract him or disturb him? He did

not know,--but there was something. This sumptuous creature, this Eve

just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the

world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,--alive

to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and

music, as the flower of some dioecious plant which has grown in a lone

corner and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June

evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded

with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double

life is shared,--this almost over-womanized woman might well have

bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm. It was,

perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him

which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in

one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had

not distinctly recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, and saw

that Elsie Venner was looking at him as if she saw nothing else but him.

He was not a nervous person, like the poor lady-teacher, yet the glitter

of the diamond eyes affected him strangely. It seemed to disenchant the

air, so full a moment before of strange attractions. He became silent,

and dreamy, as it were. The round-limbed beauty at his side crushed her

gauzy draperies against him, as they trod the figure of the dance

together, but it was no more to him than if an old nurse had laid her

hand on his sleeve. The young girl chafed at his seeming neglect, and

her imperious blood mounted into her cheeks; but he appeared unconscious

of it.

"There is one of our young ladies I must speak to," he said,--and was

just leaving his partner's side.

"Four hands all round?" shouted the first violin,--and Mr. Bernard found

himself seized and whirled in a circle out of which he could not escape,

and then forced to "cross over," and then to "dozy do," as the maestro

had it,--and when, on getting back to his place, he looked for Elsie

Venner, she was gone.

The dancing went on briskly. Some of the old folks looked on, others

conversed in groups and pairs, and so the evening wore along, until a

little after ten o'clock. About this time there was noticed an increased

bustle in the passages, with a considerable opening and shutting of

doors. Presently it began to be whispered about that they were going to

have supper. Many, who had never been to any large party before, held

their breath for a moment at this announcement. It was rather with a

tremulous interest than with open hilarity that the rumor was generally

received.

One point the Colonel had entirely forgotten to settle. It was a point

involving not merely propriety, but perhaps principle also, or at least

the good report of the house,--and he had never thought to arrange it.

He took Judge Thornton aside and whispered the important question to

him,--in his distress of mind, mistaking pockets and taking out his

bandanna instead of his white handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

"Judge," he said, "do you think, that, before we commence refreshing

ourselves at the tables, it would be the proper thing to--crave a--to

request Deacon Soper or some other elderly person--to ask a blessing?"

The Judge looked as grave as if he were about giving the opinion of the

Court in the great India-rubber case.

"On the whole," he answered, after a pause, "I should think it might,

perhaps, be dispensed with on this occasion. Young folks are noisy, and

it is awkward to have talking and laughing going on while blessing is

being asked. Unless a clergyman is present and makes a point of it, I

think it will hardly be expected."

The Colonel was infinitely relieved. "Judge, will you take Mrs. Sprowle

in to supper?" And the Colonel returned the compliment by offering his

arm to Mrs. Judge Thornton.

The door of the supper-room was now open, and the company, following the

lead of the host and hostess, began to stream into it, until it was

pretty well filled.

There was an awful kind of pause. Many were beginning to drop their

heads and shut their eyes, in anticipation of the usual petition before a

meal; some expected the music to strike up,--others, that an oration

would now be delivered by the Colonel.

"Make yourselves at home, ladies and gentlemen," said the Colonel; "good

things were made to eat, and you're welcome to all you see before you."

So saying he attacked a huge turkey which stood at the head of the table;

and his example being followed first by the bold, then by the doubtful,

and lastly by the timid, the clatter soon made the circuit of the tables.

Some were shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared they would be, at

the want of the customary invocation. Widow Leech, a kind of relation,

who had to be invited, and who came with her old, back-country-looking

string of gold beads round her neck, seemed to feel very serious about

it.

"If she'd ha' known that folks would begrutch cravin' a blessin' over

sech a heap o' provisions, she'd rather ha' staid t' home. It was a bad

sign, when folks was n't grateful for the baounties of Providence."

The elder Miss Spinney, to whom she made this remark, assented to it, at

the same time ogling a piece of frosted cake, which she presently

appropriated with great refinement of manner,--taking it between her

thumb and forefinger, keeping the others well spread and the little

finger in extreme divergence, with a graceful undulation of the neck, and

a queer little sound in her throat, as of an M that wanted to get out and

perished in the attempt.

The tables now presented an animated spectacle. Young fellows of the

more dashing sort, with high stand-up collars and voluminous bows to

their neckerchiefs, distinguished themselves by cutting up fowls and

offering portions thereof to the buxom girls these knowing ones had

commonly selected.

"A bit of the wing, Roxy, or of the--under limb?"

The first laugh broke out at this, but it was premature, a sporadic

laugh, as Dr. Kittredge would have said, which did not become epidemic.

People were very solemn as yet, many of them being new to such splendid

scenes, and crushed, as it were, in the presence of so much crockery and

so many silver spoons, and such a variety of unusual viands and

beverages. When the laugh rose around Roxy and her saucy beau, several

looked in that direction with an anxious expression, as if something had

happened, a lady fainted, for instance, or a couple of lively fellows

come to high words.

"Young folks will be young folks," said Deacon Soper. "No harm done.

Least said soonest mended."

"Have some of these shell-oysters?" said the Colonel to Mrs. Trecothick.

A delicate emphasis on the word shell implied that the Colonel knew what

was what. To the New England inland native, beyond the reach of the east

winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a

qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew

very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case

with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness,

replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she

had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater

rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a

perceptible crowding movement towards their newly discovered habitat, a

large soup-tureen.

Silas Peckham had meantime fallen upon another locality of these recent

mollusks. He said nothing, but helped himself freely, and made a sign to

Mrs. Peckham.

"Lorindy," he whispered, "shell-oysters"

And ladled them out to her largely, without betraying any emotion, just

as if they had been the natural inland or pickled article.

After the more solid portion of the banquet had been duly honored, the

cakes and sweet preparations of various kinds began to get their share of

attention. There were great cakes and little cakes, cakes with raisins

in them, cakes with currants, and cakes without either; there were brown

cakes and yellow cakes, frosted cakes, glazed cakes, hearts and rounds,

and jumbles, which playful youth slip over the forefinger before spoiling

their annular outline. There were mounds of blo'monje, of the arrowroot

variety,--that being undistinguishable from such as is made with Russia

isinglass. There were jellies, which had been shaking, all the time the

young folks were dancing in the next room, as if they were balancing to

partners. There were built-up fabrics, called Charlottes, caky

externally, pulpy within; there were also marangs, and likewise

custards,--some of the indolent-fluid sort, others firm, in which every

stroke of the teaspoon left a smooth, conchoidal surface like the

fracture of chalcedony, with here and there a little eye like what one

sees in cheeses. Nor was that most wonderful object of domestic art

called trifle wanting, with its charming confusion of cream and cake and

almonds and jam and jelly and wine and cinnamon and froth; nor yet the

marvellous floating-island,--name suggestive of all that is romantic in

the imaginations of youthful palates.

"It must have cost you a sight of work, to say nothin' of money, to get

all this beautiful confectionery made for the party," said Mrs. Crane to

Mrs. Sprowle.

"Well, it cost some consid'able labor, no doubt," said Mrs. Sprowle.

"Matilda and our girls and I made 'most all the cake with our own hands,

and we all feel some tired; but if folks get what suits 'em, we don't

begrudge the time nor the work. But I do feel thirsty," said the poor

lady, "and I think a glass of srub would do my throat good; it's dreadful

dry. Mr. Peckham, would you be so polite as to pass me a glass of srub?"

Silas Peckham bowed with great alacrity, and took from the table a small

glass cup, containing a fluid reddish in hue and subacid in taste. This

was srub, a beverage in local repute, of questionable nature, but

suspected of owing its tint and sharpness to some kind of syrup derived

from the maroon-colored fruit of the sumac. There were similar small

cups on the table filled with lemonade, and here and there a decanter of

Madeira wine, of the Marsala kind, which some prefer to, and many more

cannot distinguish from, that which comes from the Atlantic island.

"Take a glass of wine, Judge," said, the Colonel; "here is an article

that I rather think 'll suit you."

The Judge knew something of wines, and could tell all the famous old

Madeiras from each other, "Eclipse," "Juno," the almost fabulously scarce

and precious "White-top," and the rest. He struck the nativity of the

Mediterranean Madeira before it had fairly moistened his lip.

"A sound wine, Colonel, and I should think of a genuine vintage. Your

very good health."

"Deacon Soper," said the Colonel, "here is some Madary Judge Thornton

recommends. Let me fill you a glass of it."

The Deacon's eyes glistened. He was one of those consistent Christians

who stick firmly by the first miracle and Paul's advice to Timothy.

"A little good wine won't hurt anybody," said the Deacon. "Plenty,

--plenty,--plenty. There!" He had not withdrawn his glass, while the

Colonel was pouring, for fear it should spill, and now it was running

over.

--It is very odd how all a man's philosophy and theology are at the mercy

of a few drops of a fluid which the chemists say consists of nothing but

C4, O2, H6. The Deacon's theology fell off several points towards

latitudinarianism in the course of the next ten minutes. He had a deep

inward sense that everything was as it should be, human nature included.

The little accidents of humanity, known collectively to moralists as sin,

looked very venial to his growing sense of universal brotherhood and

benevolence.

"It will all come right," the Deacon said to himself,--"I feel a joyful

conviction that everything is for the best. I am favored with a blessed

peace of mind, and a very precious season of good feelin' toward my

fellow-creturs."

A lusty young fellow happened to make a quick step backward just at that

instant, and put his heel, with his weight on top of it, upon the

Deacon's toes.

"Aigh! What the d' d' didos are y' abaout with them great huffs o'

yourn?" said the Deacon, with an expression upon his features not exactly

that of peace and good-will to men. The lusty young fellow apologized;

but the Deacon's face did not come right, and his theology backed round

several points in the direction of total depravity.

Some of the dashing young men in stand-up collars and extensive neckties,

encouraged by Mr. Geordie, made quite free with the "Ma,dary," and even

induced some of the more stylish girls--not of the mansion-house set, but

of the tip-top two-story families--to taste a little. Most of these

young ladies made faces at it, and declared it was "perfectly horrid,"

with that aspect of veracity peculiar to their age and sex.

About this time a movement was made on the part of some of the

mansion-house people to leave the supper-table. Miss Jane Trecothick had

quietly hinted to her mother that she had had enough of it. Miss

Arabella Thornton had whispered to her father that he had better adjourn

this court to the next room. There were signs of migration,--a

loosening of people in their places,--a looking about for arms to hitch

on to.

"Stop!" said the Colonel. "There's something coming yet.--Ice-cream!"

The great folks saw that the play was not over yet, and that it was only

polite to stay and see it out. The word "ice-cream" was no sooner

whispered than it passed from one to another all down the tables. The

effect was what might have been anticipated. Many of the guests had

never seen this celebrated product of human skill, and to all the

two-story population of Rockland it was the last expression of the art of

pleasing and astonishing the human palate. Its appearance had been

deferred for several reasons: first, because everybody would have

attacked it, if it had come in with the other luxuries; secondly, because

undue apprehensions were entertained (owing to want of experience) of its

tendency to deliquesce and resolve itself with alarming rapidity into

puddles of creamy fluid; and, thirdly, because the surprise would make a

grand climax to finish off the banquet.

There is something so audacious in the conception of ice-cream, that it

is not strange that a population undebauched by the luxury of great

cities looks upon it with a kind of awe and speaks of it with a certain

emotion. This defiance of the seasons, forcing Nature to do her work of

congelation in the face of her sultriest noon, might well inspire a timid

mind with fear lest human art were revolting against the Higher Powers,

and raise the same scruples which resisted the use of ether and

chloroform in certain contingencies. Whatever may be the cause, it is

well known that the announcement at any private rural entertainment that

there is to be ice-cream produces an immediate and profound impression.

It may be remarked, as aiding this impression, that exaggerated ideas are

entertained as to the dangerous effects this congealed food may produce

on persons not in the most robust health.

There was silence as the pyramids of ice were placed on the table,

everybody looking on in admiration. The Colonel took a knife and

assailed the one at the head of the table. When he tried to cut off a

slice, it didn't seem to understand it, however, and only tipped, as if

it wanted to upset. The Colonel attacked it on the other side, and it

tipped just as badly the other way. It was awkward for the Colonel.

"Permit me," said the Judge,--and he took the knife and struck a sharp

slanting stroke which sliced off a piece just of the right size, and

offered it to Mrs. Sprowle. This act of dexterity was much admired by

the company.

The tables were all alive again.

"Lorindy, here's a plate of ice-cream," said Silas Peckham.

"Come, Mahaly," said a fresh-looking young-fellow with a saucerful in

each hand, "here's your ice-cream;--let's go in the corner and have a

celebration, us two." And the old green de-lame, with the young curves

under it to make it sit well, moved off as pleased apparently as if it

had been silk velvet with thousand-dollar laces over it.

"Oh, now, Miss Green! do you think it's safe to put that cold stuff into

your stomick?" said the Widow Leech to a young married lady, who, finding

the air rather warm, thought a little ice would cool her down very

nicely. "It's jest like eatin' snowballs. You don't look very rugged;

and I should be dreadful afeard, if I was you."

"Carrie," said old Dr. Kittredge, who had overheard this,--"how well

you're looking this evening! But you must be tired and heated;--sit down

here, and let me give you a good slice of ice-cream. How you young folks

do grow up, to be sure! I don't feel quite certain whether it's you or

your older sister, but I know it 's somebody I call Carrie, and that I

've known ever since."

A sound something between a howl and an oath startled the company and

broke off the Doctor's sentence. Everybody's eyes turned in the

direction from which it came. A group instantly gathered round the

person who had uttered it, who was no other than Deacon Soper.

"He's chokin'! he's chokin'!" was the first exclamation,--"slap him on

the back!"

Several heavy fists beat such a tattoo on his spine that the Deacon felt

as if at least one of his vertebrae would come up.

"He's black in the face," said Widow Leech, "he 's swallered somethin'

the wrong way. Where's the Doctor?--let the Doctor get to him, can't

ye?"

"If you will move, my good lady, perhaps I can," said Doctor Kittredge,

in a calm tone of voice. "He's not choking, my friends," the Doctor

added immediately, when he got sight of him.

"It 's apoplexy,--I told you so,--don't you see how red he is in the

face?" said old Mrs. Peake, a famous woman for "nussin" sick folks,

--determined to be a little ahead of the Doctor.

"It's not apoplexy," said Dr. Kittredge.

"What is it, Doctor? what is it? Will he die? Is he dead?--Here's his

poor wife, the Widow Soper that is to be, if she a'n't a'ready"

"Do be quiet, my good woman," said Dr. Kittredge.--"Nothing serious, I

think, Mrs. Soper. Deacon!"

The sudden attack of Deacon Soper had begun with the extraordinary sound

mentioned above. His features had immediately assumed an expression of

intense pain, his eyes staring wildly, and, clapping his hands to his

face, he had rocked his head backward and forward in speechless agony.

At the Doctor's sharp appeal the Deacon lifted his head.

"It's all right," said the Doctor, as soon as he saw his face. "The

Deacon had a smart attack of neuralgic pain. That 's all. Very severe,

but not at all dangerous."

The Doctor kept his countenance, but his diaphragm was shaking the change

in iris waistcoat-pockets with subterranean laughter. He had looked

through his spectacles and seen at once what had happened. The Deacon,

not being in the habit of taking his nourishment in the congealed state,

had treated the ice-cream as a pudding of a rare species, and, to make

sure of doing himself justice in its distribution, had taken a large

mouthful of it without the least precaution. The consequence was a

sensation as if a dentist were killing the nerves of twenty-five teeth at

once with hot irons, or cold ones, which would hurt rather worse.

The Deacon swallowed something with a spasmodic effort, and recovered

pretty soon and received the congratulations of his friends. There were

different versions of the expressions he had used at the onset of his

complaint,--some of the reported exclamations involving a breach of

propriety, to say the least,--but it was agreed that a man in an attack

of neuralgy wasn't to be judged of by the rules that applied to other

folks.

The company soon after this retired from the supper-room. The

mansion-house gentry took their leave, and the two-story people soon

followed. Mr. Bernard had stayed an hour or two, and left soon after he

found that Elsie Venner and her father had disappeared. As he passed by

the dormitory of the Institute, he saw a light glimmering from one of its

upper rooms, where the lady-teacher was still waking. His heart ached,

when he remembered, that, through all these hours of gayety, or what was

meant for it, the patient girl had been at work in her little chamber;

and he looked up at the silent stars, as if to see that they were

watching over her. The planet Mars was burning like a red coal; the

northern constellation was slanting downward about its central point of

flame; and while he looked, a falling star slid from the zenith and was

lost.

He reached his chamber and was soon dreaming over the Event of the

Season.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MORNING AFTER.

Colonel Sprowle's family arose late the next morning. The fatigues and

excitements of the evening and the preparation for it were followed by a

natural collapse, of which somnolence was a leading symptom. The sun

shone into the window at a pretty well opened angle when the Colonel

first found himself sufficiently awake to address his yet slumbering

spouse.

"Sally!" said the Colonel, in a voice that was a little husky,--for he

had finished off the evening with an extra glass or two of "Madary," and

had a somewhat rusty and headachy sense of renewed existence, on greeting

the rather advanced dawn,--"Sally!"

"Take care o' them custard-cups! There they go!"

Poor Mrs. Sprowle was fighting the party over in her dream; and as the

visionary custard-cups crashed down through one lobe of her brain into

another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning from a quart Leyden

jar had jumped into one of her knuckles with its sudden and lively poonk!

"Sally!" said the Colonel,--"wake up, wake up. What 'r' y' dreamin'

abaout?"

Mrs. Sprowle raised herself, by a sort of spasm, sur son seant, as they

say in France,--up on end, as we have it in New England. She looked

first to the left, then to the right, then straight before her,

apparently without seeing anything, and at last slowly settled down, with

her two eyes, blank of any particular meaning, directed upon the Colonel.

"What time is 't?" she said.

"Ten o'clock. What y' been dreamin' abaout? Y' giv a jump like a

hopper-grass. Wake up, wake UP! Th' party 's over, and y' been asleep

all the mornin'. The party's over, I tell ye! Wake up!"

"Over!" said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to define her position at

last,--"over! I should think 't was time 't was over! It's lasted a

hundud year. I've been workin' for that party longer 'n Methuselah's

lifetime, sence I been asleep. The pies would n' bake, and the blo'monje

would n' set, and the ice-cream would n' freeze, and all the folks kep'

comin' 'n' comin' 'n' comin',--everybody I ever knew in all my

life,--some of 'em 's been dead this twenty year 'n' more,--'n' nothin'

for 'em to eat nor drink. The fire would n' burn to cook anything, all

we could do. We blowed with the belluses, 'n' we stuffed in paper 'n'

pitch-pine kindlin's, but nothin' could make that fire burn; 'n' all the

time the folks kep' comin', as if they'd never stop,--'n' nothin' for 'em

but empty dishes, 'n' all the borrowed chaney slippin' round on the

waiters 'n' chippin' 'n' crackin',--I would n' go through what I been

through t'-night for all th' money in th' Bank,--I do believe it's harder

t' have a party than t'"--

Mrs. Sprowle stated the case strongly.

The Colonel said he did n't know how that might be. She was a better

judge than he was. It was bother enough, anyhow, and he was glad that it

was over. After this, the worthy pair commenced preparations for

rejoining the waking world, and in due time proceeded downstairs.

Everybody was late that morning, and nothing had got put to rights. The

house looked as if a small army had been quartered in it over night. The

tables were of course in huge disorder, after the protracted assault they

had undergone. There had been a great battle evidently, and it had gone

against the provisions. Some points had been stormed, and all their

defences annihilated, but here and there were centres of resistance which

had held out against all attacks,--large rounds of beef, and solid

loaves of cake, against which the inexperienced had wasted their energies

in the enthusiasm of youth or uninformed maturity, while the

longer-headed guests were making discoveries of "shell-oysters" and

"patridges" and similar delicacies.

The breakfast was naturally of a somewhat fragmentary character. A

chicken that had lost his legs in the service of the preceding campaign

was once more put on duty. A great ham stuck with cloves, as Saint

Sebastian was with arrows, was again offered for martyrdom. It would have

been a pleasant sight for a medical man of a speculative turn to have

seen the prospect before the Colonel's family of the next week's

breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. The trail that one of these great

rural parties leaves after it is one of its most formidable

considerations. Every door-handle in the house is suggestive of

sweetmeats for the next week, at least. The most unnatural articles of

diet displace the frugal but nutritious food of unconvulsed periods of

existence. If there is a walking infant about the house, it will

certainly have a more or less fatal fit from overmuch of some

indigestible delicacy. Before the week is out, everybody will be tired

to death of sugary forms of nourishment and long to see the last of the

remnants of the festival.

The family had not yet arrived at this condition. On the contrary, the

first inspection of the tables suggested the prospect of days of

unstinted luxury; and the younger portion of the household, especially,

were in a state of great excitement as the account of stock was taken

with reference to future internal investments. Some curious facts came

to light during these researches.

"Where's all the oranges gone to?" said Mrs. Sprowle. "I expected

there'd be ever so many of 'em left. I did n't see many of the folks

eatin' oranges. Where's the skins of 'em? There ought to be six dozen

orange-skins round on the plates, and there a'n't one dozen. And all the

small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the big

cakes. Has anybody counted the spoons? Some of 'em got swallered,

perhaps. I hope they was plated ones, if they did!"

The failure of the morning's orange-crop and the deficit in other

expected residual delicacies were not very difficult to account for. In

many of the two-story Rockland families, and in those favored households

of the neighboring villages whose members had been invited to the great

party, there was a very general excitement among the younger people on

the morning after the great event. "Did y' bring home somethin' from the

party? What is it? What is it? Is it frut-cake? Is it nuts and

oranges and apples? Give me some! Give me some!" Such a concert of

treble voices uttering accents like these had not been heard since the

great Temperance Festival with the celebrated "colation" in the open air

under the trees of the Parnassian Grove,--as the place was christened by

the young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the children was not in

vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the bags of sharp-eyed

spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from

the tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a resurrection of the

missing oranges and cakes and sugar-things in many a rejoicing

family-circle, enough to astonish the most hardened "caterer" that ever

contracted to feed a thousand people under canvas.

The tender recollections of those dear little ones whom extreme youth or

other pressing considerations detain from scenes of festivity--a trait of

affection by no means uncommon among our thoughtful people--dignifies

those social meetings where it is manifested, and sheds a ray of sunshine

on our common nature. It is "an oasis in the desert,"--to use the

striking expression of the last year's "Valedictorian" of the Apollinean

Institute. In the midst of so much that is purely selfish, it is

delightful to meet such disinterested care for others. When a large

family of children are expecting a parent's return from an entertainment,

it will often require great exertions on his part to freight himself so

as to meet their reasonable expectations. A few rules are worth

remembering by all who attend anniversary dinners in Faneuil Hall or

elsewhere. Thus: Lobsters' claws are always acceptable to children of

all ages. Oranges and apples are to be taken one at a time, until the

coat-pockets begin to become inconveniently heavy. Cakes are injured by

sitting upon them; it is, therefore, well to carry a stout tin box of a

size to hold as many pieces as there are children in the domestic circle.

A very pleasant amusement, at the close of one of these banquets, is

grabbing for the flowers with which the table is embellished. These will

please the ladies at home very greatly, and, if the children are at the

same time abundantly supplied with fruits, nuts, cakes, and any little

ornamental articles of confectionery which are of a nature to be

unostentatiously removed, the kind-hearted parent will make a whole

household happy, without any additional expense beyond the outlay for his

ticket.

There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, of one kind and another,

at any rate, to make all the Colonel's family uncomfortable for the next

week. It bid fair to take as long to get rid of the remains of the great

party as it had taken to make ready for it.

In the mean time Mr. Bernard had been dreaming, as young men dream, of

gliding shapes with bright eyes and burning cheeks, strangely blended

with red planets and hissing meteors, and, shining over all, the white,

un-wandering star of the North, girt with its tethered constellations.

After breakfast he walked into the parlor, where he found Miss Darley.

She was alone, and, holding a school-book in her hand, was at work with

one of the morning's lessons. She hardly noticed him as he entered,

being very busy with her book,--and he paused a moment before speaking,

and looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would not have been

strictly true to call her beautiful. For years,--since her earliest

womanhood,--those slender hands had taken the bread which repaid the toil

of heart and brain from the coarse palms which offered it in the world's

rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered away the

life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of schoolrooms, that

she had forced her intelligence to posture before her will, as the

exigencies of her place required,--waking to mental labor,--sleeping to

dream of problems,--rolling up the stone of education for an endless

twelvemonth's term, to find it at the bottom of the hill again when

another year called her to its renewed duties, schooling her temper in

unending inward and outward conflicts, until neither dulness nor

obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could reach her serene

self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly as her prodigal labors

were repaid in proportion to the waste of life they cost, her value was

too well established to leave her without what, under other

circumstances, would have been a more than sufficient compensation. But

there were others who looked to her in their need, and so the modest

fountain which might have been filled to its brim was continually drained

through silent-flowing, hidden sluices.

Out of such a life, inherited from a race which had lived in conditions

not unlike her own, beauty, in the common sense of the term, could hardly

find leisure to develop and shape itself. For it must be remembered,

that symmetry and elegance of features and figure, like perfectly formed

crystals in the mineral world, are reached only by insuring a certain

necessary repose to individuals and to generations. Human beauty is an

agricultural product in the country, growing up in men and women as in

corn and cattle, where the soil is good. It is a luxury almost

monopolized by the rich in cities, bred under glass like their forced

pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and country, the evolution of the

physical harmonies which make music to our eyes requires a combination of

favorable circumstances, of which alternations of unburdened tranquillity

with intervals of varied excitement of mind and body are among the most

important. Where sufficient excitement is wanting, as often happens in

the country, the features, however rich in red and white, get heavy, and

the movements sluggish; where excitement is furnished in excess, as is

frequently the case in cities, the contours and colors are impoverished,

and the nerves begin to make their existence known to the consciousness,

as the face very soon informs us.

Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have possessed the kind

of beauty which pleases the common taste. Her eye was calm, sad-looking,

her features very still, except when her pleasant smile changed them for

a moment, all her outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle, but

somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and on her smooth forehead

one little hinted line whispered already that Care was beginning to mark

the trace which Time sooner or later would make a furrow. She could not

be a beauty; if she had been, it would have been much harder for many

persons to be interested in her. For, although in the abstract we all

love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some

ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our

liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the

consequences,--it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of

repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes. We may

be well assured that there are many persons who no more think of

specializing their love of the other sex upon one endowed with signal

beauty, than they think of wanting great diamonds or thousand-dollar

horses. No man or woman can appropriate beauty without paying for

it,--in endowments, in fortune, in position, in self-surrender, or other

valuable stock; and there are a great many who are too poor, too

ordinary, too humble, too busy, too proud, to pay any of these prices for

it. So the unbeautiful get many more lovers than the beauties; only, as

there are more of them, their lovers are spread thinner and do not make

so much show.

The young master stood looking at Helen Darley with a kind of tender

admiration. She was such a picture of the martyr by the slow social

combustive process, that it almost seemed to him he could see a pale

lambent nimbus round her head.

"I did not see you at the great party last evening," he said, presently.

She looked up and answered, "No. I have not much taste for such large

companies. Besides, I do not feel as if my time belonged to me after it

has been paid for. There is always something to do, some lesson or

exercise,--and it so happened, I was very busy last night with the new

problems in geometry. I hope you had a good time."

"Very. Two or three of our girls were there. Rosa Milburn. What a

beauty she is! I wonder what she feeds on! Wine and musk and chloroform

and coals of fire, I believe; I didn't think there was such color and

flavor in a woman outside the tropics."

Miss Darley smiled rather faintly; the imagery was not just to her taste:

femineity often finds it very hard to accept the fact of muliebrity.

"Was"--?

She stopped short; but her question had asked itself.

"Elsie there? She was, for an hour or so. She looked frightfully

handsome. I meant to have spoken to her, but she slipped away before I

knew it."

"I thought she meant to go to the party," said Miss Darley. "Did she

look at you?"

"She did. Why?"

"And you did not speak to her?"

"No. I should have spoken to her, but she was gone when I looked for

her. A strange creature! Is n't there an odd sort of fascination about

her? You have not explained all the mystery about the girl. What does

she come to this school for? She seems to do pretty much as she likes

about studying."

Miss Darley answered in very low tones. "It was a fancy of hers to come,

and they let her have her way. I don't know what there is about her,

except that she seems to take my life out of me when she looks at me. I

don't like to ask other people about our girls. She says very little to

anybody, and studies, or makes believe to study, almost what she likes.

I don't know what she is," (Miss Darley laid her hand, trembling, on the

young master's sleeve,) "but I can tell when she is in the room without

seeing or hearing her. Oh, Mr. Langdon, I am weak and nervous, and no

doubt foolish,--but--if there were women now, as in the days of our

Saviour, possessed of devils, I should think there was something not

human looking out of Elsie Venner's eyes!"

The poor girl's breast rose and fell tumultuously as she spoke, and her

voice labored, as if some obstruction were rising in her throat.

A scene might possibly have come of it, but the door opened. Mr. Silas

Peckham. Miss Darley got away as soon as she well could.

"Why did not Miss Darley go to the party last evening?" said Mr. Bernard.

"Well, the fact is," answered Mr. Silas Peckham, "Miss Darley, she's

pooty much took up with the school. She's an industris young.

woman,--yis, she is industris,--but perhaps she a'n't quite so spry a

worker as some. Maybe, considerin' she's paid for her time, she is n't

fur out o' the way in occoopyin' herself evenin's,--that--is, if so be

she a'n't smart enough to finish up all her work in the daytime.

Edoocation is the great business of the Institoot. Amoosements are

objec's of a secondary natur', accordin' to my v'oo." [The unspellable

pronunciation of this word is the touchstone of New England Brahminism.]

Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nostrils dilating, as if the air

did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham was

speaking. The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself of

these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone,

thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after

three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large,

white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberately, as if weighing

his words well, so that, during his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time for

a mental accompaniment with variations, accented by certain bodily

changes, which escaped Mr. Peckham's observation. First there was a

feeling of disgust and shame at hearing Helen Darley spoken of like a

dumb working animal. That sent the blood up into his cheeks. Then the

slur upon her probable want of force--her incapacity, who made the

character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits--sent a

thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles

hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas Peckham,

to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over backwards

all of a sudden. This would not do, of course, and so the thrill passed

off and the muscles softened again. Then came that state of tenderness

in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the eyes grow

moist like a woman's, and there is also a great boiling-up of

objectionable terms out of the deep-water vocabulary, so that Prudence

and Propriety and all the other pious P's have to jump upon the lid of

speech to keep them from boiling over into fierce articulation. All this

was internal, chiefly, and of course not recognized by Mr. Silas Peckham.

The idea, that any full-grown, sensible man should have any other notion

than that of getting the most work for the least money out of his

assistants, had never suggested itself to him.

Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, and cooled down, in the

period while Mr. Peckham was uttering these words in his thin, shallow

whine, twanging up into the frontal sinuses. What was the use of losing

his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences

which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without a

friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor

before the windlass of his rack had taken one turn too many?

"No doubt, Mr. Peckham," he said, in a grave, calm voice, "there is a

great deal of work to be done in the school; but perhaps we can

distribute the duties a little more evenly after a time. I shall look

over the girls' themes myself, after this week. Perhaps there will be

some other parts of her labor that I can take on myself. We can arrange

a new programme of studies and recitations."

"We can do that," said Mr. Silas Peckham. "But I don't propose mater'lly

alterin' Miss Darley's dooties. I don't think she works to hurt herself.

Some of the Trustees have proposed interdoosin' new branches of study,

and I expect you will be pooty much occoopied with the dooties that

belong to your place. On the Sahbath you will be able to attend divine

service three times, which is expected of our teachers. I shall continoo

myself to give Sahbath Scriptur' readin's to the young ladies. That is a

solemn dooty I can't make up my mind to commit to other people. My

teachers enjoy the Lord's day as a day of rest. In it they do no manner

of work, except in cases of necessity or mercy, such as fillin' out

diplomas, or when we git crowded jest at the end of a term, or when there

is an extry number of p'oopils, or other Providential call to dispense

with the ordinance."

Mr. Bernard had a fine glow in his cheeks by this time,--doubtless

kindled by the thought of the kind consideration Mr. Peckham showed for

his subordinates in allowing them the between meeting-time on Sundays

except for some special reason. But the morning was wearing away; so he

went to the schoolroom, taking leave very properly of his respected

principal, who soon took his hat and departed.

Mr. Peckham visited certain "stores" or shops, where he made inquiries

after various articles in the provision-line, and effected a purchase or

two. Two or three barrels of potatoes, which had sprouted in a promising

way, he secured at a bargain. A side of feminine beef was also obtained

at a low figure. He was entirely satisfied with a couple of barrels of

flour, which, being invoiced "slightly damaged," were to be had at a

reasonable price.

After this, Silas Peckham felt in good spirits. He had done a pretty

stroke of business. It came into his head whether he might not follow it

up with a still more brilliant speculation. So he turned his steps in

the direction of Colonel Sprowle's.

It was now eleven o'clock, and the battle-field of last evening was as we

left it. Mr. Peckham's visit was unexpected, perhaps not very well

timed, but the Colonel received him civilly.

"Beautifully lighted,--these rooms last night!" said Mr. Peckham.

"Winter-strained?"

The Colonel nodded.

"How much do you pay for your winter-strained?"

The Colonel told him the price.

"Very hahnsome supper,--very hahnsome. Nothin' ever seen like it in

Rockland. Must have been a great heap of things leftover."

The compliment was not ungrateful, and the Colonel acknowledged it by

smiling and saying, "I should think the' was a trifle? Come and look."

When Silas Peckham saw how many delicacies had survived the evening's

conflict, his commercial spirit rose at once to the point of a proposal.

"Colonel Sprowle," said he, "there's 'meat and cakes and pies and pickles

enough on that table to spread a hahnsome colation. If you'd like to

trade reasonable, I think perhaps I should be willin' to take 'em off

your hands. There's been a talk about our havin' a celebration in the

Parnassian Grove, and I think I could work in what your folks don't want

and make myself whole by chargin' a small sum for tickets. Broken meats,

of course, a'n't of the same valoo as fresh provisions; so I think you

might be willin' to trade reasonable."

Mr. Peckham paused and rested on his proposal. It would not, perhaps,

have been very extraordinary, if Colonel Sprowle had entertained the

proposition. There is no telling beforehand how such things will strike

people. It didn't happen to strike the Colonel favorably. He had a

little red-blooded manhood in him.

"Sell you them things to make a colation out of?" the Colonel replied.

"Walk up to that table, Mr. Peckham, and help yourself! Fill your

pockets; Mr. Peckham! Fetch a basket, and our hired folks shall fill it

full for ye! Send a cart, if y' like, 'n' carry off them leavin's to

make a celebration for your pupils with! Only let me tell ye this:--as

sure 's my name's Hezekiah Spraowle, you 'll be known through the taown

'n' through the caounty, from that day forrard, as the Principal of the

Broken-Victuals Institoot!"

Even provincial human-nature sometimes has a touch of sublimity about it.

Mr. Silas Peckham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and come upon

the "hard pan," as the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel's character,

before he thought of it. A militia-colonel standing on his sentiments is

not to be despised. That was shown pretty well in New England two or

three generations ago. There were a good many plain officers that talked

about their "rigiment" and their "caounty" who knew very well how to say

"Make ready!" "Take aim!" "Fire!"--in the face of a line of grenadiers

with bullets in their guns and bayonets on them. And though a rustic

uniform is not always unexceptionable in its cut and trimmings, yet there

was many an ill-made coat in those old times that was good enough to be

shown to the enemy's front rank too often to be left on the field with a

round hole in its left lapel that matched another going right through the

brave heart of the plain country captain or major or colonel who was

buried in it under the crimson turf.

Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His sensibilities were not

acute, but he perceived that he had made a miscalculation. He hoped that

there was no offence,--thought it might have been mutooally agreeable,

conclooded he would give up the idee of a colation, and backed himself

out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person to

the risk of accelerating impulses.

The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot, as

if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round the

room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red brandy and

water to compose his feelings.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. (With a Digression on "Hired Help.")

"ABEL! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round."

Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a

queer sort of State, with fat streaks of soil and population where they

breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export imperfectly

nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be

found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of late

years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite

basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by

California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of

New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in

pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of that

deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.

Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or mule

between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England serving-man.

The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once an emperor and

a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part (be the same

more or less) of the power that sways the destinies of the Great

Republic. His other hand is in your boot, which he is about to polish.

It is impossible to turn a fellow citizen whose vote may make his

master--say, rather, employer--Governor or President, or who may be one

or both himself, into a flunky. That article must be imported ready-made

from other centres of civilization. When a New Englander has lost his

self-respect as a citizen and as a man, he is demoralized, and cannot be

trusted with the money to pay for a dinner.

It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional emperor, this

continent-shaper, finds his position awkward when he goes into service,

and that his employer is apt to find it still more embarrassing. It is

always under protest that the hired man does his duty. Every act of

service is subject to the drawback, "I am as good as you are." This is

so common, at least, as almost to be the rule, and partly accounts for

the rapid disappearance of the indigenous "domestic" from the basements

above mentioned. Paleontologists will by and by be examining the floors

of our kitchens for tracks of the extinct native species of serving-man.

The female of the same race is fast dying out; indeed, the time is not

far distant when all the varieties of young woman will have vanished from

New England, as the dodo has perished in the Mauritius. The young lady

is all that we shall have left, and the mop and duster of the last Ahnira

or Loizy will be stared at by generations of Bridgets and Noras as that

famous head and foot of the lost bird are stared at in the Ashmolean

Museum.

Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man, took the true American view of his

difficult position. He sold his time to the Doctor, and, having sold it,

he took care to fulfil his half of the bargain. The Doctor, on his part,

treated him, not like a gentleman, because one does not order a gentleman

to bring up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him like a man.

Every order was given in courteous terms. His reasonable privileges were

respected as much as if they had been guaranteed under hand and seal.

The Doctor lent him books from his own library, and gave him all friendly

counsel, as if he were a son or a younger brother.

Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and though he saw fit to "hire

out," he could never stand the word "servant," or consider himself the

inferior one of the two high contracting parties. When he came to live

with the Doctor, he made up his mind he would dismiss the old gentleman,

if he did not behave according to his notions of propriety. But he soon

found that the Doctor was one of the right sort, and so determined to

keep him. The Doctor soon found, on his side, that he had a trustworthy,

intelligent fellow, who would be invaluable to him, if he only let him

have his own way of doing what was to be done.

The Doctor's hired man had not the manners of a French valet. He was

grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled,

but was always at work in the daytime, and always reading in the evening.

He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do,

would go to the door or "tend table," bought the provisions for the

family,--in short, did almost everything for them but get their clothing.

There was no office in a perfectly appointed household, from that of

steward down to that of stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully assume.

His round of work not consuming all his energies, he must needs cultivate

the Doctor's garden, which he kept in one perpetual bloom, from the

blowing of the first crocus to the fading of the last dahlia.

This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen beds were so many cantos.

Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy

in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and

sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the

sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding

floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving-man.

It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God according

to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism is always

colored by the petals of his flowers,--and Nature never shows him a

black corolla.

He may or may not figure again in this narrative; but as there must be

some who confound the New England hired man, native-born, with the

servant of foreign birth, and as there is the difference of two

continents and two civilizations between them, it did not seem fair to

let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without touching his

features in half-shadow into our background.

The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by her master from her cinnamon

color, cassia being one of the professional names for that spice or drug.

She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an Englishman would perhaps

say, chestnut,--a genuine "Morgan" mare, with a low forehand, as is

common in this breed, but with strong quarters and flat hocks, well

ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively ears,--a first-rate

doctor's beast, would stand until her harness dropped off her back at the

door of a tedious case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in three

hours, if there was a child in the next county with a bean in its

windpipe and the Doctor gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was not

large, but she had a good deal of action, and was the Doctor's

show-horse. There were two other animals in his stable: Quassia or

Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he jogged

round the village.

"A long ride to-day?" said Abel, as he brought up the equipage.

"Just out of the village,--that 's all.--There 's a kink in her

mane,--pull it out, will you?"

"Goin' to visit some of the great folks," Abel said to himself. "Wonder

who it is."--Then to the Doctor,--"Anybody get sick at Sprowles's? They

say Deacon Soper had a fit, after eatin' some o' their frozen victuals."

The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon would do well enough. He was

only going to ride over to the Dudley mansion-house.

CHAPTER X.

THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER.

If that primitive physician, Chiron, M. D., appears as a Centaur, as we

look at him through the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern

country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not be

distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He

thinks of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin did of land in general;

a house may be well enough for incidental purposes, but for a "stiddy"

residence give him a "kerridge." If he is classified in the Linnaean

scale, he must be set down thus: Genus Homo; Species Rotifer infusorius,

the wheel-animal of infusions.

The Dudley mansion was not a mile from the Doctor's; but it never

occurred to him to think of walking to see any of his patients' families,

if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the narrow

sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing

corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe, in wave-like

crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheelbarrow, or trudging

lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged oxen,

rocking along the road as if they had just been landed after a

three-months' voyage, the toiling native, whatever he was doing, stopped

and looked up at the house the Doctor was visiting.

"Somebody sick over there t' Haynes's. Guess th' old man's ailin' ag'in.

Winder's half-way open in the chamber,--should n' wonder 'f he was dead

and laid aout. Docterin' a'n't no use, when y' see th' winders open like

that. Wahl, money a'n't much to speak of to th' old man naow! He don'

want but tew cents,--'n' old Widah Peake, she knows what he wants them

for!"

Or again,--

"Measles raound pooty thick. Briggs's folks buried two children with 'em

lass' week. Th' of Doctor, he'd h' ker'd 'em threugh. Struck in 'n'

p'dooced mo't'f'cation,--so they say."

This is only meant as a sample of the kind of way they used to think or

talk, when the narrow sulky turned in at the gate of some house where

there was a visit to be made.

Oh, that narrow sulky! What hopes, what fears, what comfort, what

anguish, what despair, in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels!

In the spring, when the old people get the coughs which give them a few

shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread

which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred,--in the hot

summer noons, when the strong man comes in from the fields, like the son

of the Shunamite, crying, "My head, my head,"--in the dying autumn days,

when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household,

still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low-muttering in their

daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly like those of slumbering

harpers,--in the dead winter, when the white plague of the North has

caged its wasted victims, shuddering as they think of the frozen soil

which must be quarried like rock to receive them, if their perpetual

convalescence should happen to be interfered with by any untoward

accident,--at every season, the narrow sulky rolled round freighted with

unmeasured burdens of joy and woe.

The Doctor drove along the southern foot of The Mountain. The "Dudley

Mansion" was near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it rose

steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest patches of overhanging wood.

It seemed almost too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see from a

distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like

miniature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was a

dark deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spindling, crazy-looking

hackmatacks or native larches, with pallid green tufts sticking out

fantastically all over them. It shelved so deeply, that, while the

hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would

be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would

wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a

feathered oar,--and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other

stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having

perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the

spring,--whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there

were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought, concealed caves, where

in old times they said that Tories lay hid,--some hinted not without

occasional aid and comfort from the Dudleys then living in the

mansion-house. Still higher and farther west lay the accursed

ledge,--shunned by all, unless it were now and then a daring youth, or a

wandering naturalist who ventured to its edge in the hope of securing

some infantile Crotalus durissus, who had not yet cut his poison teeth.

Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Honorable Thomas Dudley,

Esquire, a man of note and name and great resources, allied by descent to

the family of "Tom Dudley," as the early Governor is sometimes

irreverently called by our most venerable, but still youthful

antiquary,--and to the other public Dudleys, of course,--of all of whom

he made small account, as being himself an English gentleman, with little

taste for the splendors of provincial office, early in the last century,

Thomas Dudley had built this mansion. For several generations it had

been dwelt in by descendants of the same name, but soon after the

Revolution it passed by marriage into the hands of the Venners, by whom

it had ever since been held and tenanted.

As the doctor turned an angle in the road, all at once the stately old

house rose before him. It was a skilfully managed effect, as it well

might be, for it was no vulgar English architect who had planned the

mansion and arranged its position and approach. The old house rose

before the Doctor, crowning a terraced garden, flanked at the left by an

avenue of tall elms. The flower-beds were edged with box, which diffused

around it that dreamy balsamic odor, full of ante-natal reminiscences of

a lost Paradise, dimly fragrant as might be the bdellium of ancient

Havilah, the land compassed by the river Pison that went out of Eden.

The garden was somewhat neglected, but not in disgrace,--and in the time

of tulips and hyacinths, of roses, of "snowballs," of honeysuckles, of

lilacs, of syringas, it was rich with blossoms.

From the front-windows of the mansion the eye reached a far blue

mountain-summit,--no rounded heap, such as often shuts in a

village-landscape, but a sharp peak, clean-angled as Ascutney from the

Dartmouth green. A wide gap through miles of woods had opened this

distant view, and showed more, perhaps, than all the labors of the

architect and the landscape-gardener the large style of the early

Dudleys.

The great stone-chimney of the mansion-house was the centre from which

all the artificial features of the scene appeared to flow. The roofs,

the gables, the dormer-windows, the porches, the clustered offices in the

rear, all seemed to crowd about the great chimney. To this central

pillar the paths all converged. The single poplar behind the

house,--Nature is jealous of proud chimneys, and always loves to put a

poplar near one, so that it may fling a leaf or two down its black throat

every autumn,--the one tall poplar behind the house seemed to nod and

whisper to the grave square column, the elms to sway their branches

towards it. And when the blue smoke rose from its summit, it seemed to

be wafted away to join the azure haze which hung around the peak in the

far distance, so that both should bathe in a common atmosphere.

Behind the house were clumps of lilacs with a century's growth upon them,

and looking more like trees than like shrubs. Shaded by a group of these

was the ancient well, of huge circuit, and with a low arch opening out of

its wall about ten feet below the surface,--whether the door of a crypt

for the concealment of treasure, or of a subterranean passage, or merely

of a vault for keeping provisions cool in hot weather, opinions differed.

On looking at the house, it was plain that it was built with Old-World

notions of strength and durability, and, so far as might be, with

Old-World materials. The hinges of the doors stretched out like arms,

instead of like hands, as we make them. The bolts were massive enough

for a donjon-keep. The small window-panes were actually inclosed in the

wood of the sashes instead of being stuck to them with putty, as in our

modern windows. The broad staircase was of easy ascent, and was guarded

by quaintly turned and twisted balusters. The ceilings of the two rooms

of state were moulded with medallion-portraits and rustic figures, such

as may have been seen by many readers in the famous old Philipse

house,--Washington's head-quarters,--in the town of Yorkers. The

fire-places, worthy of the wide-throated central chimney, were bordered

by pictured tiles, some of them with Scripture stories, some with

Watteau-like figures,--tall damsels in slim waists and with spread enough

of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or musical swains

of what everybody calls the "conventional" sort,--that is, the swain

adapted to genteel society rather than to a literal sheep-compelling

existence.

The house was furnished, soon after it was completed, with many heavy

articles made in London from a rare wood just then come into fashion, not

so rare now, and commonly known as mahogany. Time had turned it very

dark, and the stately bedsteads and tall cabinets and claw-footed chairs

and tables were in keeping with the sober dignity of the ancient mansion.

The old "hangings" were yet preserved in the chambers, faded, but still

showing their rich patterns,--properly entitled to their name, for they

were literally hung upon flat wooden frames like trellis-work, which

again were secured to the naked partitions.

There were portraits of different date on the walls of the various

apartments, old painted coats-of-arms, bevel-edged mirrors, and in one

sleeping-room a glass case of wax-work flowers and spangly symbols, with

a legend signifying that E. M. (supposed to be Elizabeth Mascarene)

wished not to be "forgot"

"When I am dead and lay'd in dust

And all my bones are"--

Poor E. M.! Poor everybody that sighs for earthly remembrance in a

planet with a core of fire and a crust of fossils!

Such was the Dudley mansion-house,--for it kept its ancient name in spite

of the change in the line of descent. Its spacious apartments looked

dreary and desolate; for here Dudley Venner and his daughter dwelt by

themselves, with such servants only as their quiet mode of life required.

He almost lived in his library, the western room on the ground-floor.

Its window looked upon a small plat of green, in the midst of which was a

single grave marked by a plain marble slab. Except this room, and the

chamber where he slept, and the servants' wing, the rest of the house was

all Elsie's. She was always a restless, wandering child from her early

years, and would have her little bed moved from one chamber to

another,--flitting round as the fancy took her. Sometimes she would drag

a mat and a pillow into one of the great empty rooms, and, wrapping

herself in a shawl, coil up and go to sleep in a corner. Nothing

frightened her; the "haunted" chamber, with the torn hangings that

flapped like wings when there was air stirring, was one of her favorite

retreats. She had been a very hard creature to manage. Her father could

influence, but not govern her. Old Sophy, born of a slave mother in the

house, could do more with her than anybody, knowing her by long

instinctive study. The other servants were afraid of her. Her father had

sent for governesses, but none of them ever stayed long. She made them

nervous; one of them had a strange fit of sickness; not one of them ever

came back to the house to see her. A young Spanish woman who taught her

dancing succeeded best with her, for she had a passion for that exercise,

and had mastered some of the most difficult dances. Long before this

period, she had manifested some most extraordinary singularities of taste

or instinct. The extreme sensitiveness of her father on this point

prevented any allusion to them; but there were stories floating round,

some of them even getting into the papers,--without her name, of

course,--which were of a kind to excite intense curiosity, if not more

anxious feelings. This thing was certain, that at the age of twelve she

was missed one night, and was found sleeping in the open air under a

tree, like a wild creature. Very often she would wander off by day,

always without a companion, bringing home with her a nest, a flower, or

even a more questionable trophy of her ramble, such as showed that there

was no place where she was afraid to venture. Once in a while she had

stayed out over night, in which case the alarm was spread, and men went

in search of her, but never successfully,--so--that some said she hid

herself in trees, and others that she had found one of the old Tory

caves.

Some, of course, said she was a crazy girl, and ought to be sent to an

Asylum. But old Dr. Kittredge had shaken his head, and told them to bear

with her, and let her have her way as much as they could, but watch her,

as far as possible, without making her suspicious of them. He visited her

now and then, under the pretext of seeing her father on business, or of

only making a friendly call.

The Doctor fastened his horse outside the gate, and walked up the

garden-alley. He stopped suddenly with a start. A strange sound had

jarred upon his ear. It was a sharp prolonged rattle, continuous, but

rising and falling as if in rhythmical cadence. He moved softly towards

the open window from which the sound seemed to proceed.

Elsie was alone in the room, dancing one of those wild Moorish fandangos,

such as a matador hot from the Plaza de Toros of Seville or Madrid might

love to lie and gaze at. She was a figure to look upon in silence. The

dancing frenzy must have seized upon her while she was dressing; for she

was in her bodice, bare-armed, her hair floating unbound far below the

waist of her barred or banded skirt. She had caught up her castanets, and

rattled them as she danced with a kind of passionate fierceness, her

lithe body undulating with flexuous grace, her diamond eyes glittering,

her round arms wreathing and unwinding, alive and vibrant to the tips of

the slender fingers. Some passion seemed to exhaust itself in this

dancing paroxysm; for all at once she reeled from the middle of the

floor, and flung herself, as it were in a careless coil, upon a great

tiger's-skin which was spread out in one corner of the apartment.

The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at her as she lay panting on the

tawny, black-lined robe of the dead monster which stretched out beneath

her, its rude flattened outline recalling the Terror of the Jungle as he

crouched for his fatal spring. In a few moments her head drooped upon

her arm, and her glittering eyes closed,--she was sleeping. He stood

looking at her still, steadily, thoughtfully, tenderly. Presently he

lifted his hand to his forehead, as if recalling some fading remembrance

of other years.

"Poor Catalina!"

This was all he said. He shook his head,--implying that his visit would

be in vain to-day,--returned to his sulky, and rode away, as if in a

dream.

CHAPTER XI.

COUSIN RICHARD'S VISIT.

The Doctor was roused from his revery by the clatter of approaching

hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly

towards him.

A common New-England rider with his toes turned out, his elbows jerking

and the daylight showing under him at every step, bestriding a cantering

beast of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be

thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of

those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of

the cities are the unshod countryboys, who ride "bareback," with only a

halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs,

and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the

hardest trot as if they loved it.--This was a different sight on which

the Doctor was looking. The streaming mane and tail of the unshorn,

savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace with which the young

fellow in the shadowy sombrero, and armed with the huge spurs, sat in his

high-peaked saddle, could belong only to the mustang of the Pampas and

his master. This bold rider was a young man whose sudden apparition in

the quiet inland town had reminded some of the good people of a bright,

curly-haired boy they had known some eight or ten years before as little

Dick Venner.

This boy had passed several of his early years at the Dudley mansion, the

playmate of Elsie, being her cousin, two or three years older than

herself, the son of Captain Richard Venner, a South American trader, who,

as he changed his residence often, was glad to leave the boy in his

brother's charge. The Captain's wife, this boy's mother, was a lady of

Buenos Ayres, of Spanish descent, and had died while the child was in his

cradle. These two motherless children were as strange a pair as one roof

could well cover. Both handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable, they

played and fought together like two young leopards, beautiful, but

dangerous, their lawless instincts showing through all their graceful

movements.

The boy was little else than a young Gaucho when he first came to

Rockland; for he had learned to ride almost as soon as to walk, and could

jump on his pony and trip up a runaway pig with the bolas or noose him

with his miniature lasso at an age when some city-children would hardly

be trusted out of sight of a nursery-maid. It makes men imperious to sit

a horse; no man governs his fellows so well as from this living throne.

And so, from Marcus Aurelius in Roman bronze, down to the "man on

horseback" in General Cushing's prophetic speech, the saddle has always

been the true seat of empire. The absolute tyranny of the human will

over a noble and powerful beast develops the instinct of personal

prevalence and dominion; so that horse-subduer and hero were almost

synonymous in simpler times, and are closely related still. An ancestry

of wild riders naturally enough bequeaths also those other tendencies

which we see in the Tartars, the Cossacks, and our own Indian Centaurs,

and as well, perhaps, in the old-fashioned fox-hunting squire as in any

of these. Sharp alternations of violent action and self-indulgent

repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it; this is what over-much

horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped to

make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough

playmate for Elsie.

Elsie was the wilder of the two. Old Sophy, who used to watch them with

those quick, animal-looking eyes of hers,--she was said to be the

granddaughter of a cannibal chief, and inherited the keen senses

belonging to all creatures which are hunted as game, Old Sophy, who

watched them in their play and their quarrels, always seemed to be more

afraid for the boy than the girl. "Masse Dick! Masse Dick! don' you be

too rough wi' dat gal! She scratch you las' week, 'n' some day she bite

you; 'n' if she bite you, Masse Dick!" Old Sophy nodded her head

ominously, as if she could say a great deal more; while, in grateful

acknowledgment of her caution, Master Dick put his two little fingers in

the angles of his mouth, and his forefingers on his lower eyelids,

drawing upon these features until his expression reminded her of

something she vaguely recollected in her infancy,--the face of a

favorite deity executed in wood by an African artist for her grandfather,

brought over by her mother, and burned when she became a Christian.

These two wild children had much in common. They loved to ramble

together, to build huts, to climb trees for nests, to ride the colts, to

dance, to race, and to play at boys' rude games as if both were boys.

But wherever two natures have a great deal in common, the conditions of a

first-rate quarrel are furnished ready-made. Relations are very apt to

hate each other just because they are too much alike. It is so frightful

to be in an atmosphere of family idiosyncrasies; to see all the

hereditary uncomeliness or infirmity of body, all the defects of speech,

all the failings of temper, intensified by concentration, so that every

fault of our own finds itself multiplied by reflections, like our images

in a saloon lined with mirrors! Nature knows what she is about. The

centrifugal principle which grows out of the antipathy of like to like is

only the repetition in character of the arrangement we see expressed

materially in certain seed-capsules, which burst and throw the seed to

all points of the compass. A house is a large pod with a human germ or

two in each of its cells or chambers; it opens by dehiscence of the

front-door by and by, and projects one of its germs to Kansas, another to

San Francisco, another to Chicago, and so on; and this that Smith may not

be Smithed to death and Brown may not be Browned into a mad-house, but

mix in with the world again and struggle back to average humanity.

Elsie's father, whose fault was to indulge her in everything, found that

it would never do to let these children grow up together. They would

either love each other as they got older, and pair like wild creatures,

or take some fierce antipathy, which might end nobody could tell where.

It was not safe to try. The boy must be sent away. A sharper quarrel

than common decided this point. Master Dick forgot Old Sophy's caution,

and vexed the girl into a paroxysm of wrath, in which she sprang at him

and bit his arm. Perhaps they made too much of it; for they sent for the

old Doctor, who came at once when he heard what had happened. He had a

good deal to say about the danger there was from the teeth of animals or

human beings when enraged; and as he emphasized his remarks by the

application of a pencil of lunar caustic to each of the marks left by the

sharp white teeth, they were like to be remembered by at least one of his

hearers.

So Master Dick went off on his travels, which led him into strange places

and stranger company. Elsie was half pleased and half sorry to have him

go; the children had a kind of mingled liking and hate for each other,

just such as is very common among relations. Whether the girl had most

satisfaction in the plays they shared, or in teasing him, or taking her

small revenge upon him for teasing her, it would have been hard to say.

At any rate, she was lonely without him. She had more fondness for the

old black woman than anybody; but Sophy could not follow her far beyond

her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid of

her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would seem to be

fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as she twined

her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some

half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make

him shiver, and he would say kindly, "Now go, Elsie, dear," and smile

upon her as she went, and close and lock the door softly after her. Then

his forehead would knot and furrow itself, and the drops of anguish stand

thick upon it. He would go to the western window of his study and look

at the solitary mound with the marble slab for its head-stone. After his

grief had had its way, he would kneel down and pray for his child as one

who has no hope save in that special grace which can bring the most

rebellious spirit into sweet subjection. All this might seem like

weakness in a parent having the charge of one sole daughter of his house

and heart; but he had tried authority and tenderness by turns so long

without any good effect, that he had become sore perplexed, and,

surrounding her with cautious watchfulness as he best might, left her in

the main to her own guidance and the merciful influences which Heaven

might send down to direct her footsteps.

Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early manhood through a strange

succession of adventures. He had been at school at Buenos Ayres,--had

quarrelled with his mother's relatives,--had run off to the Pampas, and

lived with the Gauchos;--had made friends with the Indians, and ridden

with them, it was rumored, in some of their savage forays,--had returned

and made up his quarrel,--had got money by inheritance or otherwise,--had

troubled the peace of certain magistrates,--had found it convenient to

leave the City of Wholesome Breezes for a time, and had galloped off on a

fast horse of his, (so it was said,) with some officers riding after him,

who took good care (but this was only the popular story) not to catch

him. A few days after this he was taking his ice on the Alameda of

Mendoza, and a week or two later sailed from Valparaiso for New York,

carrying with him the horse with which he had scampered over the Plains,

a trunk or two with his newly purchased outfit of, clothing and other

conveniences, and a belt heavy with gold and with a few Brazilian

diamonds sewed in it, enough in value to serve him for a long journey.

Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out the earlier sensibilities of

adolescence. He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bistred

or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been living. Even

that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents to the amateur

of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He was thinking of a

far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of the wild girl

with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a different race

from these degenerate mongrels.

"A game little devil she was, sure enough!"--And as Dick spoke, he bared

his wrist to look for the marks she had left on it: two small white

scars, where the two small sharp upper teeth had struck when she flashed

at him with her eyes sparkling as bright as those glittering stones sewed

up in the belt he wore. "That's a filly worth noosing!" said Dick to

himself, as he looked in admiration at the sign of her spirit and

passion. "I wonder if she will bite at eighteen as she did at eight!

She shall have a chance to try, at any rate!"

Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with which Richard Venner,

Esq., a passenger by the Condor from Valparaiso, set foot upon his native

shore, and turned his face in the direction of Rockland, The Mountain,

and the mansion-house. He had heard something, from time to time, of his

New-England relatives, and knew that they were living together as he left

them. And so he heralded himself to "My dear Uncle" by a letter signed

"Your loving nephew, Richard Venner," in which letter he told a very

frank story of travel and mercantile adventure, expressed much gratitude

for the excellent counsel and example which had helped to form his

character and preserve him in the midst of temptation, inquired

affectionately after his uncle's health, was much interested to know

whether his lively cousin who used to be his playmate had grown up as

handsome as she promised to be, and announced his intention of paying his

respects to them both at Rockland. Not long after this came the trunks

marked R. V. which he had sent before him, forerunners of his advent: he

was not going to wait for a reply or an invitation.

What a sound that is,--the banging down of the preliminary trunk, without

its claimant to give it the life which is borrowed by all personal

appendages, so long as the owner's hand or eye is on them! If it announce

the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, to

sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile walking out

on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying alongside, with the

colors of his own native land at her peak, and the name of the port he

sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell the near approach of

the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short of the muffled noises

made by the undertakers as they turn the corners in the dim-lighted

house, with low shuffle of feet and whispered cautions, carries such a

sense of knocking-kneed collapse with it as the thumping down in the

front entry of the heavy portmanteau, rammed with the changes of

uncounted coming weeks?

Whether the R. V. portmanteaus brought one or the other of these emotions

to the tenants of the Dudley mansion, it might not be easy to settle.

Elsie professed to be pleased with the thought of having an adventurous

young stranger, with stories to tell, an inmate of their quiet, not to

say dull, family. Under almost any other circumstances, her father would

have been unwilling to take a young fellow of whom he knew so little

under his roof; but this was his nephew, and anything that seemed like to

amuse or please Elsie was agreeable to him. He had grown almost

desperate, and felt as if any change in the current of her life and

feelings might save her from some strange paroxysm of dangerous mental

exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, from which some fearful

calamity might come to herself or others.

Dick had been several weeks at the Dudley mansion. A few days before, he

had made a sudden dash for the nearest large city,--and when the Doctor

met him, he was just returning from his visit.

It had been a curious meeting between the two young persons, who had

parted so young and after such strange relations with each other. When

Dick first presented himself at the mansion, not one in the house would

have known him for the boy who had left them all so suddenly years ago.

He was so dark, partly from his descent, partly from long habits of

exposure, that Elsie looked almost fair beside him. He had something of

the family beauty which belonged to his cousin, but his eye had a fierce

passion in it, very unlike the cold glitter of Elsie's. Like many people

of strong and imperious temper, he was soft-voiced and very gentle in his

address, when he had no special reason for being otherwise. He soon

found reasons enough to be as amiable as he could force himself to be

with his uncle and his cousin. Elsie was to his fancy. She had a

strange attraction for him, quite unlike anything he had ever known in

other women. There was something, too, in early associations: when those

who parted as children meet as man and woman, there is always a renewal

of that early experience which followed the taste of the forbidden

fruit,--a natural blush of consciousness, not without its charm.

Nothing could be more becoming than the behavior of "Richard Venner,

Esquire, the guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his noble mansion," as

he was announced in the Court column of the "Rockland Weekly Universe."

He was pleased to find himself treated with kindness and attention as a

relative. He made himself very agreeable by abundant details concerning

the religious, political, social, commercial, and educational progress of

the South American cities and states. He was himself much interested in

everything that was going on about the Dudley mansion, walked all over

it, noticed its valuable wood-lots with special approbation, was

delighted with the grand old house and its furniture, and would not be

easy until he had seen all the family silver and heard its history. In

return, he had much to tell of his father, now dead,--the only one of the

Venners, beside themselves, in whose fate his uncle was interested. With

Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender in his manner; with the few

visitors whom they saw, shy and silent,--perhaps a little watchful, if

any young man happened to be among them.

Young fellows placed on their good behavior are apt to get restless and

nervous, all ready to fly off into some mischief or other. Dick Venner

had his half-tamed horse with him to work off his suppressed life with.

When the savage passion of his young blood came over him, he would fetch

out the mustang, screaming and kicking as these amiable beasts are wont

to do, strap the Spanish saddle tight to his back, vault into it, and,

after getting away from the village, strike the long spurs into his sides

and whirl away in a wild gallop, until the black horse was flecked with

white foam, and the cruel steel points were red with his blood. When

horse and rider were alike fired, he would fling the bridle on his neck

and saunter homeward, always contriving to get to the stable in a quiet

way, and coming into the house as calm as a bishop after a sober trot on

his steady-going cob.

After a few weeks of this kind of life, he began to want some more fierce

excitement. He had tried making downright love to Elsie, with no great

success as yet, in his own opinion. The girl was capricious in her

treatment of him, sometimes scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar,

very often, as she used to be of old, teasing and malicious. All this,

perhaps, made her more interesting to a young man who was tired of easy

conquests. There was a strange fascination in her eyes, too, which at

times was quite irresistible, so that he would feel himself drawn to her

by a power which seemed to take away his will for the moment. It may

have been nothing but the common charm of bright eyes; but he had never

before experienced the same kind of attraction.

Perhaps she was not so very different from what she had been as a child,

after all. At any rate, so it seemed to Dick Venner, who, as was said

before, had tried making love to her. They were sitting alone in the

study one day; Elsie had round her neck that somewhat peculiar ornament,

the golden torque, which she had worn to the great party. Youth is

adventurous and very curious about necklaces, brooches, chains, and other

such adornments, so long as they are worn by young persons of the female

sex. Dick was seized with a great passion for examining this curious

chain, and, after some preliminary questions, was rash enough to lean

towards her and put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the golden

coil.

She threw her head back, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing down

so that Dick thought her head actually flattened itself. He started

involuntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had struck him

with those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole scene came back, and he

felt the stroke again as if it had just been given, and the two white

scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had burned them

with that stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil, and

felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker.

It took something more than a gallop to set him right after this. The

next day he mentioned having received a letter from a mercantile agent

with whom he had dealings. What his business was is, perhaps, none of

our business. At any rate, it required him to go at once to the city

where his correspondent resided.

Independently of this "business" which called him, there may have been

other motives, such as have been hinted at. People who have been living

for a long time in dreary country-places, without any emotion beyond such

as are occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get crazy at

last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other. In this state they rush

to the great cities for a plunge into their turbid life-baths, with a

frantic thirst for every exciting pleasure, which makes them the willing

and easy victims of all those who sell the Devil's wares on commission.

The less intelligent and instructed class of unfortunates, who venture

with their ignorance and their instincts into what is sometimes called

the "life" of great cities, are put through a rapid course of instruction

which entitles them very commonly to a diploma from the police court. But

they only illustrate the working of the same tendency in mankind at large

which has been occasionally noticed in the sons of ministers and other

eminently worthy people, by many ascribed to that intense congenital

hatred for goodness which distinguishes human nature from that of the

brute, but perhaps as readily accounted for by considering it as the

yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too long in one moral

posture.

Richard Veneer was a young man of remarkable experience for his years.

He ran less risk, therefore, in exposing himself to the temptations and

dangers of a great city than many older men, who, seeking the livelier

scenes of excitement to be found in large towns as a relaxation after the

monotonous routine of family life, are too often taken advantage of and

made the victims of their sentiments or their generous confidence in

their fellow-creatures. Such was not his destiny. There was something

about him which looked as if he would not take bullying kindly. He had

also the advantage of being acquainted with most of those ingenious

devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of fortune is steadied to

something more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dangerous risks

which have so often led young men to ruin and suicide are practically

reduced to somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Veneer worked

off his nervous energies without any troublesome adventure, and was ready

to return to Rockland in less than a week, without having lightened the

money-belt he wore round his body, or tarnished the long glittering knife

he carried in his boot.

Dick had sent his trunk to the nearest town through which the railroad

leading to the city passed. He rode off on his black horse and left him

at the place where he took the cars. On arriving at the city station, he

took a coach and drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove also a

sagacious-looking, middle-aged man, who entered his name as "W. Thompson"

in the book at the office immediately after that of "R. Venner." Mr.

"Thompson" kept a carelessly observant eye upon Mr. Venner during his

stay at the hotel, and followed him to the cars when he left, looking

over his shoulder when he bought his ticket at the station, and seeing

him fairly off without obtruding himself in any offensive way upon his

attention. Mr. Thompson, known in other quarters as Detective Policeman

Terry, got very little by his trouble. Richard Venner did not turn out

to be the wife-poisoner, the defaulting cashier, the river-pirate, or the

great counterfeiter. He paid his hotel-bill as a gentleman should always

do, if he has the money and can spare it. The detective had probably

overrated his own sagacity when he ventured to suspect Mr. Venner. He

reported to his chief that there was a knowing-looking fellow he had been

round after, but he rather guessed he was nothing more than "one o' them

Southern sportsmen."

The poor fellows at the stable where Dick had left his horse had had

trouble enough with him. One of the ostlers was limping about with a

lame leg, and another had lost a mouthful of his coat, which came very

near carrying a piece of his shoulder with it. When Mr. Venner came back

for his beast, he was as wild as if he had just been lassoed, screaming,

kicking, rolling over to get rid of his saddle, and when his rider was at

last mounted, jumping about in a way to dislodge any common horseman. To

all this Dick replied by sticking his long spurs deeper and deeper into

his flanks, until the creature found he was mastered, and dashed off as

if all the thistles of the Pampas were pricking him.

"One more gallop, Juan?" This was in the last mile of the road before he

came to the town which brought him in sight of the mansion-house. It was

in this last gallop that the fiery mustang and his rider flashed by the

old Doctor. Cassia pointed her sharp ears and shied to let them pass.

The Doctor turned and looked through the little round glass in the back

of his sulky.

"Dick Turpin, there, will find more than his match!" said the Doctor.

CHAPTER XII.

THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. (With Extracts from the "Report of the

committee.")

The readers of this narrative will hardly expect any elaborate details of

the educational management of the Apollinean Institute. They cannot be

supposed to take the same interest in its affairs as was shown by the

Annual Committees who reported upon its condition and prospects. As

these Committees were, however, an important part of the mechanism of the

establishment, some general account of their organization and a few

extracts from the Report of the one last appointed may not be out of

place.

Whether Mr. Silas Peckham had some contrivance for packing his

Committees, whether they happened always to be made up of optimists by

nature, whether they were cajoled into good-humor by polite attentions,

or whether they were always really delighted with the wonderful

acquirements of the pupils and the admirable order of the school, it is

certain that their Annual Reports were couched in language which might

warm the heart of the most cold-blooded and calculating father that ever

had a family of daughters to educate. In fact, these Annual Reports were

considered by Mr. Peckham as his most effective advertisements.

The first thing, therefore, was to see that the Committee was made up of

persons known to the public.

Some worn-out politician, in that leisurely and amiable transition-state

which comes between official extinction and the paralysis which will

finish him as soon as his brain gets a little softer, made an admirable

Chairman for Mr. Peckham, when he had the luck to pick up such an

article. Old reputations, like old fashions, are more prized in the

grassy than in the stony districts. An effete celebrity, who would never

be heard of again in the great places until the funeral sermon waked up

his memory for one parting spasm, finds himself in full flavor of renown

a little farther back from the changing winds of the sea-coast. If such

a public character was not to be had, so that there was no chance of

heading the Report with the name of the Honorable Mr. Somebody, the next

best thing was to get the Reverend Dr. Somebody to take that conspicuous

position. Then would follow two or three local worthies with Esquire

after their names. If any stray literary personage from one of the great

cities happened to be within reach, he was pounced upon by Mr. Silas

Peckham. It was a hard case for the poor man, who had travelled a

hundred miles or two to the outside suburbs after peace and unwatered

milk, to be pumped for a speech in this unexpected way. It was harder

still, if he had been induced to venture a few tremulous remarks, to be

obliged to write them out for the "Rockland Weekly Universe," with the

chance of seeing them used as an advertising certificate as long as he

lived, if he lived as long as the late Dr. Waterhouse did after giving

his certificate in favor of Whitwell's celebrated Cephalic Snuff.

The Report of the last Committee had been signed by the Honorable,

___________late __________ of ____________, as Chairman. (It is with

reluctance that the name and titles are left in blank; but our public

characters are so familiarly known to the whole community that this

reserve becomes necessary.) The other members of the Committee were the

Reverend Mr. Butters, of a neighboring town, who was to make the prayer

before the Exercises of the Exhibition, and two or three notabilities of

Rockland, with geoponic eyes, and glabrous, bumpless foreheads. A few

extracts from the Report are subjoined:

"The Committee have great pleasure in recording their unanimous opinion,

that the Institution was never in so flourishing a condition....

"The health of the pupils is excellent; the admirable quality of food

supplied shows itself in their appearance; their blooming aspect excited

the admiration of the Committee, and bears testimony to the assiduity of

the excellent Matron.

"......moral and religious condition most encouraging, which they cannot

but attribute to the personal efforts and instruction of the faithful

Principal, who considers religious instruction a solemn duty which he

cannot commit to other people.

"......great progress in their studies, under the intelligent

superintendence of the accomplished Principal, assisted by Mr. Badger,

[Mr. Langdon's predecessor,] Miss Darley, the lady who superintends the

English branches, Miss Crabs, her assistant and teacher of Modern

Languages, and Mr. Schneider, teacher of French, German, Latin, and

Music....

"Education is the great business of the Institute. Amusements are

objects of a secondary nature; but these are by no means neglected....

"......English compositions of great originality and beauty, creditable

alike to the head and heart of their accomplished authors.... several

poems of a very high order of merit, which would do honor to the

literature of any age or country.... life-like drawings, showing great

proficiency.... Many converse fluently in various modern languages....

perform the most difficult airs with the skill of professional

musicians....

"......advantages unsurpassed, if equalled by those of any Institution in

the country, and reflecting the highest honor on the distinguished Head

of the Establishment, SILAS PECKHAM, Esquire, and his admirable Lady, the

MATRON, with their worthy assistants...."

The perusal of this Report did Mr. Bernard more good than a week's

vacation would have done: It gave him such a laugh as he had not had for

a month. The way in which Silas Peckham had made his Committee say what

he wanted them to--for he recognized a number of expressions in the

Report as coming directly from the lips of his principal, and could not

help thinking how cleverly he had forced his phrases, as jugglers do the

particular card they wish their dupe to take--struck him as particularly

neat and pleasing.

He had passed through the sympathetic and emotional stages in his new

experience, and had arrived at the philosophical and practical state,

which takes things coolly, and goes to work to set them right. He had

breadth enough of view to see that there was nothing so very exceptional

in this educational trader's dealings with his subordinates, but he had

also manly feeling enough to attack the particular individual instance of

wrong before him. There are plenty of dealer's in morals, as in ordinary

traffic, who confine themselves to wholesale business. They leave the

small necessity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are

poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day

charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a gray rat

steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded

with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone.

The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then

one remembers that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his kind, and

cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the tree against

his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, one can watch his

attempts at mischief with a certain amusement.

This was the kind of process Mr. Bernard had gone through. First, the

indignant surprise of a generous nature, when it comes unexpectedly into

relations with a mean one. Then the impulse of extermination,--a divine

instinct, intended to keep down vermin of all classes to their working

averages in the economy of Nature. Then a return of cheerful

tolerance,--a feeling, that, if the Deity could bear with rats and

sharpers, he could; with a confident trust, that, in the long run,

terriers and honest men would have the upperhand, and a grateful

consciousness that he had been sent just at the right time to come

between a patient victim and the master who held her in peonage.

Having once made up his mind what to do, Mr. Bernard was as good-natured

and hopeful as ever. He had the great advantage, from his professional

training, of knowing how to recognize and deal with the nervous

disturbances to which overtasked women are so liable. He saw well enough

that Helen Darley would certainly kill herself or lose her wits, if he

could not lighten her labors and lift off a large part of her weight of

cares. The worst of it was, that she was one of those women who

naturally overwork themselves, like those horses who will go at the top

of their pace until they drop. Such women are dreadfully unmanageable.

It is as hard reasoning with them as it would have been reasoning with

Io, when she was flying over land and sea, driven by the sting of the

never-sleeping gadfly.

This was a delicate, interesting game that he played. Under one innocent

pretext or another, he invaded this or that special province she had made

her own. He would collect the themes and have them all read and marked,

answer all the puzzling questions in mathematics, make the other teachers

come to him for directions, and in this way gradually took upon himself

not only all the general superintendence that belonged to his office, but

stole away so many of the special duties which might fairly have belonged

to his assistant, that, before she knew it, she was looking better and

feeling more cheerful than for many and many a month before.

When the nervous energy is depressed by any bodily cause, or exhausted by

overworking, there follow effects which have often been misinterpreted by

moralists, and especially by theologians. The conscience itself becomes

neuralgic, sometimes actually inflamed, so that the least touch is agony.

Of all liars and false accusers, a sick conscience is the most inventive

and indefatigable. The devoted daughter, wife, mother, whose life has

been given to unselfish labors, who has filled a place which it seems to

others only an angel would make good, reproaches herself with

incompetence and neglect of duty. The humble Christian, who has been a

model to others, calls himself a worm of the dust on one page of his

diary, and arraigns himself on the next for coming short of the

perfection of an archangel.

Conscience itself requires a conscience, or nothing can be more

unscrupulous. It told Saul that he did well in persecuting the

Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes of various creeds to

endless forms of self-torture. The cities of India are full of cripples

it has made. The hill-sides of Syria are riddled with holes, where

miserable hermits, whose lives it had palsied, lived and died like the

vermin they harbored. Our libraries are crammed with books written by

spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all their moral secretions a

dozen times a day. They are full of interest, but they should be

transferred from the shelf of the theologian to that of the medical man

who makes a study of insanity.

This was the state into which too much work and too much responsibility

were bringing Helen Darley, when the new master came and lifted so much

of the burden that was crushing her as must be removed before she could

have a chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of

the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being

relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual

teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So subtile is the line

which separates the true and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but

exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing with a

morbid state of the body that it is no wonder they are often confounded.

And thus many good women are suffered to perish by that form of

spontaneous combustion in which the victim goes on toiling day and night

with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek whitens,

and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they

overwork themselves, the more exacting becomes the sense of duty,--as the

draught of the locomotive's furnace blows stronger and makes the fire

burn more fiercely, the faster it spins along the track.

It is not very likely, as was said at the beginning of this chapter, that

we shall trouble ourselves a great deal about the internal affairs of the

Apollinean Institute. These schools are, in the nature of things, not so

very unlike each other as to require a minute description for each

particular one among them. They have all very much the same general

features, pleasing and displeasing. All feeding-establishments have

something odious about them,--from the wretched country-houses where

paupers are farmed out to the lowest bidder, up to the commons-tables at

colleges and even the fashionable boarding-house. A person's appetite

should be at war with no other purse than his own. Young people,

especially, who have a bone-factory at work in them, and have to feed the

living looms of innumerable growing tissues, should be provided for, if

possible, by those who love them like their own flesh and blood.

Elsewhere their appetites will be sure to make them enemies, or, what are

almost as bad, friends whose interests are at variance with the claims of

their exacting necessities and demands.

Besides, all commercial transactions in regard to the most sacred

interests of life are hateful even to those who profit by them. The

clergyman, the physician, the teacher, must be paid; but each of them, if

his duty be performed in the true spirit, can hardly help a shiver of

disgust when money is counted out to him for administering the

consolations of religion, for saving some precious life, for sowing the

seeds of Christian civilization in young ingenuous souls.

And yet all these schools, with their provincial French and their

mechanical accomplishments, with their cheap parade of diplomas and

commencements and other public honors, have an ever fresh interest to all

who see the task they are performing in our new social order. These girls

are not being educated for governesses, or to be exported, with other

manufactured articles, to colonies where there happens to be a surplus of

males. Most of them will be wives, and every American-born husband is a

possible President of these United States. Any one of these girls may be

a four-years' queen. There is no sphere of human activity so exalted

that she may not be called upon to fill it.

But there is another consideration of far higher interest. The education

of our community to all that is beautiful is flowing in mainly through

its women, and that to a considerable extent by the aid of these large

establishments, the least perfect of which do something to stimulate the

higher tastes and partially instruct them. Sometimes there is, perhaps,

reason to fear that girls will be too highly educated for their own

happiness, if they are lifted by their culture out of the range of the

practical and every-day working youth by whom they are surrounded. But

this is a risk we must take. Our young men come into active life so

early, that, if our girls were not educated to something beyond mere

practical duties, our material prosperity would outstrip our culture; as

it often does in large places where money is made too rapidly. This is

the meaning, therefore, of that somewhat ambitious programme common to

most of these large institutions, at which we sometimes smile, perhaps

unwisely or uncharitably.

We shall take it for granted that the routine of instruction went on at

the Apollinean Institute much as it does in other schools of the same

class. People, young or old, are wonderfully different, if we contrast

extremes in pairs. They approach much nearer, if we take them in groups

of twenty. Take two separate hundreds as they come, without choosing,

and you get the gamut of human character in both so completely that you

can strike many chords in each which shall be in perfect unison with

corresponding ones in the other. If we go a step farther, and compare

the population of two villages of the same race and region, there is such

a regularly graduated distribution and parallelism of character, that it

seems as if Nature must turn out human beings in sets like chessmen.

It must be confessed that the position in which Mr. Bernard now found

himself had a pleasing danger about it which might well justify all the

fears entertained on his account by more experienced friends, when they

learned that he was engaged in a Young Ladies' Seminary. The school never

went on more smoothly than during the first period of his administration,

after he had arranged its duties, and taken his share, and even more than

his share, upon himself. But human nature does not wait for the diploma

of the Apollinean Institute to claim the exercise of it, instincts and

faculties. These young girls saw but little of the youth of the

neighborhood. The mansion-house young men were off at college or in the

cities, or making love to each other's sisters, or at any rate

unavailable for some reason or other. There were a few "clerks,"--that

is, young men who attended shops, commonly called "stores,"--who were

fond of walking by the Institute, when they were off duty, for the sake

of exchanging a word or a glance with any one of the young ladies they

might happen to know, if any such were stirring abroad: crude young men,

mostly, with a great many "Sirs" and "Ma'ams" in their speech, and with

that style of address sometimes acquired in the retail business, as if

the salesman were recommending himself to a customer, "First-rate family

article, Ma'am; warranted to wear a lifetime; just one yard and three

quarters in this pattern, Ma'am; sha'n't I have the pleasure?" and so

forth. If there had been ever so many of them, and if they had been ever

so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute was too rigorous to allow

any romantic infection to be introduced from without.

Anybody might see what would happen, with a good-looking, well-dressed,

well-bred young man, who had the authority of a master, it is true, but

the manners of a friend and equal, moving about among these young girls

day after day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs,

his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, often

soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its male depth and

breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as if it were a river in

which a hundred of these little piping streamlets-might lose themselves;

anybody might see what would happen. Young girls wrote home to their

parents that they enjoyed themselves much, this term, at the Institute,

and thought they were making rapid progress in their studies. There was

a great enthusiasm for the young master's reading-classes in English

poetry. Some of the poor little things began to adorn themselves with an

extra ribbon, or a bit of such jewelry as they had before kept for great

occasions. Dear souls! they only half knew what they were doing it for.

Does the bird know why its feathers grow more brilliant and its voice

becomes musical in the pairing season?

And so, in the midst of this quiet inland town, where a mere accident had

placed Mr. Bernard Langdon, there was a concentration of explosive

materials which might at any time change its Arcadian and academic repose

into a scene of dangerous commotion. What said Helen Darley, when she

saw with her woman's glance that more than one girl, when she should be

looking at her book, was looking over it toward the master's desk? Was

her own heart warmed by any livelier feeling than gratitude, as its life

began to flow with fuller pulses, and the morning sky again looked bright

and the flowers recovered their lost fragrance? Was there any strange,

mysterious affinity between the master and the dark girl who sat by

herself? Could she call him at will by looking at him? Could it be

that--? It made her shiver to think of it.--And who was that strange

horseman who passed Mr. Bernard at dusk the other evening, looking so

like Mephistopheles galloping hard to be in season at the witches'

Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry

her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a

fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?--by what demon is she

haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by

what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in

it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters

always, but warms for none?

Some of these questions are ours. Some were Helen Darley's. Some of

them mingled with the dreams of Bernard Langdon, as he slept the night

after meeting the strange horseman. In the morning he happened to be a

little late in entering the schoolroom. There was something between the

leaves of the Virgil which lay upon his desk. He opened it and saw a

freshly gathered mountain-flower. He looked at Elsie, instinctively,

involuntarily. She had another such flower on her breast.

A young girl's graceful compliment,--that is all,--no doubt,--no doubt.

It was odd that the flower should have happened to be laid between the

leaves of the Fourth Book of the "AEneid," and at this line,

"Incipit effari, mediaque in voce resistit."

A remembrance of an ancient superstition flashed through the master's

mind, and he determined to try the Sortes Virgilianae. He shut the

volume, and opened it again at a venture.--The story of Laocoon!

He read with a strange feeling of unwilling fascination, from "Horresco

referees" to "Bis medium amplexi," and flung the book from him, as if its

leaves had been steeped in the subtle poisons that princes die of.

CHAPTER XIII.

CURIOSITY.

People will talk. 'Ciascun lo dice' is a tune that is played oftener

than the national air of this country or any other.

"That 's what they say. Means to marry her, if she is his cousin. Got

money himself,--that 's the story,--but wants to come and live in the old

place, and get the Dudley property by and by." "Mother's folks was

wealthy."--"Twenty-three to twenty-five year old."--"He a'n't more 'n

twenty, or twenty-one at the outside."--"Looks as if he knew too much to

be only twenty year old."--"Guess he's been through the mill,--don't look

so green, anyhow, hey? Did y' ever mind that cut over his left eyebrow?"

So they gossiped in Rockland. The young fellows could make nothing of

Dick Venner. He was shy and proud with the few who made advances to him.

The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but he looked at them

like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit of, ordering his wives by

the dozen.

"What do you think of the young man over there at the Veneers'?" said

Miss Arabella Thornton to her father.

"Handsome," said the Judge, "but dangerous-looking. His face is

indictable at common law. Do you know, my dear, I think there is a blank

at the Sheriff's office, with a place for his name in it?"

The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just listened to the

verdict of the jury and was going to pronounce sentence.

"Have you heard anything against him?" said the Judge's daughter.

"Nothing. But I don't like these mixed bloods and half-told stories.

Besides, I have seen a good many desperate fellows at the bar, and I have

a fancy they all have a look belonging to them. The worst one I ever

sentenced looked a good deal like this fellow. A wicked mouth. All our

other features are made for us; but a man makes his own mouth."

"Who was the person you sentenced?"

"He was a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man who had won his

money at cards. The same slender shape, the same cunning, fierce look,

smoothed over with a plausible air. Depend upon it, there is an

expression in all the sort of people who live by their wits when they

can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we old

law-doctors know just as well as the medical counsellors know the marks

of disease in a man's face. Dr. Kittredge looks at a man and says he is

going to die; I look at another man and say he is going to be hanged, if

nothing happens. I don't say so of this one, but I don't like his looks.

I wonder Dudley Veneer takes to him so kindly."

"It's all for Elsie's sake," said Miss Thornton. "I feel quite sure of

that. He never does anything that is not meant for her in some way. I

suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about the house. She rides a

good deal since he has been here. Have you seen them galloping about

together? He looks like my idea of a Spanish bandit on that wild horse

of his."

"Possibly he has been one,--or is one," said the Judge,--smiling as men

smile whose lips have often been freighted with the life and death of

their fellow-creatures. "I met them riding the other day. Perhaps Dudley

is right, if it pleases her to have a companion. What will happen,

though, if he makes love to her? Will Elsie be easily taken with such a

fellow? You young folks are supposed to know more about these matters

than we middle-aged people."

"Nobody can tell. Elsie is not like anybody else. The girls who have

seen most of her think she hates men, all but 'Dudley,' as she calls her

father. Some of them doubt whether she loves him. They doubt whether

she can love anything human, except perhaps the old black woman who has

taken care of her since she was a baby. The village people have the

strangest stories about her; you know what they call her?"

She whispered three words in her father's ear. The Judge changed color

as she spoke, sighed deeply, and was silent as if lost in thought for a

moment.

"I remember her mother," he said, "so well! A sweeter creature never

lived. Elsie has something of her in her look, but those are not her

mother's eyes. They were dark, but soft, as in all I ever saw of her

race. Her father's are dark too, but mild, and even tender, I should

say. I don't know what there is about Elsie's,--but do you know, my

dear, I find myself curiously influenced by them? I have had to face a

good many sharp eyes and hard ones,--murderers' eyes and pirates',--men

who had to be watched in the bar, where they stood on trial, for fear

they should spring on the prosecuting officers like tigers,--but I never

saw such eyes as Elsie's; and yet they have a kind of drawing virtue or

power about them,--I don't know what else to call it: have you never

observed this?"

His daughter smiled in her turn.

"Never observed it? Why, of course, nobody could be with Elsie Venner

and not observe it. There are a good many other strange things about

her: did you ever notice how she dresses?"

"Why, handsomely enough, I should think," the Judge answered. "I suppose

she dresses as she likes, and sends to the city for what she wants. What

do you mean in particular? We men notice effects in dress, but not much

in detail."

"You never noticed the colors and patterns of her dresses? You never

remarked anything curious about her ornaments? Well! I don't believe

you men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a nine-penny collar or

a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars. I don't believe you know a

silk dress from a bombazine one. I don't believe you can tell whether a

woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know she is a widow.

Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me tell you. She sends

for the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks out the most curious things

at the jeweller's, whenever she goes to town with her father. They say

the old Doctor tells him to let her have her way about such matters.

Afraid of her mind, if she is contradicted, I suppose. You've heard

about her going to school at that place,--the 'Institoot,' as those

people call it? They say she's bright enough in her way,--has studied at

home, you know, with her father a good deal, knows some modern languages

and Latin, I believe: at any rate, she would have it so,--she must go to

the 'Institoot.' They have a very good female teacher there, I hear; and

the new master, that young Mr. Langdon, looks and talks like a

well-educated young man. I wonder what they 'll make of Elsie, between

them!"

So they talked at the Judge's, in the calm, judicial-looking

mansion-house, in the grave, still library, with the troops of wan-hued

law-books staring blindly out of their titles at them as they talked,

like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed motionless and speechless, each

with a thin, golden film over his unwinking eyes.

In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after Cousin

Richard's return. A man of sense,--that is, a man who knows perfectly

well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying the

fortress of a woman's affections, (not yours, "Astarte," nor yours,

"Viola,")--who knows that men are rejected by women every day because

they, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they do not,

and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,--a man of sense, when he

finds he has established his second parallel too soon, retires quietly to

his first, and begins working on his covered ways again. The whole art

of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under the title Fortification,

where the terms just used are explained. After the little adventure of

the necklace, Dick retreated at once to his first parallel. Elsie loved

riding,--and would go off with him on a gallop now and then. He was a

master of all those strange Indian horseback-feats which shame the tricks

of the circus-riders, and used to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes

by disappearing from his saddle, like a phantom horseman lying flat

against the side of the bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a

hunting leopard with his claws in the horse's flank and flattening

himself out against his heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too,

which she had learned from the young person who had taught her dancing,

and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing

her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar

they had found with the ghostly things in the garret,--a quaint old

instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to a

certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a work

of art,--a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded away,

unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a few, are

smiling and singing and fading now,--God grant each of them His

love,--and one human heart as its interpreter!

As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked. Sometimes, when

they thought she was at her desk in the great schoolroom, she would be on

The Mountain,--alone always. Dick wanted to go with her, but she would

never let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag path a little way

up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him following her. She

turned and passed him without a word, but giving him a look which seemed

to make the scars on his wrist tingle, went to her room, where she locked

herself up, and did not come out again till evening, Old Sophy having

brought her food, and set it down, not speaking, but looking into her

eyes inquiringly, like a dumb beast trying to feel out his master's will

in his face. The evening was clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at

his chamber-window, looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed

figure flit between the trees and steal along the narrow path which led

upward. Elsie's pillow was unpressed that night, but she had not been

missed by the household,--for Dick knew enough to keep his own counsel.

The next morning she avoided him and went off early to school. It was

the same morning that the young master found the flower between the

leaves of his Virgil.

The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleasant enough with her cousin

for a few days after this; but she shunned rather than sought him. She

had taken a new interest in her books, and especially in certain poetical

readings which the master conducted with the elder scholars. This gave

Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways when her eye was on her

book, to notice the inflections of her voice, to watch for any expression

of her sentiments; for, to tell the truth, he had a kind of fear that the

girl had taken a fancy to him, and, though she interested him, he did not

wish to study her heart from the inside.

The more he saw her, the more the sadness of her beauty wrought upon him.

She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled

at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of

expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had

felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person

accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind,

and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of

disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face produced

upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre of ice;

in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows

that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears.

The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in its

stony apathy, it seemed to him, the pathos which we find in the blind who

show no film or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her

to be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet the master could

not help feeling that some instinct was working in this girl which was in

some way leading her to seek his presence. She did not lift her

glittering eyes upon him as at first. It seemed strange that she did

not, for they were surely her natural weapons of conquest. Her color did

not come and go like that of young girls under excitement. She had a

clear brunette complexion, a little sun-touched, it may be,--for the

master noticed once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a

faint ring or band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface

encircled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation,

when she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible

imperfection in articulating some of the lingual sounds,--just enough to

be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a few times heard.

Not a word about the flower on either side. It was not uncommon for the

schoolgirls to leave a rose or pink or wild flower on the teacher's desk.

Finding it in the Virgil was nothing, after all; it was a little delicate

flower, which looked as if it were made to press, and it was probably

shut in by accident at the particular place where he found it. He took

it into his head to examine it in a botanical point of view. He found it

was not common,--that it grew only in certain localities,--and that one

of these was among the rocks of the eastern spur of The Mountain.

It happened to come into his head how the Swiss youth climb the sides of

the Alps to find the flower called the Edelweiss for the maidens whom

they wish to please. It is a pretty fancy, that of scaling some

dangerous height before the dawn, so as to gather the flower in its

freshness, that the favored maiden may wear it to church on Sunday

morning, a proof at once of her lover's devotion and his courage. Mr.

Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower was said to

grow, that he might see where the wild girl sought the blossoms of which

Nature was so jealous.

It was on a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that he undertook his

land-voyage of discovery. He had more curiosity, it may be, than he

would have owned; for he had heard of the girl's wandering habits, and

the guesses about her sylvan haunts, and was thinking what the chances

were that he should meet her in some strange place, or come upon traces

of her which would tell secrets she would not care to have known.

The woods are all alive to one who walks through them with his mind in an

excited state, and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees are always

talking, not merely whispering with their leaves, (for every tree talks

to itself in that way, even when it stands alone in the middle of a

pasture,) but grating their boughs against each other, as old horn-handed

farmers press their dry, rustling palms together, dropping a nut or a

leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a woodpecker, or rustling as a

squirrel flashes along a branch. It was now the season of singing-birds,

and the woods were haunted with mysterious, tender music. The voices of

the birds which love the deeper shades of the forest are sadder than

those of the open fields: these are the nuns who have taken the veil, the

hermits that have hidden themselves away from the world and tell their

griefs to the infinite listening Silences of the wilderness,--for the one

deep inner silence that Nature breaks with her fitful superficial sounds

becomes multiplied as the image of a star in ruffled waters. Strange!

The woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and yet, if

you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is

restless and nervous as that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing

and twining and separating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the

stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the

limbs sway and twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the

rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with

long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few rain-drops which

had lain hidden among the deeper shadows. I pray you, notice, in the

sweet summer days which will soon see you among the mountains, this

inward tranquillity that belongs to the heart of the woodland, with this

nervousness, for I do not know what else to call it, of outer movement.

One would say, that Nature, like untrained persons, could not sit still

without nestling about or doing something with her limbs or features, and

that high breeding was only to be looked for in trim gardens, where the

soul of the trees is ill at ease perhaps, but their manners are

unexceptionable, and a rustling branch or leaf falling out of season is

an indecorum. The real forest is hardly still except in the Indian

summer; then there is death in the house, and they are waiting for the

sharp shrunken months to come with white raiment for the summer's burial.

There were many hemlocks in this neighborhood, the grandest and most

solemn of all the forest-trees in the mountain regions. Up to a certain

period of growth they are eminently beautiful, their boughs disposed in

the most graceful pagoda-like series of close terraces, thick and dark

with green crystalline leaflets. In spring the tender shoots come out of

a paler green, finger-like, as if they were pointing to the violets at

their feet. But when the trees have grown old, and their rough boles

measure a yard and more through their diameter, they are no longer

beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their own, too full of

meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed in words. Below, all

their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by

the weight of many winters' snows; above, they are still green and full

of life, but their summits overtop all the deciduous trees around them,

and in their companionship with heaven they are alone. On these the

lightning loves to fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw,--or rather, what had

been one such; for the bolt had torn the tree like an explosion from

within, and the ground was strewed all around the broken stump with

flakes of rough bark and strips and chips of shivered wood, into which

the old tree had been rent by the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud.

--The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely from the western side

of the Dudley mansion-house. In this way he ascended until he reached a

point many hundred feet above the level of the plain, and commanding all

the country beneath and around. Almost at his feet he saw the

mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of the roof, or

rather, like a black square hole in it,--the trees almost directly over

their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly as an architect would

draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosures round it. It

frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and old forest-growths

hung over the home below. As he descended a little and drew near the

ledge of evil name, he was struck with the appearance of a long narrow

fissure that ran parallel with it and above it for many rods, not

seemingly of very old standing,--for there were many fibres of roots

which had evidently been snapped asunder when the rent took place, and

some of which were still succulent in both separated portions.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to come back

before he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuaded himself

that it was scientific curiosity. He wished to examine the rocks, to see

what flowers grew there, and perhaps to pick up an adventure in the

zoological line; for he had on a pair of high, stout boots, and he

carried a stick in his hand, which was forked at one extremity, so as to

be very convenient to hold down a crotalus with, if he should happen to

encounter one. He knew the aspect of the ledge from a distance; for its

bald and leprous-looking declivities stood out in their nakedness from

the wooded sides of The Mountain, when this was viewed from certain

points of the village. But the nearer aspect of the blasted region had

something frightful in it. The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had

been gnawed for thousands of years by hungry waves. In some places they

overhung their base so as to look like leaning towers which might topple

over at any minute. In other parts they were scooped into niches or

caverns. Here and there they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them

of such width that one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of

meeting the regular tenants, who might treat him as an intruder.

Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicularly, with nothing but cracks

or slightly projecting edges in which or on which a foot could find hold.

High up on one of these precipitous walls of rock he saw some tufts of

flowers, and knew them at once for the same that he had found between the

leaves of his Virgil. Not there, surely! No woman would have clung

against that steep, rough parapet to gather an idle blossom. And yet the

master looked round everywhere, and even up the side of that rock, to see

if there were no signs of a woman's footstep. He peered about curiously,

as if his eye might fall on some of those fragments of dress which women

leave after them, whenever they run against each other or against

anything else,--in crowded ballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on

the fences after rambles, scattered round over every place which has

witnessed an act of violence, where rude hands have been laid upon them.

Nothing--Stop, though, one moment. That stone is smooth and polished,

as if it had been somewhat worn by the pressure of human feet. There is

one twig broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put his foot

upon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging shrub. In this way he

turned a sharp angle of the rock and found himself on a natural platform,

which lay in front of one of the wider fissures,--whether the mouth of a

cavern or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone made an easy seat,

upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, and looked

mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered from the rock was at

his feet. He took it and threw it down the declivity a little below

where he sat. He looked about for a stem or a straw of some kind to bite

upon,--a country-instinct,--relic, no doubt, of the old

vegetable-feeding habits of Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? He picked

it up. It was a hair-pin.

To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort of thrill shoot through him at

the sight of this harmless little implement would be a statement not at

variance with the fact of the case. That smooth stone had been often

trodden, and by what foot he could not doubt. He rose up from his seat to

look round for other signs of a woman's visits. What if there is a

cavern here, where she has a retreat, fitted up, perhaps, as anchorites

fitted their cells,--nay, it may be, carpeted and mirrored, and with one

of those tiger-skins for a couch, such as they, say the girl loves to lie

on? Let us look, at any rate.

Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cavern or fissure and looked into

it. His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small, sharp,

cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth, steady

motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb,

staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear

that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The two sparks of light

came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted

themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled

in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be

it man or brute, can hear unmoved,--the long, loud, stinging whirr, as

the huge, thick bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and adjusted

his loops for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets

toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the

swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her

anaesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the lion's first

shake deadens the man's fear and feeling; and the crotalus paralyzes

before he strikes. He waited as in a trance,--waited as one that longs

to have the blow fall, and all over, as the man who shall be in two

pieces in a second waits for the axe to drop. But while he looked

straight into the flaming eyes, it seemed to him that they were losing

their light and terror, that they were growing tame and dull; the charm

was dissolving, the numbness was passing away, he could move once more.

He heard a light breathing close to his ear, and, half turning, saw the

face of Elsie Venner, looking motionless into the reptile's eyes, which

had shrunk and faded under the stronger enchantment of her own.

CHAPTER XIV.

FAMILY SECRETS.

It was commonly understood in the town of Rockland that Dudley Venner had

had a great deal of trouble with that daughter of his, so handsome, yet

so peculiar, about whom there were so many strange stories. There was no

end to the tales which were told of her extraordinary doings. Yet her

name was never coupled with that of any youth or man, until this cousin

had provoked remark by his visit; and even then it was oftener in the

shape of wondering conjectures whether he would dare to make love to her,

than in any pretended knowledge of their relations to each other, that

the public tongue exercised its village-prerogative of tattle.

The more common version of the trouble at the mansion-house was this:

Elsie was not exactly in her right mind. Her temper was singular, her

tastes were anomalous, her habits were lawless, her antipathies were many

and intense, and she was liable to explosions of ungovernable anger.

Some said that was not the worst of it. At nearly fifteen years old,

when she was growing fast, and in an irritable state of mind and body,

she had had a governess placed over her for whom she had conceived an

aversion. It was whispered among a few who knew more of the family

secrets than others, that, worried and exasperated by the presence and

jealous oversight of this person, Elsie had attempted to get finally rid

of her by unlawful means, such as young girls have been known to employ

in their straits, and to which the sex at all ages has a certain

instinctive tendency, in preference to more palpable instruments for the

righting of its wrongs. At any rate, this governess had been taken

suddenly ill, and the Doctor had been sent for at midnight. Old Sophy

had taken her master into a room apart, and said a few words to him which

turned him as white as a sheet. As soon as he recovered himself, he sent

Sophy out, called in the old Doctor, and gave him some few hints, on

which he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing his patient

out of danger before he left in the morning. It is proper to say, that,

during the following days, the most thorough search was made in every

nook and cranny of those parts of the house which Elsie chiefly haunted,

but nothing was found which might be accused of having been the

intentional cause of the probably accidental sudden illness of the

governess. From this time forward her father was never easy. Should he

keep her apart, or shut her up, for fear of risk to others, and so lose

every chance of restoring her mind to its healthy tone by kindly

influences and intercourse with wholesome natures? There was no proof,

only presumption, as to the agency of Elsie in the matter referred to.

But the doubt was worse, perhaps, than certainty would have been,--for

then he would have known what to do.

He took the old Doctor as his adviser. The shrewd old man listened to

the father's story, his explanations of possibilities, of probabilities,

of dangers, of hopes. When he had got through, the Doctor looked him in

the face steadily, as if he were saying, Is that all?

The father's eyes fell. This was not all. There was something at the

bottom of his soul which he could not bear to speak of,--nay, which, as

often as it reared itself through the dark waves of unworded

consciousness into the breathing air of thought, he trod down as the

ruined angels tread down a lost soul, trying to come up out of the

seething sea of torture. Only this one daughter! No! God never would

have ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it; it

could not be; she was ill,--she would outgrow all these singularities; he

had had an aunt who was peculiar; he had heard that hysteric girls showed

the strangest forms of moral obliquity for a time, but came right at

last. She would change all at once, when her health got more firmly

settled in the course of her growth. Are there not rough buds that open

into sweet flowers? Are there not fruits, which, while unripe, are not

to be tasted or endured, which mature into the richest taste and

fragrance? In God's good time she would come to her true nature; her

eyes would lose that frightful, cold glitter; her lips would not feel so

cold when she pressed them against his cheek; and that faint birth-mark,

her mother swooned when she first saw, would fade wholly out,--it was

less marked, surely, now than it used to be!

So Dudley Venner felt, and would have thought, if he had let his thoughts

breathe the air of his soul. But the Doctor read through words and

thoughts and all into the father's consciousness. There are states of

mind which may be shared by two persons in presence of each other, which

remain not only unworded, but unthoughted, if such a word may be coined

for our special need. Such a mutually interpenetrative consciousness

there was between the father and the old physician. By a common impulse,

both of them rose in a mechanical way and went to the western window,

where each started, as he saw the other's look directed towards the white

stone which stood in the midst of the small plot of green turf.

The Doctor had, for a moment, forgotten himself but he looked up at the

clouds, which were angry, and said, as if speaking of the weather, "It is

dark now, but we hope it will clear up by and by. There are a great many

more clouds than rains, and more rains than strokes of lightning, and

more strokes of lightning than there are people killed. We must let this

girl of ours have her way, as far as it is safe. Send away this woman

she hates, quietly. Get her a foreigner for a governess, if you

can,--one that can dance and sing and will teach her. In the house old

Sophy will watch her best. Out of it you must trust her, I am

afraid,--for she will not be followed round, and she is in less danger

than you think. If she wanders at night, find her, if you can; the woods

are not absolutely safe. If she will be friendly with any young people,

have them to see her,--young men especially. She will not love any one

easily, perhaps not at all; yet love would be more like to bring her

right than anything else. If any young person seems in danger of falling

in love with her, send him to me for counsel."

Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind hewn, with a moist eye, and in

tones which tried to be cheerful and were full of sympathy. This advice

was the key to the more than indulgent treatment which, as we have seen,

the girl had received from her father and all about her. The old Doctor

often came in, in the kindest, most natural sort of way, got into

pleasant relations with Elsie by always treating her in the same easy

manner as at the great party, encouraging all her harmless fancies, and

rarely reminding her that he was a professional adviser, except when she

came out of her own accord, as in the talk they had at the party, telling

him of some wild trick she had been playing.

"Let her go to the girls' school, by all means," said the Doctor, when

she had begun to talk about it. "Possibly she may take to some of the

girls or of the teachers. Anything to interest her. Friendship, love,

religion, whatever will set her nature at work. We must have headway on,

or there will be no piloting her. Action first of all, and then we will

see what to do with it."

So, when Cousin Richard came along, the Doctor, though he did not like

his looks any too well, told her father to encourage his staying for a

time. If she liked him, it was good; if she only tolerated him, it was

better than nothing.

"You know something about that nephew of yours, during these last years,

I suppose?" the Doctor said. "Looks as if he had seen life. Has a scar

that was made by a sword-cut, and a white spot on the side of his neck

that looks like a bullet-mark. I think he has been what folks call a

'hard customer.'"

Dudley Venner owned that he had heard little or nothing of him of late

years. He had invited himself, and of course it would not be decent not

to receive him as a relative. He thought Elsie rather liked having him

about the house for a while. She was very capricious,--acted as if she

fancied him one day and disliked him the next. He did not know,--but

sometimes thought that this nephew of his might take a serious liking to

Elsie. What should he do about it, if it turned out so?

The Doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He thought there was no fear.

Elsie was naturally what they call a man-hater, and there was very little

danger of any sudden passion springing up between two such young persons.

Let him stay awhile; it gives her something to think about. So he stayed

awhile, as we have seen.

The more Mr. Richard became acquainted with the family,--that is, with

the two persons of whom it consisted,--the more favorably the idea of a

permanent residence in the mansion-house seemed to impress him. The

estate was large,--hundreds of acres, with woodlands and meadows of great

value. The father and daughter had been living quietly, and there could

not be a doubt that the property which came through the Dudleys must have

largely increased of late years. It was evident enough that they had an

abundant income, from the way in which Elsie's caprices were indulged.

She had horses and carriages to suit herself; she sent to the great city

for everything she wanted in the way of dress. Even her diamonds--and

the young man knew something about these gems--must be of considerable

value; and yet she wore them carelessly, as it pleased her fancy. She

had precious old laces, too, almost worth their weight in diamonds; laces

which had been snatched from altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during

the wars, and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with

for ten minutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich

generations which had gone before. The famous "golden" fire-set was a

purchase of one of the family who had been in France during the

Revolution, and must have come from a princely palace, if not from one of

the royal residences. As for silver, the iron closet which had been made

in the dining-room wall was running over with it: tea-kettles,

coffee-pots, heavy-lidded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that

all the Dudleys had ever used, from the caudle-cup which used to be

handed round the young mother's chamber, and the porringer from which

children scooped their bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots, to

that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far back in the dark, with a

spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick and dying, all along

the last century, and since, had taken the last drops that passed their

lips. Without being much of a scholar, Dick could see well enough, too,

that the books in the library had been ordered from the great London

houses, whose imprint they bore, by persons who knew what was best and

meant to have it. A man does not require much learning to feel pretty

sure, when he takes one of those solid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos,

say a Baskerville Addison, for instance, bound in red morocco, with a

margin of gold as rich as the embroidery of a prince's collar, as Vandyck

drew it,--he need not know much to feel pretty sure that a score or two

of shelves full of such books mean that it took a long purse, as well as

a literary taste, to bring them together.

To all these attractions the mind of this thoughtful young gentleman may

be said to have been fully open. He did not disguise from himself,

however, that there were a number of drawbacks in the way of his becoming

established as the heir of the Dudley mansion-house and fortune. In the

first place, Cousin Elsie was, unquestionably, very piquant, very

handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, which made her worth trying

for. But then there was something about Cousin Elsie,--(the small, white

scars began stinging, as he said this to himself, and he pushed his

sleeve up to look at them)--there was something about Cousin Elsie he

couldn't make out. What was the matter with her eyes, that they sucked

your life out of you in that strange way? What did she always wear a

necklace for? Had she some such love-token on her neck as the old Don's

revolver had left on his? How safe would anybody feel to live with her?

Besides, her father would last forever, if he was left to himself. And

he may take it into his head to marry again. That would be pleasant!

So talked Cousin Richard to himself, in the calm of the night and in the

tranquillity of his own soul. There was much to be said on both sides.

It was a balance to be struck after the two columns were added up. He

struck the balance, and came to the conclusion that he would fall in love

with Elsie Venner.

The intelligent reader will not confound this matured and serious

intention of falling in love with the young lady with that mere impulse

of the moment before mentioned as an instance of making love. On the

contrary, the moment Mr. Richard had made up his mind that he should fall

in love with Elsie, he began to be more reserved with her, and to try to

make friends in other quarters. Sensible men, you know, care very little

what a girl's present fancy is. The question is: Who manages her, and

how can you get at that person or those persons? Her foolish little

sentiments are all very well in their way; but business is business, and

we can't stop for such trifles. The old political wire-pullers never go

near the man they want to gain, if they can help it; they find out who

his intimates and managers are, and work through them. Always handle any

positively electrical body, whether it is charged with passion or power,

with some non-conductor between you and it, not with your naked hands.

--The above were some of the young gentleman's working axioms; and he

proceeded to act in accordance with them.

He began by paying his court more assiduously to his uncle. It was not

very hard to ingratiate himself in that quarter; for his manners were

insinuating, and his precocious experience of life made him entertaining.

The old neglected billiard--room was soon put in order, and Dick, who was

a magnificent player, had a series of games with his uncle, in which,

singularly enough, he was beaten, though his antagonist had been out of

play for years. He evinced a profound interest in the family history,

insisted on having the details of its early alliances, and professed a

great pride in it, which he had inherited from his father, who, though he

had allied himself with the daughter of an alien race, had yet chosen one

with the real azure blood in her veins, as proud as if she had Castile

and Aragon for her dower and the Cid for her grand-papa. He also asked a

great deal of advice, such as inexperienced young persons are in need of,

and listened to it with due reverence.

It is not very strange that uncle Dudley took a kinder view of his nephew

than the Judge, who thought he could read a questionable history in his

face,--or the old Doctor, who knew men's temperaments and organizations

pretty well, and had his prejudices about races, and could tell an old

sword-cut and a ballet-mark in two seconds from a scar got by falling

against the fender, or a mark left by king's evil. He could not be

expected to share our own prejudices; for he had heard nothing of the

wild youth's adventures, or his scamper over the Pampas at short notice.

So, then, "Richard Venner, Esquire, guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at

his elegant mansion," prolonged his visit until his presence became

something like a matter of habit, and the neighbors began to think that

the fine old house would be illuminated before long for a grand marriage.

He had done pretty well with the father: the next thing was to gain over

the nurse. Old Sophy was as cunning as a red fox or a gray woodchuck.

She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie; she had nothing to

care for but this girl and her father. She had never liked Dick too

well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her when he was a boy,

and now he was a man there was something about him--she could not tell

what--that made her suspicious of him. It was no small matter to get her

over to his side.

The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the foil

of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads,

such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from

the gold region of Chili,--so he said,--for the express purpose of giving

them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a perfect passion for

gay-colored clothing; being condemned by Nature, as it were, to a

perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven it with all sorts of

variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, aflame with red and yellow. The

considerate young man had remembered this, too, and brought home for

Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow hues, which had been strangely

overlooked till now, at the bottom of one of his trunks. Old Sophy took

his gifts, but kept her black eyes open and watched every movement of the

young people all the more closely. It was through her that the father had

always known most of the actions and tendencies of his daughter.

In the mean time the strange adventure on The Mountain had brought the

young master into new relations with Elsie. She had led him out of,

danger; perhaps saved him from death by the strange power she exerted.

He was grateful, and yet shuddered at the recollection of the whole

scene. In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold glittering

eyes, whether they were in the head of a woman or of a reptile he could

not always tell, the images had so run together. But he could not help

seeing that the eyes of the young girl had been often, very often, turned

upon him when he had been looking away, and fell as his own glance met

them. Helen Darley told him very plainly that this girl was thinking

about him more than about her book. Dick Venner found she was getting

more constant in her attendance at school. He learned, on inquiry, that

there was a new master, a handsome young man. The handsome young man

would not have liked the look that, came over Dick's face when he heard

this fact mentioned.

In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and there would be

no chance of disentangling the threads in this chapter.

CHAPTER XV.

PHYSIOLOGICAL.

If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young pupil for saving

him from an imminent peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity to

know why he should have needed such aid. He, an active, muscular,

courageous, adventurous young fellow, with--a stick in his hand, ready to

hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his way, to stand

still, staring into those two eyes, until they came up close to him, and

the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him stiff where he

stood,--what was the meaning of it? Again, what was the influence this

girl had seemingly exerted, under which the venomous creature had

collapsed in such a sudden way? Whether he had been awake or dreaming he

did not feel quite sure. He knew he had gone up The Mountain, at any

rate; he knew he had come down The Mountain with the girl walking just

before him;--there was no forgetting her figure, as she walked on in

silence, her braided locks falling a little, for want of the lost

hairpin, perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of--Shame on such

fancies!--to wrong that supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush

of shining black hair, which, shaken loose, would cloud her all round,

like Godiva, from brow to instep! He was sure he had sat down before the

fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led softly away from the place,

and that it was Elsie who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show

that so far it was not a dream. But between these recollections came a

strange confusion; and the more the master thought, the more he was

perplexed to know whether she had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on the

stone, from some frightful dream, such as may come in a very brief

slumber, or whether she had bewitched him into a trance with those

strange eyes of hers, or whether it was all true, and he must solve its

problem as he best might.

There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.

As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr.

Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had

heard of as a cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the

person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of Mr.

Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so

profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he

had an enemy in this handsome youth,--an enemy, too, who was like to be

subtle and dangerous.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no

enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or

later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a

scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole

armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him.

Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in

feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his

investigations. Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed

suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of fellow,

and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious,

romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and

psychological inquiries he was about instituting.

The afternoon on The Mountain was still upper-most in his mind. Of

course he knew the common stories--about fascination. He had once been

himself an eyewitness of the charming of a small bird by one of our

common harmless serpents. Whether a human being could be reached by this

subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the mysterious

relation generally felt to exist between man and this creature, "cursed

above all cattle and above every beast of the field,"--a relation which

some interpret as the fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so

instinctive that this animal has been for that reason adopted as the

natural symbol of evil. There was another solution, however, supplied

him by his professional reading. The curious work of Mr. Braid of

Manchester had made him familiar with the phenomena of a state allied to

that produced by animal magnetism, and called by that writer by the name

of hypnotism. He found, by referring to his note-book, the statement

was, that, by fixing the eyes on a bright object so placed as to produce

a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to maintain a steady fixed stare,

there comes on in a few seconds a very singular condition, characterized

by muscular rigidity and inability to move, with a strange exaltation of

most of the senses, and generally a closure of the eyelids,--this

condition being followed by torpor.

Now this statement of Mr. Braid's, well known to the scientific world,

and the truth of which had been confirmed by Mr. Bernard in certain

experiments he had instituted, as it has been by many other

experimenters, went far to explain the strange impressions, of which,

waking or dreaming, he had certainly been the subject. His nervous

system had been in a high state of exaltation at the time. He remembered

how the little noises that made rings of sound in the silence of the

woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters, had reached his inner

consciousness. He remembered that singular sensation in the roots of the

hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him of

a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and peculiar

interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted sensibility and

irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of the internal ear

at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little snap in the middle of

the head, which proved to him that he was getting very nervous.

The next thing was to find out whether it were possible that the venomous

creature's eyes should have served the purpose of Mr. Braid's "bright

object" held very close to the person experimented on, or whether they

had any special power which could be made the subject of exact

observation.

For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it necessary to get a live

crotalus or two into his possession, if this were possible. On inquiry,

he found that there was a certain family living far up the mountainside,

not a mile from the ledge, the members of which were said to have taken

these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any danger, or at least in

any fear, of being injured by them. He applied to these people, and

offered a reward sufficient to set them at work to capture some of these

animals, if such a thing were possible.

A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking woman presented herself at

his door. She held up her apron as if it contained something precious in

the bag she made with it.

"Y' wanted some rattlers," said the woman. "Here they be."

She opened her apron and showed a coil of rattlesnakes lying very

peaceably in its fold. They lifted their heads up, as if they wanted to

see what was going on, but showed no sign of anger.

"Are you crazy?" said Mr. Bernard. "You're dead in an hour, if one of

those creatures strikes you!"

He drew back a little, as he spoke; it might be simple disgust; it might

be fear; it might be what we call antipathy, which is different from

either, and which will sometimes show itself in paleness, and even

faintness, produced by objects perfectly harmless and not in themselves

offensive to any sense.

"Lord bless you," said the woman, "rattlers never touches our folks. I'd

jest 'z lieves handle them creaturs as so many striped snakes."

So saying, she put their heads down with her hand, and packed them

together in her apron as if they had been bits of cart-rope.

Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or, at least, the belief in the

possession of a power by certain persons, which enables them to handle

these frightful reptiles with perfect impunity. The fact, however, is

well known to others, and more especially to a very distinguished

Professor in one of the leading institutions of the great city of the

land, whose experiences in the neighborhood of Graylock, as he will

doubtless inform the curious, were very much like those of the young

master.

Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his formidable captives, and

studied their habits and expression with a strange sort of interest. What

did the Creator mean to signify, when he made such shapes of horror, and,

as if he had doubly cursed this envenomed wretch, had set a mark upon him

and sent him forth the Cain of the brotherhood of serpents? It was a

very curious fact that the first train of thoughts Mr. Bernard's small

menagerie suggested to him was the grave, though somewhat worn, subject

of the origin of evil. There is now to be seen in a tall glass jar, in

the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Cantabridge in the territory of the

Massachusetts, a huge crotalus, of a species which grows to more

frightful dimensions than our own, under the hotter skies of South

America. Look at it, ye who would know what is the tolerance, the

freedom from prejudice, which can suffer such an incarnation of all that

is devilish to lie unharmed in the cradle of Nature! Learn, too, that

there are many things in this world which we are warned to shun, and are

even suffered to slay, if need be, but which we must not hate, unless we

would hate what God loves and cares for.

Whatever fascination the creature might exercise in his native haunts,

Mr. Bernard found himself not in the least nervous or affected in any way

while looking at his caged reptiles. When their cage was shaken, they

would lift their heads and spring their rattles; but the sound was by no

means so formidable to listen to as when it reverberated among the chasms

of the echoing rocks. The expression of the creatures was watchful,

still, grave, passionless, fate-like, suggesting a cold malignity which

seemed to be waiting for its opportunity. Their awful, deep-cut mouths

were sternly closed over the long hollow fangs which rested their roots

against the swollen poison-gland, where the venom had been hoarding up

ever since the last stroke had emptied it. They never winked, for

ophidians have no movable eyelids, but kept up that awful fixed stare

which made the two unwinking gladiators the survivors of twenty pairs

matched by one of the Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in his "Natural

History." Their eyes did not flash, but shone with a cold still light.

They were of a pale-golden or straw color, horrible to look into, with

their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, hardly enlivened by

the almost imperceptible vertical slit of the pupil, through which Death

seemed to be looking out like the archer behind the long narrow loop-hole

in a blank turret-wall. On the whole, the caged reptiles, horrid as they

were, hardly matched his recollections of what he had seen or dreamed he

save at the cavern. These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet. A

treacherous stillness, however,--as the unfortunate New York physician

found, when he put his foot out to wake up the torpid creature, and

instantly the fang flashed through his boot, carrying the poison into his

blood, and death with it.

Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and watched all their habits

with a natural curiosity. In any collection of animals the venomous

beasts are looked at with the greatest interest, just as the greatest

villains are most run after by the unknown public. Nobody troubles

himself for a common striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra or a

wife-killer is a centre of attraction to all eyes. These captives did

very little to earn their living, but, on the other hand, their living

was not expensive, their diet being nothing but air, au naturel. Months

and months these creatures will live and seem to thrive well enough, as

any showman who has then in his menagerie will testify, though they never

touch anything to eat or drink.

In the mean time Mr. Bernard had become very curious about a class of

subjects not treated of in any detail in those text-books accessible in

most country-towns, to the exclusion of the more special treatises, and

especially of the rare and ancient works found on the shelves of the

larger city-libraries. He was on a visit to old Dr. Kittredge one day,

having been asked by him to call in for a few moments as soon as

convenient. The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked him if he had

an extensive collection of medical works.

"Why, no," said the old Doctor, "I haven't got a great many printed

books; and what I have I don't read quite as often as I might, I'm

afraid. I read and studied in the time of it, when I was in the midst of

the young men who were all at work with their books; but it's a mighty

hard matter, when you go off alone into the country, to keep up with all

that's going on in the Societies and the Colleges. I'll tell you, though,

Mr. Langdon, when a man that's once started right lives among sick folks

for five-and-thirty years, as I've done, if he has n't got a library of

five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head at the end of that time,

he'd better stop driving round and sell his horse and sulky. I know the

bigger part of the families within a dozen miles' ride. I know the

families that have a way of living through everything, and I know the

other set that have the trick of dying without any kind of reason for it.

I know the years when the fevers and dysenteries are in earnest, and when

they're only making believe. I know the folks that think they're dying

as soon as they're sick, and the folks that never find out they 're sick

till they're dead. I don't want to undervalue your science, Mr. Langdon.

There are things I never learned, because they came in after my day, and

I am very glad to send my patients to those that do know them, when I am

at fault; but I know these people about here, fathers and mothers, and

children and grandchildren, so as all the science in the world can't know

them, without it takes time about it, and sees them grow up and grow old,

and how the wear and tear of life comes to them. You can't tell a horse

by driving him once, Mr. Langdon, nor a patient by talking half an hour

with him."

"Do you know much about the Veneer family?" said Mr. Bernard, in a

natural way enough, the Doctor's talk having suggested the question.

The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed movement, so as to command

the young man through his spectacles.

"I know all the families of this place and its neighborhood," he

answered.

"We have the young lady studying with us at the Institute," said Mr.

Bernard.

"I know it," the Doctor answered. "Is she a good scholar?"

All this time the Doctor's eyes were fixed steadily on Mr. Bernard,

looking through the glasses.

"She is a good scholar enough, but I don't know what to make of her.

Sometimes I think she is a little out of her head. Her father, I

believe, is sensible enough;--what sort of a woman was her mother,

Doctor?--I suppose, of course, you remember all about her?"

"Yes, I knew her mother. She was a very lovely young woman."--The Doctor

put his hand to his forehead and drew a long breath.--"What is there you

notice out of the way about Elsie Venner?"

"A good many things," the master answered. "She shuns all the other

girls. She is getting a strange influence over my fellow-teacher, a

young lady,--you know Miss Helen Darley, perhaps? I am afraid this girl

will kill her. I never saw or heard of anything like it, in prose at

least;--do you remember much of Coleridge's Poems, Doctor?"

The good old Doctor had to plead a negative.

"Well, no matter. Elsie would have been burned for a witch in old times.

I have seen the girl look at Miss Darley when she had not the least idea

of it, and all at once I would see her grow pale and moist, and sigh, and

move round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps get up and go to

her, or else have slight spasmodic movements that looked like

hysterics;--do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor?"

"Mr. Langdon," the Doctor said, solemnly, "there are strange things about

Elsie Veneer,--very strange things. This was what I wanted to speak to

you about. Let me advise you all to be very patient with the girl, but

also very careful. Her love is not to be desired, and "--he spoke in a

lower tone--"her hate is to be dreaded. Do you think she has any special

fancy for anybody else in the school besides Miss Darley?"

Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor's spectacled eyes without

betraying a little of the feeling natural to a young man to whom a home

question involving a possible sentiment is put suddenly.

"I have suspected," he said,--"I have had a kind of feeling--that

she--Well, come, Doctor,--I don't know that there 's any use in

disguising the matter,--I have thought Elsie Veneer had rather a fancy

for somebody else,--I mean myself."

There was something so becoming in the blush with which the young man

made this confession, and so manly, too, in the tone with which he spoke,

so remote from any shallow vanity, such as young men who are incapable of

love are apt to feel, when some loose tendril of a woman's fancy which a

chance wind has blown against them twines about them for the want of

anything better, that the old Doctor looked at him admiringly, and could

not help thinking that it was no wonder any young girl should be pleased

with him.

"You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon?" said the Doctor.

"I thought so till very lately," he replied. "I am not easily

frightened, but I don't know but I might be bewitched or magnetized, or

whatever it is when one is tied up and cannot move. I think I can find

nerve enough, however, if there is any special use you want to put it

to."

"Let me ask you one more question, Mr. Langdon. Do you find yourself

disposed to take a special interest in Elsie,--to fall in love with her,

in a word? Pardon me, for I do not ask from curiosity, but a much more

serious motive."

"Elsie interests me," said the young man, "interests me strangely. She

has a wild flavor in her character which is wholly different from that of

any human creature I ever saw. She has marks of genius, poetic or

dramatic,--I hardly know which. She read a passage from Keats's 'Lamia'

the other day, in the schoolroom, in such a way that I declare to you I

thought some of the girls would faint or go into fits. Miss Darley got

up and left the room, trembling all over. Then, I pity her, she is so

lonely. The girls are afraid of her, and she seems to have either a

dislike or a fear of them. They have all sorts of painful stories about

her. They give her a name which no human creature ought to bear. They

say she hides a mark on her neck by always wearing a necklace. She is

very graceful, you know, and they will have it that she can twist herself

into all sorts of shapes, or tie herself in a knot, if she wants to.

There is not one of them that will look her in the eyes. I pity the poor

girl; but, Doctor, I do not love her. I would risk my life for her, if

it would do her any good, but it would be in cold blood. If her hand

touches mine, it is not a thrill of passion I feel running through me,

but a very different emotion. Oh, Doctor! there must be something in

that creature's blood which has killed the humanity in her. God only

knows the cause that has blighted such a soul in so beautiful a body! No,

Doctor, I do not love the girl."

"Mr. Langdon," said the Doctor, "you are young, and I am old. Let me

talk to you with an old man's privilege, as an adviser. You have come to

this country-town without suspicion, and you are moving in the midst of

perils. There are things which I must not tell you now; but I may warn

you. Keep your eyes open and your heart shut. If, through pitying that

girl, you ever come to love her, you are lost. If you deal carelessly

with her, beware! This is not all. There are other eyes on you beside

Elsie Venner's. Do you go armed?"

"I do!" said Mr. Bernard,--and he "put his hands up" in the shape of

fists, in such a way as to show that he was master of the natural weapons

at any rate.

The Doctor could not help smiling. But his face fell in an instant.

"You may want something more than those tools to work with. Come with me

into my sanctum."

The Doctor led Mr. Bernard into a small room opening out of the study.

It was a place such as anybody but a medical man would shiver to enter.

There was the usual tall box with its bleached, rattling tenant; there

were jars in rows where "interesting cases" outlived the grief of widows

and heirs in alcoholic immortality,--for your "preparation-jar" is the

true "monumentum aere perennius;" there were various semi-possibilities

of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining

instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one

shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit,

a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flatheaded, variegated with dull bands,

one of which partially encircled the neck like a collar,--an awful wretch

to look upon, with murder written all over him in horrid hieroglyphics.

Mr. Bernard's look was riveted on this creature,--not fascinated

certainly, for its eyes looked like white beads, being clouded by the

action of the spirits in which it had been long kept,--but fixed by some

indefinite sense of the renewal of a previous impression;--everybody

knows the feeling, with its suggestion of some past state of existence.

There was a scrap of paper on the jar, with something written on it. He

was reaching up to read it when the Doctor touched him lightly.

"Look here, Mr. Langdon!" he said, with a certain vivacity of manner, as

if wishing to call away his attention,--"this is my armory."

The Doctor threw open the door of a small cabinet, where were disposed in

artistic patterns various weapons of offence and defence,--for he was a

virtuoso in his way, and by the side of the implements of the art of

healing had pleased himself with displaying a collection of those other

instruments, the use of which renders the first necessary.

"See which of these weapons you would like best to carry about you," said

the Doctor.

Mr. Bernard laughed, and looked at the Doctor as if he half doubted

whether he was in earnest.

"This looks dangerous enough," he said,--"for the man who carries it, at

least."

He took down one of the prohibited Spanish daggers or knives which a

traveller may, occasionally get hold of and smuggle out of the country.

The blade was broad, trowel-like, but the point drawn out several inches,

so as to look like a skewer.

"This must be a jealous bull-fighter's weapon," he said, and put it back

in its place.

Then he took down an ancient-looking broad-bladed dagger, with a complex

aspect about it, as if it had some kind of mechanism connected with it.

"Take care!" said the Doctor; "there is a trick to that dagger."

He took it and touched a spring. The dagger split suddenly into three

blades, as when one separates the forefinger and the ring-finger from the

middle one. The outside blades were sharp on their outer edge. The stab

was to be made with the dagger shut, then the spring touched and the

split blades withdrawn.

Mr. Bernard replaced it, saying, that it would have served for sidearm to

old Suwarrow, who told his men to work their bayonets back and forward

when they pinned a Turk, but to wriggle them about in the wound when they

stabbed a Frenchman.

"Here," said the Doctor, "this is the thing you want."

He took down a much more modern and familiar implement,--a small,

beautifully finished revolver.

"I want you to carry this," he said; "and more than that, I want you to

practise with it often, as for amusement, but so that it maybe seen and

understood that you are apt to have a pistol about you. Pistol-shooting

is pleasant sport enough, and there is no reason why you should not

practise it like other young fellows. And now," the Doctor said, "I have

one other, weapon to give you."

He took a small piece of parchment and shook a white powder into it from

one of his medicine-jars. The jar was marked with the name of a mineral

salt, of a nature to have been serviceable in case of sudden illness in

the time of the Borgias. The Doctor folded the parchment carefully, and

marked the Latin name of the powder upon it.

"Here," he said, handing it to Mr. Bernard, "you see what it is, and you

know what service it can render. Keep these two protectors about your

person day and night; they will not harm you, and you may want one or the

other or both before you think of it."

Mr. Bernard thought it was very odd, and not very old-gentlemanlike, to

be fitting him out for treason, stratagem, and spoils, in this way.

There was no harm, however, in carrying a doctor's powder in his pocket,

or in amusing himself with shooting at a mark, as he had often done

before. If the old gentleman had these fancies, it was as well to humor

him.

So he thanked old Doctor Kittredge, and shook his hand warmly as he left

him.

"The fellow's hand did not tremble, nor his color change," the Doctor

said, as he watched him walking away. "He is one of the right sort."

CHAPTER XVI

EPISTOLARY.

Mr. Langdon to the Professor.

MY DEAR PROFESSOR, You were kind enough to promise me that you would

assist me in any professional or scientific investigations in which I

might become engaged. I have of late become deeply interested in a class

of subjects which present peculiar difficulty, and I must exercise the

privilege of questioning you on some points upon which I desire

information I cannot otherwise obtain. I would not trouble you, if I

could find any person or books competent to enlighten me on some of these

singular matters which have so excited me. The leading doctor here is a

shrewd, sensible man, but not versed in the curiosities of medical

literature.

I proceed, with your leave, to ask a considerable number of

questions,--hoping to get answers to some of them, at least.

Is there any evidence that human beings can be infected or wrought upon

by poisons, or otherwise, so that they shall manifest any of the

peculiarities belonging to beings of a lower nature? Can such

peculiarities--be transmitted by inheritance? Is there anything to

countenance the stories, long and widely current, about the "evil eye"?

or is it a mere fancy that such a power belongs to any human being? Have

you any personal experience as to the power of fascination said to be

exercised by certain animals? What can you make of those circumstantial

statements we have seen in the papers, of children forming mysterious

friendships with ophidians of different species, sharing their food with

them, and seeming to be under some subtile influence exercised by those

creatures? Have you read, critically, Coleridge's poem of "Christabel,"

and Keats's "Lamia"?--If so, can you understand them, or find any

physiological foundation for the story of either?

There is another set of questions of a different nature I should like to

ask, but it is hardly fair to put so many on a single sheet. There is

one, however, you must answer. Do you think there may be

predispositions, inherited or ingrafted, but at any rate constitutional,

which shall take out certain apparently voluntary determinations from the

control of the will, and leave them as free from moral responsibility as

the instincts of the lower animals? Do you not think there may be a

crime which is not a sin?

Pardon me, my dear Sir, for troubling you with such a list of notes of

interrogation. There are some very strange things going on here in this

place, country-town as it is. Country-life is apt to be dull; but when

it once gets going, it beats the city hollow, because it gives its whole

mind to what it is about. These rural sinners make terrible work with

the middle of the Decalogue, when they get started. However, I hope I

shall live through my year's school-keeping without catastrophes, though

there are queer doings about me which puzzle me and might scare some

people. If anything should happen, you will be one of the first to hear

of it, no doubt. But I trust not to help out the editors of the

"Rockland Weekly Universe" with an obituary of the late lamented, who

signed himself in life--

Your friend and pupil,

BERNARD C. LANGDON.

The Professor to Mr. Langdon.

MY DEAR MR. LANGDON, I do not wonder that you find no answer from your

country friends to the curious questions you put. They belong to that

middle region between science and poetry which sensible men, as they are

called, are very shy of meddling with. Some people think that truth and

gold are always to be washed for; but the wiser sort are of opinion,

that, unless there are so many grains to the peck of sand or nonsense

respectively, it does not pay to wash for either, so long as one can find

anything else to do. I don't doubt there is some truth in the phenomena

of animal magnetism, for instance; but when you ask me to cradle for it,

I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat so, and the professionals are

such a set of pickpockets, that I can do something better than hunt for

the grains of truth among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I

used to say in my lectures?--or were you asleep just then, or cutting

your initials on the rail? (You see I can ask questions, my young

friend.) Leverage is everything,--was what I used to say;--don't begin to

pry till you have got the long arm on your side.

To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far as possible, I have looked

into the old books,--into Schenckius and Turner and Kenelm. Digby and the

rest, where I have found plenty of curious stories which you must take

for what they are worth.

Your first question I can answer in the affirmative upon pretty good

authority. Mizaldus tells, in his "Memorabilia," the well-known story of

the girl fed on poisons, who was sent by the king of the Indies to

Alexander the Great. "When Aristotle saw her eyes sparkling and snapping

like those of serpents, he said, 'Look out for yourself, Alexander! this

is a dangerous companion for you!'"--and sure enough, the young lady

proved to be a very unsafe person to her friends. Cardanus gets a story

from Avicenna, of a certain man bit by a serpent, who recovered of his

bite, the snake dying therefrom. This man afterwards had a daughter whom

venomous serpents could not harm, though she had a fatal power over them.

I suppose you may remember the statements of old authors about

Zycanthropy, the disease in which men took on the nature and aspect of

wolves. Actius and Paulus, both men of authority, describe it. Altomaris

gives a horrid case; and Fincelius mentions one occurring as late as

1541, the subject of which was captured, still insisting that he was a

wolf, only that the hair of his hide was turned in! Versipelles, it may

be remembered, was the Latin name for these "were-wolves."

As for the cases where rabid persons have barked and bit like dogs, there

are plenty of such on record.

More singular, or at least more rare, is the account given by Andreas

Baccius, of a man who was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak,

and who died on the third day thereafter, looking for all the world like

a fighting-cock, to the great horror of the spectators.

As to impressions transmitted at a very early period of existence, every

one knows the story of King James's fear of a naked sword, and the way it

is accounted for. Sir Kenelm Digby says,--"I remember when he dubbed me

Knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword upon my

shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but turned his face

another way, insomuch, that, in lieu of touching my shoulder, he had

almost thrust the point into my eyes, had not the Duke of Buckingham

guided his hand aright." It is he, too, who tells the story of the

mulberry mark upon the neck of a certain lady of high condition, which

"every year, to mulberry season, did swell, grow big, and itch." And

Gaffarel mentions the case of a girl born with the figure of a fish on

one of her limbs, of which the wonder was, that, when the girl did eat

fish, this mark put her to sensible pain. But there is no end to cases

of this kind, and I could give some of recent date, if necessary, lending

a certain plausibility at least to the doctrine of transmitted

impressions.

I never saw a distinct case of evil eye, though I have seen eyes so bad

that they might produce strange effects on very sensitive natures. But

the belief in it under various names, fascination, jettcztura, etc., is

so permanent and universal, from Egypt to Italy, and from the days of

Solomon to those of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be some

peculiarity, to say the least, on which the opinion is based. There is

very strong evidence that some such power is exercised by certain of the

lower animals. Thus, it is stated on good authority that "almost every

animal becomes panic-struck at the sight of the rattlesnake, and seems at

once deprived of the power of motion, or the exercise of its usual

instinct of self-preservation." Other serpents seem to share this power

of fascination, as the Cobra and the Buccephalus Capensis.

Some think that it is nothing but fright; others attribute it to the

"strange powers that lie

Within the magic circle of the eye,"--

as Churchill said, speaking of Garrick.

You ask me about those mysterious and frightful intimacies between

children and serpents, of which so many instances have been recorded. I

am sure I cannot tell what to make of them. I have seen several such

accounts in recent papers, but here is one published in the seventeenth

century, which is as striking as any of the more modern ones:

"Mr. Herbert Tones of Monmouth, when he was a little Boy, was used to eat

his Milk in a Garden in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but a large

Snake always came, and eat out of the Dish with him, and did so for a

considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head,

it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he

call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned

him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would have dy'd, but did

recover."

There was likewise one "William Writtle, condemned at Maidston Assizes

for a double murder, told a Minister that was with him after he was

condemned, that his mother told him, that when he was a Child, there

crept always to him a Snake, wherever she laid him. Sometimes she would

convey him up Stairs, and leave him never so little, she should be sure

to find a Snake in the Cradle with him, but never perceived it did him

any harm."

One of the most striking alleged facts connected with the mysterious

relation existing between the serpent and-the human species is the

influence which the poison of the Crotulus, taken internally, seemed to

produce over the moral faculties, in the experiments instituted by Dr.

Hering at Surinam. There is something frightful in the disposition of

certain ophidians, as the whipsnake, which darts at the eyes of cattle

without any apparent provocation or other motive. It is natural enough

that the evil principle should have been represented in the form of a

serpent, but it is strange to think of introducing it into a human being

like cow-pox by vaccination.

You know all about the Psylli, or ancient serpent tamers, I suppose.

Savary gives an account of the modern serpent-tamers in his "Letters on

Egypt." These modern jugglers are in the habit of making the venomous

Naja counterfeit death, lying out straight and stiff, changing it into a

rod, as the ancient magicians did with their serpents, (probably the same

animal,) in the time of Moses.

I am afraid I cannot throw much light on "Christabel" or "Lamia" by any

criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply a

malignant witch-woman with the evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian

relationship. Lamia is a serpent transformed by magic into a woman. The

idea of both is mythological, and not in any sense physiological. Some

women unquestionably suggest the image of serpents; men rarely or never.

I have been struck, like many others, with the ophidian head and eye of

the famous Rachel.

Your question about inherited predispositions, as limiting the sphere of

the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide

range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own

opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being

the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded against

all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It

is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow! It is so much simpler to

consign a soul to perdition, or say masses, for money, to save it, than

to take the blame on ourselves for letting it grow up in neglect and run

to ruin for want of humanizing influences! They hung poor, crazy

Bellingham for shooting Mr. Perceval. The ordinary of Newgate preached

to women who were to swing at Tyburn for a petty theft as if they were

worse than other people,--just as though he would not have been a

pickpocket or shoplifter, himself, if he had been born in a den of

thieves and bred up to steal or starve! The English law never began to

get hold of the idea that a crime was not necessarily a sin, till

Hadfield, who thought he was the Saviour of mankind, was tried for

shooting at George the Third;--lucky for him that he did not hit his

Majesty!

It is very singular that we recognize all the bodily defects that unfit a

man for military service, and all the intellectual ones that limit his

range of thought, but always talk at him as if all his moral powers were

perfect. I suppose we must punish evil-doers as we extirpate vermin; but

I don't know that we have any more right to judge them than we have to

judge rats and mice, which are just as good as cats and weasels, though

we think it necessary to treat them as criminals.

The limitations of human responsibility have never been properly studied,

unless it be by the phrenologists. You know from my lectures that I

consider phrenology, as taught, a pseudo-science, and not a branch of

positive knowledge; but, for all that, we owe it an immense debt. It has

melted the world's conscience in its crucible, and cast it in a new

mould, with features less like those of Moloch and more like those of

humanity. If it has failed to demonstrate its system of special

correspondences, it has proved that there are fixed relations between

organization and mind and character. It has brought out that great

doctrine of moral insanity, which has done more to make men charitable

and soften legal and theological barbarism than any one doctrine that I

can think of since the message of peace and good-will to men.

Automatic action in the moral world; the reflex movement which seems to

be self-determination, and has been hanged and howled at as such

(metaphorically) for nobody knows how many centuries: until somebody

shall study this as Marshall Hall has studied reflex nervous action in

the bodily system, I would not give much for men's judgments of each

others' characters. Shut up the robber and the defaulter, we must. But

what if your oldest boy had been stolen from his cradle and bred in a

North-Street cellar? What if you are drinking a little too much wine and

smoking a little too much tobacco, and your son takes after you, and so

your poor grandson's brain being a little injured in physical texture, he

loses the fine moral sense on which you pride yourself, and doesn't see

the difference between signing another man's name to a draft and his own?

I suppose the study of automatic action in the moral world (you see what

I mean through the apparent contradiction of terms) may be a dangerous

one in the view of many people. It is liable to abuse, no doubt. People

are always glad to, get hold of anything which limits their

responsibility. But remember that our moral estimates come down to us

from ancestors who hanged children for stealing forty shillings' worth,

and sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being born,--who

punished the unfortunate families of suicides, and in their eagerness for

justice executed one innocent person every three years, on the average,

as Sir James Mackintosh tells us.

I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to

you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a

good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are

in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds,

is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the

greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far

as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,--for one angry man is

as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely,

and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,--and

when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that

they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably,

remembering that nine tenths of their' perversity comes from outside

influences, drunken ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from

which you have happily been preserved, and for some of which you, as a

member of society, may be fractionally responsible. I think also that

there are special influences which work in the brood lake ferments, and I

have a suspicion that some of those curious old stories I cited may have

more recent parallels. Have you ever met with any cases which admitted

of a solution like that which I have mentioned?

Yours very truly,

_____________ _____________

Bernard Langdon to Philip Staples.

MY DEAR PHILIP,--

I have been for some months established in this place, turning the main

crank of the machinery for the manufactory of accomplishments

superintended by, or rather worked to the profit of, a certain Mr. Silas

Peckham. He is a poor wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his

body, lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick-jointed and

thin-muscled,--you know those unwholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed creatures,

that look not fit to be round among live folks, and yet not quite dead

enough to bury. If you ever hear of my being in court to answer to a

charge of assault and battery, you may guess that I have been giving him

a thrashing to settle off old scores; for he is a tyrant, and has come

pretty near killing his principal lady-assistant with overworking her and

keeping her out of all decent privileges.

Helen Darley is this lady's name,--twenty two or three years old, I

should think,--a very sweet, pale woman,--daughter of the usual

country-clergyman,--thrown on her own resources from an early age, and

the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person,--very. All conscience

and sensibility, I should say,--a cruel worker,--no kind of regard for

herself, seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her

and you find she has the spring in her of a steel cross-bow. I am glad I

happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I have

saved that girl's life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her out of

the fire or water.

Of course I'm in love with her, you say,--we always love those whom we

have benefited; "saved her life,--her love was the reward of his

devotion," etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In love, Philip? Well,

about that,--I love Helen Darley--very much: there is hardly anybody I

love so well. What a noble creature she is! One of those that just go

right on, do their own work and everybody else's, killing themselves inch

by inch without ever thinking about it,--singing and dancing at their

toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but pressing

steadily on, tottering by and by, and catching at the rail by the

way-side to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last

falling, face down, arms stretched forward.

Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort of man that locks his door

sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes,--that can sob like a woman

and not be ashamed of it? I come of fighting-blood on one side, you

know; I think I could be savage on occasion. But I am tender,--more and

more tender as I come into my fulness of manhood. I don't like to strike

a man, (laugh, if you like,--I know I hit hard when I do strike,)--but

what I can't stand is the sight of these poor, patient, toiling women,

who never find out in this life how good they are, and never know what it

is to be told they are angels while they still wear the pleasing

incumbrances of humanity. I don't know what to make of these cases. To

think that a woman is never to be a woman again, whatever she may come to

as an unsexed angel,--and that she should die unloved! Why does not

somebody come and carry off this noble woman, waiting here all ready to

make a man happy? Philip, do you know the pathos there is in the eyes of

unsought women, oppressed with the burden of an inner life unshared? I

can see into them now as I could not in those 'earlier days. I sometimes

think their pupils dilate on purpose to let my consciousness glide

through them; indeed, I dread them, I come so close to the nerve of the

soul itself in these momentary intimacies. You used to tell me I was a

Turk,--that my heart was full of pigeon-holes, with accommodations inside

for a whole flock of doves. I don't know but I am still as Youngish as

ever in my ways,--Brigham-Youngish, I mean; at any rate, T. always want

to give a little love to all the poor things that cannot have a whole man

to themselves. If they would only be contented with a little!

Here now are two girls in this school where I am teaching. One of them,

Rosa M., is not more than sixteen years old, I think they say; but Nature

has forced her into a tropical luxuriance of beauty, as if it were July

with her, instead of May. I suppose it is all natural enough that this

girl should like a young man's attention, even if he were a grave

schoolmaster; but the eloquence of this young thing's look is

unmistakable,--and yet she does not know the language it is

talking,--they none of them do; and there is where a good many poor

creatures of our good-for-nothing sex are mistaken. There is no danger

of my being rash, but I think this girl will cost somebody his life yet.

She is one of those women men make a quarrel about and fight to the death

for,--the old feral instinct, you know.

Pray, don't think I am lost in conceit, but there is another girl here

who I begin to think looks with a certain kindness on me. Her name is

Elsie V., and she is the only daughter and heiress of an old family in

this place. She is a portentous and almost fearful creature. If I

should tell you all I know and half of what I fancy about her, you would

tell me to get my life insured at once. Yet she is the most painfully

interesting being,--so handsome! so lonely!--for she has no friends

among the girls, and sits apart from them,--with black hair like the

flow of a mountain-brook after a thaw, with a low-browed, scowling beauty

of face, and such eyes as were never seen before, I really believe, in

any human creature.

Philip, I don't know what to say about this Elsie. There is something

about her I have not fathomed. I have conjectures which I could not

utter to any living soul. I dare not even hint the possibilities which

have suggested themselves to me. This I will say, that I do take the

most intense interest in this young person, an interest much more like

pity than love in its common sense. If what I guess at is true, of all

the tragedies of existence I ever knew this is the saddest, and yet so

full of meaning! Do not ask me any questions,--I have said more than I

meant to already; but I am involved in strange doubts and

perplexities,--in dangers too, very possibly,--and it is a relief just to

speak ever so guardedly of them to an early and faithful friend.

Yours ever, BERNARD.

P. S. I remember you had a copy of Fortunius Licetus' "De Monstris"

among your old books. Can't you lend it to me for a while? I am

curious, and it will amuse me.

CHAPTER XVII.

OLD SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR.

The two meeting-houses which faced each other like a pair of

fighting-cocks had not flapped their wings or crowed at each other for a

considerable time. The Reverend Mr. Fairweather had been dyspeptic and

low-spirited of late, and was too languid for controversy. The Reverend

Doctor Honeywood had been very busy with his benevolent associations, and

had discoursed chiefly on practical matters, to the neglect of special

doctrinal subjects. His senior deacon ventured to say to him that some

of his people required to be reminded of the great fundamental doctrine

of the worthlessness of all human efforts and motives. Some of them were

altogether too much pleased with the success of the Temperance Society

and the Association for the Relief of the Poor. There was a pestilent

heresy about, concerning the satisfaction to be derived from a good

conscience, as if, anybody ever did anything which was not to be hated,

loathed, despised, and condemned.

The old minister listened gravely, with an inward smile, and told his

deacon that he would attend to his suggestion. After the deacon had

gone, he tumbled over his manuscripts, until at length he came upon his

first-rate old sermon on "Human Nature." He had read a great deal of

hard theology, and had at last reached that curious state which is so

common in good ministers,--that, namely, in which they contrive to switch

off their logical faculties on the narrow sidetrack of their technical

dogmas, while the great freight-train of their substantial human

qualities keeps in the main highway of common-sense, in which kindly

souls are always found by all who approach them by their human side.

The Doctor read his sermon with a pleasant, paternal interest: it was

well argued from his premises. Here and there he dashed his pen through

a harsh expression. Now and then he added an explanation or qualified

abroad statement. But his mind was on the logical side-track, and he

followed the chain of reasoning without fairly perceiving where it would

lead him, if he carried it into real life.

He was just touching up the final proposition, when his granddaughter,

Letty, once before referred to, came into the room with her smiling face

and lively movement. Miss Letty or Letitia Forrester was a city-bred

girl of some fifteen or sixteen years old, who was passing the summer

with her grandfather for the sake of country air and quiet. It was a

sensible arrangement; for, having the promise of figuring as a belle by

and by, and being a little given to dancing, and having a voice which

drew a pretty dense circle around the piano when she sat down to play and

sing, it was hard to keep her from being carried into society before her

time, by the mere force of mutual attraction. Fortunately, she had some

quiet as well as some social tastes, and was willing enough to pass two

or three of the summer months in the country, where she was much better

bestowed than she would have been at one of those watering-places where

so many half-formed girls get prematurely hardened in the vice of

self-consciousness.

Miss Letty was altogether too wholesome, hearty, and high-strung a young

girl to be a model, according to the flat-chested and cachectic pattern

which is the classical type of certain excellent young females, often the

subjects of biographical memoirs. But the old minister was proud of his

granddaughter for all that. She was so full of life, so graceful, so

generous, so vivacious, so ready always to do all she could for him and

for everybody, so perfectly frank in her avowed delight in the pleasures

which this miserable world offered her in the shape of natural beauty, of

poetry, of music, of companionship, of books, of cheerful cooperation in

the tasks of those about her, that the Reverend Doctor could not find it

in his heart to condemn her because she was deficient in those particular

graces and that signal other-worldliness he had sometimes noticed in

feeble young persons suffering from various chronic diseases which

impaired their vivacity and removed them from the range of temptation.

When Letty, therefore, came bounding into the old minister's study, he

glanced up from his manuscript, and, as his eye fell upon her, it flashed

across him that there was nothing so very monstrous and unnatural about

the specimen of congenital perversion he was looking at, with his

features opening into their pleasantest sunshine. Technically, according

to the fifth proposition of the sermon on Human Nature, very bad, no

doubt. Practically, according to the fact before him, a very pretty

piece of the Creator's handiwork, body and soul. Was it not a

conceivable thing that the divine grace might show itself in different

forms in a fresh young girl like Letitia, and in that poor thing he had

visited yesterday, half-grown, half-colored, in bed for the last year

with hip-disease?

Was it to be supposed that this healthy young girl, with life throbbing

all over her, could, without a miracle, be good according to the invalid

pattern and formula?

And yet there were mysteries in human nature which pointed to some

tremendous perversion of its tendencies,--to some profound, radical vice

of moral constitution, native or transmitted, as you will have it, but

positive, at any rate, as the leprosy, breaking out in the blood of

races, guard them ever so carefully. Did he not know the case of a young

lady in Rockland, daughter of one of the first families in the place, a

very beautiful and noble creature to look at, for whose bringing up

nothing had been spared,--a girl who had had governesses to teach her at

the house, who had been indulged almost too kindly,--a girl whose father

had given himself, up to her, he being himself a pure and high-souled

man?--and yet this girl was accused in whispers of having been on the

very verge of committing a fatal crime; she was an object of fear to all

who knew the dark hints which had been let fall about her, and there were

some that believed--Why, what was this but an instance of the total

obliquity and degeneration of the moral principle? and to what could it

be owing, but to an innate organic tendency?

"Busy, grandpapa?" said Letty, and without waiting for an answer kissed

his cheek with a pair of lips made on purpose for that little

function,--fine, but richly turned out, the corners tucked in with a

finish of pretty dimples, the rose-bud lips of girlhood's June.

The old gentleman looked at his granddaughter. Nature swelled up from

his heart in a wave that sent a glow to his cheek and a sparkle to his

eye. But it is very hard to be interrupted just as we are winding up a

string of propositions with the grand conclusion which is the statement

in brief of all that has gone before: our own starting-point, into which

we have been trying to back our reader or listener as one backs a, horse

into the shafts.

"Video meliora, proboque,--I see the better, and approve it; deteriora

sequor, I follow after the worse; 't is that natural dislike to what is

good, pure, holy, and true, that inrooted selfishness, totally insensible

to the claims of"--

Here the worthy man was interrupted by Miss Letty.

"Do come, if you can, grandpapa," said the young girl; "here is a poor

old black woman wants to see you so much!"

The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never groped in the

dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions which have killed out so

much of the world's life and happiness. "With the heart man believeth

unto righteousness;" a man's love is the measure of his fitness for good

or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special

beliefs like so many South-Sea Islanders; but a real human heart, with

Divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all, the patterns of

all earth's thousand tribes!

The Doctor sighed, and folded the sermon, and laid the Quarto Cruden on

it. He rose from his desk, and, looking once more at the young girl's

face, forgot his logical conclusions, and said to himself that she was a

little angel,--which was in violent contradiction to the leading doctrine

of his sermon on Human Nature. And so he followed her out of the study

into the wide entry of the old-fashioned country-house.

An old black woman sat on the plain oaken settle which humble visitors

waiting to see the minister were wont to occupy. She was old, but how

old it would be very hard to guess. She might be seventy. She might be

ninety. One could not swear she was not a hundred. Black women remain

at a stationary age (to the eyes of white people, at least) for thirty

years. They do not appear to change during this period any more than so

many Trenton trilobites. Bent up, wrinkled, yellow-eyed, with long

upper-lip, projecting jaws, retreating chin, still meek features, long

arms, large flat hands with uncolored palms and slightly webbed fingers,

it was impossible not to see in this old creature a hint of the

gradations by which life climbs up through the lower natures to the

highest human developments. We cannot tell such old women's ages because

we do not understand the physiognomy of a race so unlike our own. No

doubt they see a great deal in each other's faces that we

cannot,--changes of color and expression as real as our own, blushes and

sudden betrayals of feeling,--just as these two canaries know what their

single notes and short sentences and full song with this or that

variation mean, though it is a mystery to us unplumed mortals.

This particular old black woman was a striking specimen of her class. Old

as she looked, her eye was bright and knowing. She wore a red-and-yellow

turban, which set off her complexion well, and hoops of gold in her ears,

and beads of gold about her neck, and an old funeral ring upon her

finger. She had that touching stillness about her which belongs to

animals that wait to be spoken to and then look up with a kind of sad

humility.

"Why, Sophy!" said the good minister, "is this you?"

She looked up with the still expression on her face. "It's ol' Sophy,"

she said.

"Why," said the Doctor, "I did not believe you could walk so far as this

to save the Union. Bring Sophy a glass of wine, Letty. Wine's good for

old folks like Sophy and me, after walking a good way, or preaching a

good while."

The young girl stepped into the back-parlor, where she found the great

pewter flagon in which the wine that was left after each

communion-service was brought to the minister's house. With much toil

she managed to tip it so as to get a couple of glasses filled. The

minister tasted his, and made old Sophy finish hers.

"I wan' to see you 'n' talk wi' you all alone," she said presently.

The minister got up and led the way towards his study. "To be sure," he

said; he had only waited for her to rest a moment before he asked her

into the library. The young girl took her gently by the arm, and helped

her feeble steps along the passage. When they reached the study, she

smoothed the cushion of a rocking-chair, and made the old woman sit down

in it. Then she tripped lightly away, and left her alone with the

minister.

Old Sophy was a member of the Reverend Doctor Honeywood's church. She had

been put through the necessary confessions in a tolerably satisfactory

manner. To be sure, as her grandfather had been a cannibal chief,

according to the common story, and, at any rate, a terrible wild savage,

and as her mother retained to the last some of the prejudices of her

early education, there was a heathen flavor in her Christianity which had

often scandalized the elder of the minister's two deacons. But, the good

minister had smoothed matters over: had explained that allowances were to

be made for those who had been long sitting without the gate of

Zion,--that, no doubt, a part of the curse which descended to the

children of Ham consisted in "having the understanding darkened," as well

as the skin,--and so had brought his suspicious senior deacon to tolerate

old Sophy as one of the communion of fellow-sinners.

--Poor things! How little we know the simple notions with which these

rudiments of souls are nourished by the Divine Goodness! Did not Mrs.

Professor come home this very blessed morning with a story of one of her

old black women?

"And how do you feel to-day, Mrs. Robinson?"

"Oh, my dear, I have this singing in my head all the time." (What

doctors call tinnitus aurium.)

"She 's got a cold in the head," said old Mrs. Rider.

"Oh, no, my dear! Whatever I'm thinking about, it's all this singing,

this music. When I'm thinking of the dear Redeemer, it all turns into

this singing and music. When the clark came to see me, I asked him if he

couldn't cure me, and he said, No,--it was the Holy Spirit in me, singing

to me; and all the time I hear this beautiful music, and it's the Holy

Spirit a-singing to me."

The good man waited for Sophy to speak; but she did not open her lips as

yet.

"I hope you are not troubled in mind or body," he said to her at length,

finding she did not speak.

The poor old woman took out a white handkerchief, and lifted it--to her

black face. She could not say a word for her tears and sobs.

The minister would have consoled her; he was used to tears, and could in

most cases withstand their contagion manfully; but something choked his

voice suddenly, and when he called upon it, he got no answer, but a

tremulous movement of the muscles, which was worse than silence.

At last she spoke.

"Oh, no, no, no! It's my poor girl, my darling, my beauty, my baby, that

's grown up to be a woman; she will come to a bad end; she will do

something that will make them kill her or shut her up all her life. Or,

Doctor, Doctor, save her, pray for her! It a'n't her fault. It a'n't

her fault. If they knew all that I know, they would n' blame that poor

child. I must tell you, Doctor: if I should die, perhaps nobody else

would tell you. Massa Veneer can't talk about it. Doctor Kittredge

won't talk about it. Nobody but old Sophy to tell you, Doctor; and old

Sophy can't die without telling you."

The kind minister soothed the poor old soul with those gentle, quieting

tones which had carried peace and comfort to so many chambers of sickness

and sorrow, to so many hearts overburdened by the trials laid upon them.

Old Sophy became quiet in a few minutes, and proceeded to tell her story.

She told it in the low half-whisper which is the natural voice of lips

oppressed wish grief and fears; with quick glances around the apartment

from time to time, as if she dreaded lest the dim portraits on the walls

and the dark folios on the shelves might overhear her words.

It was not one of those conversations which a third person can report

minutely, unless by that miracle of clairvoyance known to the readers of

stories made out of authors' brains. Yet its main character can be

imparted in a much briefer space than the old black woman took to give

all its details.

She went far back to the time when Dudley Venner was born,--she being

then a middle-aged woman. The heir and hope of a family which had been

narrowing down as if doomed to extinction, he had been surrounded with

every care and trained by the best education he could have in New

England. He had left college, and was studying the profession which

gentlemen of leisure most affect, when he fell in love with a young girl

left in the world almost alone, as he was. The old woman told the story

of his young love and his joyous bridal with a tenderness which had

something more, even, than her family sympathies to account for it. Had

she not hanging over her bed a paper-cutting of a profile,--jet black,

but not blacker than the face it represented--of one who would have been

her own husband in the small years of this century, if the vessel in

which he went to sea, like Jamie in the ballad, had not sailed away and

never come back to land? Had she not her bits of furniture stowed away

which had been got ready for her own wedding,--two rocking-chairs, one

worn with long use, one kept for him so long that it had grown a

superstition with her never to sit in it,--and might he not come back

yet, after all? Had she not her chest of linen ready for her humble

house-keeping with store of serviceable huckaback and piles of neatly

folded kerchiefs, wherefrom this one that showed so white against her

black face was taken, for that she knew her eyes would betray her in "the

presence"?

All the first part of the story the old woman told tenderly, and yet

dwelling upon every incident with a loving pleasure. How happy this

young couple had been, what plans and projects of improvement they had

formed, how they lived in each other, always together, so young and fresh

and beautiful as she remembered them in that one early summer when they

walked arm in arm through the wilderness of roses that ran riot in the

garden,--she told of this as loath to leave it and come to the woe that

lay beneath.

She told the whole story;-shall I repeat it? Not now. If, in the course

of relating the incidents I have undertaken to report, it tells itself,

perhaps this will be better than to run the risk of producing a painful

impression on some of those susceptible readers whom it would be

ill-advised to disturb or excite, when they rather require to be amused

and soothed. In our pictures of life, we must show the flowering-out of

terrible growths which have their roots deep, deep underground. Just how

far we shall lay bare the unseemly roots themselves is a matter of

discretion and taste, and which none of us are infallible.

The old woman told the whole story of Elsie, of her birth, of her

peculiarities of person and disposition, of the passionate fears and

hopes with which her father had watched the course of her development.

She recounted all her strange ways, from the hour when she first tried to

crawl across the carpet, and her father's look as she worked her way

towards him. With the memory of Juliet's nurse she told the story of her

teething, and how, the woman to whose breast she had clung dying suddenly

about that time, they had to struggle hard with the child before she

would learn the accomplishment of feeding with a spoon. And so of her

fierce plays and fiercer disputes with that boy who had been her

companion, and the whole scene of the quarrel when she struck him with

those sharp white teeth, frightening her, old Sophy, almost to death;

for, as she said, the boy would have died, if it hadn't been for the old

Doctor's galloping over as fast as he could gallop and burning the places

right out of his arm. Then came the story of that other incident,

sufficiently alluded to already, which had produced such an ecstasy of

fright and left such a nightmare of apprehension in the household. And so

the old woman came down to this present time. That boy she never loved

nor trusted was grown to a dark, dangerous-looking man, and he was under

their roof. He wanted to marry our poor Elsie, and Elsie hated him, and

sometimes she would look at him over her shoulder just as she used to

look at that woman she hated; and she, old Sophy, couldn't sleep for

thinking she should hear a scream from the white chamber some night and

find him in spasms such as that woman came so near dying with. And then

there was something about Elsie she did not know what to make of: she

would sit and hang her head sometimes, and look as if she were dreaming;

and she brought home books they said a young gentleman up at the great

school lent her; and once she heard her whisper in her sleep, and she

talked as young girls do to themselves when they're thinking about

somebody they have a liking for and think nobody knows it.

She finished her long story at last. The minister had listened to it in

perfect silence. He sat still even when she had done speaking,--still,

and lost in thought. It was a very awkward matter for him to have a hand

in. Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Veneers had a pew in the

Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house. It would seem that he, Mr.

Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested. Had

he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people? Was there enough

capital of humanity in his somewhat limited nature to furnish sympathy

and unshrinking service for his friends in an emergency? or was he too

busy with his own attacks of spiritual neuralgia, and too much occupied

with taking account of stock of his own thin-blooded offences, to forget

himself and his personal interests on the small scale and the large, and

run a risk of his life, if need were, at any rate give himself up without

reserve to the dangerous task of guiding and counselling these distressed

and imperilled fellow-creatures?

The good minister thought the best thing to do would be to call and talk

over some of these matters with Brother Fairweather,--for so he would

call him at times, especially if his senior deacon were not within

earshot. Having settled this point, he comforted Sophy with a few words

of counsel and a promise of coming to see her very soon. He then called

his man to put the old white horse into the chaise and drive Sophy back

to the mansion-house.

When the Doctor sat down to his sermon again, it looked very differently

from the way it had looked at the moment he left it. When he came to

think of it, he did not feel quite so sure practically about that matter

of the utter natural selfishness of everybody. There was Letty, now,

seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that old black woman, and

indeed in poor people generally; perhaps it would not be too much to say

that she was always thinking of other people. He thought he had seen

other young persons naturally unselfish, thoughtful for others; it seemed

to be a family trait in some he had known.

But most of all he was exercised about this poor girl whose story Sophy

had been telling. If what the old woman believed was true,--and it had

too much semblance of probability,--what became of his theory of

ingrained moral obliquity applied to such a case? If by the visitation

of God a person receives any injury which impairs the intellect or the

moral perceptions, is it not monstrous to judge such a person by our

common working standards of right and wrong? Certainly, everybody will

answer, in cases where there is a palpable organic change brought about,

as when a blow on the head produces insanity. Fools! How long will it

be before we shall learn that for every wound which betrays itself to the

sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen mutilations that cripple,

each of them, some one or more of our highest faculties? If what Sophy

told and believed was the real truth, what prayers could be agonizing

enough, what tenderness could be deep enough, for this poor, lost,

blighted, hapless, blameless child of misfortune, struck by such a doom

as perhaps no living creature in all the sisterhood of humanity shared

with her?

The minister thought these matters over until his mind was bewildered

with doubts and tossed to and fro on that stormy deep of thought heaving

forever beneath the conflict of windy dogmas. He laid by his old sermon.

He put back a pile of old commentators with their eyes and mouths and

hearts full of the dust of the schools. Then he opened the book of

Genesis at the eighteenth chapter and read that remarkable argument of

Abraham's with his Maker in which he boldly appeals to first principles.

He took as his text, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" and

began to write his sermon, afterwards so famous, "On the Obligations of

an Infinite Creator to a Finite Creature."

It astonished the good people, who had been accustomed so long to repeat

mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear their

worthy minister maintaining that the dignified attitude of the old

Patriarch, insisting on what was reasonable and fair with reference to

his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful to his Maker, and a

great deal manlier and more to his credit, than if he had yielded the

whole matter, and pretended that men had not rights as well as duties.

The same logic which had carried him to certain conclusions with

reference to human nature, this same irresistible logic carried him

straight on from his text until he arrived at those other results, which

not only astonished his people, as was said, but surprised himself. He

went so far in defence of the rights of man, that he put his foot into

several heresies, for which men had been burned so often, it was time, if

ever it could be, to acknowledge the demonstration of the argumentum ad

ignem. He did not believe in the responsibility of idiots. He did not

believe a new-born infant was morally answerable for other people's acts.

He thought a man with a crooked spine would never be called to account

for not walking erect. He thought if the crook was in his brain, instead

of his back, he could not fairly be blamed for any consequence of this

natural defect, whatever lawyers or divines might call it. He argued,

that, if a person inherited a perfect mind, body, and disposition, and

had perfect teaching from infancy, that person could do nothing more than

keep the moral law perfectly. But supposing that the Creator allows a

person to be born with an hereditary or ingrafted organic tendency, and

then puts this person into the hands of teachers incompetent or

positively bad, is not what is called sin or transgression of the law

necessarily involved in the premises? Is not a Creator bound to guard

his children against the ruin which inherited ignorance might entail on

them? Would it be fair for a parent to put into a child's hands the

title-deeds to all its future possessions, and a bunch of matches? And

are not men children, nay, babes, in the eye of Omniscience?--The

minister grew bold in his questions. Had not he as good right to ask

questions as Abraham?

This was the dangerous vein of speculation in which the Reverend Doctor

Honeywood found himself involved, as a consequence of the suggestions

forced upon him by old Sophy's communication. The truth was, the good

man had got so humanized by mixing up with other people in various

benevolent schemes, that, the very moment he could escape from his old

scholastic abstractions, he took the side of humanity instinctively, just

as the Father of the Faithful did,--all honor be to the noble old

Patriarch for insisting on the worth of an honest man, and making the

best terms he could for a very ill-conditioned metropolis, which might

possibly, however, have contained ten righteous people, for whose sake it

should be spared!

The consequence of all this was, that he was in a singular and seemingly

self-contradictory state of mind when he took his hat and cane and went

forth to call on his heretical brother. The old minister took it for

granted that the Reverend Mr. Fairweather knew the private history of his

parishioner's family. He did not reflect that there are griefs men never

put into words,--that there are fears which must not be spoken,--intimate

matters of consciousness which must be carried, as bullets which have

been driven deep into the living tissues are sometimes carried, for a

whole lifetime,--encysted griefs, if we may borrow the chirurgeon's term,

never to be reached, never to be seen, never to be thrown out, but to go

into the dust with the frame that bore them about with it, during long

years of anguish, known only to the sufferer and his Maker. Dudley

Venner had talked with his minister about this child of his. But he had

talked cautiously, feeling his way for sympathy, looking out for those

indications of tact and judgment which would warrant him in some partial

communication, at least, of the origin of his doubts and fears, and never

finding them.

There was something about the Reverend Mr. Fairweather which repressed

all attempts at confidential intercourse. What this something was,

Dudley Venner could hardly say; but he felt it distinctly, and it sealed

his lips. He never got beyond certain generalities connected with

education and religious instruction. The minister could not help

discovering, however, that there were difficulties connected with this

girl's management, and he heard enough outside of the family to convince

him that she had manifested tendencies, from an early age, at variance

with the theoretical opinions he was in the habit of preaching, and in a

dim way of holding for truth, as to the natural dispositions of the human

being.

About this terrible fact of congenital obliquity his new beliefs began to

cluster as a centre, and to take form as a crystal around its nucleus.

Still, he might perhaps have struggled against them, had it not been for

the little Roman Catholic chapel he passed every Sunday, on his way to

the meeting-house. Such a crowd of worshippers, swarming into the pews

like bees, filling all the aisles, running over at the door like berries

heaped too full in the measure,--some kneeling on the steps, some

standing on the sidewalk, hats off, heads down, lips moving, some looking

on devoutly from the other side of the street! Oh, could he have

followed his own Bridget, maid of all work, into the heart of that

steaming throng, and bowed his head while the priests intoned their Latin

prayers! could he have snuffed up the cloud of frankincense, and felt

that he was in the great ark which holds the better half of the Christian

world, while all around it are wretched creatures, some struggling

against the waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected rafts, and

some with their heads just above water, thinking to ride out the flood

which is to sweep the earth clean of sinners, upon their own private,

individual life-preservers!

Such was the present state of mind of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather,

when his clerical brother called upon him to talk over the questions to

which old Sophy had called his attention.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.

For the last few months, while all these various matters were going on in

Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with the records

of ancient councils and the writings of the early fathers. The more he

read, the more discontented he became with the platform upon which he and

his people were standing. They and he were clearly in a minority, and

his deep inward longing to be with the majority was growing into an

engrossing passion. He yearned especially towards the good old

unquestioning, authoritative Mother Church, with her articles of faith

which took away the necessity for private judgment, with her traditional

forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of stimulants and anodynes.

About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his desk under the

loose papers. He sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small

crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He ordered his new coat to be

cut very narrow in the collar and to be made single-breasted. He began

an informal series of religious conversations with Miss O'Brien, the

young person of Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget, maid of

all work. These not proving very satisfactory, he managed to fall in

with Father McShane, the Catholic priest of the Rockland church.

Father McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically. It would be

such a fine thing to bring over one of those Protestant heretics, and a

"liberal" one too!--not that there was any real difference between them,

but it sounded better, to say that one of these rationalizing

free-and-equal religionists had been made a convert than any of those

half-way Protestants who were the slaves of catechisms instead of

councils, and of commentators instead of popes. The subtle priest played

his disciple with his finest tackle. It was hardly necessary: when

anything or anybody wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a coarse line

are all that is needed.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty,

if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And

the temptation is to some natures a very great one. Liberty is often a

heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice

which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common life we

shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination.

In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking before

deciding how to cast our vote. In religious matters there are great

multitudes watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready with his

bundle of finalities, which having accepted we may be at peace. The more

absolute the submission demanded, the stronger the temptation becomes to

those who have been long tossed among doubts and conflicts.

So it is that in all the quiet bays which indent the shores of the great

ocean of thought, at every sinking wharf, we see moored the hulks and the

razees of enslaved or half-enslaved intelligences. They rock peacefully

as children in their cradles on the subdued swell which comes feebly in

over the bar at the harbor's mouth, slowly crusting with barnacles,

pulling at their iron cables as if they really wanted to be free; but

better contented to remain bound as they are. For these no more the

round unwalled horizon of the open sea, the joyous breeze aloft, the

furrow, the foam, the sparkle, that track the rushing keel! They have

escaped the dangers of the wave, and lie still henceforth, evermore.

Happiest of souls, if lethargy is bliss, and palsy the chief beatitude!

America owes its political freedom to religious Protestantism. But

political freedom is reacting on religious prescription with still

mightier force. We wonder, therefore, when we find a soul which was born

to a full sense of individual liberty, an unchallenged right of

self-determination on every new alleged truth offered to its

intelligence, voluntarily surrendering any portion of its liberty to a

spiritual dictatorship which always proves to rest, in the last analysis,

on a majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly an old one, passed in

those barbarous times when men cursed and murdered each other for

differences of opinion, and of course were not in a condition to settle

the beliefs of a comparatively civilized community.

In our disgust, we are liable to be intolerant. We forget that weakness

is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our

most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity, Who of us does

not look with great tenderness on the young chieftain in the "Fair Maid

of Perth," when he confesses his want of courage? All of us love

companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us

are more or less imaginative in our theology.

Some of us may find the aid of material symbols a comfort, if not a

necessity. The boldest thinker may have his moments of languor and

discouragement, when he feels as if he could willingly exchange faiths

with the old beldame crossing herself at the cathedral-door,--nay, that,

if he could drop all coherent thought, and lie in the flowery meadow with

the brown-eyed solemnly unthinking cattle, looking up to the sky, and all

their simple consciousness staining itself blue, then down to the grass,

and life turning to a mere greenness, blended with confused scents of

herbs,--no individual mind-movement such as men are teased with, but the

great calm cattle-sense of all time and all places that know the milky

smell of herds,--if he could be like these, he would be content to be

driven home by the cow-boy, and share the grassy banquet of the king of

ancient Babylon. Let us be very generous, then, in our judgment of those

who leave the front ranks of thought for the company of the meek

non-combatants who follow with the baggage and provisions. Age, illness,

too much wear and tear, a half-formed paralysis, may bring any of us to

this pass. But while we can think and maintain the rights of our own

individuality against every human combination, let us not forget to

caution all who are disposed to waver that there is a cowardice which is

criminal, and a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge. God

help him, over whose dead soul in his living body must be uttered the sad

supplication, Requiescat in pace!

A knock at the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's study door called his eyes from

the book on which they were intent. He looked up, as if expecting a

welcome guest.

The Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., entered the study of the

Reverend Chauncy Fairweather. He was not the expected guest. Mr.

Fairweather slipped the book he was reading into a half-open drawer, and

pushed in the drawer. He slid something which rattled under a paper

lying on the table. He rose with a slight change of color, and welcomed,

a little awkwardly, his unusual visitor.

"Good-evening, Brother Fairweather!" said the Reverend Doctor, in a very

cordial, good-humored way. "I hope I am not spoiling one of those

eloquent sermons I never have a chance to hear."

"Not at all, not at all," the younger clergyman answered, in a languid

tone, with a kind of habitual half-querulousness which belonged to

it,--the vocal expression which we meet with now and then, and which says

as plainly as so many words could say it, "I am a suffering individual.

I am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed upon by mankind and

the powers of the universe generally. But I endure all. I endure you.

Speak. I listen. It is a burden to me, but I even approve. I sacrifice

myself. Behold this movement of my lips! It is a smile."

The Reverend Doctor knew this forlorn way of Mr. Fairweather's, and was

not troubled by it. He proceeded to relate the circumstances of his

visit from the old black woman, and the fear she was in about the young

girl, who being a parishioner of Mr. Fairweather's, he had thought it

best to come over and speak to him about old Sophy's fears and fancies.

In telling the old woman's story, he alluded only vaguely to those

peculiar circumstances to which she had attributed so much importance,

taking it for granted that the other minister must be familiar with the

whole series of incidents she had related. The old minister was

mistaken, as we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in

the place only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now

and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything more than idle

and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. All that he fully

understood was that this had been a perverse and unmanageable child, and

that the extraordinary care which had been bestowed on her had been so

far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom all

feared and almost all shunned, as if she carried with her some malignant

influence.

He replied, therefore, after hearing the story, that Elsie had always

given trouble. There seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about her.

Perfectly unaccountable. A very dark case. Never amenable to good

influences. Had sent her good books from the Sunday-school library.

Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of one of them, and kept

it, and flung the book out of the window. It was a picture of Eve's

temptation; and he recollected her saying that Eve was a good woman,--and

she'd have done just so, if she'd been there. A very sad child, very sad;

bad from infancy. He had talked himself bold, and said all at once,

"Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to accept your doctrine of the

congenital sinfulness of human nature? I am afraid that is the only thing

which goes to the bottom of the difficulty."

The old minister's face did not open so approvingly as Mr. Fairweather

had expected.

"Why, yes,--well,--many find comfort in it,--I believe;--there is much to

be said,--there are many bad people,--and bad children,--I can't be so

sure about bad babies,--though they cry very malignantly at

times,--especially if they have the stomach-ache. But I really don't know

how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may have impulses that act in her

like instincts in the lower animals, and so not come under the bearing of

our ordinary rules of judgment."

"But this depraved tendency, Doctor,--this unaccountable perverseness.

My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the right about human nature.

Oh, those words of the Psalmist, 'shapen in iniquity,' and the rest!

What are we to do with them,--we who teach that the soul of a child is an

unstained white tablet?"

"King David was very subject to fits of humility, and much given to

self-reproaches," said the Doctor, in a rather dry way. "We owe you and

your friends a good deal for calling attention to the natural graces,

which, after all, may, perhaps, be considered as another form of

manifestation of the divine influence. Some of our writers have pressed

rather too hard on the tendencies of the human soul toward evil as such.

It maybe questioned whether these views have not interfered with the

sound training of certain young persons, sons of clergymen and others. I

am nearer of your mind about the possibility of educating children so

that they shall become good Christians without any violent transition.

That is what I should hope for from bringing them up 'in the nurture and

admonition of the Lord.'"

The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently answered, "Possibly we

may have called attention to some neglected truths; but, after all, I

fear we must go to the old school, if we want to get at the root of the

matter. I know there is an outward amiability about many young persons,

some young girls especially, that seems like genuine goodness; but I have

been disposed of late to lean toward your view, that these human

affections, as we see them in our children,--ours, I say, though I have

not the fearful responsibility of training any of my own,--are only a

kind of disguised and sinful selfishness."

The old minister groaned in spirit. His heart had been softened by the

sweet influences of children and grandchildren. He thought of a

half-sized grave in the burial-ground, and the fine, brave, noble-hearted

boy he laid in it thirty years before,--the sweet, cheerful child who had

made his home all sunshine until the day when he was brought into it, his

long curls dripping, his fresh lips purpled in death,--foolish dear

little blessed creature to throw himself into the deep water to save the

drowning boy, who clung about him and carried him under! Disguised

selfishness! And his granddaughter too, whose disguised selfishness was

the light of his household!

"Don't call it my view!" he said. "Abstractly, perhaps, all natures may

be considered vitiated; but practically, as I see it in life, the divine

grace keeps pace with the perverted instincts from infancy in many

natures. Besides, this perversion itself may often be disease, bad

habits transmitted, like drunkenness, or some hereditary misfortune, as

with this Elsie we were talking about."

The younger minister was completely mystified. At every step he made

towards the Doctor's recognized theological position, the Doctor took

just one step towards his. They would cross each other soon at this

rate, and might as well exchange pulpits,--as Colonel Sprowle once wished

they would, it may be remembered.

The Doctor, though a much clearer-headed man, was almost equally puzzled.

He turned the conversation again upon Elsie, and endeavored to make her

minister feel the importance of bringing every friendly influence to bear

upon her at this critical period of her life. His sympathies did not

seem so lively as the Doctor could have wished. Perhaps he had vastly

more important objects of solicitude in his own spiritual interests.

A knock at the door interrupted them. The Reverend Mr. Fairweather rose

and went towards it. As he passed the table, his coat caught something,

which came rattling to the floor. It was a crucifix with a string of

beads attached. As he opened the door, the Milesian features of Father

McShane presented themselves, and from their centre proceeded the

clerical benediction in Irish-sounding Latin, Pax vobiscum!

The Reverend Doctor Honeywood rose and left the priest and his disciple

together.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD.

There was nobody, then, to counsel poor Elsie, except her father, who had

learned to let her have her own way so as not to disturb such relations

as they had together, and the old black woman, who had a real, though

limited influence over the girl. Perhaps she did not need counsel. To

look upon her, one might well suppose that she was competent to defend

herself against any enemy she was like to have. That glittering, piercing

eye was not to be softened by a few smooth words spoken in low tones,

charged with the common sentiments which win their way to maidens'

hearts. That round, lithe, sinuous figure was as full of dangerous life

as ever lay under the slender flanks and clean-shaped limbs of a panther.

There were particular times when Elsie was in such a mood that it must

have been a bold person who would have intruded upon her with reproof or

counsel. "This is one of her days," old Sophy would say quietly to her

father, and he would, as far as possible, leave her to herself. These

days were more frequent, as old Sophy's keen, concentrated watchfulness

had taught her, at certain periods of the year. It was in the heats of

summer that they were most common and most strongly characterized. In

winter, on the other hand, she was less excitable, and even at times

heavy and as if chilled and dulled in her sensibilities. It was a

strange, paroxysmal kind of life that belonged to her. It seemed to come

and go with the sunlight. All winter long she would be comparatively

quiet, easy to manage, listless, slow in her motions; her eye would lose

something of its strange lustre; and the old nurse would feel so little

anxiety, that her whole expression and aspect would show the change, and

people would say to her, "Why, Sophy, how young you're looking!"

As the spring came on, Elsie would leave the fireside, have her

tiger-skin spread in the empty southern chamber next the wall, and lie

there basking for whole hours in the sunshine. As the season warmed, the

light would kindle afresh in her eyes, and the old woman's sleep would

grow restless again,--for she knew, that, so long as the glitter was

fierce in the girl's eyes, there was no trusting her impulses or

movements.

At last, when the veins of the summer were hot and swollen, and the

juices of all the poison-plants and the blood of all the creatures that

feed upon them had grown thick and strong,--about the time when the

second mowing was in hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were following up

the scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass, (falling as the

waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers dropping as the

grass-flowers drop,--with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,--frsh,--for

that is the way the sea talks, and leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the

winds to breathe over it, and all mutes to the unyielding earth,)--about

this time of over-ripe midsummer, the life of Elsie seemed fullest of its

malign and restless instincts. This was the period of the year when the

Rockland people were most cautious of wandering in the leafier coverts

which skirted the base of The Mountain, and the farmers liked to wear

thick, long boots, whenever they went into the bushes. But Elsie was

never so much given to roaming over The Mountain as at this season; and

as she had grown more absolute and uncontrollable, she was as like to

take the night as the day for her rambles.

At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in dress and ornament came

out in a more striking way than at other times. She was never so superb

as then, and never so threatening in her scowling beauty. The barred

skirts she always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous muslins;

the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her own pleasure

rather than to dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly left her arm.

She was never seen without some necklace,--either the golden cord she

wore at the great party, or a chain of mosaics, or simply a ring of

golden scales. Some said that Elsie always slept in a necklace, and that

when she died she was to be buried in one. It was a fancy of hers,--but

many thought there was a reason for it.

Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching eye than her cousin, Dick

Venner. He had kept more out of her way of late, it is true, but there

was not a movement she made which he did not carefully observe just so

far as he could without exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to

him that the road to fortune was before him, and that the first thing was

to marry Elsie. What course he should take with her, or with others

interested, after marrying her, need not be decided in a hurry.

He had now done all he could expect to do at present in the way of

conciliating the other members of the household. The girl's father

tolerated him, if he did not even like him. Whether he suspected his

project or not Dick did not feel sure; but it was something to have got a

foothold in the house, and to have overcome any prepossession against him

which his uncle might have entertained. To be a good listener and a bad

billiard-player was not a very great sacrifice to effect this object.

Then old Sophy could hardly help feeling well-disposed towards him, after

the gifts he had bestowed on her and the court he had paid her. These

were the only persons on the place of much importance to gain over. The

people employed about the house and farm-lands had little to do with

Elsie, except to obey her without questioning her commands.

Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his second parallel. But he had

lost something of the coolness with which he had begun his system of

operations. The more he had reflected upon the matter, the more he had

convinced himself that this was his one great chance in life. If he

suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity could hardly, in

the nature of things, present itself a second time. Only one life

between Elsie and her fortune,--and lives are so uncertain! The girl

might not suit him as a wife. Possibly. Time enough to find out after

he had got her. In short, he must have the property, and Elsie Venner,

as she was to go with it,--and then, if he found it convenient and

agreeable to, lead a virtuous life, he would settle down and raise

children and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient and

disagreeable, so much the worse for those who made it so. Like many

other persons, he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue were

a better investment than its opposite; but he knew that there might be

contingencies in which the property would be better without its

incumbrances, and he contemplated this conceivable problem in the light

of all its possible solutions.

One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from himself: Elsie had some new

cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With the

acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own interest

gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real

lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young man up at the

school where the girl had been going of late, as probably at the bottom

of it.

"Cousin Elsie in love!" so he communed with himself upon his lonely

pillow. "In love with a Yankee schoolmaster! What else can it be? Let

him look out for himself! He'll stand but a bad chance between us. What

makes you think she's in love with him? Met her walking with him. Don't

like her looks and ways;--she's thinking about something, anyhow. Where

does she get those books she is reading so often? Not out of our

library, that 's certain. If I could have ten minutes' peep into her

chamber now, I would find out where she got them, and what mischief she

was up to."

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his wish, a shape

which could be none but Elsie's flitted through a gleam of moonlight into

the shadow of the trees. She was setting out on one of her midnight

rambles.

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his cheeks flushed

with the old longing for an adventure. It was not much to invade a young

girl's deserted chamber, but it would amuse a wakeful hour, and tell him

some little matters he wanted to know. The chamber he slept in was over

the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at this season. There was no great

risk of his being seen or heard, if he ventured down-stairs to her

apartment.

Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting project, arose and

lighted a lamp. He wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust his

feet into a pair of cloth slippers. He stole carefully down the stair,

and arrived safely at the door of Elsie's room.

The young lady had taken the natural precaution to leave it fastened,

carrying the key with her, no doubt,--unless; indeed, she had got out by

the window, which was not far from the ground. Dick could get in at this

window easily enough, but he did not like the idea of leaving his

footprints in the flower-bed just under it. He returned to his own

chamber, and held a council of war with himself.

He put his head out of his own window and looked at that beneath. It was

open. He then went to one of his trunks, which he unlocked, and began

carefully removing its contents. What these were we need not stop to

mention,--only remarking that there were dresses of various patterns,

which might afford an agreeable series of changes, and in certain

contingencies prove eminently useful. After removing a few of these, he

thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remaining pile and drew out a

coiled strip of leather many yards in length, ending in a noose,--a

tough, well-seasoned lasso, looking as if it had seen service and was

none the worse for it. He uncoiled a few yards of this and fastened it

to the knob of a door. Then he threw the loose end out of the window so

that it should hang by the open casement of Elsie's room. By this he let

himself down opposite her window, and with a slight effort swung himself

inside the room. He lighted a match, found a candle, and, having lighted

that, looked curiously about him, as Clodius might have done when he

smuggled himself in among the Vestals.

Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her dress and ornaments. It was a

kind of museum of objects, such as the woods are full of to those who

have eyes to see them, but many of them such as only few could hope to

reach, even if they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests, which are

never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the forks of

ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a quick eye

and a hard climb to find and get hold of, mosses and ferns of unusual

aspect, and quaint monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature

delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like any

naturalist or poet.

Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is grotesque and

fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees

does not always require clipping to make it look like an image of life.

From those windows at Canoe Meadow, among the mountains, we could see all

summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and General Jackson on

horseback, done by Nature in green leaves, each with a single tree. But

to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and smaller vegetable growths

there is no end. Her fancy is infinite, and her humor not always

refined. There is a perpetual reminiscence of animal life in her rude

caricatures, which sometimes actually reach the point of imitating the

complete human figure, as in that extraordinary specimen which nobody

will believe to be genuine, except the men of science, and of which the

discreet reader may have a glimpse by application in the proper quarter.

Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like monstrosities, that

one might have thought she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his

fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of enchanted look, as if a

witch had her home in it. Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like

branch, strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines which strain

the smaller trees in their clinging embraces, sinking into the bark until

the parasite becomes almost identified with its support. With these

sylvan curiosities were blended objects of art, some of them not less

singular, but others showing a love for the beautiful in form and color,

such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture might naturally be

expected to feel and to indulge, in adorning her apartment.

All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and the rest, did not detain

Mr. Richard Veneer very long, whatever may have been his sensibilities to

art. He was more curious about books and papers. A copy of Keats lay on

the table. He opened it and read the name of Bernard C. Langdon on the

blank leaf. An envelope was on the table with Elsie's name written in a

similar hand; but the envelope was empty, and he could not find the note

it contained. Her desk was locked, and it would not be safe to tamper

with it. He had seen enough; the girl received books and notes from this

fellow up at the school, this usher, this Yankee quill-driver;--he was

aspiring to become the lord of the Dudley domain, then, was he?

Elsie had been reasonably careful. She had locked up her papers,

whatever they might be. There was little else that promised to reward

his curiosity, but he cast his eye on everything. There was a

clasp-Bible among her books. Dick wondered if she ever unclasped it.

There was a book of hymns; it had her name in it, and looked as if it

might have been often read;--what the diablo had Elsie to do with hymns?

Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and analytical state of mind, it

will be noticed, or he might perhaps have been touched with the innocent

betrayals of the poor girl's chamber. Had she, after all, some human

tenderness in her heart? That was not the way he put the question,--but

whether she would take seriously to this schoolmaster, and if she did,

what would be the neatest and surest and quickest way of putting a stop

to all that nonsense. All this, however, he could think over more safely

in his own quarters. So he stole softly to the window, and, catching the

end of the leathern thong, regained his own chamber and drew in the

lasso.

It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on who is doubtful in love

or wooing, or to make him take hold of his courting in earnest. As soon

as Dick had satisfied himself that the young schoolmaster was his rival

in Elsie's good graces, his whole thoughts concentrated themselves more

than ever on accomplishing his great design of securing her for himself.

There was no time to be lost. He must come into closer relations with

her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from this fellow, and to find out

more exactly what was the state of her affections, if she had any. So he

began to court her company again, to propose riding with her, to sing to

her, to join her whenever she was strolling about the grounds, to make

himself agreeable, according to the ordinary understanding of that

phrase, in every way which seemed to promise a chance for succeeding in

that amiable effort.

The girl treated him more capriciously than ever. She would be sullen

and silent, or she would draw back fiercely at some harmless word or

gesture, or she would look at him with her eyes narrowed in such a

strange way and with such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to

himself they were too much for him, and would leave her for the moment.

Yet she tolerated him, almost as a matter of necessity, and sometimes

seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her power upon him. This he

soon found out, and humored her in the fancy that she could exercise a

kind of fascination over him, though there were times in which he

actually felt an influence he could not understand, an effect of some

peculiar expression about her, perhaps, but still centring in those

diamond eyes of hers which it made one feel so curiously to look into.

Whether Elsie saw into his object or not was more than he could tell. His

idea was, after having conciliated the good-will of all about her as far

as possible, to make himself first a habit and then a necessity with the

girl,--not to spring any trap of a declaration upon her until tolerance

had grown into such a degree of inclination as her nature was like to

admit. He had succeeded in the first part of his plan. He was at

liberty to prolong his visit at his own pleasure. This was not strange;

these three persons, Dudley Venner, his daughter, and his nephew,

represented all that remained of an old and honorable family. Had Elsie

been like other girls, her father might have been less willing to

entertain a young fellow like Dick as an inmate; but he had long outgrown

all the slighter apprehensions which he might have had in common with all

parents, and followed rather than led the imperious instincts of his

daughter. It was not a question of sentiment, but of life and death, or

more than that,--some dark ending, perhaps, which would close the

history of his race with disaster and evil report upon the lips of all

coming generations.

As to the thought of his nephew's making love to his daughter, it had

almost passed from his mind. He had been so long in the habit of looking

at Elsie as outside of all common influences and exceptional in the law

of her nature, that it was difficult for him to think of her as a girl to

be fallen in love with. Many persons are surprised, when others court

their female relatives; they know them as good young or old women

enough,--aunts, sisters, nieces, daughters, whatever they may be,--but

never think of anybody's falling in love with them, any more than of

their being struck by lightning. But in this case there were special

reasons, in addition to the common family delusion,--reasons which seemed

to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor. Who would dare

to marry Elsie? No, let her have the pleasure, if it was one, at any

rate the wholesome excitement, of companionship; it might save her from

lapsing into melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a

kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three

septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent idea,

her whole frame would have been thrice made over, counting from her

birth, she would revert to the natural standard of health of mind and

feelings from which she had been so long perverted. The thought of any

other motive than love being sufficient to induce Richard to become her

suitor had not occurred to him. He had married early, at that happy

period when interested motives are least apt to influence the choice; and

his single idea of marriage was, that it was the union of persons

naturally drawn towards each other by some mutual attraction. Very

simple, perhaps; but he had lived lonely for many years since his wife's

death, and judged the hearts of others, most of all of his brother's son,

by his own. He had often thought whether, in case of Elsie's dying or

being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he might not adopt this nephew and

make him his heir; but it had not occurred to him that Richard might wish

to become his son-in-law for the sake of his property.

It is very easy to criticise other people's modes of dealing with their

children. Outside observers see results; parents see processes. They

notice the trivial movements and accents which betray the blood of this

or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement of

hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the common

observer. To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy sits with

legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw; his

grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement of the

eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper of three

different generations, can tell pretty nearly the range of possibilities

and the limitations of a child, actual or potential, of a given

stock,--errors excepted always, because children of the same stock are

not bred just alike, because the traits of some less known ancestor are

liable to break out at any time, and because each human being has, after

all, a small fraction of individuality about him which gives him a

flavor, so that he is distinguishable from others by his friends or in a

court of justice, and which occasionally makes a genius or a saint or a

criminal of him. It is well that young persons cannot read these fatal

oracles of Nature. Blind impulse is her highest wisdom, after all. We

make our great jump, and then she takes the bandage off our eyes. That

is the way the broad sea-level of average is maintained, and the

physiological democracy is enabled to fight against the principle of

selection which would disinherit all the weaker children. The

magnificent constituency of mediocrities of which the world is made

up,--the people without biographies, whose lives have made a clear

solution in the fluid menstruum of time, instead of being precipitated in

the opaque sediment of history--

But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN.

There were not wanting people who accused Dudley VENNER of weakness and

bad judgment in his treatment of his daughter. Some were of opinion that

the great mistake was in not "breaking her will" when she was a little

child. There was nothing the matter with her, they said, but that she

had been spoiled by indulgence. If they had had the charge of her,

they'd have brought her down. She'd got the upperhand of her father now;

but if he'd only taken hold of her in season! There are people who think

that everything may be done, if the doer, be he educator or physician, be

only called "in season." No doubt,--but in season would often be a

hundred or two years before the child was born; and people never send so

early as that.

The father of Elsie Veneer knew his duties and his difficulties too well

to trouble himself about anything others might think or say. So soon as

he found that he could not govern his child, he gave his life up to

following her and protecting her as far as he could. It was a stern and

terrible trial for a man of acute sensibility, and not without force of

intellect and will, and the manly ambition for himself and his

family-name which belonged to his endowments and his position. Passive

endurance is the hardest trial to persons of such a nature.

What made it still more a long martyrdom was the necessity for bearing

his cross in utter loneliness. He could not tell his griefs. He could

not talk of them even with those who knew their secret spring. His

minister had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort

of devotees,--persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and

grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the

egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more odious forms of avarice and

self-indulgence. How could he speak with the old physician and the old

black woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to strike

dumb the lips of Consolation?

In the dawn of his manhood he had found that second consciousness for

which young men and young women go about looking into each other's faces,

with their sweet, artless aim playing in every feature, and making them

beautiful to each other, as to all of us. He had found his other self

early, before he had grown weary in the search and wasted his freshness

in vain longings: the lot of many, perhaps we may say of most, who

infringe the patent of our social order by intruding themselves into a

life already upon half allowance of the necessary luxuries of existence.

The life he had led for a brief space was not only beautiful in outward

circumstance, as old Sophy had described it to the Reverend Doctor. It

was that delicious process of the tuning of two souls to each other,

string by string, not without little half-pleasing discords now and then

when some chord in one or the other proves to be overstrained or

over-lax, but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until they

become at last as two instruments with a single voice. Something more

than a year of this blissful doubled consciousness had passed over him

when he found himself once more alone,--alone, save for the little

diamond-eyed child lying in the old black woman's arms, with the coral

necklace round--her throat and the rattle in her hand.

He would not die by his own act. It was not the way in his family. There

may have been other, perhaps better reasons, but this was enough; he did

not come of suicidal stock. He must live for this child's sake, at any

rate; and yet,--oh, yet, who could tell with what thoughts he looked upon

her? Sometimes her little features would look placid, and something like

a smile would steal over them; then all his tender feelings would rush

up, into his eyes, and he would put his arms out to take her from the old

woman,--but all at once her eyes would narrow and she would throw her

head back, and a shudder would seize him as he stooped over his

child,--he could not look upon her,--he could not touch his lips to her

cheek; nay, there would sometimes come into his soul such frightful

suggestions that he would hurry from the room lest the hinted thought

should become a momentary madness and he should lift his hand against the

hapless infant which owed him life.

In those miserable days he used to wander all over The Mountain in his

restless endeavor to seek some relief for inward suffering in outward

action. He had no thought of throwing himself from the summit of any of

the broken cliffs, but he clambered over them recklessly, as having no

particular care for his life. Sometimes he would go into the accursed

district where the venomous reptiles were always to be dreaded, and court

their worst haunts, and kill all he could come near with a kind of blind

fury which was strange in a person of his gentle nature.

One overhanging cliff was a favorite haunt of his. It frowned upon his

home beneath in a very menacing way; he noticed slight seams and fissures

that looked ominous;--what would happen, if it broke off some time or

other and came crashing down on the fields and roofs below? He thought

of such a possible catastrophe with a singular indifference, in fact with

a feeling almost like pleasure. It would be such a swift and thorough

solution of this great problem of life he was working out in

ever-recurring daily anguish! The remote possibility of such a

catastrophe had frightened some timid dwellers beneath The Mountain to

other places of residence; here the danger was most imminent, and yet he

loved to dwell upon the chances of its occurrence. Danger is often the

best counterirritant in cases of mental suffering; he found a solace in

careless exposure of his life, and learned to endure the trials of each

day better by dwelling in imagination on the possibility that it might be

the last for him and the home that was his.

Time, the great consoler, helped these influences, and he gradually fell

into more easy and less dangerous habits of life. He ceased from his

more perilous rambles. He thought less of the danger from the great

overhanging rocks and forests; they had hung there for centuries; it was

not very likely they would crash or slide in his time. He became

accustomed to all Elsie's strange looks and ways. Old Sophy dressed her

with ruffles round her neck, and hunted up the red coral branch with

silver bells which the little toothless Dudleys had bitten upon for a

hundred years. By an infinite effort, her father forced himself to

become the companion of this child, for whom he had such a mingled

feeling, but whose presence was always a trial to him, and often a

terror.

At a cost which no human being could estimate, he had done his duty, and

in some degree reaped his reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of filial

feeling for him, such as her nature was capable of. She never would obey

him; that was not to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments, were

out of the question with her; the mere physical effects of crossing her

will betrayed themselves in such changes of expression and manner that it

would have been senseless to attempt to govern her in any such way.

Leaving her mainly to herself, she could be to some extent indirectly

influenced,--not otherwise. She called her father "Dudley," as if he had

been her brother. She ordered everybody and would be ordered by none.

Who could know all these things, except the few people of the household?

What wonder, therefore, that ignorant and shallow persons laid the blame

on her father of those peculiarities which were freely talked about,--of

those darker tendencies which were hinted of in whispers? To all this

talk, so far as it reached him, he was supremely indifferent, not only

with the indifference which all gentlemen feel to the gossip of their

inferiors, but with a charitable calmness which did not wonder or blame.

He knew that his position was not simply a difficult, but an impossible

one, and schooled himself to bear his destiny as well as he might, and

report himself only at Headquarters.

He had grown gentle under this discipline. His hair was just beginning

to be touched with silver, and his expression was that of habitual

sadness and anxiety. He had no counsellor, as we have seen, to turn to,

who did not know either too much or too little. He had no heart to rest

upon and into which he might unburden himself of the secrets and the

sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had not allowed

himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to his

trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset

solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He

disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He

sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open

eyes through all the weary hours of the night.

It was understood between Dudley Veneer and old Doctor Kittredge that

Elsie was a subject of occasional medical observation, on account of

certain mental peculiarities which might end in a permanent affection of

her reason. Beyond this nothing was said, whatever may have been in the

mind of either. But Dudley Veneer had studied Elsie's case in the light

of all the books he could find which might do anything towards explaining

it. As in all cases where men meddle with medical science for a special

purpose, having no previous acquaintance with it, his imagination found

what it wanted in the books he read, and adjusted it to the facts before

him. So it was he came to cherish those two fancies before alluded to

that the ominous birthmark she had carried from infancy might fade and

become obliterated, and that the age of complete maturity might be

signalized by an entire change in her physical and mental state. He held

these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only half-believed illusions.

Not for the world would he have questioned his sagacious old medical

friend as to the probability or possibility of their being true. We are

very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one

word the hopes we live on.

In this life of comparative seclusion to which the father had doomed

himself for the sake of his child, he had found time for large and varied

reading. The learned Judge Thornton confessed himself surprised at the

extent of Dudley Veneer's information. Doctor Kittredge found that he

was in advance of him in the knowledge of recent physiological

discoveries. He had taken pains to become acquainted with agricultural

chemistry; and the neighboring farmers owed him some useful hints about

the management of their land. He renewed his old acquaintance with the

classic authors. He loved to warm his pulses with Homer and calm them

down with Horace. He received all manner of new books and periodicals,

and gradually gained an interest in the events of the passing time. Yet

he remained almost a hermit, not absolutely refusing to see his

neighbors, nor even churlish towards them, but on the other hand not

cultivating any intimate relations with them.

He had retired from the world a young man, little more than a youth,

indeed, with sentiments and aspirations all of them suddenly

extinguished. The first had bequeathed him a single huge sorrow, the

second a single trying duty. In due time the anguish had lost something

of its poignancy, the light of earlier and happier memories had begun to

struggle with and to soften its thick darkness, and even that duty which

he had confronted with such an effort had become an endurable habit.

At a period of life when many have been living on the capital of their

acquired knowledge and their youthful stock of sensibilities until their

intellects are really shallower and their hearts emptier than they were

at twenty, Dudley Veneer was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul

than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his

present years. He had entered that period which marks the decline of men

who have ceased growing in knowledge and strength: from forty to fifty a

man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life

will carry him rapidly downward. At this time his inward: nature was

richer and deeper than in any earlier period of his life. If he could

only be summoned to action, he was capable of noble service. If his

sympathies could only find an outlet, he was never so capable of love as

now; for his natural affections had been gathering in the course of all

these years, and the traces of that ineffaceable calamity of his life

were softened and partially hidden by new growths of thought and feeling,

as the wreck left by a mountainslide is covered over by the gentle

intrusion of the soft-stemmed herbs which will prepare it for the

stronger vegetation that will bring it once more into harmony with the

peaceful slopes around it.

Perhaps Dudley Veneer had not gained so much in worldly wisdom as if he

had been more in society and less in his study. The indulgence with

which he treated his nephew was, no doubt, imprudent. A man more in the

habit of dealing with men would have been more guarded with a person with

Dick's questionable story and unquestionable physiognomy. But he was

singularly unsuspicious, and his natural kindness was an additional

motive to the wish for introducing some variety into the routine of

Elsie's life.

If Dudley Veneer did not know just what he wanted at this period of his

life, there were a great many people in the town of Rockland who thought

they did know. He had been a widower long enough, "--nigh twenty year,

wa'n't it? He'd been aout to Spraowles's party,--there wa'n't anything

to hender him why he shouldn't stir raound l'k other folks. What was the

reason he did n't go abaout to taown-meetin's 'n' Sahbath-meetin's, 'n'

lyceums, 'n' school 'xaminations, 'n' s'prise-parties, 'n' funerals,--and

other entertainments where the still-faced two-story folks were in the

habit of looking round to see if any of the mansion-house gentry were

present?--Fac' was, he was livin' too lonesome daown there at the

mansion-haouse. Why shouldn't he make up to the Jedge's daughter? She

was genteel enough for him, and--let's see, haow old was she?

Seven-'n'itwenty,--no, six-'n'-twenty,--born the same year we buried our

little Anny Marl".

There was no possible objection to this arrangement, if the parties

interested had seen fit to make it or even to think of it. But "Portia,"

as some of the mansion-house people called her, did not happen to awaken

the elective affinities of the lonely widower. He met her once in a

while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand

style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite

so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her

speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but with two or three more

joints in her frame, and two or three soft inflections in her voice,

which for some absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so

bewitched him that he told her half his secrets and looked into her eyes

all that he could not tell, in less time than it would have takes him to

discuss the champion paper of the last Quarterly with the admirable

"Portia." Heu, quanto minus! How much more was that lost image to him

than all it left on earth!

The study of love is very much like that of meteorology. We know that

just about so much rain will fall in a season; but on what particular day

it will shower is more than we can tell. We know that just about so much

love will be made every year in a given population; but who will rain his

young affections upon the heart of whom is not known except to the

astrologers and fortune-tellers. And why rain falls as it does and why

love is made just as it is are equally puzzling questions.

The woman a man loves is always his own daughter, far more his daughter

than the female children born to him by the common law of life. It is

not the outside woman, who takes his name, that he loves: before her

image has reached the centre of his consciousness, it has passed through

fifty many-layered nerve-strainers, been churned over by ten thousand

pulse-beats, and reacted upon by millions of lateral impulses which bandy

it about through the mental spaces as a reflection is sent back and

forward in a saloon lined with mirrors. With this altered image of the

woman before him, his preexisting ideal becomes blended. The object of

his love is in part the offspring of her legal parents, but more of her

lover's brain. The difference between the real and the ideal objects of

love must not exceed a fixed maximum. The heart's vision cannot unite

them stereoscopically into a single image, if the divergence passes

certain limits. A formidable analogy, much in the nature of a proof,

with very serious consequences, which moralists and match-makers would do

well to remember! Double vision with the eyes of the heart is a

dangerous physiological state, and may lead to missteps and serious

falls.

Whether Dudley Veneer would ever find a breathing image near enough to

his ideal one, to fill the desolate chamber of his heart, or not, was

very doubtful. Some gracious and gentle woman, whose influence would

steal upon him as the first low words of prayer after that interval of

silent mental supplication known to one of our simpler forms of public

worship, gliding into his consciousness without hurting its old griefs,

herself knowing the chastening of sorrow, and subdued into sweet

acquiescence with the Divine will,--some such woman as this, if Heaven

should send him such, might call him back to the world of happiness, from

which he seemed forever exiled. He could never again be the young lover

who walked through the garden-alleys all red with roses in the old dead

and buried June of long ago. He could never forget the bride of his

youth, whose image, growing phantomlike with the lapse of years, hovered

over him like a dream while waking and like a reality in dreams. But if

it might be in God's good providence that this desolate life should come

under the influence of human affections once more, what an ecstasy of

renewed existence was in store for him! His life had not all been buried

under that narrow ridge of turf with the white stone at its head. It

seemed so for a while; but it was not and could not and ought not to be

so. His first passion had been a true and pure one; there was no spot or

stain upon it. With all his grief there blended no cruel recollection of

any word or look he would have wished to forget. All those little

differences, such as young married people with any individual flavor in

their characters must have, if they are tolerably mated, had only added

to the music of existence, as the lesser discords admitted into some

perfect symphony, fitly resolved, add richness and strength to the whole

harmonious movement. It was a deep wound that Fate had inflicted on him;

nay, it seemed like a mortal one; but the weapon was clean, and its edge

was smooth. Such wounds must heal with time in healthy natures, whatever

a false sentiment may say, by the wise and beneficent law of our being.

The recollection of a deep and true affection is rather a divine

nourishment for a life to grow strong upon than a poison to destroy it.

Dudley Venner's habitual sadness could not be laid wholly to his early

bereavement. It was partly the result of the long struggle between

natural affection and duty, on one side, and the involuntary tendencies

these had to overcome, on the other,--between hope and fear, so long in

conflict that despair itself would have been like an anodyne, and he

would have slept upon some final catastrophe with the heavy sleep of a

bankrupt after his failure is proclaimed. Alas! some new affection might

perhaps rekindle the fires of youth in his heart; but what power could

calm that haggard terror of the parent which rose with every morning's

sun and watched with every evening star,--what power save alone that of

him who comes bearing the inverted torch, and leaving after him only the

ashes printed with his footsteps?

CHAPTER XXI.

THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.

There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely

condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and with

that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people

thought, in spite of all the stories. The feelings expressed by the good

folks who dated from the time when they "buried aour little Anny Mari',"

and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all.

And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various

ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the

preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin

with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little

chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept

himself so much out of the way as the master of the Dudley Mansion.

Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of late years, to get

him out of his study, which had, for the most part, proved failures. It

was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at the Great Party at the

Colonel's. But it was an encouragement to try him again, and the

consequence had been that he had received a number of notes inviting him

to various smaller entertainments, which, as neither he nor Elsie had any

fancy for them, he had politely declined.

Such was the state of things when he received an invitation to take tea

sociably, with a few friends, at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of the

Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known as

Major Rowens. Major Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising

officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his waistband

was getting tighter every year; and, as all the world knows, the

militia-officer who splits off most buttons and fills the largest

sword-belt stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we might say,

spreading, to be General.

Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits which help a man

to eminence in the branch of public service referred to. He ran to high

colors, to wide whiskers, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin

common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,--never found in the Brahmin

caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know

what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button

which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion surface

shows you what to look for. He had the loud gruff voice which implies

the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with

bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy

limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He

had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that

step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something

fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes

gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He had no

objection, either, to holding the reins in a wagon behind another kind of

horse,--a slouching, listless beast, with a strong slant to his shoulder;

and a notable depth to his quarter and an emphatic angle at the hock, who

commonly walked or lounged along in a lazy trot of five or six miles an

hour; but, if a lively colt happened to come rattling up alongside, or a

brandy-faced old horse-jockey took the road to show off a fast nag, and

threw his dust into the Major's face, would pick his legs up all at once,

and straighten his body out, and swing off into a three-minute gait, in a

way that "Old Blue" himself need not have been ashamed of.

For some reason which must be left to the next generation of professors

to find out, the men who are knowing in horse-flesh have an eye also for,

let a long dash separate the brute creation from the angelic being now to

be named,--for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be no possible

doubt; and therefore you shall notice, that, if a fast horse trots before

two, one of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit of muliebrity, with

shapes to her, and eyes flying about in all directions.

Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of the Rockland Fusileers, had

driven and "traded" horses not a few before he turned his acquired skill

as a judge of physical advantages in another direction. He knew a neat,

snug hoof, a delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep chest, a close

ribbed-up barrel, as well as any other man in the town. He was not to be

taken in by your thick-jointed, heavy-headed cattle, without any go to

them, that suit a country-parson, nor yet by the "gaanted-up,"

long-legged animals, with all their constitutions bred out of them, such

as rich greenhorns buy and cover up with their plated trappings.

Whether his equine experience was of any use to him in the selection of

the mate with whom he was to go in double harness so long as they both

should live, we need not stop to question. At any rate, nobody could

find fault with the points of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he offered

the privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens. The Van must have been crossed

out of her blood, for she was an out-and-out brunette, with hair and eyes

black enough for a Mohawk's daughter. A fine style of woman, with very

striking tints and outlines,--an excellent match for the Lieutenant,

except for one thing. She was marked by Nature for a widow. She was

evidently got up for mourning, and never looked so well as in deep black,

with jet ornaments.

The man who should dare to marry her would doom himself; for how could

she become the widow she was bound to be, unless he could retire and give

her a chance? The Lieutenant lived, however, as we have seen, to become

Captain and then Major, with prospects of further advancement. But Mrs.

Rowens often said she should never look well in colors. At last her

destiny fulfilled itself, and the justice of Nature was vindicated.

Major Rowens got overheated galloping about the field on the day of the

Great Muster, and had a rush of blood to the head, according to the

common report,--at any rate, something which stopped him short in his

career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens in her

normal condition of widowhood.

The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very

shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven

hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with

every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone

with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black

gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold flounces, from beneath

which a small foot showed itself from time to time, clad in the same hue

of mourning. Everything about her was dark, except the whites of her

eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete. Gray's Elegy

was not a more perfect composition.

Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume belonging to her

condition, she did not disguise from herself that under certain

circumstances she might be willing to change her name again. Thus, for

instance, if a gentleman not too far gone in maturity, of dignified

exterior, with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable character, should

happen to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him happy was

to give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming colors again for his

sake,--why, she felt that it was in her nature to make the sacrifice. By

a singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman was now living in

Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was, the

sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see how it

looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains close,

and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be sure there

was nobody in the entry,--just to see how it looked, she had taken out an

envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Manilla Veneer. It made her

head swim and her knees tremble. What if she should faint, or die, or

have a stroke of palsy, and they should break into the room and find that

name written! How she caught it up and tore it into little shreds, and

then could not be easy until she had burned the small heap of pieces--

But these are things which every honorable reader will consider imparted

in strict confidence.

The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion house set, was among the most

genteel of the two-story circle, and was in the habit of visiting some of

the great people. In one of these visits she met a dashing young fellow

with an olive complexion at the house of a professional gentleman who had

married one of the white necks and pairs of fat arms from a distinguished

family before referred to. The professional gentleman himself was out,

but the lady introduced the olive-complexioned young man as Mr. Richard

Venner.

The Widow was particularly pleased with this accidental meeting. Had

heard Mr. Venner's name frequently mentioned. Hoped his uncle was well,

and his charming cousin,--was she as original as ever? Had often admired

that charming creature he rode: we had had some fine horses. Had never

got over her taste for riding, but could find nobody that liked a good

long gallop since--well--she could n't help wishing she was alongside of

him, the other day, when she saw him dashing by, just at twilight.

The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a very deep black

border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender foot

beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked up; looked down; looked

at Mr. Richard, the very picture of artless simplicity,--as represented

in well-played genteel comedy.

"A good bit of stuff," Dick said to himself, "and something of it left

yet; caramba!" The Major had not studied points for nothing, and the

Widow was one of the right sort. The young man had been a little

restless of late, and was willing to vary his routine by picking up an

acquaintance here and there. So he took the Widow's hint. He should

like to have a scamper of half a dozen miles with her some fine morning.

The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not sure that she could find any

horse in the village to suit her; but it was so kind in him! Would he not

call at Hyacinth Cottage, and let her thank him again there?

Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow made the most of, and on the

strength of which she determined to give a tea-party and invite a number

of persons of whom we know something already. She took a half-sheet of

note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country "merchant's

clerk" adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve

and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he

can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody.

After much consideration the list reduced itself to the following names:

Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose house she

had met him,--mansion-house breed,--but will come,--soft on Dick; Dudley

Venner,--take care of him herself; Elsie,--Dick will see to her,--won't

it fidget the Creamer woman to see him round her? the old Doctor,--he 's

always handy; and there's that young master there, up at the

school,--know him well enough to ask him,--oh, yes, he'll come. One,

two, three, four, five, six,--seven; not room enough, without the leaf in

the table; one place empty, if the leaf's in. Let's see,--Helen Darley,

--she 'll do well enough to fill it up,--why, yes, just the thing,

--light brown hair, blue eyes,--won't my pattern show off well against

her? Put her down,--she 's worth her tea and toast ten times over,

--nobody knows what a "thunder-and-lightning woman," as poor Major used

to have it, is, till she gets alongside of one of those old-maidish

girls, with hair the color of brown sugar, and eyes like the blue of a

teacup.

The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph at having overcome her

difficulties and arranged her party,--arose and stood before her glass,

three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to show the whites of

the eyes and the down of the upper lip. "Splendid!" said the Widow--and

to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with Helen Darley

as a foil anybody would know she must be foudroyant and pyramidal,--if

these French adjectives may be naturalized for this one particular

exigency.

So the Widow sent out her notes. The black grief which had filled her

heart and had overflowed in surges of crape around her person had left a

deposit half an inch wide at the margin of her note-paper. Her seal was a

small youth with an inverted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche

Creamer made her spiteful remark, that she expected to see that boy of

the Widow's standing on his head yet; meaning, as Dick supposed, that she

would get the torch right-side up as soon as she had a chance. That was

after Dick had made the Widow's acquaintance, and Mrs. Creamer had got it

into her foolish head that she would marry that young fellow, if she

could catch him. How could he ever come to fancy such a quadroon-looking

thing as that, she should like to know?

It is easy enough to ask seven people to a party; but whether they will

come or not is an open question, as it was in the case of the spirits of

the vasty deep. If the note issues from a three-story mansion-house, and

goes to two-story acquaintances, they will all be in an excellent state

of health, and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite

invitation. If the note is from the lady of a two-story family to

three-story ones, the former highly respectable person will very probably

find that an endemic complaint is prevalent, not represented in the

weekly bills of mortality, which occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms

of eminently desirable parties that they cannot have the pleasure of

and-so-forthing.

In this case there was room for doubt,--mainly as to whether Elsie would

take a fancy to come or not. If she should come, her father would

certainly be with her. Dick had promised, and thought he could bring

Elsie. Of course the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor

tired-out looking Helen, if only to get out of sight of those horrid

Peckham wretches. They don't get such invitations every day. The others

she felt sure of,--all but the old Doctor,--he might have some horrid

patient or other to visit; tell him Elsie Venner's going to be there,--he

always likes to have an eye on her, they say,--oh, he'd come fast enough,

without any more coaxing.

She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was odd, but she was afraid of

Elsie. She felt as if she should be safe enough, if the old Doctor were

there to see to the girl; and then she should have leisure to devote

herself more freely to the young lady's father, for whom all her

sympathies were in a state of lively excitement.

It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many persons round her

table as she had now invited. Better have the plates set and see how

they will fill it up with the leaf in.--A little too scattering with only

eight plates set: if she could find two more people, now, that would

bring the chairs a little closer,--snug, you know,--which makes the

company sociable. The Widow thought over her acquaintances. Why how

stupid! there was her good minister, the same who had married her, and

might--might--bury her for aught she anew, and his granddaughter staying

with him,--nice little girl, pretty, and not old enough to be

dangerous;--for the Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking

people to it that would be like to stand between her and any little

project she might happen to have on anybody's heart,--not she! It was

all right now; Blanche was married and so forth; Letty was a child; Elsie

was his daughter; Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge,--poor

thing!--faded, faded,--colors wouldn't wash, just what she wanted to show

off against. Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only

come,--that was the great point.

"Here's a note for us, Elsie," said her father, as they sat round the

breakfast-table. "Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea."

It was one of "Elsie's days," as old Sophy called them. The light in her

eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and

wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her

father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this

determination,--and his own way of setting about it.

"I don't want to go," he said. "What do you say, uncle?"

"To tell the truth, Richard, I don't mach fancy the Major's widow. I

don't like to see her weeds flowering out quite so strong. I suppose you

don't care about going, Elsie?"

Elsie looked up in her father's face with an expression which he knew but

too well. She was just in the state which the plain sort of people call

"contrary," when they have to deal with it in animals. She would insist

on going to that tea-party; he knew it just as well before she spoke as

after she had spoken. If Dick had said he wanted to go and her father

had seconded his wishes, she would have insisted on staying at home. It

was no great matter, her father said to himself, after all; very likely

it would amuse her; the Widow was a lively woman enough,--perhaps a

little comme il ne faut pas socially, compared with the Thorntons and

some other families; but what did he care for these petty village

distinctions?

Elsie spoke.

"I mean to go. You must go with me, Dudley. You may do as you like,

Dick."

That settled the Dudley-mansion business, of course. They all three

accepted, as fortunately did all the others who had been invited.

Hyacinth Cottage was a pretty place enough, a little too much choked

round with bushes, and too much overrun with climbing-roses, which, in

the season of slugs and rose-bugs, were apt to show so brown about the

leaves and so coleopterous about the flowers, that it might be questioned

whether their buds and blossoms made up for these unpleasant animal

combinations,--especially as the smell of whale-oil soap was very

commonly in the ascendant over that of the roses. It had its patch of

grass called "the lawn," and its glazed closet known as "the

conservatory," according to that system of harmless fictions

characteristic of the rural imagination and shown in the names applied to

many familiar objects. The interior of the cottage was more tasteful and

ambitious than that of the ordinary two-story dwellings. In place of the

prevailing hair-cloth covered furniture, the visitor had the satisfaction

of seating himself upon a chair covered with some of the Widow's

embroidery, or a sofa luxurious with soft caressing plush. The sporting

tastes of the late Major showed in various prints on the wall: Herring's

"Plenipotentiary," the "red bullock" of the '34 Derby; "Cadland" and "The

Colonel;" "Crucifix;" "West-Australian," fastest of modern racers; and

among native celebrities, ugly, game old "Boston," with his straight neck

and ragged hips; and gray "Lady Suffolk," queen, in her day, not of the

turf but of the track, "extending" herself till she measured a rod, more

or less, skimming along within a yard of the ground, her legs opening and

shutting under her with a snap, like the four blades of a compound

jack-knife.

These pictures were much more refreshing than those dreary fancy

death-bed scenes, common in two-story country-houses, in which Washington

and other distinguished personages are represented as obligingly devoting

their last moments to taking a prominent part in a tableau, in which

weeping relatives, attached servants, professional assistants, and

celebrated personages who might by a stretch of imagination be supposed

present, are grouped in the most approved style of arrangement about the

chief actor's pillow.

A single glazed bookcase held the family library, which was hidden from

vulgar eyes by green silk curtains behind the glass. It would have been

instructive to get a look at it, as it always is to peep into one's

neighbor's book-shelves. From other sources and opportunities a partial

idea of it has been obtained. The Widow had inherited some books from

her mother, who was something of a reader: Young's "Night-Thoughts;" "The

Preceptor;" "The Task, a Poem," by William Cowper; Hervey's

"Meditations;" "Alonzo and Melissa;" "Buccaneers of America;" "The

Triumphs of Temper;" "La Belle Assemblee;" Thomson's "Seasons;" and a few

others. The Major had brought in "Tom Jones" and "Peregrine Pickle;"

various works by Mr. Pierce Egan; "Boxiana," "The Racing Calendar;" and a

"Book of Lively Songs and Jests." The Widow had added the Poems of Lord

Byron and T. Moore; "Eugene Aram;" "The Tower of London," by Harrison

Ainsworth; some of Scott's Novels; "The Pickwick Papers;" a volume of

Plays, by W. Shakespeare; "Proverbial Philosophy;" "Pilgrim's Progress;"

"The Whole Duty of Man" (a present when she was married); with two

celebrated religious works, one by William Law and the other by Philip

Doddridge, which were sent her after her husband's death, and which she

had tried to read, but found that they did not agree with her. Of course

the bookcase held a few school manuals and compendiums, and one of Mr.

Webster's Dictionaries. But the gilt-edged Bible always lay on the

centre-table, next to the magazine with the fashion-plates and the

scrap-book with pictures from old annuals and illustrated papers.

The reader need not apprehend the recital, at full length, of such

formidable preparations for the Widow's tea-party as were required in the

case of Colonel Sprowle's Social Entertainment. A tea-party, even in the

country, is a comparatively simple and economical piece of business. As

soon as the Widow found that all her company were coming, she set to

work, with the aid of her "smart" maid-servant and a daughter of her own,

who was beginning to stretch and spread at a fearful rate, but whom she

treated as a small child, to make the necessary preparations. The silver

had to be rubbed; also the grand plated urn,--her mother's before

hers,--style of the Empire,--looking as if it might have been made to

hold the Major's ashes. Then came the making and baking of cake and

gingerbread, the smell whereof reached even as far as the sidewalk in

front of the cottage, so that small boys returning from school snuffed it

in the breeze, and discoursed with each other on its suggestions; so that

the Widow Leech, who happened to pass, remembered she had n't called on

Marilly Raowens for a consid'ble spell, and turned in at the gate and

rang three times with long intervals,--but all in vain, the inside Widow

having "spotted" the outside one through the blinds, and whispered to her

aides-de-camp to let the old thing ring away till she pulled the bell out

by the roots, but not to stir to open the door.

Widow Rowens was what they called a real smart, capable woman, not very

great on books, perhaps, but knew what was what and who was who as well

as another,--knew how to make the little cottage look pretty, how to set

out a tea-table, and, what a good many women never can find out, knew her

own style and "got herself up tip-top," as our young friend Master

Geordie, Colonel Sprowle's heir-apparent, remarked to his friend from one

of the fresh-water colleges. Flowers were abundant now, and she had

dressed her rooms tastefully with them. The centre-table had two or

three gilt-edged books lying carelessly about on it, and some prints and

a stereoscope with stereographs to match, chiefly groups of picnics,

weddings, etc., in which the same somewhat fatigued looking ladies of

fashion and brides received the attentions of the same unpleasant-looking

young men, easily identified under their different disguises, consisting

of fashionable raiment such as gentlemen are supposed to wear habitually.

With these, however, were some pretty English scenes,--pretty except for

the old fellow with the hanging under-lip who infests every one of that

interesting series; and a statue or two, especially that famous one

commonly called the Lahcoon, so as to rhyme with moon and spoon, and

representing an old man with his two sons in the embraces of two

monstrous serpents.

There is no denying that it was a very dashing achievement of the Widow's

to bring together so considerable a number of desirable guests. She felt

proud of her feat; but as to the triumph of getting Dudley Venner to come

out for a visit to Hyacinth Cottage, she was surprised and almost

frightened at her own success. So much might depend on the impressions

of that evening!

The next thing was to be sure that everybody should be in the right place

at the tea-table, and this the Widow thought she could manage by a few

words to the older guests and a little shuffling about and shifting when

they got to the table. To settle everything the Widow made out a

diagram, which the reader should have a chance of inspecting in an

authentic copy, if these pages were allowed under any circumstances to be

the vehicle of illustrations. If, however, he or she really wishes to

see the way the pieces stood as they were placed at the beginning of the

game, (the Widow's gambit,) he or she had better at once take a sheet of

paper, draw an oval, and arrange the characters according to the

following schedule.

At the head of the table, the Hostess, Widow Marilla Rowens. Opposite

her, at the other end, Rev. Dr. Honeywood. At the right of the Hostess,

Dudley Veneer, next him Helen Darley, next her Dr. Kittredge, next him

Mrs. Blanche Creamer, then the Reverend Doctor. At the left of the

Hostess, Bernard Langdon, next him Letty Forrester, next Letty Mr.

Richard Veneer, next him Elsie, and so to the Reverend Doctor again.

The company came together a little before the early hour at which it was

customary to take tea in Rockland. The Widow knew everybody, of course:

who was there in Rockland she did not know? But some of them had to be

introduced: Mr. Richard Veneer to Mr. Bernard, Mr. Bernard to Miss Letty,

Dudley Veneer to Miss Helen Darley, and so on. The two young men looked

each other straight in the eyes, both full of youthful life, but one of

frank and fearless aspect, the other with a dangerous feline beauty alien

to the New England half of his blood.

The guests talked, turned over the prints, looked at the flowers, opened

the "Proverbial Philosophy" with gilt edges, and the volume of Plays by

W. Shakespeare, examined the horse-pictures on the walls, and so passed

away the time until tea was announced, when they paired off for the room

where it was in readiness. The Widow had managed it well; everything was

just as she wanted it. Dudley Veneer was between herself and the poor

tired-looking schoolmistress with her faded colors. Blanche Creamer, a

lax, tumble-to-pieces, Greuze-ish looking blonde, whom the Widow hated

because the men took to her, was purgatoried between the two old Doctors,

and could see all the looks that passed between Dick Venner and his

cousin. The young schoolmaster could talk to Miss Letty: it was his

business to know how to talk to schoolgirls. Dick would amuse himself

with his cousin Elsie. The old Doctors only wanted to be well fed and

they would do well enough.

It would be very pleasant to describe the tea-table; but in reality, it

did not pretend to offer a plethoric banquet to the guests. The Widow

had not visited the mansion-houses for nothing, and she had learned there

that an overloaded tea-table may do well enough for farm-hands when they

come in at evening from their work and sit down unwashed in their

shirtsleeves, but that for decently bred people such an insult to the

memory of a dinner not yet half-assimilated is wholly inadmissible.

Everything was delicate, and almost everything of fair complexion: white

bread and biscuits, frosted and sponge cake, cream, honey, straw-colored

butter; only a shadow here and there, where the fire had crisped and

browned the surfaces of a stack of dry toast, or where a preserve had

brought away some of the red sunshine of the last year's summer. The

Widow shall have the credit of her well-ordered tea-table, also of her

bountiful cream-pitchers; for it is well known that city-people find

cream a very scarce luxury in a good many country-houses of more

pretensions than Hyacinth Cottage. There are no better maims for ladies

who give tea-parties than these:

Cream is thicker than water. Large heart never loved little cream pot.

There is a common feeling in genteel families that the third meal of the

day is not so essential a part of the daily bread as to require any

especial acknowledgment to the Providence which bestows it. Very devout

people, who would never sit down to a breakfast or a dinner without the

grace before meat which honors the Giver of it, feel as if they thanked

Heaven enough for their tea and toast by partaking of them cheerfully

without audible petition or ascription. But the Widow was not exactly

mansion-house-bred, and so thought it necessary to give the Reverend

Doctor a peculiar look which he understood at once as inviting his

professional services. He, therefore, uttered a few simple words of

gratitude, very quietly,--much to the satisfaction of some of the guests,

who had expected one of those elaborate effusions, with rolling up of the

eyes and rhetorical accents, so frequent with eloquent divines when they

address their Maker in genteel company.

Everybody began talking with the person sitting next at hand. Mr.

Bernard naturally enough turned his attention first to the Widow; but

somehow or other the right side of the Widow seemed to be more wide awake

than the left side, next him, and he resigned her to the courtesies of

Mr. Dudley Venner, directing himself, not very unwillingly, to the young

girl next him on the other side. Miss Letty Forrester, the granddaughter

of the Reverend Doctor, was city-bred, as anybody might see, and

city-dressed, as any woman would know at sight; a man might only feel the

general effect of clear, well-matched colors, of harmonious proportions,

of the cut which makes everything cling like a bather's sleeve where a

natural outline is to be kept, and ruffle itself up like the hackle of a

pitted fighting-cock where art has a right to luxuriate in silken

exuberance. How this citybred and city-dressed girl came to be in

Rockland Mr. Bernard did not know, but he knew at any rate that she was

his next neighbor and entitled to his courtesies. She was handsome, too,

when he came to look, very handsome when he came to look again,--endowed

with that city beauty which is like the beauty of wall-fruit, something

finer in certain respects than can be reared off the pavement.

The miserable routinists who keep repeating invidiously Cowper's

"God made the country and man made the town,"

as if the town were a place to kill out the race in, do not know what

they are talking about. Where could they raise such Saint-Michael pears,

such Saint-Germains, such Brown-Beurres, as we had until within a few

years growing within the walls of our old city-gardens? Is the dark and

damp cavern where a ragged beggar hides himself better than a

town-mansion which fronts the sunshine and backs on its own cool shadow,

with gas and water and all appliances to suit all needs? God made the

cavern and man made the house! What then?

There is no doubt that the pavement keeps a deal of mischief from coming

up out of the earth, and, with a dash off of it in summer, just to cool

the soles of the feet when it gets too hot, is the best place for many

constitutions, as some few practical people have already discovered. And

just so these beauties that grow and ripen against the city-walls, these

young fellows with cheeks like peaches and young girls with cheeks like

nectarines, show that the most perfect forms of artificial life can do as

much for the human product as garden-culture for strawberries and

blackberries.

If Mr. Bernard had philosophized or prosed in this way, with so pretty,

nay, so lovely a neighbor as Miss Letty Forrester waiting for him to

speak to her, he would have to be dropped from this narrative as a person

unworthy of his good-fortune, and not deserving the kind reader's further

notice. On the contrary, he no sooner set his eyes fairly on her than he

said to himself that she was charming, and that he wished she were one of

his scholars at the Institute. So he began talking with her in an easy

way; for he knew something of young girls by this time, and, of course,

could adapt himself to a young lady who looked as if she might be not

more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore could hardly be a

match in intellectual resources for the seventeen and eighteen year-old

first-class scholars of the Apollinean Institute. But city-wall-fruit

ripens early, and he soon found that this girl's training had so

sharpened her wits and stored her memory, that he need not be at the

trouble to stoop painfully in order to come down to her level.

The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all relations

without effort, true to itself always however the manners of those around

it may change. Self-respect and respect for others,--the sensitive

consciousness poises itself in these as the compass in the ship's

binnacle balances itself and maintains its true level within the two

concentric rings which suspend it on their pivots. This thorough-bred

school-girl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard. He could not understand where

she got her style, her way of dress, her enunciation, her easy manners.

The minister was a most worthy gentleman, but this was not the Rockland

native-born manner; some new element had come in between the good, plain,

worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince's partner where

there were a thousand to choose from.

He looked across to Helen Darley, for he knew she would understand the

glance of admiration with which he called her attention to the young

beauty at his side; and Helen knew what a young girl could be, as

compared with what too many a one is, as well as anybody.

This poor, dear Helen of ours! How admirable the contrast between her

and the Widow on the other side of Dudley Venner! But, what was very

odd, that gentleman apparently thought the contrast was to the advantage

of this poor, dear Helen. At any rate, instead of devoting himself

solely to the Widow, he happened to be just at that moment talking in a

very interested and, apparently, not uninteresting way to his right-hand

neighbor, who, on her part, never looked more charmingly,--as Mr. Bernard

could not help saying to himself,--but, to be sure, he had just been

looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of

beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for you know

M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent;

that it soaks itself with light in an instant's exposure, so that it is

wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous

vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of darkness, and

betrays itself by the light which escapes from its surface.

Whatever were the reason, this poor, dear Helen never looked so sweetly.

Her plainly parted brown hair, her meek, blue eyes, her cheek just a

little tinged with color, the almost sad simplicity of her dress, and

that look he knew so well,--so full of cheerful patience, so sincere,

that he had trusted her from the first moment as the believers of the

larger half of Christendom trust the Blessed Virgin,--Mr. Bernard took

this all in at a glance, and felt as pleased as if it had been his own

sister Dorothea Elizabeth that he was looking at. As for Dudley Veneer,

Mr. Bernard could not help being struck by the animated expression of his

countenance. It certainly showed great kindness, on his part, to pay so

much attention to this quiet girl, when he had the thunder-and-lightning

Widow on the other side of him.

Mrs. Marilla Rowens did not know what to make of it. She had made her

tea-party expressly for Mr. Dudley Veneer. She had placed him just as

she wanted, between herself and a meek, delicate woman who dressed in

gray, wore a plain breastpin with hair in it, who taught a pack of girls

up there at the school, and looked as if she were born for a

teacher,--the very best foil that she could have chosen; and here was

this man, polite enough to herself, to be sure, but turning round to that

very undistinguished young person as if he rather preferred her

conversation of the two!

The truth was that Dudley Veneer and Helen Darley met as two travellers

might meet in the desert, wearied, both of them, with their long journey,

one having food, but no water, the other water, but no food. Each saw

that the other had been in long conflict with some trial; for their

voices were low and tender, as patiently borne sorrow and humbly uttered

prayers make every human voice. Through these tones, more than by what

they said, they came into natural sympathetic relations with each other.

Nothing could be more unstudied. As for Dudley Venner, no beauty in all

the world could have so soothed and magnetized him as the very repose and

subdued gentleness which the Widow had thought would make the best

possible background for her own more salient and effective attractions.

No doubt, Helen, on her side, was almost too readily pleased with the

confidence this new acquaintance she was making seemed to show her from

the very first. She knew so few men of any condition! Mr. Silas

Peckham: he was her employer, and she ought to think of him as well as

she could; but every time she thought of him it was with a shiver of

disgust. Mr. Bernard Langdon: a noble young man, a true friend, like a

brother to her,--God bless him, and send him some young heart as fresh as

his own! But this gentleman produced a new impression upon her, quite

different from any to which she was accustomed. His rich, low tones had

the strangest significance to her; she felt sure he must have lived

through long experiences, sorrowful like her own. Elsie's father! She

looked into his dark eyes, as she listened to him, to see if they had any

glimmer of that peculiar light, diamond-bright, but cold and still, which

she knew so well in Elsie's. Anything but that! Never was there more

tenderness, it seemed to her, than in the whole look and expression of

Elsie's father. She must have been a great trial to him; yet his face

was that of one who had been saddened, not soured, by his discipline.

Knowing what Elsie must be to him, how hard she must make any parent's

life, Helen could not but be struck with the interest Mr. Dudley Venner

showed in her as his daughter's instructress. He was too kind to her;

again and again she meekly turned from him, so as to leave him free to

talk to the showy lady at his other side, who was looking all the while

"like the night

Of cloudless realms and starry skies;"

but still Mr. Dudley Venner, after a few courteous words, came back to

the blue eyes and brown hair; still he kept his look fixed upon her, and

his tones grew sweeter and lower as he became more interested in talk,

until this poor, dear Helen, what with surprise, and the bashfulness

natural to one who had seen little of the gay world, and the stirring of

deep, confused sympathies with this suffering father, whose heart seemed

so full of kindness, felt her cheeks glowing with unwonted flame, and

betrayed the pleasing trouble of her situation by looking so sweetly as

to arrest Mr. Bernard's eye for a moment, when he looked away from the

young beauty sitting next him.

Elsie meantime had been silent, with that singular, still, watchful look

which those who knew her well had learned to fear. Her head just a

little inclined on one side, perfectly motionless for whole minutes, her

eyes seeming to, grow small and bright, as always when she was under her

evil influence, she was looking obliquely at the young girl on the other

side of her cousin Dick and next to Bernard Langdon. As for Dick

himself, she seemed to be paying very little attention to him. Sometimes

her eyes would wander off to Mr. Bernard, and their expression, as old

Dr. Kittredge, who watched her for a while pretty keenly, noticed, would

change perceptibly. One would have said that she looked with a kind of

dull hatred at the girl, but with a half-relenting reproachful anger at

Mr. Bernard.

Miss Letty Forrester, at whom Elsie had been looking from time to time in

this fixed way, was conscious meanwhile of some unusual influence. First

it was a feeling of constraint,--then, as it were, a diminished power

over the muscles, as if an invisible elastic cobweb were spinning round

her,--then a tendency to turn away from Mr. Bernard, who was making

himself very agreeable, and look straight into those eyes which would not

leave her, and which seemed to be drawing her towards them, while at the

same time they chilled the blood in all her veins.

Mr. Bernard saw this influence coming over her. All at once he noticed

that she sighed, and that some little points of moisture began to glisten

on her forehead. But she did not grow pale perceptibly; she had no

involuntary or hysteric movements; she still listened to him and smiled

naturally enough. Perhaps she was only nervous at being stared at. At

any rate, she was coming under some unpleasant influence or other, and

Mr. Bernard had seen enough of the strange impression Elsie sometimes

produced to wish this young girl to be relieved from it, whatever it was.

He turned toward Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to draw her

eyes upon him. Then he looked steadily and calmly into them. It was a

great effort, for some perfectly inexplicable reason. At one instant he

thought he could not sit where he was; he must go and speak to Elsie.

Then he wanted to take his eyes away from hers; there was something

intolerable in the light that came from them. But he was determined to

look her down, and he believed he could do it, for he had seen her

countenance change more than once when he had caught her gaze steadily

fixed on him. All this took not minutes, but seconds. Presently she

changed color slightly,--lifted her head, which was inclined a little to

one side,--shut and opened her eyes two or three times, as if they had

been pained or wearied,--and turned away baffled, and shamed, as it would

seem, and shorn for the time of her singular and formidable or at least

evil-natured power of swaying the impulses of those around her.

It takes too long to describe these scenes where a good deal of life is

concentrated into a few silent seconds. Mr. Richard Veneer had sat

quietly through it all, although this short pantomime had taken place

literally before his face. He saw what was going on well enough, and

understood it all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been

trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little schoolgirl

was a decoy-duck,--that was all. Estates like the Dudley property were

not to be had every day, and no doubt the Yankee usher was willing to

take some pains to make sure of Elsie. Does n't Elsie look savage? Dick

involuntarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought he felt

a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist. A dare-devil fellow,

but somehow or other this girl had taken strange hold of his imagination,

and he often swore to himself, that, when he married her, he would carry

a loaded revolver with him to his bridal chamber.

Mrs. Blanche Creamer raged inwardly at first to find herself between the

two old gentlemen of the party. It very soon gave her great comfort,

however, to see that Marilla, Rowens had just missed it in her

calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Veneer devoting

himself chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens woman should hook Dudley,

she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for spite. To think of

seeing her barouching about Rockland behind a pair of long-tailed bays

and a coachman with a band on his hat, while she, Blanche Creamer, was

driving herself about in a one-horse "carriage"! Recovering her spirits

by degrees, she began playing her surfaces off at the two old Doctors,

just by way of practice. First she heaved up a glaring white shoulder,

the right one, so that the Reverend Doctor should be stunned by it, if

such a thing might be. The Reverend Doctor was human, as the Apostle was

not ashamed to confess himself. Half-devoutly and half-mischievously he

repeated inwardly, "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." As the

Reverend Doctor did not show any lively susceptibility, she thought she

would try the left shoulder on old Dr. Kittredge. That worthy and

experienced student of science was not at all displeased with the

manoeuvre, and lifted his head so as to command the exhibition through

his glasses. "Blanche is good for half a dozen years or so, if she is

careful," the Doctor said to himself, "and then she must take to her

prayer-book." After this spasmodic failure of Mrs. Blanche Creamer's to

stir up the old Doctors, she returned again to the pleasing task of

watching the Widow in her evident discomfiture. But dark as the Widow

looked in her half-concealed pet, she was but as a pale shadow, compared

to Elsie in her silent concentration of shame and anger.

"Well, there is one good thing," said Mrs. Blanche Creamer; "Dick doesn't

get much out of that cousin of his this evening! Does n't he look

handsome, though?"

So Mrs. Blanche, being now a good deal taken up with her observations of

those friends of hers and ours, began to be rather careless of her two

old Doctors, who naturally enough fell into conversation with each other

across the white surfaces of that lady, perhaps not very politely, but,

under the, circumstances, almost as a matter of necessity.

When a minister and a doctor get talking together, they always have a

great deal to say; and so it happened that the company left the table

just as the two Doctors were beginning to get at each other's ideas about

various interesting matters. If we follow them into the other parlor, we

can, perhaps, pick up something of their conversation.

CHAPTER XXII.

WHY DOCTORS DIFFER.

The company rearranged itself with some changes after leaving the

tea-table. Dudley Veneer was very polite to the Widow; but that lady

having been called off for a few moments for some domestic arrangement,

he slid back to the side of Helen Darley, his daughter's faithful

teacher. Elsie had got away by herself, and was taken up in studying the

stereoscopic Laocoon. Dick, being thus set free, had been seized upon by

Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had diffused herself over three-quarters of a

sofa and beckoned him to the remaining fourth. Mr. Bernard and Miss

Letty were having a snug fete-'a-fete in the recess of a bay-window. The

two Doctors had taken two arm-chairs and sat squared off against each

other. Their conversation is perhaps as well worth reporting as that of

the rest of the company, and, as it was carried on in a louder tone, was

of course more easy to gather and put on record.

It was a curious sight enough to see those two representatives of two

great professions brought face to face to talk over the subjects they had

been looking at all their lives from such different points of view. Both

were old; old enough to have been moulded by their habits of thought and

life; old enough to have all their beliefs "fretted in," as vintners

say,--thoroughly worked up with their characters. Each of them looked his

calling. The Reverend Doctor had lived a good deal among books in his

study; the Doctor, as we will call the medical gentleman, had been riding

about the country for between thirty and forty years. His face looked

tough and weather-worn; while the Reverend Doctor's, hearty as it

appeared, was of finer texture. The Doctor's was the graver of the two;

there was something of grimness about it, partly owing to the

northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long companionship

with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or pleasantry.

His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way he had got by

ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on occasion, as the

reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open, smiling

expression, a cheery voice, a hearty laugh, and a cordial way with him

which some thought too lively for his cloth, but which children, who are

good judges of such matters, delighted in, so that he was the favorite of

all the little rogues about town. But he had the clerical art of

sobering down in a moment, when asked to say grace while somebody was in

the middle of some particularly funny story; and though his voice was so

cheery in common talk, in the pulpit, like almost all preachers, he had a

wholly different and peculiar way of speaking, supposed to be more

acceptable to the Creator than the natural manner. In point of fact,

most of our anti-papal and anti-prelatical clergymen do really intone

their prayers, without suspecting in the least that they have fallen into

such a Romish practice.

This is the way the conversation between the Doctor of Divinity and the

Doctor of Medicine was going on at the point where these notes take it

up.

"Obi tres medici, duo athei, you know, Doctor. Your profession has

always had the credit of being lax in doctrine,--though pretty stringent

in practice, ha! ha!"

"Some priest said that," the Doctor answered, dryly. "They always talked

Latin when they had a bigger lie than common to get rid of."

"Good!" said the Reverend Doctor; "I'm afraid they would lie a little

sometimes. But isn't there some truth in it, Doctor? Don't you think

your profession is apt to see 'Nature' in the place of the God of

Nature,--to lose sight of the great First Cause in their daily study of

secondary causes?"

"I've thought about that," the Doctor answered, "and I've talked about it

and read about it, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody believes

in God and trusts in God quite so much as the doctors; only it is n't

just the sort of Deity that some of your profession have wanted them to

take up with. There was a student of mine wrote a dissertation on the

Natural Theology of Health and Disease, and took that old lying proverb

for his motto. He knew a good deal more about books than ever I did, and

had studied in other countries. I'll tell you what he said about it. He

said the old Heathen Doctor, Galen, praised God for his handiwork in the

human body, just as if he had been a Christian, or the Psalmist himself.

He said they had this sentence set up in large letters in the great

lecture-room in Paris where he attended: I dressed his wound and God

healed him. That was an old surgeon's saying. And he gave a long list

of doctors who were not only Christians, but famous ones. I grant you,

though, ministers and doctors are very apt to see differently in

spiritual matters."

"That's it," said the Reverend Doctor; "you are apt to see 'Nature' where

we see God, and appeal to 'Science' where we are contented with

Revelation."

"We don't separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do," the Doctor

answered. "When we say that God is omnipresent and omnipotent and

omniscient, we are a little more apt to mean it than your folks are. We

think, when a wound heals, that God's presence and power and knowledge

are there, healing it, just as that old surgeon did. We think a good

many theologians, working among their books, don't see the facts of the

world they live in. When we tell 'em of these facts, they are apt to

call us materialists and atheists and infidels, and all that. We can't

help seeing the facts, and we don't think it's wicked to mention 'em."

"Do tell me," the Reverend Doctor said, "some of these facts we are in

the habit of overlooking, and which your profession thinks it can see and

understand."

"That's very easy," the Doctor replied. "For instance: you don't

understand or don't allow for idiosyncrasies as we learn to. We know

that food and physic act differently with different people; but you think

the same kind of truth is going to suit, or ought to suit, all minds. We

don't fight with a patient because he can't take magnesia or opium; but

you are all the time quarrelling over your beliefs, as if belief did not

depend very much on race and constitution, to say nothing of early

training."

"Do you mean to say that every man is not absolutely free to choose his

beliefs?"

"The men you write about in your studies are, but not the men we see in

the real world. There is some apparently congenital defect in the

Indians, for instance, that keeps them from choosing civilization and

Christianity. So with the Gypsies, very likely. Everybody knows that

Catholicism or Protestantism is a good deal a matter of race.

Constitution has more to do with belief than people think for. I went to

a Universalist church, when I was in the city one day, to hear a famous

man whom all the world knows, and I never saw such pews-full of broad

shoulders and florid faces, and substantial, wholesome-looking persons,

male and female, in all my life. Why, it was astonishing. Either their

creed made them healthy, or they chose it because they were healthy.

Your folks have never got the hang of human nature."

"I am afraid this would be considered a degrading and dangerous view of

human beliefs and responsibility for them," the Reverend Doctor replied.

"Prove to a man that his will is governed by something outside of

himself, and you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature.

There is nothing bad men want to believe so much as that they are

governed by necessity. Now that which is at once degrading and dangerous

cannot be true."

"No doubt," the Doctor replied, "all large views of mankind limit our

estimate of the absolute freedom of the will. But I don't think it

degrades or endangers us, for this reason, that, while it makes us

charitable to the rest of mankind, our own sense of freedom, whatever it

is, is never affected by argument. Conscience won't be reasoned with.

We feel that we can practically do this of that, and if we choose the

wrong, we know we are responsible; but observation teaches us that this

or that other race or individual has not the same practical freedom of

choice. I don't see how we can avoid this conclusion in the instance of

the American Indians. The science of Ethnology has upset a good many

theoretical notions about human nature."

"Science!" said the Reverend Doctor, "science! that was a word the

Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if we may judge by the

Epistle to Timothy: 'Oppositions of science falsely so called.' I own

that I am jealous of that word and the pretensions that go with it.

Science has seemed to me to be very often only the handmaid of

skepticism."

"Doctor!" the physician said, emphatically, "science is knowledge.

Nothing that is not known properly belongs to science. Whenever

knowledge obliges us to doubt, we are always safe in doubting.

Astronomers foretell eclipses, say how long comets are to stay with us,

point out where a new planet is to be found. We see they know what they

assert, and the poor old Roman Catholic Church has at last to knock

under. So Geology proves a certain succession of events, and the best

Christian in the world must make the earth's history square with it.

Besides, I don't think you remember what great revelations of himself the

Creator has made in the minds of the men who have built up science. You

seem to me to hold his human masterpieces very cheap. Don't you think

the 'inspiration of the Almighty' gave Newton and Cuvier

'understanding'?"

The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory. In fact, what he wanted

was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of

opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them. He was

rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely

to learn the way of parrying. But just here he saw a tempting opening,

and could not resist giving a home-thrust.

"Yes; but you surely would not consider it inspiration of the same kind

as that of the writers of the Old Testament?"

That cornered the Doctor, and he paused a moment before he replied. Then

he raised his head, so as to command the Reverend Doctor's face through

his spectacles, and said,

"I did not say that. You are clear, I suppose, that the Omniscient spoke

through Solomon, but that Shakespeare wrote without his help?"

The Reverend Doctor looked very grave. It was a bold, blunt way of

putting the question. He turned it aside with the remark, that

Shakespeare seemed to him at times to come as near inspiration as any

human being not included among the sacred writers.

"Doctor," the physician began, as from a sudden suggestion, "you won't

quarrel with me, if I tell you some of my real thoughts, will you?"

"Say on, my dear Sir, say on," the minister answered, with his most

genial smile; "your real thoughts are just what I want to get at. A

man's real thoughts are a great rarity. If I don't agree with you, I

shall like to hear you."

The Doctor began; and in order to give his thoughts more connectedly, we

will omit the conversational breaks, the questions and comments of the

clergyman, and all accidental interruptions.

"When the old ecclesiastics said that where there were three doctors

there were two atheists, they lied, of course. They called everybody who

differed from them atheists, until they found out that not believing in

God was n't nearly so ugly a crime as not believing in some particular

dogma; then they called them heretics, until so many good people had been

burned under that name that it began to smell too strong of roasting

flesh,--and after that infidels, which properly means people without

faith, of whom there are not a great many in any place or time. But

then, of course, there was some reason why doctors shouldn't think about

religion exactly as ministers did, or they never would have made that

proverb. It 's very likely that something of the same kind is true now;

whether it is so or not, I am going to tell you the reasons why it would

not be strange, if doctors should take rather different views from

clergymen about some matters of belief. I don't, of course, mean all

doctors nor all clergymen. Some doctors go as far as any old New England

divine, and some clergymen agree very well with the doctors that think

least according to rule.

"To begin with their ideas of the Creator himself. They always see him

trying to help his creatures out of their troubles. A man no sooner gets

a cut, than the Great Physician, whose agency we often call Nature, goes

to work, first to stop the blood, and then to heal the wound, and then to

make the scar as small as possible. If a man's pain exceeds a certain

amount, he faints, and so gets relief. If it lasts too long, habit comes

in to make it tolerable. If it is altogether too bad, he dies. That is

the best thing to be done under the circumstances. So you see, the

doctor is constantly in presence of a benevolent agency working against a

settled order of things, of which pain and disease are the accidents, so

to speak. Well, no doubt they find it harder than clergymen to believe

that there can be any world or state from which this benevolent agency is

wholly excluded. This may be very wrong; but it is not unnatural.

"They can hardly conceive of a permanent state of being in which cuts

would never try to heal, nor habit render suffering endurable. This is

one effect of their training.

"Then, again, their attention is very much called to human limitations.

Ministers work out the machinery of responsibility in an abstract kind of

way; they have a sort of algebra of human nature, in which friction and

strength (or weakness) of material are left out. You see, a doctor is in

the way of studying children from the moment of birth upwards. For the

first year or so he sees that they are just as much pupils of their Maker

as the young of any other animals. Well, their Maker trains them to pure

selfishness. Why? In order that they may be sure to take care of

themselves. So you see, when a child comes to be, we will say a year and

a day old, and makes his first choice between right and wrong, he is at a

disadvantage; for he, has that vis a tergo, as we doctors call it, that

force from behind, of a whole year's life of selfishness, for which he is

no more to blame than a calf is to blame for having lived in the same

way, purely to gratify his natural appetites. Then we see that baby grow

up to a child, and, if he is fat and stout and red and lively, we expect

to find him troublesome and noisy, and, perhaps, sometimes disobedient

more or less; that's the way each new generation breaks its egg-shell;

but if he is very weak and thin, and is one of the kind that may be

expected to die early, he will very likely sit in the house all day and

read good books about other little sharp-faced children just like

himself, who died early, having always been perfectly indifferent to all

the out-door amusements of the wicked little red-cheeked children.

"Some of the little folks we watch grow up to be young women, and

occasionally one of them gets nervous, what we call hysterical, and then

that girl will begin to play all sorts of pranks,--to lie and cheat,

perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so that she might seem to a

minister a good example of total depravity. We don't see her in that

light. We give her iron and valerian, and get her on horseback, if we

can, and so expect to make her will come all right again. By and by we

are called in to see an old baby, threescore years and ten or more old.

We find this old baby has never got rid of that first year's teaching

which led him to fill his stomach with all he could pump into it, and

his hands with everything he could grab. People call him a miser. We

are sorry for him; but we can't help remembering his first year's

training, and the natural effect of money on the great majority of those

that have it. So while the ministers say he 'shall hardly enter into the

kingdom of heaven,' we like to remind them that 'with God all things are

possible.'

"Once more, we see all kinds of monomania and insanity. We learn from

them to recognize all sorts of queer tendencies in minds supposed to be

sane, so that we have nothing but compassion for a large class of persons

condemned as sinners by theologians, but considered by us as invalids.

We have constant reasons for noticing the transmission of qualities from

parents to offspring, and we find it hard to hold a child accountable in

any moral point of view for inherited bad temper or tendency to

drunkenness,--as hard as we should to blame him for inheriting gout or

asthma. I suppose we are more lenient with human nature than theologians

generally are. We know that the spirits of men and their views of the

present and the future go up and down with the barometer, and that a

permanent depression of one inch in the mercurial column would affect the

whole theology of Christendom.

"Ministers talk about the human will as if it stood on a high look-out,

with plenty of light, and elbowroom reaching to the horizon. Doctors are

constantly noticing how it is tied up and darkened by inferior

organization, by disease, and all sorts of crowding interferences, until

they get to look upon Hottentots and Indians--and a good many of their

own race as a kind of self-conscious blood-clocks with very limited power

of self-determination. That's the tendency, I say, of a doctor's

experience. But the people to whom they address their statements of the

results of their observation belong to the thinking class of the highest

races, and they are conscious of a great deal of liberty of will. So in

the face of the fact that civilization with all it offers has proved a

dead failure with the aboriginal races of this country,--on the whole, I

say, a dead failure,--they talk as if they knew from their own will all

about that of a Digger Indian! We are more apt to go by observation of

the facts in the case. We are constantly seeing weakness where you see

depravity. I don't say we're right; I only tell what you must often find

to be the fact, right or wrong, in talking with doctors. You see, too,

our notions of bodily and moral disease, or sin, are apt to go together.

We used to be as hard on sickness as you were on sin. We know better

now. We don't look at sickness as we used to, and try to poison it with

everything that is offensive, burnt toads and earth-worms and

viper-broth, and worse things than these. We know that disease has

something back of it which the body isn't to blame for, at least in most

cases, and which very often it is trying to get rid of. Just so with

sin. I will agree to take a hundred new-born babes of a certain stock

and return seventy-five of them in a dozen years true and honest, if not

'pious' children. And I will take another hundred, of a different stock,

and put them in the hands of certain Ann-Street or Five-Points teachers,

and seventy-five of them will be thieves and liars at the end of the same

dozen years. I have heard of an old character, Colonel Jaques, I believe

it was, a famous cattle-breeder, who used to say he could breed to pretty

much any pattern he wanted to. Well, we doctors see so much of families,

how the tricks of the blood keep breaking out, just as much in character

as they do in looks, that we can't help feeling as if a great many people

hadn't a fair chance to be what is called 'good,' and that there isn't a

text in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one,

'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'

"As for our getting any quarter at the hands of theologians, we don't

expect it, and have no right to. You don't give each other any quarter.

I have had two religious books sent me by friends within a week or two.

One is Mr. Brownson's; he is as fair and square as Euclid; a real honest,

strong thinker, and one that knows what he is talking about,--for he has

tried all sorts of religions, pretty much. He tells us that the Roman

Catholic Church is the one 'through which alone we can hope for heaven.'

The other is by a worthy Episcopal rector, who appears to write as if he

were in earnest, and he calls the Papacy the 'Devil's Masterpiece,' and

talks about the 'Satanic scheme' of that very Church 'through which

alone,' as Mr. Brownson tells us, 'we can hope for heaven'

"What's the use in our caring about hard words after this,--'atheists,'

heretics, infidels, and the like? They're, after all, only the cinders

picked up out of those heaps of ashes round the stumps of the old stakes

where they used to burn men, women, and children for not thinking just

like other folks. They 'll 'crock' your fingers, but they can't burn us.

"Doctors are the best-natured people in the world, except when they get

fighting with each other. And they have some advantages over you. You

inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no

children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them.

It did n't seem much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of people

to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They didn't know what

it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It will

take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so

many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.

"Besides, though our libraries are, perhaps, not commonly quite so big as

yours, God opens one book to physicians that a good many of you don't

know much about,--the Book of Life. That is none of your dusty folios

with black letters between pasteboard and leather, but it is printed in

bright red type, and the binding of it is warm and tender to every touch.

They reverence that book as one of the Almighty's infallible revelations.

They will insist on reading you lessons out of it, whether you call them

names or not. These will always be lessons of charity. No doubt,

nothing can be more provoking to listen to. But do beg your folks to

remember that the Smithfield fires are all out, and that the cinders are

very dirty and not in the least dangerous. They'd a great deal better be

civil, and not be throwing old proverbs in the doctors' faces, when they

say that the man of the old monkish notions is one thing and the man they

watch from his cradle to his coffin is something very different."

It has cost a good deal of trouble to work the Doctor's talk up into this

formal shape. Some of his sentences have been rounded off for him, and

the whole brought into a more rhetorical form than it could have

pretended to, if taken as it fell from his lips. But the exact course of

his remarks has been followed, and as far as possible his expressions

have been retained. Though given in the form of a discourse, it must be

remembered that this was a conversation, much more fragmentary and

colloquial than it seems as just read.

The Reverend Doctor was very far from taking offence at the old

physician's freedom of speech. He knew him to be honest, kind,

charitable, self-denying, wherever any sorrow was to be alleviated,

always reverential, with a cheerful trust in the great Father of all

mankind. To be sure, his senior deacon, old Deacon Shearer,--who seemed

to have got his Scripture-teachings out of the "Vinegar Bible," (the one

where Vineyard is misprinted Vinegar; which a good many people seem to

have adopted as the true reading,)--his senior deacon had called Dr.

Kittredge an "infidel." But the Reverend Doctor could not help feeling,

that, unless the text, "By their fruits ye shall know them," were an

interpolation, the Doctor was the better Christian of the two. Whatever

his senior deacon might think about it, he said to himself that he

shouldn't be surprised if he met the Doctor in heaven yet, inquiring

anxiously after old Deacon Shearer.

He was on the point of expressing himself very frankly to the Doctor,

with that benevolent smile on his face which had sometimes come near

giving offence to the readers of the "Vinegar" edition, but he saw that

the physician's attention had been arrested by Elsie. He looked in the

same direction himself, and could not help being struck by her attitude

and expression. There was something singularly graceful in the curves of

her neck and the rest of her figure, but she was so perfectly still that

it seemed as if she were hardly breathing. Her eyes were fixed on the

young girl with whom Mr. Bernard was talking. He had often noticed their

brilliancy, but now it seemed to him that they appeared dull, and the

look on her features was as of some passion which had missed its stroke.

Mr. Bernard's companion seemed unconscious that she was the object of

this attention, and was listening to the young master as if he had

succeeded in making himself very agreeable.

Of course Dick Veneer had not mistaken the game that was going on. The

schoolmaster meant to make Elsie jealous,--and he had done it. That 's

it: get her savage first, and then come wheedling round her,--a sure

trick, if he isn't headed off somehow. But Dick saw well enough that he

had better let Elsie alone just now, and thought the best way of killing

the evening would be to amuse himself in a little lively talk with Mrs.

Blanche Creamer, and incidentally to show Elsie that he could make

himself acceptable to other women, if not to herself.

The Doctor presently went up to Elsie, determined to engage her in

conversation and get her out of her thoughts, which he saw, by her look,

were dangerous. Her father had been on the point of leaving Helen Darley

to go to her, but felt easy enough when he saw the old Doctor at her

side, and so went on talking. The Reverend Doctor, being now left alone,

engaged the Widow Rowens, who put the best face on her vexation she

could, but was devoting herself to all the underground deities for having

been such a fool as to ask that pale-faced thing from the Institute to

fill up her party.

There is no space left to report the rest of the conversation. If there

was anything of any significance in it, it will turn up by and by, no

doubt. At ten o'clock the Reverend Doctor called Miss Letty, who had no

idea it was so late; Mr. Bernard gave his arm to Helen; Mr. Richard saw

to Mrs. Blanche Creamer; the Doctor gave Elsie a cautioning look, and

went off alone, thoughtful; Dudley Venner and his daughter got into their

carriage and were whirled away. The Widow's gambit was played, and she

had not won the game.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WILD HUNTSMAN.

The young master had not forgotten the old Doctor's cautions. Without

attributing any great importance to the warning he had given him, Mr.

Bernard had so far complied with his advice that he was becoming a pretty

good shot with the pistol. It was an amusement as good as many others to

practise, and he had taken a fancy to it after the first few days.

The popping of a pistol at odd hours in the backyard of the Institute was

a phenomenon more than sufficiently remarkable to be talked about in

Rockland. The viscous intelligence of a country-village is not easily

stirred by the winds which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but

it holds every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it. It

soon became rumored in the town that the young master was a wonderful

shot with the pistol. Some said he could hit a fo'pence-ha'penny at

three rod; some, that he had shot a swallow, flying, with a single ball;

some, that he snuffed a candle five times out of six at ten paces, and

that he could hit any button in a man's coat he wanted to. In other

words, as in all such cases, all the common feats were ascribed to him,

as the current jokes of the day are laid at the door of any noted wit,

however innocent he may be of them.

In the natural course of things, Mr. Richard Venner, who had by this time

made some acquaintances, as we have seen, among that class of the

population least likely to allow a live cinder of gossip to go out for

want of air, had heard incidentally that the master up there at the

Institute was all the time practising with a pistol, that they say he can

snuff a candle at ten rods, (that was Mrs. Blanche Creamer's version,)

and that he could hit anybody he wanted to right in the eye, as far as he

could see the white of it.

Dick did not like the sound of all this any too well. Without believing

more than half of it, there was enough to make the Yankee schoolmaster

too unsafe to be trifled with. However, shooting at a mark was pleasant

work enough; he had no particular objection to it himself. Only he did

not care so much for those little popgun affairs that a man carries in

his pocket, and with which you could n't shoot a fellow,--a robber,

say,--without getting the muzzle under his nose. Pistols for boys;

long-range rifles for men. There was such a gun lying in a closet with

the fowling-pieces. He would go out into the fields and see what he

could do as a marksman.

The nature of the mark which Dick chose for experimenting upon was

singular. He had found some panes of glass which had been removed from

an old sash, and he placed these successively before his target,

arranging them at different angles. He found that a bullet would go

through the glass without glancing or having its force materially abated.

It was an interesting fact in physics, and might prove of some practical

significance hereafter. Nobody knows what may turn up to render these

out-of-the-way facts useful. All this was done in a quiet way in one of

the bare spots high up the side of The Mountain. He was very thoughtful

in taking the precaution to get so far away; rifle-bullets are apt to

glance and come whizzing about people's ears, if they are fired in the

neighborhood of houses. Dick satisfied himself that he could be

tolerably sure of hitting a pane of glass at a distance of thirty rods,

more or less, and that, if there happened to be anything behind it, the

glass would not materially alter the force or direction of the bullet.

About this time it occurred to him also that there was an old

accomplishment of his which he would be in danger of losing for want of

practice, if he did not take some opportunity to try his hand and regain

its cunning, if it had begun to be diminished by disuse. For his first

trial, he chose an evening when the moon was shining, and after the hour

when the Rockland people were like to be stirring abroad. He was so far

established now that he could do much as he pleased without exciting

remark.

The prairie horse he rode, the mustang of the Pampas, wild as he was, had

been trained to take part in at least one exercise. This was the

accomplishment in which Mr. Richard now proposed to try himself. For

this purpose he sought the implement of which, as it may be remembered,

he had once made an incidental use,--the lasso, or long strip of hide

with a slip-noose at the end of it. He had been accustomed to playing

with such a thong from his boyhood, and had become expert in its use in

capturing wild cattle in the course of his adventures. Unfortunately,

there were no wild bulls likely to be met with in the neighborhood, to

become the subjects of his skill. A stray cow in the road, an ox or a

horse in a pasture, must serve his turn,--dull beasts, but moving marks

to aim at, at any rate.

Never, since he had galloped in the chase over the Pampas, had Dick

Venner felt such a sense of life and power as when he struck the long

spurs into his wild horse's flanks, and dashed along the road with the

lasso lying like a coiled snake at the saddle-bow. In skilful hands, the

silent, bloodless noose, flying like an arrow, but not like that leaving

a wound behind it,--sudden as a pistol-shot, but without the telltale

explosion,--is one of the most fearful and mysterious weapons that arm

the hand of man. The old Romans knew how formidable, even in contest

with a gladiator equipped with sword, helmet, and shield, was the almost

naked retiarius, with his net in one hand and his three-pronged javelin

in the other. Once get a net over a man's head, or a cord round his

neck, or, what is more frequently done nowadays, bonnet him by knocking

his hat down over his eyes, and he is at the mercy of his opponent. Our

soldiers who served against the Mexicans found this out too well. Many a

poor fellow has been lassoed by the fierce riders from the plains, and

fallen an easy victim to the captor who had snared him in the fatal

noose.

But, imposing as the sight of the wild huntsmen of the Pampas might have

been, Dick could not help laughing at the mock sublimity of his

situation, as he tried his first experiment on an unhappy milky mother

who had strayed from her herd and was wandering disconsolately along the

road, laying the dust, as slue went, with thready streams from her

swollen, swinging udders. "Here goes the Don at the windmill!" said

Dick, and tilted full speed at her, whirling the lasso round his head as

he rode. The creature swerved to one side of the way, as the wild horse

and his rider came rushing down upon her, and presently turned and ran,

as only cows and it would n't be safe to say it--can run. Just before he

passed,--at twenty or thirty feet from her,--the lasso shot from his

hand, uncoiling as it flew, and in an instant its loop was round her

horns. "Well cast!" said Dick, as he galloped up to her side and

dexterously disengaged the lasso. "Now for a horse on the run!"

He had the good luck to find one, presently, grazing in a pasture at the

road-side. Taking down the rails of the fence at one point, he drove the

horse into the road and gave chase. It was a lively young animal enough,

and was easily roused to a pretty fast pace. As his gallop grew more and

more rapid, Dick gave the reins to the mustang, until the two horses

stretched themselves out in their longest strides. If the first feat

looked like play, the one he was now to attempt had a good deal the

appearance of real work. He touched the mustang with the spur, and in a

few fierce leaps found himself nearly abreast of the frightened animal he

was chasing. Once more he whirled the lasso round and round over his

head, and then shot it forth, as the rattlesnake shoots his head from the

loops against which it rests. The noose was round the horse's neck, and

in another instant was tightened so as almost to stop his breath. The

prairie horse knew the trick of the cord, and leaned away from the

captive, so as to keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and

the peak of the saddle to which it was fastened. Struggling was of no

use with a halter round his windpipe, and he very soon began to tremble

and stagger,--blind, no doubt, and with a roaring in his ears as of a

thousand battle-trumpets,--at any rate, subdued and helpless. That was

enough. Dick loosened his lasso, wound it up again, laid it like a pet

snake in a coil at his saddle-bow, turned his horse, and rode slowly

along towards the mansion-house.

The place had never looked more stately and beautiful to him than as he

now saw it in the moonlight. The undulations of the land,--the grand

mountain screen which sheltered the mansion from the northern blasts,

rising with all its hanging forests and parapets of naked rock high

towards the heavens,--the ancient mansion, with its square chimneys, and

bodyguard of old trees, and cincture of low walls with marble-pillared

gateways,--the fields, with their various coverings,--the beds of

flowers,--the plots of turf, one with a gray column in its centre bearing

a sundial on which the rays of the moon were idly shining, another with a

white stone and a narrow ridge of turf,--over all these objects,

harmonized with all their infinite details into one fair whole by the

moonlight, the prospective heir, as he deemed himself, looked with

admiring eyes.

But while he looked, the thought rose up in his mind like waters from a

poisoned fountain, that there was a deep plot laid to cheat him of the

inheritance which by a double claim he meant to call his own. Every day

this ice-cold beauty, this dangerous, handsome cousin of his, went up to

that place,--that usher's girl-trap. Everyday,--regularly now,--it used

to be different. Did she go only to get out of his, her cousin's, reach?

Was she not rather becoming more and more involved in the toils of this

plotting Yankee?

If Mr. Bernard had shown himself at that moment a few rods in advance,

the chances are that in less than one minute he would have found himself

with a noose round his neck, at the heels of a mounted horseman.

Providence spared him for the present. Mr. Richard rode his horse

quietly round to the stable, put him up, and proceeded towards the house.

He got to his bed without disturbing the family, but could not sleep.

The idea had fully taken possession of his mind that a deep intrigue was

going on which would end by bringing Elsie and the schoolmaster into

relations fatal to all his own hopes. With that ingenuity which always

accompanies jealousy, he tortured every circumstance of the last few

weeks so as to make it square with this belief. From this vein of

thought he naturally passed to a consideration of every possible method

by which the issue he feared might be avoided.

Mr. Richard talked very plain language with himself in all these inward

colloquies. Supposing it came to the worst, what could be done then?

First, an accident might happen to the schoolmaster which should put a

complete and final check upon his projects and contrivances. The

particular accident which might interrupt his career must, evidently, be

determined by circumstances; but it must be of a nature to explain itself

without the necessity of any particular person's becoming involved in the

matter. It would be unpleasant to go into particulars; but everybody

knows well enough that men sometimes get in the way of a stray bullet,

and that young persons occasionally do violence to themselves in various

modes,--by firearms, suspension, and other means,--in consequence of

disappointment in love, perhaps, oftener than from other motives. There

was still another kind of accident which might serve his purpose. If

anything should happen to Elsie, it would be the most natural thing in

the world that his uncle should adopt him, his nephew and only near

relation, as his heir. Unless, indeed, uncle Dudley should take it into

his head to marry again. In that case, where would he, Dick, be? This

was the most detestable complication which he could conceive of. And yet

he had noticed--he could not help noticing--that his uncle had been very

attentive to, and, as it seemed, very much pleased with, that young woman

from the school. What did that mean? Was it possible that he was going

to take a fancy to her?

It made him wild to think of all the several contingencies which might

defraud him of that good-fortune which seemed but just now within his

grasp. He glared in the darkness at imaginary faces: sometimes at that

of the handsome, treacherous schoolmaster; sometimes at that of the

meek-looking, but no doubt, scheming, lady-teacher; sometimes at that of

the dark girl whom he was ready to make his wife; sometimes at that of

his much respected uncle, who, of course, could not be allowed to peril

the fortunes of his relatives by forming a new connection. It was a

frightful perplexity in which he found himself, because there was no one

single life an accident to which would be sufficient to insure the

fitting and natural course of descent to the great Dudley property. If

it had been a simple question of helping forward a casualty to any one

person, there was nothing in Dick's habits of thought and living to make

that a serious difficulty. He had been so much with lawless people, that

a life between his wish and his object seemed only as an obstacle to be

removed, provided the object were worth the risk and trouble. But if

there were two or three lives in the way, manifestly that altered the

case.

His Southern blood was getting impatient. There was enough of the

New-Englander about him to make him calculate his chances before he

struck; but his plans were liable to be defeated at any moment by a

passionate impulse such as the dark-hued races of Southern Europe and

their descendants are liable to. He lay in his bed, sometimes arranging

plans to meet the various difficulties already mentioned, sometimes

getting into a paroxysm of blind rage in the perplexity of considering

what object he should select as the one most clearly in his way. On the

whole, there could be no doubt where the most threatening of all his

embarrassments lay. It was in the probable growing relation between

Elsie and the schoolmaster. If it should prove, as it seemed likely,

that there was springing up a serious attachment tending to a union

between them, he knew what he should do, if he was not quite so sure how

he should do it.

There was one thing at least which might favor his projects, and which,

at any rate, would serve to amuse him. He could, by a little quiet

observation, find out what were the schoolmaster's habits of life:

whether he had any routine which could be calculated upon; and under what

circumstances a strictly private interview of a few minutes with him

might be reckoned on, in case it should be desirable. He could also very

probably learn some facts about Elsie. whether the young man was in the

habit of attending her on her way home from school; whether she stayed

about the schoolroom after the other girls had gone; and any incidental

matters of interest which might present themselves.

He was getting more and more restless for want of some excitement. A mad

gallop, a visit to Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had taken such a fancy to

him, or a chat with the Widow Rowens, who was very lively in her talk,

for all her sombre colors, and reminded him a good deal of same of his

earlier friends, the senoritas,--all these were distractions, to be sure,

but not enough to keep his fiery spirit from fretting itself in longings

for more dangerous excitements. The thought of getting a knowledge of

all Mr. Bernard's ways, so that he would be in his power at any moment,

was a happy one.

For some days after this he followed Elsie at a long distance behind, to

watch her until she got to the schoolhouse. One day he saw Mr. Bernard

join her: a mere accident, very probably, for it was only once this

happened. She came on her homeward way alone,--quite apart from the

groups of girls who strolled out of the schoolhouse yard in company.

Sometimes she was behind them all,--which was suggestive. Could she have

stayed to meet the schoolmaster?

If he could have smuggled himself into the school, he would have liked to

watch her there, and see if there was not some understanding between her

and the master which betrayed itself by look or word. But this was beyond

the limits of his audacity, and he had to content himself with such

cautious observations as could be made at a distance. With the aid of a

pocket-glass he could make out persons without the risk of being observed

himself.

Mr. Silos Peckham's corps of instructors was not expected to be off duty

or to stand at ease for any considerable length of time. Sometimes Mr.

Bernard, who had more freedom than the rest, would go out for a ramble in

the daytime, but more frequently it would be in the evening, after the

hour of "retiring," as bedtime was elegantly termed by the young ladies

of the Apollinean Institute. He would then not unfrequently walk out

alone in the common roads, or climb up the sides of The Mountain, which

seemed to be one of his favorite resorts. Here, of course, it was

impossible to follow him with the eye at a distance. Dick had a hideous,

gnawing suspicion that somewhere in these deep shades the schoolmaster

might meet Elsie, whose evening wanderings he knew so well. But of this

he was not able to assure himself. Secrecy was necessary to his present

plans, and he could not compromise himself by over-eager curiosity. One

thing he learned with certainty. The master returned, after his walk one

evening, and entered the building where his room was situated. Presently

a light betrayed the window of his apartment. From a wooded bank, some

thirty or forty rods from this building, Dick Venner could see the

interior of the chamber, and watch the master as he sat at his desk, the

light falling strongly upon his face, intent upon the book or manuscript

before him. Dick contemplated him very long in this attitude. The sense

of watching his every motion, himself meanwhile utterly unseen, was

delicious. How little the master was thinking what eyes were on him!

Well,--there were two things quite certain. One was, that, if he chose,

he could meet the schoolmaster alone, either in the road or in a more

solitary place, if he preferred to watch his chance for an evening or

two. The other was, that he commanded his position, as he sat at his

desk in the evening, in such a way that there would be very little

difficulty,--so far as that went; of course, however, silence is always

preferable to noise, and there is a great difference in the marks left by

different casualties. Very likely nothing would come of all this

espionage; but, at any rate, the first thing to be done with a man you

want to have in your power is to learn his habits.

Since the tea-party at the Widow Rowens's, Elsie had been more fitful and

moody than ever. Dick understood all this well enough, you know. It was

the working of her jealousy against that young schoolgirl to whom the

master had devoted himself for the sake of piquing the heiress of the

Dudley mansion. Was it possible, in any way, to exasperate her irritable

nature against him, and in this way to render her more accessible to his

own advances? It was difficult to influence her at all. She endured his

company without seeming to enjoy it. She watched him with that strange

look of hers, sometimes as if she were on her guard against him,

sometimes as if she would like to strike at him as in that fit of

childish passion. She ordered him about with a haughty indifference

which reminded him of his own way with the dark-eyed women whom he had

known so well of old. All this added a secret pleasure to the other

motives he had for worrying her with jealous suspicions. He knew she

brooded silently on any grief that poisoned her comfort,--that she fed on

it, as it were, until it ran with every drop of blood in her veins,--and

that, except in some paroxysm of rage, of which he himself was not likely

the second time to be the object, or in some deadly vengeance wrought

secretly, against which he would keep a sharp lookout, so far as he was

concerned, she had no outlet for her dangerous, smouldering passions.

Beware of the woman who cannot find free utterance for all her stormy

inner life either in words or song! So long as a woman can talk, there

is nothing she cannot bear. If she cannot have a companion to listen to

her woes, and has no musical utterance, vocal or instrumental,--then, if

she is of the real woman sort, and has a few heartfuls of wild blood in

her, and you have done her a wrong,--double-bolt the door which she may

enter on noiseless slipper at midnight,--look twice before you taste of

any cup whose draught the shadow of her hand may have darkened!

But let her talk, and, above all, cry, or, if she is one of the

coarser-grained tribe, give her the run of all the red-hot expletives in

the language, and let her blister her lips with them until she is tired,

she will sleep like a lamb after it, and you may take a cup of coffee

from her without stirring it up to look for its sediment.

So, if she can sing, or play on any musical instrument, all her

wickedness will run off through her throat or the tips of her fingers.

How many tragedies find their peaceful catastrophe in fierce roulades and

strenuous bravuras! How many murders are executed in double-quick time

upon the keys which stab the air with their dagger-strokes of sound!

What would our civilization be without the piano? Are not Erard and

Broadwood and Chickering the true humanizers of our time? Therefore do I

love to hear the all-pervading tum tum jarring the walls of little

parlors in houses with double door-plates on their portals, looking out

on streets and courts which to know is to be unknown, and where to exist

is not to live, according to any true definition of living. Therefore

complain I not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the open window of

the small unlovely farmhouse, tenanted by the hard-handed man of bovine

flavors and the flat-patterned woman of broken-down countenance, issue

the same familiar sounds. For who knows that Almira, but for these keys,

which throb away her wild impulses in harmless discords would not have

been floating, dead, in the brown stream which slides through the meadows

by her father's door,--or living, with that other current which runs

beneath the gas-lights over the slimy pavement, choking with wretched

weeds that were once in spotless flower?

Poor Elsie! She never sang nor played. She never shaped her inner life

in words: such utterance was as much denied to her nature as common

articulate speech to the deaf mute. Her only language must be in action.

Watch her well by day and by night, old Sophy! watch her well! or the

long line of her honored name may close in shame, and the stately mansion

of the Dudleys remain a hissing and a reproach till its roof is buried in

its cellar!

CHAPTER XXIV.

ON HIS TRACKS.

"Able!" said the old Doctor, one morning, "after you've harnessed

Caustic, come into the study a few minutes, will you?"

Abel nodded. He was a man of few words, and he knew that the "will you"

did not require an answer, being the true New-England way of rounding the

corners of an employer's order,--a tribute to the personal independence

of an American citizen.

The hired man came into the study in the course of a few minutes. His

face was perfectly still, and he waited to be spoken to; but the Doctor's

eye detected a certain meaning in his expression, which looked as if he

had something to communicate.

"Well?" said the Doctor.

"He's up to mischief o' some kind, I guess," said Abel. "I jest happened

daown by the mansion-haouse last night, 'n' he come aout o' the gate on

that queer-lookin' creator' o' his. I watched him, 'n' he rid, very

slow, all raoun' by the Institoot, 'n' acted as ef he was spyin' abaout.

He looks to me like a man that's calc'latin' to do some kind of ill-turn

to somebody. I should n't like to have him raoun' me, 'f there wa'n't a

pitchfork or an eel-spear or some sech weep'n within reach. He may be

all right; but I don't like his looks, 'n' I don't see what he's lurkin'

raoun' the Institoot for, after folks is abed."

"Have you watched him pretty close for the last few days?" said the

Doctor.

"W'll, yes,--I've had my eye on him consid'ble o' the time. I haf to be

pooty shy abaout it, or he'll find aout th't I'm on his tracks. I don'

want him to get a spite ag'inst me, 'f I c'n help it; he looks to me like

one o' them kind that kerries what they call slung-shot, 'n' hits ye on

the side o' th' head with 'em so suddin y' never know what hurts ye."

"Why," said the Doctor, sharply,--"have you ever seen him with any such

weapon about him?"

"W'll, no,--I caan't say that I hev," Abel answered. "On'y he looks kin'

o' dangerous. Maybe he's all jest 'z he ought to be,--I caan't say that

he a'n't,--but he's aout late nights, 'n' lurkin' raonn' jest 'z ef he

was spyin' somebody, 'n' somehaow I caan't help mistrustin' them

Portagee-lookin' fellahs. I caan't keep the run o' this chap all the

time; but I've a notion that old black woman daown 't the mansion-haouse

knows 'z much abaout him 'z anybody."

The Doctor paused a moment, after hearing this report from his private

detective, and then got into his chaise, and turned Caustic's head in the

direction of the Dudley mansion. He had been suspicious of Dick from the

first. He did not like his mixed blood, nor his looks, nor his ways. He

had formed a conjecture about his projects early. He had made a shrewd

guess as to the probable jealousy Dick would feel of the schoolmaster,

had found out something of his movements, and had cautioned Mr.

Bernard,--as we have seen. He felt an interest in the young man,--a

student of his own profession, an intelligent and ingenuously

unsuspecting young fellow, who had been thrown by accident into the

companionship or the neighborhood of two persons, one of whom he knew to

be dangerous, and the other he believed instinctively might be capable of

crime.

The Doctor rode down to the Dudley mansion solely for the sake of seeing

old Sophy. He was lucky enough to find her alone in her kitchen. He

began taking with her as a physician; he wanted to know how her

rheumatism had been. The shrewd old woman saw through all that with her

little beady black eyes. It was something quite different he had come

for, and old Sophy answered very briefly for her aches and ails.

"Old folks' bones a'n't like young folks'," she said. "It's the Lord's

doin's, 'n' 't a'n't much matter. I sha'n' be long roan' this kitchen.

It's the young Missis, Doctor,--it 's our Elsie,--it 's the baby, as we

use' t' call her,--don' you remember, Doctor? Seventeen year ago, 'n'

her poor mother cryin' for her,--'Where is she? where is she? Let me see

her! '--'n' how I run up-stairs,--I could run then,--'n' got the coral

necklace 'n' put it round her little neck, 'n' then showed her to her

mother,--'n' how her mother looked at her, 'n' looked, 'n' then put out

her poor thin fingers 'n' lifted the necklace,--'n' fell right back on

her piller, as white as though she was laid out to bury?"

The Doctor answered her by silence and a look of grave assent. He had

never chosen to let old Sophy dwell upon these matters, for obvious

reasons. The girl must not grow up haunted by perpetual fears and

prophecies, if it were possible to prevent it.

"Well, how has Elsie seemed of late?" he said, after this brief pause.

The old woman shook her head. Then she looked up at the Doctor so

steadily and searchingly that the diamond eyes of Elsie herself could

hardly have pierced more deeply.

The Doctor raised his head, by his habitual movement, and met the old

woman's look with his own calm and scrutinizing gaze, sharpened by the

glasses through which he now saw her.

Sophy spoke presently in an awed tone, as if telling a vision.

"We shall be havin' trouble before long. The' 's somethin' comin' from

the Lord. I've had dreams, Doctor. It's many a year I've been

a-dreamin', but now they're comin' over 'n' over the same thing. Three

times I've dreamed one thing, Doctor,--one thing!"

"And what was that?" the Doctor said, with that shade of curiosity in his

tone which a metaphysician would probably say is an index of a certain

tendency to belief in the superstition to which the question refers.

"I ca'n' jestly tell y' what it was, Doctor," the old woman answered, as

if bewildered and trying to clear up her recollections; "but it was

somethin' fearful, with a great noise 'n' a great cryin' o' people,--like

the Las' Day, Doctor! The Lord have mercy on my poor chil', 'n' take

care of her, if anything happens! But I's feared she'll never live to

see the Las' Day, 'f 't don' come pooty quick."

Poor Sophy, only the third generation from cannibalism, was, not

unnaturally, somewhat confused in her theological notions. Some of the

Second-Advent preachers had been about, and circulated their predictions

among the kitchen--population of Rockland. This was the way in which it

happened that she mingled her fears in such a strange manner with their

doctrines.

The Doctor answered solemnly, that of the day and hour we knew not, but

it became us to be always ready.--"Is there anything going on in the

household different from common?"

Old Sophy's wrinkled face looked as full of life and intelligence, when

she turned it full upon the Doctor, as if she had slipped off her

infirmities and years like an outer garment. All those fine instincts of

observation which came straight to her from her savage grandfather looked

out of her little eyes. She had a kind of faith that the Doctor was a

mighty conjurer, who, if he would, could bewitch any of them. She had

relieved her feelings by her long talk with the minister, but the Doctor

was the immediate adviser of the family, and had watched them through all

their troubles. Perhaps he could tell them what to do. She had but one

real object of affection in the world,--this child that she had tended

from infancy to womanhood. Troubles were gathering thick round her; how

soon they would break upon her, and blight or destroy her, no one could

tell; but there was nothing in all the catalogue of terrors which might

not come upon the household at any moment. Her own wits had sharpened

themselves in keeping watch by day and night, and her face had forgotten

its age in the excitement which gave life to its features.

"Doctor," old Sophy said, "there's strange things goin' on here by night

and by day. I don' like that man,--that Dick,--I never liked him. He

giv' me some o' these things I' got on; I take 'em 'cos I know it make

him mad, if I no take 'em; I wear 'em, so that he need n' feel as if I

did n' like him; but, Doctor, I hate him,--jes' as much as a member of

the church has the Lord's leave to hate anybody."

Her eyes sparkled with the old savage light, as if her ill-will to Mr.

Richard Veneer might perhaps go a little farther than the Christian limit

she had assigned. But remember that her grandfather was in the habit of

inviting his friends to dine with him upon the last enemy he had bagged,

and that her grandmother's teeth were filed down to points, so that they

were as sharp as a shark's.

"What is that you have seen about Mr. Richard Veneer that gives you such

a spite against him, Sophy?" asked the Doctor.

"What I' seen 'bout Dick Veneer?" she replied, fiercely. "I'll tell y'

what I' seen. Dick wan's to marry our Elsie,--that 's what he wan's; 'n'

he don' love her, Doctor,--he hates her, Doctor, as bad as I hate him!

He wan's to marry our Elsie, In' live here in the big house, 'n' have

nothin' to do but jes' lay still 'n' watch Massa Venner 'n' see how

long 't Ill take him to die, 'n' 'f he don' die fas' 'puff, help him some

way t' die fasser!--Come close up t' me, Doctor! I wan' t' tell you

somethin' I tol' th' minister t' other day. Th' minister, he come down

'n' prayed 'n' talked good,--he's a good man, that Doctor Honeywood, 'n'

I tol' him all 'bout our Elsie, but he did n' tell nobody what to do to

stop all what I' been dreamin' about happenin'. Come close up to me,

Doctor!"

The Doctor drew his chair close up to that of the old woman.

"Doctor, nobody mus'n' never marry our Elsie 's longs she lives! Nobody

mus' n' never live with Elsie but ol Sophy; 'n' ol Sophy won't never die

's long 's Elsie 's alive to be took care of. But I's feared, Doctor,

I's greatly feared Elsie wan' to marry somebody. The' 's a young

gen'l'm'n up at that school where she go,--so some of 'em tells me, 'n'

she loves t' see him 'n' talk wi' him, 'n' she talks about him when she

's asleep sometimes. She mus 'n' never marry nobody, Doctor! If she do,

he die, certain!"

"If she has a fancy for the young man up at the school there," the Doctor

said, "I shouldn't think there would be much danger from Dick."

"Doctor, nobody know nothin' 'bout Elsie but of Sophy. She no like any

other creator' th't ever drawed the bref o' life. If she ca'n' marry one

man 'cos she love him, she marry another man 'cos she hate him."

"Marry a man because she hates him, Sophy? No woman ever did such a

thing as that, or ever will do it."

"Who tol' you Elsie was a woman, Doctor?" said old Sophy, with a flash

of strange intelligence in her eyes.

The Doctor's face showed that he was startled. The old woman could not

know much about Elsie that he did not know; but what strange superstition

had got into her head, he was puzzled to guess. He had better follow

Sophy's lead and find out what she meant.

"I should call Elsie a woman, and a very handsome one," he said. "You

don't mean that she has any mark about her, except--you know--under the

necklace?"

The old woman resented the thought of any deformity about her darling.

"I did n' say she had nothin'--but jes' that--you know. My beauty have

anything ugly? She's the beautifullest-shaped lady that ever had a

shinin' silk gown drawed over her shoulders. On'y she a'n't like no

other woman in none of her ways. She don't cry 'n' laugh like other

women. An' she ha'n' got the same kind o' feelin's as other women.--Do

you know that young gen'l'm'n up at the school, Doctor?"

"Yes, Sophy, I've met him sometimes. He's a very nice sort of young man,

handsome, too, and I don't much wonder Elsie takes to him. Tell me,

Sophy, what do you think would happen, if he should chance to fall in

love with Elsie, and she with him, and he should marry her?"

"Put your ear close to my lips, Doctor, dear!" She whispered a little to

the Doctor, then added aloud, "He die,--that's all."

"But surely, Sophy, you a'n't afraid to have Dick marry her, if she would

have him for any reason, are you? He can take care of himself, if

anybody can."

"Doctor!" Sophy answered, "nobody can take care of hisself that live wi'

Elsie! Nobody never in all this worl' mus' live wi' Elsie but of Sophy,

I tell you. You don' think I care for Dick? What do I care, if Dick

Venner die? He wan's to marry our Elsie so 's to live in the big house

'n' get all the money 'n' all the silver things 'n' all the chists full

o' linen 'n' beautiful clothes. That's what Dick wan's. An' he hates

Elsie 'cos she don' like him. But if he marry Elsie, she 'll make him

die some wrong way or other, 'n' they'll take her 'n' hang her, or he'll

get mad with her 'n' choke her.--Oh, I know his chokin' tricks!--he don'

leave his keys roun' for nothin'"

"What's that you say, Sophy? Tell me what you mean by all that."

So poor Sophy had to explain certain facts not in all respects to her

credit. She had taken the opportunity of his absence to look about his

chamber, and, having found a key in one of his drawers, had applied it to

a trunk, and, finding that it opened the trunk, had made a kind of

inspection for contraband articles, and, seeing the end of a leather

thong, had followed it up until she saw that it finished with a noose,

which, from certain appearances, she inferred to have seen service of at

least doubtful nature. An unauthorized search; but old Sophy considered

that a game of life and death was going on in the household, and that she

was bound to look out for her darling.

The Doctor paused a moment to think over this odd piece of information.

Without sharing Sophy's belief as to the kind of use this

mischievous-looking piece of property had been put to, it was certainly

very odd that Dick should have such a thing at the bottom of his trunk.

The Doctor remembered reading or hearing something about the lasso and

the lariat and the bolas, and had an indistinct idea that they had been

sometimes used as weapons of warfare or private revenge; but they were

essentially a huntsman's implements, after all, and it was not very

strange that this young man had brought one of them with him. Not

strange, perhaps, but worth noting.

"Do you really think Dick means mischief to anybody, that he has such

dangerous-looking things?" the Doctor said, presently.

"I tell you, Doctor. Dick means to have Elsie. If he ca'n' get her, he

never let nobody else have her! Oh, Dick 's a dark man, Doctor! I know

him! I 'member him when he was little boy,--he always cunin'. I think he

mean mischief to somebody. He come home late nights,--come in

softly,--oh, I hear him! I lay awake, 'n' got sharp ears,--I hear the

cats walkin' over the roofs,--'n' I hear Dick Veneer, when he comes up in

his stockin'-feet as still as a cat. I think he mean' mischief to

somebody. I no like his looks these las' days.--Is that a very pooty

gen'l'm'n up at the schoolhouse, Doctor?"

"I told you he was good-looking. What if he is?"

"I should like to see him, Doctor,--I should like to see the pooty

gen'l'm'n that my poor Elsie loves. She mus 'n' never marry nobody,

--but, oh, Doctor, I should like to see him, 'n' jes' think a little how

it would ha' been, if the Lord had n' been so hard on Elsie."

She wept and wrung her hands. The kind Doctor was touched, and left her

a moment to her thoughts.

"And how does Mr. Dudley Veneer take all this?" he said, by way of

changing the subject a little.

"Oh, Massa Veneer, he good man, but he don' know nothin' 'bout Elsie, as

of Sophy do. I keep close by her; I help her when she go to bed, 'n' set

by her sometime when she--'sleep; I come to her in th' mornin' 'n' help

her put on her things."--Then, in a whisper;--"Doctor, Elsie lets of

Sophy take off that necklace for her. What you think she do, 'f anybody

else tech it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, Sophy,--strike the person, perhaps."

"Oh, yes, strike 'em! but not with her han's, Doctor!"--The old woman's

significant pantomime must be guessed at.

"But you haven't told me, Sophy, what Mr. Dudley Veneer thinks of his

nephew, nor whether he has any notion that Dick wants to marry Elsie."

"I tell you. Massa Venner, he good man, but he no see nothin' 'bout what

goes on here in the house. He sort o' broken-hearted, you know,--sort o'

giv up,--don' know what to do wi' Elsie, 'xcep' say 'Yes, yes.' Dick

always look smilin' 'n' behave well before him. One time I thought Massa

Veneer b'lieve Dick was goin' to take to Elsie; but now he don' seem to

take much notice,--he kin' o' stupid-' like 'bout sech things. It's

trouble, Doctor; 'cos Massa Veneer bright man naterally,--'n' he's got a

great heap o' books. I don' think Massa Veneer never been jes' heself

sence Elsie 's born. He done all he know how,--but, Doctor, that wa'n' a

great deal. You men-folks don' know nothin' 'bout these young gals; 'n'

'f you knowed all the young gals that ever lived, y' would n' know

nothin' 'bout our Elsie."

"No,--but, Sophy, what I want to know is, whether you think Mr. Veneer

has any kind of suspicion about his nephew,--whether he has any notion

that he's a dangerous sort of fellow,--or whether he feels safe to have

him about, or has even taken a sort of fancy to him."

"Lar' bless you, Doctor, Massa Veneer no more idee 'f any mischief 'bout

Dick than he has 'bout you or me. Y' see, he very fond o' the

Cap'n,--that Dick's father,--'n' he live so long alone here, 'long wi'

us, that he kin' o' like to see mos' anybody 't 's got any o' th' of

family-blood in 'em. He ha'n't got no more suspicions 'n a baby,--y'

never see sech a man 'n y'r life. I kin' o' think he don' care for

nothin' in this world 'xcep' jes' t' do what Elsie wan's him to. The fus'

year after young Madam die he do nothin' but jes' set at the window 'n'

look out at her grave, 'n' then come up 'n' look at the baby's neck 'n'

say, 'It's fadin', Sophy, a'n't it? 'n' then go down in the study 'n'

walk 'n' walk, 'n' them kneel down 'n' pray. Doctor, there was two places

in the old carpet that was all threadbare, where his knees had worn 'em.

An' sometimes, you remember 'bout all that,--he'd go off up into The

Mountain, 'n' be gone all day, 'n' kill all the Ugly Things he could find

up there.--Oh, Doctor, I don' like to think o' them days!--An' by 'n'

by he grew kin' o' still, 'n' begun to read a little, 'n' 't las' he got

's quiet's a lamb, 'n' that's the way he is now. I think he's got

religion, Doctor; but he a'n't so bright about what's goin' on, 'n' I

don' believe he never suspec' nothin' till somethin' happens; for the' 's

somethin' goin' to happen, Doctor, if the Las' Day does n' come to stop

it; 'n' you mus' tell us what to do, 'n' save my poor Elsie, my baby that

the Lord has n' took care of like all his other childer."

The Doctor assured the old woman that he was thinking a great deal about

them all, and that there were other eyes on Dick besides her own. Let

her watch him closely about the house, and he would keep a look-out

elsewhere. If there was anything new, she must let him know at once.

Send up one of the menservants, and he would come down at a moment's

warning.

There was really nothing definite against this young man; but the Doctor

was sure that he was meditating some evil design or other. He rode

straight up to the Institute. There he saw Mr. Bernard, and had a brief

conversation with him, principally on matters relating to his personal

interests.

That evening, for some unknown reason, Mr. Bernard changed the place of

his desk and drew down the shades of his windows. Late that night Mr.

Richard Venner drew the charge of a rifle, and put the gun back among the

fowling-pieces, swearing that a leather halter was worth a dozen of it.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PERILOUS HOUR.

Up to this time Dick Venner had not decided on the particular mode and

the precise period of relieving himself from the unwarrantable

interference which threatened to defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling

that he had his man in his power was its own reward. One who watches in

the dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, is

illuminating his apartment and himself so that every movement of his head

and every button on his coat can be seen and counted, experiences a

peculiar kind of pleasure, if he holds a loaded rifle in his hand, which

he naturally hates to bring to its climax by testing his skill as a

marksman upon the object of his attention.

Besides, Dick had two sides in his nature, almost as distinct as we

sometimes observe in those persons who are the subjects of the condition

known as double consciousness. On his New England side he was cunning

and calculating, always cautious, measuring his distance before he risked

his stroke, as nicely as if he were throwing his lasso. But he was

liable to intercurrent fits of jealousy and rage, such as the light-hued

races are hardly capable of conceiving, blinding paroxysms of passion,

which for the time overmastered him, and which, if they found no ready

outlet, transformed themselves into the more dangerous forces that worked

through the instrumentality of his cool craftiness.

He had failed as yet in getting any positive evidence that there was any

relation between Elsie and the schoolmaster other than such as might

exist unsuspected and unblamed between a teacher and his pupil. A book,

or a note, even, did not prove the existence of any sentiment. At one

time he would be devoured by suspicions, at another he would try to laugh

himself out of them. And in the mean while he followed Elsie's tastes as

closely as he could, determined to make some impression upon her,--to

become a habit, a convenience, a necessity,--whatever might aid him in

the attainment of the one end which was now the aim of his life.

It was to humor one of her tastes already known to the reader, that he

said to her one morning,--"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let us

have a dance."

He had struck the right vein in the girl's fancy, for she was in the mood

for this exercise, and very willingly led the way into one of the more

empty apartments. What there was in this particular kind of dance which

excited her it might not be easy to guess; but those who looked in with

the old Doctor, on a former occasion, and saw her, will remember that she

was strangely carried away by it, and became almost fearful in the

vehemence of her passion. The sound of the castanets seemed to make her

alive all over. Dick knew well enough what the exhibition would be, and

was almost afraid of her at these moments; for it was like the dancing

mania of Eastern devotees, more than the ordinary light amusement of

joyous youth,--a convulsion of the body and the mind, rather than a

series of voluntary modulated motions.

Elsie rattled out the triple measure of a saraband. Her eyes began to

glitter more brilliantly, and her shape to undulate in freer curves.

Presently she noticed that Dick's look was fixed upon her necklace. His

face betrayed his curiosity; he was intent on solving the question, why

she always wore something about her neck. The chain of mosaics she had

on at that moment displaced itself at every step, and he was peering with

malignant, searching eagerness to see if an unsunned ring of fairer hue

than the rest of the surface, or any less easily explained peculiarity,

were hidden by her ornaments.

She stopped suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and settled it hastily

in its place, flung down her castanets, drew herself back, and stood

looking at him, with her head a little on one side, and her eyes

narrowing in the way he had known so long and well.

"What is the matter, Cousin Elsie? What do you stop for?" he said.

Elsie did not answer, but kept her eyes on him, full of malicious light.

The jealousy which lay covered up under his surface-thoughts took this

opportunity to break out.

"You would n't act so, if you were dancing with Mr. Langdon,--would you,

Elsie?" he asked.

It was with some effort that he looked steadily at her to see the effect

of his question.

Elsie colored,--not much, but still perceptibly. Dick could not remember

that he had ever seen her show this mark of emotion before, in all his

experience of her fitful changes of mood. It had a singular depth of

significance, therefore, for him; he knew how hardly her color came.

Blushing means nothing, in some persons; in others, it betrays a profound

inward agitation,--a perturbation of the feelings far more trying than

the passions which with many easily moved persons break forth in tears.

All who have observed much are aware that some men, who have seen a good

deal of life in its less chastened aspects and are anything but modest,

will blush often and easily, while there are delicate and sensitive women

who can faint, or go into fits, if necessary, but are very rarely seen to

betray their feelings in their cheeks, even when their expression shows

that their inmost soul is blushing scarlet. Presently she answered,

abruptly and scornfully, "Mr. Langdon is a gentleman, and would not vex

me as you do."

"A gentleman!" Dick answered, with the most insulting accent,--"a

gentleman! Come, Elsie, you 've got the Dudley blood in your veins, and

it does n't do for you to call this poor, sneaking schoolmaster a

gentleman!"

He stopped short. Elsie's bosom was heaving, the faint flush on her

cheek was becoming a vivid glow. Whether it were shame or wrath, he saw

that he had reached some deep-lying centre of emotion. There was no

longer any doubt in his mind. With another girl these signs of confusion

might mean little or nothing; with her they were decisive and final.

Elsie Venner loved Bernard Langdon.

The sudden conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him, had

well-nigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible scene

which might have fulfilled some of old Sophy's predictions. This,

however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he

kept still until he could speak calmly.

"I've nothing against the young fellow," he said; "only I don't think

there's anything quite good enough to keep the company of people that

have the Dudley blood in them. You a'n't as proud as I am. I can't

quite make up my mind to call a schoolmaster a gentleman, though this one

may be well enough. I 've nothing against him, at any rate."

Elsie made no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her own

apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she

threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion,

without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained,

perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her

passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously

round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented with curious old Dutch

tiles, with pictures of Scripture subjects. One of these represented the

lifting of the brazen serpent. She took a hair-pin from one of her

braids, and, insinuating its points under the edge of the tile, raised it

from its place. A small leaden box lay under the tile, which she opened,

and, taking from it a little white powder, which she folded in a scrap of

paper, replaced the box and the tile over it.

Whether Dick had by any means got a knowledge of this proceeding, or

whether he only suspected some unmentionable design on her part, there is

no sufficient means of determining. At any rate, when they met, an hour

or two after these occurrences, he could not help noticing how easily she

seemed to have got over her excitement. She was very pleasant with

him,--too pleasant, Dick thought. It was not Elsie's way to come out of

a fit of anger so easily as that. She had contrived some way of letting

off her spite; that was certain. Dick was pretty cunning, as old Sophy

had said, and, whether or not he had any means of knowing Elsie's private

intentions, watched her closely, and was on his guard against accidents.

For the first time, he took certain precautions with reference to his

diet, such as were quite alien to his common habits. On coming to the

dinner-table, that day, he complained of headache, took but little food,

and refused the cup of coffee which Elsie offered him, saying that it did

not agree with him when he had these attacks.

Here was a new complication. Obviously enough, he could not live in this

way, suspecting everything but plain bread and water, and hardly feeling

safe in meddling with them. Not only had this school-keeping wretch come

between him and the scheme by which he was to secure his future fortune,

but his image had so infected his cousin's mind that she was ready to try

on him some of those tricks which, as he had heard hinted in the village,

she had once before put in practice upon a person who had become odious

to her.

Something must be done, and at once, to meet the double necessities of

this case. Every day, while the young girl was in these relations with

the young man, was only making matters worse. They could exchange words

and looks, they could arrange private interviews, they would be stooping

together over the same book, her hair touching his cheek, her breath

mingling with his, all the magnetic attractions drawing them together

with strange, invisible effluences. As her passion for the schoolmaster

increased, her dislike to him, her cousin, would grow with it, and all

his dangers would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had, reached.

He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and to disappear

suddenly from the place, leaving with the schoolmaster, who had come

between him and his object, an anonymous token of his personal sentiments

which would be remembered a good while in the history of the town of

Rockland. This was but a momentary thought; the great Dudley property

could not be given up in that way.

Something must happen at once to break up all this order of things. He

could think of but one Providential event adequate to the emergency,--an

event foreshadowed by various recent circumstances, but hitherto floating

in his mind only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once change

the course of Elsie's feelings, providing her with something to think of

besides mischief, and remove the accursed obstacle which was thwarting

all his own projects. Every possible motive, then,--his interest, his

jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for his own

safety,--urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty as a

matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr. Bernard

Langdon.

Such an event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be

incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable

fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who

looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He

was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but

strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become

suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some

display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden

repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and

would make a probable story enough,--so thought Dick over to himself

with the New-England half of his mind.

Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when,

so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most

appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There

was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the

schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary,

there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was

looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself and

exercising, as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of taking

certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when most of the

Rockland people had "retired," or, in vulgar language, "gone to bed."

Dick Veneer settled it, however, in his own mind, that Mr. Bernard

Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself. He even went so far as to

determine the precise hour, and the method in which the "rash act," as it

would undoubtedly be called in the next issue of "The Rockland Weekly

Universe," should be committed. Time,--this evening. Method, asphyxia,

by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking a great liberty with a man

to decide that he should become felo de se without his own consent.

Such, however, was the decision of Mr. Richard Veneer with regard to Mr.

Bernard Langdon.

If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner's inquest

to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, found suspended to the

branch of a tree somewhere within a mile of the Apollinean Institute.

The "Weekly Universe" would have a startling paragraph announcing a "SAD

EVENT!!!" which had "thrown the town into an intense state of excitement.

Mr. Barnard Langden, a well-known teacher at the Appolinian Institute,

was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The motive to the

rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be disappointed

affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of the highest

respectability and great beauty is mentioned in connection with this

melancholy occurrence."

Dick Venner was at the tea-table that evening, as usual.--No, he would

take green tea, if she pleased,--the same that her father drank. It

would suit his headache better.--Nothing,--he was much obliged to her.

He would help himself,--which he did in a little different way from

common, naturally enough, on account of his headache. He noticed that

Elsie seemed a little nervous while she was rinsing some of the teacups

before their removal.

"There's something going on in that witch's head," he said to himself.

"I know her,--she 'd be savage now, if she had n't got some trick in

hand. Let 's see how she looks to-morrow!"

Dick announced that he should go to bed early that evening, on account of

this confounded headache which had been troubling him so much. In fact,

he went up early, and locked his door after him, with as much noise as he

could make. He then changed some part of his dress, so that it should be

dark throughout, slipped off his boots, drew the lasso out from the

bottom of the contents of his trunk, and, carrying that and his boots in

his hand, opened his door softly, locked it after him, and stole down the

back-stairs, so as to get out of the house unnoticed. He went straight

to the stable and saddled the mustang. He took a rope from the stable

with him, mounted his horse, and set forth in the direction of the

Institute.

Mr. Bernard, as we have seen, had not been very profoundly impressed by

the old Doctor's cautions,--enough, however, to follow out some of his

hints which were not troublesome to attend to. He laughed at the idea of

carrying a loaded pistol about with him; but still it seemed only fair,

as the old Doctor thought so much of the matter, to humor him about it.

As for not going about when and where he liked, for fear he might have

some lurking enemy, that was a thing not to be listened to nor thought

of. There was nothing to be ashamed of or troubled about in any of his

relations with the school-girls. Elsie, no doubt, showed a kind of

attraction towards him, as did perhaps some others; but he had been

perfectly discreet, and no father or brother or lover had any just cause

of quarrel with him. To be sure, that dark young man at the Dudley

mansion-house looked as if he were his enemy, when he had met him; but

certainly there was nothing in their relations to each other, or in his

own to Elsie, that would be like to stir such malice in his mind as would

lead him to play any of his wild Southern tricks at his, Mr. Bernard's,

expense. Yet he had a vague feeling that this young man was dangerous,

and he had been given to understand that one of the risks he ran was from

that quarter.

On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual sense of some

impending peril. His recent interview with the Doctor, certain remarks

which had been dropped in his hearing, but above all an unaccountable

impression upon his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a

foreboding conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger.

It was as the chill of the ice-mountain toward which the ship is steering

under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see Helen Darley and talk

with her. She was in the common parlor, and, fortunately, alone.

"Helen," he said,--for they were almost like brother and sister now,--"I

have been thinking what you would do, if I should have to leave the

school at short notice, or be taken away suddenly by any accident."

"Do?" she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural delicate

hue,--"why, I do not know how I could possibly consent to live here, if

you left us. Since you came, my life has been almost easy; before, it

was getting intolerable. You must not talk about going, my dear friend;

you have spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can have any

true society with, but you? You would not leave us for another school,

would you?"

"No, no, my dear Helen," Mr. Bernard said, "if it depends on myself, I

shall stay out my full time, and enjoy your company and friendship. But

everything is uncertain in this world. I have been thinking that I might

be wanted elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it;--it was a

fancy, perhaps,--but I can't keep it out of my mind this evening. If any

of my fancies should come true, Helen, there are two or three messages I

want to leave with you. I have marked a book or two with a cross in

pencil on the fly-leaf;--these are for you. There is a little hymn-book I

should like to have you give to Elsie from me;--it may be a kind of

comfort to the poor girl."

Helen's eyes glistened as she interrupted him,--

"What do you mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Langdon. Why, you never

looked better in your life. Tell me now, you are not in earnest, are

you, but only trying a little sentiment on me?"

Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly.

"About half in earnest," he said. "I have had some fancies in my

head,--superstitions, I suppose,--at any rate, it does no harm to tell

you what I should like to have done, if anything should happen,--very

likely nothing ever will. Send the rest of the books home, if you

please, and write a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find one

small volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to

whom;--give this with your own hands; it is a keepsake."

The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first. Presently,

"Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in

danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel

you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you.

No, no,--it can't be true,--you are tired and worried, and your spirits

have got depressed. I know what that is;--I was sure, one winter, that

I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions and

buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was nothing but your

imagination."

She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from

him; it was the tear of a sister.

"I am really in earnest, Helen," he said. "I don't know that there is

the least reason in the world for these fancies. If they all go off and

nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like. But if there

should be any occasion, remember my requests. You don't believe in

presentiments, do you?"

"Oh, don't ask-me, I beg you," Helen answered. "I have had a good many

frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered. Sometimes I have

thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people

are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,--but not

often, and I don't like to talk about such things. I wouldn't think

about these fancies of yours. I don't believe you have exercised

enough;--don't you think it's confinement in the school has made you

nervous?"

"Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise

lately, and have taken regular evening walks, besides playing my old

gymnastic tricks every day."

They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a

pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding of

unknown evil. They parted at the usual hour, and went to their several

rooms. The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart of Helen, and

she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening, earnestly

entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and protected

in his hour of danger.

Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his

evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had given him when

he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture. It

happened that the first words he read were these,--"Lest, coming

suddenly, he find you sleeping." In the state of mind in which he was at

the moment, the text startled him. It was like a supernatural warning.

He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger this evening;

a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen Darley or his

own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling of

apprehension, without any definite object. At this moment he remembered

the old Doctor's counsel, which he had sometimes neglected, and, blushing

at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol his suspicious

old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away loaded, and,

thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk.

The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded.

There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually

awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the

pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently

he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward,

saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at

the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider looked

like a single dark object, and that they were moving along at an easy

pace. Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found his hand

on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was within a hundred and

fifty yards of him, the moon shone out suddenly and revealed each of them

to the other. The rider paused for a moment, as if carefully surveying

the pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full gallop, and

dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his stirrups and

swinging something round his head, what, Mr. Bernard could not make out.

It was a strange manoeuvre,--so strange and threatening in aspect that

the young man forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked his pistol,

and waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not wait long. As

the rider came rushing towards him, he made a rapid motion and something

leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr. Bernard's direction.

In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or thong, settle upon his

shoulders. There was no time to think, he would be lost in another

second. He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the rider, but at the

horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound and fell lifeless,

shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his

last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay

motionless, as if stunned.

In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse,

was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under

the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth.

He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his

shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern

blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to his

senses, he struggled violently to free himself.

"I 'll have the dog, yet," he said,--"only let me get at him with the

knife!"

He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready to

spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and looking

up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay fork, within an

inch of his breast.

"Hold on there! What 'n thunder 'r' y' abaout, y' darned Portagee?" said

a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute.

Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy,

plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect that

of one all ready for mischief.

"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't,

I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been arfter ye f'r a week, 'n'

I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother

'fore I'd done 'ith ye!"

Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless,

thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about

it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get

his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr.

Richard Venner, would be done for.

"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,--"I 'll give

you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,--don't

you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up!

I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the

spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own

hands!"

"I'll see y' darned fust! Ketch me lett'n' go!" was Abel's emphatic

answer. "Yeou lay still, 'n' wait t'll that man comes tew."

He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of

resistance.

Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and

then some few of his scattered wits, a little together.

"What is it?"--he said. "Who'shurt? What's happened?"

"Come along here 'z quick 'z y' ken," Abel answered, "'n' haalp me fix

this fellah. Y' been hurt, y'rself, 'n' the' 's murder come pooty nigh

happenin'."

Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked again,

"Who's hurt? What's happened?"

"Y' 'r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the' 's been a murder,

pooty nigh."

Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up,

found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip

over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a

wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to

slacken it.

By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and

presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He found

it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat

unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as still

as if they were performing in a tableau.

"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol,

and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me that

pistil, and yeou fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I 'll have this here

fella,h fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."

Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but

half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.

"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while

this man puts the rope mound y'r wrists."

Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm

roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he

was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then

secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of

twists and knots.

"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his

feet.

"Who's hurt? What's happened?" asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory

having been completely jarred out of him for the time.

"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' Stan' askin' questions over 'n'

over;--'t beats all! ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"

As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.

"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that 'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a

slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute,

Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."

Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round the neck

of the miserable Dick Veneer, who made no sign of resistance,--whether

on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because

he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,--since resistance

seemed of no use.

"I 'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "'T' th' ol Doctor, he's got a

gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,--off that way, will

ye?--'n' I Ill hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."

He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the

other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.

"Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a

slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a hors on th' full spring at t'

other eend!"

He looked at him from' head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new

specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg

which had been caught under the horse.

"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r

boot?"

It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly

relieved him of.

The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's house,

Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence,

still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his

hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman

riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and

these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he

had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he

could not as yet have told.

They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.

"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.

He fired.

Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal

head-dresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments

of the Nightblooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna

handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point

was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily,

from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see what

had happened.

"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what 's all

this noise about?"

"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero

of Lake Erie, in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"

The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had

bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous

in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it

had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.

"Richard Veneer!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all

this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"

Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.

"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.--Oh, yes!--wait a

minute and it will all come back to me."

"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it.

Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or

two,--will come right by to-morrow."

"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."

Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of

cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured.

The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.

"What 's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"

Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know, fell on it when his horse

came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his

clothes.

"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel"

By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was

a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people

like a hawk with a broken wing.

When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.

"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's

females and children standin' near."

This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from the

front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat

hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a

neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of

hair looked like a last year's crow's-nest.

But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate

remonstrance.

"Now," said the Doctor, "the first thing is to put the joint back."

"Stop," said Deacon Soper,--"stop a minute. Don't you think it will be

safer--for the women-folks--jest to wait till mornin', afore you put that

j'int into the socket?"

Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at

this moment.

"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they're scared, and put

the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I 'll resk him, j'int in or

out."

"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a

message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in

quick enough."

"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you

like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,--I can walk,

and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but myself. Damn

the shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"

Mr. Bernard came forward.

"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody

need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him

like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There

are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."

The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got

a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had

the bone replaced in a very few minutes.

"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends

and neighbors, leave this young man to me."

"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper, "and

you know what the law says in cases like this. It a'n't so clear that it

won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."

"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel

Sprowle,--which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually

settled the question.

"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home

and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy and I'll answer for

it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I

can tell you, whatever else they are."

The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left

the prisoner with him.

Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door, with

the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight.

The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the

limits of the State.

"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.

Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.

"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"

Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was

going, to take passage for a port in South America.

"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from

to-night's lesson."

The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed

the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun can

cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick Venner

disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine

ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as if she had not

been doing anything more than her duty during her four hours' stretch of

the last night.

Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.

"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah 's Squire Venner's

relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while,

till I come back? The's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead

boss that's layin' daown there in the road 'n' I guess the' a'n't no use

in lettin' on 'em spite,--so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em along. I

kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n' hide off

to-night,--'n' the' won't be much iron on that hose's huffs an haour

after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."

"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard; "I feel as if I could get

along well enough now."

So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead

mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned

from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In

addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of

Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a

message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a

highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this time.

His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but thin, like

bad cider-vinegar.

"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under

my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip

off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring

down a pair of pinchers and a file,--and--stop--fetch a pair of shears,

too; there's hosshair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster

with."

"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah goes

out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he's go'n' to let another

fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he's got a double-berril

gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I should like to see

the mahn that'll take off that seddle 'n' bridle, excep' the one th't hez

a fair right to the whole concern!"

Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being

overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina,

as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise, as undertaking to

carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.

Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together. "Here they be," said

the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"

Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually

becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.

All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval. He

took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the

strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse, which had led him so

suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him;

the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet

have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.

It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.

"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,--"and no wonder. A beautiful,

wild--looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and

have them carried to Mr. Dudley Veneer's. If he does not want them, you

may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I

hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate

him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel,

bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place.

You'll see to it,--won't you, Abel?"

Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw

himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with

wine.

Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked

saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with the

aid of two or three others, he removed him to the place indicated.

Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the

wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in

the far village among the hills of New England.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION.

Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made his appearance at Dudley

Veneer's, and requested to see the maan o' the haouse abaout somethin' o'

consequence. Mr. Veneer sent word that the messenger should wait below,

and presently appeared in the study, where Abel was making himself at

home, as is the wont of the republican citizen, when he hides the purple

of empire beneath the apron of domestic service.

"Good mornin', Squire!" said Abel, as Mr. Venner entered. "My name's

Stebbins, 'n' I'm stoppin' f'r a spell 'ith of Doctor Kittredge."

"Well, Stebbins," said Mr. Dudley Veneer, "have you brought any special

message from the Doctor?"

"Y' ha'n't heerd nothin' abaout it, Squire, d' ye mean t' say?" said

Abel,--beginning to suspect that he was the first to bring the news of

last evening's events.

"About what?" asked Mr. Veneer, with some interest.

"Dew tell, naow! Waal, that beats all! Why, that 'ere Portagee relation

o' yourn 'z been tryin' t' ketch a fellah 'n a slippernoose, 'n' got

ketched himself,--that's all. Y' ha'n't heerd noth'n' abaout it?"

"Sit down," said Mr. Dudley Veneer, calmly, "and tell me all you have to

say."

So Abel sat down and gave him an account of the events of the last

evening. It was a strange and terrible surprise to Dudley Veneer to find

that his nephew, who had been an inmate of his house and the companion of

his daughter, was to all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of

crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over than he began to think

what effect the news would have on Elsie. He imagined that there was a

kind of friendly feeling between them, and he feared some crisis would be

provoked in his daughter's mental condition by the discovery. He would

wait, however, until she came from her chamber, before disturbing her

with the evil tidings.

Abel did not forget his message with reference to the equipments of the

dead mustang.

"The' was some things on the hoss, Squire, that the man he ketched said

he did n' care no gre't abaout; but perhaps you'd like to have 'em

fetched to the mansion-haouse. Ef y' did n' care abaout 'em, though, I

should n' min' keepin' on 'em; they might come handy some time or

'nother; they say, holt on t' anything for ten year 'n' there 'll be some

kin' o' use for 't."

"Keep everything," said Dudley Veneer. "I don't want to see anything

belonging to that young man."

So Abel nodded to Mr. Veneer, and left the study to find some of the men

about the stable to tell and talk over with them the events of the last

evening. He presently came upon Elbridge, chief of the equine

department, and driver of the family-coach.

"Good mornin', Abe," said Elbridge. "What's fetched y' daown here so

all-fired airly?"

"You're a darned pooty lot daown here, you be!"

Abel answered. "Better keep your Portagees t' home nex' time, ketchin'

folks 'ith slippernooses raoun' their necks, 'n' kerryin' knives 'n their

boots!"

"What 'r' you jawin' abaout?" Elbridge said, looking up to see if he was

in earnest, and what he meant.

"Jawin' abaout? You'll find aout'z soon 'z y' go into that 'ere stable

o' yourn! Y' won't curry that 'ere long-tailed black hoss no more; 'n'

y' won't set y'r eyes on the fellah that rid him, ag'in, in a hurry!"

Elbridge walked straight to the stable, without saying a word, found the

door unlocked, and went in.

"Th' critter's gone, sure enough!" he said. "Glad on 't! The darndest,

kickin'est, bitin'est beast th't ever I see, 'r ever wan' t' see ag'in!

Good reddance! Don' wan' no snappin'-turkles in my stable! Whar's the

man gone th't brought the critter?"

"Whar he's gone? Guess y' better go 'n ask my ol man; he kerried him off

lass' night; 'n' when he comes back, mebbe he 'll tell ye whar he's gone

tew!"

By this time Elbridge had found out that Abel was in earnest, and had

something to tell. He looked at the litter in the mustang's stall, then

at the crib.

"Ha'n't eat b't haalf his feed. Ha'n't been daown on his straw. Must ha'

been took aout somewhere abaout ten 'r 'levee o'clock. I know that 'ere

critter's ways. The fellah's had him aout nights afore; b't I never

thought nothin' o' no mischief. He 's a kin' o' haalf Injin. What is 't

the chap's been a-doin' on? Tell 's all abaout it."

Abel sat down on a meal-chest, picked up a straw and put it into his

mouth. Elbridge sat down at the other end, pulled out his jack-knife,

opened the penknife-blade, and began sticking it into the lid of the

meal-chest. The Doctor's man had a story to tell, and he meant to get

all the enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every luxury of

circumstance. Mr. Veneer's man heard it all with open mouth. No

listener in the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a

tale heard amidst the perfume of roses and the voices of birds and

tinkling of fountains than Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as

they sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere of the stable, the

grinding of the horses' jaws keeping evenly on through it all, with now

and then the interruption of a stamping hoof, and at intervals a ringing

crow from the barn-yard.

Elbridge stopped a minute to think, after Abel had finished.

"Who's took care o' them things that was on the hoss?" he said, gravely.

"Waal, Langden, he seemed to kin 'o' think I'd ought to have 'em,--'n'

the Squire; he did n' seem to have no 'bjection; 'n' so,--waal, I

calc'late I sh'll jes' holt on to 'em myself; they a'n't good f 'r much,

but they're cur'ous t' keep t' look at."

Mr. Veneer's man did not appear much gratified by this arrangement,

especially as he had a shrewd suspicion that some of the ornaments of the

bridle were of precious metal, having made occasional examinations of

them with the edge of a file. But he did not see exactly what to do

about it, except to get them from Abel in the way of bargain.

"Waal, no,--they a'n't good for much 'xcep' to look at. 'F y' ever rid

on that seddle once, y' would n' try it ag'in, very spry,--not 'f y' c'd

haalp y'rsaalf.

"I tried it,--darned 'f I sot daown f'r th' nex' week,--eat all my

victuals stan'in'. I sh'd like t' hev them things wal enough to heng up

'n the stable; 'f y' want t' trade some day, fetch 'em along daown."

Abel rather expected that Elbridge would have laid claim to the saddle

and bridle on the strength of some promise or other presumptive title,

and thought himself lucky to get off with only offering to think abaout

tradin'.

When Elbridge returned to the house, he found the family in a state of

great excitement. Mr. Venner had told Old Sophy, and she had informed

the other servants. Everybody knew what had happened, excepting Elsie.

Her father had charged them all to say nothing about it to her; he would

tell her, when she came down.

He heard her step at last,--alight, gliding step,--so light that her

coming was often unheard, except by those who perceived the faint rustle

that went with it. She was paler than common this morning, as she came

into her father's study.

After a few words of salutation, he said quietly, "Elsie, my dear, your

cousin Richard has left us."

She grew still paler, as she asked,

"Is he dead?"

Dudley Venner started to see the expression with which Elsie put this

question.

"He is living,--but dead to us from this day forward," said her father.

He proceeded to tell her, in a general way, the story he had just heard

from Abel. There could be no doubting it;--he remembered him as the

Doctor's man; and as Abel had seen all with his own eyes, as Dick's

chamber, when unlocked with a spare key, was found empty, and his bed had

not been slept in, he accepted the whole account as true.

When he told of Dick's attempt on the young schoolmaster, ("You know Mr.

Langdon very well, Elsie,--a perfectly inoffensive young man, as I

understand,") Elsie turned her face away and slid along by the wall to

the window which looked out oh the little grass-plot with the white stone

standing in it. Her father could not see her face, but he knew by her

movements that her dangerous mood was on her. When she heard the sequel

of the story, the discomfiture and capture of Dick, she turned round for

an instant, with a look of contempt and of something like triumph upon

her face. Her father saw that her cousin had become odious to her: He

knew well, by every change of her countenance, by her movements, by every

varying curve of her graceful figure, the transitions front passion to

repose, from fierce excitement to the dull languor which often succeeded

her threatening paroxysms.

She remained looking out at the window. A group of white fan-tailed

pigeons had lighted on the green plot before it and clustered about one

of their companions who lay on his back, fluttering in a strange way,

with outspread wings and twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry;

these were her special favorites and often fed from her hand. She threw

open the long window, sprang out, caught up the white fantail, and held

it to her bosom. The bird stretched himself out, and then lay still,

with open eyes, lifeless. She looked at him a moment, and, sliding in

through the open window and through the study, sought her own apartment,

where she locked herself in, and began to sob and moan like those that

weep. But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be denied her, and her

grief, like her anger, was a dull ache, longing, like that, to finish

itself with a fierce paroxysm, but wanting its natural outlet.

This seemingly trifling incident of the death of her favorite appeared to

change all the current of her thought. Whether it were the sight of the

dying bird, or the thought that her own agency might have beep concerned

in it, or some deeper grief, which took this occasion to declare

itself,--some dark remorse or hopeless longing,--whatever it might be,

there was an unwonted tumult in her soul. To whom should she go in her

vague misery? Only to Him who knows all His creatures' sorrows, and

listens to the faintest human cry. She knelt, as she had been taught to

kneel from her childhood, and tried to pray. But her thoughts refused to

flow in the language of supplication. She could not plead for herself as

other women plead in their hours of anguish. She rose like one who

should stoop to drink, and find dust in the place of water. Partly from

restlessness, partly from an attraction she hardly avowed to herself, she

followed her usual habit and strolled listlessly along to the school.

Of course everybody at the Institute was full of the terrible adventure

of the preceding evening. Mr. Bernard felt poorly enough; but he had

made it a point to show himself the next morning, as if nothing had

happened. Helen Darley knew nothing of it all until she hard risen, when

the gossipy matron of the establishment made her acquainted with all its

details, embellished with such additional ornamental appendages as it had

caught up in transmission from lip to lip. She did not love to betray

her sensibilities, but she was pale and tremulous and very nearly tearful

when Mr. Bernard entered the sitting-room, showing on his features traces

of the violent shock he had received and the heavy slumber from which he

had risen with throbbing brows. What the poor girl's impulse was, on

seeing him, we need not inquire too curiously. If he had been her own

brother, she would have kissed him and cried on his neck; but something

held her back. There is no galvanism in kiss-your-brother; it is copper

against copper: but alien bloods develop strange currents, when they flow

close to each other, with only the films that cover lip and cheek between

them. Mr. Bernard, as some of us may remember, violated the proprieties

and laid himself open to reproach by his enterprise with a bouncing

village-girl, to whose rosy cheek an honest smack was not probably an

absolute novelty. He made it all up by his discretion and good behavior

now. He saw by Helen's moist eye and trembling lip that her woman's

heart was off its guard, and he knew, by the infallible instinct of sex,

that he should be forgiven, if he thanked her for her sisterly sympathies

in the most natural way,--expressive, and at the same time economical of

breath and utterance. He would not give a false look to their friendship

by any such demonstration. Helen was a little older than himself, but

the aureole of young womanhood had not yet begun to fade from around her.

She was surrounded by that enchanted atmosphere into which the girl walks

with dreamy eyes, and out of which the woman passes with a story written

on her forehead. Some people think very little of these refinements;

they have not studied magnetism and the law of the square of the

distance.

So Mr. Bernard thanked Helen for her interest without the aid of the

twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet,--the love labial,--the limping

consonant which it takes two to speak plain. Indeed, he scarcely let her

say a word, at first; for he saw that it was hard for her to conceal her

emotion. No wonder; he had come within a hair's-breadth of losing his

life, and he had been a very kind friend and a very dear companion to

her.

There were some curious spiritual experiences connected with his last

evening's adventure which were working very strongly in his mind. It was

borne in upon him irresistibly that he had been dead since he had seen

Helen,--as dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was

touched and he sat up and began to speak. There was an interval between

two conscious moments which appeared to him like a temporary

annihilation, and the thoughts it suggested were worrying him with

strange perplexities.

He remembered seeing the dark figure on horseback rise in the saddle and

something leap from its hand. He remembered the thrill he felt as the

coil settled on his shoulders, and the sudden impulse which led him to

fire as he did. With the report of the pistol all became blank, until he

found himself in a strange, bewildered state, groping about for the

weapon, which he had a vague consciousness of having dropped. But,

according to Abel's account, there must have been an interval of some

minutes between these recollections, and he could not help asking, Where

was the mind, the soul, the thinking principle, all this time?

A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on the head. He becomes

unconscious. Another man gets a harder blow on the head from a bigger

stick, and it kills him. Does he become unconscious, too? If so, when

does he come to his consciousness? The man who has had a slight or

moderate blow comes to himself when the immediate shock passes off and

the organs begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull is pried up,

if that happens to be broken. Suppose the blow is hard enough to spoil

the brain and stop the play of the organs, what happens them?

A British captain was struck by a cannon-ball on the head, just as he was

giving an order, at the Battle of the Nile. Fifteen months afterwards he

was trephined at Greenwich Hospital, having been insensible all that

time. Immediately after the operation his consciousness returned, and he

at once began carrying out the order he was giving when the shot struck

him. Suppose he had never been trephined, when would his consciousness

have returned? When his breath ceased and his heart stopped beating?

When Mr. Bernard said to Helen, "I have been dead since I saw you," it

startled her not a little; for his expression was that of perfect good

faith, and she feared that his mind was disordered. When he explained,

not as has been done just now, at length, but in a hurried, imperfect

way, the meaning of his strange assertion, and the fearful Sadduceeisms

which it had suggested to his mind, she looked troubled at first, and

then thoughtful. She did not feel able to answer all the difficulties he

raised, but she met them with that faith which is the strength as well as

the weakness of women,--which makes them weak in the hands of man, but

strong in the presence of the Unseen.

"It is a strange experience," she said; "but I once had something like

it. I fainted, and lost some five or ten minutes out of my life, as much

as if I had been dead. But when I came to myself, I was the same person

every way, in my recollections and character. So I suppose that loss of

consciousness is not death. And if I was born out of unconsciousness

into infancy with many family-traits of mind and body, I can believe,

from my own reason, even without help from Revelation, that I shall be

born again out of the unconsciousness of death with my individual traits

of mind and body. If death is, as it should seem to be, a loss of

consciousness, that does not shake my faith; for I have been put into a

body once already to fit me for living here, and I hope to be in some way

fitted after this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all trust in God

and in his Word. These are enough for me; I hope they are for you."

Helen was a minister's daughter, and familiar from her childhood with

this class of questions, especially with all the doubts and perplexities

which are sure to assail every thinking child bred in any inorganic or

not thoroughly vitalized faith,--as is too often the case with the

children of professional theologians. The kind of discipline they are

subjected to is like that of the Flat-Head Indian pappooses. At five or

ten or fifteen years old they put their hands up to their foreheads and

ask, What are they strapping down my brains in this way for? So they

tear off the sacred bandages of the great Flat-Head tribe, and there

follows a mighty rush of blood to the long-compressed region. This

accounts, in the most lucid manner, for those sudden freaks with which

certain children of this class astonish their worthy parents at the

period of life when they are growing fast, and, the frontal pressure

beginning to be felt as something intolerable, they tear off the holy

compresses.

The hour for school came, and they went to the great hall for study. It

would not have occurred to Mr. Silas Peckham to ask his assistant whether

he felt well enough to attend to his duties; and Mr. Bernard chose to be

at his post. A little headache and confusion were all that remained of

his symptoms.

Later, in the course of the forenoon, Elsie Venner came and took her

place. The girls all stared at her--naturally enough; for it was hardly

to have been expected that she would show herself, after such an event in

the household to which she belonged. Her expression was somewhat

peculiar, and, of course, was attributed to the shock her feelings had

undergone on hearing of the crime attempted by her cousin and daily

companion. When she was looking on her book, or on any indifferent

object, her countenance betrayed some inward disturbance, which knitted

her dark brows, and seemed to throw a deeper shadow over her features.

But, from time to time, she would lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and

let them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she herself

was the subject of observation or remark. Then they seemed to lose their

cold glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness. The deep

instincts of womanhood were striving to grope their way to the surface of

her being through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She

could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dangerous impulses,

but she did not know how to mask the unwonted feeling which fixed her

eyes and her thoughts upon the only person who had ever reached the

spring of her hidden sympathies.

The girls all looked at Elsie, whenever they could steal a glance

unperceived, and many of them were struck with this singular expression

her features wore. They had long whispered it around among each other

that she had a liking for the master; but there were too many of them of

whom something like this could be said, to make it very remarkable. Now,

however, when so many little hearts were fluttering at the thought of the

peril through which the handsome young master had so recently passed,

they were more alive than ever to the supposed relation between him and

the dark school-girl. Some had supposed there was a mutual attachment

between them; there was a story that they were secretly betrothed, in

accordance with the rumor which had been current in the village. At any

rate, some conflict was going on in that still, remote, clouded soul, and

all the girls who looked upon her face were impressed and awed as they

had never been before by the shadows that passed over it.

One of these girls was more strongly arrested by Elsie's look than the

others. This was a delicate, pallid creature, with a high forehead, and

wide-open pupils, which looked as if they could take in all the shapes

that flit in what, to common eyes, is darkness,--a girl said to be

clairvoyant under certain influences. In the recess, as it was called,

or interval of suspended studies in the middle of the forenoon, this girl

carried her autograph-book,--for she had one of those indispensable

appendages of the boarding-school miss of every degree,--and asked Elsie

to write her name in it. She had an irresistible feeling, that, sooner

or later, and perhaps very soon, there would attach an unusual interest

to this autograph. Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp Italian

hand,

Elsie Venner, Infelix.

It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn queen of the "AEneid";

but its coming to her thought in this way confirmed the sensitive

school-girl in her fears for Elsie, and she let fall a tear upon the page

before she closed it.

Of course, the keen and practised observation of Helen Darley could not

fail to notice the change of Elsie's manner and expression. She had long

seen that she was attracted to the young master, and had thought, as the

old Doctor did, that any impression which acted upon her affections might

be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly isolated nature.

Now, however, the concentration of the poor girl's thoughts upon the one

object which had had power to reach her deeper sensibilities was so

painfully revealed in her features, that Helen began to fear once more,

lest Mr. Bernard, in escaping the treacherous violence of an assassin,

had been left to the equally dangerous consequences of a violent,

engrossing passion in the breast of a young creature whose love it would

be ruin to admit and might be deadly to reject. She knew her own heart

too well to fear that any jealousy might mingle with her new

apprehensions. It was understood between Bernard and Helen that they

were too good friends to tamper with the silences and edging proximities

of lovemaking. She knew, too, the simply human, not masculine, interest

which Mr. Bernard took in Elsie; he had been frank with Helen, and more

than satisfied her that with all the pity and sympathy which overflowed

his soul, when he thought of the stricken girl, there mingled not one

drop of such love as a youth may feel for a maiden.

It may help the reader to gain some understanding of the anomalous nature

of Elsie Veneer, if we look with Helen into Mr. Bernard's opinions and

feelings with reference to her, as they had shaped themselves in his

consciousness at the period of which we are speaking.

At first he had been impressed by her wild beauty, and the contrast of

all her looks and ways with those of the girls around her. Presently a

sense of some ill-defined personal element, which half-attracted and

half-repelled those who looked upon her, and especially those on whom she

looked, began to make itself obvious to him, as he soon found it was

painfully sensible to his more susceptible companion, the lady-teacher.

It was not merely in the cold light of her diamond eyes, but in all her

movements, in her graceful postures as she sat, in her costume, and, he

sometimes thought, even in her speech, that this obscure and exceptional

character betrayed itself. When Helen had said, that, if they were living

in times when human beings were subject to possession, she should have

thought there was something not human about Elsie, it struck an

unsuspected vein of thought in his own mind, which he hated to put in

words, but which was continually trying to articulate itself among the

dumb thoughts which lie under the perpetual stream of mental whispers.

Mr. Bernard's professional training had made him slow to accept

marvellous stories and many forms of superstition. Yet, as a man of

science, he well knew that just on the verge of the demonstrable facts of

physics and physiology there is a nebulous border-land which what is

called "common sense" perhaps does wisely not to enter, but which

uncommon sense, or the fine apprehension of privileged intelligences, may

cautiously explore, and in so doing find itself behind the scenes which

make up for the gazing world the show which is called Nature.

It was with something of this finer perception, perhaps with some degree

of imaginative exaltation, that he set himself to solving the problem of

Elsie's influence to attract and repel those around her. His letter

already submitted to the reader hints in what direction his thoughts were

disposed to turn. Here was a magnificent organization, superb in

vigorous womanhood, with a beauty such as never comes but after

generations of culture; yet through all this rich nature there ran some

alien current of influence, sinuous and dark, as when a clouded streak

seams the white marble of a perfect statue.

It would be needless to repeat the particular suggestions which had come

into his mind, as they must probably have come into that of the reader

who has noted the singularities of Elsie's tastes and personal traits.

The images which certain poets had dreamed of seemed to have become a

reality before his own eyes. Then came that unexplained adventure of The

Mountain,--almost like a dream in recollection, yet assuredly real in

some of its main incidents,--with all that it revealed or hinted. This

girl did not fear to visit the dreaded region, where danger lurked in

every nook and beneath every tuft of leaves. Did the tenants of the

fatal ledge recognize some mysterious affinity which made them tributary

to the cold glitter of her diamond eyes? Was she from her birth one of

those frightful children, such as he had read about, and the Professor

had told him of, who form unnatural friendships with cold, writhing

ophidians? There was no need of so unwelcome a thought as this; she had

drawn him away from the dark opening in the rock at the moment when he

seemed to be threatened by one of its malignant denizens; that was all he

could be sure of; the counter-fascination might have been a dream, a

fancy, a coincidence. All wonderful things soon grow doubtful in our own

minds, as do even common events, if great interests prove suddenly to

attach to their truth or falsehood.

--I, who am telling of these occurrences, saw a friend in the great city,

on the morning of a most memorable disaster, hours after the time when

the train which carried its victims to their doom had left. I talked with

him, and was for some minutes, at least, in his company. When I reached

home, I found that the story had gone before that he was among the lost,

and I alone could contradict it to his weeping friends and relatives. I

did contradict it; but, alas! I began soon to doubt myself, penetrated

by the contagion of their solicitude; my recollection began to question

itself; the order of events became dislocated; and when I heard that he

had reached home in safety, the relief was almost as great to me as to

those who had expected to see their own brother's face no more.

Mr. Bernard was disposed, then, not to accept the thought of any odious

personal relationship of the kind which had suggested itself to him when

he wrote the letter referred to. That the girl had something of the

feral nature, her wild, lawless rambles in forbidden and blasted regions

of The Mountain at all hours, her familiarity with the lonely haunts

where any other human foot was so rarely seen, proved clearly enough.

But the more he thought of all her strange instincts and modes of being,

the more he became convinced that whatever alien impulse swayed her will

and modulated or diverted or displaced her affections came from some

impression that reached far back into the past, before the days when the

faithful Old Sophy had rocked her in the cradle. He believed that she

had brought her ruling tendency, whatever it was, into the world with

her.

When the school was over and the girls had all gone, Helen lingered in

the schoolroom to speak with Mr. Bernard.

"Did you remark Elsie's ways this forenoon?" she said.

"No, not particularly; I have not noticed anything as sharply as I

commonly do; my head has been a little queer, and I have been thinking

over what we were talking about, and how near I came to solving the great

problem which every day makes clear to such multitudes of people. What

about Elsie?"

"Bernard, her liking for you is growing into a passion. I have studied

girls for a long while, and I know the difference between their passing

fancies and their real emotions. I told you, you remember, that Rosa

would have to leave us; we barely missed a scene, I think, if not a whole

tragedy, by her going at the right moment. But Elsie is infinitely more

dangerous to herself and others. Women's love is fierce enough, if it

once gets the mastery of them, always; but this poor girl does not know

what to do with a passion."

Mr. Bernard had never told Helen the story of the flower in his Virgil,

or that other adventure--which he would have felt awkwardly to refer to;

but it had been perfectly understood between them that Elsie showed in

her own singular way a well-marked partiality for the young master.

"Why don't they take her away from the school, if she is in such a

strange, excitable state?" said Mr. Bernard.

"I believe they are afraid of her," Helen answered. "It is just one of

those cases that are ten thousand thousand times worse than insanity. I

don't think from what I hear, that her father has ever given up hoping

that she will outgrow her peculiarities. Oh, these peculiar children for

whom parents go on hoping every morning and despairing every night! If I

could tell you half that mothers have told me, you would feel that the

worst of all diseases of the moral sense and the will are those which all

the Bedlams turn away from their doors as not being cases of insanity!"

"Do you think her father has treated her judiciously?" said Mr. Bernard.

"I think," said Helen, with a little hesitation, which Mr. Bernard did

not happen to notice,--"I think he has been very kind and indulgent, and

I do not know that he could have treated her otherwise with a better

chance of success."

"He must of course be fond of her," Mr. Bernard said; "there is nothing

else in the world for him to love."

Helen dropped a book she held in her hand, and, stooping to pick it up,

the blood rushed into her cheeks.

"It is getting late," she said; "you must not stay any longer in this

close schoolroom. Pray, go and get a little fresh air before

dinner-time."

CHAPTER XXVII.

A SOUL IN DISTRESS.

The events told in the last two chapters had taken place toward the close

of the week. On Saturday evening the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather

received a note which was left at his door by an unknown person who

departed without saying a word. Its words were these: "One who is in

distress of mind requests the prayers of this congregation that God would

be pleased to look in mercy upon the soul that he has afflicted."

There was nothing to show from whom the note came, or the sex or age or

special source of spiritual discomfort or anxiety of the writer. The

handwriting was delicate and might well be a woman's. The clergyman was

not aware of any particular affliction among his parishioners which was

likely to be made the subject of a request of this kind. Surely neither

of the Venners would advertise the attempted crime of their relative in

this way. But who else was there? The more he thought about it, the

more it puzzled him, and as he did not like to pray in the dark, without

knowing for whom he was praying, he could think of nothing better than to

step into old Doctor Kittredge's and see what he had to say about it.

The old Doctor was sitting alone in his study when the Reverend Mr.

Fairweather was ushered in. He received his visitor very pleasantly,

expecting, as a matter of course, that he would begin with some new

grievance, dyspeptic, neuralgic, bronchitic, or other. The minister,

however, began with questioning the old Doctor about the sequel of the

other night's adventure; for he was already getting a little Jesuitical,

and kept back the object of his visit until it should come up as if

accidentally in the course of conversation.

"It was a pretty bold thing to go off alone with that reprobate, as you

did," said the minister.

"I don't know what there was bold about it," the Doctor answered. "All he

wanted was to get away. He was not quite a reprobate, you see; he didn't

like the thought of disgracing his family or facing his uncle. I think

he was ashamed to see his cousin, too, after what he had done."

"Did he talk with you on the way?"

"Not much. For half an hour or so he did n't speak a word. Then he

asked where I was driving him. I told him, and he seemed to be surprised

into a sort of grateful feeling. Bad enough, no doubt, but might be

worse. Has some humanity left in him yet. Let him go. God can judge

him,--I can't."

"You are too charitable, Doctor," the minister said. "I condemn him just

as if he had carried out his project, which, they say, was to make it

appear as if the schoolmaster had committed suicide. That's what people

think the rope found by him was for. He has saved his neck,--but his

soul is a lost one, I am afraid, beyond question."

"I can't judge men's souls," the Doctor said. "I can judge their acts,

and hold them responsible for those,--but I don't know much about their

souls. If you or I had found our soul in a half-breed body; and been

turned loose to run among the Indians, we might have been playing just

such tricks as this fellow has been trying. What if you or I had

inherited all the tendencies that were born with his cousin Elsie?"

"Oh, that reminds me,"--the minister said, in a sudden way,--"I have

received a note, which I am requested to read from the pulpit tomorrow.

I wish you would just have the kindness to look at it and see where you

think it came from."

The Doctor examined it carefully. It was a woman's or girl's note, he

thought. Might come from one of the school-girls who was anxious about

her spiritual condition. Handwriting was disguised; looked a little like

Elsie Veneer's, but not characteristic enough to make it certain. It

would be a new thing, if she had asked public prayers for herself, and a

very favorable indication of a change in her singular moral nature. It

was just possible Elsie might have sent that note. Nobody could foretell

her actions. It would be well to see the girl and find out whether any

unusual impression had been produced on her mind by the recent occurrence

or by any other cause.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into his pocket.

"I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately, myself," he said.

The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and said, in his

usual professional tone,

"Put out your tongue."

The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with persons of weak

character,--for people differ as much in their mode of performing this

trifling act as Gideon's soldiers in their way of drinking at the brook.

The Doctor took his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist.

"It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily," said the Reverend Mr.

Fairweather.

"Is your appetite as good as usual?" the Doctor asked.

"Pretty good," the minister answered; "but my sleep, my sleep, Doctor,--I

am greatly troubled at night with lying awake and thinking of my future,

I am not at ease in mind."

He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were shut, and moved

his chair up close to the Doctor's.

"You do not know the mental trials I have been going through for the last

few months."

"I think I do," the old Doctor said. "You want to get out of the new

church into the old one, don't you?"

The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been going on in a very

quiet way, and that nobody suspected his secret. As the old Doctor was

his counsellor in sickness, and almost everybody's confidant in trouble,

he had intended to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of

sentiments through which he had been passing. He was too late with his

information, it appeared, and there was nothing to be done but to throw

himself on the Doctor's good sense and kindness, which everybody knew,

and get what hints he could from him as to the practical course he should

pursue. He began, after an awkward pause,

"You would not have me stay in a communion which I feel to be alien to

the true church, would you?"

"Have you stay, my friend?" said the Doctor, with a pleasant, friendly

look,--"have you stay? Not a month, nor a week, nor a day, if I could

help it. You have got into the wrong pulpit, and I have known it from

the first. The sooner you go where you belong, the better. And I'm very

glad you don't mean to stop half-way. Don't you know you've always come

to me when you've been dyspeptic or sick anyhow, and wanted to put

yourself wholly into my hands, so that I might order you like a child

just what to do and what to take? That 's exactly what you want in

religion. I don't blame you for it. You never liked to take the

responsibility of your own body; I don't see why you should want to have

the charge of your own soul. But I'm glad you're going to the Old Mother

of all. You wouldn't have been contented short of that."

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather breathed with more freedom. The Doctor saw

into his soul through those awful spectacles of his,--into it and beyond

it, as one sees through a thin fog. But it was with a real human

kindness, after all. He felt like a child before a strong man; but the

strong man looked on him with a father's indulgence. Many and many a

time, when he had come desponding and bemoaning himself on account of

some contemptible bodily infirmity, the old Doctor had looked at him

through his spectacles, listened patiently while he told his ailments,

and then, in his large parental way, given him a few words of wholesome

advice, and cheered him up so that he went off with a light heart,

thinking that the heaven he was so much afraid of was not so very near,

after all. It was the same thing now. He felt, as feeble natures always

do in the presence of strong ones, overmastered, circumscribed, shut in,

humbled; but yet it seemed as if the old Doctor did not despise him any

more for what he considered weakness of mind than he used to despise him

when he complained of his nerves or his digestion.

Men who see into their neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but men

who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which

it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of

the order of God's manifold universe.

Little as the Doctor had said out of which comfort could be extracted,

his genial manner had something grateful in it. A film of gratitude came

over the poor man's cloudy, uncertain eye, and a look of tremulous relief

and satisfaction played about his weak mouth. He was gravitating to the

majority, where he hoped to find "rest"; but he was dreadfully sensitive

to the opinions of the minority he was on the point of leaving.

The old Doctor saw plainly enough what was going on in his mind.

"I sha'n't quarrel with you," he said,--"you know that very well; but you

mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't everybody

that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will make a

good many enemies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as you

think. This is the way the common sort of people will talk:--'You have

got your ticket to the feast of life, as much as any other man that ever

lived. Protestantism says,--"Help yourself; here's a clean plate, and a

knife and fork of your own, and plenty of fresh dishes to choose from."

The Old Mother says,--"Give me your ticket, my dear, and I'll feed you

with my gold spoon off these beautiful old wooden trenchers. Such nice

bits as those good old gentlemen have left for you!" There is no

quarrelling with a man who prefers broken victuals. That's what the

rougher sort will say; and then, where one scolds, ten will laugh. But,

mind you, I don't either scold or laugh. I don't feel sure that you

could very well have helped doing what you will soon do. You know you

were never easy without some medicine to take when you felt ill in body.

I'm afraid I've given you trashy stuff sometimes, just to keep you quiet.

Now, let me tell you, there is just the same difference in spiritual

patients that there is in bodily ones. One set believes in wholesome

ways of living, and another must have a great list of specifics for all

the soul's complaints. You belong with the last, and got accidentally

shuffled in with the others."

The minister smiled faintly, but did not reply. Of course, he considered

that way of talking as the result of the Doctor's professional training.

It would not have been worth while to take offence at his plain speech,

if he had been so disposed; for he might wish to consult him the next day

as to "what he should take" for his dyspepsia or his neuralgia.

He left the Doctor with a hollow feeling at the bottom of his soul, as if

a good piece of his manhood had been scooped out of him. His hollow

aching did not explain itself in words, but it grumbled and worried down

among the unshaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he had

been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of reason. He knew

that the inspiration which gave him understanding was losing its throne

in his intelligence, and the almighty Majority-Vote was proclaiming

itself in its stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each

successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming hidden beneath

the mechanical forms of thought, which, as with all new converts,

engrossed so large a share of his attention. The "peace," the "rest,"

which he had purchased were dearly bought to one who had been trained to

the arms of thought, and whose noble privilege it might have been to live

in perpetual warfare for the advancing truth which the next generation

will claim as the legacy of the present.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was getting careless about his sermons. He

must wait the fitting moment to declare himself; and in the mean time he

was preaching to heretics. It did not matter much what he preached,

under such circumstances. He pulled out two old yellow sermons from a

heap of such, and began looking over that for the forenoon. Naturally

enough, he fell asleep over it, and, sleeping, he began to dream.

He dreamed that he was under the high arches of an old cathedral, amidst

a throng of worshippers. The light streamed in through vast windows,

dark with the purple robes of royal saints, or blazing with yellow

glories around the heads of earthly martyrs and heavenly messengers. The

billows of the great organ roared among the clustered columns, as the sea

breaks amidst the basaltic pillars which crowd the stormy cavern of the

Hebrides. The voice of the alternate choirs of singing boys swung back

and forward, as the silver censer swung in the hands of the white-robed

children. The sweet cloud of incense rose in soft, fleecy mists, full of

penetrating suggestions of the East and its perfumed altars. The knees

of twenty generations had worn the pavement; their feet had hollowed the

steps; their shoulders had smoothed the columns. Dead bishops and abbots

lay under the marble of the floor in their crumbled vestments; dead

warriors, in rusted armor, were stretched beneath their sculptured

effigies. And all at once all the buried multitudes who had ever

worshipped there came thronging in through the aisles. They choked every

space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they hung in clusters over the

parapets of the galleries, they clung to the images in every niche, and

still the vast throng kept flowing and flowing in, until the living were

lost in the rush of the returning dead who had reclaimed their own.

Then, as his dream became more fantastic, the huge cathedral itself

seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty antediluvian vertebrate;

its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs, its piers shaped themselves

into limbs, and the sound of the organ-blast changed to the wind

whistling through its thousand-jointed skeleton.

And presently the sound lulled, and softened and softened, until it was

as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A procession of monks wound

along through an old street, chanting, as they walked. In his dream he

glided in among them and bore his part in the burden of their song. He

entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently he was

kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the Blessed Maiden holding

the Divine Child in her arms, and his lips seemed to whisper,

Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!

He turned to the crucifix, and, prostrating himself before the spare,

agonizing shape of the Holy Sufferer, fell into a long passion of tears

and broken prayers. He rose and flung himself, worn-out, upon his hard

pallet, and, seeming to slumber, dreamed again within his dream. Once

more in the vast cathedral, with throngs of the living choking its

aisles, amidst jubilant peals from the cavernous depths of the great

organ, and choral melodies ringing from the fluty throats of the singing

boys. A day of great rejoicings,--for a prelate was to be consecrated,

and the bones of the mighty skeleton-minster were shaking with anthems,

as if there were life of its own within its buttressed ribs. He looked

down at his feet; the folds of the sacred robe were flowing about them:

he put his hand to his head; it was crowned with the holy mitre. A long

sigh, as of perfect content in the consummation of all his earthly hopes,

breathed through the dreamer's lips, and shaped itself, as it escaped,

into the blissful murmur,

Ego sum Episcopus!

One grinning gargoyle looked in from beneath the roof through an opening

in a stained window. It was the face of a mocking fiend, such as the old

builders loved to place under the eaves to spout the rain through their

open mouths. It looked at him, as he sat in his mitred chair, with its

hideous grin growing broader and broader, until it laughed out aloud,

such a hard, stony, mocking laugh, that he awoke out of his second dream

through his first into his common consciousness, and shivered, as he

turned to the two yellow sermons which he was to pick over and weed of

the little thought they might contain, for the next day's service.

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather was too much taken up with his own

bodily and spiritual condition to be deeply mindful of others. He

carried the note requesting the prayers of the congregation in his pocket

all day; and the soul in distress, which a single tender petition might

have soothed, and perhaps have saved from despair or fatal error, found

no voice in the temple to plead for it before the Throne of Mercy!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SECRET IS WHISPERED.

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather's congregation was not large, but

select. The lines of social cleavage run through religious creeds as if

they were of a piece with position and fortune. It is expected of

persons of a certain breeding, in some parts of New England, that they

shall be either Episcopalians or Unitarians. The mansion-house gentry of

Rockland were pretty fairly divided between the little chapel, with the

stained window and the trained rector, and the meeting-house where the

Reverend Mr. Fairweather officiated.

It was in the latter that Dudley Venner worshipped, when he attended

service anywhere,--which depended very much on the caprice of Elsie. He

saw plainly enough that a generous and liberally cultivated nature might

find a refuge and congenial souls in either of these two persuasions, but

he objected to some points of the formal creed of the older church, and

especially to the mechanism which renders it hard to get free from its

outworn and offensive formulae,--remembering how Archbishop Tillotson

wished in vain that it could be "well rid of" the Athanasian Creed.

This, and the fact that the meeting-house was nearer than the chapel,

determined him, when the new rector, who was not quite up to his mark in

education, was appointed, to take a pew in the "liberal" worshippers'

edifice.

Elsie was very uncertain in her feeling about going to church. In

summer, she loved rather to stroll over The Mountain, on Sundays. There

was even a story, that she had one of the caves before mentioned fitted

up as an oratory, and that she had her own wild way of worshipping the

God whom she sought in the dark chasms of the dreaded cliffs. Mere

fables, doubtless; but they showed the common belief, that Elsie, with

all her strange and dangerous elements of character, had yet strong

religious feeling mingled with them. The hymn-book which Dick had found,

in his midnight invasion of her chamber, opened to favorite hymns,

especially some of the Methodist and Quietist character. Many had

noticed, that certain tunes, as sung by the choir, seemed to impress her

deeply; and some said, that at such times her whole expression would

change, and her stormy look would soften so as to remind them of her

poor, sweet mother.

On the Sunday morning after the talk recorded in the last chapter, Elsie

made herself ready to go to meeting. She was dressed much as usual,

excepting that she wore a thick veil, turned aside, but ready to conceal

her features. It was natural enough that she should not wish to be

looked in the face by curious persons who would be staring to see what

effect the occurrence of the past week had had on her spirits. Her

father attended her willingly; and they took their seats in the pew,

somewhat to the surprise of many, who had hardly expected to see them,

after so humiliating a family development as the attempted crime of their

kinsman had just been furnishing for the astonishment of the public.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was now in his coldest mood. He had passed

through the period of feverish excitement which marks a change of

religious opinion. At first, when he had began to doubt his own

theological positions, he had defended them against himself with more

ingenuity and interest, perhaps, than he could have done against another;

because men rarely take the trouble to understand anybody's difficulties

in a question but their own. After this, as he began to draw off from

different points of his old belief, the cautious disentangling of himself

from one mesh after another gave sharpness to his intellect, and the

tremulous eagerness with which he seized upon the doctrine which, piece

by piece, under various pretexts and with various disguises, he was

appropriating, gave interest and something like passion to his words.

But when he had gradually accustomed his people to his new phraseology,

and was really adjusting his sermons and his service to disguise his

thoughts, he lost at once all his intellectual acuteness and all his

spiritual fervor.

Elsie sat quietly through the first part of the service, which was

conducted in the cold, mechanical way to be expected. Her face was

hidden by her veil; but her father knew her state of feeling, as well by

her movements and attitudes as by the expression of her features. The

hymn had been sung, the short prayer offered, the Bible read, and the

long prayer was about to begin. This was the time at which the "notes"

of any who were in affliction from loss of friends, the sick who were

doubtful of recovery, those who had cause to be grateful for preservation

of life or other signal blessing, were wont to be read.

Just then it was that Dudley Veneer noticed that his daughter was

trembling,--a thing so rare, so unaccountable, indeed, under the

circumstances, that he watched her closely, and began to fear that some

nervous paroxysm, or other malady, might have just begun to show itself

in this way upon her.

The minister had in his pocket two notes. One, in the handwriting of

Deacon Soper, was from a member of this congregation, returning thanks

for his preservation through a season of great peril, supposed to be the

exposure which he had shared with others, when standing in the circle

around Dick Veneer. The other was the anonymous one, in a female hand,

which he had received the evening before. He forgot them both. His

thoughts were altogether too much taken up with more important matters.

He prayed through all the frozen petitions of his expurgated form of

supplication, and not a single heart was soothed or lifted, or reminded

that its sorrows were struggling their way up to heaven, borne on the

breath from a human soul that was warm with love.

The people sat down as if relieved when the dreary prayer was finished.

Elsie alone remained standing until her father touched her. Then she sat

down, lifted her veil, and looked at him with a blank, sad look, as if

she had suffered some pain or wrong, but could not give any name or

expression to her vague trouble. She did not tremble any longer, but

remained ominously still, as if she had been frozen where she sat.

--Can a man love his own soul too well? Who, on the whole, constitute

the nobler class of human beings? those who have lived mainly to make

sure of their own personal welfare in another and future condition of

existence, or they who have worked with all their might for their race,

for their country, for the advancement of the kingdom of God, and left

all personal arrangements concerning themselves to the sole charge of Him

who made them and is responsible to himself for their safe-keeping? Is

an anchorite who has worn the stone floor of his cell into basins with

his knees bent in prayer, more acceptable than the soldier who gives his

life for the maintenance of any sacred right or truth, without thinking

what will specially become of him in a world where there are two or three

million colonists a month, from this one planet, to be cared for? These

are grave questions, which must suggest themselves to those who know that

there are many profoundly selfish persons who are sincerely devout and

perpetually occupied with their own future, while there are others who

are perfectly ready to sacrifice themselves for any worthy object in this

world, but are really too little occupied with their exclusive

personality to think so much as many do about what is to become of them

in another.

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather did not, most certainly, belong to this

latter class. There are several kinds of believers, whose history we

find among the early converts to Christianity.

There was the magistrate, whose social position was such that he

preferred a private interview in the evening with the Teacher to

following him--with the street-crowd. He had seen extraordinary facts

which had satisfied him that the young Galilean had a divine commission.

But still he cross-questioned the Teacher himself. He was not ready to

accept statements without explanation. That was the right kind of man.

See how he stood up for the legal rights of his Master, when the people

were for laying hands on him!

And again, there was the government official, intrusted with public

money, which, in those days, implied that he was supposed to be honest.

A single look of that heavenly countenance, and two words of gentle

command, were enough for him. Neither of these men, the early disciple,

nor the evangelist, seems to have been thinking primarily about his own

personal safety.

But now look at the poor, miserable turnkey, whose occupation shows what

he was like to be, and who had just been thrusting two respectable

strangers, taken from the hands of a mob, covered with stripes and

stripped of clothing, into the inner prison, and making their feet fast

in the stocks. His thought, in the moment of terror, is for himself:

first, suicide; then, what he shall do,--not to save his household,--not

to fulfil his duty to his office,--not to repair the outrage he has been

committing,--but to secure his own personal safety. Truly, character

shows itself as much in a man's way of becoming a Christian as in any

other!

--Elsie sat, statue-like, through the sermon. It would not be fair to

the reader to give an abstract of that. When a man who has been bred to

free thought and free speech suddenly finds himself stepping about, like

a dancer amidst his eggs, among the old addled majority-votes which he

must not tread upon, he is a spectacle for men and angels. Submission to

intellectual precedent and authority does very well for those who have

been bred to it; we know that the underground courses of their minds are

laid in the Roman cement of tradition, and that stately and splendid

structures may be reared on such a foundation. But to see one laying a

platform over heretical quicksands, thirty or forty or fifty years deep,

and then beginning to build upon it, is a sorry sight. A new convert

from the reformed to the ancient faith may be very strong in the arms,

but he will always have weak legs and shaky knees. He may use his hands

well, and hit hard with his fists, but he will never stand on his legs in

the way the man does who inherits his belief.

The services were over at last, and Dudley Venner and his daughter walked

home together in silence. He always respected her moods, and saw clearly

enough that some inward trouble was weighing upon her. There was nothing

to be said in such cases, for Elsie could never talk of her griefs. An

hour, or a day, or a week of brooding, with perhaps a sudden flash of

violence: this was the way in which the impressions which make other

women weep, and tell their griefs by word or letter, showed their effects

in her mind and acts.

She wandered off up into the remoter parts of The Mountain, that day,

after their return. No one saw just where she went,--indeed, no one knew

its forest-recesses and rocky fastnesses as she did. She was gone until

late at night; and when Old Sophy, who had watched for her, bound up her

long hair for her sleep, it was damp with the cold dews.

The old black woman looked at her without speaking, but questioning her

with every feature as to the sorrow that was weighing on her.

Suddenly she turned to Old Sophy.

"You want to know what there is troubling me;" she said. "Nobody loves

me. I cannot love anybody. What is love, Sophy?"

"It's what poor Ol' Sophy's got for her Elsie," the old woman answered.

"Tell me, darlin',--don' you love somebody?--don' you love? you

know,--oh, tell me, darlin', don' you love to see the gen'l'man that

keeps up at the school where you go? They say he's the pootiest

gen'l'man that was ever in the town here. Don' be 'fraid of poor Ol'

Sophy, darlin',--she loved a man once,--see here! Oh, I've showed you

this often enough!"

She took from her pocket a half of one of the old Spanish silver coins,

such as were current in the earlier part of this century. The other half

of it had been lying in the deep sea-sand for more than fifty years.

Elsie looked her in the face, but did not answer in words. What strange

intelligence was that which passed between them through the diamond eyes

and the little beady black ones?--what subtile intercommunication,

penetrating so much deeper than articulate speech? This was the nearest

approach to sympathetic relations that Elsie ever had: a kind of dumb

intercourse of feeling, such as one sees in the eyes of brute mothers

looking on their young. But, subtile as it was, it was narrow and

individual; whereas an emotion which can shape itself in language opens

the gate for itself into the great community of human affections; for

every word we speak is the medal of a dead thought or feeling, struck in

the die of some human experience, worn smooth by innumerable contacts,

and always transferred warm from one to another. By words we share the

common consciousness of the race, which has shaped itself in these

symbols. By music we reach those special states of consciousness which,

being without form, cannot be shaped with the mosaics of the vocabulary.

The language of the eyes runs deeper into the personal nature, but it is

purely individual, and perishes in the expression.

If we consider them all as growing out of the consciousness as their

root, language is the leaf, music is the flower; but when the eyes meet

and search each other, it is the uncovering of the blanched stem through

which the whole life runs, but which has never taken color or form from

the sunlight.

For three days Elsie did not return to the school. Much of the time she

was among the woods and rocks. The season was now beginning to wane, and

the forest to put on its autumnal glory. The dreamy haze was beginning

to soften the landscape, and the mast delicious days of the year were

lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain. It was not very

singular that Elsie should be lingering in her old haunts, from which the

change of season must soon drive her. But Old Sophy saw clearly enough

that some internal conflict was going on, and knew very well that it must

have its own way and work itself out as it best could. As much as looks

could tell Elsie had told her. She had said in words, to be sure, that

she could not love. Something warped and thwarted the emotion which

would have been love in another, no doubt; but that such an emotion was

striving with her against all malign influences which interfered with it

the old woman had a perfect certainty in her own mind.

Everybody who has observed the working of emotions in persons of various

temperaments knows well enough that they have periods of incubation,

which differ with the individual, and with the particular cause and

degree of excitement, yet evidently go through a strictly self-limited

series of evolutions, at the end of which, their result--an act of

violence, a paroxysm of tears, a gradual subsidence into repose, or

whatever it may be--declares itself, like the last stage of an attack of

fever and ague. No one can observe children without noticing that there

is a personal equation, to use the astronomer's language, in their

tempers, so that one sulks an hour over an offence which makes another a

fury for five minutes, and leaves him or her an angel when it is over.

At the end of three days, Elsie braided her long, glossy, black hair, and

shot a golden arrow through it. She dressed herself with more than usual

care, and came down in the morning superb in her stormy beauty. The

brooding paroxysm was over, or at least her passion had changed its

phase. Her father saw it with great relief; he had always many fears for

her in her hours and days of gloom, but, for reasons before assigned, had

felt that she must be trusted to herself, without appealing to actual

restraint, or any other supervision than such as Old Sophy could exercise

without offence.

She went off at the accustomed hour to the school. All the girls had

their eyes on her. None so keen as these young misses to know an inward

movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many

signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of

ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden

meaning to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment.

The girls all looked at Elsie with a new thought; for she was more

sumptuously arrayed than perhaps ever before at the school; and they said

to themselves that she had come meaning to draw the young master's eyes

upon her. That was it; what else could it be? The beautiful cold girl

with the diamond eyes meant to dazzle the handsome young gentleman. He

would be afraid to love her; it couldn't be true, that which some people

had said in the village; she was n't the kind of young lady to make Mr.

Langdon happy. Those dark people are never safe: so one of the young

blondes said to herself. Elsie was not literary enough for such a

scholar: so thought Miss Charlotte Ann Wood, the young poetess. She

couldn't have a good temper, with those scowling eyebrows: this was the

opinion of several broad-faced, smiling girls, who thought, each in her

own snug little mental sanctum, that, if, etc., etc., she could make him

so happy!

Elsie had none of the still, wicked light in her eyes, that morning. She

looked gentle, but dreamy; played with her books; did not trouble herself

with any of the exercises,--which in itself was not very remarkable, as

she was always allowed, under some pretext or other, to have her own way.

The school-hours were over at length. The girls went out, but she

lingered to the last. She then came up to Mr. Bernard, with a book in

her hand, as if to ask a question.

"Will you walk towards my home with me today?" she said, in a very low

voice, little more than a whisper.

Mr. Bernard was startled by the request, put in such a way. He had a

presentiment of some painful scene or other. But there was nothing to be

done but to assure her that it would give him great pleasure.

So they walked along together on their way toward the Dudley mansion.

"I have no friend," Elsie said, all at once. "Nothing loves me but one

old woman. I cannot love anybody. They tell me there is something in my

eyes that draws people to me and makes them faint: Look into them, will

you?"

She turned her face toward him. It was very pale, and the diamond eyes

were glittering with a film, such as beneath other lids would have

rounded into a tear.

"Beautiful eyes, Elsie," he said,--"sometimes very piercing,--but soft

now, and looking as if there were something beneath them that friendship

might draw out. I am your friend, Elsie. Tell me what I can do to

render your life happier."

"Love me!" said Elsie Venner.

What shall a man do, when a woman makes such a demand, involving such an

avowal? It was the tenderest, cruellest, humblest moment of Mr.

Bernard's life. He turned pale, he trembled almost, as if he had been a

woman listening to her lover's declaration.

"Elsie," he said, presently, "I so long to be of some use to you, to have

your confidence and sympathy, that I must not let you say or do anything

to put us in false relations. I do love you, Elsie, as a suffering

sister with sorrows of her own,--as one whom I would save at the risk of

my happiness and life,--as one who needs a true friend more than--any of

all the young girls I have known. More than this you would not ask me to

say. You have been through excitement and trouble lately, and it has

made you feel such a need more than ever. Give me your hand, dear Elsie,

and trust me that I will be as true a friend to you as if we were

children of the same mother."

Elsie gave him her hand mechanically. It seemed to him that a cold aura

shot from it along his arm and chilled the blood running through his

heart. He pressed it gently, looked at her with a face full of grave

kindness and sad interest, then softly relinquished it.

It was all over with poor Elsie. They walked almost in silence the rest

of the way. Mr. Bernard left her at the gate of the mansion-house, and

returned with sad forebodings. Elsie went at once to her own room, and

did not come from it at the usual hours. At last Old Sophy began to be

alarmed about her, went to her apartment, and, finding the door unlocked,

entered cautiously. She found Elsie lying on her bed, her brows strongly

contracted, her eyes dull, her whole look that of great suffering. Her

first thought was that she had been doing herself a harm by some deadly

means or other. But Elsie, saw her fear, and reassured her.

"No," she said, "there is nothing wrong, such as you are thinking of; I

am not dying. You may send for the Doctor; perhaps he can take the pain

from my head. That is all I want him to do. There is no use in the

pain, that I know of; if he can stop it, let him."

So they sent for the old Doctor. It was not long before the solid trot

of Caustic, the old bay horse, and the crashing of the gravel under the

wheels, gave notice that the physician was driving up the avenue.

The old Doctor was a model for visiting practitioners. He always came

into the sick-room with a quiet, cheerful look, as if he had a

consciousness that he was bringing some sure relief with him. The way a

patient snatches his first look at his doctor's face, to see whether he

is doomed, whether he is reprieved, whether he is unconditionally

pardoned, has really something terrible about it. It is only to be met

by an imperturbable mask of serenity, proof against anything and

everything in a patient's aspect. The physician whose face reflects his

patient's condition like a mirror may do well enough to examine people

for a life-insurance office, but does not belong to the sickroom. The

old Doctor did not keep people waiting in dread suspense, while he stayed

talking about the case,--the patient all the time thinking that he and

the friends are discussing some alarming symptom or formidable operation

which he himself is by-and-by--to hear of.

He was in Elsie's room almost before she knew he was in the house. He

came to her bedside in such a natural, quiet way, that it seemed as if he

were only a friend who had dropped in for a moment to say a pleasant

word. Yet he was very uneasy about Elsie until he had seen her; he never

knew what might happen to her or those about her, and came prepared for

the worst.

"Sick, my child?" he said, in a very soft, low voice.

Elsie nodded, without speaking.

The Doctor took her hand,--whether with professional views, or only in a

friendly way, it would have been hard to tell. So he sat a few minutes,

looking at her all the time with a kind of fatherly interest, but with it

all noting how she lay, how she breathed, her color, her expression, all

that teaches the practised eye so much without a single question being

asked. He saw she was in suffering, and said presently,

"You have pain somewhere; where is it?"

She put her hand to her head.

As she was not disposed to talk, he watched her for a while, questioned

Old Sophy shrewdly a few minutes, and so made up his mind as to the

probable cause of disturbance and the proper remedies to be used.

Some very silly people thought the old Doctor did not believe in

medicine, because he gave less than certain poor half-taught creatures in

the smaller neighboring towns, who took advantage of people's sickness to

disgust and disturb them with all manner of ill-smelling and ill-behaving

drugs. In truth, he hated to give anything noxious or loathsome to those

who were uncomfortable enough already, unless he was very sure it would

do good,--in which case, he never played with drugs, but gave good,

honest, efficient doses. Sometimes he lost a family of the more boorish

sort, because they did not think they got their money's worth out of him,

unless they had something more than a taste of everything he carried in

his saddlebags.

He ordered some remedies which he thought would relieve Elsie, and left

her, saying he would call the next day, hoping to find her better. But

the next day came, and the next, and still Elsie was on her bed,

feverish, restless, wakeful, silent. At night she tossed about and

wandered, and it became at length apparent that there was a settled

attack, something like what they called, formerly, a "nervous fever."

On the fourth day she was more restless than common. One of the women of

the house came in to help to take care of her; but she showed an aversion

to her presence.

"Send me Helen Darley," she said, at last.

The old Doctor told them, that, if possible, they must indulge this fancy

of hers. The caprices of sick people were never to be despised, least of

all of such persons as Elsie, when rendered irritable and exacting by

pain and weakness.

So a message was sent to Mr. Silas Peckham at the Apollinean Institute,

to know if he could not spare Miss Helen Darley for a few days, if

required, to give her attention to a young lady who attended his school

and who was now lying ill,--no other person than the daughter of Dudley

Venner.

A mean man never agrees to anything without deliberately turning it over,

so that he may see its dirty side, and, if he can, sweating the coin he

pays for it. If an archangel should offer to save his soul for sixpence,

he would try to find a sixpence with a hole in it. A gentleman says yes

to a great many things without stopping to think: a shabby fellow is

known by his caution in answering questions, for fear of, compromising

his pocket or himself.

Mr. Silas Peckham looked very grave at the request. The dooties of Miss

Darley at the Institoot were important, very important. He paid her

large sums of money for her time,--more than she could expect to get in

any other institootion for the edoocation of female youth. A deduction

from her selary would be necessary, in case she should retire from the

sphere of her dooties for a season. He should be put to extry expense,

and have to perform additional labors himself. He would consider of the

matter. If any arrangement could be made, he would send word to Squire

Venner's folks.

"Miss Darley," said Silas Peckham, "the' 's a message from Squire

Venner's that his daughter wants you down at the mansion-house to see

her. She's got a fever, so they inform me. If it's any kind of ketchin'

fever, of course you won't think of goin' near the mansion-house. If

Doctor Kittredge says it's safe, perfec'ly safe, I can't object to your

goin', on sech conditions as seem to be fair to all' concerned. You will

give up your pay for the whole time you are absent,--portions of days to

be caounted as whole days. You will be charged with board the same as if

you eat your victuals with the household. The victuals are of no use

after they're cooked but to be eat, and your bein' away is no savin' to

our folks. I shall charge you a reasonable compensation for the demage

to the school by the absence of a teacher. If Miss Crabs undertakes any

dooties belongin' to your department of instruction, she will look to you

for sech pecooniary considerations as you may agree upon between you. On

these conditions I am willin' to give my consent to your temporary

absence from the post of dooty. I will step down to Doctor Kittredge's

myself, and make inquiries as to the natur' of the complaint."

Mr. Peckham took up a rusty and very narrow-brimmed hat, which he cocked

upon one side of his head, with an air peculiar to the rural gentry. It

was the hour when the Doctor expected to be in his office, unless he had

some special call which kept him from home.

He found the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather just taking leave of the

Doctor. His hand was on the pit of his stomach, and his countenance was

expressive of inward uneasiness.

"Shake it before using," said the Doctor; "and the sooner you make up

your mind to speak right out, the better it will be for your digestion."

"Oh, Mr. Peckham! Walk in, Mr. Peckham! Nobody sick up at the school, I

hope?"

"The haalth of the school is fust-rate," replied Mr. Peckham. "The

sitooation is uncommonly favorable to saloobrity." (These last words

were from the Annual Report of the past year.) "Providence has spared our

female youth in a remarkable measure. I've come with reference to

another consideration. Dr. Kittredge, is there any ketchin' complaint

goin' about in the village?"

"Well, yes," said the Doctor, "I should say there was something of that

sort. Measles. Mumps. And Sin,--that's always catching."

The old Doctor's eye twinkled; once in a while he had his little touch of

humor.

Silas Peckham slanted his eye up suspiciously at the Doctor, as if he was

getting some kind of advantage over him. That is the way people of his

constitution are apt to take a bit of pleasantry.

"I don't mean sech things, Doctor; I mean fevers. Is there any ketchin'

fevers--bilious, or nervous, or typus, or whatever you call 'em--now

goin' round this village? That's what I want to ascertain, if there's no

impropriety."

The old Doctor looked at Silas through his spectacles.

"Hard and sour as a green cider-apple," he thought to himself. "No,"; he

said,--"I don't know any such cases."

"What's the matter with Elsie Venner?" asked Silas, sharply, as if he

expected to have him this time.

"A mild feverish attack, I should call it in anybody else; but she has a

peculiar constitution, and I never feel so safe about her as I should

about most people."

"Anything ketchin' about it?" Silas asked, cunningly.

"No, indeed!" said the Doctor,--"catching? no,--what put that into your

head, Mr. Peckham?"

"Well, Doctor," the conscientious Principal answered, "I naterally feel a

graat responsibility, a very graaat responsibility, for the noomerous and

lovely young ladies committed to my charge. It has been a question,

whether one of my assistants should go, accordin' to request, to stop

with Miss Venner for a season. Nothin' restrains my givin' my full and

free consent to her goin' but the fear lest contagious maladies should be

introdooced among those lovely female youth. I shall abide by your

opinion,--I understan' you to say distinc'ly, her complaint is not

ketchin'?--and urge upon Miss Darley to fulfil her dooties to a

sufferin' fellow-creature at any cost to myself and my establishment. We

shall miss her very much; but it is a good cause, and she shall go,--and

I shall trust that Providence will enable us to spare her without

permanent demage to the interests of the Institootion."

Saying this, the excellent Principal departed, with his rusty

narrow-brimmed hat leaning over, as if it had a six-knot breeze abeam,

and its gunwale (so to speak) was dipping into his coat-collar. He

announced the result of his inquiries to Helen, who had received a brief

note in the mean time from a poor relation of Elsie's mother, then at the

mansion-house, informing her of the critical situation of Elsie and of

her urgent desire that Helen should be with her. She could not hesitate.

She blushed as she thought of the comments that might be made; but what

were such considerations in a matter of life and death? She could not

stop to make terms with Silas Peckham. She must go. He might fleece

her, if he would; she would not complain,--not even to Bernard, who, she

knew, would bring the Principal to terms, if she gave the least hint of

his intended extortions.

So Helen made up her bundle of clothes to be sent after her, took a book

or two with her to help her pass the time, and departed for the Dudley

mansion. It was with a great inward effort that she undertook the

sisterly task which was thus forced upon her. She had a kind of terror

of Elsie; and the thought of having charge of her, of being alone with

her, of coming under the full influence of those diamond eyes,--if,

indeed, their light were not dimmed by suffering and weariness,--was one

she shrank from. But what could she do? It might be a turning-point in

the life of the poor girl; and she must overcome all her fears, all her

repugnance, and go to her rescue.

"Is Helen come?" said Elsie, when she heard, with her fine sense

quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair,

with a cadence unlike that of any inmate of the house.

"It's a strange woman's step," said Old Sophy, who, with her exclusive

love for Elsie, was naturally disposed to jealousy of a new-comer. "Let

Ol' Sophy set at 'th' foot o' th' bed, if th' young missis sets by th'

piller,--won' y', darlin'? The' 's nobody that's white can love y' as

th' of black woman does;--don' sen' her away, now, there 's a dear soul!"

Elsie motioned her to sit in the place she had pointed to, and Helen at

that moment entered the room. Dudley Venner followed her.

"She is your patient," he said, "except while the Doctor is here. She has

been longing to have you with her, and we shall expect you to make her

well in a few days."

So Helen Darley found herself established in the most unexpected manner

as an inmate of the Dudley mansion. She sat with Elsie most of the time,

by day and by night, soothing her, and trying to enter into her

confidence and affections, if it should prove that this strange creature

was really capable of truly sympathetic emotions.

What was this unexplained something which came between her soul and that

of every other human being with whom she was in relations? Helen

perceived, or rather felt, that she had, folded up in the depths of her

being, a true womanly nature. Through the cloud that darkened her

aspect, now and then a ray would steal forth, which, like the smile of

stern and solemn people, was all the more impressive from its contrast

with the expression she wore habitually. It might well be that pain and

fatigue had changed her aspect; but, at any rate, Helen looked into her

eyes without that nervous agitation which their cold glitter had produced

on her when they were full of their natural light. She felt sure that

her mother must have been a lovely, gentle woman. There were gleams of a

beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined medium which disturbed

and made them flicker and waver, as distant images do when seen through

the rippling upward currents of heated air. She loved, in her own way,

the old black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent communication

with her, as if they did not require the use of speech. She appeared to

be tranquillized by the presence of Helen, and loved to have her seated

at the bedside. Yet something, whatever it was, prevented her from

opening her heart to her kind companion; and even now there were times

when she would lie looking at her, with such a still, watchful, almost

dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and change her place, as

persons do whose breath some cunning orator had been sucking out of them

with his spongy eloquence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air

and stir about, or they feel as if they should be half smothered and

palsied.

It was too much to keep guessing what was the meaning of all this. Helen

determined to ask Old Sophy some questions which might probably throw

light upon her doubts. She took the opportunity one evening when Elsie

was lying asleep and they were both sitting at some distance from her

bed.

"Tell me, Sophy," she said, "was Elsie always as shy as she seems to be

now, in talking with those to whom she is friendly?"

"Alway jes' so, Miss Darlin', ever sense she was little chil'. When she

was five, six year old, she lisp some,--call me Thophy; that make her

kin' o' 'shamed, perhaps: after she grow up, she never lisp, but she kin'

o' got the way o' not talkin' much. Fac' is, she don' like talkin' as

common gals do, 'xcep' jes' once in a while wi' some partic'lar

folks,--'n' then not much."

"How old is Elsie?"

"Eighteen year this las' September."

"How long ago did her mother die?" Helen asked, with a little trembling

in her voice.

"Eighteen year ago this October," said Old Sophy.

Helen was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, almost

inaudibly,--for her voice appeared to fail her,

"What did her mother die of, Sophy?"

The old woman's small eyes dilated until a ring of white showed round

their beady centres. She caught Helen by the hand and clung to it, as if

in fear. She looked round at Elsie, who lay sleeping, as of she might be

listening. Then she drew Helen towards her and led her softly out of the

room.

"'Sh!--'sh!" she said, as soon as they were outside the door. "Don'

never speak in this house 'bout what Elsie's mother died of!" she said.

"Nobody never says nothin' 'bout it. Oh, God has made Ugly Things wi'

death in their mouths, Miss Darlin', an' He knows what they're for; but

my poor Elsie!--to have her blood changed in her before--It was in July

Mistress got her death, but she liv' till three week after my poor Elsie

was born."

She could speak no more. She had said enough. Helen remembered the

stories she had heard on coming to the village, and among them one

referred to in an early chapter of this narrative. All the unaccountable

looks and tastes and ways of Elsie came back to her in the light of an

ante-natal impression which had mingled an alien element in her nature.

She knew the secret of the fascination which looked out of her cold,

glittering eyes. She knew the significance of the strange repulsion

which she felt in her own intimate consciousness underlying the

inexplicable attraction which drew her towards the young girl in spite of

this repugnance. She began to look with new feelings on the

contradictions in her moral nature,--the longing for sympathy, as shown

by her wishing for Helen's company, and the impossibility of passing

beyond the cold circle of isolation within which she had her being. The

fearful truth of that instinctive feeling of hers, that there was

something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes, came upon her with a

sudden flash of penetrating conviction. There were two warring

principles in that superb organization and proud soul. One made her a

woman, with all a woman's powers and longings. The other chilled all the

currents of outlet for her emotions. It made her tearless and mute, when

another woman would have wept and pleaded. And it infused into her soul

something--it was cruel now to call it malice--which was still and

watchful and dangerous, which waited its opportunity, and then shot like

an arrow from its bow out of the coil of brooding premeditation. Even

those who had never seen the white scars on Dick Venner's wrist, or heard

the half-told story of her supposed attempt to do a graver mischief, knew

well enough by looking at her that she was one of the creatures not to be

tampered with,--silent in anger and swift in vengeance.

Helen could not return to the bedside at once after this communication.

It was with altered eyes that she must look on the poor girl, the victim

of such an unheard-of fatality. All was explained to her now. But it

opened such depths of solemn thought in her awakened consciousness, that

it seemed as if the whole mystery of human life were coming up again

before her for trial and judgment. "Oh," she thought, "if, while the will

lies sealed in its fountain, it may be poisoned at its very source, so

that it shall flow dark and deadly through its whole course, who are we

that we should judge our fellow-creatures by ourselves?" Then came the

terrible question, how far the elements themselves are capable of

perverting the moral nature: if valor, and justice, and truth, the

strength of man and the virtue of woman, may not be poisoned out of a

race by the food of the Australian in his forest, by the foul air and

darkness of the Christians cooped up in the "tenement-houses" close by

those who live in the palaces of the great cities?

She walked out into the garden, lost in thought upon these dark and deep

matters. Presently she heard a step behind her, and Elsie's father came

up and joined her. Since his introduction to Helen at the distinguished

tea-party given by the Widow Rowens, and before her coming to sit with

Elsie, Mr. Dudley Venner had in the most accidental way in the world met

her on several occasions: once after church, when she happened to be

caught in a slight shower and he insisted on holding his umbrella over

her on her way home;--once at a small party at one of the mansion-houses,

where the quick-eyed lady of the house had a wonderful knack of bringing

people together who liked to see each other;--perhaps at other times and

places; but of this there is no certain evidence.

They naturally spoke of Elsie, her illness, and the aspect it had taken.

But Helen noticed in all that Dudley Venner said about his daughter a

morbid sensitiveness, as it seemed to her, an aversion to saying much

about her physical condition or her peculiarities,--a wish to feel and

speak as a parent should, and yet a shrinking, as if there were something

about Elsie which he could not bear to dwell upon. She thought she saw

through all this, and she could interpret it all charitably. There were

circumstances about his daughter which recalled the great sorrow of his

life; it was not strange that this perpetual reminder should in some

degree have modified his feelings as a father. But what a life he must

have been leading for so many years, with this perpetual source of

distress which he could not name! Helen knew well enough, now, the

meaning of the sadness which had left such traces in his features and

tones, and it made her feel very kindly and compassionate towards him.

So they walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the lines

of box breathing its fragrance of eternity;--for this is one of the odors

which carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past; if

we ever lived on another ball of stone than this, it must be that there

was box growing on it. So they walked, finding their way softly to each

other's sorrows and sympathies, each matching some counterpart to the

other's experience of life, and startled to see how the different, yet

parallel, lessons they had been taught by suffering had led them step by

step to the same serene acquiescence in the orderings of that Supreme

Wisdom which they both devoutly recognized.

Old Sophy was at the window and saw them walking up and down the

garden-alleys. She watched them as her grandfather the savage watched

the figures that moved among the trees when a hostile tribe was lurking

about his mountain.

"There'll be a weddin' in the ol house," she said, "before there's roses

on them bushes ag'in. But it won' be my poor Elsie's weddin', 'n' ol'

Sophy won' be there."

When Helen prayed in the silence of her soul that evening, it was not

that Elsie's life might be spared. She dared not ask that as a favor of

Heaven. What could life be to her but a perpetual anguish, and to those

about her but an ever-present terror? Might she but be so influenced by

divine grace, that what in her was most truly human, most purely

woman-like, should overcome the dark, cold, unmentionable instinct which

had pervaded her being like a subtile poison that was all she could ask,

and the rest she left to a higher wisdom and tenderer love than her own.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE WHITE ASH.

When Helen returned to Elsie's bedside, it was with a new and still

deeper feeling of sympathy, such as the story told by Old Sophy might

well awaken. She understood, as never before, the singular fascination

and as singular repulsion which she had long felt in Elsie's presence.

It had not been without a great effort that she had forced herself to

become the almost constant attendant of the sick girl; and now she was

learning, but not for the first time, the blessed truth which so many

good women have found out for themselves, that the hardest duty bravely

performed soon becomes a habit, and tends in due time to transform itself

into a pleasure.

The old Doctor was beginning to look graver, in spite of himself. The

fever, if such it was, went gently forward, wasting the young girl's

powers of resistance from day to day; yet she showed no disposition to

take nourishment, and seemed literally to be living on air. It was

remarkable that with all this her look was almost natural, and her

features were hardly sharpened so as to suggest that her life was burning

away. He did not like this, nor various other unobtrusive signs of

danger which his practised eye detected. A very small matter might turn

the balance which held life and death poised against each other. He

surrounded her with precautions, that Nature might have every opportunity

of cunningly shifting the weights from the scale of death to the scale of

life, as she will often do if not rudely disturbed or interfered with.

Little tokens of good-will and kind remembrance were constantly coming to

her from the girls in the school and the good people in the village. Some

of the mansion-house people obtained rare flowers which they sent her,

and her table was covered with fruits which tempted her in vain. Several

of the school-girls wished to make her a basket of their own handiwork,

and, filling it with autumnal flowers, to send it as a joint offering.

Mr. Bernard found out their project accidentally, and, wishing to have

his share in it, brought home from one of his long walks some boughs full

of variously tinted leaves, such as were still clinging to the stricken

trees. With these he brought also some of the already fallen leaflets of

the white ash, remarkable for their rich olive-purple color, forming a

beautiful contrast with some of the lighter-hued leaves. It so happened

that this particular tree, the white ash, did not grow upon The Mountain,

and the leaflets were more welcome for their comparative rarity. So the

girls made their basket, and the floor of it they covered with the rich

olive-purple leaflets. Such late flowers as they could lay their hands

upon served to fill it, and with many kindly messages they sent it to

Miss Elsie Venner at the Dudley mansion-house.

Elsie was sitting up in her bed when it came, languid, but tranquil, and

Helen was by her, as usual, holding her hand, which was strangely cold,

Helen thought, for one who was said to have some kind of fever. The

school-girls' basket was brought in with its messages of love and hopes

for speedy recovery. Old Sophy was delighted to see that it pleased

Elsie, and laid it on the bed before her. Elsie began looking at the

flowers, and taking them from the basket, that she might see the leaves.

All at once she appeared to be agitated; she looked at the basket, then

around, as if there were some fearful presence about her which she was

searching for with her eager glances. She took out the flowers, one by

one, her breathing growing hurried, her eyes staring, her hands

trembling,--till, as she came near the bottom of the basket, she flung

out all the rest with a hasty movement, looked upon the olive-purple

leaflets as if paralyzed for a moment, shrunk up, as it were, into

herself in a curdling terror, dashed the basket from her, and fell back

senseless, with a faint cry which chilled the blood of the startled

listeners at her bedside.

"Take it away!--take it away!--quick!" said Old Sophy, as she hastened

to her mistress's pillow. "It 's the leaves of the tree that was always

death to her,--take it away! She can't live wi' it in the room!"

The poor old woman began chafing Elsie's hands, and Helen to try to rouse

her with hartshorn, while a third frightened attendant gathered up the

flowers and the basket and carried them out of the apartment, She came to

herself after a time, but exhausted and then wandering. In her delirium

she talked constantly as if she were in a cave, with such exactness of

circumstance that Helen could not doubt at all that she had some such

retreat among the rocks of The Mountain, probably fitted up in her own

fantastic way, where she sometimes hid herself from all human eyes, and

of the entrance to which she alone possessed the secret.

All this passed away, and left her, of course, weaker than before. But

this was not the only influence the unexplained paroxysm had left behind

it. From this time forward there was a change in her whole expression

and her manner. The shadows ceased flitting over her features, and the

old woman, who watched her from day to day and from hour to hour as a

mother watches her child, saw the likeness she bore to her mother coming

forth more and more, as the cold glitter died out of the diamond eyes,

and the stormy scowl disappeared from the dark brows and low forehead.

With all the kindness and indulgence her father had bestowed upon her,

Elsie had never felt that he loved her. The reader knows well enough

what fatal recollections and associations had frozen up the springs of

natural affection in his breast. There was nothing in the world he would

not do for Elsie. He had sacrificed his whole life to her. His very

seeming carelessness about restraining her was all calculated; he knew

that restraint would produce nothing but utter alienation. Just so far

as she allowed him, he shared her studies, her few pleasures, her

thoughts; but she was essentially solitary and uncommunicative. No

person, as was said long ago, could judge him, because his task was not

merely difficult, but simply impracticable to human powers. A nature

like Elsie's had necessarily to be studied by itself, and to be followed

in its laws where it could not be led.

Every day, at different hours, during the whole of his daughter's

illness, Dudley Venner had sat by her, doing all he could to soothe and

please her. Always the same thin film of some emotional non-conductor

between them; always that kind of habitual regard and family-interest,

mingled with the deepest pity on one side and a sort of respect on the

other, which never warmed into outward evidences of affection.

It was after this occasion, when she had been so profoundly agitated by a

seemingly insignificant cause, that her father and Old Sophy were

sitting, one at one side of her bed and one at the other. She had fallen

into a light slumber. As they were looking at her, the same thought came

into both their minds at the same moment. Old Sophy spoke for both, as

she said, in a low voice,

"It 's her mother's look,--it 's her mother's own face right over

again,--she never look' so before, the Lord's hand is on her! His will

be done!"

When Elsie woke and lifted her languid eyes upon her father's face, she

saw in it a tenderness, a depth of affection, such as she remembered at

rare moments of her childhood, when she had won him to her by some

unusual gleam of sunshine in her fitful temper.

"Elsie, dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was

sometimes like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen

her, so as to remember her!"

The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart for the

mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishing

eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the under-thought that she might soon

rejoin her in another state of being,--all came upon her with a sudden

overflow of feeling which broke through all the barriers between her

heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to her father as if the

malign influence--evil spirit it might almost be called--which had

pervaded her being, had at last been driven forth or exorcised, and that

these tears were at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature.

But now she was to be soothed, and not excited. After her tears she

slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.

Old Sophy met the Doctor at the door and told him all the circumstances

connected with the extraordinary attack from which Elsie had suffered.

It was the purple leaves, she said. She remembered that Dick once

brought home a branch of a tree with some of the same leaves on it, and

Elsie screamed and almost fainted then. She, Sophy, had asked her, after

she had got quiet, what it was in the leaves that made her feel so bad.

Elsie could n't tell her,--did n't like to speak about it,--shuddered

whenever Sophy mentioned it.

This did not sound so strangely to the old Doctor as it does to some who

listen to his narrative. He had known some curious examples of

antipathies, and remembered reading of others still more singular. He had

known those who could not bear the presence of a cat, and recollected the

story, often told, of a person's hiding one in a chest when one of these

sensitive individuals came into the room, so as not to disturb him; but

he presently began to sweat and turn pale, and cried out that there must

be a cat hid somewhere. He knew people who were poisoned by

strawberries, by honey, by different meats, many who could not endure

cheese,--some who could not bear the smell of roses. If he had known all

the stories in the old books, he would have found that some have swooned

and become as dead men at the smell of a rose,--that a stout soldier has

been known to turn and run at the sight or smell of rue,--that cassia and

even olive-oil have produced deadly faintings in certain.

individuals,--in short, that almost everything has seemed to be a poison

to somebody.

"Bring me that basket, Sophy," said the old Doctor, "if you can find it."

Sophy brought it to him,--for he had not yet entered Elsie's apartment.

"These purple leaves are from the white ash," he said. "You don't know

the notion that people commonly have about that tree, Sophy?"

"I know they say the Ugly Things never go where the white ash grows,"

Sophy answered. "Oh, Doctor dear, what I'm thinkin' of a'n't true, is

it?"

The Doctor smiled sadly, but did not answer. He went directly to Elsie's

room. Nobody would have known by his manner that he saw any special

change in his patient. He spoke with her as usual, made some slight

alteration in his prescriptions, and left the room with a kind, cheerful

look. He met her father on the stairs.

"Is it as I thought?" said Dudley Veneer.

"There is everything to fear," the Doctor said, "and not much, I am

afraid, to hope. Does not her face recall to you one that you remember,

as never before?"

"Yes," her father answered,--"oh, yes! What is the meaning of this

change which has come over her features, and her voice, her temper, her

whole being? Tell me, oh, tell me, what is it? Can it be that the curse

is passing away, and my daughter is to be restored to me,--such as her

mother would have had her,--such as her mother was?"

"Walk out with me into the garden," the Doctor said, "and I will tell you

all I know and all I think about this great mystery of Elsie's life."

They walked out together, and the Doctor began: "She has lived a double

being, as it were,--the consequence of the blight which fell upon her in

the dim period before consciousness. You can see what she might have

been but for this. You know that for these eighteen years her whole

existence has taken its character from that influence which we need not

name. But you will remember that few of the lower forms of life last as

human beings do; and thus it might have been hoped and trusted with some

show of reason, as I have always suspected you hoped and trusted, perhaps

more confidently than myself, that the lower nature which had become

engrafted on the higher would die out and leave the real woman's life she

inherited to outlive this accidental principle which had so poisoned her

childhood and youth. I believe it is so dying out; but I am

afraid,--yes, I must say it, I fear it has involved the centres of life

in its own decay. There is hardly any pulse at Elsie's wrist; no

stimulants seem to rouse her; and it looks as if life were slowly

retreating inwards, so that by-and-by she will sleep as those who lie

down in the cold and never wake."

Strange as it may seem, her father heard all this not without deep

sorrow, and such marks of it as his thoughtful and tranquil nature, long

schooled by suffering, claimed or permitted, but with a resignation

itself the measure of his past trials. Dear as his daughter might become

to him, all he dared to ask of Heaven was that she might be restored to

that truer self which lay beneath her false and adventitious being. If

he could once see that the icy lustre in her eyes had become a soft, calm

light,--that her soul was at peace with all about her and with Him;

above,--this crumb from the children's table was enough for him, as it

was for the Syro-Phoenician woman who asked that the dark spirit might go

out from her daughter.

There was little change the next day, until all at once she said in a

clear voice that she should like to see her master at the school, Mr.

Langdon. He came accordingly, and took the place of Helen at her

bedside. It seemed as if Elsie had forgotten the last scene with him.

Might it be that pride had come in, and she had sent for him only to show

how superior she had grown to the weakness which had betrayed her into

that extraordinary request, so contrary to the instincts and usages of

her sex? Or was it that the singular change which had come over her had

involved her passionate fancy for him and swept it away with her other

habits of thought and feeling? Or could it be that she felt that all

earthly interests were becoming of little account to her, and wished to

place herself right with one to whom she had displayed a wayward movement

of her unbalanced imagination? She welcomed Mr. Bernard as quietly as

she had received Helen Darley. He colored at the recollection of that

last scene, when he came into her presence; but she smiled with perfect

tranquillity. She did not speak to him of any apprehension; but he saw

that she looked upon herself as doomed. So friendly, yet so calm did she

seem through all their interview, that Mr. Bernard could only look back

upon her manifestation of feeling towards him on their walk from the

school as a vagary of a mind laboring under some unnatural excitement,

and wholly at variance with the true character of Elsie Venner as he saw

her before him in her subdued, yet singular beauty. He looked with almost

scientific closeness of observation into the diamond eyes; but that

peculiar light which he knew so well was not there. She was the same in

one sense as on that first day when he had seen her coiling and uncoiling

her golden chain; yet how different in every aspect which revealed her

state of mind and emotion! Something of tenderness there was, perhaps,

in her tone towards him; she would not have sent for him, had she not

felt more than an ordinary interest in him. But through the whole of his

visit she never lost her gracious self-possession. The Dudley race might

well be proud of the last of its daughters, as she lay dying, but

unconquered by the feeling of the present or the fear of the future.

As for Mr. Bernard, he found it very hard to look upon her, and listen to

her unmoved. There was nothing that reminded him of the stormy--browed,

almost savage girl he remembered in her fierce loveliness,--nothing of

all her singularities of air and of costume. Nothing? Yes, one thing.

Weak and suffering as she was, she had never parted with one particular

ornament, such as a sick person would naturally, as it might be supposed,

get rid of at once. The golden cord which she wore round her neck at the

great party was still there. A bracelet was lying by her pillow; she had

unclasped it from her wrist.

Before Mr. Bernard left her, she said,

"I shall never see you again. Some time or other, perhaps, you will

mention my name to one whom you love. Give her this from your scholar

and friend Elsie."

He took the bracelet, raised her hand to his lips, then turned his face

away; in that moment he was the weaker of the two.

"Good-bye," she said; "thank you for coming."

His voice died away in his throat, as he tried to answer her. She

followed him with her eyes as he passed from her sight through the door,

and when it closed after him sobbed tremulously once or twice, but

stilled herself, and met Helen, as she entered, with a composed

countenance.

"I have had a very pleasant visit from Mr. Langdon," Elsie said. "Sit by

me, Helen, awhile without speaking; I should like to sleep, if I

can,--and to dream."

CHAPTER XXX.

THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED.

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, hearing that his parishioner's

daughter, Elsie, was very ill, could do nothing less than come to the

mansion-house and tender such consolations as he was master of. It was

rather remarkable that the old Doctor did not exactly approve of his

visit. He thought that company of every sort might be injurious in her

weak state. He was of opinion that Mr. Fairweather, though greatly

interested in religious matters, was not the most sympathetic person that

could be found; in fact, the old Doctor thought he was too much taken up

with his own interests for eternity to give himself quite 'so heartily to

the need of other people as some persons got up on a rather more generous

scale (our good neighbor Dr. Honeywood, for instance) could do. However,

all these things had better be arranged to suit her wants; if she would

like to talk with a clergyman, she had a great deal better see one as

often as she liked, and run the risk of the excitement, than have a

hidden wish for such a visit and perhaps find herself too weak to see him

by-and-by.

The old Doctor knew by sad experience that dreadful mistake against which

all medical practitioners should be warned. His experience may well be a

guide for others. Do not overlook the desire for spiritual advice and

consolation which patients sometimes feel, and, with the frightful

mauvaise honte peculiar to Protestantism, alone among all human beliefs,

are ashamed to tell. As a part of medical treatment, it is the

physician's business to detect the hidden longing for the food of the

soul, as much as for any form of bodily nourishment. Especially in the

higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of

Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the

cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick

person's real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid

sensitiveness. What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the

Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the

way they keep their religion always by them and never blush for it! And

besides this spiritual longing, we should never forget that

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,"

and the minister of religion, in addition to the sympathetic nature which

we have a right to demand in him, has trained himself to the art of

entering into the feelings of others.

The reader must pardon this digression, which introduces the visit of the

Reverend Chauncy Fairweather to Elsie Veneer. It was mentioned to her

that he would like to call and see how she was, and she consented,--not

with much apparent interest, for she had reasons of her own for not

feeling any very deep conviction of his sympathy for persons in sorrow.

But he came, and worked the conversation round to religion, and confused

her with his hybrid notions, half made up of what he had been believing

and teaching all his life, and half of the new doctrines which he had

veneered upon the surface of his old belief. He got so far as to make a

prayer with her,--a cool, well-guarded prayer, which compromised his

faith as little as possible, and which, if devotion were a game played

against Providence, might have been considered a cautious and sagacious

move.

When he had gone, Elsie called Old Sophy to her.

"Sophy," she said, "don't let them send that cold hearted man to me any

more. If your old minister comes--to see you, I should like to hear him

talk. He looks as if he cared for everybody, and would care for me.

And, Sophy, if I should die one of these days, I should like to have that

old minister come and say whatever is to be said over me. It would

comfort Dudley more, I know, than to have that hard man here, when you're

in trouble, for some of you will be sorry when I'm gone,--won't you,

Sophy?"

The poor old black woman could not stand this question. The cold

minister had frozen Elsie until she felt as if nobody cared for her or

would regret her,--and her question had betrayed this momentary feeling.

"Don' talk so! don' talk so, darlin'!" she cried, passionately. "When you

go, Ol' Sophy'll go; 'n' where you go, Ol' Sophy'll go: 'n' we'll both go

t' th' place where th' Lord takes care of all his children, whether their

faces are white or black. Oh, darlin', darlin'! if th' Lord should let

me die firs', you shall fin' all ready for you when you come after me.

On'y don' go 'n' leave poor Ol' Sophy all 'lone in th' world!"

Helen came in at this moment and quieted the old woman with a look. Such

scenes were just what were most dangerous, in the state in which Elsie

was lying: but that is one of the ways in which an affectionate friend

sometimes unconsciously wears out the life which a hired nurse, thinking

of nothing but her regular duties and her wages, would have spared from

all emotional fatigue.

The change which had come over Elsie's disposition was itself the cause

of new excitements. How was it possible that her father could keep away

from her, now that she was coming back to the nature and the very look of

her mother, the bride of his youth? How was it possible to refuse her,

when she said to Old Sophy, that she should like to have her minister

come in and sit by her, even though his presence might perhaps prove a

new source of excitement?

But the Reverend Doctor did come and sit by her, and spoke such soothing

words to her, words of such peace and consolation, that from that hour

she was tranquil as never before. All true hearts are alike in the hour

of need; the Catholic has a reserved fund of faith for his

fellow-creature's trying moment, and the Calvinist reveals those springs

of human brotherhood and charity in his soul which are only covered over

by the iron tables inscribed with the harder dogmas of his creed. It was

enough that the Reverend Doctor knew all Elsie's history. He could not

judge her by any formula, like those which have been moulded by past ages

out of their ignorance. He did not talk with her as if she were an

outside sinner worse than himself. He found a bruised and languishing

soul, and bound up its wounds. A blessed office,--one which is confined

to no sect or creed, but which good men in all times, under various names

and with varying ministries, to suit the need of each age, of each race,

of each individual soul, have come forward to discharge for their

suffering fellow-creatures.

After this there was little change in Elsie, except that her heart beat

more feebly every day,--so that the old Doctor himself, with all his

experience, could see nothing to account for the gradual failing of the

powers of life, and yet could find no remedy which seemed to arrest its

progress in the smallest degree.

"Be very careful," he said, "that she is not allowed to make any muscular

exertion. Any such effort, when a person is so enfeebled, may stop the

heart in a moment; and if it stops, it will never move again."

Helen enforced this rule with the greatest care. Elsie was hardly

allowed to move her hand or to speak above a whisper. It seemed to be

mainly the question now, whether this trembling flame of life would be

blown out by some light breath of air, or whether it could be so nursed

and sheltered by the hollow of these watchful hands that it would have a

chance to kindle to its natural brightness.

--Her father came in to sit with her in the evening. He had never talked

so freely with her as during the hour he had passed at her bedside,

telling her little circumstances of her mother's life, living over with

her all that was pleasant in the past, and trying to encourage her with

some cheerful gleams of hope for the future. A faint smile played over

her face, but she did not answer his encouraging suggestions. The hour

came for him to leave her with those who watched by her.

"Good-night, my dear child," he said, and stooping down, kissed her

cheek.

Elsie rose by a sudden effort, threw her arms round his neck, kissed him,

and said, "Good-night, my dear father!"

The suddenness of her movement had taken him by surprise, or he would

have checked so dangerous an effort. It was too late now. Her arms slid

away from him like lifeless weights,--her head fell back upon her

pillow,--along sigh breathed through her lips.

"She is faint," said Helen, doubtfully; "bring me the hartshorn, Sophy."

The old woman had started from her place, and was now leaning over her,

looking in her face, and listening for the sound of her breathing.

"She 's dead! Elsie 's dead! My darlin 's dead!" she cried aloud,

filling the room with her utterance of anguish.

Dudley Venner drew her away and silenced her with a voice of authority,

while Helen and an assistant plied their restoratives. It was all in

vain.

The solemn tidings passed from the chamber of death through the family.

The daughter, the hope of that old and honored house, was dead in the

freshness of her youth, and the home of its solitary representative was

hereafter doubly desolate.

A messenger rode hastily out of the avenue. A little after this the

people of the village and the outlying farm-houses were startled by the

sound of a bell.

One,--two,--three,--four,

They stopped in every house, as far as the wavering vibrations reached,

and listened--

five,--six,--seven,--

It was not the little child which had been lying so long at the point of

death; that could not be more than three or four years old--

eight,--nine,--ten,--and so on to fifteen, sixteen,--seventeen,

--eighteen--

The pulsations seemed to keep on,--but it was the brain, and not the

bell, that was throbbing now.

"Elsie 's dead!" was the exclamation at a hundred firesides.

"Eighteen year old," said old Widow Peake, rising from her chair.

"Eighteen year ago I laid two gold eagles on her mother's eyes,--he

wouldn't have anything but gold touch her eyelids,--and now Elsie's to be

straightened,--the Lord have mercy on her poor sinful soul!"

Dudley Venner prayed that night that he might be forgiven, if he had

failed in any act of duty or kindness to this unfortunate child of his,

now freed from all the woes born with her and so long poisoning her soul.

He thanked God for the brief interval of peace which had been granted

her, for the sweet communion they had enjoyed in these last days, and for

the hope of meeting her with that other lost friend in a better world.

Helen mingled a few broken thanks and petitions with her tears: thanks

that she had been permitted to share the last days and hours of this poor

sister in sorrow; petitions that the grief of bereavement might be

lightened to the lonely parent and the faithful old servant.

Old Sophy said almost nothing, but sat day and night by her dead darling.

But sometimes her anguish would find an outlet in strange sounds,

something between a cry and a musical note,--such as noise had ever heard

her utter before. These were old remembrances surging up from her

childish days, coming through her mother from the cannibal chief, her

grandfather,--death-wails, such as they sing in the mountains of Western

Africa, when they see the fires on distant hill-sides and know that their

own wives and children are undergoing the fate of captives.

The time came when Elsie was to be laid by her mother in the small square

marked by the white stone.

It was not unwillingly that the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had

relinquished the duty of conducting the service to the Reverend Doctor

Honeywood, in accordance with Elsie's request. He could not, by any

reasoning, reconcile his present way of thinking with a hope for the

future of his unfortunate parishioner. Any good old Roman Catholic

priest, born and bred to his faith and his business, would have found a

loophole into some kind of heaven for her, by virtue of his doctrine of

"invincible ignorance," or other special proviso; but a recent convert

cannot enter into the working conditions of his new creed. Beliefs must

be lived in for a good while, before they accommodate themselves to the

soul's wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable.

The Reverend Doctor had no such scruples. Like thousands of those who

are classed nominally with the despairing believers, he had never prayed

over a departed brother or sister without feeling and expressing a

guarded hope that there was mercy in store for the poor sinner, whom

parents, wives, children, brothers and sisters could not bear to give up

to utter ruin without a word,--and would not, as he knew full well, in

virtue of that human love and sympathy which nothing can ever extinguish.

And in this poor Elsie's history he could read nothing which the tears of

the recording angel might not wash away. As the good physician of the

place knew the diseases that assailed the bodies of men and women, so he

had learned the mysteries of the sickness of the soul.

So many wished to look upon Elsie's face once more, that her father would

not deny them; nay, he was pleased that those who remembered her living

should see her in the still beauty of death. Helen and those with her

arrayed her for this farewell-view. All was ready for the sad or curious

eyes which were to look upon her. There 'was no painful change to be

concealed by any artifice. Even her round neck was left uncovered, that

she might be more like one who slept. Only the golden cord was left in

its place: some searching eye might detect a trace of that birthmark

which it was whispered she had always worn a necklace to conceal.

At the last moment, when all the preparations were completed, Old Sophy

stooped over her, and, with trembling hand, loosed the golden cord. She

looked intently; for some little space: there was no shade nor blemish

where the ring of gold had encircled her throat. She took it gently away

and laid it in the casket which held her ornaments.

"The Lord be praised!" the old woman cried, aloud. "He has taken away

the mark that was on her; she's fit to meet his holy angels now!"

So Elsie lay for hours in the great room, in a kind of state, with

flowers all about her,--her black hair braided as in life,--her brows

smooth, as if they had never known the scowl of passion,--and on her lips

the faint smile with which she had uttered her last "Good--night." The

young girls from the school looked at her, one after another, and passed

on, sobbing, carrying in their hearts the picture that would be with them

all their days. The great people of the place were all there with their

silent sympathy. The lesser kind of gentry, and many of the plainer folk

of the village, half-pleased to find themselves passing beneath the

stately portico of the ancient mansion-house, crowded in, until the ample

rooms were overflowing. All the friends whose acquaintance we have made

were there, and many from remoter villages and towns.

There was a deep silence at last. The hour had come for the parting

words to be spoken over the dead. The good old minister's voice rose out

of the stillness, subdued and tremulous at first, but growing firmer and

clearer as he went on, until it reached the ears of the visitors who were

in the far, desolate chambers, looking at the pictured hangings and the

old dusty portraits. He did not tell her story in his prayer. He only

spoke of our dear departed sister as one of many whom Providence in its

wisdom has seen fit to bring under bondage from their cradles. It was

not for us to judge them by any standard of our own. He who made the

heart alone knew the infirmities it inherited or acquired. For all that

our dear sister had presented that was interesting and attractive in her

character we were to be grateful; for whatever was dark or inexplicable

we must trust that the deep shadow which rested on the twilight dawn of

her being might render a reason before the bar of Omniscience; for the

grace which had lightened her last days we should pour out our hearts in

thankful acknowledgment. From the life and the death of this our dear

sister we should learn a lesson of patience with our fellow-creatures in

their inborn peculiarities, of charity in judging what seem to us wilful

faults of character, of hope and trust, that, by sickness or affliction,

or such inevitable discipline as life must always bring with it, if by no

gentler means, the soul which had been left by Nature to wander into the

path of error and of suffering might be reclaimed and restored to its

true aim, and so led on by divine grace to its eternal welfare. He

closed his prayer by commending each member of the afflicted family to

the divine blessing.

Then all at once rose the clear sound of the girls' voices, in the sweet,

sad melody of a funeral hymn,--one of those which Elsie had marked, as if

prophetically, among her own favorites.

And so they laid her in the earth, and showered down flowers upon her,

and filled her grave, and covered it with green sods. By the side of it

was another oblong ridge, with a white stone standing at its head. Mr.

Bernard looked upon it, as he came close to the place where Elsie was

laid, and read the inscription,

CATALINA

WIFE TO DUDLEY VENNER

DIED

OCTOBER 13TH 1840

AGED XX YEARS

A gentle rain fell on the turf after it was laid. This was the beginning

of a long and dreary autumnal storm, a deferred "equinoctial," as many

considered it. The mountain streams were all swollen and turbulent, and

the steep declivities were furrowed in every direction by new channels.

It made the house seem doubly desolate to hear the wind howling and the

rain beating upon the roofs. The poor relation who was staying at the

house would insist on Helen's remaining a few days: Old Sophy was in such

a condition, that it kept her in continual anxiety, and there were many

cares which Helen could take off from her.

The old black woman's life was buried in her darling's grave. She did

nothing but moan and lament for her. At night she was restless, and

would get up and wander to Elsie's apartment and look for her and call

her by name. At other times she would lie awake and listen to the wind

and the rain,--sometimes with such a wild look upon her face, and with

such sudden starts and exclamations, that it seemed as if she heard

spirit-voices and were answering the whispers of unseen visitants. With

all this were mingled hints of her old superstition,--forebodings of

something fearful about to happen,--perhaps the great final catastrophe

of all things, according to the prediction current in the kitchens of

Rockland.

"Hark!" Old Sophy would say,--"don' you hear th' crackin' 'n' th'

snappin' up in Th' Mountain, 'n' th' rollin' o' th' big stones? The' 's

somethin' stirrin' among th' rocks; I hear th' soun' of it in th' night,

when th' wind has stopped blowin'. Oh, stay by me a little while, Miss

Darlin'! stay by me! for it's th' Las' Day, maybe, that's close on us,

'n' I feel as if I could n' meet th' Lord all alone!"

It was curious,--but Helen did certainly recognize sounds, during the

lull of the storm, which were not of falling rain or running

streams,--short snapping sounds, as of tense cords breaking,--long uneven

sounds, as of masses rolling down steep declivities. But the morning

came as usual; and as the others said nothing of these singular noises,

Helen did not think it necessary to speak of them. All day long she and

the humble relative of Elsie's mother, who had appeared as poor relations

are wont to in the great prises of life, were busy in arranging the

disordered house, and looking over the various objects which Elsie's

singular tastes had brought together, to dispose of them as her father

might direct. They all met together at the usual hour for tea. One of

the servants came in, looking very blank, and said to the poor relation,

"The well is gone dry; we have nothing but rainwater."

Dudley Venner's countenance changed; he sprang to, his feet and went

to--assure himself of the fact, and, if he could, of the reason of it.

For a well to dry up during such a rain-storm was extraordinary,--it was

ominous.

He came back, looking very anxious.

"Did any of you notice any remarkable sounds last night," he said,--"or

this morning? Hark! do you hear anything now?"

They listened in perfect silence for a few moments. Then there came a

short cracking sound, and two or three snaps, as of parting cords.

Dudley Venner called all his household together.

"We are in danger here, as I think, to-night," he said,--"not very great

danger, perhaps, but it is a risk I do not wish you to run. These heavy

rains have loosed some of the rocks above, and they may come down and

endanger the house. Harness the horses, Elbridge, and take all the

family away. Miss Darley will go to the Institute; the others will pass

the night at the Mountain House. I shall stay here, myself: it is not at

all likely that anything will come of these warnings; but if there

should, I choose to be there and take my chance."

It needs little, generally, to frighten servants, and they were all ready

enough to go. The poor relation was one of the timid sort, and was

terribly uneasy to be got out of the house. This left no alternative, of

course, for Helen, but to go also. They all urged upon Dudley Veneer to

go with them: if there was danger, why should he remain to risk it, when

he sent away the others?

Old Sophy said nothing until the time came for her to go with the second

of Elbridge's carriage-loads.

"Come, Sophy," said Dudley Veneer, "get your things and go. They will

take good care of you at the Mountain House; and when we have made sure

that there is no real danger, you shall come back at once."

"No, Masse!" Sophy answered. "I've seen Elsie into th' ground, 'n' I

a'n't goin' away to come back 'n' fin' Masse Veneer buried under th'

rocks. My darlin' 's gone; 'n' now, if Masse goes, 'n' th' of place

goes, it's time for Ol' Sophy to go, too. No, Masse Veneer, we'll both

stay in th' of mansion 'n' wait for th' Lord!"

Nothing could change the old woman's determination; and her master, who

only feared, but did not really expect the long-deferred catastrophe, was

obliged to consent to her staying. The sudden drying of the well at such

a time was the most alarming sign; for he remembered that the same thing

had been observed just before great mountain-slides. This long rain,

too, was just the kind of cause which was likely to loosen the strata of

rock piled up in the ledges; if the dreaded event should ever come to

pass, it would be at such a time.

He paced his chamber uneasily until long past midnight. If the morning

came without accident, he meant to have a careful examination made of all

the rents and fissures above, of their direction and extent, and

especially whether, in case of a mountain-slide, the huge masses would be

like to reach so far to the east and so low down the declivity as the

mansion.

At two o'clock in the morning he was dozing in his chair. Old Sophy had

lain down on her bed, and was muttering in troubled dreams.

All at once a loud crash seemed to rend the very heavens above them: a

crack as of the thunder that follows close upon the bolt,--a rending and

crashing as of a forest snapped through all its stems, torn, twisted,

splintered, dragged with all its ragged boughs into one chaotic ruin.

The ground trembled under them as in an earthquake; the old mansion

shuddered so that all its windows chattered in their casements; the great

chimney shook off its heavy cap-stones, which came down on the roof with

resounding concussions; and the echoes of The Mountain roared and

bellowed in long reduplication, as if its whole foundations were rent,

and this were the terrible voice of its dissolution.

Dudley Venner rose from his chair, folded his arms, and awaited his fate.

There was no knowing where to look for safety; and he remembered too well

the story of the family that was lost by rushing out of the house, and so

hurrying into the very jaws of death.

He had stood thus but for a moment, when he heard the voice of Old Sophy

in a wild cry of terror:

"It's th' Las' Day! It's th' Las' Day! The Lord is comin' to take us

all!"

"Sophy!" he called; but she did not hear him or heed him, and rushed out

of the house.

The worst danger was over. If they were to be destroyed, it would

necessarily be in a few seconds from the first thrill of the terrible

convulsion. He waited in awful suspense, but calm. Not more than one or

two minutes could have passed before the frightful tumult and all its

sounding echoes had ceased. He called Old Sophy; but she did not answer.

He went to the western window and looked forth into the darkness. He

could not distinguish the outlines of the landscape, but the white stone

was clearly visible, and by its side the new-made mound. Nay, what was

that which obscured its outline, in shape like a human figure? He flung

open the window and sprang through. It was all that there was left of

poor Old Sophy, stretched out lifeless, upon her darling's grave.

He had scarcely composed her limbs and drawn the sheet over her, when the

neighbors began to arrive from all directions. Each was expecting to

hear of houses overwhelmed and families destroyed; but each came with the

story that his own household was safe. It was not until the morning

dawned that the true nature and extent of the sudden movement was

ascertained. A great seam had opened above the long cliff, and the

terrible Rattlesnake Ledge, with all its envenomed reptiles, its dark

fissures and black caverns, was buried forever beneath a mighty incumbent

mass of ruin.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT.

The morning rose clear and bright. The long storm was over, and the calm

autumnal sunshine was now to return, with all its infinite repose and

sweetness. With the earliest dawn exploring parties were out in every

direction along the southern slope of The Mountain, tracing the ravages

of the great slide and the track it had followed. It proved to be not so

much a slide as the breaking off and falling of a vast line of cliff,

including the dreaded Ledge. It had folded over like the leaves of a

half-opened book when they close, crushing the trees below, piling its

ruins in a glacis at the foot of what had been the overhanging wall of

the cliff, and filling up that deep cavity above the mansion-house which

bore the ill-omened name of Dead Man's Hollow. This it was which had

saved the Dudley mansion. The falling masses, or huge fragments breaking

off from them, would have swept the house and all around it to

destruction but for this deep shelving dell, into which the stream of

ruin was happily directed. It was, indeed, one of Nature's conservative

revolutions; for the fallen masses made a kind oz shelf, which interposed

a level break between the inclined planes above and below it, so that the

nightmare-fancies of the dwellers in the Dudley mansion, and in many

other residences under the shadow of The Mountain, need not keep them

lying awake hereafter to listen for the snapping of roots and the

splitting of the rocks above them.

Twenty-four hours after the falling of the cliff, it seemed as if it had

happened ages ago. The new fact had fitted itself in with all the old

predictions, forebodings, fears, and acquired the solidarity belonging to

all events which have slipped out of the fingers of Time and dissolved in

the antecedent eternity.

Old Sophy was lying dead in the Dudley mansion. If there were tears shed

for her, they could not be bitter ones; for she had lived out her full

measure of days, and gone--who could help fondly believing it?--to rejoin

her beloved mistress. They made a place for her at the foot of the two

mounds. It was thus she would have chosen to sleep, and not to have

wronged her humble devotion in life by asking to lie at the side of those

whom she had served so long and faithfully. There were very few present

at the simple ceremony. Helen Darley was one of these few. The old black

woman had been her companion in all the kind offices of which she had

been the ministering angel to Elsie.

After it was all over, Helen was leaving with the rest, when Dudley

Veneer begged her to stay a little, and he would send her back: it was a

long walk; besides, he wished to say some things to her, which he had not

had the opportunity of speaking. Of course Helen could not refuse him;

there must be many thoughts coming into his mind which he would wish to

share with her who had known his daughter so long and been with filer in

her last days.

She returned into the great parlor with the wrought cornices and the

medallion-portraits on the ceiling.

"I am now alone in the world," Dudley Veneer said.

Helen must have known that before he spoke. But the tone in which he

said it had so much meaning, that she could not find a word to answer him

with. They sat in silence, which the old tall clock counted out in long

seconds; but it was silence which meant more than any words they had ever

spoken.

"Alone in the world. Helen, the freshness of my life is gone, and there

is little left of the few graces which in my younger days might have

fitted me to win the love of women. Listen to me,--kindly, if you can;

forgive me, at least. Half my life has been passed in constant fear and

anguish, without any near friend to share my trials. My task is done

now; my fears have ceased to prey upon me; the sharpness of early sorrows

has yielded something of its edge to time. You have bound me to you by

gratitude in the tender care you have taken of my poor child. More than

this. I must tell you all now, out of the depth of this trouble through

which I am passing. I have loved you from the moment we first met; and

if my life has anything left worth accepting, it is yours. Will you take

the offered gift?"

Helen looked in his face, surprised, bewildered.

"This is not for me,--not for me," she said. "I am but a poor faded

flower, not worth the gathering, of such a one as you. No, no,--I have

been bred to humble toil all my days, and I could not be to you what you

ought to ask. I am accustomed to a kind of loneliness and

self-dependence. I have seen nothing, almost, of the world, such as you

were born to move in. Leave me to my obscure place and duties; I shall

at least have peace;--and you--you will surely find in due time some one

better fitted by Nature and training to make you happy."

"No, Miss Darley!" Dudley Venner said, almost sternly. "You must not

speak to a man, who has lived through my experiences, of looking about

for a new choice after his heart has once chosen. Say that you can never

love me; say that I have lived too long to share your young life; say

that sorrow has left nothing in me for Love to find his pleasure in; but

do not mock me with the hope of a new affection for some unknown object.

The first look of yours brought me to your side. The first tone of your

voice sunk into my heart. From this moment my life must wither out or

bloom anew. My home is desolate. Come under my roof and make it bright

once more,--share my life with me,--or I shall give the halls of the old

mansion to the bats and the owls, and wander forth alone without a hope

or a friend!"

To find herself with a man's future at the disposal of a single word of

hers!--a man like this, too, with a fascination for her against which

she had tried to shut her heart, feeling that he lived in another sphere

than hers, working as she was for her bread a poor operative in the

factory of a hard master and jealous overseer, the salaried drudge of Mr.

Silas Peckham! Why, she had thought he was grateful to her as a friend

of his daughter; she had even pleased herself with the feeling that he

liked her, in her humble place, as a woman of some cultivation and many

sympathetic points of relation with himself; but that he loved her,--that

this deep, fine nature, in a man so far removed from her in outward

circumstance, should have found its counterpart in one whom life had

treated so coldly as herself,--that Dudley Venner should stake his

happiness on a breath of hers,--poor Helen Darley's,--it was all a

surprise, a confusion, a kind of fear not wholly fearful. Ah, me! women

know what it is, that mist over the eyes, that trembling in the limbs,

that faltering of the voice, that sweet, shame-faced, unspoken confession

of weakness which does not wish to be strong, that sudden overflow in the

soul where thoughts loose their hold on each other and swim single and

helpless in the flood of emotion,--women know what it is!

No doubt she was a little frightened and a good deal bewildered, and that

her sympathies were warmly excited for a friend to whom she had been

brought so near, and whose loneliness she saw and pitied. She lost that

calm self-possession she had hoped to maintain.

"If I thought that I could make you happy,--if I should speak from my

heart, and not my reason,--I am but a weak woman,--yet if I can be to

you--What can I say?"

What more could this poor, dear Helen say?

"Elbridge, harness the horses and take Miss Darley back to the school."

What conversation had taken place since Helen's rhetorical failure is not

recorded in the minutes from which this narrative is constructed. But

when the man who had been summoned had gone to get the carriage ready,

Helen resumed something she had been speaking of.

"Not for the world. Everything must go on just as it has gone on, for

the present. There are proprieties to be consulted. I cannot be hard

with you, that out of your very affliction has sprung this--this

well--you must name it for me,--but the world will never listen to

explanations. I am to be Helen Darley, lady assistant in Mr. Silas

Peckham's school, as long as I see fit to hold my office. And I mean to

attend to my scholars just as before; so that I shall have very little

time for visiting or seeing company. I believe, though, you are one of

the Trustees and a Member of the Examining Committee; so that, if you

should happen to visit the school, I shall try to be civil to you."

Every lady sees, of course, that Helen was quite right; but perhaps here

and there one will think that Dudley Venner was all wrong,--that he was

too hasty,--that he should have been too full of his recent grief for

such a confession as he has just made, and the passion from which it

sprung. Perhaps they do not understand the sudden recoil of a strong

nature long compressed. Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of

allotropism in the emotions of the human heart. Go to the nearest

chemist and ask him to show you some of the dark-red phosphorus which

will not burn without fierce heating, but at 500 deg. Fahrenheit, changes

back again to the inflammable substance we know so well. Grief seems

more like ashes than like fire; but as grief has been love once, so it

may become love again. This is emotional allotropism.

Helen rode back to the Institute and inquired for Mr. Peckham. She had

not seen him during the brief interval between her departure from the

mansion-house and her return to Old Sophy's funeral. There were various

questions about the school she wished to ask.

"Oh, how's your haalth, Miss Darley?" Silas began. "We've missed you

consid'able. Glad to see you back at the post of dooty. Hope the Squire

treated you hahnsomely,--liberal pecooniary compensation,--hey? A'n't

much of a loser, I guess, by acceptin' his propositions?"

Helen blushed at this last question, as if Silas had meant something by

it beyond asking what money she had received; but his own double-meaning

expression and her blush were too nice points for him to have taken

cognizance of. He was engaged in a mental calculation as to the amount

of the deduction he should make under the head of "demage to the

institootion,"--this depending somewhat on that of the "pecooniary

compensation" she might have received for her services as the friend of

Elsie Venner.

So Helen slid back at once into her routine, the same faithful, patient

creature she had always been. But what was this new light which seemed

to have kindled in her eyes? What was this look of peace, which nothing

could disturb, which smiled serenely through all the little meannesses

with which the daily life of the educational factory surrounded her,

which not only made her seem resigned, but overflowed all her features

with a thoughtful, subdued happiness? Mr. Bernard did not know,--perhaps

he did not guess. The inmates of the Dudley mansion were not scandalized

by any mysterious visits of a veiled or unveiled lady. The vibrating

tongues of the "female youth" of the Institute were not set in motion by

the standing of an equipage at the gate, waiting for their lady-teacher.

The servants at the mansion did not convey numerous letters with

superscriptions in a bold, manly hand, sealed with the arms of a

well-known house, and directed to Miss Helen Darley; nor, on the other

hand, did Hiram, the man from the lean streak in New Hampshire, carry

sweet-smelling, rose-hued, many-layered, criss-crossed,

fine-stitch-lettered packages of note-paper directed to Dudley Venner,

Esq., and all too scanty to hold that incredible expansion of the famous

three words which a woman was born to say,--that perpetual miracle which

astonishes all the go-betweens who wear their shoes out in carrying a

woman's infinite variations on the theme--

"I love you."

But the reader must remember that there are walks in country-towns where

people are liable to meet by accident, and that the hollow of an old tree

has served the purpose of a post-office sometimes; so that he has her

choice (to divide the pronouns impartially) of various hypotheses to

account for the new glory of happiness which seemed to have irradiated

our poor Helen's features, as if her dreary life were awakening in the

dawn of a blessed future.

With all the alleviations which have been hinted at, Mr. Dudley Venner

thought that the days and the weeks had never moved so slowly as through

the last period of the autumn that was passing. Elsie had been a

perpetual source of anxiety to him, but still she had been a companion.

He could not mourn for her; for he felt that she was safer with her

mother, in that world where there are no more sorrows and dangers, than

she could have been with him. But as he sat at his window and looked at

the three mounds, the loneliness of the great house made it seem more

like the sepulchre than these narrow dwellings where his beloved and her

daughter lay close to each other, side by side,--Catalina, the bride of

his youth, and Elsie, the child whom he had nurtured, with poor Old

Sophy, who had followed them like a black shadow, at their feet, under

the same soft turf, sprinkled with the brown autumnal leaves. It was not

good for him to be thus alone. How should he ever live through the long

months of November and December?

The months of November and December did, in some way or other, get rid of

themselves at last, bringing with them the usual events of village-life

and a few unusual ones. Some of the geologists had been up to look at

the great slide, of which they gave those prolix accounts which everybody

remembers who read the scientific journals of the time. The engineers

reported that there was little probability of any further convulsion

along the line of rocks which overhung the more thickly settled part of

the town. The naturalists drew up a paper on the "Probable Extinction

of the Crotalus Durissus in the Township of Rockland." The engagement

of the Widow Rowens to a Little Millionville merchant was

announced,--"Sudding 'n' onexpected," Widow Leech said,--"waalthy, or she

wouldn't ha' looked at him,--fifty year old, if he is a day, 'n' hu'n't

got a white hair in his head." The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had

publicly announced that he was going to join the Roman Catholic

communion,--not so much to the surprise or consternation of the

religious world as he had supposed. Several old ladies forthwith

proclaimed their intention of following him; but, as one or two of them

were deaf, and another had been threatened with an attack of that mild,

but obstinate complaint, dementia senilis, many thought it was not so

much the force of his arguments as a kind of tendency to jump as the

bellwether jumps, well known in flocks not included in the Christian

fold. His bereaved congregation immediately began pulling candidates on

and off, like new boots, on trial. Some pinched in tender places; some

were too loose; some were too square-toed; some were too coarse, and did

n't please; some were too thin, and would n't last;--in short, they could

n't possibly find a fit. At last, people began to drop in to hear old

Doctor Honeywood. They were quite surprised to find what a human old

gentleman he was, and went back and told the others, that, instead of

being a case of confluent sectarianism, as they supposed, the good old

minister had been so well vaccinated with charitable virus that he was

now a true, open-souled Christian of the mildest type. The end of all

which was, that the liberal people went over to the old minister almost

in a body, just at the time that Deacon Shearer and the "Vinegar-Bible"

party split off, and that not long afterwards they sold their own

meeting-house to the malecontents, so that Deacon Soper used often to

remind Colonel Sprowle of his wish that "our little man and him [the

Reverend Doctor] would swop pulpits," and tell him it had "pooty nigh

come trew."--But this is anticipating the course of events, which were

much longer in coming about; for we have but just got through that

terrible long month, as Mr. Dudley Venner found it, of December.

On the first of January, Mr. Silas Peckham was in the habit of settling

his quarterly accounts, and making such new arrangements as his

convenience or interest dictated. New Year was a holiday at the

Institute. No doubt this accounted for Helen's being dressed so

charmingly,--always, to be sure in, her own simple way, but yet with such

a true lady's air, that she looked fit to be the mistress of any mansion

in the land.

She was in the parlor alone, a little before noon, when Mr. Peckham came

in.

"I'm ready to settle my accaount with you now, Miss Darley," said Silas.

"As you please, Mr. Peckham," Helen answered, very graciously.

"Before payin' you your selary," the Principal continued, "I wish to come

to an understandin' as to the futur'. I consider that I've been payin'

high, very high, for the work you do. Women's wages can't be expected to

do more than feed and clothe 'em, as a gineral thing, with a little

savin', in case of sickness, and to bury 'em, if they break daown, as all

of 'em are liable to do at any time. If I a'n't misinformed, you not

only support yourself out of my establishment, but likewise relatives of

yours, who I don't know that I'm called upon to feed and clothe. There

is a young woman, not burdened with destitute relatives, has signified

that she would be glad to take your dooties for less pecooniary

compensation, by a consid'able amaount, than you now receive. I shall be

willin', however, to retain your services at sech redooced rate as we

shall fix upon,--provided sech redooced rate be as low or lower than the

same services can be obtained elsewhere."

"As you please, Mr. Peckham," Helen answered, with a smile so sweet that

the Principal (who of course had trumped up this opposition-teacher for

the occasion) said to himself she would stand being cut down a quarter,

perhaps a half, of her salary.

"Here is your accaount, Miss Darley, and the balance doo you," said Silas

Peckham, handing her a paper and a small roll of infectious-flavored

bills wrapping six poisonous coppers of the old coinage.

She took the paper and began looking at it. She could not quite make up

her mind to touch the feverish bills with the cankering coppers in them,

and left them airing themselves on the table.

The document she held ran as follows:

Silas Peckham, Esq., Principal of the Apollinean Institute, In Account

with Helen Darley, Assist. Teacher.

Dr. Cr.

To salary for quarter By Deduction for absence

ending Jan 1st @ $75 per 1 week 3 days ...........$10.00

quarter ................ $75.00

"Board, lodging, etc for

10 days @ 75 cts per day.. 7.50

"Damage to Institution by

absence of teacher from

duties, say ............. 25.00

"Stationary furnished ..... .43

"Postage-stamp ............ .01

"Balance due Helen Darley. 32.06

------ --------

$75.00 $75.00

ROCKLAND, Jan. 1st, 1859.

Now Helen had her own private reasons for wishing to receive the small

sum which was due her at this time without any unfair deduction,--reasons

which we need not inquire into too particularly, as we may be very sure

that they were right and womanly. So, when she looked over this account

of Mr. Silas Peckham's, and saw that he had contrived to pare down her

salary to something less than half its stipulated amount, the look which

her countenance wore was as near to that of righteous indignation as her

gentle features and soft blue eyes would admit of its being.

"Why, Mr. Peckham," she said, "do you mean this? If I am of so much

value to you that you must take off twenty-five dollars for ten days'

absence, how is it that my salary is to be cut down to less than

seventy-five dollars a quarter, if I remain here?"

"I gave you fair notice," said Silas. "I have a minute of it I took down

immed'ately after the intervoo."

He lugged out his large pocket-book with the strap going all round it,

and took from it a slip of paper which confirmed his statement.

"Besides," he added, slyly, "I presoom you have received a liberal

pecooniary compensation from Squire Venner for nussin' his daughter."

Helen was looking over the bill while he was speaking.

"Board and lodging for ten days, Mr. Peckham,--whose board and lodging,

pray?"

The door opened before Silas Peckham could answer, and Mr. Bernard walked

into the parlor. Helen was holding the bill in her hand, looking as any

woman ought to look who has been at once wronged and insulted.

"The last turn of the thumbscrew!" said Mr. Bernard to himself.

"What is it, Helen? You look troubled."

She handed him the account.

He looked at the footing of it. Then he looked at the items. Then he

looked at Silas Peckham.

At this moment Silas was sublime. He was so transcendently unconscious

of the emotions going on in Mr. Bernard's mind at the moment, that he had

only a single thought.

"The accaount's correc'ly cast, I presoom;--if the' 's any mistake of

figgers or addin' 'em up, it'll be made all right. Everything's

accordin' to agreement. The minute written immed'ately after the

intervoo is here in my possession."

Mr. Bernard looked at Helen. Just what would have happened to Silas

Peckham, as he stood then and there, but for the interposition of a

merciful Providence, nobody knows or ever will know; for at that moment

steps were heard upon the stairs, and Hiram threw open the parlor-door

for Mr. Dudley Venner to enter.

He saluted them all gracefully with the good-wishes of the season, and

each of them returned his compliment,--Helen blushing fearfully, of

course, but not particularly noticed in her embarrassment by more than

one.

Silas Peckham reckoned with perfect confidence on his Trustees, who had

always said what he told them to, and done what he wanted. It was a good

chance now to show off his power, and, by letting his instructors know

the unstable tenure of their offices, make it easier to settle his

accounts and arrange his salaries. There was nothing very strange in Mr.

Venner's calling; he was one of the Trustees, and this was New Year's

Day. But he had called just at the lucky moment for Mr. Peckham's

object.

"I have thought some of makin' changes in the department of instruction,"

he began. "Several accomplished teachers have applied to me, who would

be glad of sitooations. I understand that there never have been so many

fust-rate teachers, male and female, out of employment as doorin' the

present season. If I can make sahtisfahctory arrangements with my

present corpse of teachers, I shall be glad to do so; otherwise I shell,

with the permission of the Trustees, make sech noo arrangements as

circumstahnces compel."

"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in my department, Mr.

Peckham," said Mr. Bernard, "at once,--this day,--this hour. I am not

safe to be trusted with your person five minutes out of this lady's

presence,--of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I

must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the

manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful

teacher whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have

made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence.

Will you look at the paper I hold?"

Dudley Venner took the account and read it through, without changing a

feature. Then he turned to Silas Peckham.

"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in the branches this lady

has taught. Miss Helen Darley is to be my wife. I had hoped to have

announced this news in a less abrupt and ungraceful manner. But I came

to tell you with my own lips what you would have learned before evening

from my friends in the village."

Mr. Bernard went to Helen, who stood silent, with downcast eyes, and took

her hand warmly, hoping she might find all the happiness she deserved.

Then he turned to Dudley Venner, and said, "She is a queen, but has never

found it out. The world has nothing nobler than this dear woman, whom

you have discovered in the disguise of a teacher. God bless her and

you!"

Dudley Venner returned his friendly grasp, without answering a word in

articulate speech.

Silas remained dumb and aghast for a brief space. Coming to himself a

little, he thought there might have been some mistake about the

items,--would like to have Miss barley's bill returned,--would make it

all right,--had no idee that Squire Venner had a special int'rest in Miss

barley,--was sorry he had given offence,--if he might take that bill and

look it over--

"No. Mr. Peckham," said Mr. Dudley Venner, "there will be a full meeting

of the Board next week, and the bill, and such evidence with reference to

the management of the Institution and the treatment of its instructors as

Mr. Langdon sees fit to bring forward will be laid before them."

Miss Helen Darley became that very day the guest of Miss Arabella

Thornton, the Judge's daughter. Mr. Bernard made his appearance a week

or two later at the Lectures, where the Professor first introduced him to

the reader.

He stayed after the class had left the room.

"Ah, Mr. Langdon! how do you do? Very glad to see you back again. How

have you been since our correspondence on Fascination and other curious

scientific questions?"

It was the Professor who spoke,--whom the reader will recognize as

myself, the teller of this story.

"I have been well," Mr. Bernard answered, with a serious look which

invited a further question.

"I hope you have had none of those painful or dangerous experiences you

seemed to be thinking of when you wrote; at any rate, you have escaped

having your obituary written."

"I have seen some things worth remembering. Shall I call on you this

evening and tell you about them?"

"I shall be most happy to see you."

This was the way in which I, the Professor, became acquainted with some

of the leading events of this story. They interested me sufficiently to

lead me to avail myself of all those other extraordinary methods of

obtaining information well known to writers of narrative.

Mr. Langdon seemed to me to have gained in seriousness and strength of

character by his late experiences. He threw his whole energies into his

studies with an effect which distanced all his previous efforts.

Remembering my former hint, he employed his spare hours in writing for

the annual prizes, both of which he took by a unanimous vote of the

judges. Those who heard him read his Thesis at the Medical Commencement

will not soon forget the impression made by his fine personal appearance

and manners, nor the universal interest excited in the audience, as he

read, with his beautiful enunciation, that striking paper entitled

"Unresolved Nebulae in Vital Science." It was a general remark of the

Faculty,--and old Doctor Kittredge, who had come down on purpose to hear

Mr. Langdon, heartily agreed to it,--that there had never been a diploma

filled up, since the institution which conferred upon him the degree of

Doctor Medicdnce was founded, which carried with it more of promise to

the profession than that which bore the name of

BERNARDUS CARYL LANGDON

CHAPTER XXXII.

CONCLUSION.

Mr. Bernard Langdon had no sooner taken his degree, than, in accordance

with the advice of one of his teachers whom he frequently consulted, he

took an office in the heart of the city where he had studied. He had

thought of beginning in a suburb or some remoter district of the city

proper.

"No," said his teacher,--to wit, myself,--"don't do any such thing. You

are made for the best kind of practice; don't hamper yourself with an

outside constituency, such as belongs to a practitioner of the second

class. When a fellow like you chooses his beat, he must look ahead a

little. Take care of all the poor that apply to you, but leave the

half-pay classes to a different style of doctor,--the people who spend

one half their time in taking care of their patients, and the other half

in squeezing out their money. Go for the swell-fronts and south-exposure

houses; the folks inside are just as good as other people, and the

pleasantest, on the whole, to take care of. They must have somebody, and

they like a gentleman best. Don't throw yourself away. You have a good

presence and pleasing manners. You wear white linen by inherited

instinct. You can pronounce the word view. You have all the elements of

success; go and take it. Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue

yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy,

while you are about it. The highest social class furnishes incomparably

the best patients, taking them by and large. Besides, when they won't

get well and bore you to death, you can send 'em off to travel. Mind me

now, and take the tops of your sparrowgrass. Somebody must have

'em,--why shouldn't you? If you don't take your chance, you'll get the

butt-ends as a matter of course."

Mr. Bernard talked like a young man full of noble sentiments. He wanted

to be useful to his fellow-beings. Their social differences were nothing

to him. He would never court the rich,--he would go where he was called.

He would rather save the life of a poor mother of a family than that of

half a dozen old gouty millionnaires whose heirs had been yawning and

stretching these ten years to get rid of them.

"Generous emotions!" I exclaimed. "Cherish 'em; cling to 'em till you

are fifty, till you are seventy, till you are ninety! But do as I tell

you,--strike for the best circle of practice, and you 'll be sure to get

it!"

Mr. Langdon did as I told him,--took a genteel office, furnished it

neatly, dressed with a certain elegance, soon made a pleasant circle of

acquaintances, and began to work his way into the right kind of business.

I missed him, however, for some days, not long after he had opened his

office. On his return, he told me he had been up at Rockland, by special

invitation, to attend the wedding of Mr. Dudley Venner and Miss Helen

Darley. He gave me a full account of the ceremony, which I regret that I

cannot relate in full. "Helen looked like an angel,"--that, I am sure,

was one of his expressions. As for her dress, I should like to give the

details, but am afraid of committing blunders, as men always do, when

they undertake to describe such matters. White dress, anyhow,--that I am

sure of,--with orange-flowers, and the most wonderful lace veil that was

ever seen or heard of. The Reverend Doctor Honeywood performed the

ceremony, of course. The good people seemed to have forgotten they ever

had had any other minister, except Deacon Shearer and his set of

malcontents, who were doing a dull business in the meeting-house lately

occupied by the Reverend Mr. Fairweather.

"Who was at the wedding?"

"Everybody, pretty much. They wanted to keep it quiet, but it was of no

use. Married at church. Front pews, old Dr. Kittredge and all the

mansionhouse people and distinguished strangers,--Colonel Sprowle and

family, including Matilda's young gentleman, a graduate of one of the

fresh-water colleges,--Mrs. Pickins (late Widow Rowens) and

husband,--Deacon Soper and numerous parishioners. A little nearer the

door, Abel, the Doctor's man, and Elbridge, who drove them to church in

the family-coach. Father Fairweather, as they all call him now, came in

late with Father McShane."

"And Silas Peckham?"

"Oh, Silas had left The School and Rockland. Cut up altogether too badly

in the examination instituted by the Trustees. Had removed over to

Tamarack, and thought of renting a large house and 'farming' the

town-poor."

Some time after this, as I was walking with a young friend along by the

swell-fronts and south-exposures, whom should I see but Mr. Bernard

Langdon, looking remarkably happy, and keeping step by the side of a very

handsome and singularly well-dressed young lady? He bowed and lifted his

hat as we passed.

"Who is that pretty girl my young doctor has got there?" I said to my

companion.

"Who is that?" he answered. "You don't know? Why, that is neither more

nor less than Miss Letitia Forrester, daughter of--of--why, the great

banking firm, you know, Bilyuns Brothers & Forrester. Got acquainted

with her in the country, they say. There 's a story that they're

engaged, or like to be, if the firm consents."

"Oh" I said.

I did not like the look of it in the least. Too young,--too young. Has

not taken any position yet. No right to ask for the hand of Bilyuns

Brothers & Co.'s daughter. Besides, it will spoil him for practice, if

he marries a rich girl before he has formed habits of work.

I looked in at his office the other day. A box of white kids was lying

open on the table. A three-cornered note, directed in a very delicate

lady's-hand, was distinguishable among a heap of papers. I was just

going to call him to account for his proceedings, when he pushed the

three-cornered note aside and took up a letter with a great

corporation-seal upon it. He had received the offer of a professor's

chair in an ancient and distinguished institution.

"Pretty well for three-and-twenty, my boy," I said. "I suppose you'll

think you must be married one of these days, if you accept this office."

Mr. Langdon blushed.--There had been stories about him, he knew. His name

had been mentioned in connection with that of a very charming young lady.

The current reports were not true. He had met this young lady, and been

much pleased with her, in the country, at the house of her grandfather,

the Reverend Doctor Honeywood,--you remember Miss Letitia Forrester, whom

I have mentioned repeatedly? On coming to town, he found his

country-acquaintance in a social position which seemed to discourage his

continued intimacy. He had discovered, however; that he was a not

unwelcome visitor, and had kept up friendly relations with her. But

there was no truth in the current reports,--none at all.'

Some months had passed, after this visit, when I happened one evening to

stroll into a box in one of the principal theatres of the city. A small

party sat on the seats before me: a middle-aged gentleman and his lady,

in front, and directly behind them my young doctor and the same very

handsome young lady I had seen him walking with on the sidewalk before

the swell-fronts and south-exposures. As Professor Langdon seemed to be

very much taken up with his companion, and both of them looked as if they

were enjoying themselves, I determined not to make my presence known to

my young friend, and to withdraw quietly after feasting my eyes with the

sight of them for a few minutes.

"It looks as if something might come of it," I said to myself. At that

moment the young lady lifted her arm accidentally in such a way that the

light fell upon the clasp of a chain which encircled her wrist. My eyes

filled with tears as I read upon the clasp, in sharp-cut Italic letters,

E. Y. They were tears at once of sad remembrance and of joyous

anticipation; for the ornament on which I looked was the double pledge of

a dead sorrow and a living affection. It was the golden bracelet,--the

parting-gift of Elsie Venner. the golden bracelet,--the parting-gift of

Elsie Venner.

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