The Project Gutenberg EBook of Condensed Novels, by Bret Harte
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Title: Condensed Novels
Author: Bret Harte
Posting Date: March 21, 2009 [EBook #2277]
Release Date: August, 2000
Language: English
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CONDENSED NOVELS
by
BRET HARTE
Contents:
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES
LOTHAW, or THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION
MUCK-A-MUCK, A MODERN INDIAN NOVEL, AFTER JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
TERENCE DENVILLE
SELINA SEDILIA
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN [AFTER THE THREE MUSKETEERS, BY DUMAS]
THE HAUNTED MAN
MISS MIX [AFTER CHARLOTTE BRONTE]
GUY HEAVYSTONE; OR, "ENTIRE."
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY
JOHN JENKINS; OR, THE SMOKER REFORMED
NO TITLE [AFTER WILKIE COLLINS]
Contains:
MARY JONES'S NARRATIVE
THE SLIM YOUNG MAN'S STORY
NO. 27 LIMEHOUSE ROAD
COUNT MOSCOW'S NARRATIVE
DR. DIGGS'S STATEMENT
BEING A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARAGRAPHIC STYLE
FANTINE
LA FEMME
MARY MCGILLUP, A SOUTHERN NOVEL, AFTER BELLE BOYD
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES.
BY CH--S R--DE.
CHAPTER I.
The Dodds were dead. For twenty year they had slept under the green
graves of Kittery churchyard. The townfolk still spoke of them kindly.
The keeper of the alehouse, where David had smoked his pipe, regretted
him regularly, and Mistress Kitty, Mrs. Dodd's maid, whose trim figure
always looked well in her mistress's gowns, was inconsolable. The
Hardins were in America. Raby was aristocratically gouty; Mrs. Raby,
religious. Briefly, then, we have disposed of--
1. Mr. and Mrs. Dodd (dead).
2. Mr. and Mrs. Hardin (translated).
3. Raby, baron et femme. (Yet I don't know about the former; he came
of a long-lived family, and the gout is an uncertain disease.)
We have active at the present writing (place aux dames)--
1. Lady Caroline Coventry, niece of Sir Frederick.
2. Faraday Huxley Little, son of Henry and Grace Little, deceased.
Sequitur to the above, A HERO AND HEROINE.
CHAPTER II.
On the death of his parents, Faraday Little was taken to Raby Hall. In
accepting his guardianship, Mr. Raby struggled stoutly against two
prejudices: Faraday was plain-looking and sceptical.
"Handsome is as handsome does, sweetheart," pleaded Jael, interceding
for the orphan with arms that were still beautiful. "Dear knows, it is
not his fault if he does not look like--his father," she added with a
great gulp. Jael was a woman, and vindicated her womanhood by never
entirely forgiving a former rival.
"It's not that alone, madam," screamed Raby, "but, d--m it, the little
rascal's a scientist,--an atheist, a radical, a scoffer! Disbelieves in
the Bible, ma'am; is full of this Darwinian stuff about natural
selection and descent. Descent, forsooth! In my day, madam, gentlemen
were content to trace their ancestors back to gentlemen, and not
to--monkeys!"
"Dear heart, the boy is clever," urged Jael.
"Clever!" roared Raby; "what does a gentleman want with cleverness?"
CHAPTER III.
Young Little WAS clever. At seven he had constructed a telescope; at
nine, a flying-machine. At ten he saved a valuable life.
Norwood Park was the adjacent estate,--a lordly domain dotted with red
deer and black trunks, but scrupulously kept with gravelled roads as
hard and blue as steel. There Little was strolling one summer morning,
meditating on a new top with concealed springs. At a little distance
before him he saw the flutter of lace and ribbons. A young lady, a
very young lady,--say of seven summers,--tricked out in the crying
abominations of the present fashion, stood beside a low bush. Her
nursery-maid was not present, possibly owing to the fact that John the
footman was also absent.
Suddenly Little came towards her. "Excuse me, but do you know what
those berries are?" He was pointing to the low bush filled with dark
clusters of shining--suspiciously shining--fruit.
"Certainly; they are blueberries."
"Pardon me; you are mistaken. They belong to quite another family."
Miss Impudence drew herself up to her full height (exactly three feet
nine and a half inches), and, curling an eight of an inch of scarlet
lip, said, scornfully. "YOUR family, perhaps."
Faraday Little smiled in the superiority of boyhood over girlhood.
"I allude to the classification. That plant is the belladonna, or
deadly nightshade. Its alkaloid is a narcotic poison."
Sauciness turned pale. "I--have--just--eaten--some!" And began to
whimper. "O dear, what shall I do?" Then did it, i. e. wrung her
small fingers and cried.
"Pardon me one moment." Little passed his arm around her neck, and
with his thumb opened widely the patrician-veined lids of her sweet
blue eyes. "Thank Heaven, there is yet no dilation of the pupil; it is
not too late!" He cast a rapid glance around. The nozzle and about
three feet of garden hose lay near him.
"Open your mouth, quick!"
It was a pretty, kissable mouth. But young Little meant business. He
put the nozzle down her pink throat as far as it would go.
"Now, don't move."
He wrapped his handkerchief around a hoopstick. Then he inserted both
in the other end of the stiff hose. It fitted snugly. He shoved it in
and then drew it back.
Nature abhors a vacuum. The young patrician was as amenable to this
law as the child of the lowest peasant.
She succumbed. It was all over in a minute. Then she burst into a
small fury.
"You nasty, bad--UGLY boy."
Young Little winced, but smiled.
"Stimulants," he whispered to the frightened nursery-maid who
approached; "good evening." He was gone.
CHAPTER IV.
The breach between young Little and Mr. Raby was slowly widening.
Little found objectionable features in the Hall. "This black oak
ceiling and wainscoating is not as healthful as plaster; besides, it
absorbs the light. The bedroom ceiling is too low; the Elizabethan
architects knew nothing of ventilation. The color of that oak
panelling which you admire is due to an excess of carbon and the exuvia
from the pores of your skin--"
"Leave the house," bellowed Raby, "before the roof falls on your
sacrilegious head!"
As Little left the house, Lady Caroline and a handsome boy of about
Little's age entered. Lady Caroline recoiled, and then--blushed.
Little glared; he instinctively felt the presence of a rival.
CHAPTER V.
Little worked hard. He studied night and day. In five years he became
a lecturer, then a professor.
He soared as high as the clouds, he dipped as low as the cellars of the
London poor. He analyzed the London fog, and found it two parts smoke,
one disease, one unmentionable abominations. He published a pamphlet,
which was violently attacked. Then he knew he had done something.
But he had not forgotten Caroline. He was walking one day in the
Zoological Gardens and he came upon a pretty picture,--flesh and blood
too.
Lady Caroline feeding buns to the bears! An exquisite thrill passed
through his veins. She turned her sweet face and their eyes met. They
recollected their first meeting seven years before, but it was his turn
to be shy and timid. Wonderful power of age and sex! She met him with
perfect self-possession.
"Well meant, but indigestible I fear" (he alluded to the buns).
"A clever person like yourself can easily correct that" (she, the
slyboots, was thinking of something else).
In a few moments they were chatting gayly. Little eagerly descanted
upon the different animals; she listened with delicious interest. An
hour glided delightfully away.
After this sunshine, clouds.
To them suddenly entered Mr. Raby and a handsome young man. The
gentlemen bowed stiffly and looked vicious,--as they felt. The lady of
this quartette smiled amiably, as she did not feel.
"Looking at your ancestors, I suppose," said Mr. Raby, pointing to the
monkeys; "we will not disturb you. Come." And he led Caroline away.
Little was heart-sick. He dared not follow them. But an hour later he
saw something which filled his heart with bliss unspeakable.
Lady Caroline, with a divine smile on her face, feeding the monkeys!
CHAPTER VI.
Encouraged by love, Little worked hard upon his new flying-machine. His
labors were lightened by talking of the beloved one with her French
maid Therese, whom he had discreetly bribed. Mademoiselle Therese was
venal, like all her class, but in this instance I fear she was not
bribed by British gold. Strange as it may seem to the British mind, it
was British genius, British eloquence, British thought, that brought
her to the feet of this young savan.
"I believe," said Lady Caroline, one day, interrupting her maid in a
glowing eulogium upon the skill of "M. Leetell,"--"I believe you are in
love with this Professor." A quick flush crossed the olive cheek of
Therese, which Lady Caroline afterward remembered.
The eventful day of trial came. The public were gathered, impatient
and scornful as the pigheaded public are apt to be. In the open area a
long cylindrical balloon, in shape like a Bologna sausage, swayed above
the machine, from which, like some enormous bird caught in a net, it
tried to free itself. A heavy rope held it fast to the ground.
Little was waiting for the ballast, when his eye caught Lady Caroline's
among the spectators. The glance was appealing. In a moment he was at
her side.
"I should like so much to get into the machine," said the
arch-hypocrite, demurely.
"Are you engaged to marry young Raby," said Little, bluntly.
"As you please," she said with a courtesy; "do I take this as a
refusal?"
Little was a gentleman. He lifted her and her lapdog into the car.
"How nice! it won't go off?"
"No, the rope is strong, and the ballast is not yet in."
A report like a pistol, a cry from the spectators, a thousand hands
stretched to grasp the parted rope, and the balloon darted upward.
Only one hand of that thousand caught the rope,--Little's! But in the
same instant the horror-stricken spectators saw him whirled from his
feet and borne upward, still clinging to the rope, into space.
CHAPTER VII.*
* The right of dramatization of this and succeeding chapters is
reserved by the writer.
Lady Caroline fainted. The cold watery nose of her dog on her cheek
brought her to herself. She dared not look over the edge of the car;
she dared not look up to the bellying monster above her, bearing her to
death. She threw herself on the bottom of the car, and embraced the
only living thing spared her,--the poodle. Then she cried. Then a
clear voice came apparently out of the circumambient air:--
"May I trouble you to look at the barometer?"
She put her head over the car. Little was hanging at the end of a long
rope. She put her head back again.
In another moment he saw her perplexed, blushing face over the
edge,--blissful sight.
"O, please don't think of coming up! Stay there, do!"
Little stayed. Of course she could make nothing out of the barometer,
and said so. Little smiled.
"Will you kindly send it down to me?"
But she had no string or cord. Finally she said, "Wait a moment."
Little waited. This time her face did not appear. The barometer came
slowly down at the end of--a stay-lace.
The barometer showed a frightful elevation. Little looked up at the
valve and said nothing. Presently he heard a sigh. Then a sob. Then,
rather sharply,--
"Why don't you do something?"
CHAPTER VIII.
Little came up the rope hand over hand. Lady Caroline crouched in the
farther side of the car. Fido, the poodle, whined. "Poor thing," said
Lady Caroline, "it's hungry."
"Do you wish to save the dog?" said Little.
"Yes."
"Give me your parasol."
She handed Little a good-sized affair of lace and silk and whalebone.
(None of your "sunshades.") Little examined its ribs carefully.
"Give me the dog."
Lady Caroline hurriedly slipped a note under the dog's collar, and
passed over her pet.
Little tied the dog to the handle of the parasol and launched them both
into space. The next moment they were slowly, but tranquilly, sailing
to the earth.
"A parasol and a parachute are distinct, but not different. Be not
alarmed, he will get his dinner at some farm-house."
"Where are we now?"
"That opaque spot you see is London fog. Those twin clouds are North
and South America. Jerusalem and Madagascar are those specks to the
right."
Lady Caroline moved nearer; she was becoming interested. Then she
recalled herself and said freezingly, "How are we going to descend?"
"By opening the valve."
"Why don't you open it then?"
"BECAUSE THE VALVE-STRING IS BROKEN!"
CHAPTER IX.
Lady Caroline fainted. When she revived it was dark. They were
apparently cleaving their way through a solid block of black marble.
She moaned and shuddered.
"I wish we had a light."
"I have no lucifers," said Little. "I observe, however, that you wear
a necklace of amber. Amber under certain conditions becomes highly
electrical. Permit me."
He took the amber necklace and rubbed it briskly. Then he asked her to
present her knuckle to the gem. A bright spark was the result. This
was repeated for some hours. The light was not brilliant, but it was
enough for the purposes of propriety, and satisfied the delicately
minded girl.
Suddenly there was a tearing, hissing noise and a smell of gas. Little
looked up and turned pale. The balloon, at what I shall call the
pointed end of the Bologna sausage, was evidently bursting from
increased pressure. The gas was escaping, and already they were
beginning to descend. Little was resigned but firm.
"If the silk gives way, then we are lost. Unfortunately I have no rope
nor material for binding it."
The woman's instinct had arrived at the same conclusion sooner than the
man's reason. But she was hesitating over a detail.
"Will you go down the rope for a moment?" she said, with a sweet smile.
Little went down. Presently she called to him. She held something in
her hand,--a wonderful invention of the seventeenth century, improved
and perfected in this: a pyramid of sixteen circular hoops of light yet
strong steel, attached to each other by cloth bands.
With a cry of joy Little seized them, climbed to the balloon, and
fitted the elastic hoops over its conical end. Then he returned to the
car.
"We are saved."
Lady Caroline, blushing, gathered her slim but antique drapery against
the other end of the car.
CHAPTER X.
They were slowly descending. Presently Lady Caroline distinguished the
outlines of Raby Hall. "I think I will get out here," she said.
Little anchored the balloon and prepared to follow her.
"Not so, my friend," she said, with an arch smile. "We must not be
seen together. People might talk. Farewell."
Little sprang again into the balloon and sped away to America. He came
down in California, oddly enough in front of Hardin's door, at Dutch
Flat. Hardin was just examining a specimen of ore.
"You are a scientist; can you tell me if that is worth anything?" he
said, handing it to Little.
Little held it to the light. "It contains ninety per cent of silver."
Hardin embraced him. "Can I do anything for you, and why are you here?"
Little told his story. Hardin asked to see the rope. Then he examined
it carefully.
"Ah, this was cut, not broken!"
"With a knife?" asked Little.
"No. Observe both sides are equally indented. It was done with a
SCISSORS!"
"Just Heaven!" gasped Little. "Therese!"
CHAPTER XI.
Little returned to London. Passing through London one day he met a
dog-fancier. "Buy a nice poodle, sir?"
Something in the animal attracted his attention. "Fido!" he gasped.
The dog yelped.
Little bought him. On taking off his collar a piece of paper rustled
to the floor. He knew the handwriting and kissed it. It ran:--
"TO THE HON. AUGUSTUS RABY--I cannot marry you. If I marry any one"
(sly puss) "it will be the man who has twice saved my life,--Professor
Little.
"CAROLINE COVENTRY."
And she did.
LOTHAW;
OR,
THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION.
BY MR. BENJAMINS.
CHAPTER I.
"I remember him a little boy," said the Duchess. "His mother was a
dear friend of mine; you know she was one of my bridesmaids."
"And you have never seen him since, mamma?" asked the oldest married
daughter, who did not look a day older than her mother.
"Never; he was an orphan shortly after. I have often reproached
myself, but it is so difficult to see boys."
This simple yet first-class conversation existed in the morning-room of
Plusham, where the mistress of the palatial mansion sat involved in the
sacred privacy of a circle of her married daughters. One dexterously
applied golden knitting-needles to the fabrication of a purse of floss
silk of the rarest texture, which none who knew the almost fabulous
wealth of the Duke would believe was ever destined to hold in its
silken meshes a less sum than L1,000,000; another adorned a slipper
exclusively with seed pearls; a third emblazoned a page with rare
pigments and the finest quality of gold leaf. Beautiful forms leaned
over frames glowing with embroidery, and beautiful frames leaned over
forms inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Others, more remote, occasionally
burst into melody as they tried the passages of a new and exclusive air
given to them in MS. by some titled and devoted friend, for the private
use of the aristocracy alone, and absolutely prohibited for publication.
The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, wealth, and position,
was married to the highest noble in the Three Kingdoms. Those who
talked about such matters said that their progeny were exactly like
their parents,--a peculiarity of the aristocratic and wealthy. They
all looked like brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such
was their purity of blood, the perfection of their manners, and the
opulence of their condition, might have been taken for their own
children's elder son and daughter. The daughters, with one exception,
were all married to the highest nobles in the land. That exception was
the Lady Coriander, who, there being no vacancy above a marquis and a
rental of L1,000,000, waited. Gathered around the refined and sacred
circle of their breakfast-table, with their glittering coronets, which,
in filial respect to their father's Tory instincts and their mother's
Ritualistic tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the effect
was dazzling as it was refined. It was this peculiarity and their
strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the
good-humored St. Addlegourd, to say that, "'Pon my soul, you know, the
whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards, you
know." St. Addlegourd was a radical. Having a rent-roll of
L15,000,000, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he
could afford to be.
"Mamma, I've just dropped a pearl," said the Lady Coriander, bending
over the Persian hearthrug.
"From your lips, sweet friend," said Lothaw, who came of age and
entered the room at the same moment.
"No, from my work. It was a very valuable pearl, mamma; papa gave
Isaacs and Sons L50,000 for the two."
"Ah, indeed," said the Duchess, languidly rising; "let us go to
luncheon."
"But your Grace," interposed Lothaw, who was still quite young, and had
dropped on all-fours on the carpet in search of the missing gem,
"consider the value--"
"Dear friend," interposed the Duchess, with infinite tact, gently
lifting him by the tails of his dress-coat, "I am waiting for your arm."
CHAPTER II.
Lothaw was immensely rich. The possessor of seventeen castles, fifteen
villas, nine shooting-boxes, and seven town houses, he had other
estates of which he had not even heard.
Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none badly. Next to their
purity of blood and great wealth, the family were famous for this
accomplishment. Yet Lothaw soon tired of the game, and after seriously
damaging his aristocratically large foot in an attempt to "tight
croquet" the Lady Aniseed's ball, he limped away to join the Duchess.
"I'm going to the hennery," she said.
"Let me go with you, I dearly love fowls--broiled," he added,
thoughtfully.
"The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large Cochins the other day,"
continued the Duchess, changing the subject with delicate tact.
"Lady Montairy,
Quite contrairy,
How do your cochins grow?"
sang Lothaw gayly.
The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence, Lothaw abruptly
and gravely said:--
"If you please, ma'am, when I come into my property I should like to
build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander."
"You amaze me, dear friend, and yet both your aspirations are noble and
eminently proper," said the Duchess; "Coriander is but a child,--and
yet," she added, looking graciously upon her companion, "for the matter
of that, so are you."
CHAPTER III.
Mr. Putney Giles's was Lothaw's first grand dinner-party. Yet, by
carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably,
and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing
its contents with a spoon. The conversation was peculiar and
singularly interesting.
"Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?"
said Mrs. Putney Giles to her companion.
"I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal
lines," replied Lothaw.
"I should say it was a matter of latitude," observed a loud talkative
man opposite. He was an Oxford Professor with a taste for satire, and
had made himself very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, by
speaking disparagingly of a former well-known Chancellor of the
Exchequer,--a great statesman and brilliant novelist,--whom he feared
and hated.
Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the females it
absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill. His Eminence, the Cardinal,
was announced. He entered with great suavity of manner, and, after
shaking hands with everybody, asking after their relatives, and
chucking the more delicate females under the chin with a high-bred
grace peculiar to his profession, he sat down, saying, "And how do we
all find ourselves this evening, my dears?" in several different
languages, which he spoke fluently.
Lothaw's heart was touched. His deeply religious convictions were
impressed. He instantly went up to this gifted being, confessed, and
received absolution. "To-morrow," he said to himself, "I will partake
of the communion, and endow the Church with my vast estates. For the
present I'll let the improved cottages go."
CHAPTER IV.
As Lothaw turned to leave the Cardinal, he was struck by a beautiful
face. It was that of a matron, slim but shapely as an Ionic column.
Her face was Grecian, with Corinthian temples; Hellenic eyes that
looked from jutting eyebrows, like dormer-windows in an Attic forehead,
completed her perfect Athenian outline. She wore a black frock-coat
tightly buttoned over her bloomer trousers, and a standing collar.
"Your Lordship is struck by that face," said a social parasite.
"I am; who is she?"
"Her name is Mary Ann. She is married to an American, and has lately
invented a new religion."
"Ah!" said Lothaw eagerly, with difficulty restraining himself from
rushing toward her.
"Yes; shall I introduce you?"
Lothaw thought of Lady Coriander's High Church proclivities, of the
Cardinal, and hesitated: "No, I thank you, not now."
CHAPTER V.
Lothaw was maturing. He had attended two woman's rights conventions,
three Fenian meetings, had dined at White's, and had danced vis-a-vis
to a prince of the blood, and eaten off of gold plates at Crecy House.
His stables were near Oxford, and occupied more ground than the
University. He was driving over there one day, when he perceived some
rustics and menials endeavoring to stop a pair of runaway horses
attached to a carriage in which a lady and gentleman were seated.
Calmly awaiting the termination of the accident, with high-bred
courtesy Lothaw forbore to interfere until the carriage was overturned,
the occupants thrown out, and the runaways secured by the servants,
when he advanced and offered the lady the exclusive use of his Oxford
stables.
Turning upon him a face whose perfect Hellenic details he remembered,
she slowly dragged a gentleman from under the wheels into the light and
presented him with ladylike dignity as her husband, Major-General
Camperdown, an American.
"Ah," said Lothaw, carelessly, "I believe I have some land there. If I
mistake not, my agent, Mr. Putney Giles, lately purchased the State
of--Illinois--I think you call it."
"Exactly. As a former resident of the city of Chicago, let me
introduce myself as your tenant."
Lothaw bowed graciously to the gentleman, who, except that he seemed
better dressed than most Englishmen, showed no other signs of
inferiority and plebeian extraction.
"We have met before," said Lothaw to the lady as she leaned on his arm,
while they visited his stables, the University, and other places of
interest in Oxford. "Pray tell me, what is this new religion of yours?"
"It is Woman Suffrage, Free Love, Mutual Affinity, and Communism.
Embrace it and me."
Lothaw did not know exactly what to do. She however soothed and
sustained his agitated frame and sealed with an embrace his speechless
form. The General approached and coughed slightly with gentlemanly
tact.
"My husband will be too happy to talk with you further on this
subject," she said with quiet dignity, as she regained the General's
side. "Come with us to Oneida. Brook Farm is a thing of the past."
CHAPTER VI.
As Lothaw drove toward his country-seat, "The Mural Enclosure," he
observed a crowd, apparently of the working class, gathered around a
singular-looking man in the picturesque garb of an Ethiopian serenader.
"What does he say?" inquired Lothaw of his driver.
The man touched his hat respectfully and said, "My Mary Ann."
"'My Mary Ann!'" Lothaw's heart beat rapidly. Who was this mysterious
foreigner? He had heard from Lady Coriander of a certain Popish plot;
but could he connect Mr. Camperdown with it?
The spectacle of two hundred men at arms who advanced to meet him at
the gates of The Mural Enclosure drove all else from the still youthful
and impressible mind of Lothaw. Immediately behind them, on the steps
of the baronial halls, were ranged his retainers, led by the chief cook
and bottle-washer, and head crumb-remover. On either side were two
companies of laundry-maids, preceded by the chief crimper and fluter,
supporting a long Ancestral Line, on which depended the family linen,
and under which the youthful lord of the manor passed into the halls of
his fathers. Twenty-four scullions carried the massive gold and silver
plate of the family on their shoulders, and deposited it at the feet of
their master. The spoons were then solemnly counted by the steward, and
the perfect ceremony ended.
Lothaw sighed. He sought out the gorgeously gilded "Taj," or sacred
mausoleum erected to his grandfather in the second story front room,
and wept over the man he did not know. He wandered alone in his
magnificent park, and then, throwing himself on a grassy bank, pondered
on the Great First Cause, and the necessity of religion. "I will send
Mary Ann a handsome present," said Lothaw, thoughtfully.
CHAPTER VII.
"Each of these pearls, my Lord, is worth fifty thousand guineas," said
Mr. Amethyst, the fashionable jeweler, as he lightly lifted a large
shovelful from a convenient bin behind his counter.
"Indeed," said Lothaw, carelessly, "I should prefer to see some
expensive ones.
"Some number sixes, I suppose," said Mr. Amethyst, taking a couple from
the apex of a small pyramid that lay piled on the shelf. "These are
about the size of the Duchess of Billingsgate's, but they are in finer
condition. The fact is, her Grace permits her two children, the
Marquis of Smithfield and the Duke of St. Giles,--two sweet pretty
boys, my Lord,--to use them as marbles in their games. Pearls require
some attention, and I go down there regularly twice a week to clean
them. Perhaps your Lordship would like some ropes of pearls?"
"About half a cable's length," said Lothaw, shortly, "and send them to
my lodgings."
Mr. Amethyst became thoughtful. "I am afraid I have not the exact
number--that is--excuse me one moment. I will run over to the Tower
and borrow a few from the crown jewels." And before Lothaw could
prevent him, he seized his hat and left Lothaw alone.
His position certainly was embarrassing. He could not move without
stepping on costly gems which had rolled from the counter; the rarest
diamonds lay scattered on the shelves; untold fortunes in priceless
emeralds lay within his grasp. Although such was the aristocratic
purity of his blood and the strength of his religious convictions that
he probably would not have pocketed a single diamond, still he could
not help thinking that he might be accused of taking some. "You can
search me, if you like," he said when Mr. Amethyst returned; "but I
assure you, upon the honor of a gentleman, that I have taken nothing."
"Enough, my Lord," said Mr. Amethyst, with a low bow; "we never search
the aristocracy."
CHAPTER VIII.
As Lothaw left Mr. Amethyst's, he ran against General Camperdown. "How
is Mary Ann?" he asked hurriedly.
"I regret to state that she is dying," said the general, with a grave
voice, as he removed his cigar from his lips, and lifted his hat to
Lothaw.
"Dying!" said Lothaw, incredulously.
"Alas, too true!" replied the General. "The engagements of a long
lecturing season, exposure in travelling by railway during the winter,
and the imperfect nourishment afforded by the refreshments along the
road, have told on her delicate frame. But she wants to see you before
she dies. Here is the key of my lodging. I will finish my cigar out
here."
Lothaw hardly recognized those wasted Hellenic outlines as he entered
the dimly lighted room of the dying woman. She was already a classic
ruin,--as wrecked and yet as perfect as the Parthenon. He grasped her
hand silently.
"Open-air speaking twice a week, and saleratus bread in the rural
districts, have brought me to this," she said feebly; "but it is well.
The cause progresses. The tyrant man succumbs."
Lothaw could only press her hand.
"Promise me one thing. Don't--whatever you do--become a Catholic."
"Why?"
"The Church does not recognize divorce. And now embrace me. I would
prefer at this supreme moment to introduce myself to the next world
through the medium of the best society in this. Good by. When I am
dead, be good enough to inform my husband of the fact."
CHAPTER IX.
Lothaw spent the next six months on an Aryan island, in an Aryan
climate, and with an Aryan race.
"This is an Aryan landscape," said his host, "and that is a Mary Ann
statue." It was, in fact, a full-length figure in marble of Mrs.
General Camperdown!
"If you please, I should like to become a Pagan," said Lothaw, one day,
after listening to an impassioned discourse on Greek art from the lips
of his host.
But that night, on consulting a well-known spiritual medium, Lothaw
received a message from the late Mrs. General Camperdown, advising him
to return to England. Two days later he presented himself at Plusham.
"The young ladies are in the garden," said the Duchess. "Don't you
want to go and pick a rose?" she added with a gracious smile, and the
nearest approach to a wink that was consistent with her patrician
bearing and aquiline nose.
Lothaw went and presently returned with the blushing Coriander upon his
arm.
"Bless you, my children," said the Duchess. Then, turning to Lothaw,
she said: "You have simply fulfilled and accepted your inevitable
destiny. It was morally impossible for you to marry out of this
family. For the present, the Church of England is safe."
MUCK-A-MUCK.
A MODERN INDIAN NOVEL.
AFTER COOPER.
CHAPTER I.
It was toward the close of a bright October day. The last rays of the
setting sun were reflected from one of those sylvan lakes peculiar to
the Sierras of California. On the right the curling smoke of an Indian
village rose between the columns of the lofty pines, while to the left
the log cottage of Judge Tompkins, embowered in buckeyes, completed the
enchanting picture.
Although the exterior of the cottage was humble and unpretentious, and
in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave
evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An
aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one
end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the
other. The floor was covered with a yielding tapestry carpet, and the
walls were adorned with paintings from the pencils of Van Dyke, Rubens,
Tintoretto, Michael Angelo, and the productions of the more modern
Turner, Kensett, Church, and Bierstadt. Although Judge Tompkins had
chosen the frontiers of civilization as his home, it was impossible for
him to entirely forego the habits and tastes of his former life. He
was seated in a luxurious arm-chair, writing at a mahogany ecritoire,
while his daughter, a lovely young girl of seventeen summers, plied her
crochet-needle on an ottoman beside him. A bright fire of pine logs
flickered and flamed on the ample hearth.
Genevra Octavia Tompkins was Judge Tompkins's only child. Her mother
had long since died on the Plains. Reared in affluence, no pains had
been spared with the daughter's education. She was a graduate of one
of the principal seminaries, and spoke French with a perfect Benicia
accent. Peerlessly beautiful, she was dressed in a white moire antique
robe trimmed with tulle. That simple rosebud with which most heroines
exclusively decorate their hair, was all she wore in her raven locks.
The Judge was the first to break the silence.
"Genevra, the logs which compose yonder fire seem to have been
incautiously chosen. The sibilation produced by the sap, which exudes
copiously therefrom, is not conducive to composition."
"True, father, but I thought it would be preferable to the constant
crepitation which is apt to attend the combustion of more seasoned
ligneous fragments."
The Judge looked admiringly at the intellectual features of the
graceful girl, and half forgot the slight annoyances of the green wood
in the musical accents of his daughter. He was smoothing her hair
tenderly, when the shadow of a tall figure, which suddenly darkened the
doorway, caused him to look up.
CHAPTER II.
It needed but a glance at the new-comer to detect at once the form and
features of the haughty aborigine,--the untaught and untrammelled son
of the forest. Over one shoulder a blanket, negligently but gracefully
thrown, disclosed a bare and powerful breast, decorated with a quantity
of three-cent postage-stamps which he had despoiled from an Overland
Mail stage a few weeks previous. A cast-off beaver of Judge
Tompkins's, adorned by a simple feather, covered his erect head, from
beneath which his straight locks descended. His right hand hung
lightly by his side, while his left was engaged in holding on a pair of
pantaloons, which the lawless grace and freedom of his lower limbs
evidently could not brook.
"Why," said the Indian, in a low sweet tone,--"why does the Pale Face
still follow the track of the Red Man? Why does he pursue him, even as
O-kee-chow, the wild-cat, chases Ka-ka, the skunk? Why are the feet of
Sorrel-top, the white chief, among the acorns of Muck-a-muck, the
mountain forest? Why," he repeated, quietly but firmly abstracting a
silver spoon from the table,--"why do you seek to drive him from the
wigwams of his fathers? His brothers are already gone to the happy
hunting-grounds. Will the Pale Face seek him there?" And, averting
his face from the Judge, he hastily slipped a silver cake-basket
beneath his blanket, to conceal his emotion.
"Muck-a-Muck has spoken," said Genevra, softly. "Let him now listen.
Are the acorns of the mountain sweeter than the esculent and nutritious
bean of the Pale Face miner? Does my brother prize the edible
qualities of the snail above that of the crisp and oleaginous bacon?
Delicious are the grasshoppers that sport on the hillside,--are they
better than the dried apples of the Pale Faces? Pleasant is the gurgle
of the torrent, Kish-Kish, but is it better than the cluck-cluck of old
Bourbon from the old stone bottle?"
"Ugh!" said the Indian,--"ugh! good. The White Rabbit is wise. Her
words fall as the snow on Tootoonolo, and the rocky heart of
Muck-a-Muck is hidden. What says my brother the Gray Gopher of Dutch
Flat?"
"She has spoken, Muck-a-Muck," said the Judge, gazing fondly on his
daughter. "It is well. Our treaty is concluded. No, thank you,--you
need NOT dance the Dance of Snow Shoes, or the Moccasin Dance, the
Dance of Green Corn, or the Treaty Dance. I would be alone. A strange
sadness overpowers me."
"I go," said the Indian. "Tell your great chief in Washington, the
Sachem Andy, that the Red Man is retiring before the footsteps of the
adventurous Pioneer. Inform him, if you please, that westward the star
of empire takes its way, that the chiefs of the Pi-Ute nation are for
Reconstruction to a man, and that Klamath will poll a heavy Republican
vote in the fall."
And folding his blanket more tightly around him, Muck-a-Muck withdrew.
CHAPTER III.
Genevra Tompkins stood at the door of the log-cabin, looking after the
retreating Overland Mail stage which conveyed her father to Virginia
City. "He may never return again," sighed the young girl as she
glanced at the frightfully rolling vehicle and wildly careering
horses,--"at least, with unbroken bones. Should he meet with an
accident! I mind me now a fearful legend, familiar to my childhood.
Can it be that the drivers on this line are privately instructed to
despatch all passengers maimed by accident, to prevent tedious
litigation? No, no. But why this weight upon my heart?"
She seated herself at the piano and lightly passed her hand over the
keys. Then, in a clear mezzo-soprano voice, she sang the first verse
of one of the most popular Irish ballads:--
"O Arrah, ma dheelish, the distant dudheen
Lies soft in the moonlight, ma bouchal vourneen:
The springing gossoons on the heather are still,
And the caubeens and colleens are heard on the hills."
But as the ravishing notes of her sweet voice died upon the air, her
hands sank listlessly to her side. Music could not chase away the
mysterious shadow from her heart. Again she rose. Putting on a white
crape bonnet, and carefully drawing a pair of lemon-colored gloves over
her taper fingers, she seized her parasol and plunged into the depths
of the pine forest.
CHAPTER IV.
Genevra had not proceeded many miles before a weariness seized upon her
fragile limbs, and she would fain seat herself upon the trunk of a
prostrate pine, which she previously dusted with her handkerchief. The
sun was just sinking below the horizon, and the scene was one of
gorgeous and sylvan beauty. "How beautiful is Nature!" murmured the
innocent girl, as, reclining gracefully against the root of the tree,
she gathered up her skirts and tied a handkerchief around her throat.
But a low growl interrupted her meditation. Starting to her feet, her
eyes met a sight which froze her blood with terror.
The only outlet to the forest was the narrow path, barely wide enough
for a single person, hemmed in by trees and rocks, which she had just
traversed. Down this path, in Indian file, came a monstrous grizzly,
closely followed by a California lion, a wild-cat, and a buffalo, the
rear being brought up by a wild Spanish bull. The mouths of the three
first animals were distended with frightful significance; the horns of
the last were lowered as ominously. As Genevra was preparing to faint,
she heard a low voice behind her.
"Eternally dog-gone my skin ef this ain't the puttiest chance yet."
At the same moment, a long, shining barrel dropped lightly from behind
her, and rested over her shoulder.
Genevra shuddered.
"Dern ye--don't move!"
Genevra became motionless.
The crack of a rifle rang through the woods. Three frightful yells
were heard, and two sullen roars. Five animals bounded into the air
and five lifeless bodies lay upon the plain. The well-aimed bullet had
done its work. Entering the open throat of the grizzly, it had
traversed his body only to enter the throat of the California lion, and
in like manner the catamount, until it passed through into the
respective foreheads of the bull and the buffalo, and finally fell
flattened from the rocky hillside.
Genevra turned quickly. "My preserver!" she shrieked, and fell into
the arms of Natty Bumpo, the celebrated Pike Ranger of Donner Lake.
CHAPTER V.
The moon rose cheerfully above Donner Lake. On its placid bosom a
dug-out canoe glided rapidly, containing Natty Bumpo and Genevra
Tompkins.
Both were silent. The same thought possessed each, and perhaps there
was sweet companionship even in the unbroken quiet. Genevra bit the
handle of her parasol and blushed. Natty Bumpo took a fresh chew of
tobacco. At length Genevra said, as if in half-spoken revery:--
"The soft shining of the moon and the peaceful ripple of the waves seem
to say to us various things of an instructive and moral tendency."
"You may bet yer pile on that, Miss," said her companion, gravely.
"It's all the preachin' and psalm-singin' I've heern since I was a boy."
"Noble being!" said Miss Tompkins to herself, glancing at the stately
Pike as he bent over his paddle to conceal his emotion. "Reared in this
wild seclusion, yet he has become penetrated with visible consciousness
of a Great First Cause." Then, collecting herself, she said aloud:
"Methinks 'twere pleasant to glide ever thus down the stream of life,
hand in hand with the one being whom the soul claims as its affinity.
But what am I saying?"--and the delicate-minded girl hid her face in
her hands.
A long silence ensued, which was at length broken by her companion.
"Ef you mean you're on the marry," he said, thoughtfully, "I ain't in
no wise partikler!"
"My husband," faltered the blushing girl; and she fell into his arms.
In ten minutes more the loving couple had landed at Judge Tompkins's.
CHAPTER VI.
A year has passed away. Natty Bumpo was returning from Gold Hill,
where he had been to purchase provisions. On his way to Donner Lake,
rumors of an Indian uprising met his ears. "Dern their pesky skins, ef
they dare to touch my Jenny," he muttered between his clenched teeth.
It was dark when he reached the borders of the lake. Around a
glittering fire he dimly discerned dusky figures dancing. They were in
war paint. Conspicuous among them was the renowned Muck-a-Muck. But
why did the fingers of Natty Bumpo tighten convulsively around his
rifle?
The chief held in his hand long tufts of raven hair. The heart of the
pioneer sickened as he recognized the clustering curls of Genevra. In
a moment his rifle was at his shoulder, and with a sharp "ping,"
Muck-a-Muck leaped into the air a corpse. To knock out the brains of
the remaining savages, tear the tresses from the stiffening hand of
Muck-a-Muck, and dash rapidly forward to the cottage of Judge Tompkins,
was the work of a moment.
He burst open the door. Why did he stand transfixed with open mouth
and distended eyeballs? Was the sight too horrible to be borne? On
the contrary, before him, in her peerless beauty, stood Genevra
Tompkins, leaning on her father's arm.
"Ye'r not scalped, then!" gasped her lover.
"No. I have no hesitation in saying that I am not; but why this
abruptness?" responded Genevra.
Bumpo could not speak, but frantically produced the silken tresses.
Genevra turned her face aside.
"Why, that's her waterfall!" said the Judge.
Bumpo sank fainting to the floor.
The famous Pike chieftain never recovered from the deceit, and refused
to marry Genevra, who died, twenty years afterwards, of a broken heart.
Judge Tompkins lost his fortune in Wild Cat. The stage passes twice a
week the deserted cottage at Donner Lake. Thus was the death of
Muck-a-Muck avenged.
TERENCE DENVILLE.
BY CH--L--S L--V--R.
CHAPTER I.
MY HOME.
The little village of Pilwiddle is one of the smallest and obscurest
hamlets on the western coast of Ireland. On a lofty crag, overlooking
the hoarse Atlantic, stands "Denville's Shot Tower"--a corruption by
the peasantry of D'Enville's Chateau, so called from my
great-grandfather, Phelim St. Kemy d'Enville, who assumed the name and
title of a French heiress with whom he ran away. To this fact my
familiar knowledge and excellent pronunciation of the French language
may be attributed, as well as many of the events which covered my after
life.
The Denvilles were always passionately fond of field sports. At the
age of four, I was already the boldest rider and the best shot in the
country. When only eight, I won the St. Remy Cup at the Pilwiddle
races,--riding my favorite bloodmare Hellfire. As I approached the
stand amidst the plaudits of the assembled multitude, and cries of,
"Thrue for ye, Masther Terence," and "O, but it's a Dinville!" there
was a slight stir among the gentry, who surrounded the Lord Lieutenant,
and other titled personages whom the race had attracted thither. "How
young he is,--a mere child; and yet how noble-looking," said a sweet
low voice, which thrilled my soul.
I looked up and met the full liquid orbs of the Hon. Blanche Fitzroy
Sackville, youngest daughter of the Lord Lieutenant. She blushed
deeply. I turned pale and almost fainted. But the cold, sneering
tones of a masculine voice sent the blood back again into my youthful
cheek.
"Very likely the ragged scion of one of these banditti Irish gentry,
who has taken naturally to 'the road.' He should be at school--though
I warrant me his knowledge of Terence will not extend beyond his own
name," said Lord Henry Somerset, aid-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant.
A moment and I was perfectly calm, though cold as ice. Dismounting, and
stepping to the side of the speaker, I said in a low, firm voice:--
"Had your Lordship read Terence more carefully, you would have learned
that banditti are sometimes proficient in other arts beside
horsemanship," and I touched his holster significantly with my hand. I
had not read Terence myself, but with the skilful audacity of my race I
calculated that a vague allusion, coupled with a threat, would
embarrass him. It did.
"Ah--what mean you?" he said, white with rage.
"Enough, we are observed," I replied; "Father Tom will wait on you this
evening; and to-morrow morning, my lord, in the glen below Pilwiddle we
will meet again."
"Father Tom--glen!" ejaculated the Englishman, with genuine surprise.
"What? do priests carry challenges and act as seconds in your infernal
country?"
"Yes!" I answered, scornfully, "why should they not? Their services
are more often necessary than those of a surgeon," I added
significantly, turning away.
The party slowly rode off, with the exception of the Hon. Blanche
Sackville, who lingered for a moment behind. In an instant I was at
her side. Bending her blushing face over the neck of her white filly,
she said hurriedly:--
"Words have passed between Lord Somerset and yourself. You are about
to fight. Don't deny it--but hear me. You will meet him--I know your
skill of weapons. He will be at your mercy. I entreat you to spare
his life!"
I hesitated. "Never!" I cried passionately; "he has insulted a
Denville!"
"Terence," she whispered, "Terence--FOR MY SAKE?"
The blood rushed to my cheeks, and her eyes sought the ground in
bashful confusion.
"You love him then?" I cried, bitterly.
"No, no," she said, agitatedly, "no, you do me wrong. I--I--cannot
explain myself. My father!--the Lady Dowager Sackville--the estate of
Sackville--the borough--my uncle, Fitzroy Somerset. Ah! what am I
saying? Forgive me. O Terence," she said, as her beautiful head sank
on my shoulder, "you know not what I suffer!"
I seized her hand and covered it with passionate kisses. But the
high-bred English girl, recovering something of her former hauteur,
said hastily, "Leave me, leave me, but promise!"
"I promise," I replied, enthusiastically; "I WILL spare his life!"
"Thanks, Terence,--thanks!" and disengaging her hand from my lips she
rode rapidly away.
The next morning, the Hon. Captain Henry Somerset and myself exchanged
nineteen shots in the glen, and at each fire I shot away a button from
his uniform. As my last bullet shot off the last button from his
sleeve, I remarked quietly, "You seem now, my lord, to be almost as
ragged as the gentry you sneered at," and rode haughtily away.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIGHTING FIFTY-SIXTH.
When I was nineteen years old my father sold the Chateau d'Enville and
purchased my commission in the "Fifty-sixth" with the proceeds. "I say,
Denville," said young McSpadden, a boy-faced ensign, who had just
joined, "you'll represent the estate in the Army, if you won't in the
House." Poor fellow, he paid for his meaningless joke with his life,
for I shot him through the heart the next morning. "You're a good
fellow, Denville," said the poor boy faintly, as I knelt beside him:
"good by!" For the first time since my grandfather's death I wept. I
could not help thinking that I would have been a better man if
Blanche--but why proceed? Was she not now in Florence--the belle of
the English Embassy?
But Napoleon had returned from Elba. Europe was in a blaze of
excitement. The Allies were preparing to resist the Man of Destiny.
We were ordered from Gibraltar home, and were soon again en route for
Brussels. I did not regret that I was to be placed in active service.
I was ambitious, and longed for an opportunity to distinguish myself.
My garrison life in Gibraltar had been monotonous and dull. I had
killed five men in duel, and had an affair with the colonel of my
regiment, who handsomely apologized before the matter assumed a serious
aspect. I had been twice in love. Yet these were but boyish freaks
and follies. I wished to be a man.
The time soon came,--the morning of Waterloo. But why describe that
momentous battle, on which the fate of the entire world was hanging?
Twice were the Fifty-sixth surrounded by French cuirassiers, and twice
did we mow them down by our fire. I had seven horses shot under me,
and was mounting the eighth, when an orderly rode up hastily, touched
his cap, and, handing me a despatch, galloped rapidly away.
I opened it hurriedly and read:--
"LET PICTON ADVANCE IMMEDIATELY ON THE RIGHT."
I saw it all at a glance. I had been mistaken for a general officer.
But what was to be done? Picton's division was two miles away, only
accessible through a heavy cross fire of artillery and musketry. But
my mind was made up.
In an instant I was engaged with an entire squadron of cavalry, who
endeavored to surround me. Cutting my way through them, I advanced
boldly upon a battery and sabred the gunners before they could bring
their pieces to bear. Looking around, I saw that I had in fact
penetrated the French centre. Before I was well aware of the locality,
I was hailed by a sharp voice in French,--
"Come here, sir!"
I obeyed, and advanced to the side of a little man in a cocked hat.
"Has Grouchy come?"
"Not yet, sire," I replied,--for it was the Emperor.
"Ha!" he said suddenly, bending his piercing eyes on my uniform; "a
prisoner?"
"No, sire," I said, proudly.
"A spy?"
I placed my hand upon my sword, but a gesture from the Emperor bade me
forbear.
"You are a brave man," he said.
I took my snuff-box from my pocket, and, taking a pinch, replied by
handing it, with a bow, to the Emperor.
His quick eye caught the cipher on the lid. "What! a D'Enville? Ha!
this accounts for the purity of your accent. Any relation to Roderick
d'Enville?"
"My father, sire."
"He was my school-fellow at the Ecole Polytechnique. Embrace me!" And
the Emperor fell upon my neck in the presence of his entire staff.
Then, recovering himself, he gently placed in my hand his own
magnificent snuff-box, in exchange for mine, and hanging upon my breast
the cross of the Legion of Honor which he took from his own, he bade
one of his Marshals conduct me back to my regiment.
I was so intoxicated with the honor of which I had been the recipient,
that on reaching our lines I uttered a shout of joy and put spurs to my
horse. The intelligent animal seemed to sympathize with my feelings,
and fairly flew over the ground. On a rising eminence a few yards
before me stood a gray-haired officer, surrounded by his staff. I
don't know what possessed me, but putting spurs to my horse, I rode at
him boldly, and with one bound cleared him, horse and all. A shout of
indignation arose from the assembled staff. I wheeled suddenly, with
the intention of apologizing, but my mare misunderstood me, and, again
dashing forward, once more vaulted over the head of the officer, this
time unfortunately uncovering him by a vicious kick of her hoof.
"Seize him!" roared the entire army. I was seized. As the soldiers
led me away, I asked the name of the gray-haired officer. "That--why,
that's the DUKE OF WELLINGTON!"
I fainted.
* * * * *
For six months I had brain-fever. During my illness ten grapeshot were
extracted from my body which I had unconsciously received during the
battle. When I opened my eyes I met the sweet glance of a Sister of
Charity.
"Blanche!" I stammered feebly.
"The same," she replied.
"You here?"
"Yes, dear; but hush! It's a long story. You see, dear Terence, your
grandfather married my great-aunt's sister, and your father again
married my grandmother's niece, who, dying without a will, was,
according to the French law--"
"But I do not comprehend," I said.
"Of course not," said Blanche, with her old sweet smile; "you've had
brain-fever; so go to sleep."
I understood, however, that Blanche loved me; and I am now, dear
reader, Sir Terence Sackville, K. C. B., and Lady Blanche is Lady
Sackville.
SELINA SEDILIA.
BY MISS M. E. B--DD--N AND MRS. H--N--Y W--D.
CHAPTER I.
The sun was setting over Sloperton Grange, and reddened the window of
the lonely chamber in the western tower, supposed to be haunted by Sir
Edward Sedilia, the founder of the Grange. In the dreamy distance
arose the gilded mausoleum of Lady Felicia Sedilia, who haunted that
portion of Sedilia Manor, known as "Stiff-uns Acre." A little to the
left of the Grange might have been seen a mouldering ruin, known as
"Guy's Keep," haunted by the spirit of Sir Guy Sedilia, who was found,
one morning, crushed by one of the fallen battlements. Yet, as the
setting sun gilded these objects, a beautiful and almost holy calm
seemed diffused about the Grange.
The Lady Selina sat by an oriel window, overlooking the park. The sun
sank gently in the bosom of the German Ocean, and yet the lady did not
lift her beautiful head from the finely curved arm and diminutive hand
which supported it. When darkness finally shrouded the landscape she
started, for the sound of horse-hoofs clattered over the stones of the
avenue. She had scarcely risen before an aristocratic young man fell
on his knees before her.
"My Selina!"
"Edgardo! You here?"
"Yes, dearest."
"And--you--you--have--seen nothing?" said the lady in an agitated voice
and nervous manner, turning her face aside to conceal her emotion.
"Nothing--that is nothing of any account," said Edgardo. "I passed the
ghost of your aunt in the park, noticed the spectre of your uncle in
the ruined keep, and observed the familiar features of the spirit of
your great-grandfather at his usual post. But nothing beyond these
trifles, my Selina. Nothing more, love, absolutely nothing."
The young man turned his dark liquid orbs fondly upon the ingenuous
face of his betrothed.
"My own Edgardo!--and you still love me? You still would marry me in
spite of this dark mystery which surrounds me? In spite of the fatal
history of my race? In spite of the ominous predictions of my aged
nurse?"
"I would, Selina"; and the young man passed his arm around her yielding
waist. The two lovers gazed at each other's faces in unspeakable
bliss. Suddenly Selina started.
"Leave me, Edgardo! leave me! A mysterious something--a fatal
misgiving--a dark ambiguity--an equivocal mistrust oppresses me. I
would be alone!"
The young man arose, and cast a loving glance on the lady. "Then we
will be married on the seventeenth."
"The seventeenth," repeated Selina, with a mysterious shudder.
They embraced and parted. As the clatter of hoofs in the court-yard
died away, the Lady Selina sank into the chair she had just quitted.
"The seventeenth," she repeated slowly, with the same fateful shudder.
"Ah!--what if he should know that I have another husband living? Dare
I reveal to him that I have two legitimate and three natural children?
Dare I repeat to him the history of my youth? Dare I confess that at
the age of seven I poisoned my sister, by putting verdigris in her
cream-tarts,--that I threw my cousin from a swing at the age of twelve?
That the lady's-maid who incurred the displeasure of my girlhood now
lies at the bottom of the horse-pond? No! no! he is too pure,--too
good,--too innocent, to hear such improper conversation!" and her whole
body writhed as she rocked to and fro in a paroxysm of grief.
But she was soon calm. Rising to her feet, she opened a secret panel
in the wall, and revealed a slow-match ready for lighting.
"This match," said the Lady Selina, "is connected with a mine beneath
the western tower, where my three children are confined; another branch
of it lies under the parish church, where the record of my first
marriage is kept. I have only to light this match and the whole of my
past life is swept away!" she approached the match with a lighted
candle.
But a hand was laid upon her arm, and with a shriek the Lady Selina
fell on her knees before the spectre of Sir Guy.
CHAPTER II.
"Forbear, Selina," said the phantom in a hollow voice.
"Why should I forbear?" responded Selina haughtily, as she recovered
her courage. "You know the secret of our race?"
"I do. Understand me,--I do not object to the eccentricities of your
youth. I know the fearful destiny which, pursuing you, led you to
poison your sister and drown your lady's-maid. I know the awful doom
which I have brought upon this house! But if you make way with these
children--"
"Well," said the Lady Selina, hastily.
"They will haunt you!"
"Well, I fear them not," said Selina, drawing her superb figure to its
full height.
"Yes, but, my dear child, what place are they to haunt? The ruin is
sacred to your uncle's spirit. Your aunt monopolizes the park, and, I
must be allowed to state, not unfrequently trespasses upon the grounds
of others. The horse-pond is frequented by the spirit of your maid,
and your murdered sister walks these corridors. To be plain, there is
no room at Sloperton Grange for another ghost. I cannot have them in my
room,--for you know I don't like children. Think of this, rash girl,
and forbear! Would you, Selina," said the phantom, mournfully,--"would
you force your great-grandfather's spirit to take lodgings elsewhere?"
Lady Selina's hand trembled; the lighted candle fell from her nerveless
fingers.
"No," she cried passionately; "never!" and fell fainting to the floor.
CHAPTER III
Edgardo galloped rapidly towards Sloperton. When the outline of the
Grange had faded away in the darkness, he reined his magnificent steed
beside the ruins of Guy's Keep.
"It wants but a few minutes of the hour," he said, consulting his watch
by the light of the moon. "He dare not break his word. He will come."
He paused, and peered anxiously into the darkness. "But come what may,
she is mine," he continued, as his thoughts reverted fondly to the fair
lady he had quitted. "Yet if she knew all. If she knew that I were a
disgraced and ruined man,--a felon and an outcast. If she knew that at
the age of fourteen I murdered my Latin tutor and forged my uncle's
will. If she knew that I had three wives already, and that the fourth
victim of misplaced confidence and my unfortunate peculiarity is
expected to be at Sloperton by to-night's train with her baby. But no;
she must not know it. Constance must not arrive. Burke the Slogger
must attend to that.
"Ha! here he is! Well?"
These words were addressed to a ruffian in a slouched hat, who suddenly
appeared from Guy's Keep.
"I be's here, measter," said the villain, with a disgracefully low
accent and complete disregard of grammatical rules.
"It is well. Listen: I'm in possession of facts that will send you to
the gallows. I know of the murder of Bill Smithers, the robbery of the
tollgate-keeper, and the making away of the youngest daughter of Sir
Reginald de Walton. A word from me, and the officers of justice are on
your track."
Burke the Slogger trembled.
"Hark ye! serve my purpose, and I may yet save you. The 5.30 train
from Clapham will be due at Sloperton at 9.25. IT MUST NOT ARRIVE!"
The villain's eyes sparkled as he nodded at Edgardo.
"Enough,--you understand; leave me!"
CHAPTER IV.
About half a mile from Sloperton Station the South Clapham and Medway
line crossed a bridge over Sloperton-on-Trent. As the shades of
evening were closing, a man in a slouched hat might have been seen
carrying a saw and axe under his arm, hanging about the bridge. From
time to time he disappeared in the shadow of its abutments, but the
sound of a saw and axe still betrayed his vicinity. At exactly nine
o'clock he reappeared, and, crossing to the Sloperton side, rested his
shoulder against the abutment and gave a shove. The bridge swayed a
moment, and then fell with a splash into the water, leaving a space of
one hundred feet between the two banks. This done, Burke the
Slogger,--for it was he,--with a fiendish chuckle seated himself on the
divided railway track and awaited the coming of the train.
A shriek from the woods announced its approach. For an instant Burke
the Slogger saw the glaring of a red lamp. The ground trembled. The
train was going with fearful rapidity. Another second and it had
reached the bank. Burke the Slogger uttered a fiendish laugh. But the
next moment the train leaped across the chasm, striking the rails
exactly even, and, dashing out the life of Burke the Slogger, sped away
to Sloperton.
The first object that greeted Edgardo, as he rode up to the station on
the arrival of the train, was the body of Burke the Slogger hanging on
the cow-catcher; the second was the face of his deserted wife looking
from the windows of a second-class carriage.
CHAPTER V.
A nameless terror seemed to have taken possession of Clarissa, Lady
Selina's maid, as she rushed into the presence of her mistress.
"O my lady, such news!"
"Explain yourself," said her mistress, rising.
"An accident has happened on the railway, and a man has been killed."
"What--not Edgardo!" almost screamed Selina.
"No, Burke the Slogger!" your ladyship.
"My first husband!" said Lady Selina, sinking on her knees. "Just
Heaven, I thank thee!"
CHAPTER VI.
The morning of the seventeenth dawned brightly over Sloperton. "A fine
day for the wedding," said the sexton to Swipes, the butler of
Sloperton Grange. The aged retainer shook his head sadly. "Alas!
there's no trusting in signs!" he continued. "Seventy-five years ago,
on a day like this, my young mistress--" But he was cut short by the
appearance of a stranger.
"I would see Sir Edgardo," said the new-comer, impatiently.
The bridegroom, who, with the rest of the wedding-train, was about
stepping into the carriage to proceed to the parish church, drew the
stranger aside.
"It's done!" said the stranger, in a hoarse whisper.
"Ah! and you buried her?"
"With the others!"
"Enough. No more at present. Meet me after the ceremony, and you
shall have your reward."
The stranger shuffled away, and Edgardo returned to his bride. "A
trifling matter of business I had forgotten, my dear Selina; let us
proceed." And the young man pressed the timid hand of his blushing
bride as he handed her into the carriage. The cavalcade rode out of
the court-yard. At the same moment, the deep bell on Guy's Keep tolled
ominously.
CHAPTER VII.
Scarcely had the wedding-train left the Grange, than Alice Sedilia,
youngest daughter of Lady Selina, made her escape from the western
tower, owing to a lack of watchfulness on the part of Clarissa. The
innocent child, freed from restraint, rambled through the lonely
corridors, and finally, opening a door, found herself in her mother's
boudoir. For some time she amused herself by examining the various
ornaments and elegant trifles with which it was filled. Then, in
pursuance of a childish freak, she dressed herself in her mother's
laces and ribbons. In this occupation she chanced to touch a peg which
proved to be a spring that opened a secret panel in the wall. Alice
uttered a cry of delight as she noticed what, to her childish fancy,
appeared to be the slow-match of a fire-work. Taking a lucifer match in
her hand she approached the fuse. She hesitated a moment. What would
her mother and her nurse say?
Suddenly the ringing of the chimes of Sloperton parish church met her
ear. Alice knew that the sound signified that the marriage party had
entered the church, and that she was secure from interruption. With a
childish smile upon her lips, Alice Sedilia touched off the slow-match.
CHAPTER VIII.
At exactly two o'clock on the seventeenth, Rupert Sedilia, who had just
returned from India, was thoughtfully descending the hill toward
Sloperton manor. "If I can prove that my aunt Lady Selina was married
before my father died, I can establish my claim to Sloperton Grange,"
he uttered, half aloud. He paused, for a sudden trembling of the earth
beneath his feet, and a terrific explosion, as of a park of artillery,
arrested his progress. At the same moment he beheld a dense cloud of
smoke envelop the churchyard of Sloperton, and the western tower of the
Grange seemed to be lifted bodily from its foundation. The air seemed
filled with falling fragments, and two dark objects struck the earth
close at his feet. Rupert picked them up. One seemed to be a heavy
volume bound in brass.
A cry burst from his lips.
"The Parish Records." He opened the volume hastily. It contained the
marriage of Lady Selina to "Burke the Slogger."
The second object proved to be a piece of parchment. He tore it open
with trembling fingers. It was the missing will of Sir James Sedilia!
CHAPTER IX.
When the bells again rang on the new parish church of Sloperton it was
for the marriage of Sir Rupert Sedilia and his cousin, the only
remaining members of the family.
Five more ghosts were added to the supernatural population of Sloperton
Grange. Perhaps this was the reason why Sir Rupert sold the property
shortly afterward, and that for many years a dark shadow seemed to hang
over the ruins of Sloperton Grange.
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN.
BY AL--X--D--R D--M--S
CHAPTER I.
SHOWING THE QUALITY OF THE CUSTOMERS OF THE INNKEEPER OF PROVINS.
Twenty years after, the gigantic innkeeper of Provins stood looking at
a cloud of dust on the highway.
This cloud of dust betokened the approach of a traveller. Travellers
had been rare that season on the highway between Paris and Provins.
The heart of the innkeeper rejoiced. Turning to Dame Perigord, his
wife, he said, stroking his white apron:--
"St. Denis! make haste and spread the cloth. Add a bottle of
Charlevoix to the table. This traveller, who rides so fast, by his
pace must be a Monseigneur."
Truly the traveller, clad in the uniform of a musketeer, as he drew up
to the door of the hostelry, did not seem to have spared his horse.
Throwing his reins to the landlord, he leaped lightly to the ground.
He was a young man of four-and-twenty, and spoke with a slight Gascon
accent.
"I am hungry, Morbleu! I wish to dine!"
The gigantic innkeeper bowed and led the way to a neat apartment, where
a table stood covered with tempting viands. The musketeer at once set
to work. Fowls, fish, and pates disappeared before him. Perigord
sighed as he witnessed the devastations. Only once the stranger paused.
"Wine!" Perigord brought wine. The stranger drank a dozen bottles.
Finally he rose to depart. Turning to the expectant landlord, he
said:--
"Charge it."
"To whom, your highness?" said Perigord, anxiously.
"To his Eminence!"
"Mazarin!" ejaculated the innkeeper.
"The same. Bring me my horse," and the musketeer, remounting his
favorite animal, rode away.
The innkeeper slowly turned back into the inn. Scarcely had he reached
the courtyard before the clatter of hoofs again called him to the
doorway. A young musketeer of a light and graceful figure rode up.
"Parbleu, my dear Perigord, I am famishing. What have you got for
dinner?"
"Venison, capons, larks, and pigeons, your excellency," replied the
obsequious landlord, bowing to the ground.
"Enough!" The young musketeer dismounted and entered the inn. Seating
himself at the table replenished by the careful Perigord, he speedily
swept it as clean as the first comer.
"Some wine, my brave Perigord," said the graceful young musketeer, as
soon as he could find utterance.
Perigord brought three dozen of Charlevoix. The young man emptied them
almost at a draught.
"By-by, Perigord," he said lightly, waving his hand, as, preceding the
astonished landlord, he slowly withdrew.
"But, your highness,--the bill," said the astounded Perigord.
"Ah, the bill. Charge it!"
"To whom?"
"The Queen!"
"What, Madame?"
"The same. Adieu, my good Perigord." And the graceful stranger rode
away. An interval of quiet succeeded, in which the innkeeper gazed
wofully at his wife. Suddenly he was startled by a clatter of hoofs,
and an aristocratic figure stood in the doorway.
"Ah," said the courtier good-naturedly. "What, do my eyes deceive me?
No, it is the festive and luxurious Perigord. Perigord, listen. I
famish. I languish. I would dine."
The innkeeper again covered the table with viands. Again it was swept
clean as the fields of Egypt before the miraculous swarm of locusts.
The stranger looked up.
"Bring me another fowl, my Perigord."
"Impossible, your excellency; the larder is stripped clean."
"Another flitch of bacon, then."
"Impossible, your highness; there is no more."
"Well, then, wine!"
The landlord brought one hundred and forty-four bottles. The courtier
drank them all.
"One may drink if one cannot eat," said the aristocratic stranger,
good-humoredly.
The innkeeper shuddered.
The guest rose to depart. The innkeeper came slowly forward with his
bill, to which he had covertly added the losses which he had suffered
from the previous strangers.
"Ah, the bill. Charge it."
"Charge it! to whom?"
"To the King," said the guest.
"What! his Majesty?"
"Certainly. Farewell, Perigord."
The innkeeper groaned. Then he went out and took down his sign. Then
remarked to his wife:--
"I am a plain man, and don't understand politics. It seems, however,
that the country is in a troubled state. Between his Eminence the
Cardinal, his Majesty the King, and her Majesty the Queen, I am a
ruined man."
"Stay," said Dame Perigord, "I have an idea."
"And that is--"
"Become yourself a musketeer."
CHAPTER II.
THE COMBAT.
On leaving Provins the first musketeer proceeded to Nangis, where he
was reinforced by thirty-three followers. The second musketeer,
arriving at Nangis at the same moment, placed himself at the head of
thirty-three more. The third guest of the landlord of Provins arrived
at Nangis in time to assemble together thirty-three other musketeers.
The first stranger led the troops of his Eminence.
The second led the troops of the Queen.
The third led the troops of the King.
The fight commenced. It raged terribly for seven hours. The first
musketeer killed thirty of the Queen's troops. The second musketeer
killed thirty of the King's troops. The third musketeer killed thirty
of his Eminence's troops.
By this time it will be perceived the number of musketeers had been
narrowed down to four on each side.
Naturally the three principal warriors approached each other.
They simultaneously uttered a cry.
"Aramis!"
"Athos!"
"D'Artagnan!"
They fell into each other's arms.
"And it seems that we are fighting against each other, my children,"
said the Count de la Fere, mournfully.
"How singular!" exclaimed Aramis and D'Artagnan.
"Let us stop this fratricidal warfare," said Athos.
"We will!" they exclaimed together.
"But how to disband our followers?" queried D'Artagnan.
Aramis winked. They understood each other. "Let us cut 'em down!"
They cut 'em down. Aramis killed three. D'Artagnan three. Athos
three.
The friends again embraced. "How like old times," said Aramis. "How
touching!" exclaimed the serious and philosophic Count de la Fere.
The galloping of hoofs caused them to withdraw from each other's
embraces. A gigantic figure rapidly approached.
"The innkeeper of Provins!" they cried, drawing their swords.
"Perigord, down with him!" shouted D'Artagnan.
"Stay," said Athos.
The gigantic figure was beside them. He uttered a cry.
"Athos, Aramis, D'Artagnan!"
"Porthos!" exclaimed the astonished trio.
"The same." They all fell in each other's arms.
The Count de la Fere slowly raised his hands to Heaven. "Bless you!
Bless us, my children! However different our opinion may be in regard
to politics, we have but one opinion in regard to our own merits.
Where can you find a better man than Aramus?"
"Than Porthos?" said Aramis.
"Than D'Artagnan?" said Porthos.
"Than Athos?" said D'Artagnan.
CHAPTER III.
SHOWING HOW THE KING OF FRANCE WENT UP A LADDER.
The King descended into the garden. Proceeding cautiously along the
terraced walk, he came to the wall immediately below the windows of
Madame. To the left were two windows, concealed by vines. They opened
into the apartments of La Valliere.
The King sighed.
"It is about nineteen feet to that window," said the King. "If I had a
ladder about nineteen feet long, it would reach to that window. This
is logic."
Suddenly the King stumbled over something. "St. Denis!" he exclaimed,
looking down. It was a ladder, just nineteen feet long.
The King placed it against the wall. In so doing, he fixed the lower
end upon the abdomen of a man who lay concealed by the wall The man did
not utter a cry or wince. The King suspected nothing. He ascended the
ladder.
The ladder was too short. Louis the Grand was not a tall man. He was
still two feet below the window.
"Dear me!" said the King.
Suddenly the ladder was lifted two feet from below. This enabled the
King to leap in the window. At the farther end of the apartment stood
a young girl, with red hair and a lame leg. She was trembling with
emotion.
"Louise!"
"The King!"
"Ah, my God, mademoiselle."
"Ah, my God, sire."
But a low knock at the door interrupted the lovers. The King uttered a
cry of rage; Louise one of despair.
The door opened and D'Artagnan entered.
"Good evening, sire," said the musketeer.
The King touched a bell. Porthos appeared in the doorway.
"Good evening, sire."
"Arrest M. D'Artagnan."
Porthos looked at D'Artagnan, and did not move.
The King almost turned purple with rage. He again touched the bell.
Athos entered.
"Count, arrest Porthos and D'Artagnan."
The Count de la Fere glanced at Porthos and D'Artagnan, and smiled
sweetly.
"Sacre! Where is Aramis?" said the King, violently.
"Here, sire," and Aramis entered.
"Arrest Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan."
Aramis bowed and folded his arms.
"Arrest yourself!"
Aramis did not move.
The King shuddered and turned pale. "Am I not King of France?"
"Assuredly, sire, but we are also severally, Porthos, Aramis,
D'Artagnan, and Athos."
"Ah!" said the King.
"Yes, sire."
"What does this mean?"
"It means, your Majesty," said Aramis, stepping forward, "that your
conduct as a married man is highly improper. I am an Abbe, and I
object to these improprieties. My friends here, D'Artagnan, Athos, and
Porthos, pure-minded young men, are also terribly shocked. Observe,
sire, how they blush!"
Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan blushed. "Ah," said the King,
thoughtfully. "You teach me a lesson. You are devoted and noble young
gentlemen, but your only weakness is your excessive modesty. From this
moment I make you all Marshals and Dukes, with the exception of Aramis."
"And me, sire?" said Aramis.
"You shall be an Archbishop!"
The four friends looked up and then rushed into each other's arms. The
King embraced Louise de la Valliere, by way of keeping them company. A
pause ensued. At last Athos spoke:--
"Swear, my children, that, next to yourselves, you will respect the
King of France; and remember that 'Forty years after' we will meet
again."
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
BY SIR ED--D L--TT--N B--LW--R.
BOOK I.
THE PROMPTINGS OF THE IDEAL.
It was noon. Sir Edward had stepped from his brougham and was
proceeding on foot down the Strand. He was dressed with his usual
faultless taste, but in alighting from his vehicle his foot had
slipped, and a small round disk of conglomerated soil, which instantly
appeared on his high arched instep, marred the harmonious glitter of
his boots. Sir Edward was fastidious. Casting his eyes around, at a
little distance he perceived the stand of a youthful bootblack.
Thither he sauntered, and carelessly placing his foot on the low stool,
he waited the application of the polisher's art. "'Tis true," said Sir
Edward to himself, yet half aloud, "the contact of the Foul and the
Disgusting mars the general effect of the Shiny and the Beautiful--and,
yet, why am I here? I repeat it, calmly and deliberately--why am I
here? Ha! Boy!"
The Boy looked up--his dark Italian eyes glanced intelligently at the
Philosopher, and as with one hand he tossed back his glossy curls, from
his marble brow, and with the other he spread the equally glossy Day &
Martin over the Baronet's boot, he answered in deep rich tones: "The
Ideal is subjective to the Real. The exercise of apperception gives a
distinctiveness to idiocracy, which is, however, subject to the limits
of ME. You are an admirer of the Beautiful, sir. You wish your boots
blacked. The Beautiful is attainable by means of the Coin."
"Ah," said Sir Edward thoughtfully, gazing upon the almost supernal
beauty of the Child before him; "you speak well. You have read Kant."
The Boy blushed deeply. He drew a copy of Kant from his blouse, but in
his confusion several other volumes dropped from his bosom on the
ground. The Baronet picked them up.
"Ah!" said the Philosopher, "what's this? Cicero's De Senectute, at
your age, too? Martial's Epigrams, Caesar's Commentaries. What! a
classical scholar?"
"E pluribus Unum. Nux vomica. Nil desperandum. Nihil fit!" said the
Boy, enthusiastically. The Philosopher gazed at the Child. A strange
presence seemed to transfuse and possess him. Over the brow of the Boy
glittered the pale nimbus of the Student.
"Ah, and Schiller's Robbers, too?" queried the Philosopher.
"Das ist ausgespielt," said the Boy, modestly.
"Then you have read my translation of Schiller's Ballads?" continued
the Baronet, with some show of interest.
"I have, and infinitely prefer them to the original," said the Boy,
with intellectual warmth. "You have shown how in Actual life we strive
for a Goal we cannot reach; how in the Ideal the Goal is attainable,
and there effort is victory. You have given us the Antithesis which is
a key to the Remainder, and constantly balances before us the
conditions of the Actual and the privileges of the Ideal."
"My very words," said the Baronet; "wonderful, wonderful!" and he gazed
fondly at the Italian boy, who again resumed his menial employment.
Alas! the wings of the Ideal were folded. The Student had been
absorbed in the Boy.
But Sir Edward's boots were blacked, and he turned to depart. Placing
his hand upon the clustering tendrils that surrounded the classic nob
of the infant Italian, he said softly, like a strain of distant music:--
"Boy, you have done well. Love the Good. Protect the Innocent.
Provide for The Indigent. Respect the Philosopher. . . . Stay! Can
you tell we what IS The True, The Beautiful, The Innocent, The
Virtuous?"
"They are things that commence with a capital letter," said the Boy,
promptly.
"Enough! Respect everything that commences with a capital letter!
Respect ME!" and dropping a half-penny in the hand of the boy, he
departed.
The Boy gazed fixedly at the coin. A frightful and instantaneous
change overspread his features. His noble brow was corrugated with
baser lines of calculation. His black eye, serpent-like, glittered
with suppressed passion. Dropping upon his hands and feet, he crawled
to the curbstone and hissed after the retreating form of the Baronet,
the single word:--
"Bilk!"
BOOK II.
IN THE WORLD.
"Eleven years ago," said Sir Edward to himself, as his brougham slowly
rolled him toward the Committee Room; "just eleven years ago my natural
son disappeared mysteriously. I have no doubt in the world but that
this little bootblack is he. His mother died in Italy. He resembles
his mother very much. Perhaps I ought to provide for him. Shall I
disclose myself? No! no! Better he should taste the sweets of Labor.
Penury ennobles the mind and kindles the Love of the Beautiful. I will
act to him, not like a Father, not like a Guardian, not like a
Friend--but like a Philosopher!"
With these words, Sir Edward entered the Committee Room. His Secretary
approached him. "Sir Edward, there are fears of a division in the
House, and the Prime Minister has sent for you."
"I will be there," said Sir Edward, as he placed his hand on his chest
and uttered a hollow cough!
No one who heard the Baronet that night, in his sarcastic and withering
speech on the Drainage and Sewerage Bill, would have recognized the
lover of the Ideal and the Philosopher of the Beautiful. No one who
listened to his eloquence would have dreamed of the Spartan resolution
this iron man had taken in regard to the Lost Boy--his own beloved
Lionel. None!
"A fine speech from Sir Edward to-night," said Lord Billingsgate, as,
arm-and-arm with the Premier, he entered his carriage.
"Yes! but how dreadfully he coughs!"
"Exactly. Dr. Bolus says his lungs are entirely gone; he breathes
entirely by an effort of will, and altogether independent of pulmonary
assistance."
"How strange!" and the carriage rolled away.
BOOK III.
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
"ADON AI, appear! appear!"
And as the Seer spoke, the awful Presence glided out of Nothingness,
and sat, sphinx-like, at the feet of the Alchemist.
"I am come!" said the Thing.
"You should say, 'I have come,'--it's better grammar," said the
Boy-Neophyte, thoughtfully accenting the substituted expression.
"Hush, rash Boy," said the Seer, sternly. "Would you oppose your
feeble knowledge to the infinite intelligence of the Unmistakable? A
word, and you are lost forever."
The Boy breathed a silent prayer, and, handing a sealed package to the
Seer, begged him to hand it to his father in case of his premature
decease.
"You have sent for me," hissed the Presence. "Behold me,
Apokatharticon,--the Unpronounceable. In me all things exist that are
not already coexistent. I am the Unattainable, the Intangible, the
Cause, and the Effect. In me observe the Brahma of Mr. Emerson; not
only Brahma himself, but also the sacred musical composition rehearsed
by the faithful Hindoo. I am the real Gyges. None others are genuine."
And the veiled Son of the Starbeam laid himself loosely about the room,
and permeated Space generally.
"Unfathomable Mystery," said the Rosicrucian in a low, sweet voice.
"Brave Child with the Vitreous Optic! Thou who pervadest all things
and rubbest against us without abrasion of the cuticle. I command
thee, speak!"
And the misty, intangible, indefinite Presence spoke.
BOOK IV.
MYSELF.
After the events related in the last chapter, the reader will perceive
that nothing was easier than to reconcile Sir Edward to his son Lionel,
nor to resuscitate the beautiful Italian girl, who, it appears, was not
dead, and to cause Sir Edward to marry his first and boyish love, whom
he had deserted. They were married in St. George's, Hanover Square.
As the bridal party stood before the altar, Sir Edward, with a sweet
sad smile, said, in quite his old manner:--
"The Sublime and Beautiful are the Real; the only Ideal is the
Ridiculous and Homely. Let us always remember this. Let us through
life endeavor to personify the virtues, and always begin 'em with a
capital letter. Let us, whenever we can find an opportunity, deliver
our sentiments in the form of round-hand copies. Respect the Aged.
Eschew Vulgarity. Admire Ourselves. Regard the Novelist."
THE HAUNTED MAN.
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
BY CH--R--S D--CK--NS.
PART I.
THE FIRST PHANTOM.
Don't tell me that it wasn't a knocker. I had seen it often enough,
and I ought to know. So ought the three-o'clock beer, in dirty
high-lows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal
jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a
general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to
whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human
weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used. And so ought, for the
matter of that, etc., etc., etc.
But then it was SUCH a knocker. A wild, extravagant, and utterly
incomprehensible knocker. A knocker so mysterious and suspicious that
Policeman X 37, first coming upon it, felt inclined to take it
instantly in custody, but compromised with his professional instincts
by sharply and sternly noting it with an eye that admitted of no
nonsense, but confidently expected to detect its secret yet. An ugly
knocker; a knocker with a hard, human face, that was a type of the
harder human face within. A human face that held between its teeth a
brazen rod. So hereafter, in the mysterious future should be held,
etc., etc.
But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in the glare of day, you
should have seen it at night, when it peered out of the gathering
shadows and suggested an ambushed figure; when the light of the street
lamps fell upon it, and wrought a play of sinister expression in its
hard outlines; when it seemed to wink meaningly at a shrouded figure
who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the steps and passed into the
mysterious house; when the swinging door disclosed a black passage into
which the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the
mysterious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the fierce wind
made furious charges at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry
it away in triumph. Such a night as this.
It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had commenced life as a
gentle country zephyr, but wandering through manufacturing towns had
become demoralized, and reaching the city had plunged into extravagant
dissipation and wild excesses. A roistering wind that indulged in
Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked off the hats
from the heads of helpless passengers, and then fulfilled its duties by
speeding away, like all young prodigals,--to sea.
He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the wind that roared in
the chimney. Around him novels and story-books were strewn thickly; in
his lap he held one with its pages freshly cut, and turned the leaves
wearily until his eyes rested upon a portrait in its frontispiece. And
as the wind howled the more fiercely, and the darkness without fell
blacker, a strange and fateful likeness to that portrait appeared above
his chair and leaned upon his shoulder. The Haunted Man gazed at the
portrait and sighed. The figure gazed at the portrait and sighed too.
"Here again?" said the Haunted Man.
"Here again," it repeated in a low voice.
"Another novel?"
"Another novel."
"The old story?"
"The old story."
"I see a child," said the Haunted Man, gazing from the pages of the
book into the fire,--"a most unnatural child, a model infant. It is
prematurely old and philosophic. It dies in poverty to slow music. It
dies surrounded by luxury to slow music. It dies with an accompaniment
of golden water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous to its
decease it makes a will; it repeats the Lord's Prayer, it kisses the
'boofer lady.' That child--"
"Is mine," said the phantom.
"I see a good woman, undersized. I see several charming women, but
they are all undersized. They are more or less imbecile and idiotic,
but always fascinating and undersized. They wear coquettish caps and
aprons. I observe that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium
height, and that it is always simple and infantine. These women--"
"Are mine."
"I see a haughty, proud, and wicked lady. She is tall and queenly. I
remark that all proud and wicked women are tall and queenly. That
woman--"
"Is mine," said the phantom, wringing his hands.
"I see several things continually impending. I observe that whenever
an accident, a murder, or death is about to happen, there is something
in the furniture, in the locality, in the atmosphere, that foreshadows
and suggests it years in advance. I cannot say that in real life I
have noticed it,--the perception of this surprising fact belongs--"
"To me!" said the phantom. The Haunted Man continued, in a despairing
tone:--
"I see the influence of this in the magazines and daily papers; I see
weak imitators rise up and enfeeble the world with senseless formula.
I am getting tired of it. It won't do, Charles! it won't do!" and the
Haunted Man buried his head in his hands and groaned. The figure looked
down upon him sternly: the portrait in the frontispiece frowned as he
gazed.
"Wretched man," said the phantom, "and how have these things affected
you?"
"Once I laughed and cried, but then I was younger. Now, I would forget
them if I could."
"Have then your wish. And take this with you, man whom I renounce.
From this day henceforth you shall live with those whom I displace.
Without forgetting me, 't will be your lot to walk through life as if
we had not met. But first you shall survey these scenes that
henceforth must be yours. At one to-night, prepare to meet the phantom
I have raised. Farewell!"
The sound of its voice seemed to fade away with the dying wind, and the
Haunted Man was alone. But the firelight flickered gayly, and the
light danced on the walls, making grotesque figures of the furniture.
"Ha, ha!" said the Haunted Man, rubbing his hands gleefully; "now for a
whiskey punch and a cigar."
BOOK II.
THE SECOND PHANTOM.
One! The stroke of the far-off bell had hardly died before the front
door closed with a reverberating clang. Steps were heard along the
passage; the library door swung open of itself, and the Knocker--yes,
the Knocker--slowly strode into the room. The Haunted Man rubbed his
eyes,--no! there could be no mistake about it,--it was the Knocker's
face, mounted on a misty, almost imperceptible body. The brazen rod
was transferred from its mouth to its right hand, where it was held
like a ghostly truncheon.
"It's a cold evening," said the Haunted Man.
"It is," said the Goblin, in a hard, metallic voice.
"It must be pretty cold out there," said the Haunted Man, with vague
politeness. "Do you ever--will you--take some hot water and brandy?"
"No," said the Goblin.
"Perhaps you'd like it cold, by way of change?" continued the Haunted
Man, correcting himself, as he remembered the peculiar temperature with
which the Goblin was probably familiar.
"Time flies," said the Goblin coldly. "We have no leisure for idle
talk. Come!" He moved his ghostly truncheon toward the window, and
laid his hand upon the other's arm. At his touch the body of the
Haunted Man seemed to become as thin and incorporeal as that of the
Goblin himself, and together they glided out of the window into the
black and blowy night.
In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the Haunted Man seemed to
leave him. At length they stopped suddenly.
"What do you see?" asked the Goblin.
"I see a battlemented mediaeval castle. Gallant men in mail ride over
the drawbridge, and kiss their gauntleted fingers to fair ladies, who
wave their lily hands in return. I see fight and fray and tournament.
I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms of delicate women, and
shamelessly proclaiming their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to
leap from a battlement. I see knightly deeds, violence, rapine, and a
good deal of blood. I've seen pretty much the same at Astley's."
"Look again."
"I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, bare-legged men, priggish
book-worms, more violence, physical excellence, and blood. Always
blood,--and the superiority of physical attainments."
"And how do you feel now?" said the Goblin.
The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders. "None the better for being
carried back and asked to sympathize with a barbarous age."
The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm; they again sped rapidly through
the black night and again halted.
"What do you see?" said the Goblin.
"I see a barrack room, with a mess table, and a group of intoxicated
Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving challenges to duel.
I see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valor.
I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a
dragoon regiment. I hear a good deal of French! No, thank you," said
the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving hand of the Goblin;
"I would rather NOT go to the Peninsula, and don't care to have a
private interview with Napoleon."
Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortunate man, and from a strange
roaring below them he judged they were above the ocean. A ship hove in
sight, and the Goblin stayed its flight. "Look," he said, squeezing
his companion's arm.
The Haunted Man yawned. "Don't you think, Charles, you're rather
running this thing into the ground? Of course it's very moral and
instructive, and all that. But ain't there a little too much pantomime
about it? Come now!"
"Look!" repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm malevolently. The
Haunted Man groaned.
"O, of course, I see her Majesty's ship Arethusa. Of course I am
familiar with her stern First Lieutenant, her eccentric Captain, her
one fascinating and several mischievous midshipmen. Of course I know
it's a splendid thing to see all this, and not to be seasick. O, there
the young gentlemen are going to play a trick on the purser. For God's
sake, let us go," and the unhappy man absolutely dragged the Goblin
away with him.
When they next halted, it was at the edge of a broad and boundless
prairie, in the middle of an oak opening.
"I see," said the Haunted Man, without waiting for his cue, but
mechanically, and as if he were repeating a lesson which the Goblin had
taught him,--"I see the Noble Savage. He is very fine to look at! But
I observe under his war-paint, feathers, and picturesque blanket, dirt,
disease, and an unsymmetrical contour. I observe beneath his inflated
rhetoric deceit and hypocrisy; beneath his physical hardihood, cruelty,
malice, and revenge. The Noble Savage is a humbug. I remarked the
same to Mr. Catlin."
"Come," said the phantom.
The Haunted Man sighed, and took out his watch. "Couldn't we do the
rest of this another time?"
"My hour is almost spent, irreverent being, but there is yet a chance
for your reformation. Come!"
Again they sped through the night, and again halted. The sound of
delicious but melancholy music fell upon their ears.
"I see," said the Haunted Man, with something of interest in his
manner,--"I see an old moss-covered manse beside a sluggish, flowing
river. I see weird shapes: witches, Puritans, clergymen, little
children, judges, mesmerized maidens, moving to the sound of melody
that thrills me with its sweetness and purity. But, although carried
along its calm and evenly flowing current, the shapes are strange and
frightful: an eating lichen gnaws at the heart of each. Not only the
clergymen, but witch, maiden, judge, and Puritan, all wear Scarlet
Letters of some kind burned upon their hearts. I am fascinated and
thrilled, but I feel a morbid sensitiveness creeping over me. I--I beg
your pardon." The Goblin was yawning frightfully. "Well, perhaps we
had better go."
"One more, and the last," said the Goblin.
They were moving home. Streaks of red were beginning to appear in the
eastern sky. Along the banks of the blackly flowing river by moorland
and stagnant fens, by low houses, clustering close to the water's edge,
like strange mollusks, crawled upon the beach to dry; by misty black
barges, the more misty and indistinct seen through its mysterious veil,
the river fog was slowly rising. So rolled away and rose from the
heart of the Haunted Man, etc., etc.
They stopped before a quaint mansion of red brick. The Goblin waved
his hand without speaking.
"I see," said the Haunted Man, "a gay drawing-room. I see my old
friends of the club, of the college, of society, even as they lived and
moved. I see the gallant and unselfish men, whom I have loved, and the
snobs whom I have hated. I see strangely mingling with them, and now
and then blending with their forms, our old friends Dick Steele,
Addison, and Congreve. I observe, though, that these gentlemen have a
habit of getting too much in the way. The royal standard of Queen
Anne, not in itself a beautiful ornament, is rather too prominent in
the picture. The long galleries of black oak, the formal furniture,
the old portraits, are picturesque, but depressing. The house is damp.
I enjoy myself better here on the lawn, where they are getting up a
Vanity Fair. See, the bell rings, the curtain is rising, the puppets
are brought out for a new play. Let me see."
The Haunted Man was pressing forward in his eagerness, but the hand of
the Goblin stayed him, and pointing to his feet he saw, between him and
the rising curtain, a new-made grave. And bending above the grave in
passionate grief, the Haunted Man beheld the phantom of the previous
night.
* * * * *
The Haunted Man started, and--woke. The bright sunshine streamed into
the room. The air was sparkling with frost. He ran joyously to the
window and opened it. A small boy saluted him with "Merry Christmas."
The Haunted Man instantly gave him a Bank of England note. "How much
like Tiny Tim, Tom, and Bobby that boy looked,--bless my soul, what a
genius this Dickens has!"
A knock at the door, and Boots entered.
"Consider your salary doubled instantly. Have you read David
Copperfield?"
"Yezzur."
"Your salary is quadrupled. What do you think of the Old Curiosity
Shop?"
The man instantly burst into a torrent of tears, and then into a roar
of laughter.
"Enough! Here are five thousand pounds. Open a porter-house, and call
it, 'Our Mutual Friend.' Huzza! I feel so happy!" And the haunted
Man danced about the room.
And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, and yet glowing with
the warmth of a good action, the Haunted Man, haunted no longer, save
by those shapes which make the dreams of children beautiful, reseated
himself in his chair, and finished Our Mutual Friend.
MISS MIX.
BY CH--L--TTE BR--NTE.
CHAPTER I.
My earliest impressions are of a huge, misshapen rock, against which
the hoarse waves beat unceasingly. On this rock three pelicans are
standing in a defiant attitude. A dark sky lowers in the background,
while two sea-gulls and a gigantic cormorant eye with extreme disfavor
the floating corpse of a drowned woman in the foreground. A few
bracelets, coral necklaces, and other articles of jewelry, scattered
around loosely, complete this remarkable picture.
It is one which, in some vague, unconscious way, symbolizes, to my
fancy, the character of a man. I have never been able to explain
exactly why. I think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated
volume, when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before I was born.
As a child I was not handsome. When I consulted the triangular bit of
looking-glass which I always carried with me, it showed a pale, sandy,
and freckled face, shaded by locks like the color of seaweed when the
sun strikes it in deep water. My eyes were said to be indistinctive;
they were a faint, ashen gray; but above them rose--my only beauty--a
high, massive, domelike forehead, with polished temples, like
door-knobs of the purest porcelain.
Our family was a family of governesses. My mother had been one, and my
sisters had the same occupation. Consequently, when, at the age of
thirteen, my eldest sister handed me the advertisement of Mr.
Rawjester, clipped from that day's "Times," I accepted it as my
destiny. Nevertheless, a mysterious presentiment of an indefinite
future haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon my little
snow-white bed. The next morning, with two bandboxes tied up in silk
handkerchiefs, and a hair trunk, I turned my back upon Minerva Cottage
forever.
CHAPTER II.
Blunderbore Hall, the seat of James Rawjester, Esq., was encompassed by
dark pines and funereal hemlocks on all sides. The wind sang weirdly
in the turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park.
As I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit before
the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the
bell. While I strove to repress my gloomy forebodings, the
housekeeper, a timid, scared-looking old woman, showed me into the
library.
I entered, overcome with conflicting emotions. I was dressed in a
narrow gown of dark serge, trimmed with black bugles. A thick green
shawl was pinned across my breast. My hands were encased with black
half-mittens worked with steel beads; on my feet were large pattens,
originally the property of my deceased grandmother. I carried a blue
cotton umbrella. As I passed before a mirror, I could not help
glancing at it, nor could I disguise from myself the fact that I was
not handsome.
Drawing a chair into a recess, I sat down with folded hands, calmly
awaiting the arrival of my master. Once or twice a fearful yell rang
through the house, or the rattling of chains, and curses uttered in a
deep, manly voice, broke upon the oppressive stillness. I began to
feel my soul rising with the emergency of the moment.
"You look alarmed, miss. You don't hear anything, my dear, do you?"
asked the housekeeper nervously.
"Nothing whatever," I remarked calmly, as a terrific scream, followed
by the dragging of chairs and tables in the room above, drowned for a
moment my reply. "It is the silence, on the contrary, which has made
me foolishly nervous."
The housekeeper looked at me approvingly, and instantly made some tea
for me.
I drank seven cups; as I was beginning the eighth, I heard a crash, and
the next moment a man leaped into the room through the broken window.
CHAPTER III.
The crash startled me from my self-control. The housekeeper bent
toward me and whispered:--
"Don't be excited. It's Mr. Rawjester,--he prefers to come in
sometimes in this way. It's his playfulness, ha! ha! ha!"
"I perceive," I said calmly. "It's the unfettered impulse of a lofty
soul breaking the tyrannizing bonds of custom." And I turned toward
him.
He had never once looked at me. He stood with his back to the fire,
which set off the herculean breadth of his shoulders. His face was
dark and expressive; his under jaw squarely formed, and remarkably
heavy. I was struck with his remarkable likeness to a Gorilla.
As he absently tied the poker into hard knots with his nervous fingers,
I watched him with some interest. Suddenly he turned toward me:--
"Do you think I'm handsome, young woman?"
"Not classically beautiful," I returned calmly; "but you have, if I may
so express myself, an abstract manliness,--a sincere and wholesome
barbarity which, involving as it does the naturalness--" But I stopped,
for he yawned at that moment,--an action which singularly developed the
immense breadth of his lower jaw,--and I saw he had forgotten me.
Presently he turned to the housekeeper:--
"Leave us."
The old woman withdrew with a courtesy.
Mr. Rawjester deliberately turned his back upon me and remained silent
for twenty minutes. I drew my shawl the more closely around my
shoulders and closed my eyes.
"You are the governess?" at length he said.
"I am, sir."
"A creature who teaches geography, arithmetic, and the use of the
globes--ha!--a wretched remnant of femininity,--a skimp pattern of
girlhood with a premature flavor of tea-leaves and morality. Ugh!"
I bowed my head silently.
"Listen to me, girl!" he said sternly; "this child you have come to
teach--my ward--is not legitimate. She is the offspring of my
mistress,--a common harlot. Ah! Miss Mix, what do you think of me
now?"
"I admire," I replied calmly, "your sincerity. A mawkish regard for
delicacy might have kept this disclosure to yourself. I only recognize
in your frankness that perfect community of thought and sentiment which
should exist between original natures."
I looked up; he had already forgotten my presence, and was engaged in
pulling off his boots and coat. This done, he sank down in an
arm-chair before the fire, and ran the poker wearily through his hair.
I could not help pitying him.
The wind howled dismally without, and the rain beat furiously against
the windows. I crept toward him and seated myself on a low stool
beside his chair.
Presently he turned, without seeing me, and placed his foot absently in
my lap. I affected not to notice it. But he started and looked down.
"You here yet--Carrothead? Ah, I forgot. Do you speak French?"
"Oui, Monsieur."
"Taisez-vous!" he said sharply, with singular purity of accent. I
complied. The wind moaned fearfully in the chimney, and the light
burned dimly. I shuddered in spite of myself. "Ah, you tremble, girl!"
"It is a fearful night."
"Fearful! Call you this fearful, ha! ha! ha! Look! you wretched
little atom, look!" and he dashed forward, and, leaping out of the
window, stood like a statue in the pelting storm, with folded arms. He
did not stay long, but in a few minutes returned by way of the hall
chimney. I saw from the way that he wiped his feet on my dress that he
had again forgotten my presence.
"You are a governess. What can you teach?" he asked, suddenly and
fiercely thrusting his face in mine.
"Manners!" I replied, calmly.
"Ha! teach ME!"
"You mistake yourself," I said, adjusting my mittens. "Your manners
require not the artificial restraint of society. You are radically
polite; this impetuosity and ferociousness is simply the sincerity
which is the basis of a proper deportment. Your instincts are moral;
your better nature, I see, is religious. As St. Paul justly
remarks--see chap. 6, 8, 9, and 10--"
He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me. I dodged it
submissively but firmly.
"Excuse me," he remarked, as his under jaw slowly relaxed. "Excuse me,
Miss Mix--but I can't stand St. Paul! Enough--you are engaged."
CHAPTER IV.
I followed the housekeeper as she led the way timidly to my room. As we
passed into a dark hall in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an
iron gate with a grating. Three of the doors on the corridor were
likewise grated. A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling
of infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper
good night, and taking the candle, I entered my bedchamber.
I took off my dress, and, putting on a yellow flannel nightgown, which
I could not help feeling did not agree with my complexion, I composed
myself to rest by reading Blair's Rhetoric and Paley's Moral
Philosophy. I had just put out the light, when I heard voices in the
corridor. I listened attentively. I recognized Mr. Rawjester's stern
tones.
"Have you fed No. 1?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said a gruff voice, apparently belonging to a domestic.
"How's No. 2?"
"She's a little off her feed, just now, but will pick up in a day or
two!"
"And No. 3?"
"Perfectly furious, sir. Her tantrums are ungovernable."
"Hush!"
The voices died away, and I sank into a fitful slumber.
I dreamed that I was wandering through a tropical forest. Suddenly I
saw the figure of a gorilla approaching me. As it neared me, I
recognized the features of Mr. Rawjester. He held his hand to his side
as if in pain. I saw that he had been wounded. He recognized me and
called me by name, but at the same moment the vision changed to an
Ashantee village, where, around the fire, a group of negroes were
dancing and participating in some wild Obi festival. I awoke with the
strain still ringing in my ears.
"Hokee-pokee wokee fum!"
Good Heavens! could I be dreaming? I heard the voice distinctly on the
floor below, and smelt something burning. I arose, with an indistinct
presentiment of evil, and hastily putting some cotton in my ears and
tying a towel about my head, I wrapped myself in a shawl and rushed
down stairs. The door of Mr. Rawjester's room was open. I entered.
Mr. Rawjester lay apparently in a deep slumber, from which even the
clouds of smoke that came from the burning curtains of his bed could
not rouse him. Around the room a large and powerful negress, scantily
attired, with her head adorned with feathers, was dancing wildly,
accompanying herself with bone castanets. It looked like some terrible
fetich.
I did not lose my calmness. After firmly emptying the pitcher, basin,
and slop-jar on the burning bed, I proceeded cautiously to the garden,
and, returning with the garden-engine, I directed a small stream at Mr.
Rawjester.
At my entrance the gigantic negress fled. Mr. Rawjester yawned and
woke. I explained to him, as he rose dripping from the bed, the reason
of my presence. He did not seem to be excited, alarmed, or
discomposed. He gazed at me curiously.
"So you risked your life to save mine, eh? you canary-colored teacher
of infants."
I blushed modestly, and drew my shawl tightly over my yellow flannel
nightgown.
"You love me, Mary Jane,--don't deny it! This trembling shows it!" He
drew me closely toward him, and said, with his deep voice tenderly
modulated:--
"How's her pooty tootens,--did she get her 'ittle tootens wet,--bess
her?"
I understood his allusion to my feet. I glanced down and saw that in
my hurry I had put on a pair of his old india-rubbers. My feet were
not small or pretty, and the addition did not add to their beauty.
"Let me go, sir," I remarked quietly. "This is entirely improper; it
sets a bad example for your child." And I firmly but gently extricated
myself from his grasp. I approached the door. He seemed for a moment
buried in deep thought.
"You say this was a negress?"
"Yes, sir."
"Humph, No. 1, I suppose?"
"Who is Number One, sir?"
"My FIRST," he remarked, with a significant and sarcastic smile. Then,
relapsing into his old manner, he threw his boots at my head, and bade
me begone. I withdrew calmly.
CHAPTER V.
My pupil was a bright little girl, who spoke French with a perfect
accent. Her mother had been a French ballet-dancer, which probably
accounted for it. Although she was only six years old, it was easy to
perceive that she had been several times in love. She once said to
me:--
"Miss Mix, did you ever have the grande passion? Did you ever feel a
fluttering here?" and she placed her hand upon her small chest, and
sighed quaintly, "a kind of distaste for bonbons and caromels, when the
world seemed as tasteless and hollow as a broken cordial drop."
"Then you have felt it, Nina?" I said quietly. "O dear, yes. There was
Buttons,--that was our page, you know,--I loved him dearly, but papa
sent him away. Then there was Dick, the groom, but he laughed at me,
and I suffered misery!" and she struck a tragic French attitude.
"There is to be company here to-morrow," she added, rattling on with
childish naivete, "and papa's sweetheart--Blanche Marabout--is to be
here. You know they say she is to be my mamma."
What thrill was this shot through me? But I rose calmly, and,
administering a slight correction to the child, left the apartment.
Blunderbore House, for the next week, was the scene of gayety and
merriment. That portion of the mansion closed with a grating was
walled up, and the midnight shrieks no longer troubled me.
But I felt more keenly the degradation of my situation. I was obliged
to help Lady Blanche at her toilet and help her to look beautiful. For
what? To captivate him? O--no, no,--but why this sudden thrill and
faintness? Did he really love her? I had seen him pinch and swear at
her. But I reflected that he had thrown a candlestick at my head, and
my foolish heart was reassured.
It was a night of festivity, when a sudden message obliged Mr.
Rawjester to leave his guests for a few hours. "Make yourselves merry,
idiots," he added, under his breath, as he passed me. The door closed
and he was gone.
An half-hour passed. In the midst of the dancing a shriek was heard,
and out of the swaying crowd of fainting women and excited men a wild
figure strode into the room. One glance showed it to be a highwayman,
heavily armed, holding a pistol in each hand.
"Let no one pass out of this room!" he said, in a voice of thunder.
"The house is surrounded and you cannot escape. The first one who
crosses yonder threshold will be shot like a dog. Gentlemen, I'll
trouble you to approach in single file, and hand me your purses and
watches."
Finding resistance useless, the order was ungraciously obeyed.
"Now, ladies, please to pass up your jewelry and trinkets."
This order was still more ungraciously complied with. As Blanche
handed to the bandit captain her bracelet, she endeavored to conceal a
diamond necklace, the gift of Mr. Rawjester, in her bosom. But, with a
demoniac grin, the powerful brute tore it from its concealment, and,
administering a hearty box on the ear of the young girl, flung her
aside.
It was now my turn. With a beating heart I made my way to the robber
chieftain, and sank at his feet. "O sir, I am nothing but a poor
governess, pray let me go."
"O ho! A governess? Give me your last month's wages, then. Give me
what you have stolen from your master!" and he laughed fiendishly.
I gazed at him quietly, and said, in a low voice: "I have stolen
nothing from you, Mr. Rawjester!"
"Ah, discovered! Hush! listen, girl!" he hissed, in a fiercer whisper,
"utter a syllable to frustrate my plans and you die; aid me, and--"
But he was gone.
In a few moments the party, with the exception of myself, were gagged
and locked in the cellar. The next moment torches were applied to the
rich hangings, and the house was in flames. I felt a strong hand seize
me, and bear me out in the open air and place me upon the hillside,
where I could overlook the burning mansion. It was Mr. Rawjester.
"Burn!" he said, as he shook his fist at the flames. Then sinking on
his knees before me, he said hurriedly:--
"Mary Jane, I love you; the obstacles to our union are or will be soon
removed. In yonder mansion were confined my three crazy wives. One of
them, as you know, attempted to kill me! Ha! this is vengeance! But
will you be mine?"
I fell, without a word, upon his neck.
GUY HEAVYSTONE;
OR,
"ENTIRE."
A MUSCULAR NOVEL.
BY THE AUTHOR or "SWORD AND GUN."
CHAPTER I.
"Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus."
A dingy, swashy, splashy afternoon in October; a school-yard filled
with a mob of riotous boys. A lot of us standing outside.
Suddenly came a dull, crashing sound from the school-room. At the
ominous interruption I shuddered involuntarily, and called to
Smithsye:--
"What's up, Smithums?"
"Guy's cleaning out the fourth form," he replied.
At the same moment George de Coverly passed me, holding his nose, from
whence the bright Norman blood streamed redly. To him the plebeian
Smithsye laughingly:--
"Cully! how's his nibs?"
I pushed the door of the school-room open. There are some spectacles
which a man never forgets. The burning of Troy probably seemed a
large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression
on him which he carried away with the feeble Anchises.
In the centre of the room, lightly brandishing the piston-rod of a
steam-engine, stood Guy Heavystone alone. I say alone, for the pile of
small boys on the floor in the corner could hardly be called company.
I will try and sketch him for the reader. Guy Heavystone was then only
fifteen. His broad, deep chest, his sinewy and quivering flank, his
straight pastern, showed him to be a thoroughbred. Perhaps he was a
trifle heavy in the fetlock, but he held his head haughtily erect. His
eyes were glittering but pitiless. There was a sternness about the
lower part of his face,--the old Heavystone look,--a sternness,
heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit which, in one of his strange
freaks, he wore in his mouth to curb his occasional ferocity. His
dress was well adapted to his square-set and herculean frame. A
striped knit undershirt, close-fitting striped tights, and a few
spangles set off his figure; a neat Glengarry cap adorned his head. On
it was displayed the Heavystone crest, a cock regardant on a dunghill
or, and the motto, "Devil a better!"
I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector before the walls. I
always make it a point to think of something classical at such times.
He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed. Something like a smile
struggled through his grim lineaments. It was like looking on the
Jungfrau after having seen Mont Blanc,--a trifle, only a trifle less
sublime and awful. Resting his hand lightly on the shoulder of the
head-master, who shuddered and collapsed under his touch, he strode
toward me.
His walk was peculiar. You could not call it a stride. It was like
the "crest-tossing Bellerophon,"--a kind of prancing gait. Guy
Heavystone pranced toward me.
CHAPTER II.
"Lord Lovel he stood at the garden gate,
A-combing his milk-white steed."
It was the winter of 186- when I next met Guy Heavystone. He had left
the University and had entered the 76th "Heavies." "I have exchanged
the gown for the sword, you see," he said, grasping my hand, and
fracturing the bones of my little finger, as he shook it.
I gazed at him with unmixed admiration. He was squarer, sterner, and
in every way smarter and more remarkable than ever. I began to feel
toward this man as Phalaster felt towards Phyrgino, as somebody must
have felt toward Archididasculus, as Boswell felt toward Johnson.
"Come into my den," he said, and lifting me gently by the seat of my
pantaloons he carried me up stairs and deposited me, before I could
apologize, on the sofa. I looked around the room. It was a bachelor's
apartment, characteristically furnished in the taste of the proprietor.
A few claymores and battle-axes were ranged against the wall, and a
culverin, captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone, occupied the corner, the
other end of the room being taken up by a light battery. Foils,
boxing-gloves, saddles, and fishing-poles lay around carelessly. A
small pile of billets-doux lay upon a silver salver. The man was not
an anchorite, nor yet a Sir Galahad.
I never could tell what Guy thought of women. "Poor little beasts," he
would often say when the conversation turned on any of his fresh
conquests. Then, passing his hand over his marble brow, the old look
of stern fixedness of purpose and unflinching severity would straighten
the lines of his mouth, and he would mutter, half to himself, "S'death!"
"Come with me to Heavystone Grange. The Exmoor Hounds throw off
to-morrow. I'll give you a mount," he said, as he amused himself by
rolling up a silver candlestick between his fingers. "You shall have
Cleopatra. But stay," he added, thoughtfully; "now I remember, I
ordered Cleopatra to be shot this morning."
"And why?" I queried.
"She threw her rider yesterday and fell on him--"
"And killed him?"
"No. That's the reason why I have ordered her to be shot. I keep no
animals that are not dangerous--I should add--DEADLY!" He hissed the
last sentence between his teeth, and a gloomy frown descended over his
calm brow.
I affected to turn over the tradesman's bills that lay on the table,
for, like all of the Heavystone race, Guy seldom paid cash, and said:--
"You remind me of the time when Leonidas--"
"O, bother Leonidas and your classical allusions. Come!"
We descended to dinner.
CHAPTER III.
"He carries weight, he rides a race,
'Tis for a thousand pound."
"There is Flora Billingsgate, the greatest coquette and hardest rider
in the country," said my companion, Ralph Mortmain, as we stood upon
Dingleby Common before the meet.
I looked up and beheld Guy Heavystone bending haughtily over the
saddle, as he addressed a beautiful brunette. She was indeed a
splendidly groomed and high-spirited woman. We were near enough to
overhear the following conversation, which any high-toned reader will
recognize as the common and natural expression of the higher classes.
"When Diana takes the field the chase is not wholly confined to objects
ferae naturae," said Guy, darting a significant glance at his
companion. Flora did not shrink either from the glance or the meaning
implied in the sarcasm.
"If I were looking for an Endymion, now--" she said archly, as she
playfully cantered over a few hounds and leaped a five-barred gate.
Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest of the party, and,
curvetting slightly, cleverly cleared two of the huntsmen in a flying
leap, galloped up the front steps of the mansion, and dashing at full
speed through the hall leaped through the drawing-room window and
rejoined me, languidly, on the lawn.
"Be careful of Flora Billingsgate," he said to me, in low stern tones,
while his pitiless eye shot a baleful fire. "Gardez vous!"
"Gnothi seauton," I replied calmly, not wishing to appear to be behind
him in perception or verbal felicity.
Guy started off in high spirits. He was well carried. He and the
first whip, a ten-stone man, were head and head at the last fence,
while the hounds were rolling over their fox a hundred yards farther in
the open.
But an unexpected circumstance occurred. Coming back, his chestnut
mare refused a ten-foot wall. She reared and fell backward. Again he
led her up to it lightly; again she refused, falling heavily from the
coping. Guy started to his feet. The old pitiless fire shone in his
eyes; the old stern look settled around his mouth. Seizing the mare by
the tail and mane he threw her over the wall. She landed twenty feet on
the other side, erect and trembling. Lightly leaping the same obstacle
himself, he remounted her. She did not refuse the wall the next time.
CHAPTER IV.
"He holds him by his glittering eye."
Guy was in the North of Ireland, cock-shooting. So Ralph Mortmain told
me, and also that the match between Mary Brandagee and Guy had been
broken off by Flora Billingsgate. "I don't like those Billingsgates,"
said Ralph, "they're a bad stock. Her father, Smithfield de
Billingsgate, had an unpleasant way of turning up the knave from the
bottom of the pack. But nous verrons; let us go and see Guy."
The next morning we started for Fin-ma-Coul's Crossing. When I reached
the shooting-box, where Guy was entertaining a select company of
friends, Flora Billingsgate greeted me with a saucy smile.
Guy was even squarer and sterner than ever. His gusts of passion were
more frequent, and it was with difficulty that he could keep an
able-bodied servant in his family. His present retainers were more or
less maimed from exposure to the fury of their master. There was a
strange cynicism, a cutting sarcasm in his address, piercing through
his polished manner. I thought of Timon, etc., etc.
One evening, we were sitting over our Chambertin, after a hard day's
work, and Guy was listlessly turning over some letters, when suddenly
he uttered a cry. Did you ever hear the trumpeting of a wounded
elephant? It was like that.
I looked at him with consternation. He was glancing at a letter which
he held at arm's length, and snorting, as it were, at it as he gazed.
The lower part of his face was stern, but not as rigid as usual. He
was slowly grinding between his teeth the fragments of the glass he had
just been drinking from. Suddenly he seized one of his servants, and,
forcing the wretch upon his knees, exclaimed, with the roar of a
tiger:--
"Dog! why was this kept from me?"
"Why, please, sir, Miss Flora said as how it was a reconciliation from
Miss Brandagee, and it was to be kept from you where you would not be
likely to see it,--and--and--"
"Speak, dog! and you--"
"I put it among your bills, sir!"
With a groan, like distant thunder, Guy fell swooning to the floor.
He soon recovered, for the next moment a servant came rushing into the
room with the information that a number of the ingenuous peasantry of
the neighborhood were about to indulge that evening in the national
pastime of burning a farm-house and shooting a landlord. Guy smiled a
fearful smile, without, however, altering his stern and pitiless
expression.
"Let them come," he said calmly; "I feel like entertaining company."
We barricaded the doors and windows, and then chose our arms from the
armory. Guy's choice was a singular one: it was a landing net with a
long handle, and a sharp cavalry sabre.
We were not destined to remain long in ignorance of its use. A howl
was heard from without, and a party of fifty or sixty armed men
precipitated themselves against the door.
Suddenly the window opened. With the rapidity of lightning, Guy
Heavystone cast the net over the head of the ringleader, ejaculated
"Habet!" and with a back stroke of his cavalry sabre severed the member
from its trunk, and, drawing the net back again, cast the gory head
upon the floor, saying quietly:--
"One."
Again the net was cast, the steel flashed, the net was withdrawn, and
an ominous "Two!" accompanied the head as it rolled on the floor.
"Do you remember what Pliny says of the gladiator?" said Guy, calmly
wiping his sabre. "How graphic is that passage commencing 'Inter nos,
etc.'" The sport continued until the heads of twenty desperadoes had
been gathered in. The rest seemed inclined to disperse. Guy
incautiously showed himself at the door; a ringing shot was heard, and
he staggered back, pierced through the heart. Grasping the door-post in
the last unconscious throes of his mighty frame, the whole side of the
house yielded to that earthquake tremor, and we had barely time to
escape before the whole building fell in ruins. I thought of Samson,
the Giant Judge, etc., etc.; but all was over.
Guy Heavystone had died as he had lived,--HARD.
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY.
A NAVAL OFFICER.
BY CAPTAIN M--RRY--T, R. N.
CHAPTER I.
My father was a north-country surgeon. He had retired, a widower, from
her Majesty's navy many years before, and had a small practice in his
native village. When I was seven years old he employed me to carry
medicines to his patients. Being of a lively disposition, I sometimes
amused myself; during my daily rounds, by mixing the contents of the
different phials. Although I had no reason to doubt that the general
result of this practice was beneficial, yet, as the death of a
consumptive curate followed the addition of a strong mercurial lotion
to his expectorant, my father concluded to withdraw me from the
profession and send me to school.
Grubbins, the schoolmaster, was a tyrant, and it was not long before my
impetuous and self-willed nature rebelled against his authority. I
soon began to form plans of revenge. In this I was assisted by Tom
Snaffle,--a schoolfellow. One day Tom suggested:--
"Suppose we blow him up. I've got two pounds of powder!"
"No, that's too noisy," I replied.
Tom was silent for a minute, and again spoke:--
"You remember how you flattened out the curate, Pills! Couldn't you
give Grubbins something--something to make him leathery sick--eh?"
A flash of inspiration crossed my mind. I went to the shop of the
village apothecary. He knew me; I had often purchased vitriol, which I
poured into Grubbins's inkstand to corrode his pens and burn up his
coat-tail, on which he was in the habit of wiping them. I boldly asked
for an ounce of chloroform. The young apothecary winked and handed me
the bottle.
It was Grubbins's custom to throw his handkerchief over his head,
recline in his chair and take a short nap during recess. Watching my
opportunity, as he dozed, I managed to slip his handkerchief from his
face and substitute my own, moistened with chloroform. In a few
minutes he was insensible. Tom and I then quickly shaved his head,
beard, and eyebrows, blackened his face with a mixture of vitriol and
burnt cork, and fled. There was a row and scandal the next day. My
father always excused me by asserting that Grubbins had got drunk,--but
somehow found it convenient to procure me an appointment in her
Majesty's navy at an early day.
CHAPTER II.
An official letter, with the Admiralty seal, informed me that I was
expected to join H. M. ship Belcher, Captain Boltrope, at Portsmouth,
without delay. In a few days I presented myself to a tall,
stern-visaged man, who was slowly pacing the leeward side of the
quarter-deck. As I touched my hat he eyed me sternly:--
"So ho! Another young suckling. The service is going to the devil.
Nothing but babes in the cockpit and grannies in the board. Boatswain's
mate, pass the word for Mr. Cheek!"
Mr. Cheek, the steward, appeared and touched his hat. "Introduce Mr.
Breezy to the young gentlemen. Stop! Where's Mr. Swizzle?"
"At the masthead, sir."
"Where's Mr. Lankey?"
"At the masthead, sir."
"Mr. Briggs?"
"Masthead, too, sir."
"And the rest of the young gentlemen?" roared the enraged officer.
"All masthead, sir."
"Ah!" said Captain Boltrope, as he smiled grimly, "under the
circumstances, Mr. Breezy, you had better go to the masthead too."
CHAPTER III.
At the masthead I made the acquaintance of two youngsters of about my
own age, one of whom informed me that he had been there three hundred
and thirty-two days out of the year.
"In rough weather, when the old cock is out of sorts, you know, we
never come down," added a young gentleman of nine years, with a dirk
nearly as long as himself, who had been introduced to me as Mr. Briggs.
"By the way, Pills," he continued, "how did you come to omit giving the
captain a naval salute?"
"Why, I touched my hat," I said, innocently.
"Yes, but that isn't enough, you know. That will do very well at other
times. He expects the naval salute when you first come on
board--greeny!"
I began to feel alarmed, and begged him to explain.
"Why, you see, after touching your hat, you should have touched him
lightly with your forefinger in his waistcoat, so, and asked, 'How's
his nibs?'--you see?"
"How's his nibs?" I repeated.
"Exactly. He would have drawn back a little, and then you should have
repeated the salute remarking, 'How's his royal nibs?' asking
cautiously after his wife and family, and requesting to be introduced
to the gunner's daughter."
"The gunner's daughter?"
"The same; you know she takes care of us young gentlemen; now don't
forget, Pillsy!"
When we were called down to the deck I thought it a good chance to
profit by this instruction. I approached Captain Boltrope and repeated
the salute without conscientiously omitting a single detail. He
remained for a moment, livid and speechless. At length he gasped out:--
"Boatswain's mate?"
"If you please, sir," I asked, tremulously, "I should like to be
introduced to the gunner's daughter!"
"O, very good, sir!" screamed Captain Boltrope, rubbing his hands and
absolutely capering about the deck with rage. "O d--n you! Of course
you shall! O ho! the gunner's daughter! O, h--ll! this is too much!
Boatswain's mate!" Before I well knew where I was, I was seized, borne
to an eight-pounder, tied upon it and flogged!
CHAPTER IV.
As we sat together in the cockpit, picking the weevils out of our
biscuit, Briggs consoled me for my late mishap, adding that the "naval
salute," as a custom, seemed just then to be honored more in the BREACH
than the observance. I joined in the hilarity occasioned by the
witticism, and in a few moments we were all friends. Presently Swizzle
turned to me:--
"We have been just planning how to confiscate a keg of claret, which
Nips, the purser, keeps under his bunk. The old nipcheese lies there
drunk half the day, and there's no getting at it."
"Let's get beneath the state-room and bore through the deck, and so tap
it," said Lankey.
The proposition was received with a shout of applause. A long
half-inch auger and bit was procured from Chips, the carpenter's mate,
and Swizzle, after a careful examination of the timbers beneath the
ward-room, commenced operations. The auger at last disappeared, when
suddenly there was a slight disturbance on the deck above. Swizzle
withdrew the auger hurriedly; from its point a few bright red drops
trickled.
"Huzza! send her up again!" cried Lankey.
The auger was again applied. This time a shriek was heard from the
purser's cabin. Instantly the light was doused, and the party
retreated hurriedly to the cockpit. A sound of snoring was heard as
the sentry stuck his head into the door. "All right, sir," he replied
in answer to the voice of the officer of the deck.
The next morning we heard that Nips was in the surgeon's hands, with a
bad wound in the fleshy part of his leg, and that the auger had NOT
struck claret.
CHAPTER V.
"Now, Pills, you'll have a chance to smell powder," said Briggs as he
entered the cockpit and buckled around his waist an enormous cutlass.
"We have just sighted a French ship."
We went on deck. Captain Boltrope grinned as we touched our hats. He
hated the purser. "Come, young gentlemen, if you're boring for french
claret, yonder's a good quality. Mind your con, sir," he added,
turning to the quartermaster, who was grinning.
The ship was already cleared for action. The men, in their eagerness,
had started the coffee from the tubs and filled them with shot.
Presently the Frenchman yawed, and a shot from a long thirty-two came
skipping over the water. It killed the quartermaster and took off both
of Lankey's legs. "Tell the purser our account is squared," said the
dying boy, with a feeble smile.
The fight raged fiercely for two hours. I remember killing the French
Admiral, as we boarded, but on looking around for Briggs, after the
smoke had cleared away, I was intensely amused at witnessing the
following novel sight:--
Briggs had pinned the French captain against the mast with his cutlass,
and was now engaged, with all the hilarity of youth, in pulling the
captain's coat-tails between his legs, in imitation of a dancing-jack.
As the Frenchman lifted his legs and arms, at each jerk of Briggs's, I
could not help participating in the general mirth.
"You young devil, what are you doing?" said a stifled voice behind me.
I looked up and beheld Captain Boltrope, endeavoring to calm his stern
features, but the twitching around his mouth betrayed his intense
enjoyment of the scene. "Go to the masthead--up with you, sir!" he
repeated sternly to Briggs.
"Very good, sir," said the boy, coolly preparing to mount the shrouds.
"Good by, Johnny Crapaud. Humph!" he added, in a tone intended for my
ear, "a pretty way to treat a hero. The service is going to the devil!"
I thought so too.
CHAPTER VI.
We were ordered to the West Indies. Although Captain Boltrope's manner
toward me was still severe, and even harsh, I understood that my name
had been favorably mentioned in the despatches.
Reader, were you ever at Jamaica? If so, you remember the negresses,
the oranges, Port Royal Tom--the yellow fever. After being two weeks
at the station, I was taken sick of the fever. In a month I was
delirious. During my paroxysms, I had a wild distempered dream of a
stern face bending anxiously over my pillow, a rough hand smoothing my
hair, and a kind voice saying:--
"Bess his 'ittle heart! Did he have the naughty fever?" This face
seemed again changed to the well-known stern features of Captain
Boltrope.
When I was convalescent, a packet edged in black was put in my hand.
It contained the news of my father's death, and a sealed letter which
he had requested to be given to me on his decease. I opened it
tremblingly. It read thus:--
"My dear Boy:--I regret to inform you that in all probability you are
not my son. Your mother, I am grieved to say, was a highly improper
person. Who your father may be, I really cannot say, but perhaps the
Honorable Henry Boltrope, Captain R. N., may be able to inform you.
Circumstances over which I have no control have deferred this important
disclosure.
"YOUR STRICKEN PARENT."
And so Captain Boltrope was my father. Heavens! Was it a dream? I
recalled his stern manner, his observant eye, his ill-concealed
uneasiness when in my presence. I longed to embrace him. Staggering to
my feet, I rushed in my scanty apparel to the deck, where Captain
Boltrope was just then engaged in receiving the Governor's wife and
daughter. The ladies shrieked; the youngest, a beautiful girl, blushed
deeply. Heeding them not, I sank at his feet, and, embracing them,
cried:--
"My father!"
"Chuck him overboard!" roared Captain Boltrope.
"Stay," pleaded the soft voice of Clara Maitland, the Governor's
daughter.
"Shave his head! he's a wretched lunatic!" continued Captain Boltrope,
while his voice trembled with excitement.
"No, let me nurse and take care of him," said the lovely girl, blushing
as she spoke. "Mamma, can't we take him home?"
The daughter's pleading was not without effect. In the mean time I had
fainted. When I recovered my senses I found myself in Governor
Maitland's mansion.
CHAPTER VII.
The reader will guess what followed. I fell deeply in love with Clara
Maitland, to whom I confided the secret of my birth. The generous girl
asserted that she had detected the superiority of my manner at once.
We plighted our troth, and resolved to wait upon events.
Briggs called to see me a few days afterward. He said that the purser
had insulted the whole cockpit, and all the midshipmen had called him
out. But he added thoughtfully: "I don't see how we can arrange the
duel. You see there are six of us to fight him."
"Very easily," I replied. "Let your fellows all stand in a row, and
take his fire; that, you see, gives him six chances to one, and he must
be a bad shot if he can't hit one of you; while, on the other hand, you
see, he gets a volley from you six, and one of you'll be certain to
fetch him."
"Exactly"; and away Briggs went, but soon returned to say that the
purser had declined,--"like a d--d coward," he added.
But the news of the sudden and serious illness of Captain Boltrope put
off the duel. I hastened to his bedside, but too late,--an hour
previous he had given up the ghost.
I resolved to return to England. I made known the secret of my birth,
and exhibited my adopted father's letter to Lady Maitland, who at once
suggested my marriage with her daughter, before I returned to claim the
property. We were married, and took our departure next day.
I made no delay in posting at once, in company with my wife and my
friend Briggs, to my native village. Judge of my horror and surprise
when my late adopted father came out of his shop to welcome me.
"Then you are not dead!" I gasped.
"No, my dear boy."
"And this letter?"
My father--as I must still call him--glanced on the paper, and
pronounced it a forgery. Briggs roared with laughter. I turned to him
and demanded an explanation.
"Why, don't you see, Greeny, it's all a joke,--a midshipman's joke!"
"But--" I asked.
"Don't be a fool. You've got a good wife,--be satisfied."
I turned to Clara, and was satisfied. Although Mrs. Maitland never
forgave me, the jolly old Governor laughed heartily over the joke, and
so well used his influence that I soon became, dear reader, Admiral
Breezy, K. C. B.
JOHN JENKINS;
OR,
THE SMOKER REFORMED.
BY T. S. A--TH--R.
CHAPTER I.
"One cigar a day!" said Judge Boompointer.
"One cigar a day!" repeated John Jenkins, as with trepidation he
dropped his half-consumed cigar under his work-bench.
"One cigar a day is three cents a day," remarked Judge Boompointer,
gravely; "and do you know, sir, what one cigar a day, or three cents a
day, amounts to in the course of four years?"
John Jenkins, in his boyhood, had attended the village school, and
possessed considerable arithmetical ability. Taking up a shingle which
lay upon his work-bench, and producing a piece of chalk, with a feeling
of conscious pride he made an exhaustive calculation.
"Exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents," he replied, wiping the
perspiration from his heated brow, while his face flushed with honest
enthusiasm.
"Well, sir, if you saved three cents a day, instead of wasting it, you
would now be the possessor of a new suit of clothes, an illustrated
Family Bible, a pew in the church, a complete set of Patent Office
Reports, a hymn-book, and a paid subscription to Arthur's Home
Magazine, which could be purchased for exactly forty-three dollars and
eighty cents; and," added the Judge, with increasing sternness, "if you
calculate leap-year, which you seem to have strangely omitted, you have
three cents more, sir; THREE CENTS MORE! What would that buy you, sir?"
"A cigar," suggested John Jenkins; but, coloring again deeply, he hid
his face.
"No, sir," said the Judge, with a sweet smile of benevolence stealing
over his stern features; "properly invested, it would buy you that
which passeth all price. Dropped into the missionary-box, who can tell
what heathen, now idly and joyously wantoning in nakedness and sin,
might be brought to a sense of his miserable condition, and made,
through that three cents, to feel the torments of the wicked?"
With these words the Judge retired, leaving John Jenkins buried in
profound thought. "Three cents a day," he muttered. "In forty years I
might be worth four hundred and thirty-eight dollars and ten
cents,--and then I might marry Mary. Ah, Mary!" The young carpenter
sighed, and, drawing a twenty-five cent daguerreotype from his
vest-pocket, gazed long and fervidly upon the features of a young girl
in book muslin and a coral necklace. Then, with a resolute expression,
he carefully locked the door of his workshop and departed.
Alas! his good resolutions were too late. We trifle with the tide of
fortune which too often nips us in the bud and casts the dark shadow of
misfortune over the bright lexicon of youth! That night the
half-consumed fragment of John Jenkins's cigar set fire to his workshop
and burned it up, together with all his tools and materials. There was
no insurance.
CHAPTER II.
THE DOWNWARD PATH.
"Then you still persist in marrying John Jenkins?" queried Judge
Boompointer, as he playfully, with paternal familiarity, lifted the
golden curls of the village belle, Mary Jones.
"I do," replied the fair young girl, in a low voice, that resembled
rock candy in its saccharine firmness,--"I do. He has promised to
reform. Since he lost all his property by fire--"
"The result of his pernicious habit, though he illogically persists in
charging it to me," interrupted the Judge.
"Since then," continued the young girl, "he has endeavored to break
himself of the habit. He tells me that he has substituted the stalks
of the Indian ratan, the outer part of a leguminous plant called the
smoking-bean, and the fragmentary and unconsumed remainder of cigars
which occur at rare and uncertain intervals along the road, which, as
he informs me, though deficient in quality and strength, are
comparatively inexpensive." And, blushing at her own eloquence, the
young girl hid her curls on the Judge's arm.
"Poor thing!" muttered Judge Boompointer. "Dare I tell her all? Yet I
must."
"I shall cling to him," continued the young girl, rising with her
theme, "as the young vine clings to some hoary ruin. Nay, nay, chide
me not, Judge Boompointer. I will marry John Jenkins!"
The Judge was evidently affected. Seating himself at the table, he
wrote a few lines hurriedly upon a piece of paper, which he folded and
placed in the fingers of the destined bride of John Jenkins.
"Mary Jones," said the Judge, with impressive earnestness, "take this
trifle as a wedding gift from one who respects your fidelity and
truthfulness. At the altar let it be a reminder of me." And covering
his face hastily with a handkerchief, the stern and iron-willed man
left the room. As the door closed, Mary unfolded the paper. It was an
order on the corner grocery for three yards of flannel, a paper of
needles, four pounds of soap, one pound of starch, and two boxes of
matches!
"Noble and thoughtful man!" was all Mary Jones could exclaim, as she
hid her face in her hands and burst into a flood of tears.
* * * * *
The bells of Cloverdale are ringing merrily. It is a wedding. "How
beautiful they look!" is the exclamation that passes from lip to lip,
as Mary Jones, leaning timidly on the arm of John Jenkins, enters the
church. But the bride is agitated, and the bridegroom betrays a
feverish nervousness. As they stand in the vestibule, John Jenkins
fumbles earnestly in his vest-pocket. Can it be the ring he is anxious
about? No. He draws a small brown substance from his pocket, and
biting off a piece, hastily replaces the fragment and gazes furtively
around. Surely no one saw him? Alas! the eyes of two of that wedding
party saw the fatal act. Judge Boompointer shook his head sternly.
Mary Jones sighed and breathed a silent prayer. Her husband chewed!
CHAPTER III.
AND LAST.
"What! more bread?" said John Jenkins, gruffly. "You're always asking
for money for bread. D--nation! Do you want to ruin me by your
extravagance?" and as he uttered these words he drew from his pocket a
bottle of whiskey, a pipe, and a paper of tobacco. Emptying the first
at a draught, he threw the empty bottle at the head of his eldest boy,
a youth of twelve summers. The missile struck the child full in the
temple, and stretched him a lifeless corpse. Mrs. Jenkins, whom the
reader will hardly recognize as the once gay and beautiful Mary Jones,
raised the dead body of her son in her arms, and carefully placing the
unfortunate youth beside the pump in the back yard, returned with
saddened step to the house. At another time, and in brighter days, she
might have wept at the occurrence. She was past tears now.
"Father, your conduct is reprehensible!" said little Harrison Jenkins,
the youngest boy. "Where do you expect to go when you die?"
"Ah!" said John Jenkins, fiercely; "this comes of giving children a
liberal education; this is the result of Sabbath schools. Down, viper!"
A tumbler thrown from the same parental fist laid out the youthful
Harrison cold. The four other children had, in the mean time, gathered
around the table with anxious expectancy. With a chuckle, the now
changed and brutal John Jenkins produced four pipes, and, filling them
with tobacco, handed one to each of his offspring and bade them smoke.
"It's better than bread!" laughed the wretch hoarsely.
Mary Jenkins, though of a patient nature, felt it her duty now to
speak. "I have borne much, John Jenkins," she said. "But I prefer
that the children should not smoke. It is an unclean habit, and soils
their clothes. I ask this as a special favor!"
John Jenkins hesitated,--the pangs of remorse began to seize him.
"Promise me this, John!" urged Mary upon her knees.
"I promise!" reluctantly answered John.
"And you will put the money in a savings-bank?"
"I will," repeated her husband; "and I'LL give up smoking, too."
"'Tis well, John Jenkins!" said Judge Boompointer, appearing suddenly
from behind the door, where he had been concealed during this
interview. "Nobly said! my man. Cheer up! I will see that the
children are decently buried." The husband and wife fell into each
other's arms. And Judge Boompointer, gazing upon the affecting
spectacle, burst into tears.
From that day John Jenkins was an altered man.
NO TITLE.
By W--LK--E C--LL--NS.
PROLOGUE.
The following advertisement appeared in the "Times" of the 17th of
June, 1845:--
WANTED.--A few young men for a light genteel employment.
Address J. W., P. O.
In the same paper, of same date, in another column:--
TO LET.--That commodious and elegant family mansion, No. 27 Limehouse
Road, Pultneyville, will be rented low to a respectable tenant if
applied for immediately, the family being about to remove to the
continent.
Under the local intelligence, in another column:--
MISSING.--An unknown elderly gentleman a week ago left his lodgings in
the Kent Road, since which nothing has been heard of him. He left no
trace of his identity except a portmanteau containing a couple of
shirts marked "209, WARD."
To find the connection between the mysterious disappearance of the
elderly gentleman and the anonymous communication, the relevancy of
both these incidents to the letting of a commodious family mansion, and
the dead secret involved in the three occurrences, is the task of the
writer of this history.
A slim young man with spectacles, a large hat, drab gaiters, and a
note-book, sat late that night with a copy of the "Times" before him,
and a pencil which he rattled nervously between his teeth in the
coffee-room of the "Blue Dragon."
CHAPTER I.
MARY JONES'S NARRATIVE.
I am upper housemaid to the family that live at No. 27 Limehouse Road,
Pultneyville. I have been requested by Mr. Wilkey Collings, which I
takes the liberty of here stating is a gentleman born and bred, and has
some consideration for the feelings of servants, and is not above
rewarding them for their trouble, which is more than you can say for
some who ask questions and gets short answers enough, gracious knows,
to tell what I know about them. I have been requested to tell my story
in my own langwidge, though, being no schollard, mind cannot conceive.
I think my master is a brute. Do not know that he has ever attempted to
poison my missus,--which is too good for him, and how she ever came to
marry him, heart only can tell,--but believe him to be capable of any
such hatrosity. Have heard him swear dreadful because of not having his
shaving-water at nine o'clock precisely. Do not know whether he ever
forged a will or tried to get my missus' property, although, not having
confidence in the man, should not be surprised if he had done so.
Believe that there was always something mysterious in his conduct.
Remember distinctly how the family left home to go abroad. Was putting
up my back hair, last Saturday morning, when I heard a ring. Says
cook, "That's missus' bell, and mind you hurry or the master 'ill know
why." Says I, "Humbly thanking you, mem, but taking advice of them as
is competent to give it, I'll take my time." Found missus dressing
herself and master growling as usual. Says missus, quite calm and easy
like, "Mary, we begin to pack to-day." "What for, mem?" says I, taken
aback. "What's that hussy asking?" says master from the bedclothes
quite savage like. "For the Continent--Italy," says missus--"Can you
go Mary?" Her voice was quite gentle and saintlike, but I knew the
struggle it cost, and says I, "With YOU mem, to India's torrid clime,
if required, but with African Gorillas," says I, looking toward the
bed, "never." "Leave the room," says master, starting up and catching
of his bootjack. "Why Charles!" says missus, "how you talk!" affecting
surprise. "Do go Mary," says she, slipping a half-crown into my hand.
I left the room scorning to take notice of the odious wretch's conduct.
Cannot say whether my master and missus were ever legally married. What
with the dreadful state of morals nowadays and them stories in the
circulating libraries, innocent girls don't know into what society they
might be obliged to take situations. Never saw missus' marriage
certificate, though I have quite accidental-like looked in her desk
when open, and would have seen it. Do not know of any lovers missus
might have had. Believe she had a liking for John Thomas, footman, for
she was always spiteful-like--poor lady--when we were together--though
there was nothing between us, as Cook well knows, and dare not deny,
and missus needn't have been jealous. Have never seen arsenic or
Prussian acid in any of the private drawers--but have seen paregoric
and camphor. One of my master's friends was a Count Moscow, a Russian
papist--which I detested.
CHAPTER II.
THE SLIM YOUNG MAN'S STORY.
I am by profession a reporter, and writer for the press. I live at
Pultneyville. I have always had a passion for the marvellous, and have
been distinguished for my facility in tracing out mysteries, and
solving enigmatical occurrences. On the night of the 17th June, 1845,
I left my office and walked homeward. The night was bright and
starlight. I was revolving in my mind the words of a singular item I
had just read in the "Times." I had reached the darkest portion of the
road, and found my self mechanically repeating: "An elderly gentleman a
week ago left his lodgings on the Kent Road," when suddenly I heard a
step behind me.
I turned quickly, with an expression of horror in my face, and by the
light of the newly risen moon beheld an elderly gentleman, with green
cotton umbrella, approaching me. His hair, which was snow white, was
parted over a broad, open forehead. The expression of his face, which
was slightly flushed, was that of amiability verging almost upon
imbecility. There was a strange, inquiring look about the widely
opened mild blue eye,--a look that might have been intensified to
insanity, or modified to idiocy. As he passed me, he paused and partly
turned his face, with a gesture of inquiry. I see him still, his white
locks blowing in the evening breeze, his hat a little on the back of
his head, and his figure painted in relief against the dark blue sky.
Suddenly he turned his mild eye full upon me. A weak smile played
about his thin lips. In a voice which had something of the
tremulousness of age and the self-satisfied chuckle of imbecility in
it, he asked, pointing to the rising moon, "Why?--hush!"
He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be looking anxiously down the
road. I could feel his aged frame shaking with terror as he laid his
thin hands upon my shoulders and faced me in the direction of the
supposed danger.
"Hush! did you not hear them coming?"
I listened; there was no sound but the soughing of the roadside trees
in the evening wind. I endeavored to reassure him, with such success
that in a few moments the old weak smile appeared on his benevolent
face.
"Why?--" But the look of interrogation was succeeded by a hopeless
blankness.
"Why!" I repeated with assuring accents.
"Why," he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering over his face, "is
yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean, casting a flood of
light o'er hill and dale, like-- Why," he repeated, with a feeble
smile, "is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean--" He
hesitated,--stammered,--and gazed at me hopelessly, with the tears
dripping from his moist and widely opened eyes.
I took his hand kindly in my own. "Casting a shadow o'er hill and
dale," I repeated quietly, leading him up the subject, "like-- Come,
now."
"Ah!" he said, pressing my hand tremulously, "you know it?"
"I do. Why is it like--the--eh--the commodious mansion on the
Limehouse Road?"
A blank stare only followed. He shook his head sadly. "Like the young
men wanted for a light, genteel employment?"
He wagged his feeble old head cunningly.
"Or, Mr. Ward," I said, with bold confidence, "like the mysterious
disappearance from the Kent Road?"
The moment was full of suspense. He did not seem to hear me. Suddenly
he turned.
"Ha!"
I darted forward. But he had vanished in the darkness.
CHAPTER III.
NO. 27 LIMEHOUSE ROAD.
It was a hot midsummer evening. Limehouse Road was deserted save by
dust and a few rattling butchers' carts, and the bell of the muffin and
crumpet man. A commodious mansion, which stood on the right of the
road as you enter Pultneyville, surrounded by stately poplars and a
high fence surmounted by a chevaux de frise of broken glass, looked to
the passing and footsore pedestrian like the genius of seclusion and
solitude. A bill announcing in the usual terms that the house was to
let, hung from the bell at the servants' entrance.
As the shades of evening closed, and the long shadows of the poplars
stretched across the road, a man carrying a small kettle stopped and
gazed, first at the bill and then at the house. When he had reached
the corner of the fence, he again stopped and looked cautiously up and
down the road. Apparently satisfied with the result of his scrutiny,
he deliberately sat himself down in the dark shadow of the fence, and
at once busied himself in some employment, so well concealed as to be
invisible to the gaze of passers-by. At the end of an hour he retired
cautiously.
But not altogether unseen. A slim young man, with spectacles and
note-book, stepped from behind a tree as the retreating figure of the
intruder was lost in the twilight, and transferred from the fence to
his note-book the freshly stencilled inscription, "S--T--1860--X."
CHAPTER IV.
COUNT MOSCOW'S NARRATIVE.
I am a foreigner. Observe! To be a foreigner in England is to be
mysterious, suspicious, intriguing. M. Collins has requested the
history of my complicity with certain occurrences. It is nothing, bah!
absolutely nothing.
I write with ease and fluency. Why should I not write? Tra la la? I
am what you English call corpulent. Ha, ha! I am a pupil of
Macchiavelli. I find it much better to disbelieve everything, and to
approach my subject and wishes circuitously, than in a direct manner.
You have observed that playful animal, the cat. Call it, and it does
not come to you directly, but rubs itself against all the furniture in
the room, and reaches you finally--and scratches. Ah, ha, scratches! I
am of the feline species. People call me a villain--bah!
I know the family, living No. 27 Limehouse Road. I respect the
gentleman,--a fine, burly specimen of your Englishman,--and madame,
charming, ravishing, delightful. When it became known to me that they
designed to let their delightful residence, and visit foreign shores, I
at once called upon them. I kissed the hand of madame. I embraced the
great Englishman. Madame blushed slightly. The great Englishman shook
my hand like a mastiff.
I began in that dexterous, insinuating manner, of which I am truly
proud. I thought madame was ill. Ah, no. A change, then, was all
that was required. I sat down at the piano and sang. In a few minutes
madame retired. I was alone with my friend.
Seizing his hand, I began with every demonstration of courteous
sympathy. I do not repeat my words, for my intention was conveyed more
in accent, emphasis, and manner, than speech. I hinted to him that he
had another wife living. I suggested that this was balanced--ha!--by
his wife's lover. That, possibly, he wished to fly; hence the letting
of his delightful mansion. That he regularly and systematically beat
his wife in the English manner, and that she repeatedly deceived me. I
talked of hope, of consolation, of remedy. I carelessly produced a
bottle of strychnine and a small vial of stramonium from my pocket, and
enlarged on the efficiency of drugs. His face, which had gradually
become convulsed, suddenly became fixed with a frightful expression.
He started to his feet, and roared: "You d--d Frenchman!"
I instantly changed my tactics, and endeavored to embrace him. He
kicked me twice, violently. I begged permission to kiss madame's hand.
He replied by throwing me down stairs.
I am in bed with my head bound up, and beef-steaks upon my eyes, but
still confident and buoyant. I have not lost faith in Macchiavelli.
Tra la la! as they sing in the opera. I kiss everybody's hands.
CHAPTER V.
DR. DIGGS'S STATEMENT.
My name is David Diggs. I am a surgeon, living at No. 9 Tottenham
Court. On the 15th of June, 1854, I was called to see an elderly
gentleman lodging on the Kent Road. Found him highly excited, with
strong febrile symptoms, pulse 120, increasing. Repeated incoherently
what I judged to be the popular form of a conundrum. On closer
examination found acute hydrocephalus and both lobes of the brain
rapidly filling with water. In consultation with an eminent
phrenologist, it was further discovered that all the organs were more
or less obliterated, except that of Comparison. Hence the patient was
enabled to only distinguish the most common points of resemblance
between objects, without drawing upon other faculties, such as Ideality
or Language, for assistance. Later in the day found him
sinking,--being evidently unable to carry the most ordinary conundrum
to a successful issue. Exhibited Tinct. Val., Ext. Opii, and Camphor,
and prescribed quiet and emollients. On the 17th the patient was
missing.
CHAPTER LAST.
STATEMENT OF THE PUBLISHER.
On the 18th of June, Mr. Wilkie Collins left a roll of manuscript with
us for publication, without title or direction, since which time he has
not been heard from. In spite of the care of the proof-readers, and
valuable literary assistance, it is feared that the continuity of the
story has been destroyed by some accidental misplacing of chapters
during its progress. How and what chapters are so misplaced, the
publisher leaves to an indulgent public to discover.
N N.
BEING A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARAGRAPHIC STYLE.
--Mademoiselle, I swear to you that I love you.
--You who read these pages. You who turn your burning eyes upon these
words--words that I trace-- Ah, Heaven! the thought maddens me.
--I will be calm. I will imitate the reserve of the festive
Englishman, who wears a spotted handkerchief which he calls a Belchio,
who eats biftek, and caresses a bulldog. I will subdue myself like him.
--Ha! Poto-beer! All right--Goddam!
--Or, I will conduct myself as the free-born American--the gay Brother
Jonathan! I will whittle me a stick. I will whistle to myself "Yankee
Doodle," and forget my passion in excessive expectoration.
--Hoho!--wake snakes and walk chalks.
The world is divided into two great divisions,--Paris and the
provinces. There is but one Paris. There are several provinces, among
which may be numbered England, America, Russia, and Italy.
N N. was a Parisian.
But N N. did not live in Paris. Drop a Parisian in the provinces, and
you drop a part of Paris with him. Drop him in Senegambia, and in
three days he will give you an omelette soufflee, or a pate de foie
gras, served by the neatest of Senegambian filles, whom he will call
Mademoiselle. In three weeks he will give you an opera.
N N. was not dropped in Senegambia, but in San Francisco,--quite as
awkward.
They find gold in San Francisco, but they don't understand gilding.
N N. existed three years in this place. He became bald on the top of
his head, as all Parisians do. Look down from your box at the Opera
Comique, Mademoiselle, and count the bald crowns of the fast young men
in the pit. Ah--you tremble! They show where the arrows of love have
struck and glanced off.
N N. was also near-sighted, as all Parisians finally become. This is a
gallant provision of Nature to spare them the mortification of
observing that their lady friends grow old. After a certain age every
woman is handsome to a Parisian.
One day, N N. was walking down Washington street. Suddenly he stopped.
He was standing before the door of a mantuamaker. Beside the counter,
at the farther extremity of the shop, stood a young and elegantly
formed woman. Her face was turned from N N. He entered. With a
plausible excuse, and seeming indifference, he gracefully opened
conversation with the mantuamaker as only a Parisian can. But he had to
deal with a Parisian. His attempts to view the features of the fair
stranger by the counter were deftly combated by the shop-woman. He was
obliged to retire.
N N. went home and lost his appetite. He was haunted by the elegant
basque and graceful shoulders of the fair unknown, during the whole
night.
The next day he sauntered by the mantuamaker. Ah! Heavens! A thrill
ran through his frame, and his fingers tingled with a delicious
electricity. The fair inconnue was there! He raised his hat
gracefully. He was not certain, but he thought that a slight motion of
her faultless bonnet betrayed recognition. He would have wildly darted
into the shop, but just then the figure of the mantuamaker appeared in
the doorway.
--Did Monsieur wish anything?
Misfortune! Desperation. N N. purchased a bottle of Prussic acid, a
sack of charcoal, and a quire of pink note-paper, and returned home.
He wrote a letter of farewell to the closely fitting basque, and opened
the bottle of Prussic acid.
Some one knocked at his door. It was a Chinaman, with his weekly linen.
These Chinese are docile, but not intelligent. They are ingenious, but
not creative. They are cunning in expedients, but deficient in tact.
In love they are simply barbarous. They purchase their wives openly,
and not constructively by attorney. By offering small sums for their
sweethearts, they degrade the value of the sex.
Nevertheless, N N. felt he was saved. He explained all to the faithful
Mongolian, and exhibited the letter he had written. He implored him to
deliver it.
The Mongolian assented. The race are not cleanly or sweet-savored, but
N N. fell upon his neck. He embraced him with one hand, and closed his
nostrils with the other. Through him, he felt he clasped the
close-fitting basque.
The next day was one of agony and suspense. Evening came, but no
Mercy. N N. lit the charcoal. But, to compose his nerves, he closed
his door and first walked mildly up and down Montgomery Street. When
he returned, he found the faithful Mongolian on the steps.
--All lity!
These Chinese are not accurate in their pronunciation. They avoid the
r, like the English nobleman.
N N. gasped for breath. He leaned heavily against the Chinaman.
--Then you have seen her, Ching Long?
--Yes. All lity. She cum. Top side of house.
The docile barbarian pointed up the stairs, and chuckled.
--She here--impossible! Ah, Heaven! do I dream?
--Yes. All lity,--top side of house. Good by, John.
This is the familiar parting epithet of the Mongolian. It is
equivalent to our au revoir.
N N. gazed with a stupefied air on the departing servant.
He placed his hand on his throbbing heart. She here,--alone beneath
this roof. O Heavens, what happiness!
But how? Torn from her home. Ruthlessly dragged, perhaps, from her
evening devotions, by the hands of a relentless barbarian. Could she
forgive him?
He dashed frantically up the stairs. He opened the door. She was
standing beside his couch with averted face.
A strange giddiness overtook him. He sank upon his knees at the
threshold.
--Pardon, pardon. My angel, can you forgive me?
A terrible nausea now seemed added to the fearful giddiness. His
utterance grew thick and sluggish.
--Speak, speak, enchantress. Forgiveness is all I ask. My Love, my
Life!
She did not answer. He staggered to his feet. As he rose, his eyes
fell on the pan of burning charcoal. A terrible suspicion flashed
across his mind. This giddiness,--this nausea. The ignorance of the
barbarian. This silence. O merciful heavens! she was dying!
He crawled toward her. He touched her. She fell forward with a
lifeless sound upon the floor. He uttered a piercing shriek, and threw
himself beside her.
* * * * *
A file of gendarmes, accompanied by the Chef Burke, found him the next
morning lying lifeless upon the floor. They laughed brutally,--these
cruel minions of the law,--and disengaged his arm from the waist of the
wooden dummy which they had come to reclaim for the mantuamaker.
Emptying a few bucketfuls of water over his form, they finally
succeeded in robbing him, not only of his mistress, but of that Death
he had coveted without her.
Ah! we live in a strange world, Messieurs.
FANTINE.
AFTER THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.
PROLOGUE.
As long as there shall exist three paradoxes, a moral Frenchman, a
religious Atheist, and a believing sceptic; so long, in fact, as
booksellers shall wait--say twenty-five years--for a new gospel; so
long as paper shall remain cheap and ink three sous a bottle, I have no
hesitation in saying that such books as these are not utterly
profitless.
VICTOR HUGO.
I.
To be good is to be queer. What is a good man? Bishop Myriel.
My friend, you will possibly object to this. You will say you know
what a good man is. Perhaps you will say your clergyman is a good man,
for instance.
Bah! you are mistaken; you are an Englishman, and an Englishman is a
beast.
Englishmen think they are moral when they are only serious. These
Englishmen also wear ill-shaped hats, and dress horribly!
Bah! they are canaille.
Still, Bishop Myriel was a good man,--quite as good as you. Better
than you, in fact.
One day M. Myriel was in Paris. This angel used to walk about the
streets like any other man. He was not proud, though fine-looking.
Well, three gamins de Paris called him bad names. Says one:--
"Ah, mon Dieu! there goes a priest; look out for your eggs and
chickens!"
What did this good man do? He called to them kindly.
"My children," said he, "this is clearly not your fault. I recognize
in this insult and irreverence only the fault of your immediate
progenitors. Let us pray for your immediate progenitors."
They knelt down and prayed for their immediate progenitors.
The effect was touching.
The Bishop looked calmly around.
"On reflection," said he, gravely, "I was mistaken; this is clearly the
fault of Society. Let us pray for Society."
They knelt down and prayed for Society.
The effect was sublimer yet. What do you think of that? You, I mean.
Everybody remembers the story of the Bishop and Mother Nez Retrousse.
Old Mother Nez Retrouse sold asparagus. She was poor; there's a great
deal of meaning in that word, my friend. Some people say "poor but
honest." I say, Bah!
Bishop Myriel bought six bunches of asparagus. This good man had one
charming failing; he was fond of asparagus. He gave her a franc and
received three sous change.
The sous were bad,--counterfeit. What did this good Bishop do? He
said: "I should not have taken change from a poor woman."
Then afterwards, to his housekeeper: "Never take change from a poor
woman."
Then he added to himself: "For the sous will probably be bad."
II.
When a man commits a crime, society claps him in prison. A prison is
one of the worst hotels imaginable. The people there are low and
vulgar. The butter is bad, the coffee is green. Ah, it is horrible!
In prison, as in a bad hotel, a man soon loses, not only his morals,
but what is much worse to a Frenchman, his sense of refinement and
delicacy.
Jean Valjean came from prison with confused notions of society. He
forgot the modern peculiarities of hospitality. So he walked off with
the Bishop's candlesticks.
Let us consider: candlesticks were stolen; that was evident. Society
put Jean Valjean in prison; that was evident, too. In prison, Society
took away his refinement; that is evident, likewise.
Who is Society?
You and I are Society.
My friend, you and I stole those candlesticks!
III.
The Bishop thought so, too. He meditated profoundly for six days. On
the morning of the seventh he went to the Prefecture of Police.
He said: "Monsieur, have me arrested. I have stolen candlesticks."
The official was governed by the law of Society, and refused.
What did this Bishop do?
He had a charming ball and chain made, affixed to his leg, and wore it
the rest of his life.
This is a fact!
IV.
Love is a mystery.
A little friend of mine down in the country, at Auvergne, said to me
one day: "Victor, Love is the world,--it contains everything."
She was only sixteen, this sharp-witted little girl, and a beautiful
blonde. She thought everything of me.
Fantine was one of those women who do wrong in the most virtuous and
touching manner. This is a peculiarity of French grisettes.
You are an Englishman, and you don't understand. Learn, my friend,
learn. Come to Paris and improve your morals.
Fantine was the soul of modesty. She always wore high-neck dresses.
High-neck dresses are a sign of modesty.
Fantine loved Tholmoyes. Why? My God! What are you to do? It was
the fault of her parents, and she hadn't any. How shall you teach her?
You must teach the parent if you wish to educate the child. How would
you become virtuous?
Teach your grandmother!
V.
When Tholmoyes ran away from Fantine,--which was done in a charming,
gentlemanly manner,--Fantine became convinced that a rigid sense of
propriety might look upon her conduct as immoral. She was a creature of
sensitiveness,--and her eyes were opened.
She was virtuous still, and resolved to break off the liaison at once.
So she put up her wardrobe and baby in a bundle. Child as she was, she
loved them both. Then left Paris.
VI.
Fantine's native place had changed.
M. Madeline--an angel, and inventor of jet work--had been teaching the
villagers how to make spurious jet.
This is a progressive age. Those Americans,--children of the
West,--they make nutmegs out of wood.
I, myself, have seen hams made of pine, in the wigwams of those
children of the forest.
But civilization has acquired deception too. Society is made up of
deception. Even the best French society.
Still there was one sincere episode.
Eh?
The French Revolution!
VII.
M. Madeline was, if anything, better than Myriel.
M. Myriel was a saint. M. Madeline a good man.
M. Myriel was dead. M. Madeline was living.
That made all the difference.
M. Madeline made virtue profitable. I have seen it written:--
"Be virtuous and you will be happy."
Where did I see this written? In the modern Bible? No. In the Koran?
No. In Rousseau? No. Diderot? No. Where then?
In a copy-book.
VIII.
M. Madeline was M. le Maire.
This is how it came about.
For a long time he refused the honor. One day an old woman, standing
on the steps, said:--
"Bah, a good mayor is a good thing.
"You are a good thing.
"Be a good mayor."
This woman was a rhetorician. She understood inductive ratiocination.
IX.
When this good M. Madeline, whom the reader will perceive must have
been a former convict, and a very bad man, gave himself up to justice
as the real Jean Valjean, about this same time, Fantine was turned away
from the manufactory, and met with a number of losses from society.
Society attacked her, and this is what she lost:--
First her lover.
Then her child.
Then her place.
Then her hair.
Then her teeth.
Then her liberty.
Then her life.
What do you think of society after that? I tell you the present social
system is a humbug.
X.
This is necessarily the end of Fantine. There are other things that
will be stated in other volumes to follow. Don't be alarmed; there are
plenty of miserable people left.
Au revoir--my friend.
"LA FEMME."
AFTER THE FRENCH OF M. MICHELET.
I.
WOMEN AS AN INSTITUTION.
"If it were not for women, few of us would at present be in existence."
This is the remark of a cautious and discreet writer. He was also
sagacious and intelligent.
Woman! Look upon her and admire her. Gaze upon her and love her. If
she wishes to embrace you, permit her. Remember she is weak and you
are strong.
But don't treat her unkindly. Don't make love to another woman before
her face, even if she be your wife. Don't do it. Always be polite,
even should she fancy somebody better than you.
If your mother, my dear Amadis, had not fancied your father better than
somebody, you might have been that somebody's son. Consider this.
Always be a philosopher, even about women.
Few men understand women. Frenchmen, perhaps, better than any one
else. I am a Frenchman.
II.
THE INFANT.
She is a child--a little thing--an infant.
She has a mother and father. Let us suppose, for example, they are
married. Let us be moral if we cannot be happy and free--they are
married--perhaps--they love one another--who knows?
But she knows nothing of this; she is an infant--a small thing--a
trifle!
She is not lovely at first. It is cruel, perhaps, but she is red, and
positively ugly. She feels this keenly and cries. She weeps. Ah, my
God, how she weeps! Her cries and lamentations now are really
distressing.
Tears stream from her in floods. She feels deeply and copiously like
M. Alphonse de Lamartine in his Confessions.
If you are her mother, Madame, you will fancy worms; you will examine
her linen for pins, and what not. Ah, hypocrite! you, even YOU,
misunderstand her.
Yet she has charming natural impulses. See how she tosses her dimpled
arms. She looks longingly at her mother. She has a language of her
own. She says, "goo goo," and "ga ga."
She demands something--this infant!
She is faint, poor thing. She famishes. She wishes to be restored.
Restore her, Mother!
It is the first duty of a mother to restore her child!
III.
THE DOLL.
She is hardly able to walk; she already totters under the weight of a
doll.
It is a charming and elegant affair. It has pink cheeks and
purple-black hair. She prefers brunettes, for she has already, with
the quick knowledge of a French infant, perceived she is a blonde, and
that her doll cannot rival her. Mon Dieu, how touching! Happy child!
She spends hours in preparing its toilet. She begins to show her taste
in the exquisite details of its dress. She loves it madly, devotedly.
She will prefer it to bonbons. She already anticipates the wealth of
love she will hereafter pour out on her lover, her mother, her father,
and finally, perhaps, her husband.
This is the time the anxious parent will guide these first outpourings.
She will read her extracts from Michelet's L'Amour, Rousseau's Heloise,
and the Revue des deux Mondes.
IV.
THE MUD PIE.
She was in tears to-day.
She had stolen away from her bonne and was with some rustic infants.
They had noses in the air, and large, coarse hands and feet.
They had seated themselves around a pool in the road, and were
fashioning fantastic shapes in the clayey soil with their hands. Her
throat swelled and her eyes sparkled with delight as, for the first
time, her soft palms touched the plastic mud. She made a graceful and
lovely pie. She stuffed it with stones for almonds and plums. She
forgot everything. It was being baked in the solar rays, when madame
came and took her away.
She weeps. It is night, and she is weeping still.
V.
HER FIRST LOVE.
She no longer doubts her beauty. She is loved. She saw him secretly.
He is vivacious and sprightly. He is famous. He has already had an
affair with Finfin, the fille de chambre, and poor Finfin is desolate.
He is noble. She knows he is the son of Madame la Baronne Couturiere.
She adores him.
She affects not to notice him. Poor little thing! Hippolyte is
distracted--annihilated--inconsolable and charming.
She admires his boots, his cravat, his little gloves his exquisite
pantaloons--his coat, and cane.
She offers to run away with him. He is transported, but magnanimous.
He is wearied, perhaps. She sees him the next day offering flowers to
the daughter of Madame la Comtesse Blanchisseuse.
She is again in tears.
She reads Paul et Virginie. She is secretly transported. When she
reads how the exemplary young woman laid down her life rather than
appear en deshabille to her lover, she weeps again. Tasteful and
virtuous Bernardine de St. Pierre!--the daughters of France admire you!
All this time her doll is headless in the cabinet. The mud pie is
broken on the road.
VI.
THE WIFE.
She is tired of loving and she marries.
Her mother thinks it, on the whole, the best thing. As the day
approaches, she is found frequently in tears. Her mother will not
permit the affianced one to see her, and he makes several attempts to
commit suicide.
But something happens. Perhaps it is winter, and the water is cold.
Perhaps there are not enough people present to witness his heroism.
In this way her future husband is spared to her. The ways of
Providence are indeed mysterious. At this time her mother will talk
with her. She will offer philosophy. She will tell her she was
married herself.
But what is this new and ravishing light that breaks upon her? The
toilet and wedding clothes! She is in a new sphere.
She makes out her list in her own charming writing. Here it is. Let
every mother heed it.*
* * * * *
* * * * *
She is married. On the day after, she meets her old lover, Hippolyte.
He is again transported.
* The delicate reader will appreciate the omission of certain articles
for which English synonymes are forbidden.
VII.
HER OLD AGE.
A Frenchwoman never grows old.
MARY MCGILLUP.
A SOUTHERN NOVEL.
AFTER BELLE BOYD.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. A. S--LA.
INTRODUCTION.
"Will you write me up?"
The scene was near Temple Bar. The speaker was the famous rebel Mary
McGillup,--a young girl of fragile frame, and long, lustrous black
hair. I must confess that the question was a peculiar one, and, under
the circumstances, somewhat puzzling. It was true I had been kindly
treated by the Northerners, and, though prejudiced against them, was to
some extent under obligations to them. It was true that I knew little
or nothing of American politics, history, or geography. But when did
an English writer ever weigh such trifles? Turning to the speaker, I
inquired with some caution the amount of pecuniary compensation offered
for the work.
"Sir!" she said, drawing her fragile form to its full height, "you
insult me,--you insult the South."
"But look ye here, d'ye see--the tin--the blunt--the ready--the stiff;
you know. Don't ye see, we can't do without that, you know!"
"It shall be contingent on the success of the story," she answered
haughtily. "In the mean time take this precious gem." And drawing a
diamond ring from her finger, she placed it with a roll of MSS. in my
hands and vanished.
Although unable to procure more than L1 2s. 6 d. from an intelligent
pawnbroker to whom I stated the circumstances and with whom I pledged
the ring, my sympathies with the cause of a downtrodden and chivalrous
people were at once enlisted. I could not help wondering that in rich
England, the home of the oppressed and the free, a young and lovely
woman like the fair author of those pages should be obliged to thus
pawn her jewels--her marriage gift--for the means to procure her bread!
With the exception of the English aristocracy,--who much resemble
them,--I do not know of a class of people that I so much admire as the
Southern planters. May I become better acquainted with both!
Since writing the above, the news of Mr. Lincoln's assassination has
reached me. It is enough for me to say that I am dissatisfied with the
result. I do not attempt to excuse the assassin. Yet there will be
men who will charge this act upon the chivalrous South. This leads me
to repeat a remark once before made by me in this connection which has
become justly celebrated. It is this:--
"It is usual, in cases of murder, to look for the criminal among those
who expect to be benefited by the crime. In the death of Lincoln, his
immediate successor in office alone receives the benefit of his dying."
If her Majesty Queen Victoria were assassinated, which Heaven forbid,
the one most benefited by her decease would, of course, be his Royal
Highness the Prince of Wales, her immediate successor. It would be
unnecessary to state that suspicion would at once point to the real
culprit, which would of course be his Royal Highness. This is logic.
But I have done. After having thus stated my opinion in favor of the
South, I would merely remark that there is One who judgeth all
things,--who weigheth the cause between brother and brother,--and
awardeth the perfect retribution; and whose ultimate decision I, as a
British subject, have only anticipated.
G. A. S.
CHAPTER I.
Every reader of Belle Boyd's narrative will remember an allusion to a
"lovely, fragile-looking girl of nineteen," who rivalled Belle Boyd in
devotion to the Southern cause, and who, like her, earned the enviable
distinction of being a "rebel spy."
I am that "fragile" young creature. Although on friendly terms with
the late Miss Boyd, now Mrs. Hardinge, candor compels me to state that
nothing but our common politics prevents me from exposing the
ungenerous spirit she has displayed in this allusion. To be dismissed
in a single paragraph after years of-- But I anticipate. To put up
with this feeble and forced acknowledgment of services rendered would
be a confession of a craven spirit, which, thank God, though "fragile"
and only "nineteen," I do not possess. I may not have the "blood of a
Howard" in my veins, as some people, whom I shall not disgrace myself
by naming, claim to have, but I have yet to learn that the race of
McGillup ever yet brooked slight or insult. I shall not say that
attention in certain quarters seems to have turned SOME PEOPLE'S heads;
nor that it would have been more delicate if certain folks had kept
quiet on the subject of their courtship, and the rejection of certain
offers, when it is known that their forward conduct was all that
procured them a husband! Thank heaven, the South has some daughters
who are above such base considerations! While nothing shall tempt me
to reveal the promises to share equally the fame of certain
enterprises, which were made by one who shall now be nameless, I have
deemed it only just to myself to put my own adventures upon record. If
they are not equal to those of another individual, it is because,
though "fragile," my education has taught me to have some consideration
for the truth. I am done.
CHAPTER II.
I was born in Missouri. My dislike for the Northern scum was inherent.
This was shown, at an early age, in the extreme distaste I exhibited
for Webster's spelling-book,--the work of a well-known Eastern
Abolitionist. I cannot be too grateful for the consideration shown by
my chivalrous father,--a gentleman of the old school,--who resisted to
the last an attempt to introduce Mitchell's Astronomy and Geography
into the public school of our district. When I state that this same
Mitchell became afterward a hireling helot in the Yankee Army, every
intelligent reader will appreciate the prophetic discrimination of this
true son of the South.
I was eight years old when I struck the first blow for Southern freedom
against the Northern Tyrant. It is hardly necessary to state that in
this instance the oppressor was a pale, overworked New England
"schoolmarm." The principle for which I was contending, I felt,
however, to be the same. Resenting an affront put upon me, I one day
heaved a rock* at the head of the Vandal schoolmistress. I was seized
and overpowered. My pen falters as I reach the climax. English
readers will not give credit to this sickening story,--the civilized
world will avert its head,--but I, Mary McGillup, was publicly SPANKED!
* NOTE, BY G. A. S.--In the Southwest, any stone larger than a pea is
termed "a rock."
CHAPTER III.
But the chaotic vortex of civil war approached, and fell destruction,
often procrastinated, brooded in storm.* As the English people may
like to know what was really the origin of the rebellion, I have no
hesitation in giving them the true and only cause. Slavery had nothing
to do with it, although the violation of the Declaration of
Independence, in the disregard by the North of the Fugitive Slave
Law,** might have provoked a less fiery people than the Southrons. At
the inception of the struggle a large amount of Southern indebtedness
was held by the people of the North. To force payment from the
generous but insolvent debtor--to obtain liquidation from the Southern
planter--was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven
Northerners. Let the common people of England look to this. Let the
improvident literary hack; the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor;
the newspaper frequenter of sponging-houses, remember this in their
criticisms of the vile and slavish Yankee.
* I make no pretension to fine writing, but perhaps Mrs. Hardinge can
lay over that. O, of course! M. McG.
** The Declaration of Independence grants to each subject "the pursuit
of life, liberty, and happiness." A fugitive slave may be said to
personify "life, liberty, and happiness." Hence his pursuit is really
legal. This is logic. G. A. S.
CHAPTER IV.
The roasting of an Abolitionist, by a greatly infuriated community, was
my first taste of the horrors of civil war. Heavens! Why will the
North persist in this fratricidal warfare? The expulsion of several
Union refugees, which soon followed, now fairly plunged my beloved
State in the seething vortex.
I was sitting at the piano one afternoon, singing that stirring
refrain, so justly celebrated, but which a craven spirit, unworthy of
England, has excluded from some of her principal restaurants, and was
dwelling with some enthusiasm on the following line:--
"Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!"
when a fragment of that scum, clothed in that detestable blue uniform
which is the symbol of oppression, entered the apartment. "I have the
honor of addressing the celebrated rebel spy, Miss McGillup," said the
Vandal officer.
In a moment I was perfectly calm. With the exception of slightly
expectorating twice in the face of the minion, I did not betray my
agitation. Haughtily, yet firmly, I replied:--
"I am."
"You looked as if you might be," the brute replied, as he turned on his
heel to leave the apartment.
In an instant I threw myself before him. "You shall not leave here
thus," I shrieked, grappling him with an energy which no one, seeing my
frail figure, would have believed. "I know the reputation of your
hireling crew. I read your dreadful purpose in your eye. Tell me not
that your designs are not sinister. You came here to insult me,--to
kiss me, perhaps. You sha'n't,--you naughty man. Go away!"
The blush of conscious degradation rose to the cheek of the Lincoln
hireling as he turned his face away from mine.
In an instant I drew my pistol from my belt, which, in anticipation of
some such outrage, I always carried, and shot him.
CHAPTER V.
"Thy forte was less to act than speak,
Maryland!
Thy politics were changed each week,
Maryland!
With Northern Vandals thou wast meek,
With sympathizers thou wouldst shriek,
I know thee--O, 'twas like thy cheek!
Maryland! my Maryland!"
After committing the act described in the preceding chapter, which
every English reader will pardon, I went up stairs, put on a clean pair
of stockings, and, placing a rose in my lustrous black hair, proceeded
at once to the camp of Generals Price and Mosby to put them in
possession of information which would lead to the destruction of a
portion of the Federal Army. During a great part of my flight I was
exposed to a running fire from the Federal pickets of such coarse
expressions as, "Go it, Sally Reb," "Dust it, my Confederate beauty,"
but I succeeded in reaching the glorious Southern camp uninjured.
In a week afterwards I was arrested, by a lettre de cachet of Mr.
Stanton, and placed in the Bastile. British readers of my story will
express surprise at these terms, but I assure them that not only these
articles but tumbrils, guillotines, and conciergeries were in active
use among the Federals. If substantiation be required, I refer to the
Charleston Mercury, the only reliable organ, next to the New York Daily
News, published in the country. At the Bastile I made the acquaintance
of the accomplished and elegant author of Guy Livingstone,* to whom I
presented a curiously carved thigh-bone of a Union officer, and from
whom I received the following beautiful acknowledgment:--
"Demoiselle:--Should I ever win hame to my ain countrie, I make mine
avow to enshrine in my reliquaire this elegant bijouterie and offering
of La Belle Rebelle. Nay, methinks this fraction of man's anatomy were
some compensation for the rib lost by the 'grand old gardener,' Adam."
* The recent conduct of Mr. Livingstone renders him unworthy of my
notice. His disgusting praise of Belle Boyd, and complete ignoring of
my claims, show the artfulness of some females and puppyism of some
men. M. McG.
CHAPTER VI.
Released at last from durance vile and placed on board of an Erie
canal-boat, on my way to Canada, I for a moment breathed the sweets of
liberty. Perhaps the interval gave me opportunity to indulge in
certain reveries which I had hitherto sternly dismissed. Henry
Breckinridge Folair, a consistent copperhead, captain of the
canal-boat, again and again pressed that suit I had so often rejected.
It was a lovely moonlight night. We sat on the deck of the gliding
craft. The moonbeam and the lash of the driver fell softly on the
flanks of the off horse, and only the surging of the tow-rope broke the
silence. Folair's arm clasped my waist. I suffered it to remain.
Placing in my lap a small but not ungrateful roll of checkerberry
lozenges, he took the occasion to repeat softly in my ear the words of
a motto he had just unwrapped--with its graceful covering of the tissue
paper--from a sugar almond. The heart of the wicked little rebel, Mary
McGillup, was won!
The story of Mary McGillup is done. I might have added the journal of
my husband, Henry Breckinridge Folair, but as it refers chiefly to his
freights, and a schedule of his passengers, I have been obliged,
reluctantly, to suppress it.
It is due to my friends to say that I have been requested not to write
this book. Expressions have reached my ears, the reverse of
complimentary. I have been told that its publication will probably
insure my banishment for life. Be it so. If the cause for which I
labored have been subserved, I am content.
LONDON, May, 1865.
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