A HALF RECOGNITION.
The character of Robert Ford may be divined without much difficulty from
the glimpses which have already been given. He was an amiable man, but
strikingly deficient in those practical traits which usually mark our
countrymen and command success even under the most unpromising
circumstances. He was not a man to succeed in business, nor suited for
the rough jostling with the world which business men must expect. He
ought rather to have been a quiet scholar, and dreamed away long days in
his library,—“the world forgetting, by the world forgot.” Such would
have been his choice if his circumstances had been easy. Under the
pressure of necessity he had turned aside from the ordinary paths of
money-making to devote himself to a chimerical plan by which he hoped to
attain wealth and distinction.
No man of a well balanced mind would have labored with such sanguine
expectations of success on a project so uncertain as the invention of a
flying machine. But Mr. Ford had not a well balanced mind. He was much
given to theorizing, and, like many amiable but obstinate persons, it
was as difficult to dislodge from his mind a purpose which had once
gained entrance there as to convert him by some miraculous
transformation into a sharp man of the world. Had he lived in the middle
ages it is very probable that his tastes and the habits of his mind
would have led him to devote himself to alchemy, or some other recondite
science, which would have consumed his time and money without any
adequate return.
We will now suppose three months to have elapsed since the events
recorded in our first chapter; three months in which the flowers of June
had been exchanged for the fruits of September, and the mellow beauty of
autumn had succeeded the glory of early summer.
During this time Helen has become an established favorite with all the
inmates except M’lle Fanchette, who yet, finding the tide of general
opinion against her, is content with privately stigmatizing the child as
an “upstart,” and a “forward hussy,” though in truth it would be
difficult to imagine anything more modest or retiring than her conduct.
She and her father still occupy the little room in the fourth story
back. Nothing has come of Mr. Ford’s invention yet, though he has filled
the room with strange, out-of-the-way appliances, wheels, and bits of
machinery, on which he labors day after day in the construction of his
proposed flying machine. His repeated failures have little effect in
damping his spirits. He has the true spirit of a discoverer, and is as
sanguine as ever of ultimate success. He has learned the difficult
lesson of patience.
“With such an end in view,” he sometimes exclaims with enthusiasm, half
to himself, half to Helen, “what matter a few months or years! Rome was
not built in a day, nor is it to be expected that a discovery which is
to affect the whole world in its consequences, should be the result of a
few hours’ or days’ labor.”
Helen, whose veneration for her father is unbounded, listens with the
fullest confidence, to his repeated assurances. It pains her to find
that others are more skeptical. Even Mother Morton who, though some find
her rough, is invariably kind to Helen, looks upon the father as a
visionary, since she has discovered the nature of his labors. She one
day intimated this to Helen. It was some time before the latter could
understand that a doubt was entertained as to her father’s success, and
when the conviction came slowly, it brought such an expression of pain
to her face, that the landlady resolved never in future to venture upon
an allusion which should grieve the child, whom she could not but love
the better for her filial trust and confidence.
Meanwhile the rent of the apartment which they occupy, and the cost of
living, simple as is their fare, have sensibly diminished their scanty
supply of money. This Helen, who is the steward and treasurer, cannot
help seeing, and she succeeds in obtaining work from the slop-shops. Her
father does not at first discover this. One day, however, he said
abruptly, as if the idea had for the first time occurred to him, “Helen,
you always seem to be sewing, lately.”
The child cast down her eyes in some embarrassment.
“You cannot be sewing so much for yourself,” continued her father. “Why,
what is this?” taking a boy’s vest from her reluctant fingers. “Surely,
this is not yours.”
“No, papa,” answered Helen, laughing; “you don’t think I have turned
Bloomer, do you?”
“Then what does it mean?” questioned her father, in real perplexity.
“Only this, papa, that being quite tired of sitting idle, and having
done all my own sewing, I thought I might as well fill up the time, and
earn some money at the same time by working for other people. Is that
satisfactory?” she concluded, playfully.
“Surely this was not necessary,” said Mr. Ford, with pain. “Are we then
so poor?”
“Do not be troubled, papa,” said Helen, cheerfully. “We could get along
very well without it; but I wanted something to do, and it gives me some
pocket-money for myself. You must know that I am getting extravagant.”
“Is that all?” said her father, in a tone of relief, the shadow passing
from his face. “I am glad of it. I could not bear to think of my little
Helen being compelled to work. Some day,” passing his hands fondly over
her luxuriant curls; “some day she shall have plenty of money.”
This thought incited him to fresh activity, and with new zeal he turned
to the odd jumble of machinery in the corner.
The evening meal was studiously simple and frugal, though Helen could
not resist the temptation of now and then purchasing some little
delicacy for her father. He was so abstracted that he gave little heed
to what was set before him, and never noticed that Helen always
abstained from tasting any luxury thus procured, confining herself
strictly to the usual frugal fare.
After tea it was the custom for father and daughter to walk out,
sometimes in one direction sometimes in another. Often they would walk
up Broadway, and Helen, at least, found amusement in watching the
shifting scenes which present themselves to the beholder in that crowded
thoroughfare. Life in all its varieties, from pampered wealth to squalid
poverty, too often the fruit of a mis-spent life jostled each other upon
the sidewalk, or in the street. The splendid equipage dashes past the
humble handcart; the dashing buggy jostles against the loaded dray.
Broadway is no exclusive thoroughfare. In the shadow of the magnificent
hotel leans the foreign beggar, just landed on our shores, and there is
no one to bid him “move on.” The shop windows, too, are a free “World’s
Fair Exhibition,” constantly changing, never exhausted. Helen and her
father had just returned from a leisurely walk, taken at the close of a
day of labor and confinement, and paused to rest for a moment on the
west side of the Park.
While they were standing there, a handsome carriage drove past. Within
were two gentlemen. One was already well advanced in years, as his gray
hairs and wrinkled face made apparent. He wore an expression of
indefinable sorrow and weariness, as if life had long ago ceased to have
charms for him. His companion might be somewhat under forty. He was tall
and spare, with a dark, forbidding face, which repelled rather than
attracted the beholder.
As the carriage neared the Park, the elder of the two looked out to rest
his gaze, wearied with the sight of brick and stone, upon the verdure of
this inclosure. This, be it remembered, was twenty years since, before
the Park had so completely lost its fresh country look. He chanced to
see Mr. Ford and Helen. He started suddenly in visible agitation.
“Look, Lewis!” he exclaimed, clutching the arm of his companion, and
pointing to Mr. Ford.
The younger man started almost imperceptibly, and his face paled, but he
almost instantly recovered himself.
“Yes,” he said, carelessly; “the Park is looking well.”
“Not that, not that,” said the old man, hurriedly. “That man with the
little girl. He is,—he must be Robert, my long-lost son. Stop the
carriage. I must get out.”
“My dear uncle,” expostulated the younger man, who had been addressed as
Lewis, “you are laboring under a strange hallucination. This man does
not in the least resemble my cousin. Besides, you remember that we have
undoubted proof of his death in Chicago two years since.”
“You may be right,” said the old man, as he sank back into his seat with
a sigh, “but the resemblance was wonderful.”
“But, uncle, let me suggest that more than fifteen years have passed
away since my cousin left home, and even if he were living, he must have
changed so much that we could not expect to recognize him.”
“Perhaps you are right, Lewis; and yet, when I looked at that man, I was
startled by a look that brought before me my dead wife,—my precious
Helen. I fear I have dealt harshly with her boy.”
He relapsed into a silence which his companion did not care to disturb.
He watched guardedly the expression of the old man, and a close observer
might have detected a shade of anxiety, as if there were something
connected with his uncle’s present mood which alarmed him. After a short
scrutiny he himself fell into thought, and as we are privileged to read
what is concealed from all else, we will give the substance of his
reflections.
“Here is a new danger to be guarded against, just at the most critical
time, too. Shall I never attain the object of my wishes? Shall I never
be paid for the years in which I have danced attendance upon my uncle? I
_must_ succeed by whatever means. He cannot last much longer.”
The evident weakness of his uncle seemed to justify his prediction. He
looked like one whose feet are drawing very near the brink of that
mysterious river which it is appointed to all of us at some time to
cross.