VARICK-STREET
CHAPTER II.
VERY GOOD LUCK
CHAPTER III.
KILIAN
CHAPTER IV.
MY COMPANIONS
CHAPTER V.
THE TUTOR
CHAPTER VI.
MATINAL
CHAPTER VII.
THREE WEEKS TOO LATE
CHAPTER VIII.
SUNDAY
CHAPTER IX.
A DANCE
CHAPTER X.
EVERY DAY FROM SIX TO SEVEN.
CHAPTER XI.
SOPHIE'S WORK
CHAPTER XII.
PRAEMONITUS, PRAEMUNITUS
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WORLD GOES ON THE SAME
CHAPTER XIV.
GUARDED
CHAPTER XV.
I SHALL HAVE SEEN HIM
CHAPTER XVI.
AUGUST THIRTIETH
CHAPTER XVII.
BESIDE HIM ONCE AGAIN
CHAPTER XVIII.
A JOURNEY
CHAPTER XIX.
SISTER MADELINE
CHAPTER XX.
THE HOUR OF DAWN
CHAPTER XXI.
APRÉS PERDRE, PERD ON BIEN
CHAPTER XXII.
A GREAT DEAL TOO SOON
CHAPTER XXIII.
A REVERSAL
CHAPTER XXIV.
MY NEW WORLD
CHAPTER XXV.
BIEN PERDU, BIEN CONNU
CHAPTER XXVI.
A DINNER
CHAPTER I.
VARICK STREET.
O for one spot of living green,
One little spot where leaves can grow,--
To love unblamed, to walk unseen,
To dream above, to sleep below!
_Holmes_.
There are in this loud stunning tide,
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of th' everlasting chime;
* * * * *
And to wise hearts this certain hope is given;
"No mist that man may raise, shall hide the eye of Heaven."
_Keble._
I never knew exactly how the invitation came; I felt very much honored
by it, though I think now, very likely the honor was felt to be upon the
other side. I was exceedingly young, and exceedingly ignorant, not
seventeen, and an orphan, living in the house of an uncle, an unmarried
man of nearly seventy, wholly absorbed in business, and not much more
interested in me than in his clerks and servants.
I had come under his protection, a little girl of two years old, and had
been in his house ever since. I had had as good care as a very ordinary
class of servants could give me, and was supplied with some one to teach
me, and had as much money to spend as was good for me--perhaps more; and
I do not feel inclined to say my uncle did not do his duty, for I do not
think he knew of anything further to do; and strictly speaking, I had no
claim on him, for I was only a great-niece, and there were those living
who were more nearly related to me, and who were abundantly able to
provide for me, if they had been willing to do it.
When I came in to the household, its wants were attended to by a cook
and a man-servant, who had lived many years with my uncle. A third
person was employed as my nurse, and a great deal of quarrelling was the
result of her coming. I quite wonder my uncle did not put me away at
board somewhere, rather than be disturbed. But in truth, I do not
believe that the quarrelling disturbed him much, or that he paid much
attention to the matter, and so the matter settled itself. My nurses
were changed very often, by will of the cook and old Peter, and I never
was happy enough to have one who had very high principle, or was more
than ordinarily good-tempered.
I don't know who selected my teachers; probably they applied for
employment and were received. They were very business-like and
unsuggestive people. I was of no more interest to them than a bale of
goods, I believe. Indeed, I seemed likely to go a bale of goods through
life; everything that was done for me was done for money, and with a
view to the benefit of the person serving me. I was not sent to school,
which was a very great pity; it was owing to the fact, no doubt, that
somebody applied to my uncle to teach me at home, and so the system was
inaugurated, and never received a second thought, and I went on being
taught at home till I was seventeen.
The "home" was as follows; a large dark house on the unsunny side of a
dull street; furniture that had not been changed for forty years, walls
that were seldom repainted, windows that were rarely opened. The
neighborhood had been for many years unfashionable and undesirable, and,
by the time I was grown up, nobody would have lived in it, who had cared
to have a cheerful home, I might almost have said, a respectable one, I
fancy ours was nearly the only house in the block occupied by its owner;
the others, equally large, were rented for tenement houses, or
boarding-houses, and perhaps for many things worse. It was probably
owing to this fact, that my uncle gave orders, once for all, I was never
to go into the street alone; and I believe, in my whole life, I had
never taken a walk unaccompanied by a servant, or one of my teachers.
A very dull life indeed. I wonder how I endured it. The rooms were so
dismal, the windows so uneventful. If it had not been for a room in the
garret where I had my playthings, and where the sun came all day long, I
am sure I should have been a much worse and more unhappy child. As I
grew older, I tried to adorn my room (my own respectable sleeping room,
I mean), with engravings, and the little ornaments that I could buy. But
it was a hopeless attempt. The walls were so high and so dingy, the
little pictures were lost upon them; and the vases on the great black
mantel-shelf looked so insignificant, I felt ashamed of them, and owned
the unfitness of decorating such a room. No flowers would grow in those
cold north windows--no bird would sing in sight of such a street. I gave
it up with a sigh; and there was one good instinct lost.
When I was about eleven, I fell foul of some good books. If it had not
been for them, I truly do not see how I could have known that I was not
to lie or steal, and that God was to be worshipped. Certainly, I had had
hands slapped many times for taking things I had been forbidden to
touch, and had had many a battle in consequence of "telling stories,"
with the servants of the house, but I had always recognized the personal
spite of the punishments, and they had not carried with them any
moral lesson.
I had sometimes gone to church; but the sermons in large city churches
are not generally elementary, and I did not understand those that I
heard at all. Occasionally I went with the nurse to Vespers, and that I
thought delightful. I was enraptured with the pictures, the music, the
rich clothes of the priests; if it had not been for the bad odor of the
neighboring worshippers, I think I might have rushed into the bosom of
the Church of Rome. But that offended sense restrained me. And so, as I
said, if I had not obtained access to some books of holy and pure
influence, and been starved by the dullness of the life around me into
taking hold of them with eagerness, I should have led the life of a
little heathen in the midst of light. Of course the books were not
written for my especial case, nor were they books for children,--and so,
much was supposed, and not expressed, and consequently the truth they
imparted to me was but fragmentary. But it was truth, and the
influence was holy.
I was driven to books; I do not believe I had any more desire than most
vivid, palpitating, fluttering young things of my sex, to pore over a
dull black and white page; but this black and white gate opened to me
golden fields of happiness, while I was perishing of hunger in a life of
dreary fact.
When I was about sixteen, however, an outside human influence, not
written in black and white, came into the current of my existence. About
that time, my uncle took into his firm, as junior partner, a young man
who had long been a clerk in the house. After his promotion he often
came home with my uncle to dinner. I think this was done, perhaps, with
a view of civil treatment, on the first occasion; but afterward, it was
continued because my uncle could not bear to leave business when he left
the office, and because he could talk on the matters which were dearer
to him than his dinner, with this junior, in whom he took unqualified
delight. He often wrote letters in the evening, which my uncle dictated,
and he sometimes did not go away till eleven o'clock at night. The first
time he came, I did not notice him very much. It was not unusual for
Uncle Leonard to be accompanied by some gentleman who talked business
with him during dinner; and being naturally shy, and moreover, on this
occasion, in the middle of a very interesting book, at once timid and
indifferent, I slipped away from the table the moment that I could. But
upon the third or fourth occasion of his being there, I became
interested, finding often a pair of handsome eyes fixed on me, and being
occasionally addressed and made a partner in the conversation. Uncle
Leonard very rarely talked to me, and I think found me in the way when
Richard Vandermarck made the talk extend to me.
But this was the beginning of a very much improved era for me. I lost my
shyness, and my fear of Uncle Leonard, and indeed, I think, my frantic
thirst for books, and became quite a young lady. We were great friends;
he brought me books, he told me about other people, he opened a thousand
doors of interest and pleasure to me. I never can enumerate all I owed
to him. My dull life was changed, and the house owed him gratitude.
We began to have the gas lighted in the parlor, and even Uncle Leonard
came in there sometimes and sat after dinner, before he went up into
that dreary library above. I think he rather enjoyed hearing us talk
gayly across his sombre board; he certainly became softer and more human
toward me after Richard came to be so constantly a guest. He gave me
more money to spend, (that was always the expression of his feelings,
his language, so to speak;) he made various inquiries and improvements
about the house. The dinners themselves were improved, for a horrible
monotony had crept into the soups and sauces of forty years; and Uncle
Leonard was no epicure; he seemed to have no more stomach than he had
heart; brain and pocket made the man.
I think unconsciously he was much influenced by Richard, whose business
talent had charmed him, and to whom he looked for much that he knew he
must soon lose. He was glad to make the house seem pleasant to him, and
he was much gratified by his frequent coming. And Richard was peculiarly
a man to like and to lean upon. Not in any way brilliant, and with no
literary tastes, he was well educated enough, and very well informed; a
thorough business man. I think he was ordinarily reserved, but our
intercourse had been so unconventional, that I did not think him so at
all. He was rather good-looking, tall and square-shouldered, with
light-brown hair and fine dark-blue eyes; he had a great many points of
advantage.
One day, long after he had become almost a member of the household, he
told me he wanted me to know his sister, and that she would come the
next day to see me, if I would like it. I did like it, and waited for
her with impatience. He had told me a great deal about her, and I was
full of curiosity to see her. She was a little older than Richard, and
the only sister; very pretty, and quite a person of consequence in
society. She had made an unfortunate marriage, though of that Richard
said very little to me; but with better luck than attends most
unfortunately-married, women, she was released by her husband's early
death, and was free to be happy again, with some pretty boys, a moderate
fortune, and two brothers to look after her investments, and do her
little errands for her. She considered herself fortunate; and was a
widow of rare discretion, in that she was wedded to her unexpected
independence, and never intended to be wedded to anything or anybody
else. She was naturally cool and calculating, and was in no danger of
being betrayed by her feelings into any other course of life than the
one she had marked out as most expedient. If she was worldly, she was
also useful, intelligent, and popular, and a paragon in her brother's
partial eyes.