THE WOLF AND THE LAMB.
“Bitten by rage canine of dying rich;
Guilt’s blunder! and the loudest laugh of hell!”
_Young._
The poor little lady! First sold by a needy parent to an old man, and
then betrayed by her own uncalculating affections to a young one, whose
nature had the torpor without the venerableness of age! Her heart, full
of all loving possibilities, had steered by false lights and been
wrecked. Brief had been its poor, shattered dream of household joys and
domestic amenities!
It was the old, old story of the cheat and the dupe; of credulous
innocence overmatched by heartless selfishness and fraud.
The young man “of genteel appearance and address” who last week, as the
newspapers tell us, got a supply of dry-goods from Messrs. Raby & Co.,
under false pretences, has been arrested, and will be duly punished.
But the scoundrel who tricks a confiding woman out of her freedom and
her happiness under the false pretences of a disinterested affection and
the desire of a loving home,—the swindler who, with the motives of a
devil of low degree, affects the fervor and the dispositions of a loyal
heart,—for such an impostor the law has no lash, no prison. To play the
blackleg and the sharper in a matter of the affections is not penal.
Success consecrates the crime; and the victim, when her eyes are at
length opened to the extent of the deception and the misery, must
continue to submit to a yoke at once hateful and demoralizing; she must
submit, unless she is willing to brave the ban of society and the
persecutions of the law.
Ralph Charlton, when he gave his wife Berwick’s letter the night before,
had supposed she would sit down to pen an answer as soon as she was
alone. And so the next morning, after visiting his office in Fulton
Street, he retraced his steps, and re-entered his house soon after
Toussaint had left, and just as Mrs. Charlton had put her signature to
the last page of the manuscript, and, bowing her forehead on her palms,
was giving vent to sobs of bitter emotion.
Charlton was that prodigy in nature,—a young man in whom an avarice that
would have been remarkable in a senile miser had put in subjection all
the other passions. Well formed and not ungraceful, his countenance was
at first rather prepossessing and propitiatory. It needed a keener eye
than that of the ordinary physiognomist to penetrate to the inner
nature. It was only when certain expressions flitted over the features
that they betrayed him. You must study that countenance and take it at
unawares before you could divine what it meant. Age had not yet hardened
it in the mould of the predominant bias of the character. Well born and
bred, he ought to have been a gentleman, but it is difficult for a man
to be that and a miser at the same time. There was little in his style
of dress that distinguished him from the mob of young business-men,
except that a critical eye would detect that his clothes were well
preserved. Few of his old coats were made to do service on the backs of
the poor.
Charlton called himself a lawyer, his specialty being conveyancing and
real estate transactions. His one purpose in life was to be a rich man.
To this end all others must be subordinate. When a boy he had been
taught to play on the flute; and his musical taste, if cultivated, might
have been a saving element of grace. But finding that in a single year
he had spent ten dollars in concert tickets, he indignantly repudiated
music, and shut his ears even to the hand-organs in the street. He had
inherited a fondness for fine horses. Before he was twenty-five he would
not have driven out after Ethan Allen himself, if there had been any
toll-gate keepers to pay. His taste in articles of food was nice and
discriminating; but he now bought fish and beef of the cheapest, and
patronized a milkman whose cows were fed on the refuse of the
distilleries.
Charlton was not venturous in speculation. The boldest operation he ever
attempted was that of his marriage. Before taking that step he had
satisfied himself in regard to the state of the late Mr. Berwick’s
affairs. They could be disentangled, and made to leave a balance of half
a million for the heirs, if a certain lawsuit, involving a large amount
of real estate, should be decided the right way. Charlton burrowed and
inquired and examined till he came to the conclusion that the suit would
go in favor of the estate. On that hint he took time by the forelock,
and married the widow. To his consternation matters did not turn out as
he had hoped.
As Charlton entered his wife’s room, on the morning she had been writing
the letter already presented, “What is all this, madam?” he exclaimed,
advancing and twitching away the manuscript that lay before her.
The lady thus startled rose and looked at him without speaking, as if
struggling to comprehend what he had done. At length a gleam of
intelligence flashed from her eyes, and she mildly said, “I will thank
you to give me back those papers: they are mine.”
“_Mine_, Mrs. Charlton! Where did you learn that word?” said the
husband, really surprised at the language of his usually meek and
acquiescent helpmate.
“Do you not mean to give them back?”
“Assuredly no. To whom is the letter addressed? Ah! I see. To Mr. Henry
Berwick. Highly proper that I should read what my wife writes to a young
man.”
“Then you do not mean to give the letter back, Charlton?”
Another surprise for the husband! At first she used to speak to him as
“Ralph,” or “dear”; then as “Mr. Charlton”; then as “Sir”; and now it
was plain “Charlton.” What did it portend?
The lady held out her hand, as if to receive the papers.
“Pooh!” said the husband, striking it away. “Go and attend to your
housework. What a shrill noise your canary is making! That bird must be
sold. There was a charge of seventy-five cents for canary-seed in my
last grocer’s bill! It’s atrocious. The creature is eating us out of
house and home. Bird and cage would bring, at least, five dollars.”
“The letter,—do you choose to give it back?”
“If, after reading it, I think proper to send it to its address, it
shall be sent. Give yourself no further concern about it.”
Mrs. Charlton advanced with folded arms, looked him unblenchingly in the
face, and gasped forth, with a husky, half-chocked utterance, “Beware!”
“Truly, madam,” said the astonished husband, “this is a new character
for you to appear in, and one for which I am not prepared.”
“It is for that reason I say, Beware! Beware when the tame, the
submissive, the uncomplaining woman is roused at last. Will you give me
that letter?”
“Go to the Devil!”
Mrs. Charlton threw out her hand and clutched at the manuscript, but her
husband had anticipated the attempt. As she closed with him in the
effort to recover the paper, he threw her off so forcibly that she fell
and struck her head against one of the protuberant claws of the legs of
her writing-table.
Whatever were the effects of the blow, it did not prevent the lady from
rising immediately, and composing her exuberant hair with a gesture of
puzzled distress that would have excited pity in the heart of a Thug.
But Charlton did not even inquire if she were hurt. After a pause she
seemed to recover her recollection, and then threw up her head with a
lofty gesture of resolve, and quitted the room.
Her husband sat down and read the letter. His equanimity was unruffled
till he came to the passage where the writer alludes to the gold casket
she had put aside for little Clara. At that disclosure he started to his
feet, and gave utterance to a hearty execration upon the woman who had
presumed to circumvent him by withholding any portion of her effects. He
opened the door and called, “Wife!” No voice replied to his summons. He
sought her in her chamber. She was not there. She had left the house. So
Dorcas, the one overworked domestic of the establishment, assured him.
Charlton saw there was no use in scolding. So he put on his hat and
walked down Broadway to his office. Here he wrote a letter which he
wished to mail before one o’clock. It was directed to Colonel Delaney
Hyde, Philadelphia. Having finished it and put it in the mail-box,
Charlton took his way at a brisk pace to the house of old Toussaint.
That veteran himself opened the door. A venerable black man, reminding
one of Ben Franklin in ebony. His wool was gray, his complexion of the
blackest, showing an unmixed African descent. He was of middling height,
and stooped slightly; was attired in the best black broadcloth, with a
white vest and neckcloth, and had the manners of a French marquis of the
old school.
“Is my wife here?” asked Charlton.
“Madame is here,” replied the old man; “but she suffers, and prays to be
not disturbed.”
“I must see her. Conduct me to her.”
“_Pardonnez._ Monsieur will comprehend as I say the commands of Madame
in this house are sacred.”
“You insolent old nigger! Do you mean to tell me I am not to see my own
wife?”
“_Precisement._ Monsieur cannot see Madame Charlton.”
“I’ll search the house for her, at any rate. Out of the way, you blasted
old ape!”
Here a policeman, provided for the occasion by Toussaint, and who had
been smoking in the front room opening on the hall, made his appearance.
“You can’t enter this house,” said Blake, carelessly knocking the ashes
from his cigar. Charlton had a wholesome respect for authority. He drew
back on seeing the imperturbable Blake, with the official star on his
breast, and said, “I came here, Mr. Blake, to recover a little gold box
that I have reason to believe my wife has left with this old nigger.”
“Well, she might have left it in worse hands,—eh, Toussaint?” said
Blake, resuming his cigar; and then, removing it, he added, “If you call
this old man a nigger again, I’ll make a nigger of you with my fist.”
Toussaint might have taken for his motto that of the old eating-house
near the Park,—“_Semper paratus_.” The gold box having been committed to
him to deposit in a place of safety, he had meditated long as to the
best disposition he could make of it. As he stood at the window of his
house, looking thoughtfully out, he saw coming up the street a gay old
man, swinging a cane, humming an opera tune, and followed by a little
dog. As the dashing youth drew nearer, Toussaint recognized in him an
old acquaintance, and a man not many years his junior,—Mr. Albert
Pompilard, stock-broker, Wall Street.
No two men could be more unlike than Toussaint and Pompilard; and yet
they were always drawn to each other by some subtle points of
attraction. Pompilard was a reckless speculator and spendthrift;
Toussaint, a frugal and cautious economist; but he had been indebted for
all his best investments to Pompilard. Bold and often audacious in his
own operations, Pompilard never would allow Toussaint to stray out of
the path of prudence. Not unfrequently Pompilard would founder in his
operations on the stock exchange. He would fall, perhaps, to a depth
where a few hundred dollars would have been hailed as a rope flung to a
drowning man. Toussaint would often come to him at these times and offer
a thousand dollars or so as a loan. Pompilard, in order not to hurt the
negro’s feelings, would take it and pretend to use it; but it would be
always put securely aside, out of his reach, or deposited in some bank
to Toussaint’s credit.
Toussaint stood at his door as Pompilard drew nigh.
“Ha! good morning, my guide, philosopher, and friend!” exclaimed the
stock-broker. “What’s in the wind now, Toussaint? Any money to invest?”
“No, Mr. Pompilard; but here’s a box that troubles me.”
“A box! Not a pill-box, I hope? Let me look at it. Beautiful! beautiful,
exceedingly! It could not be duplicated for twelve hundred dollars.
Whose is it? Ah! here’s an inscription,—‘_Henry Berwick to Emily_.’
Berwick? It was a Henry Berwick who married my wife’s niece, Miss
Aylesford.”
“This box,” interposed Toussaint, “was the gift of his late father to
his second wife, the present Mrs. Charlton.”
“Ah! yes, I remember the connection now.”
“Mrs. Charlton wishes me to deposit the box where, in the event of her
death, it will reach the daughter of the present Mrs. Berwick. Here is
the direction on the envelope.”
Pompilard read the words: “For Clara Aylesford Berwick, daughter of
Henry Berwick, Esq., to be delivered to her in the event of the death of
the undersigned, Emily Charlton.”
“I will tell you what to do,” said Pompilard. “Here come Isaac Jones of
the Chemical and Arthur Schermerhorn. Isaac shall give a receipt for the
box and deposit it in the safe of the bank, there to be kept till called
for by Miss Clara Berwick or her representative.”
“That will do,” said Toussaint.
The two gentlemen were called in, and in five minutes the proper paper
was drawn up, witnessed, and signed, and Mr. Jones gave a receipt for
the box.
Briefly Toussaint now explained to Charlton the manner in which the box
had been disposed of. Charlton was nonplussed. It would not do to
disgust the officials at the Chemical. It might hurt his credit. A
consolatory reflection struck him. “Do you say my wife is suffering?” he
asked.
“Madame will need a physician,” replied the negro. “I have sent for Dr.
Hull.”
“Well, look here, old gentleman, I’m responsible for no debts of your
contracting on her account. I call Mr. Blake to witness. If you keep her
here, it must be at your own expense. Not a cent shall you ever have
from _me_.”
“That will not import,” replied Toussaint, with the hauteur of a prince
of the blood.
Felicitating himself on having got rid of a doctor’s bill, Charlton took
his departure.
“The exceedingly poor cuss!” muttered Blake, tossing after him the stump
of a cigar.
“Let me pay you for your trouble, Mr. Blake,” said Toussaint.
“Not a copper, Marquis! I have been here only half an hour, and in that
time have read the newspaper, smoked one regalia, quality prime, and
pocketed another. If that is not pay enough, you shall make it up by
curling my hair the next time I go to a ball.”
“But take the rest of the cigars.”
“There, Marquis, you touch me on my weak point. Thank you. Good by,
Toussaint!”
Toussaint closed the door, and called to his wife in a whisper, speaking
in French, “How goes it, Juliette?”
“Hist! She sleeps. She wishes you to put this letter in the post-office
as soon as possible. If you can get the canary-bird, do it. I hope the
doctor will be here soon.”
Toussaint left at once to mail the invalid’s letter and get possession
of her bird.