SHALL THERE BE A WEDDING?
“Ah! spare your idol; think him human still;
Charms he may have, but he has frailties too!
Dote not too much, nor spoil what ye admire.”
_Young._
The question as to the inheritance of the Aylesford-Berwick property was
not decided without a lawsuit. The case was put into the courts, and
kept there many months. The heavy legal expenses to which Charlton was
subjected, and his reluctance to meet them, protracted the contest by
alienating his lawyers. Pompilard went straight to the point by
promising his counsel a fee of a hundred thousand dollars in the event
of success; and thus he enlisted and kept active the best professional
aid. Still the prospect was doubtful.
But even the _law’s_ delay must finally have an end. The hour of the
final settlement of the great case by the ultimate court of appeal had
come at last. The judges had entered and taken their seats. Charlton,
pale and haggard, sat by the side of his lawyer, Detritch. Pompilard,
still masking his age, entered airy as a maiden just stepping forth into
Broadway in her new spring bonnet. He wore a paletot of light gray, a
choker girt by a sky-blue silk ribbon, a white vest, checked pantaloons,
and silk stockings under low-cut patent-leather shoes. Taking a seat at
a little semicircular table near his lawyers, he exchanged repartees
with them, and then tranquilly abided his fate. Charlton looked with
anguish on the composure of his antagonist.
Just as the case was expected to come on, one of the judges was found to
have left a certain document at home. They all retired, and a messenger
was sent for the important paper. Hence a delay of an hour. Charlton
could not conceal his agitation. Pompilard took up the morning journal,
and read with sorrow of the death of an old friend.
“Poor old Toussaint! I see he has left us,” said Pompilard.
“Yes,” replied Girard, “All-Saint has gone. He was well named. He has
never held up his head since he lost his wife.”
“Toussaint was a gentleman, every inch of him,” said Pompilard. “He
believed in the elevation of the black man, not by that process of
absorption or amalgamation which some of our noodles recommend, but by
his showing in his life and character that a negro can be as worthy and
capable of freedom as a white man. He was for keeping the blacks
socially separate from the whites, though one before the law, and
teaching them to be content with the color God had given them. A brave
fellow was Toussaint. I remember—that was before your day—when the
yellow fever prevailed here. Maiden Lane and the lower parts of the city
were almost deserted. But Toussaint used to cross the barricades every
day to tend on the sick and dying, and carry them food and medicine.”
“Did you know him well?” asked Girard.
“Intimately, these thirty years. In his demeanor exquisitely courteous
and respectful, there was never the slightest tinge of servility. You
could not have known him as I did without forgetting his color and
feeling honored in the companionship of a man so thoroughly generous,
pious, and sincere. He would sometimes make playful allusions to his
color. He seemed much amused once by my little Netty, who, when she was
about three years old, said to him, after looking him steadily in the
face for some time, ‘Toussaint, do you live in a black house?’ The other
day, knowing he was quite ill, my wife called on him, and while by his
bedside asked him if she should close a window, the light of which shone
full in his face. ‘O non, madam,’ he replied, ‘car alors je serai trop
noir.’”[22]
Here Pompilard ceased, and looked up. There was a stir in the
court-room. Their Honors had re-entered and taken seats. The messenger
with the missing paper had returned. The presiding judge, after a long
and tantalizing preamble, in the course of which Charlton was
alternately elevated and depressed, at length summed up, in a few
intelligible words, the final decision of the court. Charlton fainted.
Pompilard’s lawyers bent down their heads, as if certain papers suddenly
demanded their close scrutiny; but Pompilard himself was radiant.
Everybody stared at him, and handsomely did he baffle everybody by his
imperturbable good humor. It is not every day that one has an
opportunity of seeing how a fellow-being is affected by the winning or
the losing of a million of dollars. No one could have guessed from
Pompilard’s appearance whether he had won or lost. Unfortunately he had
lost; and Charlton had reached the acme of his hopes, mortal or
immortal,—he was a millionnaire.
Pompilard took the news home to his wife in the little old double house
at Harlem; and her only comment was: “Poor dear Melissa! I had hoped to
make her a present of a furnished cottage on the North River.”
The conversation was immediately turned to the subject of Toussaint, and
one would have thought, hearing these strange foolish people talk, that
the old negro’s exit saddened them far more than the loss of their
fortune. Angelica, Pompilard’s widowed daughter, entered. After her came
Netty, the elf, now almost a young lady. She carried under her arm a
portfolio, filled with such drawings of ships, beaches, and rocks as she
could find in occasional excursions to Long Island, under the patronage
of Mrs. Maloney, the tailor’s wife.
Julia and Mary Ireton, daughters of Angelica, came in.
“Which of my little nieces will take my portfolio up-stairs?” asked
Netty.
“I will, aunt,” said the dutiful Mary; and off she ran with it.
“Poor Melissa! We shall now have to put off the wedding,” sighed
Angelica, on learning the result of the lawsuit.
“No such thing! It sha’n’t be put off!” said Pompilard.
Netty threw her arms round the old man’s neck, kissed him, and
exclaimed: “Bravo, father of mine! Stick to that! It isn’t half lively
enough in this house. We want a few more here to make it jolly. Why
can’t we have such high times as they have in at the Maloneys’? There we
made such a noise the other night that the police knocked at the door.”
Maloney, by the way, be it recorded, had, under the pupilage of
Pompilard, given up strong drink and wife-beating, and risen to be a
tailor of some fashionable note. Pompilard had found out for him an
excellent cutter,—had kept him posted in regard to the fashions,—and
then had gone round the city to all the clubs, hotels, and opera-houses,
blowing for Maloney with all his lungs. He didn’t “hesitate to declare”
that Maloney was the only man in the country who could fit you decently
to pantaloons. Pantaloons were his _specialité_. His cutter was a born
genius,—“an Englishman, sir, whose grandfather used to cut for the
famous Brummel,—you’ve heard of Brummel?” The results of all this
persistent blowing were astonishing. Soon the superstition prevailed in
Wall Street and along the Fifth Avenue, that if one wanted pantaloons he
must go to Maloney. Haynes was excellent for dress-coats and sacks; but
don’t let him hope to compete with Maloney in pantaloons. You would hear
young fops discussing the point with intensest earnestness and
enthusiasm.
How many fortunes have a basis quite as airy and unsubstantial! Soon
Maloney’s little shop was crowded with customers. He was obliged to take
a large and showy establishment in Broadway. Here prosperity insisted on
following him. Wealth began to flow steadily in. He found himself on the
plain, high road to fortune; and by whom but Pompilard had he been led
there? The consequence was perpetual gratitude on the tailor’s part,
evinced in daily sending home, with his own marketing, enough for the
other half of the house; evinced also in the determination to stick to
Harlem till his benefactor would consent to leave.
While the Pompilards were discussing the matter of the wedding, Melissa
and Purling entered from a walk. Melissa carried her years very well;
though hope deferred had written anxiety on her amiable features.
Purling was a slim, gentlemanly person, always affecting good spirits,
though certain little silvery streaks in the side-locks over his ears
showed that time and care were beginning their inevitable work. In
aspiring to authorship he had not thought it essential that he should
consume gin like Byron, or whiskey like Charles Lamb, or opium like De
Quincey. But if there be an avenging deity presiding over the wrongs of
undone publishers, Purling must be doomed to some unquiet nights. There
was something sublime in the pertinacity with which he kept on writing
after the public had snubbed him so repeatedly by utter neglect;
something still more sublime in the faith which led publishers to fall
into the nets he so industriously wove for them.
The result of the lawsuit being made known to the newcomers, Melissa,
hiding her face, at once left the room, and was followed by her sisters
and step-mother.
Purling keenly felt the embarrassment of his position. Pompilard came to
his relief. “We have concluded, my dear fellow,” said he, “not to put
off the wedding. Don’t concern yourself about money-matters. You can
come and occupy Melissa’s room with her till I get on my legs once more.
I shall go to work in earnest now this lawsuit is off my hands.”
“My dear sir,” said Purling, “you are very generous,—very indulgent. The
moment my books begin to pay, what is mine shall be yours; and if you
can conveniently accommodate me for a few months, till the work I’m now
writing is—”
“Accommodate you? Of course we can! The more the merrier,” interrupted
Pompilard. “So it’s settled. The wedding comes off next Wednesday.”
And the wedding came off according to the programme. It took place in
church. Pompilard was in his glory. Cards had been issued to all his
friends of former days. Many had conveniently forgotten that such a
person existed; but there were some noble exceptions, as there generally
are in such cases. Presents of silver, of dresses, books, furniture, and
pictures were sent in from friends both of the bride and bridegroom; so
that the _trousseau_ presented a very respectable appearance; but the
prettiest gift of the occasion was a little porte-monnaie, containing a
check for two thousand dollars signed by Pat Maloney.
As for Charlton, young in years, if not in heart, good-looking, a
widower unencumbered with a child, what was there he might not aspire to
with his twelve hundred thousand dollars?
He was taken in charge by the J——s, and the M——s, and the P——s, and
introduced into “society.” Yes, that is the proper name for “our set.” A
competition, outwardly calm, but internally bitter and intense, was
entered upon by fashionable mothers having daughters to provide for.
Charlton became the sensation man of the season. “Will he marry?” That
was now the agitating question that convulsed all the maternal councils
within a mile’s radius of the new Fifth Avenue Hotel.