Marsena Pulford, what time the village of Octavius knew him, was a
slender and tall man, apparently skirting upon the thirties, with
sloping shoulders and a romantic aspect.
It was not alone his flowing black hair, and his broad shirt-collars
turned down after the ascertained manner of the British poets, which
stamped him in our humble minds as a living brother to "The Corsair,"
"The Last of the Suliotes," and other heroic personages engraved in the
albums and keepsakes of the period. His face, with its darkling eyes
and distinguished features, conveyed wherever it went an impression
of proudly silent melancholy. In those days—that is, just before the
war—one could not look so convincingly and uniformly sad as Marsena
did without raising the general presumption of having been crossed in
love. We had a respectful feeling, in his case, that the lady ought to
have been named Iñez, or at the very least Oriana.
Although he went to the Presbyterian Church with entire regularity,
was never seen in public save in a long-tailed black coat, and in the
winter wore gloves instead of mittens, the local conscience had always,
I think, sundry reservations about the moral character of his past. It
would not have been reckoned against him, then, that he was obviously
poor. We had not learned in those primitive times to measure people by
dollar-mark standards. Under ordinary conditions, too, the fact that he
came from New England—had indeed lived in Boston—must have counted
rather in his favor than otherwise. But it was known that he had been
an artist, a professional painter of pictures and portraits, and we
understood in Octavius that this involved acquaintanceship, if not even
familiarity, with all sorts of occult and deleterious phases of city
life.
Our village held all vice, and especially the vice of other and larger
places, in stern reprobation. Yet, though it turned this matter of the
newcomer's previous occupation over a good deal in its mind, Marsena
carried himself with such a gentle picturesqueness of subdued sorrow
that these suspicions were disarmed, or, at the worst, only added
to the fascinated interest with which Octavius watched his spare and
solitary figure upon its streets, and noted the progress of his efforts
to find a footing for himself in its social economy.
It was taken for granted among us that he possessed a fine and
well-cultivated mind, to match that thoughtful countenance and that
dignified deportment. This assumption continued to hold its own in
the face of a long series of failures in the attempt to draw him out.
Almost everybody who was anybody at one time or another tried to
tap Marsena's mental reservoirs—and all in vain. Beyond the barest
commonplaces of civil conversation he could never be tempted. Once,
indeed, he had volunteered to the Rev. Mr. Bunce the statement that
he regarded Washington Allston as in several respects superior to
Copley; but as no one in Octavius knew who these men were, the remark
did not help us much. It was quoted frequently, however, as indicating
the lofty and recondite nature of the thoughts with which Mr. Pulford
occupied his intellect. As it became more apparent, too, that his
reserve must be the outgrowth of some crushing and incurable heart
grief, people grew to defer to it and to avoid vexing his silent moods
with talk.
Thus, when he had been a resident and neighbor for over two years,
though no one knew him at all well, the whole community regarded him
with kindly and even respectful emotions, and the girls in particular
felt that he was a distinct acquisition to the place.
I have said that Marsena Pulford was poor. Hardly anybody in Octavius
ever knew to what pathetic depths his poverty during the second winter
descended. There was a period of several months, in sober truth, during
which he fed himself upon six or seven cents a day. As he was too proud
to dream of asking credit at the grocer's and butcher's, and walked
about more primly erect than ever, meantime, in his frock-coat and
gloves, no idea of these privations got abroad. And at the end of this
long evil winter there came a remarkable spring, which altered in a
violent way the fortunes of millions of people—among them Marsena. We
have to do with events somewhat subsequent to that even, and with the
period of Mr. Pulford's prosperity.
The last discredited strips of snow up in the ravines on the hill-sides
were melting away; the robins had come again, and were bustling busily
across between the willows, already in the leaf, and the budded elms;
men were going about the village streets without their overcoats, and
boys were telling exciting tales about the suckers in the creek; our
old friend Homer Sage had returned from his winter's sojourn in the
county poorhouse at Thessaly, and could be seen daily sitting in the
sunshine on the broad stoop of the Excelsior Hotel. It was April of
1862.
A whole year had gone by since that sudden and memorable turn in
Marsena Pulford's luck. So far from there being signs now of a possible
adverse change, this new springtide brought such an increase of good
fortune, with its attendant responsibilities, that Marsena was unable
to bear the halcyon burden alone. He took in a partner to help him, and
then the firm jointly hired a boy. The partner painted a signboard to
mark this double event, in bold red letters of independent form upon a
yellow ground:
PULFORD & SHULL.
EMPIRE STATE PORTRAIT ATHENÆUM AND
STUDIO.
War Likenesses at Peace Prices.
Marsena discouraged the idea of hanging this out on the street; and, as
a compromise, it was finally placed at the end of the operating-room,
where for years thereafter it served for the sitters to stare at when
their skulls had been clasped in the iron head-rest and they had been
adjured to look pleasant. A more modest and conventional announcement
of the new firm's existence was put outside, and Octavius accepted it
as proof that the liberal arts were at last established within its
borders on a firm and lucrative basis.
The head of the firm was not much altered by this great wave of
prosperity. He had been drilled by adversity into such careful ways
with his wardrobe that he did not need to get any new clothes. Although
the villagers, always kindly, sought now with cordial effusiveness to
make him feel one of themselves, and although he accepted all their
invitations and showed himself at every public meeting in his capacity
as a representative and even prominent citizen, yet the heart of his
mystery remained unplucked. Marsena was too busy in these days to be
much upon the streets. When he did appear he still walked alone, slowly
and with an air of settled gloom. He saluted such passers-by as he knew
in stately silence. If they stopped him or joined him in his progress,
at the most he would talk sparingly of the weather and the roads.
Neither at the fortnightly sociables of the Ladies' Church Mite
Society, given in turn at the more important members' homes, nor in the
more casual social assemblages of the place, did Marsena ever unbend.
It was not that he held himself aloof, as some others did, from the
simple amusements of the evening. He never shrank from bearing his part
in "pillow," "clap in and clap out," "post-office," or in whatever
other game was to be played, and he went through the kissing penalties
and rewards involved without apparent aversion. It was also to be
noted, in fairness, that, if any one smiled at him full in the face,
he instantly smiled in response. But neither smile nor chaste salute
served to lift for even the fleeting instant that veil of reserve which
hung over him.
Those who thought that by having Marsena Pulford take their pictures
they would get on more intimate terms with him fell into grievous
error. He was more sententious and unapproachable in his studio, as he
called it, than anywhere else. In the old days, before the partnership,
when he did everything himself, his manner in the reception-room
downstairs, where he showed samples, gave the prices of frames, and
took orders, had no equal for formal frigidity—except his subsequent
demeanor in the operating-room upstairs. The girls used to declare
that they always emerged from the gallery with "cold shivers all over
them." This, however, did not deter them from going again, repeatedly,
after the outbreak of the war had started up the universal notion of
being photographed.
When the new partner came in, in this April of 1862, Marsena was able
to devote himself exclusively to the technical business of the camera
and the dark-room, on the second floor. He signalled this change by
wearing now every day an old russet-colored velveteen jacket, which
we had never seen before. This made him look even more romantically
melancholy and picturesque than ever, and revived something of the
fascinating curiosity as to his hidden past; but it did nothing toward
thawing the ice-bound shell which somehow came at every point between
him and the good-fellowship of the community.
The partnership was scarcely a week old when something happened.
The new partner, standing behind the little show-case in the
reception-room, transacted some preliminary business with two customers
who had come in. Then, while the sound of their ascending footsteps was
still to be heard on the stairs, he hastily left his post and entered
the little work-room at the back of the counter.
"You couldn't guess in a baker's dozen of tries who's gone upstairs,"
he said to the boy. Without waiting for even one effort, he added:
"It's the Parmalee girl, and Dwight Ransom's with her, and he's got a
Lootenant's uniform on, and they're goin' to be took together!"
"What of it?" asked the unimaginative boy. He was bending over a crock
of nitric acid, transferring from it one by one to a tub of water a
lot of spoiled glass plates. The sickening fumes from the jar, and the
sting of the acid on his cracked skin, still further diminished his
interest in contemporary sociology. "Well, what of it?" he repeated,
sulkily.
"Oh, I don't know," said the new partner, in a listless, disappointed
way. "It seemed kind o' curious, that's all. Holdin' her head up as
high in the air as she does, you wouldn't think she'd so much as look
at an ordinary fellow like Dwight Ransom."
"I suppose this is a free country," remarked the boy, rising to rest
his back.
"Oh, my, yes," returned the other; "if she's pleased, I'm quite
agreeable. And—I don't know, too—I dare say she's gettin' pretty well
along. May be she thinks they ain't any too much time to lose, and is
making a grab at what comes handiest. Still, I should 'a' thought she
could 'a' done better than Dwight. I worked with him for a spell once,
you know."
There seemed to be very few people with whom Newton Shull had not at
one time or another worked. Apparently there was no craft or calling
which he did not know something about. The old phrase, "Jack of all
trades," must surely have been coined in prophecy for him. He had
turned up in Octavius originally, some years before, as the general
manager of a "Whaler's Life on the Rolling Deep" show, which was
specially adapted for moral exhibitions in connection with church
fairs. Calamity, however, had long marked this enterprise for its
own, and at our village its career culminated under the auspices of
a sheriff's officer. The boat, the harpoons, the panorama sheet and
rollers, the whale's jaw, the music-box with its nautical tunes—these
were sold and dispersed. Newton Shull remained, and began work as a
mender of clocks. Incidentally, he cut out stencil-plates for farmers
to label their cheese-boxes with, and painted or gilded ornamental
designs on chair-backs through perforated paper patterns. For a time
he was a maker of children's sleds. In slack seasons he got jobs to
help the druggist, the tinsmith, the dentist, or the Town Clerk, and
was equally at home with each. He was one of the founders of the
Octavius Philharmonics, and offered to play any instrument they liked,
though his preference was for what he called the bull fiddle. He spoke
often of having travelled as a bandsman with a circus. We boys believed
that he was quite capable of riding a horse bareback as well.
When Marsena Pulford, then, decided that he must have some help, Newton
Shull was obviously the man. How the arrangement came to take the
form of a partnership was never explained, save on the conservative
village theory that Marsena must have reasoned that a partner would
be safer with the cash-box downstairs, while he was taking pictures
upstairs, than a mere hired man. More likely it grew out of their
temperamental affinity. Shull was also a man of grave and depressed
moods (as, indeed, is the case with all who play the bass viol),
only his melancholy differed from Marsena's in being of a tirelessly
garrulous character. This was not always an advantage. When customers
came in, in the afternoon, it was his friendly impulse to engage them
in conversation at such length that frequently the light would fail
altogether before they got upstairs. He recognized this tendency as
a fault, and manfully combated it—leaving the reception-room with
abruptness at the earliest possible moment, and talking to the boy in
the work-room instead.
Mr. Shull was a short, round man, with a beard which was beginning to
show gray under the lip. His reception-room manners were urbane and
persuasive to a degree, and he particularly excelled in convincing
people that the portraits of themselves, which Marsena had sent down
to him in the dummy to be dried and varnished, and which they hated
vehemently at first sight, were really unique and precious works of
art. He had also much success in inducing country folks to despise the
cheap ferrotype which they had intended to have made, and to adventure
upon the costlier ambrotype, daguerreotype, or even photograph instead.
If they did not go away with a family album or an assortment of frames
that would come in handy as well, it was no fault of his.
He made these frames himself, on a bench which he had fitted up in
the work-room. Here he constructed show-cases, too, cut out mats and
mounts, and did many other things as adjuncts to the business, which
honest Marsena had never dreamed of.
"Yes," he went on now, "I carried a chain for Dwight the best part o'
one whole summer, when he was layin' levels for that Nedahma Valley
Railroad they were figurin' on buildin'. Guess they ruther let him
in over that job—though he paid me fair enough. It ain't much of a
business, that surveyin'. You spend about half your time in findin'
out for people the way they could do things if they only had the money
to do 'em, and the other half in settlin' miserable farmers' squabbles
about the boundaries of their land. You've got to pay a man day's wages
for totin' round your chain and axe and stakes—and, as like as not,
you never get even that money back, let alone any pay for yourself. I
know something about a good many trades, and I say surveyin' is pretty
nigh the poorest of 'em all."
"George Washington was a surveyor," commented the boy, stooping down to
his task once more.
"Yes," admitted Mr. Shull; "so he was, for a fact. But then he had
influence enough to get government jobs. I don't say there ain't money
in that. If Dwight, now, could get a berth on the canal, say, it 'ud
be a horse of another color. They say, there's some places there that
pay as much as $3 a day. That's how George Washington got his start,
and, besides, he owned his own house and lot to begin with. But you'll
notice that he dropped surveyin' like a hot potato the minute there was
any soldierin' to do. He knew which side _his_ bread was buttered on!"
"Well," said the boy, slapping the last plates sharply into the tub,
"that's just what Dwight's doin' too, ain't it?"
"Yes," Mr. Shull conceded; "but it ain't the same thing. You won't find
Dwight Ransom gettin' to be a general, or much of anything else. He's a
nice fellow enough, in his way, of course; but, somehow, after it's all
said and done, there ain't much to him. I always sort o' felt, when I
was out with him, that by good rights I ought to be working the level
and him hammerin' in the stakes."
The boy sniffed audibly as he bore away the acid-jar. Mr. Shull went
over to the bench, and took up a chisel with a meditative air. After a
moment he lifted his head and listened, with aroused interest written
all over his face.
There had been audible from the floor above, at intervals, the
customary noises of the camera being wheeled about to different
points under the skylight. There came echoing downward now quite
other and most unfamiliar sounds—the clatter of animated, even gay,
conversation, punctuated by frank outbursts of laughter. Newton Shull
could hardly believe his ears: but they certainly did tell him that
there were three parties to that merriment overhead. It was so strange
that he laid aside the chisel, and tiptoed out into the reception-room,
with a notion of listening at the stair door. Then he even more
hurriedly ran back again. They were coming downstairs.
It might have been a whole wedding-party that trooped down the
resounding stairway, the voices rising above the clump of Dwight's
artillery boots and sword on step after step, and overflowed into the
stuffy little reception-room with a cheerful tumult of babble. The new
partner and the boy looked at each other, then directed a joint stare
of bewilderment toward the door.
Julia Parmalee had pushed her way behind the show-case, and stood in
the entrance to the work-room, peering about her with an affectation of
excited curiosity which she may have thought pretty and playful, but
which the boy, at least, held to be absurd.
She had been talking thirteen to the dozen all the time. "Oh, I really
must see everything!" she rattled on now. "If I could be trusted alone
in the dark-room with you, Mr. Pulford, I surely may be allowed to
explore all these minor mysteries. Oh, I see," she added, glancing
round, and incidentally looking quite through Mr. Shull and the boy, as
if they had been transparent: "here's where the frames and the washing
are done. How interesting!"
What really was interesting was the face of Marsena Pulford,
discernible in the shadow over her shoulder. No one in Octavius had
ever seen such a beaming smile on his saturnine countenance before.