“So I did, but that was when I expected to get it by law, though; and

this here young man knows that, if he’d only speak.”

Thus adjured, Charles did speak, and so much to the purpose that

it did not take many minutes to convince Mr. Keene that Ashburn’s

evil-mindedness was bounded by the limits of the law, that precious

privilege of the Wolverine. But there was still the mystery of

Charles’s apparition, and in order to its full unravelment, the

blushing Clarissa had to be enticed from her hiding-place, and brought

to confession. And then it was made clear that she, with all her

innocent looks, was the moving cause of the mighty mischief. She it was

who encouraged Charles to believe that her uncle’s anger would not last

forever; and this had led Charles to venture into the neighbourhood;

and it was while consulting together, (on this particular point, of

course,) that they managed to set the kitchen curtain on fire.

These things occupied some time in explaining,--but they were at

length, by the aid of words and more eloquent blushes, made so clear,

that Mr. Keene concluded, not only to new roof the kitchen, but to add

a very pretty wing to one side of the house. And at the present time,

the steps of Charles Darwin, when he returns from a surveying tour,

seek the little gate as naturally as if he had never lived anywhere

else. And the sweet face of Clarissa is always there, ready to welcome

him, though she still finds plenty of time to keep in order the

complicated affairs of both uncle and aunt.

Mr. Keene has done his very best to atone for his injurious estimate

of Wolverine honour, by giving constant employment to Ashburn and

his sons, and owning himself always the obliged party, without which

concession all he could do would avail nothing. And Mrs. Keene and

Clarissa have been unwearied in their kind attentions to the family,

supplying them with so many comforts that most of them have got rid of

the ague, in spite of themselves. The house has assumed so cheerful an

appearance that I could scarcely recognise it for the same squalid den

it had often made my heart ache to look upon. As I was returning from

my last visit there, I encountered Mr. Ashburn, and remarked to him how

very comfortable they seemed.

“Yes,” he replied; “I’ve had pretty good luck lately; but I’m a goin’

to pull up stakes and move to Wisconsin. I think I can do better,

further West.”

FITZ-JAMES O’BRIEN

1828–1862

The facts of O’Brien’s life have never been set in order. Even the date

of his birth in County Limerick is uncertain. His untimely death was at

Cumberland, Virginia, from wounds in the Federal service early in the

Civil War. The clearest impression of the man may be had from William

Winter’s introduction to a collection of his verse and prose, published

in Boston, 1881. He seems very like the Thackeray Irishman--generous,

impulsive, extravagant with money and words. In the geniality that

deserved their warm affection his somewhat Bohemian companions found a

touch of genius; but the demands of a spendthrift life hand-to-mouth,

and the facility with which these demands could be met, both made

against the realisation of this higher promise. That it remained only

a promise may be ascribed also to his dying at thirty-four. Youth is

evident especially in that his prose is imitative. Poe is suggested

almost immediately; and there is often an undertone of Dickens, the

Dickens of the Christmas stories. In other aspects, too, O’Brien’s

writing is the work, not of a craftsman, but of a brilliant amateur.

The fancies that he threw upon the periodical press are never quite

achieved. Considered as materials, these fancies vary in value all the

way from the conceptions of _The Diamond Lens_ and _The Wondersmith_,

which are not far from pure imagination, to _Tommatoo_ and _My Wife’s

Tempter_, which are mere melodrama. But whatever their potential value,

O’Brien’s hand was not steady enough to bring it out. The main scene

of _The Diamond Lens_, the microscopic vision, is as delicate as it is

original, and as vivid as it is delicate; but the preparation for it

is fumbling, and the solution unsatisfying. The tale printed below is

exceptionally compact in structure and careful in detail. The obvious

general resemblance to Poe’s tales of physical horror should not

obscure certain original merits. The note of realism, for instance,

is not merely Poe’s verisimilitude; it expresses a differentiation of

character more like that of Kipling’s similar study, _The End of the

Passage_. Prof. Brander Matthews (_Philosophy of the Short-Story_, page

68) points out the similarity in conception of Maupassant’s _Le Horla_.

Writing much prose and verse for many magazines now long passed away,

and a play or two for Wallack, O’Brien found his steadiest employment

with the Harpers between 1853 and 1858, and his most congenial life

with the younger journalists and artists of New York.

WHAT WAS IT? A MYSTERY

[_From “Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” March, 1859; volume xviii, page

504. The signature is Harry Escott_]

It is, I confess, with considerable diffidence that I approach the

strange narrative which I am about to relate. The events which I

purpose detailing are of so extraordinary and unheard-of a character

that I am quite prepared to meet with an unusual amount of incredulity

and scorn. I accept all such beforehand. I have, I trust, the literary

courage to face unbelief. I have, after mature consideration, resolved

to narrate, in as simple and straightforward a manner as I can compass,

some facts that passed under my observation in the month of July last,

and which, in the annals of the mysteries of physical science, are

wholly unparalleled.

I live at No. -- Twenty-sixth Street, in this city. The house is in

some respects a curious one. It has enjoyed for the last two years

the reputation of being haunted. It is a large and stately residence,

surrounded by what was once a garden, but which is now only a green

enclosure used for bleaching clothes. The dry basin of what has been

a fountain, and a few fruit-trees, ragged and unpruned, indicate that

this spot, in past days, was a pleasant, shady retreat, filled with

fruits and flowers and the sweet murmur of waters.

The house is very spacious. A hall of noble size leads to a vast spiral

staircase winding through its centre, while the various apartments are

of imposing dimensions. It was built some fifteen or twenty years

since by Mr. A----, the well-known New York merchant, who five years

ago threw the commercial world into convulsions by a stupendous bank

fraud. Mr. A----, as every one knows, escaped to Europe, and died not

long after of a broken heart. Almost immediately after the news of

his decease reached this country, and was verified, the report spread

in Twenty-sixth Street that No. -- was haunted. Legal measures had

dispossessed the widow of its former owner, and it was inhabited merely

by a care-taker and his wife, placed there by the house-agent into

whose hands it had passed for purposes of renting or sale. These people

declared that they were troubled with unnatural noises. Doors were

opened without any visible agency. The remnants of furniture scattered

through the various rooms were, during the night, piled one upon the

other by unknown hands. Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs

in broad daylight, accompanied by the rustle of unseen silk dresses,

and the gliding of viewless hands along the massive balusters. The

care-taker and his wife declared they would live there no longer. The

house-agent laughed, dismissed them, and put others in their place.

The noises and supernatural manifestations continued. The neighborhood

caught up the story, and the house remained untenanted for three years.

Several persons negotiated for it; but somehow, always before the

bargain was closed, they heard the unpleasant rumors, and declined to

treat any further.

It was in this state of things that my landlady--who at that time kept

a boarding-house in Bleecker Street, and who wished to move farther up

town--conceived the bold idea of renting No. -- Twenty-sixth Street.

Happening to have in her house rather a plucky and philosophical set of

boarders, she laid her scheme before us, stating candidly everything

she had heard respecting the ghostly qualities of the establishment

to which she wished to remove us. With the exception of two timid

persons,--a sea-captain and a returned Californian, who immediately

gave notice that they would leave,--all of Mrs. Moffat’s guests

declared that they would accompany her in her chivalric incursion into

the abode of spirits.

Our removal was effected in the month of May, and we were all charmed

with our new residence. The portion of Twenty-sixth Street where our

house is situated--between Seventh and Eighth Avenues--is one of the

pleasantest localities in New York. The gardens back of the houses,

running down nearly to the Hudson, form, in the summer time, a perfect

avenue of verdure. The air is pure and invigorating, sweeping, as it

does, straight across the river from the Weehawken heights, and even

the ragged garden which surrounded the house on two sides, although

displaying on washing days rather too much clothes-line, still gave us

a piece of green sward to look at, and a cool retreat in the summer

evenings, where we smoked our cigars in the dusk, and watched the

fire-flies flashing their dark-lanterns in the long grass.

Of course we had no sooner established ourselves at No. -- than we

began to expect the ghosts. We absolutely awaited their advent with

eagerness. Our dinner conversation was supernatural. One of the

boarders, who had purchased Mrs. Crowe’s “Night Side of Nature” for

his own private delectation, was regarded as a public enemy by the

entire household for not having bought twenty copies. The man led

a life of supreme wretchedness while he was reading this volume. A

system of espionage was established, of which he was the victim. If

he incautiously laid the book down for an instant and left the room,

it was immediately seized and read aloud in secret places to a select

few. I found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked

out that I was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism,

and had once written a story, entitled “The Pot of Tulips,” for

_Harper’s Monthly_, the foundation of which was a ghost. If a table or

a wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large

drawing-room, there was an instant silence, and every one was prepared

for an immediate clanking of chains and a spectral form.

After a month of psychological excitement, it was with the utmost

dissatisfaction that we were forced to acknowledge that nothing in the

remotest degree approaching the supernatural had manifested itself.

Once the black butler asseverated that his candle had been blown out by

some invisible agency while he was undressing himself for the night;

but as I had more than once discovered this colored gentleman in a

condition when one candle must have appeared to him like two, I thought

it possible that, by going a step farther in his potations, he might

have reversed this phenomenon, and seen no candle at all where he ought

to have beheld one.

Things were in this state when an incident took place so awful and

inexplicable in its character that my reason fairly reels at the bare

memory of the occurrence. It was the tenth of July. After dinner was

over I repaired, with my friend Dr. Hammond, to the garden to smoke my

evening pipe. Independent of certain mental sympathies which existed

between the Doctor and myself, we were linked together by a secret

vice. We both smoked opium. We knew each other’s secret, and respected

it. We enjoyed together that wonderful expansion of thought, that

marvellous intensifying of the perceptive faculties, that boundless

feeling of existence when we seem to have points of contact with the

whole universe,--in short, that unimaginable spiritual bliss, which I

would not surrender for a throne, and which I hope you, reader, will

never--never taste.

Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in

secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly

smoke the drug of Paradise, and leave our dreams to chance. While

smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest

and calmest channels of thought. We talked of the East, and endeavored

to recall the magical panorama of its glowing scenery. We criticised

the most sensuous poets, those who painted life ruddy with health,

brimming with passion, happy in the possession of youth and strength

and beauty. If we talked of Shakespeare’s “Tempest,” we lingered over

Ariel, and avoided Caliban. Like the Gebers, we turned our faces to the

east, and saw only the sunny side of the world.

This skilful coloring of our train of thought produced in our

subsequent visions a corresponding tone. The splendors of Arabian

fairy-land dyed our dreams. We paced that narrow strip of grass with

the tread and port of kings. The song of the _rana arborea_, while he

clung to the bark of the ragged plum-tree, sounded like the strains of

divine orchestras. Houses, walls, and streets melted like rainclouds,

and vistas of unimaginable glory stretched away before us. It was a

rapturous companionship. We enjoyed the vast delight more perfectly

because, even in our most ecstatic moments, we were conscious of each

other’s presence. Our pleasures, while individual, were still twin,

vibrating and moving in musical accord.

On the evening in question, the tenth of July, the Doctor and myself

found ourselves in an unusually metaphysical mood. We lit our large

meerschaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco, in the core of which

burned a little black nut of opium, that, like the nut in the fairy

tale, held within its narrow limits wonders beyond the reach of kings;

we paced to and fro, conversing. A strange perversity dominated the

currents of our thought. They would _not_ flow through the sun-lit

channels into which we strove to divert them. For some unaccountable

reason they constantly diverged into dark and lonesome beds, where a

continual gloom brooded. It was in vain that, after our old fashion,

we flung ourselves on the shores of the East, and talked of its

gay bazaars, of the splendors of the time of Haroun, of harems and

golden palaces. Black afreets continually arose from the depths of

our talk, and expanded, like the one the fisherman released from

the copper vessel, until they blotted everything bright from our

vision. Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force that swayed us,

and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the

proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal

love of the Terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me, “What do you

consider to be the greatest element of Terror?”

The question, I own, puzzled me. That many things were terrible, I

knew. Stumbling over a corpse in the dark; beholding, as I once did,

a woman floating down a deep and rapid river, with wildly-lifted

arms, and awful, upturned face, uttering, as she sank, shrieks that

rent one’s heart, while we, the spectators, stood frozen at a window

which overhung the river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the

slightest effort to save her, but dumbly watching her last supreme

agony and her disappearance. A shattered wreck, with no life visible,

encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a terrible object, for

it suggests a huge terror, the proportions of which are vailed. But

it now struck me for the first time that there must be one great and

ruling embodiment of fear, a King of Terrors to which all others must

succumb. What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe

its existence?

“I confess, Hammond,” I replied to my friend, “I never considered the

subject before. That there must be one Something more terrible than any

other thing, I feel. I cannot attempt, however, even the most vague

definition.”

“I am somewhat like you, Harry,” he answered. “I feel my capacity to

experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by the human

mind;--something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation

hitherto supposed incompatible elements. The calling of the voices in

Brockden Brown’s novel of ‘Wieland’ is awful; so is the picture of the

Dweller of the Threshold, in Bulwer’s ‘Zanoni’; but,” he added, shaking

his head gloomily, “there is something more horrible still than these.”

“Look here, Hammond,” I rejoined, “let us drop this kind of talk, for

Heaven’s sake! We shall suffer for it, depend on it.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night,” he replied, “but my

brain is running upon all sorts of weird and awful thoughts. I feel as

if I could write a story like Hoffman, to-night, if I were only master

of a literary style.”

“Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque in our talk, I’m off to bed.

Opium and nightmares should never be brought together. How sultry it

is! Good-night, Hammond.”

“Good-night, Harry. Pleasant dreams to you.”

“To you, gloomy wretch, afreets, ghouls, and enchanters.”

We parted, and each sought his respective chamber. I undressed quickly

and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual custom, a book,

over which I generally read myself to sleep. I opened the volume as

soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to

the other side of the room. It was Goudon’s “History of Monsters”--a

curious French work, which I had lately imported from Paris, but which,

in the state of mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable

companion. I resolved to go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas

until nothing but a little blue point of light glimmered on the top of

the tube, I composed myself to rest.

The room was in total darkness. The atom of gas that still remained

lighted did not illuminate a distance of three inches round the burner.

I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the

darkness, and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded

themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves

on my brain. I battled against them. I erected ramparts of would-be

blankness of intellect to keep them out. They still crowded upon me.

While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical

inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred. A

Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plumb upon my chest,

and the next instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat,

endeavoring to choke me.

I am no coward, and am possessed of considerable physical strength.

The suddenness of the attack, instead of stunning me, strung every

nerve to its highest tension. My body acted from instinct, before my

brain had time to realize the terrors of my position. In an instant

I wound two muscular arms around the creature, and squeezed it, with

all the strength of despair, against my chest. In a few seconds the

bony hands that had fastened on my throat loosened their hold, and

I was free to breathe once more. Then commenced a struggle of awful

intensity. Immersed in the most profound darkness, totally ignorant of

the nature of the Thing by which I was so suddenly attacked, finding

my grasp slipping every moment, by reason, it seemed to me, of the

entire nakedness of my assailant, bitten with sharp teeth in the

shoulder, neck, and chest, having every moment to protect my throat

against a pair of sinewy, agile hands, which my utmost efforts could

not confine--these were a combination of circumstances to combat which

required all the strength and skill and courage that I possessed.

At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting struggle, I got my

assailant under by a series of incredible efforts of strength. Once

pinned, with my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew that

I was victor. I rested for a moment to breathe. I heard the creature

beneath me panting in the darkness, and felt the violent throbbing of a

heart. It was apparently as exhausted as I was; that was one comfort.

At this moment I remembered that I usually placed under my pillow,

before going to bed, a large yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, for use

during the night. I felt for it instantly; it was there. In a few

seconds more I had, after a fashion, pinioned the creature’s arms.

I now felt tolerably secure. There was nothing more to be done but to

turn on the gas, and, having first seen what my midnight assailant

was like, arouse the household. I will confess to being actuated by

a certain pride in not giving the alarm before; I wished to make the

capture alone and unaided.

Never losing my hold for an instant, I slipped from the bed to the

floor, dragging my captive with me. I had but a few steps to make to

reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution, holding

the creature in a grip like a vice. At last I got within arm’s-length

of the tiny speck of blue light which told me where the gas-burner lay.

Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the

full flood of light. Then I turned to look at my captive.

I cannot even attempt to give any definition of my sensations the

instant after I turned on the gas. I suppose I must have shrieked

with terror, for in less than a minute afterward my room was crowded

with the inmates of the house. I shudder now as I think of that awful

moment. _I saw nothing!_ Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a

breathing, panting, corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its

strength a throat as warm, and apparently fleshly, as my own; and yet,

with this living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against

my own, and all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely

beheld nothing! Not even an outline,--a vapor!

I do not, even at this hour, realize the situation in which I found

myself. I cannot recall the astounding incident thoroughly. Imagination

in vain tries to compass the awful paradox.

It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my cheek. It struggled

fiercely. It had hands. They clutched me. Its skin was smooth, like my

own. There it lay, pressed close up against me, solid as stone,--and

yet utterly invisible!

I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on the instant. Some wonderful

instinct must have sustained me; for, absolutely, in place of loosening

my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain an additional strength

in my moment of horror, and tightened my grasp with such wonderful

force that I felt the creature shivering with agony.

Just then Hammond entered my room at the head of the household. As soon

as he beheld my face--which, I suppose, must have been an awful sight

to look at--he hastened forward, crying, “Great heaven, Harry! what has

happened?”

“Hammond! Hammond!” I cried, “come here. Oh! this is awful! I have been

attacked in bed by something or other, which I have hold of; but I

can’t see it--I can’t see it!”

Hammond, doubtless struck by the unfeigned horror expressed in my

countenance, made one or two steps forward with an anxious yet puzzled

expression. A very audible titter burst from the remainder of my

visitors. This suppressed laughter made me furious. To laugh at a human

being in my position! It was the worst species of cruelty. _Now_, I

can understand why the appearance of a man struggling violently, as it

would seem, with an airy nothing, and calling for assistance against a

vision, should have appeared ludicrous. _Then_, so great was my rage

against the mocking crowd that had I the power I would have stricken

them dead where they stood.

“Hammond! Hammond!” I cried again, despairingly, “for God’s sake come

to me. I can hold the--the Thing but a short while longer. It is

overpowering me. Help me! Help me!”

“Harry,” whispered Hammond, approaching me, “you have been smoking too

much opium.”

“I swear to you, Hammond, that this is no vision,” I answered, in the

same low tone. “Don’t you see how it shakes my whole frame with its

struggles? If you don’t believe me, convince yourself. Feel it,--touch

it.”

Hammond advanced and laid his hand in the spot I indicated. A wild cry

of horror burst from him. He had felt it!

In a moment he had discovered somewhere in my room a long piece of

cord, and was the next instant winding it and knotting it about the

body of the unseen being that I clasped in my arms.

“Harry,” he said, in a hoarse, agitated voice, for, though he preserved

his presence of mind, he was deeply moved, “Harry, it’s all safe now.

You may let go, old fellow, if you’re tired. The Thing can’t move.”

I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly loosed my hold.

Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the Invisible,

twisted round his hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were,

he beheld a rope laced and interlaced, and stretching tightly round a

vacant space. I never saw a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe.

Nevertheless his face expressed all the courage and determination which

I knew him to possess. His lips, although white, were set firmly, and

one could perceive at a glance that, although stricken with fear, he

was not daunted.

The confusion that ensued among the guests of the house who were

witnesses of this extraordinary scene between Hammond and myself--who

beheld the pantomime of binding this struggling Something,--who beheld

me almost sinking from physical exhaustion when my task of jailer was

over--the confusion and terror that took possession of the bystanders,

when they saw all this, was beyond description. The weaker ones fled

from the apartment. The few who remained clustered near the door,

and could not be induced to approach Hammond and his Charge. Still

incredulity broke out through their terror. They had not the courage to

satisfy themselves, and yet they doubted. It was in vain that I begged

of some of the men to come near and convince themselves by touch of

the existence in that room of a living being which was invisible. They

were incredulous, but did not dare to undeceive themselves. How could

a solid, living, breathing body be invisible, they asked. My reply was

this. I gave a sign to Hammond, and both of us--conquering our fearful

repugnance to touch the invisible creature--lifted it from the ground,

manacled as it was, and took it to my bed. Its weight was about that of

a boy of fourteen.

“Now, my friends,” I said, as Hammond and myself held the creature

suspended over the bed, “I can give you self-evident proof that here is

a solid, ponderable body which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be good

enough to watch the surface of the bed attentively.”

I was astonished at my own courage in treating this strange event so

calmly; but I had recovered from my first terror, and felt a sort of

scientific pride in the affair which dominated every other feeling.

The eyes of the bystanders were immediately fixed on my bed. At a given

signal Hammond and I let the creature fall. There was the dull sound of

a heavy body alighting on a soft mass. The timbers of the bed creaked.

A deep impression marked itself distinctly on the pillow, and on the

bed itself. The crowd who witnessed this gave a sort of low, universal

cry, and rushed from the room. Hammond and I were left alone with our

Mystery.

We remained silent for some time, listening to the low, irregular

breathing of the creature on the bed, and watching the rustle of the

bed-clothes as it impotently struggled to free itself from confinement.

Then Hammond spoke.

“Harry, this is awful.”

“Ay, awful.”

“But not unaccountable.”

“Not unaccountable! What do you mean? Such a thing has never occurred

since the birth of the world. I know not what to think, Hammond. God

grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an insane fantasy!”

“Let us reason a little, Harry. Here is a solid body which we touch,

but which we cannot see. The fact is so unusual that it strikes us

with terror. Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenomenon?

Take a piece of pure glass. It is tangible and transparent. A certain

chemical coarseness is all that prevents its being so entirely

transparent as to be totally invisible. It is not _theoretically

impossible_, mind you, to make a glass which shall not reflect a single

ray of light--a glass so pure and homogeneous in its atoms that the

rays from the sun shall pass through it as they do through the air,

refracted but not reflected. We do not see the air, and yet we feel it.”

“That’s all very well, Hammond, but these are inanimate substances.

Glass does not breathe, air does not breathe. _This_ thing has a heart

that palpitates,--a will that moves it,--lungs that play, and inspire

and respire.”

“You forget the strange phenomena of which we have so often heard of

late,” answered the Doctor, gravely. “At the meetings called ‘spirit

circles,’ invisible hands have been thrust into the hands of those

persons round the table--warm, fleshly hands that seemed to pulsate

with mortal life.”

“What? Do you think, then, that this thing is--”

“I don’t know what it is,” was the solemn reply; “but please the gods I

will, with your assistance, thoroughly investigate it.”

We watched together, smoking many pipes, all night long, by the bedside

of the unearthly being that tossed and panted until it was apparently

wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular breathing that it

slept.

The next morning the house was all astir. The boarders congregated on

the landing outside my room, and Hammond and myself were lions. We had

to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our extraordinary

prisoner, for as yet not one person in the house except ourselves could

be induced to set foot in the apartment.

The creature was awake. This was evidenced by the convulsive manner in

which the bed-clothes were moved in its efforts to escape. There was

something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, those second-hand

indications of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for

liberty which themselves were invisible.

Hammond and myself had racked our brains during the long night to

discover some means by which we might realize the shape and general

appearance of the Enigma. As well as we could make out by passing our

hands over the creature’s form, its outlines and lineaments were human.

There was a mouth; a round, smooth head without hair; a nose, which,

however, was little elevated above the cheeks; and its hands and feet

felt like those of a boy. At first we thought of placing the being on a

smooth surface and tracing its outline with chalk, as shoemakers trace

the outline of the foot. This plan was given up as being of no value.

Such an outline would give not the slightest idea of its conformation.

A happy thought struck me. We would take a cast of it in plaster

of Paris. This would give us the solid figure, and satisfy all our

wishes. But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb

the setting of the plastic covering, and distort the mould. Another

thought. Why not give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs--that

was evident by its breathing. Once reduced to a state of insensibility,

we could do with it what we would. Doctor X---- was sent for; and after

the worthy physician had recovered from the first shock of amazement,

he proceeded to administer the chloroform. In three minutes afterward

we were enabled to remove the fetters from the creature’s body, and

a well-known modeler of this city was busily engaged in covering the

invisible form with the moist clay. In five minutes more we had a

mould, and before evening a rough _fac-simile_ of the Mystery. It was

shaped like a man,--distorted, uncouth, and horrible, but still a

man. It was small, not over four feet and some inches in height, and

its limbs revealed a muscular development that was unparalleled. Its

face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen. Gustave Doré,

or Callot, or Tony Johannot, never conceived anything so horrible.

There is a face in one of the latter’s illustrations to “_Un Voyage

où il vous plaira_,” which somewhat approaches the countenance of

this creature, but does not equal it. It was the physiognomy of what I

should have fancied a ghoul to be. It looked as if it was capable of

feeding on human flesh.

Having satisfied our curiosity, and bound every one in the house to

secrecy, it became a question, what was to be done with our Enigma? It

was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our house; it was

equally impossible that such an awful being should be let loose upon

the world. I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature’s

destruction. But who would shoulder the responsibility? Who would

undertake the execution of this horrible semblance of a human being?

Day after day this question was deliberated gravely. The boarders all

left the house. Mrs. Moffat was in despair, and threatened Hammond

and myself with all sorts of legal penalties if we did not remove the

Horror. Our answer was, “We will go if you like, but we decline taking

this creature with us. Remove it yourself if you please. It appeared

in your house. On you the responsibility rests.” To this there was, of

course, no answer. Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love or money a

person who would even approach the Mystery.

The most singular part of the transaction was that we were entirely

ignorant of what the creature habitually fed on. Everything in the way

of nutriment that we could think of was placed before it, but was never

touched. It was awful to stand by, day after day, and see the clothes

toss, and hear the hard breathing, and know that it was starving.

Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still lived. The

pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and had

now nearly ceased altogether. It was evident that the creature was

dying for want of sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was

going on, I felt miserable. I could not sleep of nights. Horrible

as the creature was, it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was

suffering.

At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning

in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We

hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the

dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its

form I gave to Doctor X----, who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street.

As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I may not return, I

have drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular that has

ever come to my knowledge.

NOTE.

[It is rumored that the proprietors of a well-known museum in

this city have made arrangements with Dr. X---- to exhibit to the

public the singular cast which Mr. Escott deposited with him. So

extraordinary a history cannot fail to attract universal attention.]

FRANCIS BRET HARTE

1839–1902

Bret Harte will always be associated with the California of the

“forty-niners.” Gold digger, teacher, express messenger by turns,

he was setting up his own sketches among the compositors of the San

Francisco _Golden Era_ while still in his ’teens. The sketches brought

him into the editorial room, and then to his own chair of the _Weekly

Californian_, where he vindicated his title by the clever _Condensed

Novels_. A secretaryship in the United States Branch Mint gave him

leisure to gain wide popularity in verse. On this he mounted to his

height. The year 1868 is cardinal in his life and in the history

of American literature; for in that year was founded _The Overland

Monthly_; and the young man of the hour was made its editor. Its second

number (August, 1868) contained the most widely known, perhaps, of all

American short stories, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_. The three years

of his editorship include his most popular work, and perhaps his most

enduring. He made the whole country laugh and weep by his verse, he

established a magazine of solid merit, and he gave new life to the

short story.

To this growth his removal to the East in 1871 put a period. Continuing

his production pretty steadily on the Atlantic seaboard, in his

consulships at Crefeld (1878) and at Glasgow (1880), and finally during

seventeen years in London (1885–1902), he hardly advanced in art. That

his art survived the transplanting is sufficiently proved by the long

list of his books; but it did not thrive. His constant recurrence to

the old themes suggests that he missed the strong western soil.

The familiar tale reprinted here is typical of Bret Harte’s field,

geographical and artistic. His local color no longer keeps the

separate value attached to it alike by many of his admirers and by

himself. The California of his stories, sometimes drawn to the life,

as in _Johnson’s Old Woman_, is often that California, made of stock

desperadoes, stage-drivers, and gulches, which is the delight of

melodrama. Melodramatic Harte is incorrigibly. _Mrs. Skaggs_ is the

Dumas adventuress; and the people of her story can hardly be seen

off the boards. _The Iliad of Sandy Bar_ shows that cheap shifting

from farce humor to false pathos which catches the throats of the

gallery. Though in fact he had the knowledge of actual contact, he saw

California as his master Dickens saw London, through a haze of romance.

The stories of both are woven from the suggestions of actual places;

but in the weaving the actuality has faded.

Rather Bret Harte’s best stories prevail by something not extraneous,

by focusing the primary emotions on a single imaginative situation.

_Poker Flat_ is almost allegory--the gambler, the thief, the harlot,

the innocents, not so artificially grouped as in Hawthorne’s

_Seven Vagabonds_, but quite as artfully. It is convincing, not as

a transcript of pioneer society, but as a unified conception of

unhindered human emotions. The same is true of the famous _Luck of

Roaring Camp_, of _Tennessee’s Partner_, and of his best work in

general. For all its scientific aloofness and worship of fact, is _La

maison Tellier_ ultimately as human as _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_?

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

[_From “The Overland Monthly,” January, 1869; copyright, 1871,

by Fields, Osgood & Co.; 1899, by Bret Harte; reprinted here

by special arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,

authorized publishers of all Bret Harte’s works_]

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker

Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was

conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding

night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he

approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull

in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked

ominous.

Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern of these

indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was

another question. “I reckon they’re after somebody,” he reflected;

“likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which

he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat

boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.

In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It had lately

suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and

a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction,

quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked

it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper

persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then

hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in

the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to

say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however,

to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in

such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to

sit in judgment.

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this

category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible

example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets

of the sums he had won from them. “It’s agin justice,” said Jim

Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire

stranger--carry away our money.” But a crude sentiment of equity

residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win

from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.

Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the

less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was

too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an

uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the

dealer.

A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat

to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was

known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the

armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young

woman familiarly known as “The Duchess”; another, who had gained the

infelicitous title of “Mother Shipton”; and “Uncle Billy,” a suspected

sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no

comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort.

Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was

reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were

forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few

hysterical tears from “The Duchess,” some bad language from Mother

Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The

philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to

Mother Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s heart out, to the repeated

statements of “The Duchess” that she would die in the road, and to

the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he

rode forward. With the easy good-humor characteristic of his class, he

insisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse, “Five Spot,” for the

sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the

party into any closer sympathy. The young woman reädjusted her somewhat

draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the

possessor of “Five Spot” with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the

whole party in one sweeping anathema.

The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the

regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer

some invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It

was distant a day’s severe journey. In that advanced season, the party

soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foot-hills

into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow

and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon

the ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party

halted.

The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre,

surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite,

sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked

the valley. It was undoubtedly the most suitable spot for a camp, had

camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the

journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped

or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions

curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly of “throwing up

their hand before the game was played out.” But they were furnished

with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel,

rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long

before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed

rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became

maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect,

leaning against a rock, calmly surveying them.

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which

required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his

own language, he “couldn’t afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent

fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah-trade, his habits

of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him.

He bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands

and face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits,

and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his

weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him.

Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which,

singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which

he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand

feet sheer above the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously

clouded; at the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing

so, suddenly he heard his own name called.

A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the

new-comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as

“The Innocent” of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over

a “little game,” and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire

fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless youth.

After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator

behind the door and thus addressed him: “Tommy, you’re a good little

man, but you can’t gamble worth a cent. Don’t try it over again.” He

then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so

made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.

There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting

of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek

his fortune. “Alone?” No, not exactly alone; in fact--a giggle--he had

run away with Piney Woods. Didn’t Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She

that used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been

engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had

run away, and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they

were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a

place to camp and company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly,

while Piney--a stout, comely damsel of fifteen--emerged from behind the

pine-tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of

her lover.

Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less

with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not

felicitous. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to

kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was

sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst’s kick a superior power that

would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from

delaying further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there

was no provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, “The

Innocent” met this objection by assuring the party that he was provided

with an extra mule loaded with provisions, and by the discovery of a

rude attempt at a log-house near the trail. “Piney can stay with Mrs.

Oakhurst,” said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, “and I can shift

for myself.”

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst’s admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from

bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to

retire up the cañon until he could recover his gravity. There he

confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his

leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when

he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire--for the

air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast--in apparently

amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,

girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and

animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding

forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother

Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. “Is this yer a

d--d picnic?” said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the

sylvan group, the glancing fire-light, and the tethered animals in the

foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that

disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt

impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.

As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked

the tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy

aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set

apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged

a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the

swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were

probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity,

and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the

men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.

Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and

cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing

strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave

it,--snow!

He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers,

for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had

been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and

a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been

tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly

disappearing in the snow.

The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with

his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered

peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin

Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended

by celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his

shoulders, stroked his mustachios and waited for the dawn. It came

slowly in a whirling mist of snow-flakes, that dazzled and confused the

eye. What could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed.

He looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future in two

words,--“Snowed in!”

A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the

party, had been stored within the hut, and so escaped the felonious

fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence

they might last ten days longer. “That is,” said Mr. Oakhurst,

_sotto voce_ to the Innocent, “if you’re willing to board us. If you

ain’t--and perhaps you’d better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy

gets back with provisions.” For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could

not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy’s rascality, and so offered

the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally

stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother

Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate’s defection.

“They’ll find out the truth about us _all_, when they find out

anything,” he added, significantly, “and there’s no good frightening

them now.”

Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr.

Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.

“We’ll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow’ll melt, and

we’ll all go back together.” The cheerful gayety of the young man and

Mr. Oakhurst’s calm infected the others. The Innocent, with the aid

of pine boughs, extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the

Duchess directed Piney in the reärrangement of the interior with a

taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden

to their fullest extent. “I reckon now you’re used to fine things at

Poker Flat,” said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal

something that reddened her cheek through its professional tint, and

Mother Shipton requested Piney not to “chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst

returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of

happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and

his thoughts first naturally reverted to the whiskey, which he had

prudently _cachéd_. “And yet it don’t somehow sound like whiskey,”

said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire

through the still blinding storm, and the group around it, that he

settled to the conviction that it was “square fun.”

Whether Mr. Oakhurst had _cachéd_ his cards with the whiskey as

something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say.

It was certain that, in Mother Shipton’s words, he “didn’t say cards

once” during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordeon,

produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson, from his pack.

Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this

instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies

from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone

castinets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in

a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with

great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant

tone and Covenanter’s swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional

quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at last joined in

the refrain:

“I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord,

And I’m bound to die in His army.”

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable

group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as if in token

of the vow.

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the

stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose

professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible

amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, somehow

managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused

himself to the Innocent, by saying that he had “often been a week

without sleep.” “Doing what?” asked Tom. “Poker!” replied Oakhurst,

sententiously; “when a man gets a streak of luck,--nigger-luck,--he

don’t get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck,” continued the gambler,

reflectively, “is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for

certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s finding out when it’s

going to change that makes you. We’ve had a streak of bad luck since

we left Poker Flat--you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If

you can hold your cards right along you’re all right. For,” added the

gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,

“‘I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord,

And I’m bound to die in His army.’”

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained

valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of

provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of

that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over

the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past.

But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut; a

hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky

shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously

clear air, the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles

away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky

fastness, hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last

vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a

certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed

the Duchess. “Just you go out there and cuss, and see.” She then set

herself to the task of amusing “the child,” as she and the Duchess were

pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and

ingenious theory of the pair thus to account for the fact that she

didn’t swear and wasn’t improper.

When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the

accordeon rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the

flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching

void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by

Piney--story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions

caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have

failed, too, but for The Innocent. Some months before he had chanced

upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious translation of the Iliad. He

now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having

thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in

the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that

night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and

wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the cañon

seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened

with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the

fate of “Ash-heels,” as the Innocent persisted in denominating the

“swift-footed Achilles.”

So with small food and much of Homer and the accordeon, a week passed

over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again

from leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over the land. Day by day

closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked

from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered

twenty feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to

replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now

half-hidden in the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned

from the dreary prospect and looked into each other’s eyes, and were

happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game before

him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of

Piney. Only Mother Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed

to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst

to her side. “I’m going,” she said, in a voice of querulous weakness,

“but don’t say anything about it. Don’t waken the kids. Take the bundle

from under my head and open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained

Mother Shipton’s rations for the last week, untouched. “Give ’em to

the child,” she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. “You’ve starved

yourself,” said the gambler. “That’s what they call it,” said the

woman, querulously, as she lay down again, and, turning her face to the

wall, passed quietly away.

The accordeon and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was

forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the

snow, Mr. Oakhurst took The Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of

snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle. “There’s

one chance in a hundred to save her yet,” he said, pointing to Piney;

“but it’s there,” he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. “If you can

reach there in two days she’s safe.” “And you?” asked Tom Simson. “I’ll

stay here,” was the curt reply.

The lovers parted with a long embrace. “You are not going, too?” said

the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany

him. “As far as the cañon,” he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed

the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, and her trembling limbs

rigid with amazement.

Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the

whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some

one had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days

longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.

The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other’s

faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the

position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the

Duchess’s waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That

night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the

protecting pines, invaded the very hut.

Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which

gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess

crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: “Piney,

can you pray?” “No, dear,” said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without

knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney’s

shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer

pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they

fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,

shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and

settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds

looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace

of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully

flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices

and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers

brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told

from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had

sinned. Even the Law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away,

leaving them still locked in each other’s arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they

found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore

the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:

†

BENEATH THIS TREE

LIES THE BODY

OF

JOHN OAKHURST,

WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK

ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,

AND

HANDED IN HIS CHECKS

ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.

†

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in

his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who

was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker

Flat.

ALBERT FALVEY WEBSTER

1848–1876

Readers of “Appleton’s Journal” in the early ’70’s must have looked

forward from week to week to the stories of Albert Webster. For,

often as he wrote, he always had a story to tell. It might be merely

a romance of incident; it was usually a situation of very human

significance; it always showed narrative instinct. With this native

sense he was experimenting variously toward his art, while through his

investigations of prisons, courts, and medical advice he was developing

a serious and definite philosophy of life. But his own life was doomed.

The quest of health, very like Stevenson’s, may be read in the titles

of his descriptive essays during 1875 and 1876: _Spring Days in Aiken_,

_From New York to Aspinwall_, _The Isthmus and Panama_, _Up the Mexican

Coast_, _Winter Days in California_, etc. On the steamer from San

Francisco to Honolulu he died, and was buried in the Pacific. He was

betrothed to Una, eldest daughter of Hawthorne.

Of his many stories perhaps the most striking is _An Operation in

Money_ (“Appleton’s Journal,” September 27, 1873, volume x, page 387);

the nicest in adjustment, _Miss Eunice’s Glove_, printed below. _The

Daphne_ (“Appleton’s Journal,” 1873, volume x, page 290) and _A Fool’s

Moustache_ (ibid., 1874, volume xii, page 259) read as if sketched for

the stage. How he kept at his work appears pathetically in his leaving

behind a tale laid at Santa Barbara and published after his death, _The

Owner of “Lara”_ (ibid., 1877, new series, volume ii, page 350).

MISS EUNICE’S GLOVE

[_From the “Atlantic Monthly,” July, 1873_]

I

For a long time blithe and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in

deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that day

the unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands that

unobtrusive yet dramatic book, “Miss Crofutt’s Missionary Labors in the

English Prisons.”

It came to her notice by mere accident, not by favor of proselyting

friends; and such was its singular material, that she at once

devoured it with avidity. As its title suggests, it was the history

of the ameliorating endeavors of a woman in criminal society, and it

contained, perforce, a large amount of tragic and pathetic incident.

But this last was so blended and involved with what Miss Eunice would

have skipped as commonplace, that she was led to digest the whole

volume,--statistics, philosophy, comments, and all. She studied the

analysis of the atmosphere of cells, the properties and waste of

wheaten flour, the cost of clothing to the general government, the whys

and wherefores of crime and evil-doing; and it was not long before

there was generated within her bosom a fine and healthy ardor to

emulate this practical and courageous pattern.

She was profoundly moved by the tales of missionary labors proper.

She was filled with joy to read that Miss Crofutt and her lieutenants

sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks which enveloped

divine kernels in the hearts of some of the wretches, and she

frequently wept at the stories of victories gained over monsters whose

defences of silence and stolidity had suddenly fallen into ruin above

the slow but persistent sapping of constant kindness. Acute tinglings

and chilling thrills would pervade her entire body when she read that

on Christmas every wretch seemed to become for that day, at least, a

gracious man; that the sight of a few penny tapers, or the possession

of a handful of sweet stuff, or a spray of holly, or a hot-house bloom,

would appear to convert the worst of them into children. Her heart

would swell to learn how they acted during the one poor hour of yearly

freedom in the prison-yards; that they swelled their chests; that they

ran; that they took long strides; that the singers anxiously tried

their voices, now grown husky; that the athletes wrestled only to find

their limbs stiff and their arts forgotten; that the gentlest of them

lifted their faces to the broad sky and spent the sixty minutes in a

dreadful gazing at the clouds.

The pretty student gradually became possessed with a rage. She desired

to convert some one, to recover some estray, to reform some wretch.

She regretted that she lived in America, and not in England, where the

most perfect rascals were to be found; she was sorry that the gloomy,

sin-saturated prisons which were the scenes of Miss Crofutt’s labors

must always be beyond her ken.

There was no crime in the family or the neighborhood against which she

might strive; no one whom she knew was even austere; she had never met

a brute; all her rascals were newspaper rascals. For aught she knew,

this tranquillity and good-will might go on forever, without affording

her an opportunity. She must be denied the smallest contact with these

frightful faces and figures, these bars and cages, these deformities

of the mind and heart, these curiosities of conscience, shyness,

skill, and daring; all these dramas of reclamation, all these scenes

of fervent gratitude, thankfulness, and intoxicating liberty,--all or

any of these things must never come to be the lot of her eyes; and she

gave herself up to the most poignant regret.

But one day she was astonished to discover that all of these delights

lay within half an hour’s journey of her home; and moreover, that

there was approaching an hour which was annually set apart for the

indulgence of the inmates of the prison in question. She did not stop

to ask herself, as she might well have done, how it was that she had so

completely ignored this particular institution, which was one of the

largest and best conducted in the country, especially when her desire

to visit one was so keen; but she straightway set about preparing for

her intended visit in a manner which she fancied Miss Crofutt would

have approved, had she been present.

She resolved, in the most radical sense of the word, to be

alive. She jotted on some ivory tablets, with a gold pencil, a

number of hints to assist her in her observations. For example:

“Phrenological development; size of cells; ounces of solid and

liquid; tissue-producing food; were mirrors allowed? if so, what

was the effect? jimmy and skeleton-key, character of; canary birds:

query, would not their admission into every cell animate in the human

prisoners a similar buoyancy? to urge upon the turnkeys the use of the

Spanish garrote in place of the present distressing gallows; to find

the proportion of Orthodox and Unitarian prisoners to those of other

persuasions.” But besides these and fifty other similar memoranda, the

enthusiast cast about her for something practical to do.

She hit upon the capital idea of flowers. She at once ordered from a

gardener of taste two hundred bouquets, or rather nosegays, which she

intended for distribution among the prisoners she was about to visit,

and she called upon her father for the money.

Then she began to prepare her mind. She wished to define the plan from

which she was to make her contemplations. She settled that she would be

grave and gentle. She would be exquisitely careful not to hold herself

too much aloof, and yet not to step beyond the bounds of that sweet

reserve that she conceived must have been at once Miss Crofutt’s sword

and buckler.

Her object was to awaken in the most abandoned criminals a realization

that the world, in its most benignant phase, was still open to them;

that society, having obtained a requital for their wickedness, was

ready to embrace them again on proof of their repentance.

She determined to select at the outset two or three of the most

remarkable monsters, and turn the full head of her persuasions

exclusively upon them, instead of sprinkling (as it were) the whole

community with her grace. She would arouse at first a very few, and

then a few more, and a few more, and so on _ad infinitum_.

It was on a hot July morning that she journeyed on foot over the bridge

which led to the prison, and there walked a man behind her carrying the

flowers.

Her eyes were cast down, this being the position most significant of

her spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid; she made herself

oblivious of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her

vanity had permitted her to wear white and lavender, these making a

combination in her dress which she had been told became her well. She

had no right to embellish herself. Was she going to the races, or a

match, or a kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with particular

shades of color? She stopped short, blushing. Would Miss Cro----.

But there was no help for it now. It was too late to turn back. She

proceeded, feeling that the odds were against her.

She approached her destination in such a way that the prison came into

view suddenly. She paused with a feeling of terror. The enormous gray

building rose far above a lofty white wall of stone, and a sense of

its prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed her. On the top of

the wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a man with a rifle

trailing behind him. He was looking down into the yard inside. His

attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen thing that was being

thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a revulsion that she came

to a standstill.

What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began to tremble.

The man with the flowers came up to her and halted. From the prison

there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell, and succeeding

this a prolonged and resonant murmur which seemed to increase. Miss

Eunice looked hastily around her. There were several people who must

have heard the same sounds that reached her ears, but they were not

alarmed. In fact, one or two of them seemed to be going to the prison

direct. The courage of our philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a

brick house opposite suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an

amused and inquisitive look upon her.

This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. “Come, if you

please,” she commanded the man, and she marched upon the jail.

She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the

structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of

iron. A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large

keys. When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door, and she

passed through.

She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one

hundred feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several

people strolling about here and there. Through several grated apertures

the sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze swept

around the cavernous apartment.

Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three more wings

of the building, and in these were the prisoners’ corridors.

At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells, and

mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the

chapel above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and

to the left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The

men were dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the

lofty gratings. From above and below and all around her there came

the metallic snapping of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so

significant was everything of savage repression and impending violence,

that Miss Eunice was compelled to say faintly to herself, “I am afraid

it will take a little time to get used to all this.”

She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while the chapel

services were being conducted, and she thus had an opportunity to

regain a portion of her lost heart. She felt wonderfully dwarfed and

belittled, and her plan of recovering souls had, in some way or other,

lost much of its feasibility. A glance at her bright flowers revived

her a little, as did also a surprising, long-drawn roar from over her

head, to the tune of “America.” The prisoners were singing.

Miss Eunice was not alone in her intended work, for there were several

other ladies, also with supplies of flowers, who with her awaited until

the prisoners should descend into the yard and be let loose before

presenting them with what they had brought. Their common purpose made

them acquainted, and by the aid of chat and sympathy they fortified

each other.

Half an hour later the five hundred men descended from the chapel to

the yard, rushing out upon its bare broad surface as you have seen a

burst of water suddenly irrigate a road-bed. A hoarse and tremendous

shout at once filled the air, and echoed against the walls like the

threat of a volcano. Some of the wretches waltzed and spun around like

dervishes, some threw somersaults, some folded their arms gravely and

marched up and down, some fraternized, some walked away pondering, some

took off their tall caps and sat down in the shade, some looked towards

the rotunda with expectation, and there were those who looked towards

it with contempt.

There led from the rotunda to the yard a flight of steps. Miss Eunice

descended these steps with a quaking heart, and a turnkey shouted to

the prisoners over her head that she and others had flowers for them.

No sooner had the words left his lips, than the men rushed up pell-mell.

This was a crucial moment.

There thronged upon Miss Eunice an army of men who were being punished

for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual here had been caged

because he was either a highwayman, or a forger, or a burglar, or a

ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The unclean and frightful tide

bore down upon our terrified missionary, shrieking and whooping. Every

prisoner thrust out his hand over the head of the one in front of him,

and the foremost plucked at her dress.

She had need of courage. A sense of danger and contamination impelled

her to fly, but a gleam of reason in the midst of her distraction

enabled her to stand her ground. She forced herself to smile, though

she knew her face had grown pale.

She placed a bunch of flowers into an immense hand which projected from

a coarse blue sleeve in front of her; the owner of the hand was pushed

away so quickly by those who came after him that Miss Eunice failed to

see his face. Her tortured ear caught a rough “Thank y’, miss!” The

spirit of Miss Crofutt revived in a flash, and her disciple thereafter

possessed no lack of nerve.

She plied the crowd with flowers as long as they lasted, and a jaunty

self-possession enabled her finally to gaze without flinching at the

mass of depraved and wicked faces with which she was surrounded.

Instead of retaining her position upon the steps, she gradually

descended into the yard, as did several other visitors. She began to

feel at home; she found her tongue, and her color came back again. She

felt a warm pride in noticing with what care and respect the prisoners

treated her gifts; they carried them about with great tenderness, and

some compared them with those of their friends.

Presently she began to recall her plans. It occurred to her to select

her two or three villains. For one, she immediately pitched upon a

lean-faced wretch in front of her. He seemed to be old, for his back

was bent and he leaned upon a cane. His features were large, and

they bore an expression of profound gloom. His head was sunk upon

his breast, his lofty conical cap was pulled over his ears, and his

shapeless uniform seemed to weigh him down, so infirm was he.

Miss Eunice spoke to him. He did not hear; she spoke again. He glanced

at her like a flash, but without moving; this was at once followed by

a scrutinizing look. He raised his head, and then he turned toward her

gravely.

The solemnity of his demeanor nearly threw Miss Eunice off her balance,

but she mastered herself by beginning to talk rapidly. The prisoner

leaned over a little to hear better. Another came up, and two or three

turned around to look. She bethought herself of an incident related

in Miss Crofutt’s book, and she essayed its recital. It concerned a

lawyer who was once pleading in a French criminal court in behalf

of a man whose crime had been committed under the influence of dire

want. In his plea he described the case of another whom he knew who

had been punished with a just but short imprisonment instead of a long

one, which the judge had been at liberty to impose, but from which he

humanely refrained. Miss Eunice happily remembered the words of the

lawyer: “That man suffered like the wrong-doer that he was. He knew his

punishment was just. Therefore there lived perpetually in his breast an

impulse toward a better life which was not suppressed and stifled by

the five years he passed within the walls of the jail. He came forth

and began to labor. He toiled hard. He struggled against averted faces

and cold words, and he began to rise. He secreted nothing, faltered at

nothing, and never stumbled. He succeeded; men took off their hats to

him once more; he became wealthy, honorable, God-fearing. I, gentlemen,

am that man, that criminal.” As she quoted this last declaration, Miss

Eunice erected herself with burning eyes and touched herself proudly

upon the breast. A flush crept into her cheeks, and her nostrils

dilated, and she grew tall.

She came back to earth again, and found herself surrounded with the

prisoners. She was a little startled.

“Ah, that was good!” ejaculated the old man upon whom she had fixed her

eyes. Miss Eunice felt an inexpressible sense of delight.

Murmurs of approbation came from all of her listeners, especially from

one on her right hand. She looked around at him pleasantly.

But the smile faded from her lips on beholding him. He was extremely

tall and very powerful. He overshadowed her. His face was large,

ugly, and forbidding; his gray hair and beard were cropped close, his

eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose and overhung his large eyes like

a screen. His lips were very wide, and, being turned downwards at the

corners, they gave him a dolorous expression. His lower jaw was square

and protruding, and a pair of prodigious white ears projected from

beneath his sugar-loaf cap. He seemed to take his cue from the old man,

for he repeated his sentiment.

“Yes,” said he, with a voice which broke alternately into a roar and a

whisper, “that was a good story.”

“Y-yes,” faltered Miss Eunice, “and it has the merit of being t-rue.”

He replied with a nod, and looked absently over her head while he

rubbed the nap upon his chin with his hand. Miss Eunice discovered that

his knee touched the skirt of her dress, and she was about to move in

order to destroy this contact, when she remembered that Miss Crofutt

would probably have cherished the accident as a promoter of a valuable

personal influence, so she allowed it to remain. The lean-faced man was

not to be mentioned in the same breath with this one, therefore she

adopted the superior villain out of hand.

She began to approach him. She asked him where he lived, meaning to

discover whence he had come. He replied in the same mixture of roar

and whisper, “Six undered un one, North Wing.”

Miss Eunice grew scarlet. Presently she recovered sufficiently to

pursue some inquiries respecting the rules and customs of the prison.

She did not feel that she was interesting her friend, yet it seemed

clear that he did not wish to go away. His answers were curt, yet he

swept his cap off his head, implying by the act a certain reverence,

which Miss Eunice’s vanity permitted her to exult at. Therefore she

became more loquacious than ever. Some men came up to speak with the

prisoner, but he shook them off, and remained in an attitude of strict

attention, with his chin on his hand, looking now at the sky, now at

the ground, and now at Miss Eunice.

In handling the flowers her gloves had been stained, and she now

held them in her fingers, nervously twisting them as she talked. In

the course of time she grew short of subjects, and, as her listener

suggested nothing, several lapses occurred; in one of them she absently

spread her gloves out in her palms, meanwhile wondering how the English

girl acted under similar circumstances.

Suddenly a large hand slowly interposed itself between her eyes and her

gloves, and then withdrew, taking one of the soiled trifles with it.

She was surprised, but the surprise was pleasurable. She said nothing

at first. The prisoner gravely spread his prize out upon his own palm,

and after looking at it carefully, he rolled it up into a tight ball

and thrust it deep in an inner pocket.

This act made the philanthropist aware that she had made progress. She

rose insensibly to the elevation of patron, and she made promises to

come frequently and visit her ward and to look in upon him when he was

at work; while saying this she withdrew a little from the shade his

huge figure had supplied her with.

He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he hastily took them out

again. Still he said nothing and hung his head. It was while she was

in the mood of a conqueror that Miss Eunice went away. She felt a touch

of repugnance at stepping from before his eyes a free woman, therefore

she took pains to go when she thought he was not looking.

She pointed him out to a turnkey, who told her he was expiating the

sins of assault and burglarious entry. Outwardly Miss Eunice looked

grieved, but within she exulted that he was so emphatically a rascal.

When she emerged from the cool, shadowy, and frowning prison into the

gay sunlight, she experienced a sense of bewilderment. The significance

of a lock and a bar seemed greater on quitting them than it had when

she had perceived them first. The drama of imprisonment and punishment

oppressed her spirit with tenfold gloom now that she gazed upon the

brilliancy and freedom of the outer world. That she and everybody

around her were permitted to walk here and there at will, without

question and limit, generated within her an indefinite feeling of

gratitude; and the noise, the colors, the creaking wagons, the myriad

voices, the splendid variety and change of all things excited a

profound but at the same time a mournful satisfaction.

Midway in her return journey she was shrieked at from a carriage, which

at once approached the sidewalk. Within it were four gay maidens bound

to the Navy-Yard, from whence they were to sail, with a large party of

people of nice assortment, in an experimental steamer, which was to be

made to go with kerosene lamps, in some way. They seized upon her hands

and cajoled her. Wouldn’t she go? They were to sail down among the

islands (provided the oil made the wheels and things go round), they

were to lunch at Fort Warren, dine at Fort Independence, and dance at

Fort Winthrop. Come, please go. Oh, do! The Germanians were to furnish

the music.

Miss Eunice sighed, but shook her head. She had not yet got the air of

the prison out of her lungs, nor the figure of her robber out of her

eyes, nor the sense of horror and repulsion out of her sympathies.

At another time she would have gone to the ends of the earth with such

a happy crew, but now she only shook her head again and was resolute.

No one could wring a reason from her, and the wondering quartet drove

away.

II

Before the day went, Miss Eunice awoke to the disagreeable fact that

her plans had become shrunken and contracted, that a certain something

had curdled her spontaneity, and that her ardor had flown out at some

crevice and had left her with the dry husk of an intent.

She exerted herself to glow a little, but she failed. She talked

well at the tea-table, but she did not tell about the glove. This

matter plagued her. She ran over in her mind the various doings of

Miss Crofutt, and she could not conceal from herself that that lady

had never given a glove to one of her wretches; no, nor had she ever

permitted the smallest approach to familiarity.

Miss Eunice wept a little. She was on the eve of despairing.

In the silence of the night the idea presented itself to her with a

disagreeable baldness. There was a thief over yonder that possessed a

confidence with her.

They had found it necessary to shut this man up in iron and stone, and

to guard him with a rifle with a large leaden ball in it.

This villain was a convict. That was a terrible word, one that made her

blood chill.

She, the admired of hundreds and the beloved of a family, had done a

secret and shameful thing of which she dared not tell. In these solemn

hours the madness of her act appalled her.

She asked herself what might not the fellow do with the glove? Surely

he would exhibit it among his brutal companions, and perhaps allow it

to pass to and fro among them. They would laugh and joke with him, and

he would laugh and joke in return, and no doubt he would kiss it to

their great delight. Again, he might go to her friends, and, by working

upon their fears and by threatening an exposure of her, extort large

sums of money from them. Again, might he not harass her by constantly

appearing to her at all times and all places and making all sorts of

claims and demands? Again, might he not, with terrible ingenuity,

use it in connection with some false key or some jack-in-the-box,

or some dark-lantern, or something, in order to effect his escape;

or might he not tell the story times without count to some wretched

curiosity-hunters who would advertise her folly all over the country,

to her perpetual misery?

She became harnessed to this train of thought. She could not escape

from it. She reversed the relation that she had hoped to hold toward

such a man, and she stood in his shadow, and not he in hers.

In consequence of these ever-present fears and sensations, there

was one day, not very far in the future, that she came to have an

intolerable dread of. This day was the one on which the sentence of the

man was to expire. She felt that he would surely search for her; and

that he would find her there could be no manner of doubt, for, in her

surplus of confidence, she had told him her full name, inasmuch as he

had told her his.

When she contemplated this new source of terror, her peace of mind

fled directly. So did her plans for philanthropic labor. Not a shred

remained. The anxiety began to tell upon her, and she took to peering

out of a certain shaded window that commanded the square in front of

her house. It was not long before she remembered that for good behavior

certain days were deducted from the convicts’ terms of imprisonment.

Therefore, her ruffian might be released at a moment not anticipated by

her. He might, in fact, be discharged on any day. He might be on his

way towards her even now.

She was not very far from right, for suddenly the man did appear.

He one day turned the corner, as she was looking out at the window

fearing that she should see him, and came in a diagonal direction

across the hot, flagged square.

Miss Eunice’s pulse leaped into the hundreds. She glued her eyes upon

him. There was no mistake. There was the red face, the evil eyes, the

large mouth, the gray hair, and the massive frame.

What should she do? Should she hide? Should she raise the sash and

shriek to the police? Should she arm herself with a knife? or--what?

In the name of mercy, what? She glared into the street. He came on

steadily, and she lost him, for he passed beneath her. In a moment she

heard the jangle of the bell. She was petrified. She heard his heavy

step below. He had gone into the little reception room beside the door.

He crossed to a sofa opposite the mantel. She then heard him get up and

go to a window, then he walked about, and then sat down; probably upon

a red leather seat beside the window.

Meanwhile the servant was coming to announce him. From some impulse,

which was a strange and sudden one, she eluded the maid, and rushed

headlong upon her danger. She never remembered her descent of the

stairs. She awoke to cool contemplation of matters only to find herself

entering the room.

Had she made a mistake, after all? It was a question that was asked and

answered in a flash. This man was pretty erect and self-assured, but

she discerned in an instant that there was needed but the blue woollen

jacket and the tall cap to make him the wretch of a month before.

He said nothing. Neither did she. He stood up and occupied himself

by twisting a button upon his waistcoat. She, fearing a threat or a

demand, stood bridling to receive it. She looked at him from top to toe

with parted lips.

He glanced at her. She stepped back. He put the rim of his cap in his

mouth and bit it once or twice, and then looked out at the window.

Still neither spoke. A voice at this instant seemed impossible.

He glanced again like a flash. She shrank, and put her hands upon the

bolt. Presently he began to stir. He put out one foot, and gradually

moved forward. He made another step. He was going away. He had almost

reached the door, when Miss Eunice articulated, in a confused whisper,

“My--my glove; I wish you would give me my glove.”

He stopped, fixed his eyes upon her, and after passing his fingers up

and down upon the outside of his coat, said, with deliberation, in a

husky voice, “No, mum. I’m goin’ fur to keep it as long as I live, if

it takes two thousand years.”

“Keep it!” she stammered.

“Keep it,” he replied.

He gave her an untranslatable look. It neither frightened her nor

permitted her to demand the glove more emphatically. She felt her

cheeks and temples and her hands grow cold, and midway in the process

of fainting she saw him disappear. He vanquished quietly. Deliberation

and respect characterized his movements, and there was not so much as a

jar of the outer door.

Poor philanthropist!

This incident nearly sent her to a sick-bed. She fully expected that

her secret would appear in the newspapers in full, and she lived in

dread of the onslaught of an angry and outraged society.

The more she reflected upon what her possibilities had been and how

she had misused them, the iller and the more distressed she got. She

grew thin and spare of flesh. Her friends became frightened. They began

to dose her and to coddle her. She looked at them with eyes full of

supreme melancholy, and she frequently wept upon their shoulders.

In spite of her precautions, however, a thunderbolt slipped in.

One day her father read at the table an item that met his eye. He

repeated it aloud, on account of the peculiar statement in the last

line:--

“Detained on suspicion.--A rough-looking fellow, who gave the name

of Gorman, was arrested on the high-road to Tuxbridge Springs for

suspected complicity in some recent robberies in the neighborhood.

He was fortunately able to give a pretty clear account of his late

whereabouts, and he was permitted to depart with a caution from the

justice. Nothing was found upon him but a few coppers and an old kid

glove wrapped in a bit of paper.”

Miss Eunice’s soup spilled. This was too much, and she fainted this

time in right good earnest; and she straightway became an invalid of

the settled type. They put her to bed. The doctor told her plainly that

he knew she had a secret, but she looked at him so imploringly that he

refrained from telling his fancies; but he ordered an immediate change

of air. It was settled at once that she should go to the “Springs”--to

Tuxbridge Springs. The doctor knew there were young people there, also

plenty of dancing. So she journeyed thither with her pa and her ma and

with pillows and servants.

They were shown to their rooms, and strong porters followed with the

luggage. One of them had her huge trunk upon his shoulder. He put it

carefully upon the floor, and by so doing he disclosed the ex-prisoner

to Miss Eunice and Miss Eunice to himself. He was astonished, but

he remained silent. But she must needs be frightened and fall into

another fit of trembling. After an awkward moment he went away, while

she called to her father and begged piteously to be taken away from

Tuxbridge Springs instantly. There was no appeal. She hated, _hated_,

HATED Tuxbridge Springs, and she should die if she were forced to

remain. She rained tears. She would give no reason, but she could not

stay. No, millions on millions could not persuade her; go she must.

There was no alternative. The party quitted the place within the hour,

bag and baggage. Miss Eunice’s father was perplexed and angry, and her

mother would have been angry also if she had dared.

They went to other springs and stayed a month, but the patient’s fright

increased each day, and so did her fever. She was full of distractions.

In her dreams everybody laughed at her as the one who had flirted with

a convict. She would ever be pursued with the tale of her foolishness

and stupidity. Should she ever recover her self-respect and confidence?

She had become radically selfish. She forgot the old ideas of

noble-heartedness and self-denial, and her temper had become weak and

childish. She did not meet her puzzle face to face, but she ran away

from it with her hands over her ears. Miss Crofutt stared at her, and

therefore she threw Miss Crofutt’s book into the fire.

After two days of unceasing debate, she called her parents, and with

the greatest agitation told them _all_.

It so happened, in this case, that events, to use a railroad phrase,

made connection.

No sooner had Miss Eunice told her story than the man came again. This

time he was accompanied by a woman.

“Only get my glove away from him,” sobbed the unhappy one, “that is all

I ask!” This was a fine admission! It was thought proper to bring an

officer, and so a strong one was sent for.

Meanwhile the couple had been admitted to the parlor. Miss Eunice’s

father stationed the officer at one door, while he, with a pistol,

stood at the other. Then Miss Eunice went into the apartment. She

was wasted, weak, and nervous. The two villains got up as she came

in, and bowed. She began to tremble as usual, and laid hold upon the

mantelpiece. “How much do you want?” she gasped.

The man gave the woman a push with his forefinger. She stepped forward

quickly with her crest up. Her eyes turned, and she fixed a vixenish

look upon Miss Eunice. She suddenly shot her hand out from beneath her

shawl and extended it at full length. Across it lay Miss Eunice’s

glove, very much soiled.

“Was that thing ever yours?” demanded the woman, shrilly.

“Y-yes,” said Miss Eunice, faintly.

The woman seemed (if the apt word is to be excused) staggered. She

withdrew her hand, and looked the glove over. The man shook his head,

and began to laugh behind his hat.

“And did you ever give it to him?” pursued the woman, pointing over her

shoulder with her thumb.

Miss Eunice nodded.

“Of your own free will?”

After a moment of silence she ejaculated, in a whisper, “Yes.”

“Now wait,” said the man, coming to the front; “’nough has been said by

you.” He then addressed himself to Miss Eunice with the remains of his

laugh still illuminating his face.

“This is my wife’s sister, and she’s one of the jealous kind. I love

my wife” (here he became grave), “and I never showed her any kind of

slight that I know of. I’ve always been fair to her, and she’s always

been fair to me. Plain sailin’ so far; I never kep’ anything from

her--but this.” He reached out and took the glove from the woman, and

spread it out upon his own palm, as Miss Eunice had seen him do once

before. He looked at it thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t tell her about this;

no, never. She was never very particular to ask me; that’s where her

trust in me came in. She knowed I was above doing anything out of the

way--that is--I mean--” He stammered and blushed, and then rushed on

volubly. “But her sister here thought I paid too much attention to

it; she thought I looked at it too much, and kep’ it secret. So she

nagged and nagged, and kept the pitch boilin’ until I had to let it

out: I told ’em” (Miss Eunice shivered). “‘No,’ says she, my wife’s

sister, ‘that won’t do, Gorman. That’s chaff, and I’m too old a bird.’

Ther’fore I fetched her straight to you, so she could put the question

direct.”

He stopped a moment as if in doubt how to go on. Miss Eunice began

to open her eyes, and she released the mantel. The man resumed with

something like impressiveness:

“When you last held that,” said he, slowly, balancing the glove in his

hand, “I was a wicked man with bad intentions through and through. When

I first held it I became an honest man, with good intentions.”

A burning blush of shame covered Miss Eunice’s face and neck.

“An’ as I kep’ it my intentions went on improvin’ and improvin’,

till I made up my mind to behave myself in future, forever. Do you

understand?--forever. No backslidin’, no hitchin’, no slippin’-up. I

take occasion to say, miss, that I was beset time and again; that the

instant I set my foot outside them prison-gates, over there, my old

chums got round me; but I shook my head. ‘No,’ says I, ‘I won’t go back

on the glove.’”

Miss Eunice hung her head. The two had exchanged places, she thought;

she was the criminal and he the judge.

“An’ what is more,” continued he, with the same weight in his tone,

“I not only kep’ sight of the glove, but I kep’ sight of the generous

sperrit that gave it. I didn’t let _that_ go. I never forgot what you

meant. I knowed--I knowed,” repeated he, lifting his forefinger,--“I

knowed a time would come when there wouldn’t be any enthoosiasm, any

‘hurrah,’ and then perhaps you’d be sorry you was so kind to me; an’

the time did come.”

Miss Eunice buried her face in her hands and wept aloud.

“But did I quit the glove? No, mum. I held on to it. It was what I

fought by. I wasn’t going to give it up, because it was asked for.

All the police-officers in the city couldn’t have took it from me. I

put it deep into my pocket and I walked out. It was differcult, miss.

But I come through. The glove did it. It helped me stand out against

temptation when it was strong. If I looked at it, I remembered that

once there was a pure heart that pitied me. It cheered me up. After a

while I kinder got out of the mud. Then I got work. The glove again.

Then a girl that knowed me before I took to bad ways married me, and

no questions asked. Then I just took the glove into a dark corner and

blessed it.”

Miss Eunice was belittled.

A noise was heard in the hall-way. Miss Eunice’s father and the

policeman were going away.

The awkwardness of the succeeding silence was relieved by the moving of

the man and the woman. They had done their errand, and were going.

Said Miss Eunice, with the faint idea of making a practical apology to

her visitor, “I shall go to the prison once a week after this, I think.”

“Then may God bless ye, miss,” said the man. He came back with tears in

his eyes and took her proffered hand for an instant. Then he and his

wife’s sister went away.

Miss Eunice’s remaining spark of charity at once crackled and burst

into a flame. There is sure to be a little something that is bad in

everybody’s philanthropy when it is first put to use; it requires to be

filed down like a faulty casting before it will run without danger to

anybody. Samaritanism that goes off with half a charge is sure to do

great mischief somewhere; but Miss Eunice’s, now properly corrected,

henceforth shot off at the proper end, and inevitably hit the mark. She

purchased a new Crofutt.

BAYARD TAYLOR

1825–1878

Bayard Taylor, in the ’60’s and ’70’s, was among the best known of our

men of letters. Typical American in enterprise and resource, he gave

most of his life to foreign lands and letters. _Views Afoot_ (1846),

which has sent across the Atlantic hundreds of young Americans like him

in large ambition and small purse, was the first of a series extending

through his life. For a really Viking spirit of travel urged him over

the habitable globe, from Africa to Iceland, from California to Japan.

The store of observations first made newspaper correspondence. His

profession was journalism. Some of the material was subsequently cast

in lectures; most of it appeared finally in books. Thus his trip across

the world (1851–1853) to join Perry furnished, first, copy for the New

York “Tribune,” then many popular lectures, and finally _The Lands of

the Saracen_ (1854) and _A Visit to India, China and Japan_ (1855). His

wide knowledge of foreign societies and his intimate acquaintance with

Germany brought him naturally into public life as minister to Berlin

(1877–1878).

Admirable journalist, Taylor was not content with journalism. In 1863

at Gotha, where he had found a wife in 1857, he was deep in the study

of Goethe. From 1868–1870, after intervening travels, he gave himself

to the translation of “Faust.” Lecturing then at Cornell as Professor

of German Literature, he went back to Germany to pursue Goethe

still further at Weimar. So his knowledge of Scandinavia was of the

literature as well as of the land.

His great ambition, and doubtless his measure of success, was poetry.

From his youthful ventures in Philadelphia almost to the day of his

death he published verse; and the recognition of the public appears

in the choice of him to read the Harvard Φ Β Κ poem in 1850 and the

National Ode at the Centennial Exposition of 1876. Since his death

this part of his work has been so far slighted that there is some

need of recalling his consistently high aim and the technical mastery

evinced by performances so widely different as the delicious parodies

of _The Echo Club_ and the noble rendering of “Faust.” No criticism of

Taylor as a poet should obscure the fact that his “Faust” takes rank

with the few great verse translations.

Taylor’s versatility achieved also a lesser, but still a considerable,

success in novels and tales. The interest aroused by the lively opening

of _Who Was She?_ is sustained with no little art. Perhaps the import

would be more poignant if it were less dangerously near to abstract

proposition; but it is very human.

WHO WAS SHE?

[_From the “Atlantic Monthly” September, 1874_]

Come, now, there may as well be an end of this! Every time I meet your

eyes squarely, I detect the question just slipping out of them. If

you had spoken it, or even boldly looked it; if you had shown in your

motions the least sign of a fussy or fidgety concern on my account;

if this were not the evening of my birthday, and you the only friend

who remembered it; if confession were not good for the soul, though

harder than sin to some people, of whom I am one,--well, if all reasons

were not at this instant converged into a focus, and burning me rather

violently, in that region where the seat of emotion is supposed to lie,

I should keep my trouble to myself.

Yes, I have fifty times had it on my mind to tell you the whole story.

But who can be certain that his best friend will not smile--or, what

is worse, cherish a kind of charitable pity ever afterwards--when

the external forms of a very serious kind of passion seem trivial,

fantastic, foolish? And the worst of all is that the heroic part which

I imagined I was playing proves to have been almost the reverse. The

only comfort which I can find in my humiliation is that I am capable of

feeling it. There isn’t a bit of a paradox in this, as you will see;

but I only mention it, now, to prepare you for, maybe, a little morbid

sensitiveness of my moral nerves.

The documents are all in this portfolio, under my elbow. I had just

read them again completely through, when you were announced. You may

examine them as you like, afterwards: for the present, fill your glass,

take another Cabaña, and keep silent until my “ghastly tale” has

reached its most lamentable conclusion.

The beginning of it was at Wampsocket Springs, three years ago last

summer. I suppose most unmarried men who have reached, or passed, the

age of thirty--and I was then thirty-three--experience a milder return

of their adolescent warmth, a kind of fainter second spring, since

the first has not fulfilled its promise. Of course, I wasn’t clearly

conscious of this at the time: who is? But I had had my youthful

passion and my tragic disappointment, as you know: I had looked far

enough into what Thackeray used to call the cryptic mysteries, to save

me from the Scylla of dissipation, and yet preserved enough of natural

nature to keep me out of the Pharisaic Charybdis. My devotion to my

legal studies had already brought me a mild distinction; the paternal

legacy was a good nest-egg for the incubation of wealth,--in short, I

was a fair, respectable “party,” desirable to the humbler mammas, and

not to be despised by the haughty exclusives.

The fashionable hotel at the Springs holds three hundred, and it

was packed. I had meant to lounge there for a fortnight and then

finish my holidays at Long Branch; but eighty, at least, out of

the three hundred, were young and moved lightly in muslin. With my

years and experience I felt so safe, that to walk, talk, or dance

with them became simply a luxury, such as I had never--at least so

freely--possessed before. My name and standing, known to some families,

were agreeably exaggerated to the others, and I enjoyed that supreme

satisfaction which a man always feels when he discovers, or imagines,

that he is popular in society. There is a kind of premonitory apology

implied in my saying this, I am aware. You must remember that I am

culprit, and culprit’s counsel, at the same time.

You have never been at Wampsocket? Well, the hills sweep around in

a crescent, on the northern side, and four or five radiating glens,

descending from them, unite just above the village. The central one,

leading to a water-fall (called “Minne-hehe” by the irreverent young

people, because there is so little of it), is the fashionable drive

and promenade; but the second ravine on the left, steep, crooked, and

cumbered with bowlders which have tumbled from somewhere and lodged in

the most extraordinary groupings, became my favorite walk of a morning.

There was a footpath in it, well-trodden at first, but gradually fading

out as it became more like a ladder than a path, and I soon discovered

that no other city feet than mine were likely to scale a certain rough

slope which seemed the end of the ravine. With the aid of the tough

laurel-stems I climbed to the top, passed through a cleft as narrow as

a doorway, and presently found myself in a little upper dell, as wild

and sweet and strange as one of the pictures that haunts us on the

brink of sleep.

There was a pond--no, rather a bowl--of water in the centre; hardly

twenty yards across, yet the sky in it was so pure and far down that

the circle of rocks and summer foliage inclosing it seemed like a

little planetary ring, floating off alone through space. I can’t

explain the charm of the spot, nor the selfishness which instantly

suggested that I should keep the discovery to myself. Ten years

earlier, I should have looked around for some fair spirit to be my

“minister,” but now--

One forenoon--I think it was the third or fourth time I had visited the

place--I was startled to find the dint of a heel in the earth, half-way

up the slope. There had been rain during the night and the earth was

still moist and soft. It was the mark of a woman’s boot, only to be

distinguished from that of a walking-stick by its semicircular form. A

little higher, I found the outline of a foot, not so small as to awake

an ecstasy, but with a suggestion of lightness, elasticity, and grace.

If hands were thrust through holes in a board-fence, and nothing of the

attached bodies seen, I can easily imagine that some would attract and

others repel us: with footprints the impression is weaker, of course,

but we cannot escape it. I am not sure whether I wanted to find the

unknown wearer of the boot within my precious personal solitude: I was

afraid I should see her, while passing through the rocky crevice, and

yet was disappointed when I found no one.

But on the flat, warm rock overhanging the tarn--my special throne--lay

some withering wild-flowers, and a book! I looked up and down, right

and left: there was not the slightest sign of another human life than

mine. Then I lay down for a quarter of an hour, and listened: there

were only the noises of bird and squirrel, as before. At last, I took

up the book, the flat breadth of which suggested only sketches. There

were, indeed, some tolerable studies of rocks and trees on the first

pages; a few not very striking caricatures, which seemed to have been

commenced as portraits, but recalled no faces I knew; then a number of

fragmentary notes, written in pencil. I found no name, from first to

last; only, under the sketches, a monogram so complicated and laborious

that the initials could hardly be discovered unless one already knew

them.

The writing was a woman’s, but it had surely taken its character

from certain features of her own: it was clear, firm, individual. It

had nothing of that air of general debility which usually marks the

manuscript of young ladies, yet its firmness was far removed from the

stiff, conventional slope which all Englishwomen seem to acquire in

youth and retain through life. I don’t see how any man in my situation

could have helped reading a few lines--if only for the sake of

restoring lost property. But I was drawn on, and on, and finished by

reading all: thence, since no further harm could be done, I re-read,

pondering over certain passages until they stayed with me. Here they

are, as I set them down, that evening, on the back of a legal blank.

“It makes a great deal of difference whether we wear social forms as

bracelets or handcuffs.”

“Can we not still be wholly our independent selves, even while doing,

in the main, as others do? I know two who are so; but they are

married.”

“The men who admire these bold, dashing young girls treat them like

weaker copies of themselves. And yet they boast of what they call

‘experience!’”

“I wonder if any one felt the exquisite beauty of the noon as I did,

to-day? A faint appreciation of sunsets and storms is taught us in

youth, and kept alive by novels and flirtations; but the broad,

imperial splendor of this summer noon!--and myself standing alone in

it,--yes, utterly alone!”

“The men I seek _must_ exist: where are they? How make an acquaintance,

when one obsequiously bows himself away, as I advance? The fault is

surely not all on my side.”

There was much more, intimate enough to inspire me with a keen interest

in the writer, yet not sufficiently so to make my perusal a painful

indiscretion. I yielded to the impulse of the moment, took out my

pencil, and wrote a dozen lines on one of the blank pages. They ran

something in this wise:--

“IGNOTUS IGNOTÆ!--You have bestowed without intending it, and I

have taken without your knowledge. Do not regret the accident which

has enriched another. This concealed idyl of the hills was mine,

as I supposed, but I acknowledge your equal right to it. Shall we

share the possession, or will you banish me?”

There was a frank advance, tempered by a proper caution, I fancied, in

the words I wrote. It was evident that she was unmarried, but outside

of that certainty there lay a vast range of possibilities, some of them

alarming enough. However, if any nearer acquaintance should arise out

of the incident, the next step must be taken by her. Was I one of the

men she sought? I almost imagined so--certainly hoped so.

I laid the book on the rock, as I had found it, bestowed another keen

scrutiny on the lonely landscape, and then descended the ravine. That

evening, I went early to the ladies’ parlor, chatted more than usual

with the various damsels whom I knew, and watched with a new interest

those whom I knew not. My mind, involuntarily, had already created

a picture of the unknown. She might be twenty-five, I thought: a

reflective habit of mind would hardly be developed before that age.

Tall and stately, of course; distinctly proud in her bearing, and

somewhat reserved in her manners. Why she should have large dark eyes,

with long dark lashes, I could not tell; but so I seemed to see her.

Quite forgetting that I was (or had meant to be) _Ignotus_, I found

myself staring rather significantly at one or the other of the young

ladies, in whom I discovered some slight general resemblance to the

imaginary character. My fancies, I must confess, played strange pranks

with me. They had been kept in a coop so many years, that now, when

I suddenly turned them loose, their rickety attempts at flight quite

bewildered me.

No! there was no use in expecting a sudden discovery. I went to the

glen betimes, next morning: the book was gone, and so were the faded

flowers, but some of the latter were scattered over the top of another

rock, a few yards from mine. Ha! this means that I am not to withdraw,

I said to myself: she makes room for me! But how to surprise her?--for

by this time I was fully resolved to make her acquaintance, even though

she might turn out to be forty, scraggy and sandy-haired.

I knew no other way so likely as that of visiting the glen at all times

of the day. I even went so far as to write a line of greeting, with a

regret that our visits had not yet coincided, and laid it under a stone

on the top of _her_ rock. The note disappeared, but there was no answer

in its place. Then I suddenly remembered her fondness for the noon

hours, at which time she was “utterly alone.” The hotel _table d’hôte_

was at one o’clock: her family, doubtless, dined later, in their own

rooms. Why, this gave me, at least, her place in society! The question

of age, to be sure, remained unsettled; but all else was safe.

The next day I took a late and large breakfast, and sacrificed my

dinner. Before noon the guests had all straggled back to the hotel from

glen and grove and lane, so bright and hot was the sunshine. Indeed, I

could hardly have supported the reverberation of heat from the sides of

the ravine, but for a fixed belief that I should be successful. While

crossing the narrow meadow upon which it opened, I caught a glimpse of

something white among the thickets higher up. A moment later, it had

vanished, and I quickened my pace, feeling the beginning of an absurd

nervous excitement in my limbs. At the next turn, there it was again!

but only for another moment. I paused, exulting, and wiped my drenched

forehead. “She cannot escape me!” I murmured between the deep draughts

of cooler air I inhaled in the shadow of a rock.

A few hundred steps more brought me to the foot of the steep ascent,

where I had counted on overtaking her. I was too late for that, but

the dry, baked soil had surely been crumbled and dislodged, here and

there, by a rapid foot. I followed, in reckless haste, snatching at the

laurel-branches right and left, and paying little heed to my footing.

About one third of the way up I slipped, fell, caught a bush which

snapped at the root, slid, whirled over, and before I fairly knew what

had happened, I was lying doubled up at the bottom of the slope.

I rose, made two steps forward, and then sat down with a groan of

pain; my left ankle was badly sprained, in addition to various

minor scratches and bruises. There was a revulsion of feeling, of

course,--instant, complete, and hideous. I fairly hated the Unknown.

“Fool that I was!” I exclaimed, in the theatrical manner, dashing the

palm of my hand softly against my brow: “lured to this by the fair

traitress! But, no!--not fair: she shows the artfulness of faded,

desperate spinsterhood; she is all compact of enamel, ‘liquid bloom of

youth’ and hair-dye!”

There was a fierce comfort in this thought, but it couldn’t help me

out of the scrape. I dared not sit still, lest a sunstroke should

be added, and there was no resource but to hop or crawl down the

rugged path, in the hope of finding a forked sapling from which I

could extemporize a crutch. With endless pain and trouble I reached a

thicket, and was feebly working on a branch with my pen-knife, when the

sound of a heavy footstep surprised me.

A brown harvest-hand, in straw hat and shirt-sleeves, presently

appeared. He grinned when he saw me, and the thick snub of his nose

would have seemed like a sneer at any other time.

“Are you the gentleman that got hurt?” he asked. “Is it pretty

tolerable bad?”

“Who said I was hurt?” I cried, in astonishment.

“One of your town-women from the hotel--I reckon she was. I was binding

oats, in the field over the ridge; but I haven’t lost no time in comin’

here.”

While I was stupidly staring at this announcement, he whipped out a big

clasp knife, and in a few minutes fashioned me a practicable crutch.

Then, taking me by the other arm, he set me in motion towards the

village.

Grateful as I was for the man’s help, he aggravated me by his

ignorance. When I asked if he knew the lady, he answered: “It’s more’n

likely _you_ know her better.” But where did she come from? Down from

the hill, he guessed, but it might ha’ been up the road. How did she

look? was she old or young? what was the color of her eyes? of her

hair? There, now, I was too much for him. When a woman kept one o’

them speckled veils over her face, turned her head away, and held her

parasol between, how were you to know her from Adam? I declare to you,

I couldn’t arrive at one positive particular. Even when he affirmed

that she was tall, he added, the next instant: “Now I come to think on

it, she stepped mighty quick; so I guess she must ha’ been short.”

By the time we reached the hotel, I was in a state of fever; opiates

and lotions had their will of me for the rest of the day. I was glad

to escape the worry of questions, and the conventional sympathy

expressed in inflections of the voice which are meant to soothe, and

only exasperate. The next morning, as I lay upon my sofa, restful,

patient, and properly cheerful, the waiter entered with a bouquet of

wild flowers.

“Who sent them?” I asked.

“I found them outside your door, sir. Maybe there’s a card; yes, here’s

a bit o’ paper.”

I opened the twisted slip he handed me, and read: “From your dell--and

mine.” I took the flowers; among them were two or three rare and

beautiful varieties, which I had only found in that one spot. Fool,

again! I noiselessly kissed, while pretending to smell them, had them

placed on a stand within reach, and fell into a state of quiet and

agreeable contemplation.

Tell me, yourself, whether any male human being is ever too old for

sentiment, provided that it strikes him at the right time and in the

right way! What did that bunch of wild flowers betoken? Knowledge,

first; then, sympathy; and finally, encouragement, at least. Of course

she had seen my accident, from above; of course she had sent the

harvest laborer to aid me home. It was quite natural she should imagine

some special, romantic interest in the lonely dell, on my part, and the

gift took additional value from her conjecture.

Four days afterwards, there was a hop in the large dining-room of

the hotel. Early in the morning, a fresh bouquet had been left at my

door. I was tired of my enforced idleness, eager to discover the fair

unknown, (she was again fair, to my fancy!) and I determined to go

down, believing that a cane and a crimson velvet slipper on the left

foot would provoke a glance of sympathy from certain eyes, and thus

enable me to detect them.

The fact was, the sympathy was much too general and effusive.

Everybody, it seemed, came to me with kindly greetings; seats were

vacated at my approach, even fat Mrs. Huxter insisting on my taking her

warm place, at the head of the room. But Bob Leroy,--you know him,--as

gallant a gentleman as ever lived, put me down at the right point, and

kept me there. He only meant to divert me, yet gave me the only place

where I could quietly inspect all the younger ladies, as dance or

supper brought them near.

One of the dances was an old-fashioned cotillon, and one of the

figures, the “coquette,” brought every one, in turn, before me. I

received a pleasant word or two from those whom I knew, and a long,

kind, silent glance from Miss May Danvers. Where had been my eyes? She

was tall, stately, twenty-five, had large dark eyes, and long dark

lashes! Again the changes of the dance brought her near me; I threw

(or strove to throw) unutterable meanings into my eyes, and cast them

upon hers. She seemed startled, looked suddenly away, looked back to

me, and--blushed. I knew her for what is called “a nice girl”--that is,

tolerably frank, gently feminine, and not dangerously intelligent. Was

it possible that I had overlooked so much character and intellect?

As the cotillon closed, she was again in my neighborhood, and her

partner led her in my direction. I was rising painfully from my

chair, when Bob Leroy pushed me down again, whisked another seat from

somewhere, planted it at my side, and there she was!

She knew who was her neighbor, I plainly saw; but instead of turning

towards me, she began to fan herself in a nervous way and to fidget

with the buttons of her gloves. I grew impatient.

“Miss Danvers!” I said, at last.

“Oh!” was all her answer, as she looked at me for a moment.

“Where are your thoughts?” I asked.

Then she turned, with wide, astonished eyes, coloring softly up to the

roots of her hair. My heart gave a sudden leap.

“How can you tell, if I cannot?” she asked.

“May I guess?”

She made a slight inclination of the head, saying nothing. I was then

quite sure.

“The second ravine, to the left of the main drive?”

This time she actually started; her color became deeper, and a leaf of

the ivory fan snapped between her fingers.

“Let there be no more a secret!” I exclaimed. “Your flowers have

brought me your messages; I knew I should find you”--

Full of certainty, I was speaking in a low, impassioned voice. She

cut me short by rising from her seat; I felt that she was both angry

and alarmed. Fisher, of Philadelphia, jostling right and left in his

haste, made his way towards her. She fairly snatched his arm, clung to

it with a warmth I had never seen expressed in a ball-room, and began

to whisper in his ear. It was not five minutes before he came to me,

alone, with a very stern face, bent down, and said:--

“If you have discovered our secret, you will keep silent. You are

certainly a gentleman.”

I bowed, coldly and savagely. There was a draft from the open window;

my ankle became suddenly weary and painful, and I went to bed. Can you

believe that I didn’t guess, immediately, what it all meant? In a vague

way, I fancied that I had been premature in my attempt to drop our

mutual incognito, and that Fisher, a rival lover, was jealous of me.

This was rather flattering than otherwise; but when I limped down to

the ladies’ parlor, the next day, no Miss Danvers was to be seen. I did

not venture to ask for her; it might seem importunate, and a woman of

so much hidden capacity was evidently not to be wooed in the ordinary

way.

So another night passed by; and then, with the morning, came a letter

which made me feel, at the same instant, like a fool and a hero. It had

been dropped in the Wampsocket post-office, was legibly addressed to me

and delivered with some other letters which had arrived by the night

mail. Here it is; listen!

“NOTO IGNOTA!--Haste is not a gift of the gods, and you have been

impatient, with the usual result. I was almost prepared for this,

and thus am not wholly disappointed. In a day or two more you will

discover your mistake, which, so far as I can learn, has done no

particular harm. If you wish to find _me_, there is only one way

to seek me; should I tell you what it is, I should run the risk

of losing you,--that is, I should preclude the manifestation of

a certain quality which I hope to find in the man who may--or,

rather, must--be my friend. This sounds enigmatical, yet you have

read enough of my nature, as written in those random notes in my

sketch-book, to guess, at least, how much I require. Only this let

me add: mere guessing is useless.

“Being unknown, I can write freely. If you find me, I shall be

justified; if not, I shall hardly need to blush, even to myself,

over a futile experiment.

“It is possible for me to learn enough of your life, henceforth, to

direct my relation towards you. This may be the end; if so, I shall

know it soon. I shall also know whether you continue to seek me.

Trusting in your honor as a man, I must ask you to trust in mine,

as a woman.”

I _did_ discover my mistake, as the Unknown promised. There had been

a secret betrothal between Fisher and Miss Danvers; and singularly

enough, the momentous question and answer had been given in the very

ravine leading to my upper dell! The two meant to keep the matter to

themselves, but therein, it seems, I thwarted them; there was a little

opposition on the part of their respective families, but all was

amicably settled before I left Wampsocket.

The letter made a very deep impression upon me. What was the one way

to find her? What could it be but the triumph that follows ambitious

toil,--the manifestation of all my best qualities, as a man? Be she

old or young, plain or beautiful, I reflected, hers is surely a nature

worth knowing, and its candid intelligence conceals no hazards for me.

I have sought her rashly, blundered, betrayed that I set her lower,

in my thoughts, than her actual self: let me now adopt the opposite

course, seek her openly no longer, go back to my tasks, and, following

my own aims vigorously and cheerfully, restore that respect which she

seemed to be on the point of losing. For, consciously or not, she had

communicated to me a doubt, implied in the very expression of her own

strength and pride. She had meant to address me as an equal, yet,

despite herself, took a stand a little above that which she accorded to

me.

I came back to New York earlier than usual, worked steadily at

my profession and with increasing success, and began to accept

opportunities (which I had previously declined) of making myself

personally known to the great, impressible, fickle, tyrannical public.

One or two of my speeches in the hall of the Cooper Institute, on

various occasions--as you may perhaps remember--gave me a good headway

with the party, and were the chief cause of my nomination for the State

office which I still hold. (There, on the table, lies a resignation,

written to-day, but not yet signed. We’ll talk of it, afterwards.)

Several months passed by, and no further letter reached me. I gave up

much of my time to society, moved familiarly in more than one province

of the kingdom here, and vastly extended my acquaintance, especially

among the women; but not one of them betrayed the mysterious something

or other--really I can’t explain precisely what it was!--which I was

looking for. In fact, the more I endeavored quietly to study the sex,

the more confused I became.

At last, I was subjected to the usual onslaught from the strong-minded.

A small but formidable committee entered my office one morning and

demanded a categorical declaration of my principles. What my views

on the subject were, I knew very well; they were clear and decided;

and yet, I hesitated to declare them! It wasn’t a temptation of Saint

Anthony--that is, turned the other way--and the belligerent attitude

of the dames did not alarm me in the least; but _she_! What was _her_

position? How could I best please her? It flashed upon my mind, while

Mrs. ---- was making her formal speech, that I had taken no step for

months without a vague, secret reference to _her_. So, I strove to be

courteous, friendly, and agreeably noncommittal; begged for further

documents, and promised to reply by letter, in a few days.

I was hardly surprised to find the well-known hand on the envelope of

a letter, shortly afterwards. I held it for a minute in my palm, with

an absurd hope that I might sympathetically feel its character, before

breaking the seal. Then I read it with a great sense of relief.

“I have never assumed to guide a man, except towards the full

exercise of his powers. It is not opinion in action, but opinion in

a state of idleness or indifference, which repels me. I am deeply

glad that you have gained so much since you left the country. If,

in shaping your course, you have thought of me, I will frankly

say that, _to that extent_, you have drawn nearer. Am I mistaken

in conjecturing that you wish to know my relation to the movement

concerning which you were recently interrogated? In this, as in

other instances which may come, I must beg you to consider me only

as a spectator. The more my own views may seem likely to sway your

action, the less I shall be inclined to declare them. If you find

this cold or unwomanly, remember that it is not easy!”

Yes! I felt that I had certainly drawn much nearer to her. And from

this time on, her imaginary face and form became other than they

were. She was twenty-eight--three years older; a very little above

the middle height, but not tall; serene, rather than stately, in her

movements; with a calm, almost grave face, relieved by the sweetness

of the full, firm lips; and finally eyes of pure, limpid gray, such as

we fancy belonged to the Venus of Milo. I found her, thus, much more

attractive than with the dark eyes and lashes,--but she did not make

her appearance in the circles which I frequented.

Another year slipped away. As an official personage, my importance

increased, but I was careful not to exaggerate it to myself. Many have

wondered (perhaps you among the rest) at my success, seeing that I

possess no remarkable abilities. If I have any secret, it is simply

this--doing faithfully, with all my might, whatever I undertake. Nine

tenths of our politicians become inflated and careless, after the

first few years, and are easily forgotten when they once lose place.

I am a little surprised, now, that I had so much patience with the

Unknown. I was too important, at least, to be played with; too mature

to be subjected to a longer test; too earnest, as I had proved, to be

doubted, or thrown aside without a further explanation.

Growing tired, at last, of silent waiting, I bethought me of

advertising. A carefully-written “Personal,” in which _Ignotus_

informed _Ignota_ of the necessity of his communicating with her,

appeared simultaneously in the Tribune, Herald, World, and Times. I

renewed the advertisement as the time expired without an answer, and I

think it was about the end of the third week before one came, through

the post, as before.

Ah, yes! I had forgotten. See! my advertisement is pasted on the note,

as a heading or motto for the manuscript lines. I don’t know why the

printed slip should give me a particular feeling of humiliation as I

look at it, but such is the fact. What she wrote is all I need read to

you:--