CARRIED BY STORM.
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;
But sure am I, among the ranks that fell
’Tis the first _fiend_ e’er counselled man to rise!
ANON.
Manton had reckoned without his host, in supposing that his
self-constituted patroness had any idea whatever of being frozen off:
on the contrary, her benevolent ardor had been only warmed still more,
as he had abundant evidence, when, on returning from his office next
morning, he found yet another snowy missive crowning the centre of his
table.
“Monsieur Tonson, come again!” he exclaimed, as he seized the note, and
opened it this time without hesitation, “what can the incredible woman
have to say now? Well, here it is!”
MY FRIEND—You heaped ice upon my heart yesterday. To-day, I feel
chilled and stiffened, as if my very soul-wings had been frosted
through your lips! Why did you do so? It was not magnanimous in you.
_You_ are proud, and beautiful, and strong, while I am plain, and
weak, and lowly. Was it worthy of a noble soul to treat with such
harsh and cutting coldness a poor, feeble, and wayworn daughter of
sorrow like myself, who had come merely in the meek and matronly
overflow of tenderness and appreciation for a poisoned, sick and
erring child of genius, to offer him her sympathy in his dreary and
unrelieved immolation of glorious powers at the unholy altar of
ambition? Was it not unkind of you? Can you suppose that had you
not been poisoned, body and soul, the demon pride would have thus
overruled your better and your angel nature to such harsh rejection
of the comforter, the Father had sent you in his mercy? What have I
asked of you, but that you should unbend this fatal pride, and accept
of mortal genialities? That you should spare yourself from yourself,
and give something to others. Ah! you will not always thus repulse the
sympathies of your race—naughty, naughty boy! hasten to be good and
come to see me!
MARIE.
“Well! well! by heaven, the audacity of this thing soars to the
sublime! and yet there is some truth as well as pathos in it, too! Now,
I come to think of it, it was unmanly of me to treat the poor woman
so, just as if I expected she carried stilettoes or revolvers under
her petticoats, or wore aromatic poison in her bosom, with a foul and
treacherous design upon my life! The fact is, I have made a bugbear of
this creature in my imagination, when she is nothing, in fact, but fool
and fanatic combined, with a little disjointed mother-wit. Curse the
whole affair! I wish she and her endless letters were in the bottom of
the sea! By these persistent impertinences she disturbs me in my work;
these distractions are unendurable! I wish she were only safe in heaven.
It is useless to give _all_ the letters which poor Manton received
within the next four or five days, but it is sufficient to say that at
last, in a fit of veritable desperation, spleen and humor, he answered
one of the last in a tone of hyperbolical exaggeration that would have
put to shame, not Mercutio only, but the veritable Bombastes Furioso
himself. The effect was coldly studied, and behold the result.
The next morning a servant informed him that a lady desired to see him
in the parlor.
Terror-stricken by the announcement, he nevertheless knew, in his
conscience, that he had brought down the judgment upon his own head. He
therefore felt it to be his duty to abide the consequences of his own
imprudence, and went down to wait upon his caller, who, of course, was
no other than his correspondent.
She received him with a flushing face, as seemed to be usual to her
shrinking nature. She was this time without her daughter. There
were other persons in the parlor, and this seemed to disconcert her
somewhat, for she had evidently come full of some important disclosure.
Although it was the latter part of winter, and a heavy snow had just
commenced breaking up, which rendered the streets of New York almost
impassable, she nevertheless proposed that they should go out for a
long walk. Manton looked through the window into the sloppy street,
opened his eyes a little, and assented.
There was something wonderfully rare in the idea of a woman’s proposing
a long walk on such a day, and Manton relished the hardiness and
originality of the thing.
“Well!” said he to himself, “I like her spunk, anyhow! She has shown
herself in every way to be in earnest in what she undertakes. Phew!
I shall enjoy it! a woman in long petticoats, wading a mile or two
through a cold slush such as this! After this, what is it that Madame
won’t do? I’ll lead her something of a round, at any rate, before she
gets back.”
These thoughts passed through his mind as he ran up-stairs for his cap.
She met him as he came down, in the passage-way, and they passed out at
the front door.
“You are a droll person,” said Manton, as they reached the street.
“Why?” asked she, with a covert gleam in her eye.
“Why? Because few women would have thought of choosing such a day as
this for a walk.”
“I care nothing for trifles! Misfortune has taught me to disregard
them. Suffering makes us hardy.”
Manton looked down at her with surprise; for, of all things on earth,
the most disagreeable to him, was that commonplace timidity, and
shrinking from trifles, which is so ludicrously characteristic of
American women. He did not wish to see woman unsexed, but contemned her
puerile and unnecessary cowardice.
His companion now proceeded with great animation to follow up the
favorable opening thus effected, with a rapid and pathetic sketch, in
outline, of her sad and suffering life.
She had been married by her parents to a sordid lout of a Quaker, in
New England, whose horrid barbarities and persecutions had finally
compelled the weak and hitherto unresisting woman to seek a separation,
the scandal of which had roused against her the relentless animosity of
the whole body of New England Quakers, who finally carried their brutal
persecution to the extreme of assisting her yet more brutal husband,
in robbing her of her dear and only child, under the plea that she was
neither a suitable nor capable person to have charge of it. That, after
a long period, spent by the distracted mother in roaming up and down
the land, in search of aid and comfort, she had at length succeeded in
enlisting some noble and benevolent souls in her cause, who finally
rescued the child, by strategy or force, and restored it to its weeping
mother’s arms.
In addition to this sad tale of suffering connected with her private
history, which was most skilfully and artistically worked up, she had
another, of public martyrdom, which was, to Manton, far more impressive.
Through obscurity and poverty, this resolute and daring woman had
dedicated herself to the amelioration of the physical evils of her
helpless sex. She had, with unflagging ardor, studied the books of
anatomical science, the diseases of her sex, and the wisest means of
cure. And thus, in addition to having been the first woman in New
England to publicly assert that there is no true marriage but in love,
she had also led the way in announcing to women their sanitary duties
to themselves; that they must learn to heal their bodies, and leave the
other sex to take care of their own diseases; that delicacy as well as
utility prompted this course.
This idea at once met the approbation of Manton, to whom its assertion
was comparatively novel, but who had always deeply felt the lamentable
helplessness of woman, and the unnatural relation of the male members
of the profession to them.
The brave and hearty manner in which this singular woman had evidently
breasted alone the popular prejudice, in a cause which he saw, at a
glance, to be so just and nobly utilitarian, for the first time moved
his sympathies somewhat in her favor, in spite of his contempt and
disgust for women who ventured beyond their sphere.
The vocation of a learned nurse to diseased persons of her own
sex, was clearly to him _not_ beyond the proper sphere of woman,
but a most important, legitimate, and—however little recognised,
conventionally—the most honorable and useful. He could not but respect
the woman, whatever her eccentricities might be, who could be brave
and true enough to assert effectively to her sex, the natural and
inevitable mandate, “Know thyself!”
There was something chivalrous in the thought—a generous daring, a
martyr spirit, that could not fail to arrest a nature in itself, rashly
scornful of all that was merely conventional, and whose untamed,
half-savage soul rejoiced in all novelties that expressed to him a
higher utility than mere forms conveyed.
The walk was continued for hours; and still further to try her nerves,
during this long conversation, Manton turned through many intricacies
into the most darkened labyrinths of the vice-profaned metropolis.
The woman never flinched; nothing seemed to appal her, and, as they
threaded rapidly the dingy alleys of the “Five Points,” she had an
acute theory or a daring speculation for each evil, the external form
of which they successively encountered.
There was a vigor and originality in all this, as coming from a woman,
that interested Manton in spite of himself. Plain, uncouth, and
eccentric as was this scorned “lecture-woman,” he could not but confess
to himself, as they returned mud-bedraggled and tired enough from that
long walk, that his respect for her had very much increased.