SPIRITUAL CONFIDENCES.
And under fair pretence of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wind me into easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares.
MASK OF COMUS.
We shall follow the bedraggled heroine of the last chapter, begging
leave of the reader to “see her home.”
Mark with what an elate and vigorous step she trips it up Barclay
Street into Broadway, after taking leave of Manton at the door of the
Graham House. One would think that she should surely be tired, after
that tremendous morning’s work, trudging and splashing through the
dirtiest mire of three-fourths of the great city. But no—she springs in
her gait, and her strange, animal eye, glitters fairly with a devilish
obliquity, which has for the moment usurped its expression. She does
not mind that people turn and stare after her dragging and bespattered
skirts—not she!—her very soul is possessed with the pre-occupation of
an ecstatic gloating over some great conquest achieved, or closely
perceived already in the prospective future into which she glares.
We shall see what we shall see—only follow, still follow. She has
turned up Broadway, and threads the great throng there with rapid
glide, as street after street is passed. Ah, now we have it! She
crosses—this is Eighth Street! There, in Broadway, near the corner,
stands a great house, with wide-open door; the smeared and dirty
lintels, the greasy latch, the wide, uncarpeted hall of which, at
once reveals it to be one of those miscellaneous and incomprehensible
edifices, which are not unfrequently met with on the great
thoroughfare, and the uses of which are not generally more specifically
known, than that they are fashionable boarding-houses.
Into this ever-gaping entrance she wheeled, and darted up the broad,
uncarpeted stairway, which she continued to ascend with almost
incredible ease and swiftness to the fifth story. When near the end
of a long and narrow passage, she paused before one of the doors, and
tapping it slightly, entered without farther ceremony.
A handsome and well-dressed woman, who was engaged in writing at a
small escritoire, looked up indifferently as she entered, but the
moment she caught the expression of the newcomer’s face, she sprang
to her feet, throwing down the pen, and with a strangely shrill and
unmusical laugh, screamed out in a most inconceivably voluble style—
“Why, I declare! Marie, what’s the matter? Your eyes are almost
bursting out of your head! You look as if you had found a bag of gold,
and meant to give me half! Why, bless the woman, how she looks! Have
you caught him at last? Well, we’re in luck! I’ve caught my man for
sure! He’s been here all the morning, he’s just left! Why, how the
woman looks! She keeps staring so! You haven’t gone crazy for joy, have
you? Now, do tell! how have you managed to catch that insolent baby,
you seemed to have set your heart on so? Why, how muddy the woman is!”
she shrieked, looking down at the condition of her dress. “Ha! ha! ha!
ha! Do tell, what sort of a game have you been playing? Did you have to
hunt him through a pig-sty?”
The woman had been standing motionless, in the meantime, with distended
eyes and compressed mouth, stretched in a rigid smile of supernaturally
savage exultation. She gazed towards the face of the speaker, but
did not seem to listen to her, or see her features. She looked the
abstracted embodiment of triumphing evil. Very soon her stiffened lips
quivered slightly, while the voluble lady stepping forward, shook her
sharply by the shoulder, shrilling out again—
“Do look at the woman! Why, what can be the matter? Can’t you talk? The
cat’s got the woman’s tongue surely! I did not think you were so much
in earnest about that green boy! Why, I could twist him about my finger
like a tow-string! I have achieved something in conquering _my_ man!”
“Y-your man!” said the woman slowly, interrupting her. But these words
were accompanied by a look of such strange and taunting significance,
that the other turned instantly pale and sprang back, as if she had
received an electric shock from those singular eyes, that fell upon her
for a moment with their evil obliquity, and then returned instantly to
their natural expression. “Wh-why, what do you mean?” stammered the
other angrily.
The woman only answered with a pleasant smile—“Now don’t be a jealous
fool, Jeannette Shrewell—I shall never interfere with your schemes if
you don’t with mine.”
“Yes! but because you knew Edmond long ago,” continued the other in a
fierce and shrewish voice, “you dare to insinuate to me that he too has
passed through your hands!”
The woman broke out into a loud laugh—“Why, what a child you are! You
know what my relations to Edmond are, perfectly. Spiritual—purely
and spotlessly spiritual. I should no more think of him than of my
grandfather.”
“Spiritual!” shrieked the other, springing forward; “do you dare to
use that stupid cant to me? Keep it for the sap-headed boys and senile
drivellers that you decoy with such bait, to plunder. You shan’t insult
me to my teeth with it.”
The speaker, whose physical energies were far more vehement and
overbearing than the other, seemed to have entirely awed her. She
sank meekly into a chair, turned very pale, and lifting her eyes with
an humble look, she said, in a low imploring voice, “Now, Jeannette,
please don’t be so violent. I did not mean to taunt or insult you. You
have altogether mistaken me, dear friend. Now, please be calm.”
But the other, whose long black curls still writhed and quivered, like
the snakes of the Gorgon head, with rage, stood towering before the
suppliant, as if she meant to crush her; and as she thus stood, she
really looked superb.
Her profile was delicately chiselled and Roman, with large, dark gray
eyes, thin lips, and fine chin; and now that every feature was inspired
with anger, the eye ceased to be offended by their habitual expression
of selfish, cold, and sharp intellection. She continued, quite as
vehemently—
“You have sown the wind, and you must reap. I have heard this vile
insinuation before of something between you and Edmond at B.”
“Jeannette! Jeannette! it is false! every word of it. It is a vile
slander of my enemies. Ask Edmond himself—he will tell you it is so.”
“Yes! yes! I know it is false. But who gave circulation to these
reports? Hey? Your enemies, were they? Your enemies must have a great
deal to do, that they keep themselves busy with these manifold stories
of your adventures. Who was it aspired to the eclat of any affair with
the rich, generous, learned, and travelled Edmond? Who was it dragged
him, through his unsuspecting recklessness of conventional usages, into
conditions which rendered him liable to such an imputation? Who boasted
of it, and attempted to place him in the same category with the dupes
and gulls and fools she had already ruined and plundered? Hey? Who
was it? Marie ——, I know you,” and she stretched herself to her full
height; but, had her vision not been blinded by passion, she might have
perceived a cold and scarcely perceptible smile of scornful incredulity
pass over the face at which she pointed her sharp finger. “I know you,
woman! Beware! beware how you cross my track with Edmond! You had
better rouse the sleeping tigress with her young in your arms. He shall
be mine! I have sworn it! One year ago, when I heard of his return from
Europe, and left everything, mother, sisters, friends, and came on to
this city, a thousand miles, alone and unprotected, that I might throw
myself in his way, I swore that he should be mine. I had watched his
career for years, from a distance, and he had grown to be my ideal.
When he became, first the pupil and then the expounder of the new
philosophy in France, I too became its student; with unwearied labor I
mastered its prodigious science, for I divined the purpose of the man.
I knew he must return to his own country, and become its exponent here,
and that then my time would come.
“I studied the German, the French, and the Italian; with all which
languages I knew him to be familiar. I acquainted myself with the
literature of each, that I might be able always to speak with him in
the tongues and of the themes of which his long residence in Europe had
made the associations most pleasant. Armed thus, cap-a-pie, I have met
him at last, as I felt it was my destiny to do.
“I have attracted him; I have all but conquered him. That man shall be
my lover! Ay, woman, he shall be my lawful husband! Cross my track in
any way, if you d-a-a-r-e! I know your arts; I will render them for
ever unavailing to you; I will explain them, and expose them. Cross
my track, then, if you d-a-a-r-e!” and, as she hissed out the words
between her teeth, she stooped forward and shook her finger in the face
of the now actually trembling woman. “Remember! our compact is, you let
me alone, and I will let you alone; you help me, I’ll help you; cross
me, I destroy you!”
“Is that all?” murmured the woman, in a soft voice, opening her eyes,
which had been closed during the greater part of this tirade, while, at
the same time, the old obliquity became for a moment apparent.
“Why, Jeannette, I never dreamed of any thing else. I would sooner cut
off my right hand than interfere with you, in any respect. Our two
courses are entirely different. You have one object and one species
of game to hunt down, while I have another. We shall not clash!” and
seeing the features of the other relax from exhausted passion, she
leaned forward with a pleasing smile.
“Just to think, you stormy child! I had hastened home to tell you of my
good fortune, and you so overpower me as to make me forget all I had to
tell. You have frightened me sadly, Jeannette, and all about nothing.
But I’ve got him—I think he’s booked at last!”
“Pooh!” said the other, sinking into a chair. “Well, I asked you ever
so long ago; how did you manage it? You seem to have had a great deal
more trouble this time than usual. He does not seem to have been very
civil to you heretofore, I should think.”
“No!” said the other, in a low, hoarsened tone, while the blood mounted
in crimson flush to her _forehead_, _not_ to her cheeks. This nice
discrimination is very necessary to a true apprehension of such a
character. “No, he has acted like a sullen cub, heretofore, a perfect
young white bear, with his insolent pride, and clumsy haughtiness! He
is the most insulting and impracticable boor I ever took hold of!”
“Ah! I perceive you are splenetic!”
“No! It is simply annoying, that the insufferable fellow should give
me so much trouble. Why, only think, he positively refused to be
introduced to me—said I was a shallow adventuress, and that he did not
wish to know me—even when our Doctor Weasel went to him, with a special
request on my part for such an introduction!”
“Oh, yes! but our Doctor is proverbially awkward in such matters. No
doubt he spoiled it all in the manner of the request.”
“Well, but you know, if the Doctor is awkward, he’s got money, and as
long as he believes in Fourier and Swedenborg as devotedly as he does
now, we can use his purse. But to proceed: That sullen Southerner not
only refused to be introduced to me, in the most insulting terms, but
when I wrote him three or four of my most irresistible billet-doux,
that never failed before, he treated them with what I suppose he meant
to be silent contempt, for he did not answer one of them, though I had
taken the pains to place them all upon his table with my own hands,
during his absence, and find out all I could concerning him at the same
time.
“I found the key-note, however; the boy loved his mother, and has been
playing hyæna with the rest of the world ever since she died, and been
endeavoring to imagine himself a misanthrope, with a life dedicated
since solely to the ambition of achieving, in her name, good for
mankind. This discovery, privately made, put me fully in possession
of all I wanted to know of his weakness. I saw he was earnest and
chivalrous, as his origin implies, and proudly secretive, so far as
the privacies of his life were concerned. So I at once felt that this
incrustation of reserve with which he had fenced about his life, could
only be broken down by a _coup de main_.
“I determined to come down upon him, by surprise, in spite of
everything. I called on him, and sent our trusty Doctor up to bring him
to the parlor _per force_. The _ruse_ succeeded so far as to effect
an introduction; but, to tell you the truth,” and her forehead fairly
blazed while she spoke, “I never was treated with such insolent and
frozen hauteur in my life before! I went away with my ears tingling and
blood on fire, but I cursed him in my very heart, and swore to have a
woman’s vengeance! You remember how sick I was that night. Oh, God!
such furies as tortured me! I scarcely slept; but a happy thought came
to me just about morning.
“He was a poet—his brow revealed that—but with characteristic sternness
he had yet published nothing which could be accounted the highest
expression of his inmost life. He had made his way in literature
rapidly and brilliantly through a novel combination of style, in which
the essential elements of prose and poetry were combined; but had never
yet ventured to associate his proper name with anything bearing the
forms of poetry.
“Now, the Doctor had told me that the poem, under the soubriquet of
‘De Noto,’ in the last number of the Journal, was his, and it at once
flashed across me—appreciation! appreciation! The young poet has stolen
timidly forth, under disguise, with this myth clear from his soul! He
does not expect to be understood at once, and any prompt appreciation
will overwhelm him from the very suddenness of the thing; and in his
delighted surprise he would yearn towards the acknowledged devil
himself.
“I sent him another note expressing that intense appreciation for
which I knew he was craving. He treated it with the neglect that he
had the others; but I somehow felt that I had made my mark. I called
this morning, and as I knew his contempt for mere conventional forms, I
ventured upon a dashing _ruse de guerre_.
“I challenged him, for I knew his own personal hardiness, to take a
long walk through all the slop of the thaw. With a stare of surprise
he accepted it. I felt even then that my point was half gained. There
were people in the parlor, and my object was to get him alone with
myself. I felt that I had already touched one weakness, and my object
now was to arrest his chivalrous sympathies in behalf of my forlorn and
unprotected martyrdom to the cause of woman in her resistance to the
brutalities of the marital law, and her right of proclaiming to her
sisterhood the sanitary laws of health, in which they have been kept in
profound ignorance by the ‘profession.’
“At first, I arrested his attention by the daring of the position which
I had assumed, and then aroused his sympathies by a fervent relation
of the wrongs inflicted on me by my brutal husband. The story was old,
but I managed to throw into it a great deal of feeling, for there is
nothing like a tale of persecution to arrest chivalrous minds all over
the world. _We_ understand all these propositions as scientific! When I
parted with him he smiled upon me, for the first time, genially. I am
sure of him now!”
“I should think you might be!”