ANOTHER INTRIGUE.
With all the apparent amount of suffering which we have attempted
to describe above, Manton was no little astonished, not only at the
promptness and completeness of the recovery of the woman Marie, but at
the shortness of the time which she permitted to elapse before he found
her again engaged deep in a bold and characteristic intrigue.
He had immediately determined that Elna should be separated from him
until the time of the proposed marriage had approached. While she was
to be sent to New England to prosecute her studies under the charge of
an artist friend, he himself proposed to spend the greater part of the
year in the northern mountains, hunting, fishing and exploring.
But before this prudent and proper step could be taken, a week or so
of preparation became necessary. It was only a week since the woman
had risen from her bed, a showery Niobe, as we have seen, when Manton
entered the house one morning at an hour when he was not expected,
he met the woman gliding hastily through a passage, with one of the
sleeves of her dress gone. The meaning of this sign at once flashed
across him, for he remembered to have seen that fair and beautiful
arm, by skilful accident, exposed to his own gaze during her first
attempts at diverting and exciting his passions, and he shrewdly
conceived that there must be some new victim on hand, even already.
“Ha!” said he maliciously, as she was hurrying past. “Why, what’s
become of your sleeve this morning?”
The woman flushed very red, and her eye turned obliquely upon him as
she muttered confusedly—
“I—I’ve lost it!”
“Ah, well, come! Let us look for it! Let us find it! The morning is too
cold! I will help you! I fear you will suffer!”
“No, no, never mind! I will find it myself!”
“But I insist! We must find it at once, before you take cold! Come, we
will look in the parlor!” And he made a movement of his outstretched
hand as if to open the door.
She clutched him nervously, saying in a low whisper—
“Don’t go in there, I have a visitor!”
But as Manton only smiled at this and showed no disposition to desist,
she continued in an imploring voice—
“Don’t go in! Mr. Narcissus, the editor, is there! I will get the
sleeve and put it on immediately! Don’t disturb us now; I am just
reading to him the MS. of my new novel, which I hope he will undertake
to publish in his paper!”
“Well,” said Manton, quietly stepping back, “it must be confessed you
are prompt in finding alternatives! I wish you success in your new
publishing enterprise! And I suppose this bare arm is to have nothing
to do with his anticipated commentary upon your text!”
Manton turned away with a light laugh, but the look which was sent
after him would have chilled his very soul could he have met it. His
sneering conjecture was only too true. She had already fastened upon
a new victim. But for once it turned out that it was “file cut file.”
She had at last met her equal in all that was detestable—her peer in
baseness, and only an under-graduate to _her_ in cunning.
She had selected him as she did all her victims, with reference to
social and pecuniary position. He was at the time a co-editor and
ostensible part-owner of one of the most brilliant and successful
weekly papers of New York. She had always aspired to command
an “organ.” And anything in that line, from a review down to a
thumb-paper, to her restless ambition, was better than nothing. For by
a process more hideous to the world than anomalous in fact, she had
come to reconcile any degree of private intrigue, by balancing it with
the value of abstract teachings for the public good, under that liberal
postulate of the school to which she belonged, that the end justifies
the means.
In setting herself down for a regular siege before this newspaper
establishment, she had first in her eye, all three of the associate
owners. It was a matter of entire indifference to her, through which
she succeeded in obtaining an entrance to its columns, which might
lead to her control of the future tone of the paper. She opened the
investment in the usual form; first, by visiting them alone, in
their offices; then by bombarding them, from the distance of her own
writing-table, with a constant hail of those snow-white missives, with
the sugared contents of which we have before been made acquainted.
They were each privately and successively pronounced in their own ears,
and under seal of those crow-quilled envelopes, to be “naughty boys,”
whose proud and wilful natures were driving them headlong to ruin—to
be sons of genius, who only required to be saved from themselves and
their own vices, by her, to become the illustrious reformers of the
age! One of them smoked too much—was making a “chimney of his nose,”
through which he was exhaling spiritual mightiness, that might equalise
him with the cherubim, if only free! But this unhappily did not tell;
the shrewd and wary business-man, who knew more about coppers than
cherubim, and was by no means conscious of the spiritual prowess she so
pathetically attributed to him, “smoked” her, or her motive at least,
and threw the dainty correspondence aside, with a jeering laugh.
The other, who was really chief editor, and a handsome and talented
fellow, might not have got off so well, had he not been pre-occupied,
and predisposed to bestow the exalted attributes which she had
discovered in him, in another direction. He was duly grateful to her,
however, for the discovery that he was a child of genius; and, though
a little disposed to be suspicious, could not, for some time, restrain
the expression of his delight at having met with a lady possessing such
unquestionable and extraordinary discrimination.
He was a jovial and generous fellow, though very shrewd and suspicious
withal. She was not quite aware of the last two attributes, and
therefore expected a great deal from him, as he proverbially drank
too much. She therefore opened her batteries mercilessly upon this
weakness, which, as she affirmed, combined with the horrible practice
of chewing to excess, was demonising an “Archangel! Dragging down the
loftiest spirit of his age! A spirit that might guide the destinies
of the human race, and rule it, whether for evil or for good.” She
particularly desired his salvation. She prayed for it, day and night!
She had a spiritual monition that he could be saved; and the fact was,
he would be saved, if he would only listen to her counsel! Indeed, she
might guarantee he _should_ be saved, if he would only give up his
poisons, and dedicate the columns of his paper to the great cause of
progressive hygiene and popular physiology. In a word, the fact was, he
_must_ be saved, whether he wanted to be or not!
But the trouble was, our editor was a person who would do nothing on
compulsion. And when he found that such a powerful edict had gone
forth, that he _must_ be saved, he swore, in his benighted obstinacy,
that he would be —— if he would!
This led, through his spleen, to an explanation between himself and
the business-man of the firm, and what was their mutual astonishment,
on privately comparing “notes,” to find that one was absolutely a
“Cherubim,” and the other an “Archangel!” They looked at each other
with a blank stare of surprise. The tawney, lean, angular, iron-jawed
face of the business-man suggested anything but the plump and dimpled
outlines of that prolific progeny of winged infants, which Raphael has
rendered so illustrious. While, in contrast, the features of the young
editor were remarkable for their plump and childlike freshness.
“Why!” shouted the business-man, with a tremendous guffaw, “there’s a
great mistake here—she has clearly misdirected the notes. You should be
the cherub!”
The breath of a simultaneous roar of laughter dissipated all her
fine-spun web, in these two directions at least. She was more
successful, however, with the third party.
Manton had been deceived, egregiously, in regard to this man’s past
history, or he would never have permitted him to pass the threshold
of the house where he lived. He had known him only as ostensibly
associate editor of a highly-respectable paper, and therefore had not
felt himself called upon to interfere in any way. Although he had, as
we have perceived, early indications of his having become a frequent
visitor at the house.
To have gone any higher in her classification of him than she had
already gone in that of his associates, would have puzzled any less
versatile genius than hers. But as cherubim and archangel had already
been used up, she placed him among the “principalities and powers in
heavenly places,” and there he decided to stick. It was certainly time
for him to be pleased with elevation of some sort, for, as it turned
out afterwards, when his history became better understood by Manton,
he was one of those slugs, or barnacles of the press, that cling about
and slime the keels of every noble and thought-freighted bark. From
the precarious and eminently honourable occupation of writing obscene
books for _private_ circulation, “getting up” quack advertisements,
interpolating the pages of Paul De Kock with smearings of darker
filth than ever his mousing vision had yet discovered in the sinks
and gutters of Paris, he had gradually risen, through his facile
availability, to the _sub rosa_ respectability of a well-paid “sub” in
a respectable office—I say _sub rosa_, for it seems to have been well
understood, in New York, that the appearance of his name, at the head
of the columns of any paper, would be sufficient to damn it, outright,
so linked had it become with sneaking infamy of every sort.
However, _this_ “child of genius” and Madame progressed bravely towards
a mutual understanding; and billets-doux flew between them thick as
snow-flakes. As for their contents, the reader is, by this time, pretty
well prepared to conjecture. Interviews, from weekly to semi-weekly,
crowded fast upon each other’s heels; until, at last, Manton began to
perceive that, not only was the sleeve lost every day, but that the new
novel, like the pious labor of the needle of Penelope, “grew with its
growth.”
About this time, however, it came to his knowledge, that this highly
respectable literary personage, Mr. Narcissus, had been as notoriously
abject in his private relations as he had been in those to the press.
However, as he had determined to drag Elna from beneath the clutches
of her mother, and to sever all remote, or even possible connection
between them, he did not feel himself called upon to do more than
announce the fact to Madame that the fellow was even now an infamous
stipendiary to a party no less infamous than himself, who had privately
furnished him, out of her ill-gotten gains, the money to buy his share
in the weekly paper she was so ambitious of controlling, through him.
As he had now to expect, she received the news with the most refreshing
coolness, and merely remarked, that it was no fault of hers that this
bad woman had loved Mr. Narcissus; that he possessed great talent in
affairs; could be made of much use in the cause of human progress and
advancement—in a word, deserved to be saved, and to save him she meant.
She should rescue him from such gross and debasing associations, and
give to his astonishing energies a nobler bent; that his future life,
under her inspiration and guidance, should be made to atone for the
past.
This logic seemed so very conclusive and characteristic, that Manton
made no reply, but a shudder, at the thought of that _saving_ process,
to which, despicable as he was, a new victim was to be subjected. But
it was no part of his plan to divert her from her purpose; for he
wished, by all means, to see her active and dangerous energies employed
in any direction, save that of the subversion and counteraction of his
own design in regard to her daughter.
Elna, in a few days after, was sent to New England, with the
understanding between Manton and herself, that she would by no means
consent to return to her mother, until he himself should come back from
his tour, and should send for her. He did not dare to trust her for an
hour beneath the accursed shadow of this domestic Upas, that had given
her birth; and more particularly did he dread the hideous combination
of influences which were likely now to be brought to bear upon her,
as Madam had openly announced her intention, since she had obtained a
divorce from her former husband, to marry the delectable Narcissus.
We may as well dispose of this affair at once, by remarking, that in
a few months afterward she did marry him; that the unfortunate woman,
who had heretofore so long lived with and loved Narcissus, instantly
withdrew the support which her ill-gotten gains furnished; and that,
asserting her right to the share which he had pretended to own in the
property of the paper, and disclosing the whole of his infamy to his
former partners, the cherubim and archangel indignantly kicked him out
of doors, and at once toppled about the astonished ears of Madame all
her castles in the air reared, with regard to “controlling a powerful
organ.”
But Madame, as we have perceived, was possessed of one of those elastic
natures which always rebound from collisions, or which, in a word,
“never say die;” so that, instead of being discouraged by this untoward
conclusion of her ambitious schemes, she set herself to work forthwith
to make the best of a bad bargain; and, as she had already exhibited
her passion for professional spouses, in immediately converting her
first and dear Ebenezer, into an M. D., she could not do less than make
a Doctor out of her beloved Narcissus.
It did not matter to her that both of them were ludicrously
ignorant—that neither of them had probably ever read a book clear
through in their lives; parchments were dog-cheap in New York, and
could be had any day for an equivalent in hard coin. She accordingly
“put him through;” and in something less than three months, one more
legalised murderer was turned loose upon society, under the cabalistic
ægis of M. D.