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| Little Classics. |
| |
| Edited by ROSSITER JOHNSON. Each in one volume, |
| 16mo, $1.00. The set, in box, $18.00. |
| |
| 1. EXILE. 10. CHILDHOOD. |
| 2. INTELLECT. 11. HEROISM. |
| 3. TRAGEDY. 12. FORTUNE. |
| 4. LIFE. 13. NARRATIVE POEMS. |
| 5. LAUGHTER. 14. LYRICAL POEMS. |
| 6. LOVE. 15. MINOR POEMS. |
| 7. ROMANCE. 16. NATURE. |
| 8. MYSTERY. 17. HUMANITY. |
| 9. COMEDY. 18. AUTHORS. |
| |
| HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. |
| BOSTON AND NEW YORK. |
+-------------------------------------------------+
Eighth Volume
LITTLE CLASSICS
Edited by
ROSSITER JOHNSON
Mystery
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914
Copyright, 1875, by James R. Osgood & Co.
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS.
THE GHOST. _William D. O'Connor_
THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS _Amelia B. Edwards_
THE SIGNAL-MAN _Charles Dickens_
THE HAUNTED SHIPS _Allan Cunningham_
A RAFT THAT NO MAN MADE _Robert T. S. Lowell_
THE INVISIBLE PRINCESS _Francis O' Connor_
THE ADVOCATE'S WEDDING-DAY _Catherine Crowe_
THE BIRTHMARK _Nathaniel Hawthorne_
THE GHOST.
BY WILLIAM D. O'CONNOR.
At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more
or less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.
It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our
First Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight
deepens on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you
may see them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent
or very broad fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in
square-toed curbstone, with an air about them as if they had thrust
their hard hands into their wealthy pockets forever, with a character
of arctic reserve, and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed,
self-satisfied, opulent, stony, repellent aspect to each, which
says plainly, "I belong to a rich family, of the very highest
respectability."
History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base.
It is an old street,--quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It
was young once, though,--having been born before the Revolution,
and was then given to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who
died without heirs, and did this much for posterity. Posterity
has not been grateful to Mr. Middlecott. The street bore his name
till he was dust, and then got the more aristocratic epithet of
Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing what would have been
his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to see Faneuil
Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics are
proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance
has the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the
grave to prove the proverb about republics.
Bowdoin Street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if
it thought to itself, "I'm getting old, but I'm highly respectable;
that's a comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as
if it brooded solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its
original name and calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very
conservative street, it was resolved to keep a cautious silence on
the subject, lest the Union should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears
a profound and mysterious look, as if it could tell something if it
had a mind to, but thought it best not. Something of the ghost of
its father--it was the only child he ever had!--walking there all
the night, pausing at the corners to look up at the signs, which
bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in lamentation
at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper, many years
ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest inhabitants
of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard of
it, and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by
any sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a
phantom there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the
very old person was. Nobody knew who had seen it, nor when, nor
how. The very rumor was spectral.
All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that
a ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years
back. The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps
were not yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops
were still distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day.
It was light enough, however, for one to read easily, from the
opposite sidewalk, "Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver
plate of a door, not far from the Gothic portal of the Swedenborgian
church. Near this door stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral
eyes floated on vacancy, and whose long, shadowy white hair lifted
like an airy weft in the streaming wind. That was the ghost! It
stood near the door a long time, without any other than a shuddering
motion, as though it felt the searching blast, which swept furiously
from the north up the declivity of the street, rattling the shutters
in its headlong passage. Once or twice, when a passer-by, muffled
warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer
to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague, mournful face seemed
to watch for some one. The twilight darkened gradually, but it
did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look fixed in
one direction,--watching,--watching; and, while the howling wind
swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to shudder
in the piercing cold.
A light suddenly kindled in an opposite window. As if touched by a
gleam from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination,
the spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to
quiver over its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic
figure--Dr. Renton himself--came in sight, striding down the slope
of the pavement to his own door, his overcoat thrown back, as if
the icy air were a tropical warmth to him, his hat set on the back
of his head, and the loose ends of a 'kerchief about his throat,
streaming in the nor'wester. The wind set up a howl the moment he
came in sight, and swept upon him; and a curious agitation began
on the part of the phantom. It glided rapidly to and fro, and moved
in circles, and then, with the same swift, silent motion, sailed
toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its long, thin arms,
with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips of the slender
fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the wan smile
played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it made
a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared
to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side,
looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid lips
with agonized rapidity, as if it said, "Look at me--speak to me--speak
to me--see me!" But he kept his course with unconscious eyes, and
a vexed frown on his forehead betokening an irritated mind. The
light that had shone in the figure of the phantom darkened slowly,
till the form was only a pale shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled,
and no longer lifted its white hair. It still glided on with him,
its head drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its
side; but when he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him,
gazing fixedly into his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed
over its grief-worn features, as if it had shrieked out a word.
He had his foot on the step at the moment. With a start, he put
his gloved hand to his forehead, while the vexed look went out
quickly on his face. The ghost watched him breathlessly. But the
irritated expression came back to his countenance more resolutely
than before, and he began to fumble in his pocket for a latch-key,
muttering petulantly, "What the devil is the matter with me now?"
It seemed to him that a voice had cried clearly, yet as from afar,
"Charles Renton!"--his own name. He had heard it in his startled
mind; but then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state of nervous
excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge for a basis,
could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation against any
phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.
He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his overcoat;
wrenched off his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the
clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed
in the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar,
threw himself into an easy-chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened
dusk, with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his
breast. The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless
in a corner of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom,
and its white locks drooping down!
It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor. The very library caught
contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre. The furniture
was grim and sullen and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet
and on the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams
from the fire on its polished surfaces in homoeopathic globules,
and got no good from them. The fire itself peered out sulkily from
the black bars of the grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the
fresh deposit of black coals at the top, but to take this as a good
time to remember that those coals had been bought in the summer at
five dollars a ton,--under price, mind you,--when poor people, who
cannot buy at advantage, but must get their firing in the winter,
would then have given nine or ten dollars for them. And so (glowered
the fire), I am determined to think of that outrage, and not to
light them, but to go out myself, directly! And the fire got into
such a spasm of glowing indignation over the injury, that it lit
a whole tier of black coals with a series of little explosions,
before it could cool down, and sent a crimson gleam over the moody
figure of its owner in the easy-chair, and over the solemn furniture,
and into the shadowy corner filled by the ghost.
The spectre did not move when Dr. Renton arose and lit the chandelier.
It stood there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow light. The
curtains were drawn, and the twilight without had deepened into
darkness. The fire was now burning in despite of itself, fanned
by the wintry gusts, which found their way down the chimney. Dr.
Renton stood with his back to it, his hands behind him, his bold
white forehead shaded by a careless lock of black hair, and knit
sternly; and the same frown in his handsome, open, searching dark
eyes. Tall and strong, with an erect port, and broad, firm shoulders,
high, resolute features, a commanding figure garbed in aristocratic
black, and not yet verging into the proportions of obesity,--take
him for all in all, a very fine and favorable specimen of the solid
men of Boston. And seen in contrast (oh! could he but have known
it!) with the attenuated figure of the poor, dim ghost!
Hark! a very light foot on the stairs,--a rich rustle of silks.
Everything still again,--Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great
sternness, at the half-open door, whence a faint, delicious perfume
floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody
peeping in with very bright, arch eyes. Dr. Renton knew it, and
prepared to maintain his ill-humor against the invader. His face
became triply armed with severity for the encounter. That's Netty,
I know, he thought. His daughter. So it was. In she bounded. Bright
little Netty! Gay little Netty! A dear and sweet little creature,
to be sure, with a delicate and pleasant beauty of face and figure,
it needed no costly silks to grace or heighten. There she stood.
Not a word from her merry lips, but a smile which stole over all
the solitary grimness of the library, and made everything better,
and brighter, and fairer, in a minute. It floated down into the
cavernous humor of Dr. Renton, and the gloom began to lighten
directly,--though he would not own it, nor relax a single feature.
But the wan ghost in the corner lifted its head to look at her,
and slowly brightened as to something worthy a spirit's love, and
a dim phantom's smiles. Now then, Dr. Renton! the lines are drawn,
and the foe is coming. Be martial, sir, as when you stand in the
ranks of the Cadets on training-days! Steady, and stand the charge!
So he did. He kept an inflexible front as she glided toward him,
softly, slowly, with her bright eyes smiling into his, and doing
dreadful execution. Then she put her white arms around his neck,
laid her dear, fair head on his breast, and peered up archly into
his stern visage. Spite of himself, he could not keep the fixed
lines on his face from breaking confusedly into a faint smile.
Somehow or other, his hands came from behind him, and rested on
her head. There! That's all. Dr. Renton surrendered at discretion!
One of the solid men of Boston was taken after a desperate
struggle,--internal, of course,--for he kissed her, and said, "Dear
little Netty!" and so she was.
The phantom watched her with a smile, and wavered and brightened
as if about to glide to her; but it grew still, and remained.
"Pa in the sulks to-night?" she asked, in the most winning, playful,
silvery voice.
"Pa's a fool," he answered in his deep chest-tones, with a vexed
good-humor; "and you know it."
"What's the matter with pa? What makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy,
dear," she continued, stroking his face with her little hands,
and patting him, very much as Beauty might have patted the Beast
after she fell in love with him; or as if he were a great baby.
In fact, he began to look then as if he were.
"Matter? Oh! everything's the matter, little Netty. The world goes
round too fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my umbrella last
year. And I've got a headache." He concluded this fanciful abstract
of his grievances by putting his arms around her, and kissing her
again. Then he sat down in the easy-chair, and took her fondly
on his knee.
"Pa's got a headache! It is t-o-o bad, so it is," she continued
in the same soothing, winning way, caressing his brow with her
tiny hands. "It's a horrid shame, so it is! P-o-o-r pa. Where does
it ache, papa-sy, dear? In the forehead? Cerebrum or cerebellum,
papa-sy? Occiput or sinciput, deary?"
"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek,
"none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way
for, to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where
are you going, fairy?"
"Going out with mother for the evening, Dr. Renton," she replied
briskly; "Mrs. Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, you know.
And what are you going to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa-sy?"
"To-morrow will tell, little Netty."
"Good! And what are you going to give me, so that I can make _my_
presents, Beary?"
"Ugh!" But he growled it in fun, and had a pocket-book out from his
breast-pocket directly after. Fives--tens--twenties--fifties--all
crisp, and nice, and new bank-notes.
"Will that be enough, Netty?" He held up a twenty. The smiling face
nodded assent, and the bright eyes twinkled.
"No, it won't. But _that_ will," he continued, giving her a fifty.
"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" exclaimed Netty, making great
eyes at him. "But we must take all we can get, pa-sy; mustn't we?
It's too much, though. Thank you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless."
And she kissed him, and put the bill in a little bit of a portemonnaie
with a gay laugh.
"Well done, I declare!" he said, smilingly. "But you're going to
the party?"
"Pretty soon, pa."
He made no answer; but sat smiling at her. The phantom watched them,
silently.
"What made pa so cross and grim, to-night? Tell Netty--do," she
pleaded.
"Oh! because;--everything went wrong with me, to-day. There." And
he looked as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in his life.
"No, no, pa-sy; that won't do. I want the particulars," continued
Netty, shaking her head, smilingly.
"Particulars! Well, then, Miss Nathalie Renton," he began, with
mock gravity, "your professional father is losing some of his oldest
patients. Everybody is in ruinous good health; and the grass is
growing in the graveyards."
"In the winter time, papa?--smart grass!"
"Not that I want practice," he went on, getting into soliloquy;
"or patients, either. A rich man who took to the profession simply
for the love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an
interloping she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out
of my hands, and to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological
laws, and woman's rights, and no taxation without representation,
they learn from her,--well, it's too bad!"
"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me _I_'d like to vote, too," was Netty's
piquant rejoinder.
"Hoh! I'll warrant," growled her father. "Hope you'll vote the Whig
ticket, Netty, when you get your rights."
"Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa-sy,--when the Whigs are beaten?"
"Bah! you little plague," he growled, with a laugh. "But, then,
you women don't know anything about politics. So, there. As I was
saying, everything went wrong with me to-day. I've been speculating
in railroad stock, and singed my fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis
outbid me to-day, at Leonard's, on a rare medical work I had set
my eyes upon having. Confound him! Then, again, two of my houses
are tenantless, and there are folks in two others that won't pay
their rent, and I can't get them out. Out they'll go, though, or
I'll know why. And, to crown all--um-m. And I wish the Devil had
him! as he will."
"Had who, Beary-papa?"
"Him. I'll tell you. The street-floor of one of my houses in Hanover
Street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell
liquor. Last night they had a grand row,--a drunken fight, and
one man was stabbed, it's thought fatally."
"O father!" Netty's bright eyes dilated with horror.
"Yes. I hope he won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a
stir about the matter, and my name will be called into question,
then, as I'm the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it,
and there'll be the deuce to pay, generally."
He got back the stern, vexed frown, to his face, with the anticipation,
and beat the carpet with his foot. The ghost still watched from
the angle of the room, and seemed to darken, while its features
looked troubled.
"But, father," said Netty, a little tremulously, "I wouldn't let
my houses to such people. It's not right; is it? Why, it's horrid
to think of men getting drunk, and killing each other!"
Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into disorder, with vexation, and then
subsided into solemnity.
"I know it's not exactly right, Netty; but I can't help it. As I
said before, I wish the Devil had that barkeeper. I ought to have
ordered him out long ago, and then this wouldn't have happened.
I've increased his rent twice, hoping to get rid of him so; but
he pays without a murmur; and what am I to do? You see, he was
an occupant when the building came into my hands, and I let him
stay. He pays me a good, round rent; and, apart from his cursed
traffic, he's a good tenant. What can I do? It's a good thing for
him, and it's a good thing for me, pecuniarily. Confound him! Here's
a nice rumpus brewing!"
"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good thing for you," said Netty,
caressing him and smoothing his tumbled hair. "Nor for him either.
I wouldn't mind the rent he pays you. I'd order him out. It's
bad money. There's blood on it."
She had grown pale, and her voice quivered. The phantom glided
over to them, and laid its spectral hand upon her forehead. The
shadowy eyes looked from under the misty hair into the doctor's
face, and the pale lips moved as if speaking the words heard only
in the silence of his heart,--"Hear her, hear her!"
"I must think of it," resumed Dr. Renton, coldly. "I'm resolved,
at all events, to warn him that if anything of this kind occurs
again, he must quit at once. I dislike to lose a profitable tenant;
for no other business would bring me the sum his does. Hang it,
everybody does the best he can with his property,--why shouldn't
I?"
The ghost, standing near them, drooped its head again on its breast,
and crossed its arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Renton continued,
petulantly,--
"A precious set of people I manage to get into my premises. There's
a woman hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, overhead, in that
same building, and for three months I haven't got a cent from her.
I know these people's tricks. Her month's notice expires to-morrow,
and out she goes."
"Poor creature!" sighed Netty.
He knit his brow, and beat the carpet with his foot, in vexation.
"Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trembled the sweet, silvery voice.
"You wouldn't turn her out in this cold winter, when she can't
pay you,--would you, pa?"
"Why don't she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he
replied, testily; "there's plenty of rooms to let."
"Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answered Netty.
"Humbug!" retorted her father; "I know better."
"Pa, dear, if I were you, I'd turn out that rumseller, and let the
poor woman stay a little longer; just a little, pa."
"Sha'n't do it. Hah! that would be scattering money out of both
pockets. Sha'n't do it. Out she shall go; and as for him,--well,
he'd better turn over a new leaf. There, let us leave the subject,
darling. It vexes me. How did we contrive to get into this train?
Bah!"
He drew her closer to him, and kissed her forehead. She sat quietly,
with her head on his shoulder, thinking very gravely.
"I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short
pause. "My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters have
taken."
"How is it, papa? The headache?" she answered.
"Y-e-s--n-o--not exactly; I don't know," he said dubiously; then,
in an absent way, "it was that letter set me to think of him all
day, I suppose."
"Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, starting up, "if I didn't forget
all about it, and I came down expressly to give it to you! Where
is it? Oh! here it is."
She drew from her pocket an old letter, faded to a pale yellow,
and gave it to him. The ghost started suddenly.
"Why, bless my soul! it's the very letter! Where did you get that,
Nathalie?" asked Dr. Renton.
"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."
"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it,"
he answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost
was gazing at it, too, with startled interest.
"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who
wrote it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a
long time since."
"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that
wrote it has been cold for all that time."
He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the
heart of fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his
side had bowed its head, and all was still.
"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have
not thought of him for so long a time, and to-day--especially this
evening--I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a
singular feeling."
He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused,--his right clasped
his daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and
gazed at him with a look of unutterable tenderness.
"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.
"A young man, an author, a poet. He had been my dearest friend,
when we were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years,--he
led an erratic life,--we were friends when he died. Poor, poor
fellow! Well, he is at peace."
The stern voice had saddened, and was almost tremulous. The spectral
form was still.
"How did he die, father?"
"A long story, darling," he replied, gravely, "and a sad one. He
was very poor and proud. He was a genius,--that is, a person without
an atom of practical talent. His parents died, the last, his mother,
when he was near manhood. I was in college then. Thrown upon the
world, he picked up a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a time.
I could have got him a place in the counting-house, but he would
not take it; in fact, he wasn't fit for it. You can't harness
Pegasus to the cart, you know. Besides, he despised mercantile
life, without reason, of course; but he was always notional. His
love of literature was one of the rocks he foundered on. He was
n't successful; his best compositions were too delicate, fanciful,
to please the popular taste; and then he was full of the radical
and fanatical notions which infected so many people at that time
in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and his
sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till
his dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always
staved off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose
above the drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was
terribly passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't
wise. What I mean is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw,
any wrong or injury done to any one, it was enough to throw him
into a frenzy; he would get black in the face and absolutely shriek
out his denunciations of the wrong-doer. I do believe he would
have visited his own brother with the most unsparing invective,
if that brother had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar, or
a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't blame the
feeling; though with a man like him it was very apt to be a false
or mistaken one; but, at any rate, its exhibition wasn't sensible.
Well, as I was saying, he buffeted about in this world a long time,
poorly paid, fed, and clad; taking more care of other people than
he did of himself. Then mental suffering, physical exposure, and
want killed him."
The stern voice had grown softer than a child's. The same look of
unutterable tenderness brooded on the mournful face of the phantom
by his side; but its thin, shining hand was laid upon his head,
and its countenance had undergone a change. The form was still
undefined; but the features had become distinct. They were those
of a young man, beautiful and wan, and marked with great suffering.
A pause had fallen on the conversation, in which the father and
daughter heard the solemn sighing of the wintry wind around the
dwelling. The silence seemed scarcely broken by the voice of the
young girl.
"Dear father, this was very sad. Did you say he died of want?"
"Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. I don't doubt it. He had
wandered about, as I gather, houseless for a couple of days and
nights. It was in December, too. Some one found him, on a rainy
night, lying in the street, drenched and burning with fever, and had
him taken to the hospital. It appears that he had always cherished
a strange affection for me, though I had grown away from him; and
in his wild ravings he constantly mentioned my name, and they sent
for me. That was our first meeting after two years. I found him
in the hospital--dying. Heaven can witness that I felt all my old
love for him return then, but he was delirious, and never recognized
me. And, Nathalie, his hair,--it had been coal-black, and he wore
it very long,--he wouldn't let them cut it either; and as they
knew no skill could save him, they let him have his way,--his hair
was then as white as snow! God alone knows what that brain must
have suffered to blanch hair which had been as black as the wing
of a raven!"
He covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silently. The fingers
of the phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks
drooped above him, like a weft of light.
"What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl.
"George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas
eve, fifteen years ago this night. It was on his death-bed, while
his mind was tossing on a sea of delirious fancies, that he wrote me
this long letter,--for to the last, I was uppermost in his thoughts.
It is a wild, incoherent thing, of course,--a strange mixture of
sense and madness. But I have kept it as a memorial of him. I have
not looked at it for years; but this morning I found it among my
papers, and somehow it has been in my mind all day."
He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and sadly gazed at the writing.
His daughter had risen from her half-recumbent posture, and now
bent her graceful head over the leaves. The phantom covered its
face with its hands.
"What a beautiful manuscript it is, father!" she exclaimed. "The
writing is faultless."
"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he had written his life as fairly!"
"Read it, father," said Nathalie.
"No, but I'll read you a detached passage here and there," he answered,
after a pause. "The rest you may read yourself some time, if you
wish. It is painful to me. Here's the beginning:--
"'_My Dear Charles Renton:--Adieu, and adieu. It is Christmas eve,
and I am going home. I am soon to exhale from my flesh, like the
spirit of a broken flower. Exultemus forever!_'
* * * * *
"It is very wild. His mind was in a fever-craze. Here is a passage
that seems to refer to his own experience of life:--
"'_Your friendship was dear to me. I give you true love. Stocks
and returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's
pauper. Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh!
the world has no place for souls that can only love and suffer.
How many miles to Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far--not
near so far! Ask starvelings--they know._
* * * * *
_I wanted to do the world good, and the world has killed me, Charles._'"
* * * * *
"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.
"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of
sense in it, and passages where the delirium of the language is
only a transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted
to what he thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and
vague. Poor--poor George!"
The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly
turned over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the
leaves, laid her finger on the last, and asked, "What are those
closing sentences, father? Read them."
"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild
as the rest,--tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career.
First he says, '_Farewell--farewell_'; then he bids me take his
'_counsel into memory on Christmas day_'; then after enumerating
all the wretched classes he can think of in the country, he says:
'_These are your sisters and your brothers,--love them all._' Here
he says, '_O friend, strong in wealth for so much good, take my
last counsel. In the name of the Saviour, I charge you be true
and tender to mankind._' He goes on to bid me '_live and labor
for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, and the poor_'; and
finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or all, institutions,
laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends of society;
and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is worth
more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything
we can gain from the world. Ah, well! poor George."
"But isn't all that true, father?" said Netty; "it seems so."
"H'm," he murmured through his closed lips. Then, with a vague
smile, folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, "Wild words,
Netty, wild words. I've no objection to charity, judiciously given;
but poor George's notions are not mine. Every man for himself, is a
good general rule. Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in
his acceptation of the principle, would send us all to the almshouse
pretty soon. The greatest good of the greatest number,--that's my
rule of action. There are plenty of good institutions for the
distressed, and I'm willing to help support 'em, and do. But as for
making a martyr of one's self, or tilting against the necessary evils
of society, or turning philanthropist at large, or any quixotism of
that sort, I don't believe in it. We didn't make the world, and
we can't mend it. Poor George. Well--he's at rest. The world was
n't the place for him."
They grew silent. The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood
as if it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was
to become of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie
sat on her father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of
his having been starved and grieved to death.
"Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading
the letter, as if he were near us. Didn't you? The room was so
light and still, and the wind sighed so."
"Netty, dear, I've felt that all day, I believe," he replied. "Hark!
there is the door-bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes
the actual. Confound it! Some one to see me, I'll warrant, and
I'm not in the mood."
He got into a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour
ago, or she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice
it now in her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell,
and seated herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple
on the end of it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak,
piping voice said, reckless of the proper tense, "There was a woman
wanted to see you, sir."
"Who is it, James?--no matter, show her in."
He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room.
In a minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid,
frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being
considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.
"O, Mrs. Miller! Good evening, ma'am. Sit down," he said, with a
cold, constrained civility.
The little woman faintly said, "Good evening, Dr. Renton," and
sat down stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair
nearest the wall. This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no
rent for three months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.
"Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.
"Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward answer.
"Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am?" said Netty, gently; "you look
cold."
"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was
cold, though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and
open bonnet, in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there
was a rigid, sharp, suffering look in her pinched features that
betokened she might have been hungry, too. "Poor people don't mind
the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak smile, her voice
getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and they get
used to it."
She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of
indifference. Netty looked at her with a tender pity. Dr. Renton
thought to himself, Hoh!--blazoning her poverty,--manufacturing
sympathy already,--the old trick; and steeled himself against any
attacks of that kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.
"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it this evening? I suppose
you've brought me my rent."
The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her
quivering lips. Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.
"Nathalie, please to leave the room." We'll have no nonsense carried
on here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the
stern, decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.
He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg
up to rest on his left knee. He did not look at his tenant's face,
determined that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion,
of course) should be wasted on him.
"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said again.
"Dr. Renton," she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded,
"I have come to see you about the rent. I am very sorry, sir, to
have made you wait, but we have been unfortunate."
"Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing what was coming; "but your
misfortunes are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, ma'am. But
we must pay our debts, you know."
"I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir,"
she resumed, "and I wrote to him. I got a letter from him to-day,
sir, and it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a
letter; and it appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody,
for I never got it. It was nearly three months' wages, sir, and it
is very hard to lose it. If it had n't been for that your rent
would have been paid long ago, sir."
"Don't believe a word of _that_ story," thought Dr. Renton,
sententiously.
"I thought, sir," she continued, emboldened by his silence, "that
if you would be willing to wait a little longer, we would manage
to pay you soon, and not let it occur again. It has been a hard
winter with us, sir; firing is high, and provisions, and everything;
and we're only poor people, you know, and it's difficult to get
along."
The doctor made no reply.
"My husband was unfortunate, sir, in not being able to get employment
here," she resumed; "his being out of work in the autumn, threw us
all back, and we've got nothing to depend on but his earnings. The
family that he's in now, sir, don't give him very good pay,--only
twenty dollars a month, and his board,--but it was the best chance
he could get, and it was either go to Baltimore with them, or stay
at home and starve, and so he went, sir. It's been a hard time
with us, and one of the children is sick, now, with a fever, and
we don't hardly know how to make out a living. And so, sir, I have
come here this evening, leaving the children alone, to ask you if
you wouldn't be kind enough to wait a little longer, and we'll
hope to make it right with you in the end."
"Mrs. Miller," said Dr. Renton, with stern composure, "I have no
wish to question the truth of any statement you may make; but I
must tell you plainly, that I can't afford to let my houses for
nothing. I told you a month ago, that if you couldn't pay me my
rent, you must vacate the premises. You know very well that there
are plenty of tenants who are able and willing to pay when the
money comes due. You _know_ that."
He paused as he said this, and, glancing at her, saw her pale lips
falter. It shook the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he had a
vague feeling that he was doing wrong. Not without a proud struggle,
during which no word was spoken, could he beat it down. Meanwhile,
the phantom had advanced a pace toward the centre of the room.
"That is the state of the matter, ma'am," he resumed, coldly. "People
who will not pay me my rent must not live in my tenements. You
must move out. I have no more to say."
"Dr. Renton," she said, faintly, "I have a sick child,--how can
I move now? O, sir, it's Christmas eve,--don't be hard with us!"
Instead of touching him, this speech irritated him beyond measure.
Passing all considerations of her difficult position involved in
her piteous statement, his anger flashed at once on her implication
that he was unjust and unkind. So violent was his excitement that
it whirled away the words that rushed to his lips, and only fanned
the fury that sparkled from the whiteness of his face in his eyes.
"Be patient with us, sir," she continued; "we are poor, but we mean
to pay you; and we can't move now in this cold weather; please,
don't be hard with us, sir."
The fury now burst out on his face in a red and angry glow, and
the words came.
"Now, attend to me!" He rose to his feet. "I will not hear any
more from you. I know nothing of your poverty, nor of the condition
of your family. All I know is that you owe me three months' rent,
and that you can't or won't pay me. I say, therefore, leave the
premises to people who can and will. You have had your legal notice;
quit my house to-morrow; if you don't, your furniture shall be
put in the street. Mark me,--to-morrow!"
The phantom had rushed into the centre of the room. Standing face
to face with him,--dilating,--blackening,--its whole form shuddering
with a fury to which his own was tame,--the semblance of a shriek upon
its flashing lips, and on its writhing features, and an unearthly
anger streaming from its bright and terrible eyes,--it seemed to
throw down, with its tossing arms, mountains of hate and malediction
on the head of him whose words had smitten poverty and suffering,
and whose heavy hand was breaking up the barriers of a home.
Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. His tenant,--not a woman!--not
a sister in humanity!--but only his tenant; she sat crushed and
frightened by the wall. He knew it vaguely. Conscience was battling
in his heart with the stubborn devils that had entered there. The
phantom stood before him, like a dark cloud in the image of a man.
But its darkness was lightening slowly, and its ghostly anger had
passed away.
The poor woman, paler than before, had sat mute and trembling, with
all her hopes ruined. Yet her desperation forbade her to abandon
the chances of his mercy, and she now said,--
"Dr. Renton, you surely don't mean what you have told me. Won't
you bear with me a little longer, and we will yet make it all right
with you?"
"I have given you my answer," he returned, coldly; "I have no more
to add. I never take back anything I say--never!"
It was true. He never did--never! She half rose from her seat as if
to go; but weak and sickened with the bitter result of her visit,
she sunk down again with her head bowed. There was a pause. Then,
solemnly gliding across the lighted room, the phantom stole to her
side with a glory of compassion on its wasted features. Tenderly,
as a son to a mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light
rested upon her in caressing and benediction; its shadowy fall of
hair, once blanched by the anguish of living and loving, floated
on her throbbing brow; and resignation and comfort not of this
world sank upon her spirit, and consciousness grew dim within her,
and care and sorrow seemed to die.
He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom.
The stern and sullen mood, from which had dropped but one fierce
flash of anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark
rack of thundercloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke,
had he but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the
colloquy went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant
made any further attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She
had left the room meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that
marked her entrance. He recalled her manner very indistinctly;
for a feeling like a mist began to gather in his mind, and make
the occurrences of moments before uncertain.
Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with a sensation that something
was near him. Was it a spiritual instinct? for the phantom stood
by his side. It stood silent, with one hand raised above his head,
from which a pale flame seemed to flow downward to his brain; its
other hand pointed movelessly to the open letter on the table beside
him.
He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only
of George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was,
"In the name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to
mankind!" And the words touched him like a low voice from the grave.
Their penetrant reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He
tossed the letter back on the table. The very manner of the act
accused him of an insult to the dead. In a moment he took up the
faded sheets more reverently, but only to lay them down again.
He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before.
The pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation,
and there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which
seemed to him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert
his mind from what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he
could not hold his thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped
and fell away; and only the one circumstance of his recent cruelty,
mixed with remembrance of George Feval, recurred and clung with
vivid persistence. This tortured him. Sitting there, with arms
tightly interlocked, he resolved to wrench his mind down by sheer
will upon other things; and a savage pleasure at what at once seemed
success, took possession of him. In this mood, he heard soft footsteps
and the rustle of festal garments on the stairs, and had a fierce
complacency in being able to apprehend clearly that it was his
wife and daughter going out to the party. In a moment he heard the
controlled and even voice of Mrs. Renton,--a serene and polished
lady with whom he had lived for years in cold and civil alienation,
both seeing as little of each other as possible. With a scowl of
will upon his brow, he received her image distinctly into his mind,
even to the minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore,
and felt an absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain
it. Then came the sound of the closing of the hall door and the
rattle of receding wheels, and somehow it was Nathalie and not
his wife that he was holding so grimly in his thought, and with
her, salient and vivid as before, the tormenting remembrance of
his tenant, connected with the memory of George Feval. Springing
to his feet, he walked the room.
He had thrown himself on a sofa, still striving to be rid of his
remorseful visitations, when the library door opened, and the inside
man appeared, with his hand held bashfully over his nose. It flashed
on him at once that his tenant's husband was the servant of a family
like this fellow; and, irritated that the whole matter should be
thus broadly forced upon him in another way, he harshly asked him
what he wanted. The man only came in to say that Mrs. Renton and
the young lady had gone out for the evening, but that tea was laid
for him in the dining-room. He did not want any tea, and if anybody
called, he was not at home. With this charge, the man left the
room, closing the door behind him.
If he could but sleep a little! Rising from the sofa, he turned
the lights of the chandelier low, and screened the fire. The room
was still. The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr.
Renton lay down again, but not to repose. Things he had forgotten
of his dead friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from
the grave of many years; and not one of them but linked itself
by some mysterious bond to something connected with his tenant,
and became an accusation.
He had lain thus for more than an hour, feeling more and more unmanned
by illness, and his mental excitement fast becoming intolerable,
when he heard a low strain of music, from the Swedenborgian chapel,
hard by. Its first impression was one of solemnity and rest, and its
first sense, in his mind, was of relief. Perhaps it was the music
of an evening meeting; or it might be that the organist and choir
had met for practice. Whatever its purpose, it breathed through his
heated fancy like a cool and fragrant wind. It was vague and sweet
and wandering at first, straying on into a strain more mysterious and
melancholy, but very shadowy and subdued, and evoking the innocent
and tender moods of early youth before worldliness had hardened
around his heart. Gradually, as he listened to it, the fires in
his brain were allayed, and all yielded to a sense of coolness
and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance of utter rest,
and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own condition,
or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the music from
its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It was
still low and indeterminate and sweet, but had unaccountably and
strangely swelled into a gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably
mournful, and filled with a dark significance that touched him in
his depth of rest with a secret tremor and awe. As he listened,
rapt and vaguely wondering, the sense of his tranced sinking seemed
to come to an end, and with the feeling of one who had been descending
for many hours, and at length lay motionless at the bottom of a
deep, dark chasm, he heard the music fail and cease.