FIRST NIGHT OF THEIR ARRIVAL IN THE CITY.
I.
The stage was belated.
The country road they traveled entered the city by a remarkably wide and
winding street, a great thoroughfare for its less opulent inhabitants.
There was no moon and few stars. It was that preluding hour of the night
when the shops are just closing, and the aspect of almost every
wayfarer, as he passes through the unequal light reflected from the
windows, speaks of one hurrying not abroad, but homeward. Though the
thoroughfare was winding, yet no sweep that it made greatly obstructed
its long and imposing vista; so that when the coach gained the top of
the long and very gradual slope running toward the obscure heart of the
town, and the twinkling perspective of two long and parallel rows of
lamps was revealed--lamps which seemed not so much intended to dispel
the general gloom, as to show some dim path leading through it, into
some gloom still deeper beyond--when the coach gained this critical
point, the whole vast triangular town, for a moment, seemed dimly and
despondently to capitulate to the eye.
And now, ere descending the gradually-sloping declivity, and just on its
summit as it were, the inmates of the coach, by numerous hard, painful
joltings, and ponderous, dragging trundlings, are suddenly made sensible
of some great change in the character of the road. The coach seems
rolling over cannon-balls of all calibers. Grasping Pierre's arm, Isabel
eagerly and forebodingly demands what is the cause of this most strange
and unpleasant transition.
"The pavements, Isabel; this is the town."
Isabel was silent.
But, the first time for many weeks, Delly voluntarily spoke:
"It feels not so soft as the green sward, Master Pierre."
"No, Miss Ulver," said Pierre, very bitterly, "the buried hearts of some
dead citizens have perhaps come to the surface."
"Sir?" said Delly.
"And are they so hard-hearted here?" asked Isabel.
"Ask yonder pavements, Isabel. Milk dropt from the milkman's can in
December, freezes not more quickly on those stones, than does snow-white
innocence, if in poverty, it chance to fall in these streets."
"Then God help my hard fate, Master Pierre," sobbed Delly. "Why didst
thou drag hither a poor outcast like me?"
"Forgive me, Miss Ulver," exclaimed Pierre, with sudden warmth, and yet
most marked respect; "forgive me; never yet have I entered the city by
night, but, somehow, it made me feel both bitter and sad. Come, be
cheerful, we shall soon be comfortably housed, and have our comfort all
to ourselves; the old clerk I spoke to you about, is now doubtless
ruefully eying his hat on the peg. Come, cheer up, Isabel;--'tis a long
ride, but here we are, at last. Come! 'Tis not very far now to our
welcome."
"I hear a strange shuffling and clattering," said Delly, with a shudder.
"It does not seem so light as just now," said Isabel.
"Yes," returned Pierre, "it is the shop-shutters being put on; it is the
locking, and bolting, and barring of windows and doors; the
town's-people are going to their rest."
"Please God they may find it!" sighed Delly.
"They lock and bar out, then, when they rest, do they, Pierre?" said
Isabel.
"Yes, and you were thinking that does not bode well for the welcome I
spoke of."
"Thou read'st all my soul; yes, I was thinking of that. But whither lead
these long, narrow, dismal side-glooms we pass every now and then? What
are they? They seem terribly still. I see scarce any body in
them;--there's another, now. See how haggardly look its criss-cross,
far-separate lamps.--What are these side-glooms, dear Pierre; whither
lead they?"
"They are the thin tributaries, sweet Isabel, to the great Oronoco
thoroughfare we are in; and like true tributaries, they come from the
far-hidden places; from under dark beetling secrecies of mortar and
stone; through the long marsh-grasses of villainy, and by many a
transplanted bough-beam, where the wretched have hung."
"I know nothing of these things, Pierre. But I like not the town.
Think'st thou, Pierre, the time will ever come when all the earth shall
be paved?"
"Thank God, that never can be!"
"These silent side-glooms are horrible;--look! Methinks, not for the
world would I turn into one."
That moment the nigh fore-wheel sharply grated under the body of the
coach.
"Courage!" cried Pierre, "we are in it!--Not so very solitary either;
here comes a traveler."
"Hark, what is that?" said Delly, "that keen iron-ringing sound? It
passed us just now."
"The keen traveler," said Pierre, "he has steel plates to his
boot-heels;--some tender-souled elder son, I suppose."
"Pierre," said Isabel, "this silence is unnatural, is fearful. The
forests are never so still."
"Because brick and mortar have deeper secrets than wood or fell, sweet
Isabel. But here we turn again; now if I guess right, two more turns
will bring us to the door. Courage, all will be well; doubtless he has
prepared a famous supper. Courage, Isabel. Come, shall it be tea or
coffee? Some bread, or crisp toast? We'll have eggs, too; and some cold
chicken, perhaps."--Then muttering to himself--"I hope not that, either;
no cold collations! there's too much of that in these paving-stones
here, set out for the famishing beggars to eat. No. I won't have the
cold chicken." Then aloud--"But here we turn again; yes, just as I
thought. Ho, driver!" (thrusting his head out of the window) "to the
right! to the right! it should be on the right! the first house with a
light on the right!"
"No lights yet but the street's," answered the surly voice of the
driver.
"Stupid! he has passed it--yes, yes--he has! Ho! ho! stop; turn back.
Have you not passed lighted windows?"
"No lights but the street's," was the rough reply. "What's the number?
the number? Don't keep me beating about here all night! The number, I
say!"
"I do not know it," returned Pierre; "but I well know the house; you
must have passed it, I repeat. You must turn back. Surely you have
passed lighted windows?"
"Then them lights must burn black; there's no lighted windows in the
street; I knows the city; old maids lives here, and they are all to bed;
rest is warehouses."
"Will you stop the coach, or not?" cried Pierre, now incensed at his
surliness in continuing to drive on.
"I obeys orders: the first house with a light; and 'cording to my
reck'ning--though to be sure, I don't know nothing of the city where I
was born and bred all my life--no, I knows nothing at all about
it--'cording to my reck'ning, the first light in this here street will
be the watch-house of the ward--yes, there it is--all right! cheap
lodgings ye've engaged--nothing to pay, and wictuals in."
To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep
feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, and which sooner
explodes all self-command, than the coarse, jeering insolence of a
porter, cabman, or hack-driver. Fetchers and carriers of the worst city
infamy as many of them are; professionally familiar with the most
abandoned haunts; in the heart of misery, they drive one of the most
mercenary of all the trades of guilt. Day-dozers and sluggards on their
lazy boxes in the sunlight, and felinely wakeful and cat-eyed in the
dark; most habituated to midnight streets, only trod by sneaking
burglars, wantons, and debauchees; often in actual pandering league with
the most abhorrent sinks; so that they are equally solicitous and
suspectful that every customer they encounter in the dark, will prove a
profligate or a knave; this hideous tribe of ogres, and Charon ferry-men
to corruption and death, naturally slide into the most practically
Calvinistical view of humanity, and hold every man at bottom a fit
subject for the coarsest ribaldry and jest; only fine coats and full
pockets can whip such mangy hounds into decency. The least impatience,
any quickness of temper, a sharp remonstrating word from a customer in a
seedy coat, or betraying any other evidence of poverty, however minute
and indirect (for in that pecuniary respect they are the most piercing
and infallible of all the judgers of men), will be almost sure to
provoke, in such cases, their least endurable disdain.
Perhaps it was the unconscious transfer to the stage-driver of some such
ideas as these, which now prompted the highly irritated Pierre to an
act, which, in a more benignant hour, his better reason would have
restrained him from.
He did not see the light to which the driver had referred; and was
heedless, in his sudden wrath, that the coach was now going slower in
approaching it. Ere Isabel could prevent him, he burst open the door,
and leaping to the pavement, sprang ahead of the horses, and violently
reined back the leaders by their heads. The driver seized his
four-in-hand whip, and with a volley of oaths was about striking out its
long, coiling lash at Pierre, when his arm was arrested by a policeman,
who suddenly leaping on the stayed coach, commanded him to keep the
peace.
"Speak! what is the difficulty here? Be quiet, ladies, nothing serious
has happened. Speak you!"
"Pierre! Pierre!" cried the alarmed Isabel. In an instant Pierre was at
her side by the window; and now turning to the officer, explained to him
that the driver had persisted in passing the house at which he was
ordered to stop.
"Then he shall turn to the right about with you, sir;--in double quick
time too; do ye hear? I know you rascals well enough. Turn about, you
sir, and take the gentleman where he directed."
The cowed driver was beginning a long string of criminating
explanations, when turning to Pierre, the policeman calmly desired him
to re-enter the coach; he would see him safely at his destination; and
then seating himself beside the driver on the box, commanded him to tell
the number given him by the gentleman.
"He don't know no numbers--didn't I say he didn't--that's what I got mad
about."
"Be still"--said the officer. "Sir"--turning round and addressing Pierre
within; "where do you wish to go?"
"I do not know the number, but it is a house in this street; we have
passed it; it is, I think, the fourth or fifth house this side of the
last corner we turned. It must be lighted up too. It is the small
old-fashioned dwelling with stone lion-heads above the windows. But make
him turn round, and drive slowly, and I will soon point it out."
"Can't see lions in the dark"--growled the driver--"lions; ha! ha!
jackasses more likely!"
"Look you," said the officer, "I shall see you tightly housed this
night, my fine fellow, if you don't cease your jabber. Sir," he added,
resuming with Pierre, "I am sure there is some mistake here. I perfectly
well know now the house you mean. I passed it within the last half-hour;
all as quiet there as ever. No one lives there, I think; I never saw a
light in it. Are you not mistaken in something, then?"
Pierre paused in perplexity and foreboding. Was it possible that Glen
had willfully and utterly neglected his letter? Not possible. But it
might not have come to his hand; the mails sometimes delayed. Then
again, it was not wholly out of the question, that the house was
prepared for them after all, even though it showed no outward sign. But
that was not probable. At any rate, as the driver protested, that his
four horses and lumbering vehicle could not turn short round in that
street; and that if he must go back, it could only be done by driving
on, and going round the block, and so retracing his road; and as after
such a procedure, on his part, then in case of a confirmed
disappointment respecting the house, the driver would seem warranted, at
least in some of his unmannerliness; and as Pierre loathed the villain
altogether, therefore, in order to run no such risks, he came to a
sudden determination on the spot.
"I owe you very much, my good friend," said he to the officer, "for your
timely assistance. To be frank, what you have just told me has indeed
perplexed me not a little concerning the place where I proposed to stop.
Is there no hotel in this neighborhood, where I could leave these ladies
while I seek my friend?"
Wonted to all manner of deceitfulness, and engaged in a calling which
unavoidably makes one distrustful of mere appearances, however specious,
however honest; the really good-hearted officer, now eyed Pierre in the
dubious light with a most unpleasant scrutiny; and he abandoned the
"Sir," and the tone of his voice sensibly changed, as he
replied:--"There is no hotel in this neighborhood; it is too off the
thoroughfares."
"Come! come!"--cried the driver, now growing bold again--"though you're
an officer, I'm a citizen for all that. You haven't any further right to
keep me out of my bed now. He don't know where he wants to go to, cause
he haint got no place at all to go to; so I'll just dump him here, and
you dar'n't stay me."
"Don't be impertinent now," said the officer, but not so sternly as
before.
"I'll have my rights though, I tell you that! Leave go of my arm; damn
ye, get off the box; I've the law now. I say mister, come tramp, here
goes your luggage," and so saying he dragged toward him a light trunk on
the top of the stage.
"Keep a clean tongue in ye now"--said the officer--"and don't be in
quite so great a hurry," then addressing Pierre, who had now re-alighted
from the coach--"Well, this can't continue; what do you intend to do?"
"Not to ride further with that man, at any rate," said Pierre; "I will
stop right here for the present."
"He! he!" laughed the driver; "he! he! 'mazing 'commodating now--we
hitches now, we do--stops right afore the watch-house--he! he!--that's
funny!"
"Off with the luggage then, driver," said the policeman--"here hand the
small trunk, and now away and unlash there behind."
During all this scene, Delly had remained perfectly silent in her
trembling and rustic alarm; while Isabel, by occasional cries to Pierre,
had vainly besought some explanation. But though their complete
ignorance of city life had caused Pierre's two companions to regard the
scene thus far with too much trepidation; yet now, when in the
obscurity of night, and in the heart of a strange town, Pierre handed
them out of the coach into the naked street, and they saw their luggage
piled so near the white light of a watch-house, the same ignorance, in
some sort, reversed its effects on them; for they little fancied in what
really untoward and wretched circumstances they first touched the
flagging of the city.
As the coach lumbered off, and went rolling into the wide murkiness
beyond, Pierre spoke to the officer.
"It is a rather strange accident, I confess, my friend, but strange
accidents will sometimes happen."
"In the best of families," rejoined the other, a little ironically.
Now, I must not quarrel with this man, thought Pierre to himself, stung
at the officer's tone. Then said:--"Is there any one in your--office?"
"No one as yet--not late enough."
"Will you have the kindness then to house these ladies there for the
present, while I make haste to provide them with better lodgment? Lead
on, if you please."
The man seemed to hesitate a moment, but finally acquiesced; and soon
they passed under the white light, and entered a large, plain, and most
forbidding-looking room, with hacked wooden benches and bunks ranged
along the sides, and a railing before a desk in one corner. The
permanent keeper of the place was quietly reading a paper by the long
central double bat's-wing gas-light; and three officers off duty were
nodding on a bench.
"Not very liberal accommodations"--said the officer, quietly; "nor
always the best of company, but we try to be civil. Be seated, ladies,"
politely drawing a small bench toward them.
"Hallo, my friends," said Pierre, approaching the nodding three beyond,
and tapping them on the shoulder--"Hallo, I say! Will you do me a little
favor? Will you help bring some trunks in from the street? I will
satisfy you for your trouble, and be much obliged into the bargain."
Instantly the three noddies, used to sudden awakenings, opened their
eyes, and stared hard; and being further enlightened by the bat's-wings
and first officer, promptly brought in the luggage as desired.
Pierre hurriedly sat down by Isabel, and in a few words gave her to
understand, that she was now in a perfectly secure place, however
unwelcoming; that the officers would take every care of her, while he
made all possible speed in running to the house, and indubitably
ascertaining how matters stood there. He hoped to be back in less than
ten minutes with good tidings. Explaining his intention to the first
officer, and begging him not to leave the girls till he should return,
he forthwith sallied into the street. He quickly came to the house, and
immediately identified it. But all was profoundly silent and dark. He
rang the bell, but no answer; and waiting long enough to be certain,
that either the house was indeed deserted, or else the old clerk was
unawakeable or absent; and at all events, certain that no slightest
preparation had been made for their arrival; Pierre, bitterly
disappointed, returned to Isabel with this most unpleasant information.
Nevertheless something must be done, and quickly. Turning to one of the
officers, he begged him to go and seek a hack, that the whole party
might be taken to some respectable lodging. But the man, as well as his
comrades, declined the errand on the score, that there was no stand on
their beat, and they could not, on any account, leave their beat. So
Pierre himself must go. He by no means liked to leave Isabel and Delly
again, on an expedition which might occupy some time. But there seemed
no resource, and time now imperiously pressed. Communicating his
intention therefore to Isabel, and again entreating the officer's
particular services as before, and promising not to leave him
unrequited; Pierre again sallied out. He looked up and down the street,
and listened; but no sound of any approaching vehicle was audible. He
ran on, and turning the first corner, bent his rapid steps toward the
greatest and most central avenue of the city, assured that there, if
anywhere, he would find what he wanted. It was some distance off; and he
was not without hope that an empty hack would meet him ere he arrived
there. But the few stray ones he encountered had all muffled fares. He
continued on, and at last gained the great avenue. Not habitually used
to such scenes, Pierre for a moment was surprised, that the instant he
turned out of the narrow, and dark, and death-like bye-street, he should
find himself suddenly precipitated into the not-yet-repressed noise and
contention, and all the garish night-life of a vast thoroughfare,
crowded and wedged by day, and even now, at this late hour, brilliant
with occasional illuminations, and echoing to very many swift wheels and
footfalls.
II.
"I say, my pretty one! Dear! Dear! young man! Oh, love, you are in a
vast hurry, aint you? Can't you stop a bit, now, my dear: do--there's a
sweet fellow."
Pierre turned; and in the flashing, sinister, evil cross-lights of a
druggist's window, his eye caught the person of a wonderfully
beautifully-featured girl; scarlet-cheeked, glaringly-arrayed, and of a
figure all natural grace but unnatural vivacity. Her whole form,
however, was horribly lit by the green and yellow rays from the
druggist's.
"My God!" shuddered Pierre, hurrying forward, "the town's first welcome
to youth!"
He was just crossing over to where a line of hacks were drawn up
against the opposite curb, when his eye was arrested by a short, gilded
name, rather reservedly and aristocratically denominating a large and
very handsome house, the second story of which was profusely lighted. He
looked up, and was very certain that in this house were the apartments
of Glen. Yielding to a sudden impulse, he mounted the single step toward
the door, and rang the bell, which was quickly responded to by a very
civil black.
As the door opened, he heard the distant interior sound of dancing-music
and merriment.
"Is Mr. Stanly in?"
"Mr. Stanly? Yes, but he's engaged."
"How?"
"He is somewhere in the drawing rooms. My mistress is giving a party to
the lodgers."
"Ay? Tell Mr. Stanly I wish to see him for one moment if you please;
only one moment."
"I dare not call him, sir. He said that possibly some one might call for
him to-night--they are calling every night for Mr. Stanly--but I must
admit no one, on the plea of the party."
A dark and bitter suspicion now darted through the mind of Pierre; and
ungovernably yielding to it, and resolved to prove or falsify it without
delay, he said to the black:
"My business is pressing. I must see Mr. Stanly."
"I am sorry, sir, but orders are orders: I am his particular servant
here--the one that sees his silver every holyday. I can't disobey him.
May I shut the door, sir? for as it is, I can not admit you."
"The drawing-rooms are on the second floor, are they not?" said Pierre
quietly.
"Yes," said the black pausing in surprise, and holding the door.
"Yonder are the stairs, I think?"
"That way, sir; but this is yours;" and the now suspicious black was
just on the point of closing the portal violently upon him, when Pierre
thrust him suddenly aside, and springing up the long stairs, found
himself facing an open door, from whence proceeded a burst of combined
brilliancy and melody, doubly confusing to one just emerged from the
street. But bewildered and all demented as he momentarily felt, he
instantly stalked in, and confounded the amazed company with his
unremoved slouched hat, pale cheek, and whole dusty, travel-stained, and
ferocious aspect.
"Mr. Stanly! where is Mr. Stanly?" he cried, advancing straight through
a startled quadrille, while all the music suddenly hushed, and every eye
was fixed in vague affright upon him.
"Mr. Stanly! Mr. Stanly!" cried several bladish voices, toward the
further end of the further drawing-room, into which the first one widely
opened, "Here is a most peculiar fellow after you; who the devil is he?"
"I think I see him," replied a singularly cool, deliberate, and rather
drawling voice, yet a very silvery one, and at bottom perhaps a very
resolute one; "I think I see him; stand aside, my good fellow, will you;
ladies, remove, remove from between me and yonder hat."
The polite compliance of the company thus addressed, now revealed to the
advancing Pierre, the tall, robust figure of a remarkably
splendid-looking, and brown-bearded young man, dressed with surprising
plainness, almost demureness, for such an occasion; but this plainness
of his dress was not so obvious at first, the material was so fine, and
admirably fitted. He was carelessly lounging in a half side-long
attitude upon a large sofa, and appeared as if but just interrupted in
some very agreeable chat with a diminutive but vivacious brunette,
occupying the other end. The dandy and the man; strength and effeminacy;
courage and indolence, were so strangely blended in this superb-eyed
youth, that at first sight, it seemed impossible to decide whether there
was any genuine mettle in him, or not.
Some years had gone by since the cousins had met; years peculiarly
productive of the greatest conceivable changes in the general personal
aspect of human beings. Nevertheless, the eye seldom alters. The instant
their eyes met, they mutually recognized each other. But both did not
betray the recognition.
"Glen!" cried Pierre, and paused a few steps from him.
But the superb-eyed only settled himself lower down in his lounging
attitude, and slowly withdrawing a small, unpretending, and unribboned
glass from his vest pocket, steadily, yet not entirely insultingly,
notwithstanding the circumstances, scrutinized Pierre. Then, dropping
his glass, turned slowly round upon the gentlemen near him, saying in
the same peculiar, mixed, and musical voice as before:
"I do not know him; it is an entire mistake; why don't the servants take
him out, and the music go on?---- As I was saying, Miss Clara, the
statues you saw in the Louvre are not to be mentioned with those in
Florence and Rome. Why, there now is that vaunted _chef d'oeuvre_, the
Fighting Gladiator of the Louvre----"
"Fighting Gladiator it is!" yelled Pierre, leaping toward him like
Spartacus. But the savage impulse in him was restrained by the alarmed
female shrieks and wild gestures around him. As he paused, several
gentlemen made motions to pinion him; but shaking them off fiercely, he
stood erect, and isolated for an instant, and fastening his glance upon
his still reclining, and apparently unmoved cousin, thus spoke:--
"Glendinning Stanly, thou disown'st Pierre not so abhorrently as Pierre
does thee. By Heaven, had I a knife, Glen, I could prick thee on the
spot; let out all thy Glendinning blood, and then sew up the vile
remainder. Hound, and base blot upon the general humanity!"
"This is very extraordinary:--remarkable case of combined imposture and
insanity; but where are the servants? why don't that black advance? Lead
him out, my good Doc, lead him out. Carefully, carefully! stay"--putting
his hand in his pocket--"there, take that, and have the poor fellow
driven off somewhere."
Bolting his rage in him, as impossible to be sated by any conduct, in
such a place, Pierre now turned, sprang down the stairs, and fled the
house.
III.
"Hack, sir? Hack, sir? Hack, sir?"
"Cab, sir? Cab, sir? Cab, sir?"
"This way, sir! This way, sir! This way, sir!"
"He's a rogue! Not him! he's a rogue!"
Pierre was surrounded by a crowd of contending hackmen, all holding long
whips in their hands; while others eagerly beckoned to him from their
boxes, where they sat elevated between their two coach-lamps like
shabby, discarded saints. The whip-stalks thickened around him, and
several reports of the cracking lashes sharply sounded in his ears. Just
bursting from a scene so goading as his interview with the scornful Glen
in the dazzling drawing-room, to Pierre, this sudden tumultuous
surrounding of him by whip-stalks and lashes, seemed like the onset of
the chastising fiends upon Orestes. But, breaking away from them, he
seized the first plated door-handle near him, and, leaping into the
hack, shouted for whoever was the keeper of it, to mount his box
forthwith and drive off in a given direction.
The vehicle had proceeded some way down the great avenue when it
paused, and the driver demanded whither now; what place?
"The Watch-house of the---- Ward," cried Pierre.
"Hi! hi! Goin' to deliver himself up, hey!" grinned the fellow to
himself--"Well, that's a sort of honest, any way:--g'lang, you
dogs!--whist! whee! wha!--g'lang!"
The sights and sounds which met the eye of Pierre on re-entering the
watch-house, filled him with inexpressible horror and fury. The before
decent, drowsy place, now fairly reeked with all things unseemly. Hardly
possible was it to tell what conceivable cause or occasion had, in the
comparatively short absence of Pierre, collected such a base
congregation. In indescribable disorder, frantic, diseased-looking men
and women of all colors, and in all imaginable flaunting, immodest,
grotesque, and shattered dresses, were leaping, yelling, and cursing
around him. The torn Madras handkerchiefs of negresses, and the red
gowns of yellow girls, hanging in tatters from their naked bosoms, mixed
with the rent dresses of deep-rouged white women, and the split coats,
checkered vests, and protruding shirts of pale, or whiskered, or
haggard, or mustached fellows of all nations, some of whom seemed scared
from their beds, and others seemingly arrested in the midst of some
crazy and wanton dance. On all sides, were heard drunken male and female
voices, in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, interlarded now and
then, with the foulest of all human lingoes, that dialect of sin and
death, known as the Cant language, or the Flash.
Running among this combined babel of persons and voices, several of the
police were vainly striving to still the tumult; while others were busy
handcuffing the more desperate; and here and there the distracted
wretches, both men and women, gave downright battle to the officers; and
still others already handcuffed struck out at them with their joined
ironed arms. Meanwhile, words and phrases unrepeatable in God's
sunlight, and whose very existence was utterly unknown, and undreamed
of by tens of thousands of the decent people of the city; syllables
obscene and accursed were shouted forth in tones plainly evincing that
they were the common household breath of their utterers. The
thieves'-quarters, and all the brothels, Lock-and-Sin hospitals for
incurables, and infirmaries and infernoes of hell seemed to have made
one combined sortie, and poured out upon earth through the vile vomitory
of some unmentionable cellar.
Though the hitherto imperfect and casual city experiences of Pierre illy
fitted him entirely to comprehend the specific purport of this terrific
spectacle; still he knew enough by hearsay of the more infamous life of
the town, to imagine from whence, and who, were the objects before him.
But all his consciousness at the time was absorbed by the one horrified
thought of Isabel and Delly, forced to witness a sight hardly endurable
for Pierre himself; or, possibly, sucked into the tumult, and in close
personal contact with its loathsomeness. Rushing into the crowd,
regardless of the random blows and curses he encountered, he wildly
sought for Isabel, and soon descried her struggling from the delirious
reaching arms of a half-clad reeling whiskerando. With an immense blow
of his mailed fist, he sent the wretch humming, and seizing Isabel,
cried out to two officers near, to clear a path for him to the door.
They did so. And in a few minutes the panting Isabel was safe in the
open air. He would have stayed by her, but she conjured him to return
for Delly, exposed to worse insults than herself. An additional posse of
officers now approaching, Pierre committing her to the care of one of
them, and summoning two others to join himself, now re-entered the room.
In another quarter of it, he saw Delly seized on each hand by two
bleared and half-bloody women, who with fiendish grimaces were
ironically twitting her upon her close-necked dress, and had already
stript her handkerchief from her. She uttered a cry of mixed anguish
and joy at the sight of him; and Pierre soon succeeded in returning with
her to Isabel.
During the absence of Pierre in quest of the hack, and while Isabel and
Delly were quietly awaiting his return, the door had suddenly burst
open, and a detachment of the police drove in, and caged, the entire
miscellaneous night-occupants of a notorious stew, which they had
stormed and carried during the height of some outrageous orgie. The
first sight of the interior of the watch-house, and their being so
quickly huddled together within its four blank walls, had suddenly
lashed the mob into frenzy; so that for the time, oblivious of all other
considerations, the entire force of the police was directed to the
quelling of the in-door riot; and consequently, abandoned to their own
protection, Isabel and Delly had been temporarily left to its mercy.
It was no time for Pierre to manifest his indignation at the
officer--even if he could now find him--who had thus falsified his
individual pledge concerning the precious charge committed to him. Nor
was it any time to distress himself about his luggage, still somewhere
within. Quitting all, he thrust the bewildered and half-lifeless girls
into the waiting hack, which, by his orders, drove back in the direction
of the stand, where Pierre had first taken it up.
When the coach had rolled them well away from the tumult, Pierre stopped
it, and said to the man, that he desired to be taken to the nearest
respectable hotel or boarding-house of any kind, that he knew of. The
fellow--maliciously diverted by what had happened thus far--made some
ambiguous and rudely merry rejoinder. But warned by his previous rash
quarrel with the stage-driver, Pierre passed this unnoticed, and in a
controlled, calm, decided manner repeated his directions.
The issue was, that after a rather roundabout drive they drew up in a
very respectable side-street, before a large respectable-looking house,
illuminated by two tall white lights flanking its portico. Pierre was
glad to notice some little remaining stir within, spite of the
comparative lateness of the hour. A bare-headed, tidily-dressed, and
very intelligent-looking man, with a broom clothes-brush in his hand,
appearing, scrutinized him rather sharply at first; but as Pierre
advanced further into the light, and his countenance became visible, the
man, assuming a respectful but still slightly perplexed air, invited the
whole party into a closely adjoining parlor, whose disordered chairs and
general dustiness, evinced that after a day's activity it now awaited
the morning offices of the housemaids.
"Baggage, sir?"
"I have left my baggage at another place," said Pierre, "I shall send
for it to-morrow."
"Ah!" exclaimed the very intelligent-looking man, rather dubiously,
"shall I discharge the hack, then?"
"Stay," said Pierre, bethinking him, that it would be well not to let
the man know from whence they had last come, "I will discharge it
myself, thank you."
So returning to the sidewalk, without debate, he paid the hackman an
exorbitant fare, who, anxious to secure such illegal gains beyond all
hope of recovery, quickly mounted his box and drove off at a gallop.
"Will you step into the office, sir, now?" said the man, slightly
flourishing with his brush--"this way, sir, if you please."
Pierre followed him, into an almost deserted, dimly lit room with a
stand in it. Going behind the stand, the man turned round to him a large
ledger-like book, thickly inscribed with names, like any directory, and
offered him a pen ready dipped in ink.
Understanding the general hint, though secretly irritated at something
in the manner of the man, Pierre drew the book to him, and wrote in a
firm hand, at the bottom of the last-named column,--
"Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Glendinning, and Miss Ulver."
The man glanced at the writing inquiringly, and then said--"The other
column, sir--where from."
"True," said Pierre, and wrote "Saddle Meadows."
The very intelligent-looking man re-examined the page, and then slowly
stroking his shaven chin, with a fork, made of his thumb for one tine,
and his united four fingers for the other, said softly and
whisperingly--"Anywheres in this country, sir?"
"Yes, in the country," said Pierre, evasively, and bridling his ire.
"But now show me to two chambers, will you; the one for myself and wife,
I desire to have opening into another, a third one, never mind how
small; but I must have a dressing-room."
"Dressing-room," repeated the man, in an ironically deliberative
voice--"Dressing-room;--Hem!--You will have your luggage taken into the
dressing-room, then, I suppose.--Oh, I forgot--your luggage aint come
yet--ah, yes, yes, yes--luggage is coming to-morrow--Oh, yes,
yes,--certainly--to-morrow--of course. By the way, sir; I dislike to
seem at all uncivil, and I am sure you will not deem me so; but--"
"Well," said Pierre, mustering all his self-command for the coming
impertinence.
"When stranger gentlemen come to this house without luggage, we think
ourselves bound to ask them to pay their bills in advance, sir; that is
all, sir."
"I shall stay here to-night and the whole of to-morrow, at any rate,"
rejoined Pierre, thankful that this was all; "how much will it be?" and
he drew out his purse.
The man's eyes fastened with eagerness on the purse; he looked from it
to the face of him who held it; then seemed half hesitating an instant;
then brightening up, said, with sudden suavity--"Never mind, sir, never
mind, sir; though rogues sometimes be gentlemanly; gentlemen that are
gentlemen never go abroad without their diplomas. Their diplomas are
their friends; and their only friends are their dollars; you have a
purse-full of friends.--We have chambers, sir, that will exactly suit
you, I think. Bring your ladies and I will show you up to them
immediately." So saying, dropping his brush, the very
intelligent-looking man lighted one lamp, and taking two unlighted ones
in his other hand, led the way down the dusky lead-sheeted hall, Pierre
following him with Isabel and Delly.