It is just as well to say at the onset that the tragedy in which
Tristrem Varick was the central figure has not been rightly understood.
The world in which he lived, as well as the newspaper public, have had
but one theory between them to account for it, and that theory is that
Tristrem Varick was insane. Tristrem Varick was not insane. He had,
perhaps, a fibre more or a fibre less than the ordinary run of men; that
something, in fact, which is the prime factor of individuality and
differentiates the possessor from the herd; but to call him insane is
nonsense. If he were, it is a pity that there are not more lunatics like
him.
It may be that the course of conduct which he pursued in regard to his
father's estate served as basis to the theory alluded to. At the time
being, it created quite a little stir; it was looked upon as a piece of
old-world folly, an eccentricity worthy of the red-heeled days of
seigneurial France, and, as such, altogether out of place in a
money-getting age like our own. But it was not until after the tragedy
that his behavior in that particular was brought up in evidence against
him.
The facts in the case were these: Tristrem's father, Erastus Varick, was
a man of large wealth, who, when well on in the forties, married a girl
young enough to be his daughter. The lady in question was the only child
of a neighbor, Mr. Dirck Van Norden by name, and very pretty is she said
to have been. Before the wedding Erastus Varick had his house, which was
situated in Waverley Place, refurbished from cellar to garret; he had
the parlor--there were parlors in those days--fitted up in white and
gold, in the style known as that of the First Empire. The old Dutch
furniture, black with age and hair-cloth, was banished. The walls were
plastered with a lime cement of peculiar brilliance. The floors of the
bedrooms were carpeted with rugs that extended under the beds, a novelty
in New York, and the bedsteads themselves, which were vast enough to
make coffins for ten people, were curtained with chintz patterns
manufactured in Manchester to frighten children. In brief, Erastus
Varick succeeded in making the house even less attractive than before,
and altogether acted like a man in love.
After three years of marriage, Tristrem was born and Mrs. Varick died.
The boy had the best of care and everything that money could procure. He
was given that liberal education which usually unfits the recipient for
making so much as his bread and butter, and at school, at college, and
when he went abroad his supply of funds was of the amplest description.
Shortly after his return from foreign lands Erastus Varick was gathered
to his fathers. By his will he bequeathed to Tristrem a Panama hat and a
bundle of letters. The rest and residue of his property he devised to
the St. Nicholas Hospital. The value of that property amounted to seven
million dollars.
Now Dirck Van Norden had not yet moved from the neighborhood to a better
place. Tristrem was his only grandson, and when he learned of the tenor
of the will, he shook his fist at himself in the looking-glass and
swore, in a bountiful old-fashioned manner which was peculiar to him,
that his grandson should not be divested of his rights. He set the
lawyers to work, and the lawyers were not long in discovering a flaw
which, through a wise provision of the legislature, rendered the will
null and void. The Hospital made a bold fight. It was shown beyond
peradventure that from the time of Tristrem's birth the intention of the
testator--and the intention of a testator is what the court most
considers--had been to leave his property to a charitable institution.
It was proved that he had made other wills of a similar character, and
that he had successively destroyed them as his mind changed in regard to
minor details and distributions of the trust. But the wise law was
there, and there too were the wise lawyers. The decision was made in
accordance with the statute, and the estate reverted to Tristrem, who
then succeeded in surprising New York. Of his own free will he made over
the entire property to the account of the Hospital to which it had been
originally devised, and it was in connection with that transfer that he
was taxed with old-world folly. But the matter was misunderstood and
afterward forgotten, and only raked up again when the press of two
continents busied itself with his name. At that time he was in his
twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year.
He was slender, of medium height, blue of eye, and clear-featured. His
hair, which was light in color, he wore brushed upward and back from the
forehead. When he walked, it was with a slight stoop, which was the more
noticeable in that, being nearsighted, he had a way of holding his chin
out and raising his eyebrows as though he were peering at something
which he could not quite discern. In his face there was a charm that
grew and delighted and fastened on the beholder. At the age of
twenty-six he would have been recognized by anyone who had known him as
a boy. He had expanded, of course, and a stoop and dimness of vision had
come with years; but in his face was the same unmistakable, almost
childish, expression of sweet good-will.
His school-days were passed at Concord. When he first appeared there he
looked so much like a pretty girl, in his manner was such gentleness,
and his nature was found to be so vibrant and sensitive, that his
baptismal name was promptly shortened into Trissy. But by the time he
reached the fourth form it was lengthened back again to its rightful
shape. This change was the result of an evolution of opinion. One day
while some companions, with whom he happened to be loitering, scurried
behind a fence, he stopped a runaway horse, clinging to the bridle
though his arm had been dislocated in the earliest effort. Another time,
when a comrade had been visited, unjustly it appeared, with some
terrible punishment--five hundred lines, perhaps, or something equally
direful--Tristrem made straight for the master, and argued with him to
such effect that the punishment was remitted. And again, when a tutor
asked how it was that there was no W in the French language, Tristrem
answered, "Because of Waterloo."
Boys are generous in their enthusiasms; they like bravery, they are not
deaf to wit, but perhaps of all other things they admire justice most.
And Tristrem seemed to exhale it. It is said that everyone has a
particular talent for some one thing, whether for good or evil, and the
particular talent which was accorded to Tristrem Varick was that of
appreciation. He was a born umpire. In disputes his school-fellows
turned to him naturally, and accepted his verdict without question. When
he reached the altitudes which the Upper School offers, no other boy at
St. Paul's was better liked than he. At that time the form of which he
was a member--and in which, parenthetically, he ranked rather low--was
strengthened by a new-comer, a turbulent, precocious boy who had been
expelled from two other schools, and with whom, so ran the gossip, it
would go hard were he expelled again. His name was Royal Weldon, and on
his watch, and on a seal ring which he wore on his little finger, he
displayed an elaborate coat-of-arms under which for legend were the
words, _Well done, Weldon_, words which it was reported an English king
had bawled in battle, ennobling as he did so the earliest Weldon known
to fame.
Between the two lads, and despite the dissimilarity of their natures, or
perhaps precisely on that account, there sprang up a warm friendship
which propinquity cemented, for chance or the master had given them a
room in common. At first, Tristrem fairly blinked at Weldon's precocity,
and Weldon, who was accustomed to be admired, took to Tristrem not
unkindly on that account. But after a time Tristrem ceased to blink and
began to lecture, not priggishly at all, but in a persuasive manner that
was hard to resist. For Weldon was prone to get into difficulties, and
equally prone to make the difficulties worse than they need have been.
When cross-questioned he would decline to answer; it was a trick he had.
Now Tristrem never got into difficulties, except with Latin prosody or a
Greek root, and he was frank to a fault.
It so happened that one day the headmaster summoned Tristrem to him. "My
dear," he said, "Royal is not acting quite as he should, is he?" To this
Tristrem made no reply. "He is a motherless boy," the master continued,
"a poor motherless boy. I wish, Tristrem, that you would use your
influence with him. I see but one course open to me, unless he does
better--" Tristrem was a motherless boy himself, but he answered bravely
that he would do what he could. That evening, as he was battling with
the platitudes of that Augustan bore who is called the Bard of Mantua,
presumably because he was born in Andes--Weldon came in, smelling of
tobacco and drink. It was evident that he had been to town.
Tristrem looked up from his task, and as he looked he heard the step of
a tutor in the hall. He knew, if the tutor had speech with Weldon, that
on the morrow Weldon would leave the school. In a second he had seated
him before the open dictionary, and in another second he was kneeling at
his own bedside. Hardly had he bowed his head when there came a rap at
the door, the tutor entered, saw the kneeling figure, apologized in a
whisper, and withdrew.
When Tristrem stood up again, Weldon was sobered and very pale.
"Tristrem--" he began, but Tristrem interrupted him. "There, don't say
anything, and don't do it again. To-morrow you had better talk it over
with the doctor."
Weldon declined to talk it over with anyone, but after that he behaved
himself with something approaching propriety. Two years later, in
company with his friend, he entered Harvard, from which institution he
was subsequently dropped.
Tristrem meanwhile struggled through the allotted four years. He was not
brilliant in his studies, the memorizing of abstruse questions and
recondite problems was not to his liking. He preferred modern tongues to
dead languages, an intricate fugue was more to his taste than the
simplest equation, and to his shame it must be noted that he read
Petrarch at night. But, though the curriculum was not entirely to his
fancy, he was conscientious and did his best. There are answers that he
gave in class that are quoted still, tangential flights that startled
the listeners into new conceptions of threadbare themes, totally
different from the usual cut and dried response that is learned by rote.
And at times he would display an ignorance, a stupidity even, that was
fathomless in its abysses.
After graduation, he went abroad. England seemed to him like a rose in
bloom, but when autumn came and with it a succession of fogs, each more
depressing than the last, he fled to Italy, and wandered among her
ghosts and treasuries, and then drifted up again through Germany, to
Paris, where he gave his mornings to the Sorbonne and his evenings to
orchestra-stalls.