TREATY ELM.
Andrew Zane was leaning on his elbow, in bed, listening to the tolling
bell for the old pastor of Kensington. He had not attended the funeral,
fearing to trust his eyes and heart near Calvin Van de Lear, for the
unruly element in his blood was not wholly stilled. Good and evil,
gratitude and recollection, contended within him, and Agnes just escaped
from the long shadow of his father's rage--had forebodings of some
violence when the two young men should meet in the little thoroughfare
of Kensington--the one with the accumulated indignities he had suffered
liable to be aroused by the other's shallow superciliousness. Agnes had
but one friend to carry her fears to--Him "who never forsaketh." She had
not persisted that her husband should attend the old pastor's funeral,
whither Duff Salter escorted her, and going there, relieved from all
imputation, her evidently wedded state was seen with general respect.
People spoke to her as of old, congratulated her even at the grave, and
sought to repair their own misapprehensions, suspicions, and severities,
which Agnes accepted without duplicity.
Andrew Zane was leaning up in bed hearing the tolling bell when Agnes
reappeared.
"Husband," she said, "only Knox Van de Lear was at the grave, of the
pastor's sons."
"Ha!" exclaimed Andrew.
"He looked worse than grief could make him. A terrible tale is afloat in
Kensington."
Husband and wife looked at each other a moment in silence.
"They say," continued Agnes, "that Calvin Van de Lear has fled with his
brother's wife. That is the talk of the town. Professing to desire some
clothing for the funeral, they took a carriage together, and were driven
to Tacony yesterday, where the afternoon train, meeting the steamboat
from Philadelphia, took them on board for New York."
Andrew fell back on his pillow.
"God has hedged me all around," he answered. "While Calvin Van de Lear
lived in Kensington I was in revengeful temptation all the time. He has
escaped, and my soul is oppressed no more. Do you know, Agnes, that the
guilty accomplice of Calvin, his brother's wife, wrote all the worst
letters which anonymously came through the post?"
Agnes replied:
"I never suspected it. My heart was too full of you. But Mr. Salter told
me to-day that he unravelled it some time ago. Calvin Van de Lear showed
him, in a moment of egotism, the conquest he had made over an unknown
lady's affections, and passages of the correspondence. The keen old man
immediately identified in the handwriting the person who addressed him a
letter against us soon after his arrival in the East. But he did not
tell me until to-day. How did you know she was the person?"
Andrew Zane blushed a little, and confessed:
"Agnes, she used to write to me. Seeing the anonymous letters you
received, I knew the culprit instantly. It was that which precipitated
the flight. She feared that her anonymous letters would result in her
arrest and public trial for slander, as they would have done. The
magistrate promised me that he would issue his warrant for every person
who had employed the public mails to harass my wife, and when you
entered this room my darker passions were again working to punish that
woman and her paramour."
"Dearest, let them be forgotten. Yes, forgiven too. But poor Mr. Knox
Van de Lear! They have stolen his savings and mortgaged his household
furniture, which he was confiding enough to have put in his wife's name.
That is also a part of the story related around the good pastor's
grave."
"Calvin has not escaped," exclaimed Andrew Zane. "As long as that
tigress accompanies him he has expiation to make. Voluptuous, jealous,
restless, and, like a snake in the tightness of her folds and her
noiseless approach, she will smother him with kisses and sell him to his
enemies."
"Do you know her so well?" asked Agnes placidly.
"Very well. She was corrupt from childhood, but only a few of us knew
it. She grew to be beautiful, and had the quickened intelligence which,
for a while, accompanies ruined women: the unnatural sharpening of the
duplicity, the firmer grasp on man as the animal, the study of the
proprieties of life, and apparent impatience with all misbehavior. Her
timid voice assisted her cunning as if with a natural gentleness, and
invited onward the man who expected in her ample charms a bolder spirit.
She betook herself to the church for penance, perhaps, but remained
there for a character. My wife, if I have suffered, it was, perhaps, in
part because for every sin is some punishment; that woman was _my_
temptress also!"
His face was pale as he spoke these words, but he did not drop his eyes.
The wife looked at him with a face also paled and startled.
"Remember," said Andrew Zane, "that I was a man."
She walked to him in a moment and kissed his forehead.
"I will have no more deceit," said Andrew. "That is why I give you this
pain. It was long, my darling, before we loved."
"That was the source, perhaps, of Lottie's anger with me," spoke Agnes.
"I think not. There was not a sentiment between us. It is the way,
occasionally, that a very bad woman is made, by marriage or wealth,
respectable, and she declares war on her own past and its imitators. You
were pursued because you had exchanged deserts with her. You were pure
and abused; she was approved but tainted. Not your misfortunes but your
goodness rebuked her, and she lashed you behind her _alias_, as every
demon would riot in lashing the angels."
"My husband," exclaimed Agnes, "where did you draw such secrets from
woman's nature? God has blessed you with wisdom. I felt, myself, by some
intuition of our sex, that it was sin, not virtue, that took such pains
to upbraid me."
"I drew them from the old, old plant," answered Andrew Zane; "the Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yonder, where I skimmed the surface of a
bad woman; here, where I am forgiven."
"If you felt remorse," said Agnes, "you were not given up."
"After _we_ were engaged that woman cast her eyes on my widowed father
and notified me that I must not stand in her way. 'If you embarrass me
by one word,' she said to me in her pretty, timid way, but with the look
of a lion out of her florid fringes, 'I will shatter your future
hearthstone. You are not fit to marry a Christian woman like Agnes Wilt.
I am good enough for your father--yes,' she finished, with terrible
irony, 'and to be your mother!' Those words went with me around the
world. Agnes, was I not punished?"
"To think that the son of so good a man should be bound to such a
tyrant."
"Yes, she will make him steal for her, or worse. He will end by being
her most degraded creature, leading and misleading to her. Theirs is an
unreturning path. God keep us all faithful!"
Duff Salter became again mysterious. He sent for his trunks, and gave
his address as the "Treaty House," on Beach Street, nearly opposite the
monument, only a square back from the Zane house.
"Andrew," said Salter, when the young husband sought him there, "I
concluded to move because there will be a nurse in that house before
midsummer. If I was deaf as I once was, it would make no difference. But
a very slight cry would certainly pierce my restored sensibilities now."
The Treaty House was a fine, old-fashioned brick, with a long saloon or
double parlor containing many curiosities, such as pieces of old ships
of war, weapons used in Polynesia and brought home by old sea captains,
the jaws of whales and narwhals, figure-heads from perished vessels,
harpoons, and points of various naval actions. In those days, before
manufactures had extended up all the water streets, and when domestic
war had not been known for a whole generation, the little low marble
monument on the site of William Penn's treaty with the Indians attracted
hundreds of strangers, who moistened their throats and cooled their
foreheads in the great bar parlor of the Treaty House. It was still a
secluded spot, shady and dewy with venerable trees, and the moisture
they gave the old brown and black bricks in the contiguous houses, some
of them still stylish, and all their windows topped with marble or
sandstone, gray with the superincumbent weight of time or neglect. Large
rear additions and sunless sideyards carried out the idea of a former
gentry. Some buttonwood trees, now thinning out with annual age,
conveyed by their speckled trunks the notion of a changing social
standard, white and brown, native and foreign, while the lines of maples
stood on blackened boles like old retired seamen, bronzed in many
voyages and planted home forever. But despite the narrow, neglected,
shady street, the slope of Shackamaxon went gently shelving to the edges
of long sunny wharves, nearly as in the day when Penn selected this
greensward to meet his Indian friends, and barter tools and promises for
forest levels and long rich valleys, now open to the sky and murmurous
with wheat and green potato vines.
Sitting before the inn door, on drowsy June afternoons, Duff Salter
heard the adzes ring and hammers smite the thousand bolt-heads on lofty
vessels, raised on mast-like scaffolds as if they meant to be launched
into the air and go cleared for yonder faintly tinted spectral moon,
which lingered so long by day, like the symbol of the Indian race,
departed but lambent in thoughtful memories. Duff had grown
superstitious; he came out of the inn door sidewise, that he might
always see that moon over his right shoulder for good luck.
One morning Andrew Zane appeared at the Treaty House before Duff Salter
had taken his julep, after the fashion of malarious Arkansas.
"Mr. Salter, it is all over. There is a baby at our house."
"Girl?"
"Just that!"
"I thought so," exclaimed Duff Salter. "It was truly mother's labor, and
ought to have been like Agnes. We will give her a toast."
"In nothing but water," spoke Andrew soberly. "I hope I have sown my
wild oats."
"I will imitate you," heartily responded Duff Salter; "for it occurred
to me in Arkansas that people shot and butchered each other so often
because they threw into empty stomachs a long tumbler of liquor and
leaves. You are well started, Andrew. Your father's and his partner's
estate will give you an income of $10,000. What will you do?"
"I have no idea whatever. My mind is not ready for business. My serious
experience has been followed by a sort of stupor--an inquiry, a detached
relation to everything."
"Let it be so awhile," answered the strong, gray-eyed man. "Such rests
are often medicine, as sleep is. The mind will find its true channel
some day."
"Can I be of service to you, Mr. Salter? Money would be a small return
of our obligations to you."
"No, I am independent. Too independent! I wish I had a wife."
"Ah! Agnes told me that besides seeing the baby when you came to the
house, little Mary Byerly would be there. She is well enough to be out,
and has lost her invalid brother."
"If you see me blush, Andrew," said Duff Salter, "you needn't tell of
it. I am in love with little Podge, but it's all over. With no
understanding of woman's sensibilities, I shook that fragile child in my
rude grasp, and frightened her forever. What will you call your baby?"
"Agnes says it shall be _Euphemia_, meaning 'of good report.' You know
it came near being a young lady of bad report."
"As for me, Andrew, I shall make the contract for the steeple and
completion of the new church, and then take a foreign journey. Since I
stopped sneezing I have no way to disguise my sensibilities, and am more
an object of suspicion than ever."
Duff Salter peeped at the beautiful mother and hung a chain of gold
around the baby's neck, and was about slipping out when Podge Byerly
appeared. She made a low bow and shrank away.
"Follow her," whispered Andrew Zane. "If she is cool now she will be
cold hereafter, unless you nurse her confidence."
With a sense of great youthfulness and demerit, Duff Salter entered the
parlors and found Podge sitting in the shadows of that thrice notable
room where death and grief had been so often carried and laid down. The
little teacher was pale and thin, and her eyes wore a saddened light.
"I am very glad to see you again," said Duff Salter. "I wanted your
forgiveness."
Striking the centre of sympathy by these few words, the late deaf man
saw Podge's throat agitated.
"If you knew," he continued, "how often I accused myself since your
illness, you would try to excuse me."
After a little silence Podge said,
"I don't remember just what happened, Mr. Salter. Was it you who sent me
many beautiful and dainty things while I was sick? I thought it might
be."
"You guessed me, then? At least I was not forgotten."
"I never forgot you, sir; but ever since my illness you seem to have
been a part of the dread river and its dead. I have often tried to
restore you as I once thought of you, but other things rise up and I
cannot see you. My head was gone, I suppose."
"Alas, no! I drove away your heart. If that would come back, the
wandering head would follow, little friend. Are you afraid of me?"
"Sometimes. One thing, I think, is your deafness. While you were deaf
you seemed so natural that we talked freely before you, prattling out
our fancies undisguised. We wouldn't have done it if we knew that you
heard as well as we. That makes me afraid too. Oh! why did you deceive
us so?"
"I only deceived myself. A foolish habit, formed in pique, of affecting
not to hear, adhered to me long before we were acquainted. If you will
let me drive you out into the country to-morrow I will tell you the
whole of my silly story. The country roads are what you need, and I need
your consideration as much."
The next day a buggy stopped at the door, and Podge, sitting at the
window with her bonnet on, saw Duff Salter, hale and strong, holding the
reins. She was helped into the buggy by Andrew Zane, and in a few
minutes the two were in the open country pointing toward old Frankford.
They rode up the long stony street of that old village, whose stone or
rough-cast houses suggested the Swiss city of Basle whence the early
settlers of Frankford came. Then turning through the factory dale called
Little Britain, they sped out the lane, taking the general direction of
Tacony Creek, and followed that creek up through different little
villages and mill-seats until they came to nearly the highest mill-pond,
in the stony region about the Old York road. A house of gray and reddish
stones, in irregular forms, mortised in white plaster, sat broadside to
the lawn before it, which was covered with venerable trees, and bordered
at the roadside by a stone rampart, so that it looked like a hanging
lawn. A gate at the lawn-side gave admission to a lane, behind which was
the ancient mill-pond suspended in a dewy landscape, with a path in the
grass leading up the mill-race, and on the pond a little scow floated in
pond-lilies. All around were chestnut trees, their burrs full of fruit.
Across the lane, only a few feet from the house, the ancient mill gave
forth a snoring and drumming together as if the spirit of solitude was
having a dance all to itself and only breathing hard. Then the crystal
water, shooting the old black mill-wheel, fell off it like the beard
from Duff Salter's face, and went away in pools and flakes across a
meadow, under spontaneous willow trees which liked to stand in moisture
and cover with their roots the harmless water-snakes. A few cottages
peeped over the adjacent ridges upon the hidden dale.
"What a restful place!" exclaimed Podge Byerly. "I almost wish I might
be spirit of a mill, or better still, that old boat yonder basking in
the pond-lilies and holding up its shadow!"
"I am glad you like it," said Duff Salter. "Let us go in and see if the
house is hospitable."
As Podge Byerly walked up the worn stone walk of the lawn she saw a
familiar image at the door--her mother.
"You here, mother?" said Podge. "What is the meaning of it?"
"This is my house, my darling. There is our friend who gave it to us.
You will need to teach no more. The mill and a little farm surrounding
us will make us independent."
Podge turned to Duff Salter.
"How kind of you!" she said. "Yet it frightens me the more. These
surprises, tender as they are, excite me. Everything about you is
mysterious. You are not even deaf as you were. What silly things you may
have heard us say."
"Dear girl," exclaimed Duff Salter, "nothing which I heard from your
lips ever affected me except to love you. You cured me of years of
suspicion, and I consented to hear again. The world grew candid to me;
its sounds were melodious, its silence was sincere. It is you who are
deaf. You cannot hear my heart."
"I hear no other's, at least," said Podge. "Tell me the story of your
strange deceit."
They drew chairs upon the lawn. Podge took off her bonnet and looked
very delicate as her color rose and faded alternately in the emotions of
one wooed in earnest and uncertain of her fate.
"I have not come by money without hard labor," said the hale and
handsome man. "This gray beard is not the creation of many years. It is
the fruit of anxiety, toil, and danger. My years are not double yours."
"You have recovered at least one of your faculties since I knew you,"
said Podge slyly.
"You mean hearing. The sense of feeling too, perhaps--which you have
lost. But this is my tale: After I went to Mexico, and became the
superintendent of a mine, I found my nature growing hard and my manner
imperious, not unlike those of my dead friend, William Zane. The hot
climate of Mexico and confinement in the mines, hundreds of feet below
the surface and in the salivating fumes of the cinnabar retorts,
assisted to make me impetuous. I fought more than one duel, and, like
all men who do desperate things, grew more desperate by experience
until, upon one occasion, I was made deaf by an explosion in the bowels
of the ground. For one year I could hear but little. In that year I was
comparatively humble, and one day I heard a workman say, 'If the boss
gets his hearing back there will be no peace about the mine.' This set
me to thinking. 'How much of my suspicion and anger,' I said, 'is the
result of my own speaking. I provoked the distemper of which I am
afflicted. I start the inquiries which make me distrustful. I hear the
echo of my own idle words, and impeach my fellow-man upon it. Until I
find a strong reason for speech, I will remain deaf as I have been.'
That strong reason never arrived, my little girl, until all reason
ceased to be and love supplanted it."
"There is no reason, then, in your present passion," said Podge dryly.
"No. I am so absolutely in love that there is no resisting it. It is
boyishness wholly."
"I think I should be afraid of a man," said Podge, "who could have so
much will as to hold his tongue for seven years. Suppose you had a
second attack, it might never come to an end. What were you thinking
about all that time?"
"I thought how deaf, blind, and dumb was any one without love. I found
the world far better than it had seemed when I was one of its
chatterers. By my voluntary silence I had banished the disturbing
element in Nature; for our enemy is always within us, not without. In
that seven years, for most of which I heard everything and answered
none, except by my pencil, I was prosperous, observant, sober, and
considerate. The deceit of affecting not to hear has brought its
penalty, however. You are afraid of me."
"Were you ever in love before?"
"I fear I will surprise you again by my answer," said Duff Salter. "I
once proposed marriage to a young girl on this very lawn. It was in the
springtime of my life. We met at a picnic in a grove not far distant.
She was a coquette, and forgot me."
Podge said she must have time to know her heart. Every day they made a
new excursion, now into the country of the Neshaminy, and beyond it to
the vales of the Tohicken and Perkiomen. They descended the lanes along
the Pennypack and Poqessing, and followed the Wissahickon to its
sources. Podge rapidly grew in form and spirits, and Agnes and Andrew
Zane came out to spend a Saturday with them.
Mean time Andrew Zane was in a mystic condition--uncertain of purpose,
serious, and studious, and he called one night at the Treaty tavern to
see Duff Salter. Duff had gone, however, up the Tacony, and in a
listless way Andrew sauntered over to the little monument erected on the
alleged site of the Indian treaty. He read the inscription aloud:
"Treaty Ground of William Penn and the Indian Nations, 1682. Unbroken
Faith! Pennsylvania, founded by deeds of Peace!"
As Andrew ceased he looked up and beheld a man of rather portly figure,
with the plain clothes of a Quaker, a broad-brimmed hat, knee-breeches,
and buckled shoes. Something in his countenance was familiar. Andrew
looked again, and wondered where he had seen that face. It then occurred
to him that it was the exact likeness of William Penn. The man locked at
Andrew and said,
"Thee is called to preach!"
"Sir?" exclaimed Andrew.
In the same tone of voice the man exclaimed,
"Thee is called to preach!"
Andrew looked with some slight superstition at the peculiar man, with
such a tone of authority, and said again, but respectfully:
"Do I understand you as speaking to me, sir?"
"Thee is called to preach!" said the object, in precisely the same tone
of voice, and vanished.
Andrew Zane walked across to the hotel and saw Duff Salter, freshly
arrived, looking at him intently.
"Did you see a person in Quaker dress standing by the monument an
instant past?"
"I saw nobody but yourself," said Duff heartily. "I have been looking at
you some moments."
"As truly as I live, a man in Quaker dress spoke to me at the monument's
side."
"What did he say?"
"He said three times, deliberately, 'Thee is called to preach!'"
"That's queer," said Duff, looking curiously at Andrew. "My friend, that
man spoke from within you. Do you know that it is the earnest desire of
your wife, and a subject of her prayers, that you may become a
minister?"
"I didn't know it," said Andrew. "But there is something startling in
this apparition. I shall never be able to forget it."
To the joy of Agnes, now a happy wife and mother, her husband went
seriously into the church, and the moment his intention was announced of
entering the ministry, there arose a spontaneous and united wish that he
would take the pulpit in his native suburb.
"Agnes," said the young man, "the dangers I have passed, the tragedy of
my family, your piety and my feelings, all concur in this step. I feel a
new life within me, now that I have settled upon this design."
"I would rather see you a good minister than President," exclaimed
Agnes. "The desires of my heart are fully answered now. When you saw the
image standing by the Treaty tree at that instant I was upon my knees
asking God to turn your heart toward the ministry."
"Here in Kensington," spoke Andrew, "we will live down all imputation
and renew our family name. Here, where we made our one mistake, we will
labor for others who err and suffer. Such an escape as ours can be
celebrated by nothing less than religion."
Duff Salter went to Tacony for the last time on the Sunday Andrew Zane
entered the church. He did not speak a word, but at the appearance of
Podge Byerly drew out the ancient ivory tablets and wrote:
"I'll never speak again until you accept or refuse me."
She answered, "What are you going to do if I say _no_?"
"I have bought two tickets for Europe," wrote Duff Salter. "One is for
you, if you will accept it. If not I shall go alone and be deaf for the
remainder of my days."
Podge answered by reaching out her lips and kissing Duff Salter plumply.
"There," she said, "I've done it!"
Duff Salter threw the tablets away, and standing up in a glow of
excitement, gave with great unction his last articulate sneeze:
"Jericho! Jericho!"
THE DEAD BOHEMIAN.
* * * * *
My hope to take his hand,
His world my promised land,
I thought no face so beautiful and high.
When he had called me "Friend,"
I reached ambition's end,
And Art's protection in his kindly eye.
My dream was quickly run--
I knew Endymion;
His wing was fancy and his soarings play;
No great thirsts in him pent,
His hates were indolent,
His graces calm and eloquent alway.
Not love's converse now seems
So tender to my dreams
As he, discursive at our mutual desk,
Most fervid and most ripe,
When dreaming at his pipe,
He made the opiate nights grow Arabesque.
His crayon never sharp,
No discord in his harp,
He made such sweetness I was discontent;
He knew not the desire
To rise from warmth to fire,
And with his magic rend the firmament.
Perhaps some want of faith,
Perhaps some past heart-scath,
Took from his life the zest of reaching far--
And so grew my regret,
To see my pride forget
That many watched him like a risen star.
Some moralist in man--
Even Bohemian--
Feathers the pen and nerves the archer too.
Not dear decoying art,
But the crushed, loving heart,
Makes the young life to its resolves untrue.
Therefore his haunts were sad;
Therefore his rhymes were glad;
Therefore he laughed at my reproach and goad--
With listless dreams and vague,
Passed not the walls of Prague,
To hew some fresh and individual road.
Still like an epic round,
With beautifulness crowned,
I read his memory, tenderer every year,
Complete with graciousness,
Gifted and purposeless,
But to my heart as some grand Master dear.
THE END
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistencies of spelling, punctuation and accents
in the original have been retained in this etext.]