IN WHICH IS SEEN A COMMINGLING OF CITIZENS.
Night has thrown her mantle over the city. There is a great gathering
of denizens at the house of Madame Flamingo. She has a _bal-masque_
to-night. Her door is beset with richly-caparisoned equipages. The town
is on tip-toe to be there; we reluctantly follow it. An hundred
gaudily-decorated drinking saloon are filled with gaudier-dressed men.
In loudest accent rings the question—“Do you go to Madame Flamingo’s
to-night?” Gentlemen of the genteel world, in shining broadcloth, touch
glasses and answer—“yes!” It is a wonderful city-this of ours. Vice
knows no restraint, poverty hath no friends here. We bow before the
shrine of midnight revelry; we bring licentiousness to our homes, but
we turn a deaf ear to the cries of poverty, and we gloat over the sale
of men.
The sickly gaslight throws a sicklier glare over the narrow, unpaved
streets. The city is on a frolic, a thing not uncommon with it. Lithe
and portly-figured men, bearing dominos in their hands, saunter along
the sidewalk, now dangling ponderous watch-chains, then flaunting
highly-perfumed cambrics—all puffing the fumes of choice cigars. If
accosted by a grave wayfarer—they are going to the opera! They are
dressed in the style of opera-goers. And the road to the opera seems
the same as that leading to the house of the old hostess. A
gaily-equipped carriage approaches. We hear the loud, coarse laughing
of those it so buoyantly bears, then there comes full to view the glare
of yellow silks and red satins, and doubtful jewels-worn by denizens
from whose faded brows the laurel wreath hath fallen. How shrunken with
the sorrow of their wretched lives, and yet how sportive they seem! The
pale gaslight throws a spectre-like hue over their paler features; the
artificial crimson with which they would adorn the withered cheek
refuses to lend a charm to features wan and ghastly. The very air is
sickly with the odor of their cosmetics. And with flaunting cambrics
they bend over carriage sides, salute each and every pedestrian, and
receive in return answers unsuited to refined ears. They pass into the
dim vista, but we see with the aid of that flickering gas, the shadow
of that polluting hand which hastens life into death.
Old Mr. McArthur, who sits smoking his long pipe in the door of his
crazy-looking curiosity shop, (he has just parted company with the
young theologian, having assured him he would find a place to stow Tom
Swiggs in,) wonders where the fashionable world of Charleston can be
going? It is going to the house of the Flamingo. The St. Cecilia were
to have had a ball to-night; scandal and the greater attractions here
have closed its doors.
A long line of carriages files past the door of the old hostess. An
incessant tripping of feet, delicately encased in bright-colored
slippers; an ominous fluttering of gaudy silks and satins; an inciting
glare of borrowed jewelry, mingling with second-hand lace; an
heterogeneous gleaming of bare, brawny arms, and distended busts, all
lend a sort of barbaric splendor to that mysterious group floating, as
it were, into a hall in one blaze of light. A soft carpet, over-lain
with brown linen, is spread from the curbstone into the hall. Two
well-developed policemen guard the entrance, take tickets of those who
pass in, and then exchange smiles of recognition with venerable looking
gentlemen in masks. The hostess, a clever “business man” in her way,
has made the admission fee one dollar. Having paid the authorities ten
dollars, and honored every Alderman with a complimentary ticket, who
has a better right? No one has a nicer regard for the Board of Aldermen
than Madame Flamingo; no one can reciprocate this regard more
condescendingly than the honorable Board of Aldermen do. Having got
herself arrayed in a dress of sky-blue satin, that ever and anon
streams, cloudlike, behind her, and a lace cap of approved fashion,
with pink strings nicely bordered in gimp, and a rich Honiton cape,
jauntily thrown over her shoulders, and secured under the chin with a
great cluster of blazing diamonds, and rows of unpolished pearls at her
wrists, which are immersed in crimped ruffles, she doddles up and down
the hall in a state of general excitement. A corpulent colored man,
dressed in the garb of a beadle,—a large staff in his right hand, a
cocked hat on his head, and broad white stripes down his flowing coat,
stands midway between the parlor doors. He is fussy enough, and stupid
enough, for a Paddington beadle. Now Madame Flamingo looks scornfully
at him, scolds him, pushes him aside; he is only a slave she purchased
for the purpose; she commands that he gracefully touch his hat (she
snatches it from his head, and having elevated it over her own,
performs the delicate motion she would have him imitate) to every
visitor. The least neglect of duty will incur (she tells him in
language he cannot mistake) the penalty of thirty-nine well laid on in
the morning. In another minute her fat, chubby face glows with smiles,
her whole soul seems lighted up with childlike enthusiasm; she has a
warm welcome for each new comer, retorts saliently upon her old
friends, and says—“you know how welcome you all are!” Then she curtsies
with such becoming grace. “The house, you know, gentlemen, is a
commonwealth to-night.” Ah! she recognizes the tall, comely figure of
Mr. Soloman, the accommodation man. He did not spring from among the
bevy of coat-takers, and hood-retainers, at the extreme end of the
great hall, nor from among the heap of promiscuous garments piled in
one corner; and yet he is here, looking as if some magic process had
brought him from a mysterious labyrinth. “Couldn’t get along without
me, you see. It’s an ambition with me to befriend everybody. If I can
do a bit of a good turn for a friend, so much the better!” And he
grasps the old hostess by the hand with a self-satisfaction he rather
improves by tapping her encouragingly on the shoulder. “You’ll make a
right good thing of this!—a clear thousand, eh?”
“The fates have so ordained it,” smiles naively the old woman.
“Of course the fates could not ordain otherwise—”
“As to that, Mr. Soloman, I sometimes think the gods are with me, and
then again I think they are against me. The witches-they have done my
fortune a dozen times or more-always predict evil (I consult them
whenever a sad fit comes over me), but witches are not to be depended
upon! I am sure I think what a fool I am for consulting them at all.”
She espies, for her trade of sin hath made keen her eye, the venerable
figure of Judge Sleepyhorn advancing up the hall, masked. “Couldn’t get
along without you,” she lisps, tripping towards him, and greeting him
with the familiarity of an intimate friend. “I’m rather aristocratic,
you’ll say!—and I confess I am, though a democrat in principle!” And
Madame Flamingo confirms what she says with two very dignified nods. As
the Judge passes silently in she pats him encouragingly on the back,
saying,—“There ain’t no one in this house what’ll hurt a hair on your
head.” The Judge heeds not what she says.
“My honor for it, Madame, but I think your guests highly favored,
altogether! Fine weather, and the prospect of a bal-masque of Pompeian
splendor. The old Judge, eh?”
“The gods smile-the gods smile, Mr. Soloman!” interrupts the hostess,
bowing and swaying her head in rapid succession.
“The gods have their eye on him to-night-he’s a marked man! A jolly old
cove of a Judge, he is! Cares no more about rules and precedents, on
the bench, than he does for the rights and precedents some persons
profess to have in this house. A high old blade to administer justice,
eh?”
“But, you see, Mr. Soloman,” the hostess interrupts, a gracious bow
keeping time with the motion of her hand, “he is such an aristocratic
prop in the character of my house.”
“I rather like that, I confess, Madame. You have grown rich off the
aristocracy. Now, don’t get into a state of excitement!” says Mr.
Soloman, fingering his long Saxon beard, and eyeing her mischievously.
She sees a bevy of richly-dressed persons advancing up the hall in high
glee. Indeed her house is rapidly filling to the fourth story. And yet
they come! she says. “The gods are in for a time. I love to make the
gods happy.”
Mr. Soloman has lain his hand upon her arm retentively.
“It is not that the aristocracy and such good persons as the Judge
spend so much here. But they give eclat to the house, and eclat is
money. That’s it, sir! Gold is the deity of our pantheon! Bless you
(the hostess evinces the enthusiasm of a politician), what better
evidence of the reputation of my house than is before you, do you want?
I’ve shut up the great Italian opera, with its three squalling prima
donnas, which in turn has shut up the poor, silly Empresario, as they
call him; and the St. Cecilia I have just used up. I’m a team in my
way, you see;—run all these fashionable oppositions right into
bankruptcy.” Never were words spoken with more truth. Want of patronage
found all places of rational amusement closed. Societies for
intellectual improvement, one after another, died of poverty.
Fashionable lectures had attendance only when fashionable lecturers
came from the North; and the Northman was sure to regard our taste
through the standard of what he saw before him.
The house of the hostess triumphs, and is corpulent of wealth and
splendor. To-morrow she will feed with the rich crumbs that fall from
her table the starving poor. And although she holds poor virtue in
utter contempt, feeding the poor she regards a large score on the
passport to a better world. A great marble stairway winds its way
upward at the further end of the hall and near it are two small
balconies, one on each side, presenting barricades of millinery
surmounted with the picturesque faces of some two dozen denizens, who
keep up an incessant gabbling, interspersed here and there with jeers
directed at Mr. Soloman. “Who is he seeking to accommodate to-night?”
they inquire, laughing merrily.
The house is full, the hostess has not space for one friend more; she
commands the policemen to close doors. An Alderman is the only
exception to her fiat. “You see,” she says, addressing herself to a
courtly individual who has just saluted her with urbane deportment, “I
must preserve the otium cum dignitate of my (did I get it right?)
standing in society. I don’t always get these Latin sayings right. Our
Congressmen don’t. And, you see, like them, I ain’t a Latin scholar,
and may be excused for any little slips. Politics and larnin’ don’t get
along well together. Speaking of politics, I confess I rather belong to
the Commander and Quabblebum school-I do!”
At this moment (a tuning of instruments is heard in the dancing-hall)
the tall figure of the accommodation man is seen, in company of the
venerable Judge, passing hurriedly into a room on the right of the
winding stairs before described. “Judge!” he exclaims, closing the door
quickly after him, “you will be discovered and exposed. I am not
surprised at your passion for her, nor the means by which you seek to
destroy the relations existing between her and George Mullholland. It
is an evidence of taste in you. But she is proud to a fault, and, this
I say in friendship, you so wounded her feelings, when you betrayed her
to the St. Cecilia, that she has sworn to have revenge on you. George
Mullholland, too, has sworn to have your life.
“I tell you what it is, Judge, (the accommodation man assumes the air
of a bank director,) I have just conceived-you will admit I have an
inventive mind!—a plot that will carry you clean through the whole
affair. Your ambition is divided between a passion for this charming
creature and the good opinion of better society. The resolution to
retain the good opinion of society is doing noble battle in your heart;
but it is the weaker vessel, and it always will be so with a man of
your mould, inasmuch as such resolutions are backed up by the less
fierce elements of our nature. Put this down as an established
principle. Well, then, I will take upon myself the betrayal. I will
plead you ignorant of the charge, procure her forgiveness, and
reconcile the matter with this Mullholland. It’s worth an hundred or
more, eh?”
The venerable man smiles, shakes his head as if heedless of the
admonition, and again covers his face with his domino.
The accommodation man, calling him by his judicial title, says he will
yet repent the refusal!
It is ten o’clock. The gentleman slightly colored, who represents a
fussy beadle, makes a flourish with his great staff. The doors of the
dancing hall are thrown open. Like the rushing of the gulf stream there
floods in a motley procession of painted females and masked men-the
former in dresses as varied in hue as the fires of remorse burning out
their unuttered thoughts. Two and two they jeer and crowd their way
along into the spacious hall, the walls of which are frescoed in
extravagant mythological designs, the roof painted in fret work, and
the cornices interspersed with seraphs in stucco and gilt. The lights
of two massive chandeliers throw a bewitching refulgence over a scene
at once picturesque and mysterious; and from four tall mirrors secured
between the windows, is reflected the forms and movements of the
masquers.
Reader! you have nothing in this democratic country with which to
successfully compare it. And to seek a comparison in the old world,
where vice, as in this city of chivalry, hath a license, serves not our
office.
Madame Flamingo, flanked right and left by twelve colored gentlemen,
who, their collars decorated with white and pink rosettes, officiate as
masters of ceremony, and form a crescent in front of the thronging
procession, steps gradually backward, curtsying and bowing, and
spreading her hands to her guests, after the manner of my Lord
Chamberlain.
Eight colored musicians, (everything is colored here,) perched on a
raised platform covered with maroon-colored plush; at the signal of a
lusty-tongued call-master, strike up a march, to which the motley
throng attempt to keep time. It is martial enough, and discordant
enough for anything but keeping time to.
The plush-covered benches filing along the sides and ends of the hall
are eagerly sought after and occupied by a strange mixture of lookers
on in Vienna. Here the hoary-headed father sits beside a
newly-initiated youth, who is receiving his first lesson of
dissipation. There the grave and chivalric planter sports with the nice
young man, who is cultivating a beard and his way into the by-ways. A
little further on the suspicious looking gambler sits freely conversing
with the man whom a degrading public opinion has raised to the dignity
of the judicial bench. Yonder is seen the man who has eaten his way
into fashionable society, (and by fashionable society very much
caressed in return,) the bosom companion of the man whose crimes have
made him an outcast.
Generous reader! contemplate this grotesque assembly; study the object
Madame Flamingo has in gathering it to her fold. Does it not present
the accessories to wrong doing? Does it not show that the wrong-doer
and the criminally inclined, too often receive encouragement by the
example of those whose duty it is to protect society? The spread of
crime, alas! for the profession, is too often regarded by the lawyer as
rather a desirable means of increasing his trade.
Quadrille follows quadrille, the waltz succeeds the schottish, the
scene presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating
bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling
seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in
the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of
the young,—the child who stood trembling between the first and second
downward step finds her reeling brain a captive in this snare set to
seal her ruin.
Now the music ceases, the lusty-tongued call-master stands surveying
what he is pleased to call the oriental splendor of this grotesque
assembly. He doesn’t know who wouldn’t patronize such a house! It
suddenly forms in platoon, and marshalled by slightly-colored masters
of ceremony, promenades in an oblong figure.
Here, leaning modestly on the arm of a tall figure in military uniform,
and advancing slowly up the hall, is a girl of some sixteen summers.
Her finely-rounded form is in harmony with the ravishing vivacity of
her face, which is beautifully oval. Seen by the glaring gaslight her
complexion is singularly clear and pale. But that freshness which had
gained her many an admirer, and which gave such a charm to the
roundness of early youth, we look for in vain. And yet there is a
softness and delicacy about her well-cut and womanly features-a
child-like sweetness in her smile-a glow of thoughtfulness in those
great, flashing black eyes-an expression of melancholy in which at
short intervals we read her thoughts-an incessant playing of those long
dark eyelashes, that clothes her charms with an irresistible, a
soul-inspiring seductiveness. Her dress, of moire antique, is
chasteness itself; her bust exquisite symmetry; it heaves as softly as
if touched by some gentle zephyr. From an Haidean brow falls and floats
undulating over her marble-like shoulders, the massive folds of her
glossy black hair. Nature had indeed been lavish of her gifts on this
fair creature, to whose charms no painter could give a touch more
fascinating. This girl, whose elastic step and erect carriage contrasts
strangely with the languid forms about her, is Anna Bonard, the
neglected, the betrayed. There passes and repasses her, now
contemplating her with a curious stare, then muttering inaudibly, a man
of portly figure, in mask and cowl. He touches with a delicate hand his
watch-guard, we see two sharp, lecherous eyes peering through the
domino; he folds his arms and pauses a few seconds, as if to survey the
metal of her companion, then crosses and recrosses her path. Presently
his singular demeanor attracts her attention, a curl of sarcasm is seen
on her lip, her brow darkens, her dark orbs flash as of fire,—all the
heart-burnings of a soul stung with shame are seen to quicken and make
ghastly those features that but a moment before shone lambent as summer
lightning. He pauses as with a look of withering scorn she scans him
from head to foot, raises covertly her left hand, tossing carelessly
her glossy hair on her shoulder, and with lightning quickness snatches
with her right the domino from his face. “Hypocrite!” she exclaims,
dashing it to the ground, and with her foot placed defiantly upon the
domino, assumes a tragic attitude, her right arm extended, and the
forefinger of her hand pointing in his face. “Ah!” she continues, in
biting accents, “it is against the perfidy of such as you I have
struggled. Your false face, like your heart, needed a disguise. But I
have dragged it away, that you may be judged as you are. This is my
satisfaction for your betrayal. Oh that I could have deeper revenge!”
She has unmasked Judge Sleepyhorn, who stands before the anxious gaze
of an hundred night revellers, pressing eagerly to the scene of
confusion. Madame Flamingo’s house, as you may judge, is much out in
its dignity, and in a general uproar. There was something
touching-something that the graver head might ponder over, in the words
of this unfortunate girl—“I have struggled!” A heedless and
gold-getting world seldom enters upon the mystery of its meaning. But
it hath a meaning deep and powerful in its appeal to society- one that
might serve the good of a commonwealth did society stoop and take it by
the hand.
So sudden was the motion with which this girl snatched the mask from
the face of the Judge, (he stood as if appalled,) that, ere he had
gained his self-possession, she drew from her girdle a pearl-hilted
stiletto, and in attempting to ward off the dreadful lunge, he struck
it from her hand, and into her own bosom. The weapon fell gory to the
floor-the blood trickled down her bodice-a cry of “murder” resounded
through the hall! The administrator of justice rushed out of the door
as the unhappy girl swooned in the arms of her partner. A scene so
confused and wild that it bewilders the brain, now ensued. Madame
Flamingo calls loudly for Mr. Soloman; and as the reputation of her
house is uppermost in her thoughts, she atones for its imperiled
condition by fainting in the arms of a grave old gentleman, who was
beating a hasty retreat, and whose respectability she may compromise
through this uncalled-for act.
A young man of slender form, and pale, sandy features, makes his way
through the crowd, clasps Anna affectionately in his arms, imprints a
kiss on her pallid brow, and bears her out of the hall.
By the aid of hartshorn and a few dashes of cold water, the old hostess
is pleased to come to, as we say, and set about putting her house in
order. Mr. Soloman, to the great joy of those who did not deem it
prudent to make their escape, steps in to negotiate for the peace of
the house and the restoration of order. “It is all the result of a
mistake,” he says laughingly, and good-naturedly, patting every one he
meets on the shoulder. “A little bit of jealousy on the part of the
girl. It all had its origin in an error that can be easily rectified.
In a word, there’s much ado about nothing in the whole of it. Little
affairs of this kind are incident to fashionable society all over the
world! The lady being only scratched, is more frightened than hurt.
Nobody is killed; and if there were, why killings are become so
fashionable, that if the killed be not a gentleman, nobody thinks
anything of it,” he continues. And Mr. Soloman being an excellent
diplomatist, does, with the aid of the hostess, her twelve masters of
ceremony, her beadle, and two policemen, forthwith bring the house to a
more orderly condition. But night has rolled into the page of the past,
the gray dawn of morning is peeping in at the half-closed windows, the
lights burning in the chandeliers shed a pale glow over the wearied
features of those who drag, as it were, their languid bodies to the
stifled music of unwilling slaves. And while daylight seems modestly
contending with the vulgar glare within, there appears among the pale
revellers a paler ghost, who, having stalked thrice up and down the
hall, preserving the frigidity and ghostliness of the tomb, answering
not the questions that are put to him, and otherwise deporting himself
as becometh a ghost of good metal, is being taken for a demon of wicked
import. Now he pauses at the end of the hall, faces with spectre-like
stare the alarmed group at the opposite end, rests his left elbow on
his scythe-staff, and having set his glass on the floor, points to its
running sands warningly with his right forefinger. Not a muscle does he
move. “Truly a ghost!” exclaims one. “A ghost would have vanished
before this,” whispers another. “Speak to him,” a third responds, as
the musicians are seen to pale and leave their benches. Madame
Flamingo, pale and weary, is first to rush for the door, shrieking as
his ghostship turns his grim face upon her. Shriek follows shriek, the
lights are put out, the gray dawn plays upon and makes doubly frightful
the spectre. A Pandemonium of shriekings and beseechings is succeeded
by a stillness as of the tomb. Our ghost is victor.