rapturous cheer, each man and woman, to show that he or she was not
disappointed. The bearer spoke with Mr. Burrham, in answer to his
questions, and, with a good deal of ostentation, he opened a
check-book, filled a check and passed it to her, she signing a receipt
as she took it, and transferring to him her ticket. So far, in dumb
show, all was well. What was more to my purpose, it was rapid, for we
should have been done in five minutes more, but that some devil tempted
some loafer in a gallery to cry, "Face! face!" Miss Stillingfleet's
legatee was still heavily veiled.
In one horrid minute that whole amphitheatre, which seemed to me then
more cruel than the Coliseum ever was, rang out with a cry of "Face,
face!" I tried the counter-cry of "Shame! shame!" but I was in disgrace
among my neighbors, and a counter-cry never takes as its prototype
does, either. At first, on the stage, they affected not to hear or
understand; then there was a courtly whisper between Mr. Burrham and
the lady; but Mr. A----, the mayor, and the respectable gentlemen,
instantly interfered. It was evident that she would not unveil, and
that they were prepared to indorse her refusal. In a moment more she
courtesied to the assembly; the mayor gave her his arm, and led her out
through a side door.
O, the yell that rose up then! The whole assembly stood up, and, as if
they had lost some vested right, hooted and shrieked, "Back! back!
Face! face!" Mr. A---- returned, made as if he would speak, came
forward to the very front, and got a moment's silence.
"It is not in the bond, gentlemen," said he. "The young lady is
unwilling to unveil, and we must not compel her."
"Face! face!" was the only answer, and oranges from up stairs flew
about his head and struck upon the table,--an omen only fearful from
what it prophesied. Then there was such a row for five minutes as I
hope I may never see or hear again. People kept their places,
fortunately, under a vague impression that they should forfeit some
magic rights if they left those numbered seats. But when, for a moment,
a file of policemen appeared in the orchestra, a whole volley of
cyclopædias fell like rain upon their chief, with a renewed cry of
"Face! face!"
At this juncture, with a good deal of knowledge of popular feeling, Mr.
A---- led forward his child again. Frightened to death the poor thing
was, and crying; he tied his handkerchief round her eyes hastily, and
took her to the red box. For a minute the house was hushed. A cry of
"Down! down!" and every one took his place as the child gave the red
ticket to her father. He read it as before, "No. 3,671!" I heard the
words as if he did not speak them. All excited by the delay and the
row, by the injustice to the stranger and the personal injustice of
everybody to me, I did not know, for a dozen seconds, that every one
was looking towards our side of the house, nor was it till my next
neighbor with the watch said, "Go, you fool," that I was aware that
3,671 was I! Even then, as I stepped down the passage and up the steps,
my only feeling was, that I should get out of this horrid trap, and
possibly find Miss Jones lingering near the Astor,--not by any means
that I was invited to take a check for $5,000.
There was not much cheering. Women never mean to cheer, of course. The
men had cheered the green ticket, but they were mad with the red one. I
gave up my ticket, signed my receipt, and took my check, shook hands
with Mr. A---- and Mr. Burrham, and turned to bow to the mob,--for mob
I must call it now. But the cheers died away. A few people tried to go
out, perhaps, but there was nothing now to retain any in their seats as
before, and the generality rose, pressed down the passages, and howled,
"Face! face!" I thought for a moment that I ought to say something, but
they would not hear me, and, after a moment's pause, my passion to
depart overwhelmed me. I muttered some apology to the gentlemen, and
left the stage by the stage-door.
I had forgotten that to Castle Garden there can be no back entrance. I
came to door after door, which were all locked. It was growing dark.
Evidently the sun was set, and I knew the library-door would be shut at
sunset. The passages were very obscure. All around me rang this horrid
yell of the mob, in which all that I could discern was the cry, "Face,
face!" At last, as I groped round, I came to a practicable door. I
entered a room where the western sunset glare dazzled me. I was not
alone. The veiled lady in black was there. But the instant she saw me
she sprang towards me, flung herself into my arms, and cried:--
"Felix, is it you?--you are indeed my protector!"
It was Miss Jones! It was Fausta! She was the legatee of Miss
Stillingfleet. My first thought was, "O, if that beggarly usher had let
me go! Will I ever, ever think I have better rights than the Public
again?"
I took her in my arms. I carried her to the sofa. I could hardly speak
for excitement. Then I did say that I had been wild with terror; that I
had feared I had lost her, and lost her forever; that to have lost that
interview would have been worse to me than death; for unless she knew
that I loved her better than man ever loved woman, I could not face a
lonely night, and another lonely day.
"My dear, dear child," I said, "you may think me wild; but I must say
this,--it has been pent up too long."
"Say what you will," she said after a moment, in which still I held her
in my arms; she was trembling so that she could not have sat upright
alone,--"say what you will, if only you do not tell me to spend another
day alone."
And I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I said,
"Never, darling, God helping me, till I die!"
How long we sat there I do not know. Neither of us spoke again. For
one, I looked out on the sunset and the bay. We had but just time to
rearrange ourselves in positions more independent, when Mr. A---- came
in, this time in alarm, to say:--
"Miss Jones, we must get you out of this place, or we must hide you
somewhere. I believe, before God, they will storm this passage, and
pull the house about our ears."
He said this, not conscious, as he began, that I was there. At that
moment, however, I felt as if I could have met a million men. I started
forward and passed him, saying, "Let me speak to them." I rushed upon
the stage, fairly pushing back two or three bullies who were already
upon it. I sprang upon the table, kicking down the red box as I did so,
so that the red tickets fell on the floor and on the people below. One
stuck in an old man's spectacles in a way which made the people in the
galleries laugh. A laugh is a great blessing at such a moment.
Curiosity is another. Three loud words spoken like thunder do a good
deal more. And after three words the house was hushed to hear me. I
said:--
"Be fair to the girl. She has no father nor mother. She has no brother
nor sister. She is alone in the world, with nobody to help her but the
public--and me!"
The audacity of the speech brought out a cheer, and we should have come
off in triumph, when some rowdy--the original "face" man, I
suppose--said,--
"And who are you?"
If the laugh went against me now I was lost, of course. Fortunately I
had no time to think. I said without thinking,--
"I am the Child of the Public, and her betrothed husband!"
O heavens! what a yell of laughter, of hurrahings, of satisfaction with
a _dénouement_, rang through the house, and showed that all was well.
Burrham caught the moment, and started his band, this time
successfully,--I believe with "See the Conquering Hero." The doors, of
course, had been open long before. Well-disposed people saw they need
stay no longer; ill-disposed people dared not stay; the blue-coated men
with buttons sauntered on the stage in groups, and I suppose the worst
rowdies disappeared as they saw them. I had made my single speech, and
for the moment I was a hero.
I believe the mayor would have liked to kiss me. Burrham almost did.
They overwhelmed me with thanks and congratulations. All these I
received as well as I could,--somehow I did not feel at all
surprised,--everything was as it should be. I scarcely thought of
leaving the stage myself, till, to my surprise, the mayor asked me to
go home with him to dinner.
Then I remembered that we were not to spend the rest of our lives in
Castle Garden. I blundered out something about Miss Jones, that she had
no escort except me, and pressed into her room to find her. A group of
gentlemen was around her. Her veil was back now. She was very pale, but
very lovely. Have I said that she was beautiful as heaven? She was the
queen of the room, modestly and pleasantly receiving their
felicitations that the danger was over, and owning that she had been
very much frightened. "Until," she said, "my friend, Mr. Carter, was
fortunate enough to guess that I was here. How he did it," she said,
turning to me, "is yet an utter mystery to me."
She did not know till then that it was I who had shared with her the
profits of the cyclopædias.
As soon as we could excuse ourselves, I asked some one to order a
carriage. I sent to the ticket-office for my valise, and we rode to the
St. Nicholas. I fairly laughed as I gave the hackman at the hotel-door
what would have been my last dollar and a half only two hours before. I
entered Miss Jones's name and my own. The clerk looked, and said
inquiringly,--
"Is it Miss Jones's trunk which came this afternoon?"
I followed his finger to see the trunk on the marble floor. Rowdy Rob
had deserted it, having seen, perhaps, a detective when he reached
Piermont. The trunk had gone to Albany, had found no owner, and had
returned by the day boat of that day.
Fausta went to her room, and I sent her supper after her. One kiss and
"Good night" was all that I got from her then.
"In the morning," said she, "you shall explain."
It was not yet seven. I went to my own room and dressed, and tendered
myself at the mayor's just before his gay party sat down to dine. I
met, for the first time in my life, men whose books I had read, and
whose speeches I had by heart, and women whom I have since known to
honor; and, in the midst of this brilliant group, so excited had Mr.
A---- been in telling the strange story of the day, I was, for the
hour, the lion.
I led Mrs. A---- to the table; I made her laugh very heartily by
telling her of the usher's threats to me, and mine to him, and of the
disgrace into which I fell among the three thousand six hundreds. I had
never been at any such party before. But I found it was only rather
simpler and more quiet than most parties I had seen, that its good
breeding was exactly that of dear Betsy Myers.
As the party broke up, Mrs. A---- said to me,--
"Mr. Carter, I am sure you are tired, with all this excitement. You say
you are a stranger here. Let me send round for your trunk to the St.
Nicholas, and you shall spend the night here. I know I can make you a
better bed than they."
I thought as much myself, and assented. In half an hour more I was in
bed in Mrs. A----'s "best room."
"I shall not sleep better," said I to myself, "than I did last night."
That was what the Public did for me that night. I was safe again!
III.
FAUSTA'S STORY.
Fausta slept late, poor child. I called for her before breakfast. I
waited for her after. About ten she appeared, so radiant, so beautiful,
and so kind! The trunk had revealed a dress I never saw before, and the
sense of rest, and eternal security, and unbroken love had revealed a
charm which was never there to see before. She was dressed for walking,
and, as she met me, said,--
"Time for constitutional, Mr. Millionnaire."
So we walked again, quite up town, almost to the region of pig-pens and
cabbage-gardens which is now the Central Park. And after just the first
gush of my enthusiasm, Fausta said, very seriously:--
"I must teach you to be grave. You do not know whom you are asking to
be your wife. Excepting Mrs. Mason, No. 27 Thirty-fourth Street, sir,
there is no one in the world who is of kin to me, and she does not care
for me one straw, Felix," she said, almost sadly now. "You call
yourself 'Child of the Public.' I started when you first said so, for
that is just what I am.
"I am twenty-two years old. My father died before I was born. My
mother, a poor woman, disliked by his relatives and avoided by them,
went to live in Hoboken over there, with me. How she lived, God knows!
but it happened that of a strange death she died, I in her arms."
After a pause, the poor girl went on:--
"There was a great military review, an encampment. She was tempted out
to see it. Of a sudden, by some mistake, a ramrod was fired from a
careless soldier's gun, and it pierced her through the heart. I tell
you, Felix, it pinned my baby frock into the wound, so that they could
not part me from her till it was cut away.
"Of course every one was filled with horror. Nobody claimed poor me,
the baby. But the battalion--the Montgomery Battalion, it was, which
had, by mischance, killed my mother--adopted me as their child. I was
voted 'Fille du Regiment.' They paid an assessment annually, which the
colonel expended for me. A kind old woman nursed me."
"She was your Betsy Myers," interrupted I.
"And when I was old enough I was sent into Connecticut, to the best of
schools. This lasted till I was sixteen. Fortunately for me, perhaps,
the Montgomery Battalion then dissolved. I was finding it hard to
answer the colonel's annual letters. I had my living to earn,--it was
best I should earn it. I declined a proposal to go out as a missionary.
I had no call. I answered one of Miss Beecher's appeals for Western
teachers. Most of my life since has been a school-ma'am's. It has had
ups and downs. But I have always been proud that the Public was my
godfather; and, as you know," she said, "I have trusted the Public
well. I have never been lonely, wherever I went. I tried to make myself
of use. Where I was of use I found society. The ministers have been
kind to me. I always offered my services in the Sunday schools and
sewing-rooms. The school committees have been kind to me. They are the
Public's high chamberlains for poor girls. I have written for the
journals. I won one of Sartain's hundred-dollar prizes--"
"And I another," interrupted I.
"When I was very poor, I won the first prize for an essay on bad boys."
"And I the second," answered I.
"I think I know one bad boy better than he knows himself," said she.
But she went on. "I watched with this poor Miss Stillingfleet the night
she died. This absurd 'distribution' had got hold of her, and she would
not be satisfied till she had transferred that strange ticket, No.
2,973, to me, writing the indorsement which you have heard. I had had a
longing to visit New York and Hoboken again. This ticket seemed to me
to beckon me. I had money enough to come, if I would come cheaply. I
wrote to my father's business partner, and enclosed a note to his only
sister. She is Mrs. Mason. She asked me, coldly enough, to her house.
Old Mr. Grills always liked me,--he offered me escort and passage as
far as Troy or Albany. I accepted his proposal, and you know the rest."
When I told Fausta my story, she declared I made it up as I went along.
When she believed it,--as she does believe it now,--she agreed with me
in declaring that it was not fit that two people thus joined should
ever be parted. Nor have we been, ever!
She made a hurried visit at Mrs. Mason's. She prepared there for her
wedding. On the 1st of November we went into that same church which was
our first home in New York; and that dear old raven-man made us one.
THE RIVAL DREAMERS.
BY JOHN BANIM.
Mr. Washington Irving has already given to the public a version of an
American legend, which, in a principal feature, bears some likeness to
the following transcript of a popular Irish one. It may, however, be
interesting to show this very coincidence between the descendants of a
Dutch transatlantic colony and the native peasantry of Ireland, in the
superstitious annals of both. Our tale, moreover, will be found
original in all its circumstances, that alluded to only excepted.
Shamus Dempsey returned a silent, plodding, sorrowful man, though a
young one, to his poor home, after seeing laid in the grave his aged,
decrepit father. The last rays of the setting sun were glorious,
shooting through the folds of their pavilion of scarlet clouds; the
last song of the thrush, chanted from the bough nearest to his nest,
was gladdening; the abundant though but half-matured crops around
breathed of hope for the future. But Shamus's bosom was covered with
the darkness that inward sunshine alone can illumine. The chord that
should respond to song and melody had snapped in it; for him the softly
undulating fields of light-green wheat, or the silken surfaced patches
of barley, made a promise in vain. He was poor, penniless, friendless,
and yet groaning under responsibilities: worn out by past and present
suffering, and without a consoling prospect. His father's corpse had
been just buried by a subscription among his neighbors, collected in an
old glove, a penny or a half-penny from each, by the most active of the
humble community to whom his sad state was a subject of pity. In the
wretched shed which he called "home," a young wife lay on a truss of
straw, listening to the hungry cries of two little children, and
awaiting her hour to become the weeping mother of a third. And the
recollection that but for an act of domestic treachery experienced by
his father and himself, both would have been comfortable and
respectable in the world, aggravated the bitterness of the feeling in
which Shamus contemplated this lot. He could himself faintly call to
mind a time of early childhood, when he lived with his parents in a
roomy house, eating and sleeping and dressing well, and surrounded by
servants and workmen; he further remembered that a day of great
affliction came, upon which strange and rude persons forced their way
into the house; and, for some cause his infant observation did not
reach, father, servants, and workmen (his mother had just died) were
all turned out upon the road, and doomed to seek the shelter of a mean
roof. But his father's discourse, since he gained the years of manhood,
supplied Shamus with an explanation of all these circumstances, as
follows:--
Old Dempsey had been the youngest son of a large farmer, who divided
his lands between two elder children, and destined Shamus's father to
the Church, sending him abroad for education, and, during its course,
supplying him with liberal allowances. Upon the eve of ordination the
young student returned home to visit his friends; was much noticed by
neighboring small gentry of each religion; at the house of one of the
opposite persuasion from his met a sister of the proprietor, who had a
fortune in her own right; abandoned his clerical views for her smiles;
eloped with her; married her privately; incurred thereby the
irremovable hostility of his own family; but, after a short time, was
received, along with his wife, by his generous brother-in-law, under
whose guidance both became reputably settled in the house to which
Shamus's early recollections pointed, and where, till he was about six
years old, he passed indeed a happy childhood.
But, a little previous to this time, his mother's good brother died
unmarried, and was succeeded by another of her brothers, who had
unsuccessfully spent half his life as a lawyer in Dublin, and who,
inheriting little of his predecessor's amiable character, soon showed
himself a foe to her and her husband, professedly on account of her
marriage with a Roman Catholic. He did not appear to their visit,
shortly after his arrival in their neighborhood, and he never
condescended to return it. The affliction experienced by his sensitive
sister, from his conduct, entailed upon her a premature accouchement,
in which, giving birth to a lifeless babe, she unexpectedly died. The
event was matter of triumph rather than of sorrow to her unnatural
brother. For, in the first place, totally unguarded against the sudden
result, she had died intestate; in the next place, he discovered that
her private marriage had been celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest,
consequently could not, according to law, hold good; and again, could
not give to her nominal husband any right to her property, upon which
both had hitherto lived, and which was now the sole means of existence
to Shamus's father.
The lawyer speedily set to work upon these points, and with little
difficulty succeeded in supplying for Shamus's recollections a day of
trouble, already noticed. In fact, his father and he, now without a
shilling, took refuge in a distant cabin, where, by the sweat of his
parent's brow, as a laborer in the fields, the ill-fated hero of this
story was scantily fed and clothed, until maturer years enabled him to
relieve the old man's hand of the spade and sickle, and in turn labor
for their common wants.
Shamus, becoming a little prosperous in the world, rented a few acres
adjacent to his cabin and--married. The increase of his fields did not
quite keep pace with the increase of his cares, in the persons of
new-comers, for whose well-being he was bound to provide. His ray of
success in life soon became overclouded, by the calls of the landlord
and the tithe-proctor. In truth, three years after his marriage, he
received a notice which it were vain to oppose, to quit both his farm
and his cabin, and leave his few articles of furniture behind.
At this juncture his father was bedridden, and his wife advanced in her
third pregnancy. He put on his hat, walked to the door, fixed his eyes
upon the ruins of an old abbey which stood on the slope of an opposite
hill, and formed his plan for present measures. By the next evening he
had constructed a wattled shed, covered with rushes and leaves, against
a gable in the interior of the ruin. Clearing away the nettles and
other rank weeds enclosed by his new house, he discovered a long slab
on which was carved a cross and letters illegible to his eye; this he
made his hearthstone. To furnish the abode, he fetched two large
stones, as seats for his wife and himself, shook straw in either
corner, and laid in a bundle of twigs. Then he went to the cabin that
was no longer his, sent on his wife and two children to the abbey,
followed with his father on his back, and laid him upon one of the
straw couches. Two days afterwards the old man was a corpse. From his
pauper funeral we now see Shamus returning, and to such a home does he
bend his heavy steps.
If to know that the enemy of his father and mother did not thrive on
the spoils of his oppression could have yielded Shamus any consolation
in his lot, he had long ago become aware of circumstances calculated to
give this negative comfort. His maternal uncle enjoyed, indeed, his
newly acquired property only a few years after it came into his
possession. Partly on account of his cruelty to his relations, partly
from a meanness and vulgarity of character, which soon displayed itself
in his novel situation, and which, it was believed, had previously kept
him in the lowest walks of his profession as a Dublin attorney, he
found himself neglected and shunned by the gentry of his neighborhood.
To grow richer than any one who thus insulted him, to blazon abroad
reports of his wealth, and to watch opportunities of using it to their
injury, became the means of revenge adopted by the _parvenu_. His
legitimate income not promising a rapid accomplishment of this plan, he
ventured, using precautions that seemingly set suspicion at defiance,
to engage in smuggling adventures on a large scale, for which his
proximity to the coast afforded a local opportunity. Notwithstanding
all his pettifogging cleverness, the ex-attorney was detected, however,
in his illegal traffic, and fined to an amount which swept away half
his real property. Driven to desperation by the publicity of his
failure, as well as by the failure itself, he tried another grand
effort to retrieve his fortune; was again surprised by the revenue
officers; in a personal struggle with them, at the head of his band,
killed one of their body; immediately absconded from Ireland; for the
last twenty years had not been authentically heard of; but, it was
believed, lived under an assumed name in London, deriving an obscure
existence from some mean pursuit, of which the very nature enabled him
to gratify propensities to drunkenness and other vices, learned during
his first career in life.