MR. WADDY RECEIVES A LETTER AND GETS OUT HIS PISTOLS
It was about this time that Mr. Waddy received the following letter
from Mr. Tootler:
“THE SHRINE, August, 1855.
“DEAR IRA:
“I have leased your store, No. 26 Waddy Buildings, to Godfrey Bullion
& Co., for five years at $5000 a year.
“Wool is up and fleecing prospers. I am glad, for Mrs. T. asked me
the other day what I thought had better be the name of our boy. How
would you like to be N. or M. to him--Ira if it’s he, Irene if it’s
a girl? Ira and Irene--Wrath and Peace--that’s just the difference
between boy and girl.
“But this is not what I am writing about. You know, my dear old boy,
that I was never inquisitive about your affairs. Still, you can’t
suppose that I have not divined something with regard to you and a
certain old friend of ours. I don’t ask information now, because I
believe if you had the right, you would have given it long ago.
“Of course you remember Sally Bishop. The day after you bought
Pallid, Cecilia went over to see her. (The dear girl is always
going to see people that have diseases. I wonder she don’t take the
smallpox and yellow fever twice a month the year round.) It seems old
Bishop had spoken of you, and when my wife arrived, Sally, who is
dying fast, was very curious to hear more. Cecilia was surprised to
find that Sally knew you, but would have supposed her inquiries only
the ordinary interest of a neighbour in the return of a neighbour,
except for something very singular in her manner. Sally asked if you
were as fine-looking as ever. Mrs. T., of course, gave the proper
reply. Were you married? Did you look happy? Cecilia thought it a
strange question--but said that though you were cheerful and very
amusing, she found you sometimes very sad--she had observed, in fact,
as I had, that there seemed to be some unhappiness at the bottom of
your indifferent manner. Sally Bishop burst into tears, in such a
distressed and almost agonised manner that my wife feared she would
kill herself with weeping. Cecilia prayed her to say what this meant,
and she answered in a frightened voice, ‘Remorse!’--she would not or
could not say anything more, and has always refused to see Cecilia
since.
“I have good reason to suppose that Sally had at one time the most
intimate relations with Belden. She may have been his mistress. I
only much suspect, without being able to fully prove. There was a
child, a _filius nullius_, who died, and it was the feeling of shame
at this, though I believe that not five people knew it, that drove
her father to hard drinking.
“Ira--what cause can she have to feel remorse at the mention of your
name? Is it possible that she may have been drawn by Belden into some
devilish plot against you? And against someone else?
“I can make no conjectures, as I do not know facts enough. Cecilia,
who seems to have her own theory, which she will not impart, will
endeavour to learn more from Sally.
“Meantime, do you watch Belden! I know that he went several times to
see Sally, and each time she was more ill. He is capable of anything,
the rotten villain!--as two of my family know, Cecilia and myself.
Is he disposed to be friendly with you now? Something may appear in
conversation, if you have a clew. Watch him!
“Yours,
“THOMAS TOOTLER.”
Mr. Waddy read this letter very carefully twice. He folded and filed it
with a bundle of old yellow letters, written in a hand like his own,
with so much difference only as there may be between writing of man
and boy-man. He then, with the same extreme deliberation, took from a
portmanteau a mahogany box. In it were two eight-inch six-shooters,
apparently fired only once or twice for trial. Both were loaded in
every barrel of the cylinder with conical ball. The caps were perfectly
fresh, but Mr. Waddy changed them all.
While he was thus engaged, Major Granby came in.
“At your armory, eh?” he asked. “You were always a great amateur in
shooting-irons. What’s in the wind now? You look like an executioner.
What do you intend to slay--beast, man, or devil?”
“If I shoot, it will be to slay all three in one,” said Waddy gravely.
He had a manner of intense and concentrated wrath, quite terrible to
see. The Ira of the man’s nature was dominant.
Granby understood that this meant mischief.
“Do you want me?” he asked, quick but quiet.
“Not yet,” replied his friend; “perhaps not at all. I don’t like
to talk of shooting until the time comes to do it. Aiming too long
makes the hand tremble. You can understand, Granby, that the world
becomes a small and narrow place to walk in when we meet an enemy
deadly and damnable. Now, without nourishing any ill-feeling, I begin
to half perceive that there may be a person whose life and mine are
inconsistent. You said I looked like an executioner--it may be that I
shall be appointed executioner of such a person.”
“I know you too well,” said Granby, “to suppose you capable of any
petty revenge--this is grave, of course.”
“It is grave. Personal revenge is necessary for the protection
of society. There is crime that laws take no notice of. Public
opinion--public scorn--is never quite reliable. Nor does public opinion
protect the innocent ignorant. There may be such an absolutely dastard
villain that, for the safety and decency and habitableness of the
globe, he must die--and it is fortunate for society when he outrages
anyone to the point of deadly vengeance.”
“Do you begin to see any light on the part of your life that we have
talked over by so many campfires? Fifteen years is long to wait.”
“No years are lost while a man is learning patience. I remember that
it took thirty years of my life to teach me to regard my moral and
mental tremors and stumbles and falls with the same unconcern that in
my fifteenth year I did my childish physical weaknesses. I suppose that
one hour of actual happiness now, which I am certainly not likely to
have, would explain my dark fifteen years. Patience!”
“You expect to win happiness by killing your man, eh?” questioned
Granby.
“No; if I kill him, it will merely be from a quickened sense of duty.
Don’t think I’m going to lie in ambush like a Thug. I wait information
and entertain a purpose.”
Here, Sir Comeguys knocked at the door. They had an appointment for a
sailing party.
As they passed the parlour, Belden was sitting with Mrs. Budlong. It
was as much contact as was possible in public, and some women allow
liberal possibilities.
“How much that Belden looks like your friend Dunstan,” said Granby.
“No compliment to Dunstan, who is just the type American, chivalrous,
half-alligator, not without a touch of the non-snapping but tenderly
billing and cooing turtle. A graceful union of Valentine and Orson.
He is the finest fellow I have seen and his giant friend, Paulding,
is made of the same porcelain in bigger mold. They seem to have been
everywhere and seen and done everything, except what gentlemen should
not do. You’ll do well, Ambient, to model after them for your Yankee
life.”
“Doosed fine fellows,” said Ambient, “and Dunstan has told me lots
about buffalo hunting. This fellow may look a little like Harwy
Dunstan--but he is older, seedier, and hawder. Harwy looks as fresh
as Adam before the fall. If he was not such an out-and-outer and my
fwiend, I should be savage at him for cutting me out with Diana. She
seemed to like him, by George!--fwom the start.”
“I thought it was Miss Clara,” said Ira, “and that Granby would be
gouging the young hero. Paulding seems to me more devoted to Diana.”
“Do you know,” said Granby, “to pass from bipeds to quadrupeds--that
Mr. Belden is trying to make up a race with that wide-travelling horse
of his? I heard him phrase it the other day that he could ‘wipe out’
Pallid.”
“If he should offer a bet on that, I wish you would take it--for me,
you understand--to any amount,” said Ira. “His horse is a singed cat,
but Pallid don’t need any fire singeing him to make him go. I didn’t
think he could go as he does, but he is working into it every day.”
“Belden won’t stand a very large bet. He has been subscribing, as they
call it, to the Frenchman lately. Are both those men lovers of your
fat friend’s wife? What villains some women are! Bless them!” said
Granby. “Didn’t you tell me, Ambient, that you had seen that Frenchman
somewhere?”
“I’m looking at him every day,” replied Sir Com. “I lost a thousand
pounds to some fellows in Pawis two years ago. I was gween then--a
pwecious sight gweener than I am now. Those fellows showed me about
Pawis, and all I know of the money is that I lost the thousand one
night at what they call a pwivate hell. I was vewy dwunk at the time,
I’m ashamed to say, and have no doubt they plucked me. I’m almost suah
that this Fwenchman is one of the same chaps. He’s diffewently got
up, but if I can spot him (as Skewwett says) I shall pound him more or
less--more, I think.”
“Do so, O six-feet Nemesis! and you will take the house down. If
you will mill the Gaul and Waddy beat that contemptible fellow in
the race--_Io triumphe!_ which means I not only owe but will pay a
triumphal supper.”
With talk like this, the gentlemen arrived at the wharf. Why the boat
they embarked in should be called a “cat,” they could not discover. A
cat is fond of fish, as the poet hath it----
“What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?”
Newport female hearts of the summer population despise not, but,
several of them at least, do fitly esteem the yellow boys, and Newport
cats and those who sail in them are not averse to fishing for fish and
taking them. So Waddy smiled with his friends and thought too much of
Tootler’s letter. He would watch Belden.
Meantime, Mr. Waddy saw the world continuously,--and continuously was
lionised. This has its pleasures and its pains. It does not build up
lofty structures of respect towards the lioniser. Mr. Waddy, however,
always had the charm of sweet refuge with his cousin, as he called her,
Clara, fairest of the fair, and her friend, the divine Diana. Mrs.
Waddy made immense dinner parties for the Returned Kinsman, where he
met the people one meets in that best world, of which his hostess is so
distinguished an ornament, etc.
The particularly distinguished guest of that summer was the Hon. and
Rev. Gorgias Pithwitch, the epideiktic sophist of the nadir Orient.
Mr. Pithwitch was sometimes called “The Wizard of the North.” He
drew immense houses to his pleasant jugglery. He had, that summer,
as always, excellent man! some amiable charity to assist--such as
to relieve Mahomet’s coffin from the painful uncertainties of its
position--or to purchase ashes of roses to fill the cenotaph of
Mausolus. Anything elegiac or pensively sepulchral gave him a cue for
epideiktics or showing off.
Mr. Pithwitch spoke on the character of Mahomet at Newport at the
request of the Ladies’ Coffin Down Society. All the people who figure
in this history went. People always go to hear things. The boys and
girls thought the oration “thweet,” and so it was--just about. Mr.
Belden went with Mrs. Budlong and whispered her safely through, playing
meanwhile familiarly with the fringe of her flounces. How they began to
eye each other now, those two! Tim Budlong escorted Miss Saccharissa
Mellasys. A young poet, Edmund Waller by name, had fallen desperately
in love with the soft, startled eyes of Saccharissa. She cast upon him
sugar-melting glances, and he loved. Girls like poets and poets like
girls. But Edmund, in the intervals of his sonnetteering Miss Mellasys,
had been so unfortunate as to beat Tim Budlong regularly at billiards.
Tim was in a porcupine state of mind and resolved to be revenged. He
devoted himself to Saccharissa and she, well-knowing the cipher of the
poet’s fortunes and the _chiffre_ of Tim’s, reciprocated the devotions.
They first began to appear together in public at Pithwitch’s oration.
People began to whisper. It was at this period of his life that Waller
wrote his spasmodic poem, “The Beldame, or Blasted Hope.”
Mrs. Waddie, as has been said, made a dinner for Mr. Pithwitch. It was
part of her active business in society to have all the lions properly
treated, and this was not the first whom Mr. Waddy had met at her
house. Mr. Pithwitch was, of course, an accomplished, gentlemanly
person and very much liked.
“So that is your type orator,” Mr. Waddy murmured through his cheroot
to Dunstan, as they walked home together; “the best among a myriad
talkers from a platform. I suppose he’s not able to balance himself on
a stump, and therefore is not out doing his duty to what you call the
Cause of Freedom in this campaign. Is he ardent for that Cause? Is he
ardent for any cause? Is he a strong fiery spirit? I trow not. Tell me
of him.”
Whereupon Dunstan gave Ira that sketch of the character and genius of
Mr. Pithwitch which has just been read. Dunstan was quite familiar with
the men of this country who had done aught to distinguish themselves,
either positively or negatively. The active life he had led had given
him an independence of thought not common among scholars. He had
already been through some tough political experience in California in
the Free State struggle and was now, on his re-establishment at home,
nominated for Congress in his North River district to replace a person
who had voted for the Nebraska bill. Dunstan was wanted at this very
time in the county of his nomination, and on the stump everywhere; he
was a young man of fervid and passionate nature, quite untrammelled by
any law of life other than his own sense of right. If he was needed
elsewhere, why did he stay at Newport? Men will often stay where
they should not, longer than they should, for several reasons, but
principally for female ones.
Ira and Dunstan were much together. They talked over society and
socialisms at much greater length than can be here repeated. The
younger man represented the party of confident hope--the elder did not
see life, living, and livers in such brilliant colours. Perhaps his
sight was jaundiced.
In fact, for all his friends of the best, and for all his lionising,
Mr. Waddy did not cease to be often lonely and often forlorn. Was he
growing bilious again, or bored, that he found himself uneasy and
unhappy, and became again often filled with bitter longing, and was
forced to harden his heart with study of a certain old yellow letter?
He knew also that it would be well if he looked less at his pistols.
It seemed an unworthy thing to be a spy upon Mr. Belden’s movements.
He saw that that gentleman avoided him and he indulged himself in
interferences with this artful dodger--not spitefully, but because he
wished to observe him, and because he did not love that a man he so
thoroughly distrusted should have power anywhere with anyone who might
confide.
All this was unhappy, unhealthy business. Why return for such life as
this? He began to talk with Granby of their journeys and their hunts
proposed; but Granby, who, perforce, had become a Stoic, hopeless of
any return to his happy happiness, satisfied himself very well where he
was. There were snipe and plover to be bagged; the bay still yielded as
good fish as had ever been taken. All the ladies who rode were ready to
be companioned by so distinguished a cavalier. All who drove thought
him an agreeable and decorative object on the front seats of the
drivers’ drags. He knew all the catsmen of the docks. At every yachting
party he, as well as Waddy, was an indispensable. He bathed; he danced;
he astonished people at late, sleepy breakfasts by coming in with vast
appetite from seven-league walks and presenting this pallid danseuse
of the last night’s hop with a wild rosebud from a hill a dozen miles
away, or that weary, nightless, ballful dowager with a creamy, new-laid
egg. He held his own at the club, at billiards with the three ponies
of the summer: with Mr. Skibbereen, the cool, cautious man and dashing
player: with Blinders, the dashing man and accurate, mathematical
player: with Bob O’Link, the sentimental man and nonchalant player.
Poor Bob O’Link used to hum lugubrious airs, such as the serenade from
“Trovatore,” and sigh to Granby, particularly when he made a scratch,
that a man whose destiny it was to be a poet could only attain to
billiard-marker results.
“I’m too lucky,” said Bob O’, “to lose money. Then I might grow poor
and work. But I’m like Cæsar--wasn’t it _Cæsar aut nullus_?--everything
I touch turns to gold.” And then he would make a lunging stroke that
the tyros talked of all summer.
“Poor fellow!” said Granby. “You have reason to be a disappointed man.
I’ve known whole families in the same condition. You’ll have to marry a
strong-minded woman and learn to run a sewing machine.”
“I don’t see any strong-minded women,” replied Link, looking into an
empty chalk-cup for chalk.
“There’s Miss Anthrope,” suggested Granby. “Besides, Peter Skerrett
says it’s one of the oldest and most respectable families. They came
in, did the Anthropes, with the creation. Marry her.”
“Now you mention it, I believe I will,” cried Bob; and he did. And
Miss Anthrope, now Mrs. O’Link, is one of the lights of the woman’s
question, while Bob O’ is really happy at home in a cradle Elysium, and
would not give an obolus to be ferried back to the mundane joys of his
former life.
Major Granby was thus, in truth, useful as well as agreeable, and
with the feelings of a man who is doing his duty towards himself
and incidentally towards others, including his protégé, Ambient, he
determined to keep Mr. Waddy at Newport.
I should be doing great injustice to Granby did I fail to say that,
with all his pretence of personal enjoyment, it was mainly on
Ira’s account that he stayed. Granby had not found his friend any
less malcontent out of the world than in it. He had seen the same
dreariness and utter dissatisfaction overcome him in camps, in desert
or forest; under the special and immediate influence of Nature, kindly
restorer, he had seen him unrestored. Not that his friend was morbid,
inactive, sulky, dull, selfish--never these. Such traits terminate
companionship, if not friendly regard. Ira was always, when the time
came for exertion, alert, bold, a trapper of the most up-to-trap kind.
But when the moment’s fleeting purpose was o’ertook, he seemed to care
not for changing purpose into result. When need for vivacity ceased,
he returned into gloom. His mental hermitage was always ready, where
he could become a Trappist of the Carthusian variety. Voyaging over
the wild regions of the earth had done him no good. Granby saw that
his friend had not been happy out of society. The old wrong, whatever
it was, rankled--but it was old. Might it not become out of date,
obsolete? No man can ever forget, no man wishes to forget; but he can
console himself. Why could not Mr. Waddy love, or like in the range
of loving, someone who might be made a wife of? That would distract
him--in one or other sense.
“There is the beautiful Clara, his cousin. How happy might a man be in
loving her,” thought Granby, with a sigh for himself. “That fancy of
hers which I have detected for Dunstan, will pass away when she sees he
is Diana’s. Of course Waddy is charmed with Clara. I believe the dog
actually presumes upon his kinsmanship and youthful antiquity to the
point of a kiss--confound him!”