On me laisse tout croire; on fait gloire de tout;
Et cependant mon coeur est encore assez lache
Pour ne pouvoir briser la chaine qui l'attache.--_Le Misanthrope_.
"I had an old friend," Buckland began, with some glimmering of his
former vivacity,--"De Ruyter,--I don't think you ever knew him. He was
the representative of a family great in its day and generation, but
broken in fortune, and without means to support its pretensions. This
did not at all tend to diminish their pride,--precisely of that kind
which goeth before destruction. De Ruyter was a good fellow, however,
and, if he had had twenty thousand a year, he would have spent it all.
One summer, four years ago, he went with his child--his wife had died
the year before--and his two sisters to spend a few weeks at a quiet
little watering-place on the Jersey shore, frequented by people of
good standing, but not fashionably inclined. De Ruyter praised the
sporting in the neighborhood, and persuaded me to go with him.
"His sisters were very agreeable women,--cultivated and lively, but
proud as Lucifer, and desperately exclusive. A _nouveau riche_ was, in
their eyes, equivalent to every thing that is odious and detestable;
and to call a man a _parvenu_ was to steep him in infamy forever. The
men at the house were, for the most part, of no great account--chiefly
old bachelors, or sober family men run to seed, with a number of
awkward young boobies not yet in bloom. The two ladies liked the
company of a lazy fellow like me, a butterfly of society, with the
poets, at least the sentimental ones, on my tongue's end, and the
latest advices from the fashionable world. I staid there a week, and
when that was over they persuaded me to stay another.
"On the day after, there was a fresh arrival,--a gentleman from
Philadelphia, with his sister and his daughter. He only remained for
the night, and went away in the morning, leaving the ladies behind.
The sister was a starched old person,--a sort of purblind duenna, with
grizzled hair, gold spectacles, and cap. The daughter I need not
describe, for you saw her half an hour ago.
"Her family was good enough; her father a lawyer in Philadelphia. She
was well educated--played admirably, and spoke excellent French and
Italian. How much or how little she had frequented cultivated society,
I do not know,--her own assertions went for nothing; but she had the
utmost ease and grace of manner, and an invincible self-possession.
Her ruling passion was a compound of vanity and pride, an insatiable
craving for admiration and power. Whatever associates she happened to
be among, nothing satisfied her but to be the cynosure of all eyes,
the centre of all influence. I have known women enough,--women of all
kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but such a one as she I never met
but once. I shall not soon forget the evening when I first saw her,
seated opposite me at the tea table. She was a small, light
figure,--as you saw her just now,--the features, perhaps, a trifle too
large. I never recall her, as she appeared at that time, without
thinking of Byron's description of one of his mischief-making
heroines:--
"'Her form had all the softness of her sex,
Her features all the sweetness of the devil,
When he put on the cherub to perplex
Eve, and paved--God knows how--the road to evil.'
"She was utterly unscrupulous. The depth of her artifice was
unfathomable. She soon became the moving spirit of that little cockney
watering-place--some admiring her, some hating her, some desperately
smitten with her. I can see through her manoeuvres now, but then I was
blind as a mole. She understood every body about her, and held out to
each the kind of bait which was most likely to attract him. There was
a sort of _dilettante_ there whose heart she won by talking to him of
the Italian poets, which, by the way, she really loved, for there was
a dash of genius in her. She aimed to impress each one with the idea
that in her heart she liked him better than any one else; and it was
her game to appear on all occasions perfectly impulsive and
spontaneous, while, in fact, every look, word, or act of hers had an
object in it. In short, she was an accomplished actress; and, had her
figure been more commanding, she might have rivalled Rachel on the
stage. No two people were exactly agreed in opinion concerning her;
but all--I mean all the men--thought her excessively interesting; and
I remember that two young collegians had nearly fought a duel about
her, each thinking that she was in love with him. Nothing delighted
her more than to become the occasion of the jealousy of married women
towards their husbands,--nothing, that is, except the still greater
delight of fascinating a certain young New Yorker who had come to the
house on a visit to his betrothed.
"For some time every one supposed her to be unmarried. She did her
best, indeed, to encourage the idea, since she thus gained to herself
more notice and more marked attentions. At length, to the astonishment
of every body, it came out that she had been, for more than a year,
married to a cousin of her own, a weak and imbecile youngster, as I
afterwards learned, who was then absent on an East India voyage, and
who, happily for himself, has since died.
"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you
should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were
three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her
devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There
were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision;
and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the
dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if
they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The
disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and
stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all
of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like
a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were
reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in
dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company,
where they would tell with the sharpest effect.
"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in
her. Her passions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to
falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the
feeling she expressed were real or pretended.
"The grace and apparent _abandon_ of her manner, her beauty, her wit,
her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of
poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made
her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause
to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could
not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the
reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put
forth all her arts, and caught me.
"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and
drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish
swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by
striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his
escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is
precisely analogous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I
caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately.
Her passions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane.
She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One
evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land
on board one of the Cunard steamers.
"For the next two months, I was in paradise. Then came a purgatory, or
something worse. Her passion for me subsided as quickly as it had
arisen. She was herself again. Her vanity and artifice, her insatiable
love of intrigue and adventure, returned with double force. I wore
myself out with watching, vexation, and anxiety. She tried every means
to attract attention and draw admirers, and every where she succeeded.
I remember that one night at Naples she insisted on going with me to
the theatre of San Carlo, in the dress of a young man, and wearing a
moustache. The disguise was detected, as she meant it should be, and
eyes centred upon her from all the boxes. I tried to travel with her
through remote and unfrequented countries, such as the interior of
Sicily; but it was all in vain. There was no resisting her fiery will,
and I was compelled to go wherever she wished.
"One afternoon, at Messina, at the _table d'hote_, we met a lively
young Spanish nobleman. She caught his eye; I saw them exchange
glances. In spite of all my precautions, messages, billets, and
momentary interviews passed between them. I challenged the Spaniard,
gave him a severe flesh wound, and thought I had taught him a lesson.
Not at all. On the next day, coming to my lodgings, I found her gone,
no one could tell whither. I was desperate, and could have done any
thing; but there was nothing to be done. I could not find her, and if
I had it would have availed me nothing.
"I returned to America, wrought up to the verge of a nervous fever;
and, by mingling in amusements of every kind, tried to forget her. In
six or eight months I had partially succeeded. My health was not good,
and I had made a journey of a few weeks to the west; when, on
returning,--it was a sultry July afternoon,--I remember it as if it
were yesterday,--sitting in the reading room window of the New York
Hotel, I saw her passing down Broadway in an open carriage; and, with
the sight, my passion awoke again at fever heat. She had left the
Spaniard, and come to America with a New York gentleman, who had lived
for some time in Paris. I had an interview with her, and she promised
to join me again; but she broke her word. She saw at once what a power
she still held over me; and she has used it most mercilessly ever
since. She practises all her arts on me, as if I were a new lover,
whom she wished to insnare. Sometimes she flatters me; sometimes she
repels me; now and then she allows me stolen interviews, or long walks
or rides with her. She plays me as an angler plays a salmon that he
has hooked, till he brings him gasping to his death. I have plunged
into dissipations of all kinds, to drown the memory of her. It is all
useless. She knows the torments I am suffering, and she rejoices in
them. Perhaps she remembers that it was I who made her what she is,
and takes this for her revenge. But, pshaw!--if I had not eloped with
her, some one else would have done so soon; and that she perfectly
well knows. It is her vanity--nothing but her vanity: she delights to
hold me in bondage; she knows that I am her slave, and she glories in
it."
"But why, in Heaven's name," demanded Morton, "do you not break away
from this miserable fascination?"
"There it is!" Buckland answered; "I only wish that I had the power. I
have resolved twenty times to leave New York, and my resolution has
failed me as often."
"Who takes charge of her now?"
"Colonel ----. He seems as crazy after her as I was."
"I can hardly comprehend," pursued Morton, "how, understanding her
character as you do, you can still remain so infatuated with her."
"Neither can I comprehend it. I can only feel it. Strange--is it
not?--that I, who used to be regarded as a mere flirt; who, as a lady
acquaintance once told me, had a great deal too much sentiment, but no
heart at all; I, who, in my time, have written love verses to twenty
different ladies,--should be so enchained at last by this black-eyed
witch!"
"Very strange."
"And now what would you recommend? what advice do you give me? You see
in what a predicament I stand. What ought I to do?"
"With your broken health and weakened nerves," said Morton, "it is
useless for you to attempt contending against this fancy that has
taken possession of you. You must run away from it. Take a long
voyage; the longer the better. I will go with you to engage your
passage to-morrow."
Buckland hesitated at first, slowly shaking his head; but in a moment
he said, with some animation, "Yes, I will go, on one condition; you
must promise to go with me."
The will, the motive power,--never very strong in him,--was now
completely relaxed. He was unfitted for action of any kind, and was,
as he himself said, no better than a sea weed drifting on the water.
Morton walked the streets with him for some hours. He seemed to cling
to his companion, like an ivy to the supporting trunk, and was
evidently reluctant to resign his company. At length, Morton, who was
exhausted with the excitements of the day, pleaded fatigue, and bade
him good night. He turned again, however, and, by the blaze of the gas
lamps, followed with his eye Buckland's slowly receding figure.
"A few hours ago," he said to himself, "I thought myself unhappy; but
what is my suffering compared to his? I am not, thank God, the builder
of my own misfortunes, nor pursued with the reflection that they are a
just retribution for my own misdeeds. With health, liberty,
self-respect, and a good conscience, what man has a right to call
himself miserable?"