The evening was somewhat advanced, but Arthur determined at once to seek
an interview with Miss Ayleff. Hastily arranging his toilet, he walked
briskly up Broadway, revolving in his mind a fit course for fulfilling
his delicate errand.
To shorten his way, he turned into a cross street in the upper part of
the city. As he approached the hall door of a large brick house, his eye
chanced to fall upon a man who was ringing for admittance. The light
from the street lamp fell full upon his face, and he recognized the
features of Philip Searle. At that moment the door was opened, and
Philip entered. Arthur would have passed on, but something in the
appearance of the house arrested his attention, and, on closer scrutiny,
revealed to him its character. One of those impulses which sometimes
sway our actions, tempted him to enter, and learn, if possible,
something further respecting the habits of the man whose scheme he had
been commissioned to thwart. A moment's reflection might have changed
his purpose, but his hand was already upon the bell, and the summons was
quickly answered by a good-looking but faded young woman, with painted
cheeks and gay attire. She fixed her keen, bold eyes upon him for a few
seconds, and then, tossing her ringlets, pertly invited him to enter.
"Who is within?" asked Arthur, standing in the hall.
"Only the girls. Walk in."
"The gentleman who came in before me, is he there?"
"Do you want to see him?" she asked, suspiciously.
"Oh, no. Only I would avoid being seen by any one."
"He will not see you. Come right in." And she threw open the door, and
flaunted in.
Arthur followed her without hesitation.
Bursts of forced and cheerless laughter, and the shrill sound of rude
and flippant talk, smote unpleasantly upon his ear. The room was richly
furnished, but without taste or modesty. The tall mirrors were displayed
with ostentation, and the paintings, offensive in design, hung
conspicuous in showy frames. The numerous gas jets, flashing among
glittering crystal pendants, made vice more glaring and heartlessness
more terribly apparent. Women, with bold and haggard eyes, with brazen
brows, and cheeks from which the roses of virgin shame had been plucked
to bloom no more forever--mostly young girls, scourging their youth into
old age, and gathering poison at once for soul and body--with sensual
indolence reclined upon the rich ottomans, or with fantastic grace
whirled through lewd waltzes over the velvet carpets. There was laughter
without joy--there was frivolity without merriment--there was the
surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted
cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those
whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were
aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with
habitual sin.
Yet there, like a crushed pearl upon a heap of garbage, lingers the
trace of beauty; and there, surely, though sepulchred in the caverns of
vice, dwells something that was once innocence, and not unredeemable.
But whence is the friendly word to come, whence the guardian hand that
might lift them from the slough. They live accursed by even charity,
shunned by philanthropy, and shut from the Christian world like a tribe
of lepers whose touch is contagion and whose breath is pestilence. In
the glittering halls of fashion, the high-born beauty, with wreaths
about her white temples and diamonds upon her chaste bosom, gives her
gloved hand for the dance, and forgets that an erring sister, by the
touch of those white fingers, might be raised from the grave of her
chastity, and clothed anew with the white garments of repentance. But
no; the cold world of fashion, that from its cushioned pew has listened
with stately devotion to the words of the Redeemer, has taught her that
to redeem the fallen is beneath her caste. The bond of sisterhood is
broken. The lost one must pursue her hideous destiny, each avenue of
escape blocked by the scorn and loathing which denies her the contact of
virtue and the counsel of purity. In the broad fields of charity,
invaded by cold philosophers, losing themselves in searching unreal and
vague philanthropies, none so practical in beneficence as to take her by
the hand, saying, "Go, and sin no more."
But whenever the path of benevolence is intricate and doubtful, whenever
the work is linked with a riddle whose solving will breed discord and
trouble among men, whenever there is a chance to make philanthropy a
plea for hate, and bitterness and charity can be made a battle-cry to
arouse the spirit of destruction, and spread ruin and desolation over
the fair face of the earth, then will the domes of our churches resound
with eloquence, then will the journals of the land teem with their
mystic theories, then will the mourners of human woe be loud in
lamentation, and lift up their mighty voices to cry down an abstract
evil. When actual misery appeals to them, they are deaf; when the plain
and palpable error stalks before them, they turn aside. They are too
busy with the tangles of some philanthropic Gordian knot, to stretch out
a helping hand to the sufferer at their sides. They are frenzied with
their zeal to build a bridge over a spanless ocean, while the drowning
wretch is sinking within their grasp. They scorn the simple charity of
the good Samaritan; theirs must be a gigantic and splendid achievement
in experimental beneficence, worthy of their philosophic brains. The
wrong they would redress must be one that half the world esteems a
right; else there would be no room for their arguments, no occasion for
their invective, no excuse for their passion. To do good is too simple
for their transcendentalism; they must first make evil out of their
logic, and then, through blood and wasting flames, drive on the people
to destruction, that the imaginary evil may be destroyed. While Charity
soars so high among the clouds, she will never stoop to lift the
Magdalen from sin.