MRS. ALFRED DINKS AT HOME.
A new element had forced itself into the life of Hope Wayne, and that
was the fate of Abel Newt. There was something startling in the direct,
passionate, personal appeal he had made to her. She put on her bonnet and
furs, for it was Christmas time, and passed the Bowery into the small,
narrow street where the smell of the sewer was the chief odor and the few
miserable trees cooped up in perforated boxes had at last been released
from suffering, and were placidly, rigidly dead.
The sloppy servant girl was standing upon the area steps with her apron
over her head, and blowing her huge red fingers, staring at every thing,
and apparently stunned when Hope Wayne stopped and went up the steps.
Hope rang, entered the little parlor and seated herself upon the
haircloth sofa. Her heart ached with the dreariness of the house; but
while she was resolving that she would certainly raise her secret
allowance to her Cousin Alfred, whether her good friend Lawrence Newt
approved of it or not, she saw that the dreariness was not in the small
room or the hair sofa, nor in the two lamps with glass drops upon the
mantle, but in the lack of that indescribable touch of feminine taste,
and tact, and tenderness, which create comfort and grace wherever they
fall, and make the most desolate chambers to blossom with cheerfulness.
Hope felt as she glanced around her that money could not buy what was
wanting.
Mrs. Alfred Dinks presently entered. Hope Wayne had rarely met her since
the season at Saratoga when Fanny had captured her prize. She saw that
the black-eyed, clever, resolute girl of those days had grown larger and
more pulpy, and was wrapped in a dingy morning wrapper. Her hair was not
smooth, her hands were not especially clean; she had that dull
carelessness, or unconsciousness of personal appearance, which seemed
to Hope only the parlor aspect of the dowdiness that had run entirely
to seed in the sloppy servant girl upon the area steps.
Hope Wayne put out her hand, which Fanny listlessly took. There was
nothing very hard, or ferocious, or defiant in her manner, as Hope had
expected--there was only a weariness and indifference, as if she had been
worsted in some kind of struggle. She did not even seem to be excited by
seeing Hope Wayne in her house, but merely said, "Good-morning," and then
sank quietly upon the sofa, as if she had said every thing she had to
say.
"I came to ask you if you know any thing about Abel?" said Hope.
"No; nothing in particular," replied Fanny; "I believe he's going to
Congress; but I never see him or hear of him."
"Doesn't Alfred see him?"
"He used to meet him at Thiel's; but Alfred doesn't go there much now.
It's too fine for poor gentlemen. I remember some time ago I saw he had a
black eye, and he said that he and my 'd---- brother Abel,' as he
elegantly expressed it, had met somewhere the night before, and Abel was
drunk and gave him the lie, and they fought it out. I think, by-the-way,
that's the last I've heard of brother Abel."
There was a slight touch of the old manner in the tone with which
Fanny ended her remark; after which she relapsed into the previous
half-apathetic condition.
"Fanny, I wish I could do something for Abel."
Fanny Dinks looked at Hope Wayne with an incredulous smile, and said,
"I thought once you would marry him; and so did he, I fancy."
"What does he do? and how can I reach him?" asked Hope, entirely
disregarding Fanny's remark.
"He lives at the old place in Grand Street, I believe; the Lord knows
how; I'm sure I don't. I suppose he gambles when he isn't drunk."
"But about Congress?" inquired Hope.
"I don't know any thing about that. Abel and father used to say that no
gentleman would ever have any thing to do with politics; so I never heard
any thing, and I'm sure I don't know what he's going to do."
Fanny apparently supposed her last remark would end the conversation. Not
that she wished to end it--not that she was sorry to see Hope Wayne again
and to talk with her--not that she wanted or cared for any thing in
particular, no, not even for her lord and master, who burst into the room
with an oath, as usual, and with his small, swinish eyes heavy with
drowsiness.
The master of the house was evidently just down. He wore a dirty
morning-gown, and slippers down at the heel, displaying his dirty
stockings. He came in yawning and squeezing his eves together.
"Why the h---- don't that slut of a waiter have my coffee ready?" he said
to his wife, who paid no more attention to him than to the lamp on the
mantle, but, on the contrary, appeared to Hope to be a little more
indifferent than before.
"I say, why the h----" Mr. Dinks began again, and had advanced so far
when he suddenly saw his cousin.
"Hallo! what are you doing here?" he said to her abruptly, and in the
half-sycophantic, half-bullying tone that indicates the feeling of such
a man toward a person to whom he is under immense obligation. Alfred
Dinks's real feeling was that Hope Wayne ought to give him a much larger
allowance.
Hope was inexpressibly disgusted; but she found an excitement in
encountering this boorishness, which served to stimulate her in the
struggle going on in her own soul. And she very soon understood how the
sharp, sparkling, audacious Fanny Newt had become the inert, indifferent
woman before her. A clever villain might have developed her, through
admiration and sympathy, into villainy; but a dull, heavy brute merely
crushed her. There is a spur in the prick of a rapier; only stupidity
follows the blow of a club.
After sitting silently for some minutes, during which Alfred Dinks
sprawled in a chair, and yawned, and whistled insolently to himself,
while Fanny sat without looking at him, as if she were deaf and dumb,
Hope Wayne said to the husband and wife:
"Abel Newt is ruining himself, and he may harm other people. If there is
any thing that can be done to save him we ought to do it. Fanny, he is
your own flesh and blood."
She spoke with a kind of despairing earnestness, for Hope herself felt
how useless every thing would probably be. But when she had ended Alfred
broke out into uproarious laughter,
"Ho! ho! ho! Ho! ho! ho!"
He made such a noise that even his wife looked at him with almost a
glance of contempt.
"Save Abel Newt!" cried he. "Convert the Devil! Yes, yes; let's send him
some tracts! Ho! ho! ho!"
And he roared again until the water oozed from his eyes.
Hope Wayne scarcely looked at him. She rose to go; but it seemed to her
pitiful to leave Fanny Newt in such utter desolation of soul and body,
in which she seemed to her to be gradually sinking into idiocy. She went
to Fanny and took her hand. Fanny listlessly rose, and when Hope had
done shaking hands Fanny crossed them before her inanely, but in an
unconsciously appealing attitude, which Hope saw and felt. Alfred still
sprawled in his chair; laughing at intervals; and Hope left the room,
followed by Fanny, who shuffled after her, her slippers, evidently down
at the heel, pattering on the worn oil-cloth in the entry as she shambled
toward the front door. Hope opened it. The morning was pleasant, though
cool, and the air refreshing after the odor of mingled grease and stale
tobacco-smoke which filled the house.
As they passed out, Fanny quietly sat down upon the step, leaned her chin
upon one hand, and looked up and down the street, which, it seemed to
Hope, offered a prospect that would hardly enliven her mind. There was
something more touching to Hope in this dull apathy than in the most
positive grief.
"Fanny Newt!" she said to her, suddenly.
Fanny lifted her lazy eyes.
"If I can do nothing for your brother, can I do nothing for you? You will
rust out, Fanny, if you don't take care."
Fanny smiled languidly.
"What if I do?" she answered.
Thereupon Hope sat down by her, and told her just what she meant, and
what she hoped, and what she would do if she would let her. And the eager
young woman drew such pleasant pictures of what was yet possible to
Fanny, although she was the wife of Alfred Dinks, that, as if the
long-accumulating dust and ashes were blown away from her soul, and it
began to kindle again in a friendly breath, Fanny felt herself moved and
interested. She smiled, looked grave, and finally laid her head upon
Hope's shoulder and cried good, honest tears of utter weariness and
regret.
"And now," said Hope, "will you help me about Abel?"
"I really don't see that you can do any thing," said Fanny, "nor any body
else. Perhaps he'll get a new start in Congress, though I don't know any
thing about it."
Hope Wayne shook her head thoughtfully.
"No," she said, "I see no way. I can only be ready to befriend him if the
chance offers."
They said no more of him then, but Hope persuaded Fanny to come to
Lawrence Newt's Christmas dinner, to which they had all been bidden.
"And I will make him understand about it," she said, as she went down
the steps.
Mrs. Dinks sat upon the door-step for some time. There was nobody to see
her whom she knew, and if there had been she would not have cared. She
did not know how long she had been sitting there, for she was thinking of
other things, but she was roused by hearing her husband's voice:
"Well, by G----! that's a G---- d---- pretty business--squatting on a
door-step like a servant girl! Come in, I tell you, and shut the door."
From long habit Fanny did not pay the least attention to this order. But
after some time she rose and closed the door, and clattered along the
entry and up stairs, upon the worn and ragged carpet. Mr. Alfred Dinks
returned to the parlor, pulled the bell violently, and when the sloppy
servant girl appeared, glaring at him with the staring eyes, he
immediately damned them, and wanted to know why in h---- he was kept
waiting for his boots. The staring eyes vanished, and Mr. Dinks
reclined upon the sofa, picking his teeth. Presently there was the
slop--slop--slop of the girl along the entry. She opened the door,
dropped the boots, and fled. Mr. Dinks immediately pulled the bell
violently, walking across the room a greater distance than to his boots.
Slop--slop again. The door opened.
"Look here! If you don't bring me my boots, I'll come and pull the hair
out of your head!" roared the master of the house.
The cowering little creature dashed at the boots with a wobegone look,
and brought them to the sofa. Mr. Dinks took them in his hand, and turned
them round contemptuously.
"G----! You call those boots blacked?"
He scratched his head a moment, enjoying the undisguised terror of the
puny girl.
"If you don't black 'em better--if you don't put a brighter shine on to
'em, I'll--I'll--I'll put a shine on your face, you slut!"
The girl seemed to be all terrified eye as she looked at him, and then
fled again, while he laughed.
"Ho! ho! ho! I'll teach 'em how--insolent curs! G---- d---- Paddies! What
business have they coming over here? Ho! ho! ho!"
Leaving his slippers upon the parlor floor, Mr. Dinks mounted to his room
and changed his coat. He tried the door of his wife's room as he passed
out, and found it locked. He kicked it violently, and bawled,
"Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks! If Miss Wayne calls, tell her I've gone to
tell Mr. Abel Newt that she repents, and wants to marry him; and I shall
add that, having been through the wood, she picks up a crooked stick at
last. Ho! ho! ho! (Kick.) Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks!"
He went heavily down stairs and slammed the front door, and was gone for
the day.
When they were first married, after the bitter conviction that there was
really no hope of old Burt's wealth, Fanny Dinks had carried matters with
a high hand, domineering by her superior cleverness, and with a
superiority that stung and exasperated her husband at every turn. Her
bitter temper had gradually entirely eaten away the superficial, stupid
good-humor of his younger days; and her fury of disappointment, carried
into the detail of life, had gradually confirmed him in all his worst
habits and obliterated the possibility of better. But the sour, superior
nature was, as usual, unequal to the struggle. At last it spent itself
in vain against the massive brutishness of opposition it had itself
developed, and the reaction came, and now daily stunned her into hopeless
apathy and abject indifference. Having lost the power of vexing, and
beyond being really vexed by a being she so utterly despised as her
husband, there was nothing left but pure passivity and inanition, into
which she was rapidly declining.
Mr. Dinks kicked loudly and roared at the door, but Mrs. Dinks did not
heed him. She was sitting in her dingy wrapper, rocking, and pondering
upon the conversation of the morning--mechanically rocking, and thinking
of the Christinas dinner at Uncle Lawrence's.