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The Ghost.
BY WM. D. O'CONNOR.
WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOS. NAST.
NEW YORK:
G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW & CO.
1867.
THE NEW YORK PRINTING COMPANY,
_81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_,
NEW YORK.
The Ghost.
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more or
less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.
It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our First
Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight deepens
on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you may see
them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent or very broad
fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone,
with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their
wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly
dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony,
repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich
family, of the very highest respectability."
History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base. It is
an old street--quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It was young
once, though--having been born before the Revolution, and was then given
to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who died without heirs, and
did this much for posterity. Posterity has not been grateful to Mr.
Middlecott. The street bore his name till he was dust, and then got the
more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing
what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to
see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics
are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance has
the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the grave to
prove the proverb about republics.
Bowdoin street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if it
thought to itself, "I'm getting old but I'm highly respectable; that's a
comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if it brooded
solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, and
calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street, it was
resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the Union
should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious look,
as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought it best
not. Something of the ghost of its father--it was the only child he ever
had!--walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to look up at
the signs, which bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in
lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper,
many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest
inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard
of it; and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by any
sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a phantom
there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very old person
was. Nobody knew who had seen it; nor when; nor how. The very rumor was
spectral.
All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
enough, however, for one to read, easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not
far from the gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door
stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and
whose long, shadowy white hair, lifted like an airy weft in the
streaming wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time,
without any other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the
searching blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity
of the street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or
twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried
past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its
vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight
darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its
piteous look fixed in one direction--watching--watching; and, while the
howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to
shudder in the piercing cold.
A light suddenly kindled in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam
from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the
spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over
its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure--Dr.
Renton, himself--came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement
to his own door, his over-coat thrown back, as if the icy air were a
tropical warmth to him, his hat set on the back of his head, and the
loose ends of a 'kerchief about his throat, streaming in the nor'wester.
The wind set up a howl the moment he came in sight, and swept upon him;
and a curious agitation began on the part of the phantom. It glided
rapidly to and fro, and moved in circles, and then, with the same swift,
silent motion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its
long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips
of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the
wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it
made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared
to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side,
looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid lips with
agonized rapidity, as if it said: "Look at me--speak to me--speak to
me--see me!" But he kept his course with unconscious eyes, and a vexed
frown on his bold, white forehead, betokening an irritated mind. The
light that had shone in the figure of the phantom, darkened slowly, till
the form was only a pale shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled, and no
longer lifted its white hair. It still glided on with him, its head
drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its side; but when
he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him, gazing fixedly into
his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed over its grief-worn
features, as if it had shrieked out a word. He had his foot on the step
at the moment. With a start, he put his gloved hand to his forehead,
while the vexed look went out quickly on his face. The ghost watched him
breathlessly. But the irritated expression came back to his countenance
more resolutely than before, and he began to fumble in his pocket for a
latch-key, muttering petulantly, "What the devil is the matter with me
now!" It seemed to him that a voice had cried, clearly, yet as from
afar, "Charles Renton!"--his own name. He had heard it in his startled
mind; but, then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state of nervous
excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge for a basis,
could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation against any
phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.
He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his over-coat;
wrenched off his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the
clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed in
the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar, threw
himself into an easy chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened dusk,
with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his breast.
The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless in a corner
of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and its white
locks drooping down.
It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor. The very library caught
contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre. The furniture was
grim, and sullen, and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet and on
the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams from the fire
on its polished surfaces, in hom[oe]opathic globules, and got no good
from them. The fire itself peered out sulkily from the black bars of the
grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the fresh deposit of black coals
at the top, but to take this as a good time to remember that those coals
had been bought in the summer at five dollars a ton--under price, mind
you--when poor people, who cannot buy at advantage, but must get their
firing in the winter, would then have given nine or ten dollars for
them. And so (glowered the fire), I am determined to think of that
outrage, and not to light them, but to go out myself, directly! And the
fire got into such a spasm of glowing indignation over the injury, that
it lit a whole tier of black coals with a series of little explosions,
before it could cool down, and sent a crimson gleam over the moody
figure of its owner in the easy chair, and over the solemn furniture,
and into the shadowy corner filled by the ghost.
The spectre did not move when Dr. Renton arose and lit the chandelier.
It stood there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow light. The
curtains were drawn, and the twilight without had deepened into
darkness. The fire was now burning in despite of itself, fanned by the
wintry gusts, which found their way down the chimney. Dr. Renton stood
with his back to it, his hands behind him, his bold white forehead
shaded by a careless lock of black hair, and knit sternly; and the same
frown in his handsome, open, searching dark eyes. Tall and strong, with
an erect port, and broad, firm shoulders, high, resolute features, a
commanding figure garbed in aristocratic black, and not yet verging into
the proportions of obesity--take him for all in all, a very fine and
favorable specimen of the solid men of Boston. And seen in contrast (oh!
could he but have known it!) with the attenuated figure of the poor, dim
ghost!
Hark! a very light foot on the stairs--a rich rustle of silks.
Everything still again--Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great
sternness, at the half-open door, from whence a faint, delicious perfume
floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody peeping
in with very bright, arch eyes. Dr. Renton knew it, and prepared to
maintain his ill-humor against the invader. His face became triply armed
with severity for the encounter. That's Netty, I know, he thought. His
daughter. So it was. In she bounded. Bright little Netty! Gay little
Netty! A dear and sweet little creature, to be sure, with a delicate and
pleasant beauty of face and figure, it needed no costly silks to grace
or heighten. There she stood. Not a word from her merry lips, but a
smile which stole over all the solitary grimness of the library, and
made everything better, and brighter, and fairer, in a minute. It
floated down into the cavernous humor of Dr. Renton, and the gloom began
to lighten directly--though he would not own it, nor relax a single
feature. But the wan ghost in the corner lifted its head to look at her,
and slowly brightened as to something worthy a spirit's love, and a dim
phantom's smiles. Now then, Dr. Renton! the lines are drawn, and the foe
is coming. Be martial, sir, as when you stand in the ranks of the cadets
on training-days! Steady, and stand the charge! So he did. He kept an
inflexible front as she glided toward him, softly, slowly, with her
bright eyes smiling into his, and doing dreadful execution. Then she put
her white arms around his neck, laid her dear, fair head on his breast,
and peered up archly into his stern visage. Spite of himself, he could
not keep the fixed lines on his face from breaking confusedly into a
faint smile. Somehow or other, his hands came from behind him, and
rested on her head. There! That's all. Dr. Renton surrendered at
discretion! One of the solid men of Boston was taken after a desperate
struggle--internal, of course--for he kissed her, and said, "Dear little
Netty!" And so she was.
The phantom watched her with a smile, and wavered and brightened as if
about to glide to her; but it grew still, and remained.
"Pa in the sulks to-night?" she asked, in the most winning, playful,
silvery voice.
"Pa's a fool," he answered in his deep chest-tones, with a vexed good
humor; "and you know it."
"What's the matter with pa? What makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy,
dear," she continued, stroking his face with her little hands, and
patting him, very much as Beauty might have patted the Beast after she
fell in love with him--or, as if he were a great baby. In fact, he began
to look then as if he were.
"Matter? Oh! everything's the matter, little Netty. The world goes round
too fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my umbrella last year. And I've
got a headache." He concluded this fanciful abstract of his grievances
by putting his arms around her, and kissing her again. Then he sat down
in the easy-chair, and took her fondly on his knee.
"Pa's got a headache! It is t-o-o bad, so it is," she continued in the
same soothing, winning way, caressing his bold, white brow with her tiny
hands. "It's a horrid shame, so it is! P-o-o-r pa. Where does it ache,
papa-sy, dear? In the forehead? Cerebrum or cerebellum, papa-sy? Occiput
or sinciput, deary?"
"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek,
"none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way for,
to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where are you
going, fairy?"
"Going out with mother for the evening, Dr. Renton," she replied
briskly; "Mrs. Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, you know. And
what are you going to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa-sy?"
"To-morrow will tell, little Netty."
"Good! And what are you going to give me, so that I can make _my_
presents, Beary?"
"Ugh!" but he growled it in fun, and had a pocket-book out from his
breast-pocket directly after. Fives--tens--twenties--fifties--all crisp,
and nice, and new bank-notes.
"Will that be enough, Netty?" He held up a twenty. The smiling face
nodded assent, and the bright eyes twinkled.
"No, it won't. But _that_ will," he continued, giving her a fifty.
"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" exclaimed Netty, making great eyes
at him. "But we must take all we can get, pa-sy; mustn't we? It's too
much, though. Thank you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless." And she
kissed him, and put the bill in a little bit of a portemonnaie with a
gay laugh.
"Well done, I declare!" he said, smilingly. "But you're going to the
party?"
"Pretty soon, pa."
He made no answer; but sat smiling at her. The phantom watched them,
silently.
"What made pa so cross and grim, to-night? Tell Netty--do," she pleaded.
"Oh! because;--everything went wrong with me, to-day. There." And he
looked as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in his life.
"No, no, pa-sy; that won't do. I want the particulars," continued Netty,
shaking her head, smilingly.
"Particulars! Well, then, Miss Nathalie Renton," he began, with mock
gravity, "your professional father is losing some of his oldest
patients. Everybody is in ruinous good health; and the grass is growing
in the graveyards."
"In the winter-time, papa?--smart grass!"
"Not that I want practice," he went on, getting into soliloquy; "or
patients, either. A rich man who took to the profession simply for the
love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an interloping
she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out of my hands, and
to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological laws, and woman's
rights, and no taxation without representation, they learn from
her--well, it's too bad!"
"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me, _I'd_ like to vote, too," was Netty's
piquant rejoinder.
"Hoh! I'll warrant," growled her father. "Hope you'll vote the Whig
ticket, Netty, when you get your rights."
"Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa-sy--when the Whigs are beaten?"
"Bah! you little plague," he growled, with a laugh. "But, then, you
women don't know anything about politics. So, there. As I was saying,
everything went wrong with me to-day. I've been speculating in railroad
stock, and singed my fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis outbid me, to-day, at
Leonard's on a rare medical work I had set my eyes upon having. Confound
him! Then, again, two of my houses are tenantless, and there are folks
in two others that won't pay their rent, and I can't get them out. Out
they'll go, though, or I'll know why. And, to crown all--um-m. And I
wish the devil had him! as he will."
"Had who, Beary-papa?"
"Him. I'll tell you. The street floor of one of my houses in Hanover
street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell liquor.
Last night they had a grand row--a drunken fight, and one man was
stabbed, it's thought fatally."
"O, father!" Netty's bright eyes dilated with horror.
"Yes. I hope he won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a stir
about the matter, and my name will be called into question, then, as I'm
the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it, and there'll be the
deuce to pay, generally."
He got back the stern, vexed frown, to his face, with the anticipation,
and beat the carpet with his foot. The ghost still watched from the
angle of the room, and seemed to darken, while its features looked
troubled.
"But, father," said Netty, a little tremulously, "I wouldn't let my
houses to such people. It's not right; is it? Why, it's horrid to think
of men getting drunk, and killing each other!"
Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into disorder, with vexation, and then
subsided into solemnity.
"I know it's not exactly right, Netty; but I can't help it. As I said
before, I wish the devil had that bar-keeper. I ought to have ordered
him out long ago, and then this wouldn't have happened. I've increased
his rent twice, hoping to get rid of him so; but he pays without a
murmur; and what am I to do? You see, he was an occupant when the
building came into my hands, and I let him stay. He pays me a good,
round rent; and, apart from his cursed traffic, he's a good tenant. What
can I do? It's a good thing for him, and it's a good thing for me,
pecuniarily. Confound him. Here's a nice rumpus brewing!"
"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good thing for you," said Netty,
caressing him, and smoothing his tumbled hair. "Nor for him either. I
wouldn't mind the rent he pays you. I'd order him out. It's bad money.
There's blood on it."
She had grown pale, and her voice quivered. The phantom glided over to
them, and laid its spectral hand upon her forehead. The shadowy eyes
looked from under the misty hair into the doctor's face, and the pale
lips moved as if speaking the words heard only in the silence of his
heart--"hear her, hear her!"
"I must think of it," resumed Dr. Renton, coldly. "I'm resolved, at all
events, to warn him that if anything of this kind occurs again, he must
quit at once. I dislike to lose a profitable tenant; for no other
business would bring me the sum his does. Hang it, everybody does the
best he can with his property--why shouldn't I?"
The ghost, standing near them, drooped its head again on its breast, and
crossed its arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Renton continued, petulantly:
"A precious set of people I manage to get into my premises. There's a
woman hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, overhead, in that same
building, and for three months I haven't got a cent from her. I know
these people's tricks. Her month's notice expires to-morrow, and out she
goes."
"Poor creature!" sighed Netty.
He knit his brow, and beat the carpet with his foot, in vexation.
"Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trembled the sweet, silvery voice. "You
wouldn't turn her out in this cold winter, when she can't pay you--would
you, pa?"
"Why don't she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he
replied, testily; "there's plenty of rooms to let."
"Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answered Netty.
"Humbug!" retorted her father; "I know better."
"Pa, dear, if I were you, I'd turn out that rumseller, and let the poor
woman stay a little longer; just a little, pa."
"Shan't do it. Hah! that would be scattering money out of both pockets.
Shan't do it. Out she shall go; and as for him--well, he'd better turn
over a new leaf. There, let us leave the subject, darling. It vexes me.
How did we contrive to get into this train. Bah!"
He drew her closer to him, and kissed her forehead. She sat quietly,
with her head on his shoulder, thinking very gravely.
"I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short pause.
"My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters have taken."
"How is it, papa? The headache?" she answered.
"Y-e-s--n-o--not exactly; I don't know," he said dubiously; then, in an
absent way, "it was that letter set me to think of him all day, I
suppose."
"Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, starting up, "if I didn't forget all
about it, and I came down expressly to give it to you! Where is it? Oh!
here it is."
She drew from her pocket an old letter, faded to a pale yellow, and gave
it to him. The ghost started suddenly.
"Why, bless my soul! it's the very letter! Where did you get that,
Nathalie?" asked Dr. Renton.
"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."
"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it," he
answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost was gazing
at it, too, with startled interest.
"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who wrote
it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a long time
since."
"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that wrote
it has been cold for all that time."
He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the heart of
fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his side had bowed
its head, and all was still.
"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have not
thought of him for so long a time, and to-day--especially this
evening--I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a singular
feeling."
He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused--his right clasped his
daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed at
him with a look of unutterable tenderness.
"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.
"A young man--an author--a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when we
were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years--he led an erratic
life--we were friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow! Well, he is at
peace."
The stern voice had saddened, and was almost tremulous. The spectral
form was still.
"How did he die, father?"
"A long story, darling," he replied gravely, "and a sad one. He was very
poor and proud. He was a genius--that is, a person without an atom of
practical talent. His parents died, the last, his mother, when he was
near manhood. I was in college then. Thrown upon the world, he picked up
a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a time. I could have got him a
place in the counting-house, but he would not take it; in fact, he
wasn't fit for it. You can't harness Pegasus to the cart, you know.
Besides, he despised mercantile life--without reason, of course; but he
was always notional. His love of literature was one of the rocks he
foundered on. He wasn't successful; his best compositions were too
delicate--fanciful--to please the popular taste; and then he was full of
the radical and fanatical notions which infected so many people at that
time in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and his
sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till his
dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always staved
off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose above the
drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was terribly
passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't wise. What I mean
is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done to
any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black in
the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the wrongdoer. I
do believe he would have visited his own brother with the most unsparing
invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar,
or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't blame the
feeling; though with a man like him, it was very apt to be a false or
mistaken one; but, at any rate, its exhibition wasn't sensible. Well, as
I was saying, he buffeted about in this world a long time, poorly paid,
fed, and clad; taking more care of other people than he did of himself.
Then mental suffering, physical exposure, and want killed him."
The stern voice had grown softer than a child's. The same look of
unutterable tenderness brooded on the mournful face of the phantom by
his side; but its thin, shining hand was laid upon his head, and its
countenance had undergone a change. The form was still undefined; but
the features had become distinct. They were those of a young man,
beautiful and wan, and marked with great suffering.
A pause had fallen on the conversation, in which the father and daughter
heard the solemn sighing of the wintry wind around the dwelling. The
silence seemed scarcely broken by the voice of the young girl.
"Dear father, this was very sad. Did you say he died of want?"
"Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. I don't doubt it. He had
wandered about, as I gather, houseless for a couple of days and nights.
It was in December, too. Some one found him, on a rainy night, lying in
the street, drenched and burning with fever, and had him taken to the
hospital. It appears that he had always cherished a strange affection
for me, though I had grown away from him; and in his wild ravings he
constantly mentioned my name, and they sent for me. That was our first
meeting after two years. I found him in the hospital--dying. Heaven can
witness that I felt all my old love for him return then, but he was
delirious, and never recognized me. And, Nathalie, his hair--it had been
coal-black, and he wore it very long, he wouldn't let them cut it
either; and as they knew no skill could save him, they let him have his
way--his hair was then as white as snow! God alone knows what that brain
must have suffered to blanch hair which had been as black as the wing of
a raven!"
He covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silently. The fingers of the
phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks drooped above
him, like a weft of light.
"What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl.
"George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas
eve, fifteen years ago this night. It was on his death-bed, while his
mind was tossing on a sea of delirious fancies, that he wrote me this
long letter--for to the last, I was uppermost in his thoughts. It is a
wild, incoherent thing, of course--a strange mixture of sense and
madness. But I have kept it as a memorial of him. I have not looked at
it for years; but this morning I found it among my papers, and somehow
it has been in my mind all day."
He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and sadly gazed at the writing. His
daughter had risen from her half-recumbent posture, and now bent her
graceful head over the leaves. The phantom covered its face with its
hands.
"What a beautiful manuscript it is, father!" she exclaimed. "The writing
is faultless."
"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he had written his life as fairly!"
"Read it, father," said Nathalie.
"No--but I'll read you a detached passage here and there," he answered,
after a pause. "The rest you may read yourself some time, if you wish.
It is painful to me. Here's the beginning:
"_'My Dear Charles Renton:--Adieu, and adieu. It is Christmas eve, and I
am going home. I am soon to exhale from my flesh, like the spirit of a
broken flower. Exultemus forever!'_
"It is very wild. His mind was in a fever-craze. Here is a passage that
seems to refer to his own experience of life:
"_'Your friendship was dear to me. I give you true love. Stocks and
returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's pauper.
Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh! the world has no
place for souls that can only love and suffer. How many miles to
Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far--not near so far! Ask
starvelings--they know. I wanted to do the world good and the world has
killed me, Charles.'_"
"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.
"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in
it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a
transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what he
thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and vague. Poor--poor
George!"
The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly turned
over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the leaves, laid
her finger on the last, and asked--"What are those closing sentences,
father? Read them."
"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild as
the rest--tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career. First he
says, '_Farewell--farewell_;' then he bids me take his '_counsel into
memory on Christmas day_;' then, after enumerating all the wretched
classes he can think of in the country, he says. '_These are your
sisters and your brothers--love them all_.' Here he says, '_O friend,
strong in wealth for so much good, take my last counsel. In the name of
the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind._' He goes on to
bid me '_live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering,
and the poor_;' and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or
all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends
of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is
worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything
we can gain from the world. Ah, well! poor George."
"But isn't all that true, father?" said Netty; "it seems so."
"H'm," he murmured through his closed lips. Then, with a vague smile,
folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, "Wild words, Netty, wild
words. I've no objection to charity, judiciously given; but poor
George's notions are not mine. Every man for himself, is a good general
rule. Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in his acceptation
of the principle, would send us all to the alms-house pretty soon. The
greatest good of the greatest number--that's my rule of action. There
are plenty of good institutions for the distressed, and I'm willing to
help support 'em, and do. But as for making a martyr of one's self, or
tilting against the necessary evils of society, or turning
philanthropist at large, or any quixotism of that sort, I don't believe
in it. We didn't make the world, and we can't mend it. Poor George.
Well--he's at rest. The world wasn't the place for him."
They grew silent. The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood as if
it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was to become
of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie sat on her
father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of his having been
starved and grieved to death.
"Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading the
letter, as if he were near us. Didn't you? The room was so light and
still, and the wind sighed so."
"Netty, dear, I've felt that all day, I believe," he replied. "Hark!
there is the door-bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes the
actual. Confound it! Some one to see me, I'll warrant, and I'm not in
the mood."
He got into a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour ago, or
she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice it now in
her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated
herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of
it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said,
reckless of the proper tense, "there was a woman wanted to see you,
sir."
"Who is it, James?--no matter, show her in."
He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room. In a
minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid,
frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being
considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.
"Oh! Mrs. Miller. Good evening, ma'am. Sit down," he said, with a cold,
constrained civility.
The little woman faintly said, "Good evening, Dr. Renton," and sat down
stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair nearest the
wall. This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no rent for three
months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.
"Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.
"Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward answer.
"Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am," said Netty, gently; "you look
cold."
"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was cold,
though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and open bonnet,
in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there was a rigid, sharp,
suffering look in her pinched features that betokened she might have
been hungry, too.
"Poor people don't mind the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak
smile, her voice getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and
they get used to it."
She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of
indifference. Netty looked at her with a tender pity. Dr. Renton thought
to himself--Hoh!--blazoning her poverty--manufacturing sympathy
already--the old trick--and steeled himself against any attacks of that
kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.
"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it this evening? I suppose you've
brought me my rent."
The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her
quivering lips. Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.
"Nathalie, please to leave the room." We'll have no nonsense carried on
here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the stern,
decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.
He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg up to
rest on his left knee. He did not look at his tenant's face, determined
that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion, of course) should
be wasted on him.
"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said again.
"Dr. Renton," she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded,
"I have come to see you about the rent. I am very sorry, sir, to have
made you wait, but we have been unfortunate."
"Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing what was coming; "but your
misfortunes are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, ma'am. But we
must pay our debts, you know."
"I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir," she
resumed, "and I wrote to him. I got a letter from him to-day, sir, and
it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a letter; and it
appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody, for I never got
it. It was nearly three months' wages, sir, and it is very hard to lose
it. If it hadn't been for that, your rent would have been paid long ago,
sir."
"Don't believe a word of _that_ story," thought Dr. Renton,
sententiously.
"I thought, sir," she continued, emboldened by his silence, "that if you
would be willing to wait a little longer, we would manage to pay you
soon, and not let it occur again. It has been a hard winter with us,
sir; firing is high, and provisions, and everything; and we're only poor
people, you know, and it's difficult to get along."
The doctor made no reply.
"My husband was unfortunate, sir, in not being able to get employment
here," she resumed; "his being out of work, in the autumn, threw us all
back, and we've got nothing to depend on but his earnings. The family
that he's in now, sir, don't give him very good pay--only twenty dollars
a month, and his board--but it was the best chance he could get, and it
was either go to Baltimore with them, or stay at home and starve, and so
he went, sir. It's been a hard time with us, and one of the children is
sick, now, with a fever, and we don't hardly know how to make out a
living. And so, sir, I have come here this evening, leaving the children
alone, to ask you if you wouldn't be kind enough to wait a little
longer, and we'll hope to make it right with you in the end."
"Mrs. Miller," said Dr. Renton, with stern composure, "I have no wish to
question the truth of any statement you may make; but I must tell you
plainly, that I can't afford to let my houses for nothing. I told you a
month ago, that if you couldn't pay me my rent, you must vacate the
premises. You know very well that there are plenty of tenants who are
able and willing to pay when the money comes due. You _know_ that."
He paused as he said this, and, glancing at her, saw her pale lips
falter. It shook the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he had a vague
feeling that he was doing wrong. Not without a proud struggle, during
which no word was spoken, could he beat it down. Meanwhile, the phantom
had advanced a pace toward the centre of the room.
"That is the state of the matter, ma'am," he resumed, coldly. "People
who will not pay me my rent must not live in my tenements. You must move
out. I have no more to say."
"Dr. Renton," she said faintly, "I have a sick child--how can I move
now? Oh! sir, it's Christmas eve--don't be hard with us!"
Instead of touching him, this speech irritated him beyond measure.
Passing all considerations of her difficult position involved in her
piteous statement, his anger flashed at once on her implication that he
was unjust and unkind. So violent was his excitement that it whirled
away the words that rushed to his lips, and only fanned the fury that
sparkled from the whiteness of his face in his eyes.
"Be patient with us, sir," she continued; "we are poor, but we mean to
pay you; and we can't move now in this cold weather; please, don't be
hard with us, sir."
The fury now burst out on his face in a red and angry glow, and the
words came.
"Now, attend to me!" He rose to his feet. "I will not hear any more from
you. I know nothing of your poverty, nor of the condition of your
family. All I know is that you owe me three months' rent, and that you
can't or won't pay me. I say, therefore, leave the premises to people
who can and will. You have had your legal notice; quit my house
to-morrow; if you don't, your furniture shall be put in the street. Mark
me--to-morrow!"
The phantom had rushed into the centre of the room. Standing, face to
face with him--dilating--blackening--its whole form shuddering with a
fury to which his own was tame--the semblance of a shriek upon its
flashing lips, and on its writhing features, and an unearthly anger
streaming from its bright and terrible eyes--it seemed to throw down,
with its tossing arms, mountains of hate and malediction on the head of
him whose words had smitten poverty and suffering, and whose heavy hand
was breaking up the barriers of a home.
Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. His tenant--not a woman!--not a
sister in humanity!--but only his tenant; she sat crushed and frightened
by the wall. He knew it vaguely. Conscience was battling in his heart
with the stubborn devils that had entered there. The phantom stood
before him, like a dark cloud in the image of a man. But its darkness
was lightening slowly, and its ghostly anger had passed away.
The poor woman, paler than before, had sat mute and trembling, with all
her hopes ruined. Yet her desperation forbade her to abandon the chances
of his mercy, and she now said:
"Dr. Renton, you surely don't mean what you have told me. Won't you bear
with me a little longer, and we will yet make it all right with you?"
"I have given you my answer," he returned, coldly; "I have no more to
add. I never take back anything I say--never!"
It was true. He never did--never! She half rose from her seat as if to
go; but weak and sickened with the bitter result of her visit, she sunk
down again with her head bowed. There was a pause. Then, solemnly
gliding across the lighted room, the phantom stole to her side with a
glory of compassion on its wasted features. Tenderly, as a son to a
mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light rested upon her in
caressing and benediction; its shadowy fall of hair, once blanched by
the anguish of living and loving, floated on her throbbing brow; and
resignation and comfort not of this world, sank upon her spirit, and
consciousness grew dim within her, and care and sorrow seemed to die.
He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The
stern and sullen mood from which had dropped but one fierce flash of
anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of
thunder-cloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he
but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy
went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further
attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She had left the room
meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that marked her entrance. He
recalled her manner very indistinctly; for a feeling, like a mist, began
to gather in his mind, and make the occurrences of moments before
uncertain.
Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with a sensation that something was
near him. Was it a spiritual instinct? for the phantom stood by his
side. It stood silently, with one hand raised above his head, from which
a pale flame seemed to flow downward to his brain; its other hand
pointed movelessly to the open letter on the table beside him.
He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only of
George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was, "In the
name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind!" and
the words touched him like a low voice from the grave. Their penetrant
reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He tossed the letter back on
the table. The very manner of the act accused him of an insult to the
dead. In a moment he took up the faded sheets more reverently, but only
to lay them down again.
He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before. The
pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation, and
there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which seemed to
him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert his mind from
what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he could not hold his
thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped and fell away; and only
the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, mixed with remembrance of
George Feval, recurred and clung with vivid persistence. This tortured
him. Sitting there, with arms tightly interlocked, he resolved to wrench
his mind down by sheer will upon other things; and a savage pleasure at
what at once seemed success, took possession of him. In this mood, he
heard soft footsteps and the rustle of festal garments on the stairs,
and had a fierce complacency in being able to clearly apprehend that it
was his wife and daughter going out to the party. In a moment, he heard
the controlled and even voice of Mrs. Renton--a serene and polished lady
with whom he had lived for years in cold and civil alienation, both
seeing as little of each other as possible. With a scowl of will upon
his brow, he received her image distinctly into his mind, even to the
minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore, and felt an
absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain it. Then came the
sound of the closing of the hall door and the rattle of receding wheels,
and somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife that he was holding so
grimly in his thought, and with her, salient and vivid as before, the
tormenting remembrance of his tenant, connected with the memory of
George Feval. Springing to his feet, he walked the room.
He had thrown himself on a sofa, still striving to be rid of his
remorseful visitations, when the library door opened, and the inside man
appeared, with his hand held bashfully over his nose. It flashed on him
at once, that his tenant's husband was the servant of a family like this
fellow; and, irritated that the whole matter should be thus broadly
forced upon him in another way, he harshly asked him what he wanted. The
man only came in to say that Mrs. Renton and the young lady had gone out
for the evening, but that tea was laid for him in the dining-room. He
did not want any tea, and if anybody called, he was not at home. With
this charge, the man left the room, closing the door behind him.
If he could but sleep a little! Rising from the sofa, he turned the
lights of the chandelier low, and screened the fire. The room was still.
The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr. Renton lay
down again, but not to repose. Things he had forgotten of his dead
friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from the grave of
many years; and not one of them but linked itself by some mysterious
bond to something connected with his tenant, and became an accusation.
He had lain thus for more than an hour, feeling more and more unmanned
by illness, and his mental excitement fast becoming intolerable, when he
heard a low strain of music, from the Swedenborgian chapel, hard by. Its
first impression was one of solemnity and rest, and its first sense, in
his mind, was of relief. Perhaps it was the music of an evening meeting;
or it might be that the organist and choir had met for practice.
Whatever its purpose, it breathed through his heated fancy like a cool
and fragrant wind. It was vague and sweet and wandering at first,
straying on into a strain more mysterious and melancholy, but very
shadowy and subdued, and evoking the innocent and tender moods of early
youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he
listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to
a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance
of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own
condition, or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the
music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It
was still low and indeterminate and sweet, but had unaccountably and
strangely swelled into a gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably
mournful, and filled with a dark significance that touched him in his
depth of rest with a secret tremor and awe. As he listened, rapt and
vaguely wondering, the sense of his tranced sinking seemed to come to an
end, and with the feeling of one who had been descending for many hours,
and at length lay motionless at the bottom of a deep, dark chasm, he
heard the music fail and cease.
A pause, and then it rose again, blended with the solemn voices of the
choir, sublimed and dilated now, reaching him as though from weird night
gulfs of the upper air, and charged with an overmastering pathos as of
the lamentations of angels. In the dimness and silence, in the aroused
and exalted condition of his being, the strains seemed unearthly in
their immense and desolate grandeur of sorrow, and their mournful and
dark significance was now for him. Working within him the impression of
vast, innumerable, fleeing shadows, thick-crowding memories of all the
ways and deeds of an existence fallen from its early dreams and aims,
poured across the midnight of his soul, and under the streaming
melancholy of the dirge, his life showed like some monstrous treason. It
did not terrify or madden him; he listened to it rapt utterly as in some
deadening ether of dream; yet feeling to his inmost core all its
powerful grief and accusation, and quietly aghast at the sinister
consciousness it gave him. Still it swelled, gathering and sounding on
into yet mightier pathos, till all at once it darkened and spread wide
in wild despair, and aspiring again into a pealing agony of
supplication, quivered and died away in a low and funereal sigh.