p545-012 CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE OF SEACLIFF.

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IT was exactly a year since I had said good-bye to Mr.
and Mrs. Westervelt, and to the two Misses Westervelt,
in Switzerland.

I had left them on the summit of the Righi at sunrise,
leaning over the awful outlying brink of the alp, and looking
downward upon an ocean of clouds dazzling-white, surging,
billowy, and cleft in fleecy chasms, through which appeared
the gleam of many lakes, and the stony or snowy brows of
many mountains. Around us sightseers from various lands
were clustered in silent companies, earnest in gaze and reverently
wonder-stricken. A revelation, like that of an immaculate
Righi sunrise, is not received lightly by the majority of
intelligent creatures, nor passes away without making memorable
some of those who stand with us on the mount and
behold the glory. Now, as I drove up to the country-house
of the Westervelts, I called to mind distinctly the grouping
of their four figures on the bald, breezy Swiss summit. The
painting was so clear before me that I half glanced around to
see the infinite alpine mist, the shadowy valleys, the seamed
and gray precipices, the far-off flash of glaciers, the solemn,
unconquerable, cruel snows of the everlasting mountain

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heads. There was nought but green New England hillocks,
the white dwelling half hidden by trees, and beyond it a
shimmer of sunny sea.

The house stood in one of the southwesterly townships of
Connecticut, crowning a bluff which fronted sharply upon the
narrow arm of ocean, called Long Island Sound. The
grounds, varied and full of character by Nature's gift, gayly
toned with bright hillocks and little dells of shadow, or
wrought into stronger relief of ledge and leafage, were well
adapted to the modern style of landscape gardening after
which they had lately been remodelled. No reflection was
there here of Versailles Vandalism, laid out stiff and stark
by grim undertaker Le Notre. The general appearance of
the two or three acres was already agreeable and tending
toward the picturesque, although no one feature of the landscape
was surprising or in the least suggestive of alpine sublimities.
The dwelling itself was far from worthy of an
environment so tasteful. The work doubtless of some predecessor
to the present proprietor, it bespoke those dark ages
of American country architecture previous to Downing, and
seemed to assert, with all the force of its snobbish individuality,
that it had no sympathy with the natural graces which
surrounded it. It was one of those mock Parthenons, beloved
of our fathers thirty years ago; a temple of brick and
mortar, coated over with stucco veined and lined in shabby
imitation of marble; breaking out toward the south in a
staring, shameless pediment, and Ionic columns which shaded
Yankee windows; and flanked on either side by modern
wings, built solely for convenience, in abrupt disregard of the
sham classicism of the edifice. On each side of the main
body there was a slight one-story veranda, running forward
from the wing and joining the heavy front portico. Altogether
the building reminded me of a clumsy translation from
the Greek, eked out with modern supplement, appendix, and
commentaries. Partial amends were made for these absurdities
by the beautiful outlook of the house, standing as it did

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on a prominent turfy hillock, and facing the mid-day sun, the
shining sheet of the Sound, and, far away, the green and yellow
belts of the Long Island shore.

In approaching from the neighboring village I had left the
highway and trotted my hired buggy along the slowly ascending
curve of a private road which stopped at the eastern gate
of the grounds. Tying my horse at a post, under shelter of
a thicket of trimmed cedars, I walked up a broad, winding
path to the make-believe majesty of the portico. The door
was open, giving me a glance down a narrow hall which ran
through the mansion. That heavy shouldered, long armed,
brief nosed Hibernian maiden, who ministers so generally to
the domestic comfort or discomfort of New England family
life, was passing at the moment on some errand of cleanliness,
made manifest by her dustpan and duster. Handing
her my card, with a request to see the ladies, I stepped flurriedly
into the untenanted parlor and waited. Now was the
time for an elfin mob of reminiscences and anticipations,
doubts and hopes, to assail me. Happily for human manners
and morals, a certain amount of diffidence comes to most persons
by birthright, and an average man must see a great
deal of the world before he can dissipate his entire legacy of
bashfulness. It is a circumstance that we all complain of at
times; but we may feel sure that if it were not for the best, it
would not be so. How many blunders, how many exhibitions
of bad taste, how much impertinence and brutality, how
many ruinous follies and crimes even, are we saved from in
our years of youthful indiscretion by a decent hamper of
youthful diffidence. Show me a youngster with a brow unblushing,
and I will show you one of the devil's adopted
children. Notwithstanding a city breeding, flirtations with
boarding-school belles, and two years of pleasuring in Europe,
I had not yet, at the age of twenty-four, turned all my
native gold of modesty into current social brass, and therefore
my heart beat sensibly under its glossy shirt-bosom, as I listened
for the advance of female drapery along the flooring of

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the hall. The Misses Westervelt were beautiful girls; it was
a matter of wide dispute which was the most beautiful; as
the Bernesque poets express it, each was fairer than the
other. My susceptible southern friend, Boynton, used to reproach
me with being an unloving man, incapable of earnest
affection for woman, and unworthy of what he, in his sentimental
way, styled the highest, purest duty and privilege of
manhood—marriage. Boynton was engaged himself; on probation
for the time being, and, as a matter of course, mightily
enamored; his face set toward the altar, like Christian's
toward the Holy City. Greatly was I affected by the utterances
of his enthusiasm, notwithstanding the somewhat ludicrous
earnestness of his pale lovelorn face, and the chanting
southern accent with which he enunciated his prose poetry.
To the depths of my soul I felt his reproach, and wished that
it were false, while I feared that it was true. But Boynton
would have been inclined to absolve me from that bitter accusation
of emotional barrenness, had he known the tremors
with which I used to meet the Misses Westervelt, one or
both of them, I could not for a long time tell which. American
women charm American men easily at home, but still
more easily in a foreign land. Many are the love-affairs
which blossom in Europe, to ripen into marriage in America.
All along the course of the grand tour, in every mouldering
ruin, in every famed cathedral, by every irised cascade, on
every alpine summit, are there invisible altars to Hymen,
where incipient husbands have bowed, and vowed, and sacrificed.

Hat in hand, I stood for two or three minutes by the front
windows; and then, as no one came, I paced slowly to the
other end of the room, led on by a straggling line of pictures.
There was a landscape of no significance; a modern half-length,
clearly a portrait; a Madonna which looked like a
Carlo Dolci; and a fair copy of Guido's terrible Beatrice
Cenci. Beautiful that pale calm face is, beyond the beauty
of Grecian goddesses, but terrible also, in its grief that is

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unutterable, its remorse that is yet not penitence, and its despair
that is as placid as sleep. As I looked, I was suddenly impressed
with a likeness in the woful girlish countenance to
the younger Miss Westervelt. The discovery was a doubly
noticeable one, because it explained a mystery. Very often,
as I sat, or walked, or rode by the side of Genevieve, particularly
when the moonlight fell on her features, making them
paler and more pensive than their wont, the idea had crossed
me that, somewhere or other, at some important moment, in
some agitating circumstance, I had seen and watched her
with the profoundest pity and sympathy. The feeling was a
vivid one, although I could not connect it with anything in
my memory; it made me regard her with an interest which I
should not otherwise have accorded to a precocious girl of
sixteen; it wrought an atmosphere of romance around her,
and seemed to connect her, not only with my past, but with
my future; it was the only thing, perhaps, which withheld
me from sacrificing all my attention and admiration to the
sweet, Madonna-like face and being of her sister Mary. The
illusion was cornered now, and robbed of the wings of mystery
with which it had haunted me. It retreated within the
square, gilded prison of the picture-frame, resolved itself into
the well-known features of the Beatrice, and became a mere
interesting fact without a particle of poetic power. “Ah,
Genevieve!” whispered I to myself, “you have lost by it.”

The interest of this reverie held me so close, that for a
while I did not notice a murmur of conversation which arose
in a back room connecting by a door with the end of the parlor
where I stood. I was recalled to myself by hearing a
man's voice utter these strange words: “I tell you I have
no pity!”

I turned and stared at the door with just that simple surprise
which most mortals would have felt under the circumstances.
The voice was a full, fine and commanding one,
although muffled by the panels, and deepened by anger into an
utterance much like that of one of those stage ruffians whom

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we Americans call actors. Good heavens! thought I, what
unmerciful individual is that? Can Mr. Westervelt be lecturing
his wife in such a fierce fashion? I never thought him
a hard husband. But perhaps he is correcting one of the
Misses Westervelt. Nonsense! he is probably admonishing
a thievish servant.

While I stood dumfounded, the answer to the threat
came; an answer in womanish tones, pleading and tearful,
though I distinguished no words. Stifled and stern the masculine
utterance retorted: “Quick then! or I will expose you
and myself together!”

What a hypocritical old ruffian! I meditated. Is it possible
that quiet, creamy Mr. Westervelt talks in that style to
women? Well, I must get away from here;—I shall have
the air of an eavesdropper.

I turned hurriedly, and set off on tiptoe for the opposite
end of the deep parlor. Dumas's heroes, pinks of courtesy
and spotless lilies of chivalry as he represents them, are
never ashamed to gain information by the frailty of a wainscot,
or to dive into family secrets through a keyhole; but
our American education is stupid compared with the Parisian,
and, instead of rejoicing in my discovery, I felt horribly
annoyed. It was clear that my entrance, unheralded as
it was by the door-bell, had not become known to the household
at large; and that some members of it, supposing this
back room to be for the present a place of the strictest privacy,
had repaired thither to fight out an old quarrel. What
if they should come in upon me and discover in my face that
I had been an ear-witness of their squabbles! I felt that I
should need all the refined brass of Dumas's shabby gentlemen,
to be equal to such an emergency. I was still squeaking
across the room on my patent-leather toes, when I heard
a scuffling behind the door, followed in quick succession by a
click of the lock, a creak of the hinge, a hasty justle of
woman's raiment and a stifled exclamation as of surprise and
alarm. Instinctively, and altogether against my very

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honorable intentions, I looked backward over my shoulder. No
face was visible, but I caught a glimpse of a plaid silk of
dead-leaf colors disappearing from the opening, as its wearer
retreated and hurriedly pulled to the door. The voices
hushed their muffled altercation, and the mysterious threatener
had evidently concluded not to expose himself just at
present.

“What a reception!” I muttered. “Is nobody coming, so
that I can make my compliments and be off? I wonder if I
shall see the Misses Westervelt at all. I wonder if either of
them will wear a plaid silk of dead-leaf colors. I wonder
what is the matter in the family. I wouldn't marry into it
for a million.”

p545-019 CHAPTER II. THE PEOPLE OF SEACLIFF.

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IN another minute it became clear that I was about to
be received. I heard, floating down the stairway,
that perfumed rush and rustle which breathes from
the robes of woman,—that voice of lace and satin which has
caused my heart and the heart of every properly constituted
man to beat so often and so violently,—that eerie silken whisper
which makes us start and look up even when the siren,
who causes it, passes our lonely rooms unseen, through sombre
hotel entries.

Preparing my face for a smile, and clearing my throat for
the salaams, I awaited the Misses Westervelt. I had already
forgotten the shocking dialogue of the mysterious boudoir;
the descending enchantment had driven it from my spirit; a
new spell was upon me. They entered lightly and gracefully,
first Mary and then Genevieve.

“I am glad to see you again, Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Mary,
in her sweet quiet way, as though the mild Madonna of Carlo
Dolci had spoken. “We were out in the garden tending our
flowers, or we shouldn't have made you wait so long. You
must excuse Mamma, she has a headache, and can only send
her compliments.”

She gave me her hand frankly, and then waved the rosywhite
fingers toward a chair. In the mean time Genevieve
had only saluted me with a reserved little bow, and just

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enough of a smile to show me how sharply, delicately cut
were her aristocratic and somewhat haughty lips.

“Thank you, Miss Westervelt,” said I, “This is more
agreeable to me than the Righi. That was a parting, and
this is a meeting.”

I was not afraid, it will be seen, to pay a bold compliment
to the Misses Westervelt. The truth is, that I felt as if I
knew them well, because I had travelled several weeks with
them; for a month's journey in company gives a closer acquaintance
than a year of ordinary intercourse. In society
the mass of people have few startling topics in common, and
still fewer interests; but among heroic ruins, solemnizing cathedrals,
revered works of art and life-pictures of strange
peoples, sensations rapidly sympathize, and thoughts become
charmingly interchangeable. This is not all the explanation,
but this is enough for the present purpose.

“Oh, but the Righi!” said she. “Just think again of the
Righi before you prefer our parlor to it. We had a carpet
of clouds, you know, instead of a Brussels. And then the
lakes, the awful white mountains, the blinding glaciers, the”—
she checked herself with a little blush at her own enthusiasm.

“Very true,” said I; “but I bring all those things with
me; I have them in my mind's eye at this moment; they
got into the buggy with me at my hotel. The mere thought
of calling on my old friends, summoned up the Righi. By
the way, I see that you have some mementos of Europe
here.”

“The pictures? Oh, yes, we couldn't resist the temptation
of buying a copy or two. We chose one Carlo Dolci, you
see, in spite of Ruskin.”

“But they are not all copies, are they?” I asked. “There
is one, I see, that resembles both of you slightly. Is it meant
for a portrait of either of you?”

“It is my mother's portrait,” replied Mary, gravely, with
a glance at the half-length over the mantel. “It was taken
the year she was married.”

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“Not the present Mrs. Westervelt, you understand, Mr.
Fitz Hugh,” said Genevieve, now speaking for the first time.
“You know, or shall know, that our present mamma is only
a step-mamma.”

“I am aware,—I remember,” responded I, passing hastily
over the thorny subject of step-motherhood. “Mrs. Westervelt
is a very charming lady.”

“She charms papa, I believe,” said Genevieve, coolly,—
“and some other people.”

I was quite used to Genevieve's little satirical ways, and
only smiled at a speech which I considered more flippant
than malicious. Miss Westervelt took the affair more seriously,
and gave her sister a beseeching glance of caution;
but the latter had evidently been stirred up to bitterness
by some recent development of step-maternity; and so,
paying no attention to the silent admonition, she went on
in her tirade with a brisk sparkling energy, like the first
flurry of a lighted lucifer. “There is one experience, Mr.
Fitz Hugh, that you men never can appreciate, and that
is the happiness of a young lady,—say a couple of young
ladies,—over whose welfare and prospects broods the love
of a step-mother. You are not so constantly in the nest
as we are; besides, you can struggle out of the step-feathers,
if you don't find them agreeable; you can choose your own
element, like ducklings who have been hatched by a hen.
Mr. Fitz Hugh, did you ever fancy the condition of a chicken
gathered under the motherly quills of a porcupine? I have,
and I assure you that I think it is no laughing matter.”

“Hush, Genevieve!” said Mary. “Mr. Fitz Hugh doesn't
understand your extravaganzas; and, if he does, I hope he
will be kind enough not to notice them.”

“I am as discreet as a tomb, as a pyramid,” replied I.
“In fact I understand nothing, and confess that Miss Genevieve
has completely mystified me.”

I had already reverted in thought to the plaid silk of dead
leaf colors, and for the first time I glanced at the dresses of

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the young ladies to see their tint and fashion. I suspected
that Genevieve had been the misused female of the back
boudoir, and that papa had threatened vengeance upon her
for thwarting the authority or happiness of step-mamma, only
I could detect no sort of sense in that denunciation of universal
exposure. Neither she nor her sister wore anything
like a plaid, not even in the shape of a checked scarf or
ribbon. Both were dressed as French ladies dress, and as
most women who trust their own taste dress, in broad sheets
of plain color, contrasting only in masses and unbroken by
any frivolous deformities of crossings, stripings, prismatic
blotchings or kaleidoscope patterns. To be more particular,
Mary wore a skirt of green silk, Genevieve a skirt of blue
silk, and both had black silk bodices. The auburn locks of
the elder sister, and the flaxen blonde ones of the younger
were alike unadorned, except by their own luxurious braidings
and wavy droopings. Still suspecting that the spirited
and satirical junior of the couple had been the oppressed
heroine of the boudoir scene, I began to ponder whether she
had had time, in the interval between that and her appearance
in the parlor, to change her attire. I am not ashamed
to confess that in those days I was too ignorant of the mysteries
of the female toilet to decide the question. I have
learned better since; but I still declare that a man is unlucky
who has no sisters; that he labors under a serious disadvantage
in studying the multitudinous, the ever-present, and
ever-fascinating problem of womanhood.

I was getting into a state of distraction which would soon
have made me absurd in the eyes of the Misses Westervelt,
had not their attention and mine been diverted by a new incident.
A trampling of masculine heels in the portico, and
then a confident clamor of voices in the hall told the arrival
of some persons who apparently felt themselves at home.

“They have come back?” said Mary, glancing at her sister.
“Why, they but this moment went out.”

“Out at one door, and in at another,” replied Genevieve.

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“I presume Cousin Jule found it too hot; she always finds it
too hot or too cold. Our cousins the Van Leers,” she added,
in explanation to me. “Not own cousins, but relatives of
Mrs. Westervelt.”

Alarum, sounding of trumpets, as it were, and enter the
Van Leers. First came a lady of about twenty-seven, medium
sized, walking well, dark-haired, black-eyed, self conscious,
and terribly fashionable; a woman of the world most
distinctly, who had seen all the life she could, held etiquette
at her fingers' ends, and knew exactly what she was about,
every moment of her modish existence. Then followed two
hulking, strongly-built men, evidently brothers, the one thirty-five
and the other twenty-five. They had the same massive
dull features, the same Bœotian brown eyes, the same enormous
chestnut moustaches; both alike, also, were dressed in
the latest morning fashion, and laid defiant exterior claim to
the character of dandy and man-about-town. The eldest had
prematurely lost his front hair, so that his naturally low forehead
showed a counterfeit loftiness. Lastly appeared a foppish
youth of about twenty-two, much shorter and lighter in
frame than his predecessors, the face of him round and lively,
his eyes small black and shiny, his step quick and skipping,
his whole air full of a conceit which was half amusing, half
offensive. The lady and gentlemen bowed as I was presented,
but did not trouble themselves to offer me a remark. The
skipping-jack youth skated lightly about the room for a few
seconds, like an insect upon water, until, hitting against the
piano-stool, he forthwith seated himself upon it and thrummed
in cold blood and unprovoked, the brindisi of Lucrezia Borgia.
His two heavy seniors fell upon a sofa, yawned and
sucked the jasper heads of their canes. Had they entered
as strangers, I should have supposed that here were three
beaux for the Misses Westervelt, and should accordingly
have left the field free to them by paying my compliments
and taking my departure, but as they were only cousins, I
kept my post and waited for them to disencumber the parlor

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They had no such delicate intentions, however; the lady
complained to my two pretty hostesses of the dreadful heat;
the two men on the sofa threw in a few words concerning a
proposed fishing excursion. Altogether they seemed to me
under-bred people, whose parvenudity could not be hidden by
any cunning of tailors and mantua-makers.

I considered myself an intimate acquaintance of the Misses
Westervelt, and therefore did not feel annoyed at being left
for a moment to the society of mine own beaver. While the
others talked, I busied myself in looking at Genevieve and
speculating on her possible connection with the mystery of
the boudoir, but after studying her earnestly for two or three
minutes, I simply came to the conclusion at last that she was
unquestionably a beauty. Her form was small, but very
elegant; her features were uncommonly regular, delicate, and
spirituel; her lip was the most flexible, the most patrician,
the haughtiest that I knew; her eyes were blue-gray, but as
eloquent in their mute speech as the dark orbs of Rome; and
her whole face was refined, although it could not be quite
tender, because of a gleam of pride and a sparkle of satire.
On the whole, she was a wonder of beauty and expression,
considering how small she was, and that she was only seventeen.

Presently my reverie was broken by a remark of the lady
cousin, who, it turned out, was wife of the elder Van Leer.
“Your father has just about reached New York,” she observed.

“Exactly!” struck in the skipping-jack, spinning round on
the piano-stool. “Just about having his pocket picked in
the Canal-street station.” And here he went off in a boastful
narrative concerning an adventure of his own with a pickpocket,
in which the gentleman of the swell-mob suffered
painful discomfiture, getting his thievish wrist broken by the
tremendous gripe of the skipping-jack.

So Mr. Westervelt was not at Seacliff, and had not been
there since early morning! Who then, in the name of

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Bluebeard's wives, was that dreadful man in the back boudoir who
was so devoid of pity, and so anxious to expose himself?
And who was the other, the woman, whose very voice seemed
to cower and tremble at his feet, who dared not even weep
loudly, and to whose pleadings he returned such harsh answer?
The idea crossed my mind that they might have
been Mr. and Mrs. Van Leer, playing shuttlecock with the
matrimonial doves, in angry forgetfulness that the holy birds
came from Paradise. Nothing more likely, thought I, smiling
inwardly at the cruel supposition, for I had the common
incredulity of bachelors concerning the happiness of married
people, and in short was an ignoramus of life, as will be often
visible in this history.

At that moment a firm masculine step came along the hall
from the interior haunts of the dwelling. Here is another
hook to hang a guess upon, thought I, and assiduously
watched the doorway. Entered the dandy, the diner-out, the
Apollo of Gothamite tailors, the man who drew at sight on
ladies' hearts, the unrivalled manager of fancy balls and private
theatricals, the high priest of Fifth Avenue mysteries,
Frank Somerville, Esquire, Attorney at Law. He was a
very noticeable man in person as well as in manners and
character. He must have been thirty-seven at that moment,
and he had seen dissipation enough to waste the ruddiest
health; yet he was as erect, as fresh, as unwrinkled, as
graceful in port as if Father Time had but just brought him
to the first full perfection of manhood. Nature seemed to
have gifted him with that imperishable beauty, that eternal
youth, the ideal of which we see in statues of Grecian gods
and heroes. Five feet ten and finely proportioned, he had the
features of an Achilles, a clear pale complexion, stern dark-gray
eyes, waving glossy black hair and a heavy moustache
unequalled in curl and unsurpassed in blackness. I had observed
him in Paris as one of the most perfectly Gallicized
Americans that ever trod a boulevard; in London as a prime
man-about-town, indistinguishable to my eyes from the purest

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bloods of the English aristocracy; and I had heard of him
in Italy as the rival of Russian princes, the conqueror of
contesse and marchesine. It was not agreeable to find him
here at Seacliff, ready perhaps to dispute with me the ownership
of any air-castles that I should seek to erect around
either or both of the Misses Westervelt.

He walked into the room quietly and gravely, with no
effort at effect. Evidently it would be impossible to pick
flaws in his manners so long as he chose to keep the polished
side of them toward me. I noticed that Genevieve colored
and only half glanced at him as he entered, and that Mary
introduced him to me with a constrained air which seemed to
indicate some stronger feeling than mere youthful embarrassment.
Mrs. Van Leer's eyes, on the contrary, flashed with
frank gratification, and she beckoned the new-comer to her
side with an easy boldness which gave one the idea of relationship,
and disagreed strangely with the excited blush that
tinted her cheeks. That they were not relatives, and that the
lady was simply one of the numberless fascinated ones, I soon
discovered. “How are you, Mr. Somerville?—How do you
find yourself?—Got rested, my dear feller?” were the salutations
of the skipping-jack and the two Bœotian brothers.

“I am really glad to see that you are able to be about,”
observed Mrs. Van Leer, with a smile that was meant to be
charmingly saucy. “How imprudent it was of you to come
all the way from New York in one morning! Oh, don't protest
that you are well; you hadn't strength enough to go out
with us, you know. I do hope that the country air will set
you all right again.”

The smile and the look with which Somerville listened to
these trivialities formed an expression that was deliciously
adulatory; it seemed to tell Mrs. Van Leer that he was perfectly
entranced with her badinage, and considered it the
liveliest, the cleverest, that he had heard in a long time.

“There is a prospect of my improvement,” said he. “I
have the pleasure of congratulating Mrs. Van Leer on the

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beneficent effects of country air. It turns the fairest lily to
a rose.”

“What a shameless flatterer!” whispered the lady, pretending
to shake her ringlets at the compliment; but her very
skirts rustled with satisfaction, and her face became more
roseate than before.

“Ah, Sis! everybody knows that you hate adulation,” maliciously
observed the skipping-jack, who, it appeared, was
Mrs. Van Leer's brother, and called himself Mr. Frederick
William Hunter.

After a while Somerville came over to me, remarking that
he remembered having supped with me in Paris. That
supper, eaten at the Maison Dorée by two dozen Americans,
in honor of somebody's election, I perfectly well recollected;
nor had I forgotten the presence of Somerville, who that
evening dawned on my acquaintance in the character of the
prince of good fellows, the greatest of convivialists; but I
was surprised and a trifle flattered that my own youthful and
very timid assistance on the occasion had made any impression
on his memory. I told him so frankly, observing that it
was very kind in him thus to distinguish my twenty-fourth
part of the festivity. The smile with which he answered this
remark was peculiarly winning and gratifying, it seemed to
say: “I am charmed that you think so much of my good
opinion; let us be friends forever.” Then he turned gayly
to Mrs. Van Leer, and called on her to acknowledge that here
at last was a modest man.

“Every one is modest in your company, Mr. Somerville,”
was her reply, spoken in a flippant tone, but with a coaxing
face.

“By contrast to my own conceit, I suppose,” said he, laughingly,
but looking fervent thanks for her implied acknowledgment
of his crushing superiority. Such was his usual
method of receiving a compliment, as I found when I knew
him better. He seemed to think so much of it as coming
from you,—he had such an air of sticking it proudly in the

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

most conspicuous button-hole of his memory,—that he left
you in the thankfullest frame of mind imaginable, feeling
moreover that you could not say or do enough for him in
future. It was like offering a lady a bouquet, and seeing her
place it in her bosom. In such a case it is the donor who
is the obliged person, and it is the recipient who confers a
favor.

The conversation soon became general, for Somerville
made it so. He tossed off several amusing subjects in succession,
started people on the tracks best suited to them, and
seduced even the two Van Leer mummies into a delusive
show of liveliness. Indeed, the charm of his society did not
proceed so much from the wit or wisdom of what he said, as
from his tact in tempting you to reply. This, however, I did
not then clearly perceive; this I discovered long afterwards,
and by dint of much observation; for Somerville was a hard
man to find out, because he was so very agreeable. But,
clever as he was, and interesting as the whole circle had
become under his influence, I could not be diverted from
noting his voice and manner, with a view to decide whether
he was the man of mysterious exposures. Rapidly I became
convinced that the mere suspicion of such a thing did him
the harshest, stupidest injustice. His deportment, to speak
figuratively, consisted entirely of lines of beauty, underformed
by a single straight mark or angle. His voice was a luxury
to hear; mellow, powerful, varied, rhythmical, delicious, and
reminding one of the medium notes of a fine organ; very
different indeed from the tones of the invisible miscreant
of the boudoir, which, muffled as they were by the heavy
door, had still reached me hoarse and contorted with passion.
Somerville may be a dangerous man to ladies, I
concluded; but it is not in his nature to treat them with
coarseness and violence.

I turned again to the eldest Van Leer, and, after a very
brief trial, brought him in guilty. That he was just the man
to bully a woman, became more evident to me every time that

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

I ran my eye over his flat forehead, unintellectual breadth of
face, heavy jaws, pugilistic build, and other indications of a
most fleshly nature. To be sure, there seemed to be no sense
in his telling his own wife that he would expose her and himself
together; but, on the other hand, what intelligence or
appropriateness of utterance could you expect from the anger
of such a manifest barbarian? Then Mrs. Van Leer wore
a check of green and crimson, which might easily be mistaken
for an arrangement of dead-leaf colors. Yes, you are
the domestic hero, thought I, and if Carlyle were only here,
you would have a worshipper.

While I pulled at the tangled threads of my mystery, the
conversation skipped on from subject to subject, until Van
Leer the elder laid strong hold of it, and with one vigorous
haul brought it clear over from a criticism on “Modern
Painters,” to the consideration of shark-fishing.

“Mrs. Van Leer, is that true?” asked Somerville. “Your
husband says that you circumvented a couple of sharks yesterday;
hooked them handsomely, and ruined their prospects
for man-eating.”

“Cousin Jule has always been famous for catching sharks,”
observed Genevieve quickly.

The remark in itself seemed to be an innocent one enough,
but the manner of its utterance was so cynical, biting, and
almost vicious, that I glanced around the company to see who
had felt the teeth. Somerville was as unclouded and benignant
as June sunshine, not even turning his eye on the
pungent beauty. The married Van Leer was also perfectly
unmoved, but then it was possible that no satire could pierce
his dense blubber of stupidity, any more than the fangs of a
rattlesnake can penetrate that other gross animal who is such
a horror to Jews and such a comfort to Irishmen. The only
startled persons were Miss Westervelt, who looked alarmed,
and Mrs. Van Leer, who looked angry. Really, Miss Genevieve,
thought I, you are a little too sharp; you have no
business to go blabbing family misfortunes in that way; you

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

would not make a nice wife, nor even a pleasant sister-in-law.

“I tell you it's grand sport, shark-fishing is,” observed
Robert Van Leer, the second of the brothers. “Look here
now, Genevieve, you ought to try it. You see, you don't
pull him in yourself; you lay out your line, and, when the
feller bites, we haul him in for you; and you look on and
swing your bonnet. The last feller that Sis caught was a
strapper, and gave us the heaviest kind of a long pull and a
pull altogether,—didn't he, Henry? Look here now, Mary
and Jenny, you go out with us next time, and have some
sport, won't you?

“Are they land-sharks?” asked Genevieve, with a significant
crisp of her lips.

“No, no,” explained the ponderous youth, without in the
least understanding her meaning. “They're a small kind;
not man-eaters, you know; not in the least dangerous except
to your clothes; you'll have to wear some old clothes, for
you'll get all slime. Come, Mary, I say you try it this afternoon,
or to-morrow.”

“By land-sharks,” said I, drawing a bow at a venture, “I
suppose Miss Genevieve means mermen; fellows of an amphibious,
doubtful, brutal nature, who creep unsuspected into
human society and fill it with troubles.”

“Exactly,” replied Genevieve; “all such outlandish creatures
as gamblers, rakes, roués, and hateful people generally.”

There was a smile on the faces of Somerville, and the
skipping-jack; but the eldest Van Leer showed no signs of
remorse, nor even conviction.

“That is a clever fancy,” observed Somerville,—“that
wicked people are not of human race, but steal in among us
from some outcast species, commit their evil deeds, and then,
perhaps, return for safety to their own place.”

“It makes one think of the story of Branca Doria, in
Dante's Inferno,” said Miss Westervelt.

“Story of who? I say, what's the joke?” inquired

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

Robert, vaguely guessing that somebody had caught an idea
which he had missed. “Come, Mary, let's hear it.”

“Mr. Fitz Hugh knows all about it,” replied Mary, unwilling
to put herself on exhibition as a connoisseur of Dantesque
literature.

“Branca Doria belonged to the upper ten in Genoa, about
six hundred years ago,” said I, as Robert's slow eyes turned
inquiringly upon me. “He died one day, very unexpectedly,
and in the strictest privacy. As no one was by at the time,
a certain devil, name unknown, took the opportunity to enter
the body, deceive the relatives, and get himself into good
society. Of course he became a politician, held office,
brought on a crisis, and disgraced the respectable name of
Doria in various ways. Those, Mr. Van Leer, are the facts
of the case, I believe, although the devil always denied
them.”

“Did he? Confounded old liar!” observed Robert, with
a horselaugh either for my wit or his own. “Well, where is
this story? Not in the Bible, is it? Sounds something like
the Bible.”

“Dear me! Oh, Robert, you are too comical,” laughed
Genevieve. “You mustn't suppose that all the devils are in
the Bible. Some of them are too modern to be mentioned
there.”

For the first time Somerville glanced a reply to one of the
hits of this captious little lady. A comical look, a sort of
jesting grimace it was, which said much to her doubtless, but
provokingly little to me, the uninitiated, who stood only at
the door of some grotesque mystery, and vainly tried to recognize
human figures traversing the darkness within. On
the whole, however, I felt pretty sure that all these sarcastic
flings referred to the domestic tyranny of Mr. Van Leer;
and I naturally decided that Genevieve was extremely unamiable
in harping so constantly and sharply on a subject of
such a delicately private nature. Still, this piquancy gave
her a decided appearance of character, and made her

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

conversation amusing. A mere acquaintance, a simple caller on the
family, like myself, must necessarily forgive it, and indeed be
thankful for such a frank and interesting originality, remembering
that very few young ladies have the courage to risk
their matrimonial prospects for the sake of expressing their
feelings. Independent as the girl was, however, she colored
under Somerville's glance of humorous comprehension, and,
twisting away from him, began a conversation with me. She
was wonderfully clever for her age, and amused me for fifteen
minutes with odd remarks upon Europe. She thought that
the French could never be a truly great people until they
stopped lying; it was very much against them, too, that they
had so little real respect for women; no nation could be very
virtuous or noble, in which women were not listened to;
women had more heart than men, and were therefore more
refined, more moral; nearly all moral truths were reached
through the heart and not through the head; such were the
philosophies of precocious Miss Genevieve.

Presently the Van Leers and Somerville went off on a
walk along the sea-shore, in order, as Robert expressed it, to
start up an appetite for prog; the mention of dinner reminding
me that I had made a long call, I rose to depart.
Miss Westervelt asked me to stay and dine, in family style;
but I had a previous engagement which obliged me to decline.

“Come back in the afternoon, then,” said she. “There
will be something going on. We shall either ride or fish.
You can walk over, if you like,—I know that you are a
wonderful walker,—and we will send you back on wheels.”

I thanked her, and accepted the invitation, so far at least
as regarded the evening. As for dinner, and the immediate
post-prandial hours, I had agreed to pass all that time with
an old acquaintance whose paternal mansion was one of the
chiefest architectural glories of the village where I was now
stopping. Does the public incline its million ears to catch
the name of that village? Really it pains me to keep my

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

many-headed friend and patron in ignorance, but I have
been counselled not to mention the geographical title of the
respectable place in question. Villages are so sensitive, you
know, and so very terrible in their vengeances! For convenience'
sake, however, I must call it something; and so, hoping
no offence, I shall make bold to designate it as Rockford.

p545-034 CHAPTER III. THE GAYETIES OF SEACLIFF.

[figure description] [Page 029].[end figure description]

AT eight o'clock of that clear June evening, anxious to
meet the pretty Misses Westervelt again, still more
anxious, perhaps, to get a satisfactory glimpse of the
mystery which haunted their family, I made my second entry
into the house of Seacliff. Mrs. Westervelt was in the parlor
to receive me, but seeming so worn and depressed that I
readily credited her morning excuse of illness. She had
changed considerably, and for the worse, since I left her on
the brow of the Righi: her complexion had lost colour, her
cheeks had sunk a little, her mild hazel eyes had faded; and
her whole look had a weary, discouraged expression, which
told of either invalidism or sorrow. She still retained, however,
that inspid grace, that soft, soulless charm of manner,
which made her so fascinating to some people.

“I am glad you came again,” said she. “I thank you for
this second call, really,—for I was very sorry not to see you
this morning,—disappointed, really. You know, of course,
how pleasant it is to meet old travelling companions; they
bring up so many recollections, and they seem such intimate
friends! But it can't be as great a treat to you as it is to us.
You are on the move and amused all the while; and we are
so quiet and lonesome in our little country place. Ah! you
remember how fond I used to be of balls, and operas, and
those things. Well, you will hardly believe it, but I have

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

got over all that, at least very nearly. I feel a little forsaken
now and then at Seacliff, but still I have no desire to go into
city life again. Matinées, and parties, and rounds of visits,—
I am quite tired of all that, I assure you. What you saw in
me abroad was the last flicker of the candle. I am as domestic
now as my husband, if not more so. Oh, it will be a
long time before you can come to this state of feeling, unless
you should have bad health or meet with some great trouble.
Trouble saddens one for a long while. I never have been
quite the same person that I was before the death of my poor
uncle who adopted me. Oh, you need not try to tell me;—I
know all about it by experience;—if people are gay once,
they are gay for a good while; but they can be sobered by
sickness and misfortune. I wouldn't have thought once that
I could be as much like a nun as I am now. You wouldn't
have thought it, either, if you could have seen how fond of
society I was ten years ago. Oh, it seemed to me like being
asked to Paradise when I had an invitation to a ball. But
that was foolish, of course; and I suppose that I am fortunate
in having outlived such ideas.”

Such was the style of Mrs. Westervelt's observations. It
will be seen, I suppose, that she was a woman of barely
average originality and conversational powers. Ten years
previous to this time, when her name was famous in the
Saratoga letters of Jenkins as Miss Van L—, she had
reigned in the second circle of New York society as a belle,
by mere dint of beauty, of taste in dress, of grace in dancing,
and of proficiency in etiquette. Now, through her marriage
with Mr. Westervelt, she moved in the first circle, but not as
a queen, because beauty, that mightiest wand of womanly enchantment,
had disappeared from among her treasures. Her
face and form were still regular and agreeable, but the most
flattering of mirrors could say no more; for leanness, that
gaunt enemy of American bellehood, had robbed her of half
her outlines at the early age of thirty-three. But she was
a harmless, genteel, sweet-voiced lady, an acquaintance to

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

whom you accorded an average amount of respect, an amiable
friend, an affectionate wife, and a kind mother-in-law, I
am certain, notwithstanding the hints of the embittered Genevieve.
Let us do her some little honor, for her heart was
stronger than her head, and that is not an unworthy thing
in woman.

After a few minutes of dialogue, she quitted me to receive
some people who had called over, in their own carriage, from
Rockford. I now slipped out of the parlor under the guidance
of Mrs. Van Leer, who led me into the library, where
the rest of the family were arranging the programme and
preparing the costumes of a series of tableaux vivants.

“Come along; we shall press you into the service; we
shall make you good for something; we are going to have
Rebecca and Rowena, the execution of Anne Boleyn, and a
lot of other awful scenes,” she prattled. “Mr. Somerville,
just look at this gentleman and see what he will answer for.
Won't he go in the execution?”

“Oh, exactly; just the person we want,” said Somerville.
“Six feet high; dark and determined; broad-shouldered
enough for a battle-axe; give an awful fierceness to the
tragedy; make a really tremendous spectator. He shall
have the second biggest hatchet, and stand by the scaffold as
a bloodthirsty lord, one of the remorseless enemies of the
queen. Mr. Fitz Hugh, have the kindness to blow up all
the ferocity there is in your nature, and let it blaze in your
countenance. Mrs. Van Leer will deepen the gloom of your
eyebrows with a piece of burnt cork. By the way, couldn't
we have another tableau, representing a devil trying to
carry off a soul, and an angel driving him out of the death-chamber?
Miss Westervelt is just blonde enough for an
angel; her sister would be a beautiful corpse, and Mr. Fitz
Hugh will play the devil; he is tall enough to make a very
majestic one.”

“Agreed! agreed!” exclaimed Mrs. Van Leer. “Mr.
Fitz Hugh, please to feel fiendish imme—diately, for we will

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

have that scene first. Now, who is to be executioner in
Anne Boleyn?”

“Some herculean person, of course,” replied Somerville.
“I think Robert is as near the true build as we can furnish;
besides, he has a tremendous biceps muscle,—for we must
have his arms bare. As for the ponderous king, your husband
will do, with some flour on his head and a pillow under
his waistcoat. We must ignore the absurd fact that the king
was absent.”

“Good!” said the lively lady. “King Harry, too! Why,
Henry, my dear, you were born for this very occasion. But
then,—as to specta—tors,—as to somebody to witness our
success,—there's the rub! We shall have to call up the
ser—vants, and send for Mr. and Mrs. Treat, who won't
come, of course, because its theat—rical. Oh! by the way,
the Capers of Rockford are in the other room. I'll go
and engage them to stay. We must have specta—tors, or
there's no use in acting. What a stu—pid place the country
is, to be sure, where people are so apt to live a great ways
from each other!”

“Do exert your fascinations, Mrs. Van Leer,” implored
Somerville. “Engage the Capers, and then come back to us,
for we can't get along a moment without you.”

Presently she returned, exclaiming, “Capers will stay.
Capers has agreed to witness our spectacle. Eter—nal thanks
to Capers! We must never cut Capers.”

Without Somerville, our wardrobe would have been a failure.
Theatrical habiliments there were none in the house
except a single costume of the times of Louis XIV., which
Mrs. Westervelt had once worn to a fancy ball. For the rest
of our materials we had to depend on a transfiguration of old
clothes. A lady's velvet cloak of obsolete fashion became a
royal mantle; a brilliant smoking-cap served for an earl's
bonnet; costumic anachronisms were disregarded; necessity
was the mother of invention; and the result was splendidly
illusive. We seized upon the back parlor, closed the sliding

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

doors, and arranged with a most jovial and human gabble the
demoniac horror of the first tableau. Genevieve Westervelt,
covered with a black cloak for a pall, was stretched upon
three consecutive ottomans, her beautiful face bare and still,
her long eyelashes depressed upon her cheeks, deathlike with
flour, her flaxen hair drawn smoothly across her temples,
and her hands folded on her breast. An infinity of sable
cambric swathed my stature, and drooped from my arms in
the form of most clumsy pinions, changing me into the similitude
of a fiend, black and ill-shapen enough to be very wicked
indeed. Behind a window-curtain hid Miss Westervelt as
guardian angel, in a morning dress of white muslin, with auburn
hair lying over her shoulders, and wings fabricated of
bridal veils. All things had been arranged by Somerville, at
the same time that he seemed to listen with the utmost deference
and delight to the dictation of every eager co-laborer.
He heard each one attentively; he smiled and said it was a
capital idea; then, he suggested his own plan, merely as a
sequel of yours; finally he put his plan into practice and
complimented you on the success of it. Each one of us was
persuaded to take immense credit to himself or herself for the
perfection of the result. I never saw such another insinuating
fellow as Somerville, nor one who was so strong in the
weakness of his fellow-creatures.

The drama was ready to open, and the lights were extinguished.
Mrs. Van Leer, her husband, and his brother,
hurried through the hall into the front parlor, to become
spectators, while Somerville and Hunter withdrew the sliding
doors simultaneously, exposing a sombre death-chamber
seen dream-like through the illusive gauze of a mosquito-net.

If ever there was a moment of unmitigated terror and tremendous
extremity on this earth, it was when I glided forward
in my tartarean drapery to the side of Genevieve, and waved
my ebon pinions, or rather fins, above her in significance of
monstrous, fiendish, and eternal triumph. Second by second

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

the horror deepened, and the cambric flapped a clearer affirmation
of the diabolical, the everlasting catastrophe. At last,
when human hope had fled the scene, when despair was at its
awfullest culmination, when the spectators in the front parlor
were shuddering with helpless sympathy, forth rustled the
guardian angel from the window-curtains, and flitted straight
at the exultant devil. Now ensued a noiseless but terrible
contest between the powers of light and the powers of darkness.
Four wings going at once; bridal veils against cotton
cambric; virtue supernal against vice internal; devil the
biggest, but angel a hundred times the handsomest; black
waving the highest, but white the quickest and most gracefully;
battle tough and tight, but Beelzebub slowly losing
ground, according to agreement. About thirty swings of the
bridal veils fairly took the conceit out of Satan, and he began
to cower. Downward he sloped, lower and lower, crouching,
sliding backwards, frightened, whipped, pursued by the conquering
angel, not the ghost of a chance, giving it up, and
slipping blackly out of a side door with an air of discomfiture
approaching to extermination. Then back to the bier glided
the heavenly spirit, and raised over it her gauzy wings
in expression of a holy, salvatory, eternal benison. The
drama was finished; the spectators clapped their hands
over the triumph of the good cause; the sliding doors met
each other half-way, advancing stickily on unmellifluous
castors.

“First rate! Splendid! I tell you, Mary did look like
an angel. Oh, Fitz Hugh! you was awful,” shouted Robert
Van Leer, roaring through the hall and exploding among us
with the enthusiasm of a bombshell.

“I begin to believe that the devil is fully as dark as he is
painted,” said Somerville, smiling upon me so graciously that
I felt flattered, and thought that I must have played my part
exceedingly well. “If you had been the very imp that Luther
threw his inkstand at, you could not have looked
blacker.”

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

“Beautiful! Charming! Did you ever!” exclaimed the
Capers in a chorus of admiration.

“His riverence got the worst of it,” giggled one of the
Irish servant girls, who had taken me to represent a priest,
and thus had totally lost the moral of the tableau.

As I had nothing to do with the affairs between Rebecca
and Rowena, I walked into the parlor, and was introduced to
the Capers. The family consisted of papa, maiden sister,
young lady daughter and boy of fourteen. Mr. Capers was a
tall, thin, pale, mild man, high in the shoulders, loose in his
coat and pantaloons, tight and white about the neck, with
light, tearful eyes, a Roman nose set slightly to one side, and
a chin like the after peak of a saddle. Miss Capers, the
elder, was a half-century plant, of much the same pattern
with her brother, but frost-bitten and tartish in aspect. The
daughter was eighteen years old, aquiline in feature, with
black eyes, and the general freshness of a healthy village
belle; the son, a stout boy, good-looking enough, but grimy
under the finger-nails, ill at ease in his best clothes, and
speechless with bashfulness. Mr. Hunter, who, like myself,
had no part in the next scene, had already got the daughter's
arm in his own, and was drifting away with her into the
verandah, under pretext of extraordinary moonlight effects on
Long Island. Falling in between the father and maiden
sister, I talked of tableaux vivants, as that seemed to be their
choice of subjects. The lady was theologically minded,
asserted her belief in the existence of the devil, dwelt
upon the awful lesson which had been taught by the tableau,
and asked me whether I had lately suffered any bereavements
in my family. I was obliged to confess, however unwillingly,
that for some years past the Fitz Hughs had not
been visited by the black horses, whereupon her interest
in me evidently diminished, and she swept over to the sofa,
where Mrs. Westervelt was painfully extracting a few syllables,
like grinders, from writhing Master Capers. Her
brother, however, clung to me, and demanded sympathy with
mournful eye and speech.

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

“Ah, sir!” he whispered, shaking his head and sighing;
“that little drama touched a tender spot in our hearts.”

I started, and felt really pained that we had exhibited such
a tableau; for I now observed, for the first time, that the
whole family was in mourning.

“Yes, sir, I lost my wife five weeks ago,” he continued
with a simple, earnest look, that was really curious, although
it made a strong appeal to my compassion.

“I am grieved to hear it, and offer you my condolence,” I
replied. “I sincerely regret it, if our tableau has pained
you.”

“Oh, not at all!” said he. Don't think so. On the contrary,
it gave me a melancholy pleasure; everything gives
me pleasure that reminds me of her. She was a very handsome
woman,” he added, after a pause. “You would hardly
believe it, sir, but she was as young looking as her daughter,—
and much handsomer. Strangers often mistook them for
sisters, sir. A very tasty woman in dress, too, sir. Her
death was an awful blow to me, and to us all, and to Rockford,
also, I am sure. Our minister, the Reverend Mr. Jacobs,
told me so. I had her buried in a style worthy of her,
sir. I thought I knew how she would like to be, sir, and I
went and did it.”

“A very graceful tribute of affection,” I suggested, considerably
puzzled by this eccentric though unquestionably
sincere mourner.

“Yes, sir, I think it was rather graceful,” he assented,
sadly but gratified. “I went down to New York and got the
most beautiful rosewood coffin that I could find. Then I had
it lined with quilted white satin. As for a shroud, sir, I
wouldn't suffer her to be put in an ordinary shroud, but I got
a white satin dress made for her, very expensive and very
tasty, with real lace frills down the bosom and on the collar
and cuffs. Lastly, I put a bouquet of hothouse flowers in her
hand. Oh, sir! she looked very handsome. Why, sir, when
I led Lottie, my daughter, into the room, and showed her how

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

I had arranged everything, she broke right out, `Oh, pa,'
said she, `I do wish ma could see herself.' That was just
what she said, sir, and it was pure nature.”

He had told his story, and was satisfied. I never saw the
man but twice after that evening, but I am confident that he
repeated that same narrative to hundreds of persons. A spell
seemed to be upon him, as upon the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge,
compelling him to find a listener and to rehearse to him
his quaint tale of bereavement and of consolation.

While I hesitated on the brink of his melancholy, doubting
whether to disturb the stream or to let it roll on voicelessly,
a note of preparation ran through the house, and all rushed
into the front parlor, to behold the next tableau. The sliding
doors jolted backward, and through the mosquito-net we saw
Jewish Rebecca kneeling to Saxon Rowena. Genevieve
Westervelt's flaxen hair, large blue-gray eyes, delicate
blonde features, patrician expression, and white shoulders,
did full justice to the daughter of Cedric, while Mrs. Van
Leer looked handsomer as Rebecca than she had ever looked,
I imagine, in her proper personality. Abundant were the
jewels; artistic, rich, and deceiving the foldings of the draperies;
the front lights so well thrown as to make the very
shadows ornamental. It was a still picture, unstirred by gesture,
and quite eloquent in its silence.

“Oh! I do think that is so lovely!” whispered Miss Lottie
Capers, with an enthusiasm which almost made her forget to
address herself to Mr. Hunter. “The other was horrid; but
this is perfectly ro—mantic.”

Mr. Hunter lost not a moment in adding his mite to the
impression of the scene, by declaiming the entire passage
from Ivanhoe, with as much fluency and exactness as if he
had studied it for the occasion. The sliding doors met again,
and Miss Lottie admiringly murmured, “What a wonderful
memory you must have, Mr. Hunter!”

The artful youth immediately repeated a long passage from
Alexander Smith, concerning stars, and, under cover of it

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

inveigled Miss Capers into the presence of the heavenly host
as seen from the verandah.

After one more tableau, the execution of Anne Boleyn,
which I shall allow the reader to make just as beautiful or
just as hideous as he chooses, we closed our play, and the
evening's pomp was put away like old furniture in the garrets
of memory. In a few minutes more the Capers took
their departure, thanking us so earnestly for our entertainment,
that we all felt flattered and asserted our vehement desire
to continue the acquaintance. Hunter was especially
emphatic in his professions; favored them with the death of
Hugo and Parisina as he accompanied them to their carriage;
obtained a particular invitation to call, from Miss Lottie, and
joked a good deal about her during the rest of the evening.
As for me, I thought of the rich auburn streams of Miss
Westervelt's hair, and concluded that the neighborhood of
Seacliff would be a delightful summer residence,—for to most
men, at all events to men who have no sisters, few sights are
more persuasive, more circean, than that of a woman's hair
gracefully dishevelled. I must see her thus again, I said to
myself; and for that I will stay a week, perhaps a month.
It was because our tableaux gave rise to this resolution that
they form an important event in my life, and are worthy of
being recorded in the present volume. But for them and the
consequent shower of gold which fell down Miss Westervelt's
shoulders, I should next day have gone to New Haven, and
next day to Boston, and next day, perhaps, to Nahant or
Newport, and so never become identified with the fortunes of
Seacliff, nor had a chance to write its history.

But there was one other thing which contributed to make
the place interesting to me, and that was an absurd curiosity
to learn the meaning of the singular conversation which I
had partially overheard in the morning. Looking round for
Mrs. Van Leer, I observed that she had seated herself near
Somerville, and was coquetting to keep his attention. Aha!
I begin to understand, thought I: flirting in a wife begets

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

jealousy in a husband; jealousy is the natural or unnatural
parent of matrimonial quarrels; matrimonial quarrels are
sometimes carried on too loudly in back boudoirs; the consequence
is that chance visitors overhear family secrets. I
looked at Mr. Henry Van Leer, to see him chafe under the
affront; but if he had passed the last twenty years in sleeping
with his fathers, he could not have been more drowsily
indifferent to what was passing. Perhaps I am on the
wrong trace, I said to myself; or else the man is a better
dissembler than I should imagine. In the mean time, Mrs.
Westervelt and Genevieve were whispering confidences in
the veranda, and Mr. Hunter was troubling the spirit of
the piano with some halt and lame reminiscences of Linda
di Chamouni. Miss Westervelt had ruthlessly retired to
put up her hair, and I waited impatiently for her reappearance,
for I was anxious to receive an invitation to
remain a while in the vicinity of Seacliff, and for certain
instinctive, emotional reasons, which any one can understand
easier than I can explain, I preferred that the encouragement
should come from her rather than another. She appeared,
but instead of approaching me, she took Hunter's place from
him, and played Linda passionately, enchantingly. While I
was deliberating whether I should sulk or turn the leaves for
her, Genevieve entered, seated herself at the other end of my
sofa, and started a conversation by asking, “Did you get
tried of Europe?”

“Not at all. The longer I stayed, the better I liked it.”

“I would have remained if I had been you. What made
you come home?”

“There were too many temptations to idleness and good-for-nothingness;
my Yankee conscience rose against them.”

“I suppose it is better to work hard in doing nothing than
not to work at all,” she said.

“Of course. It is more ridiculous, to be sure; but it is
more respectable, and it makes one happier.”

“It is a consolation to hear you say so. I work hard from

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

year's end to year's end, and the only result is that I am
dressed; a very trifling result, you see, for I am not tall.”

“The world does not judge the result of labor by quantity,
but by quality,” I replied with a reverential glance at her
tasteful attire.

“Oh, there I think that you are mistaken,” said she, without
seeming to notice my compliment. “In this country, at
least, people are more astonished to see a man do a great
deal, than to see him do anything well.”

“Perhaps so; at any rate, I am afraid so; although the
charge is a sharp satire. Still, such a feeling cannot last; it
will give way as we become more esthetic; no refined and
tasteful people judges in that style. Just notice what decision
the great world of intelligent humanity pronounces in
matters of art, for instance. Suppose two artists, one of
whom produces in two years four or five statues of mediocre
merit, while the other in the same time produces only one
statue, but that one an Apollo Belvidere. The world will
gradually forget the first artist, and put the second among the
demigods. It recognizes that the latter has not only done
better work, but more of it. He has cut less stone, but,
artistically speaking, he has performed more labor. Just
imagine how many expressions he has conceived and rejected;
how many lines he has drawn in his mind, or in the
clay, and obliterated; how many incomplete ideals he has at
last married and moulded into one ideal perfection. The
world feels all this, although it may not reason it out, and
arrives by instinct at the true conclusion.”

“I think you are right,” said she. “It ought to be so, and
I suppose that in the long run it is so. However, all these
subjects are out of the circle of us women, and I wonder that
you should take the trouble to talk to me about them. We
women are allowed so few ambitions, so few emotions, so few
efforts! Why, I scarcely know what you mean by temptations.
Our only temptations are to dress, flirting, idleness,
and crossness.”

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

“It is not the great temptations that ruin us; it is the little
ones,” said I, oracularly.

“I don't believe that,” she objected, shaking her head.
“What do you mean by it?”

“Why, it is very clear. If the devil never asked us to do
anything less than steal a horse, for instance, he would hardly
catch a soul. We should get frightened at his first demand,
and quit him forever.”

“Exactly,” she replied, nodding and laughing. “He is
wonderfully cautious and cunning; before he asks you to
steal a horse, he gets you to steal a pony.”

How clever the creature had grown since I parted with
her a year before! She was no longer a girl of sixteen; she
had suddenly become a woman of seventeen.

“But what are you going to do in America, Mr. Fitz
Hugh?” she resumed. “What great labors are you going
to perform, to make amends for your European idleness?”

Now I really intended to become an author, having already
got a book of travels on the launching-ways of a New York
publisher, and having projected at least half a dozen other
works in history, biography, and romance, with which I
meant to storm the world's attention. But I naturally objected
to making an ostentation of these facts,—and so I
replied simply that I was engaged in a course of private
study.

“Are you going to study in the city?” she asked. “Will
the Astor Library be necessary?”

“I should prefer the country, if Seacliff is a fair specimen
of it.”

“Why not come to Seacliff, then?” interposed Mrs. Westervelt.
“There is a boarding-place close by, just under the
hill. Our neighbors are plain people, but they would make
you very comfortable. We have had friends there before.
Why not take rooms with them?”

“Yes, why not, Mr. Fitz Hugh?” said Miss Westervelt,
turning upon me from the piano.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

“To be sure! It would be an act of the purest charity to
us,” added Mrs. Van Leer, with a sudden sparkle of interest
in her coquettish eyes.

Immensely flattered and gratified, I accepted the proposition,
although not entirely persuaded that the neighborhood
of Seacliff would be the most favorable of places for literary
application. It was late now, and I took my departure, with
the understanding that I should find my rooms engaged for
me when I came over next morning. Mr. Hunter was
obliging enough to drive me to Rockford in Van Leer's sulky,
and to drink three glasses of sherry, and smoke a couple of
cigars with his heels on my table. Such stories as the adolescent
told me under the inspiration of these modest stimulants!
Although doubt seemed almost wicked as I looked at
his persuaded face, still it was hard to believe that so young
a man could have seen so much life, been the hero of so
many adventures, and sacked the hearts of so many peerless
ladies. I felt obliged to respect either his precocious experience
or his imagination. The pace at which he drove away
was a furious one, and I went to my room hoping that his
neck was stronger than his head.

Some other questions gave me much more concern. Why
was it that the Seacliff family had set its youngest daughter
to invite me there, and not the eldest? Was it because Miss
Westervelt was engaged, or on the look-out for a richer or
more attractive match than Mr. Fitz Hugh? Finally, the
man who had no pity, and the woman who was in such imminent
danger of exposure, were they Mr. and Mrs. Van Leer,
or, if not, who were they?

p545-048 CHAPTER IV. DOMICILIATION.

[figure description] [Page 043].[end figure description]

HAD the reader been in front of the Rockford Hotel
on a certain bright June morning of eighteen hundred
and fifty something, he might have seen a
spruce young man getting into a shabby old barouche. He
was tall and strong in build, with black eyes, long and thick
black hair, aquiline nose, a forehead which seemed to retreat
above because it was so heavy below, a darkly pale complexion
and a moustache as ample and sombre as that of the
immemorial opera brigand. He wore a sober morning dress
of the English fashion, and one of those broad-brimmed soft
hats which the advent of Kossuth had lately made permissible.
Giving the porter thirty cents, which was a compromise
between his natural extravagance as an American and the
economy which he had learned abroad, he leaned back in the
barouche, lit a cigar, and told the negro coachman to drive to
the brown house just below the Westervelt place. If the
reader had asked me who the young man was, I should have
replied (remembering the title-page of Pendennis), that he
was my lifelong enemy, Mr. Louis Fitz Hugh.

A drive of less than three miles took me to my new domicile.
It was a dingy, small-windowed, huge-chimneyed, little
old house, with a short roof before and a long one behind,
reminding me vaguely of a chubby dog sitting on his
haunches. Thirty yards from the front of it rippled the

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

Sound, and two hundred yards to the eastward rose the low
bluff of Seacliff. In the doorway appeared the landlady, a
tidy housewife of about fifty, thin, angular and stiffish, but
with an eager, fluttered, kindly look which I felt to be a sure
prognosticator of respectful treatment, soft bed and good dinners.
Seeing that she advanced to meet me, I jumped out
hastily, and bowed to her with a more than ordinarily civil
“Good morning.”

“I do believe that is Louis Fitz Hugh,” she replied, running
forward with sudden animation. “I do wonder if it
aint. Now aint you the son of Mr. Charles Fitz Hugh of
New York, perhaps?”

“Not a doubt of it, ma'am,” said I. “Why—Mrs. Treat!
why, is it possible? Is this my old Ma Treat?—my old
nurse?”

“I guess it is, Louis,—I guess it is, if you ever had a Ma
Treat. Why Louis, how you have grown!” she continued,
catching both my hands and looking up at my summits.
“Oh, but you always was one of the tall sort. I almost knew
you couldn't stop short of six feet in your stockings' feet.
Well, you've come back like bread upon the waters, which is
found after many days,—Ecclesiastes, eleventh, first. Now
Mr. Treat will be disappointed. Now he will feel bad to
think he didn't stay to see you. I said it was you, as soon
as ever Mr. Van Leer came down to engage rooms for you
and spoke your name. Mr. Treat said it couldn't be, because
you was in foreign parts, and so he finally went off to
the man-that-makes-the-sailboats'-house, to get his sharpee
tinkered. But now he will feel sorry. Mr. Weston, (to the
negro,) you jest carry up the gentleman's baggage into the
front chamber—you know where—same room where MissPhillips-of-Rochester's
daughter stayed. Lewy, we've done
jest the best we could by you, thinking all the time perhaps'
twas you. Now do come in and set down and rest your legs,
while Mr. Weston carries up the baggage.”

Slipping the covenanted pieces of silver into the negro's

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

hand, I followed Ma Treat into her prim, puritanical little
front parlor; that sacred retreat which no dust or cobwebs
ever deformed, whence flies were daily banished, and
whither the feet of common mortality rarely attained; that
abode of curtained obscurity where the family Bible loomed
largely on the cherry table, and the hereditary brass candlesticks
stood sentinel on the mantel. In this sanctuary we
sat and talked of my early history, while my numerous
pieces of baggage trooped gradually up stairs on the shoulders
of limping Mr. Weston. Our lengthy and rambling
reminiscences amounted to the following commonplace narrative.

My mother falling seriously ill when I was three weeks
old, I was put out to nurse with a plain country couple
named Treat, who had just lost an infant of their own.
They took kindly care of me for two years, and nourished
me into a vigorous small-boyhood. My mother has often
related to me with a vanity for which I must of course pardon
her, how piteously my nurse cried when she was called
on to let me go out of the arms of that affection which had
become a second nature. It seems to me that I can remember
the woful scene, but as I have an equally distinct recollection
of two or three incidents which happened before I
was born, I sometimes doubt whether the picture of a weeping
woman holding a petticoated urchin, which exists in my
imagination, was not painted there altogether from hearsay.
Perhaps it was in some such spiritual manner that Joyce
Heth and all those other colored centenarians, of whom we read
in the papers, dandled the infancy of Washington. Well,
for years after quitting my foster-parents, I used to pay them
annual visits, generally timed to some great change in my
life, as, for instance, the occasion of getting my first pockets,
my first breeches, my first pair of boots. Pa Treat and Ma
Treat I styled them, in distinction from my parents, whom I
dignified with the more awful titles of Father and Mother.
They always had a cake of maple sugar for me, or a card of

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

gingerbread, or a cutter whittled out by Pa Treat's own jackknife,
or a pair of lambs'-wool stockings from Ma Treat's
own needles, as well as long stories about my wonderful
babyhood, when I bumped my remarkable nose, or cut my
extraordinary teeth. After I got old enough to be sent to
boarding-school, I began to lose sight of Pa and Ma Treat.
Maturer studies, Europe, the pleasures and interests of
opening manhood, broadened the distance between us, until
now, on my visit to Seacliff, it was years since I had seen
them or scarcely thought of them. To my shame be it
spoken, they had been the first to start up in recognition at
the sound of the old familiar name; and now Ma Treat led
me about the house with as much delight as if I were still
the same innocent two-year-old who had toddled away from
her in the lang-syne. She made fifty apologies for a neat
front chamber and convenient closet bedroom which drew
forth my warmest praises. She absolutely wanted to board
me for nothing, and accepted my own price with great reluctance
and mortification. After five minutes of shyness, she
fell back into the old nursery deportment, called me Lewy, as
she had done twenty-two years before, wanted to get me
some milk toast as if I still had my first set of teeth, and
would have held me in lap if I had shown the least desire for
that infantile privilege.

“Well, Lewy, I s'pose I must clear out and give you a
chance to put yourself to rights,” she said at last. “There's
water, and there's soap, and there's towels. If you want
anything, you holler, and I'll fly right up.”

She went out, and I unpacked my trunk. That done, I
consulted my watch to see if it was late enough for a call on
the Westervelts; but as it still lacked a few minutes of ten,
I did not dare to trouble the ladies, and amused myself
with taking a view of Seacliff and its surroundings. The
green bluff, on which stood the Yankee Parthenon, closed
abruptly to the south in a low precipice of awkward, ugly
granite, prevalent along this shore, worn and torn at the

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

bottom by waves, and stained adown its rough face with the
drizzle of earth and decayed grasses. It was no great affair
of a cliff, but there was enough of it perhaps to justify a
name for a country-house. Outward from it spread the
changeable green of the Sound, terminated southward by the
yellow sand-banks of Long-Island and westward by the verdant
treadings of the Connecticut shore, but stretching eastward
into a watery horizon which recalled the unconfined
sublimities of mid ocean. Other bluffs were sown at wide
intervals along the coast; and behind lay the low, desultory
hillocks of New England. On the east, a quarter of a mile
off, a marshy rivulet strolled indolently into the Sound, forming
a small haven where nestled a sloop yacht, a trivial
fishing-smack or two, and three or four of those fast, light
flat-bottomed sailboats known as sharpees. There were
trees, grass, cattle, houses, and church spires in the landscape,
and white sails in the sea view.

As I made these observations from a dwarfish knoll some
thirty yards to the left of my new residence, I heard the
voice of Ma Treat behind me, calling in impassioned tones,
“Here he is, husband! Here's Lewy Fitz Hugh, as sure
as you're alive. Here's Pa Treat a-coming, Lewy! and
glad enough to see you.”

I turned, and beheld a short, broad, stocky man of fiftyfive
trudging hastily along the beach, closely followed by a
duck-legged urchin of six or seven, at full waddle. Pa Treat
stumped up to me with a smile of mingled incredulity and
delight on his weather-beaten face, and, without saying a
word at first, shook hands for a period which, owing to his
tremendous gripe, seemed nearly equal to our separation.
Meantime Ma Treat, dragging duck-legs forward by the
arm, looked on with tears in her eyes and talked for the four
of us.

“Ain't he a tall one!” said Pa Treat, at last. “Who'd
a thought it! Why, Lewy,—Mr. Fitz Hugh, I mean,—
come in and set down. Dreadful sorry now I didn't stay

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

and help get up your thingumbobs. Had to hurry off,
though, hot-foot, down to the what-dye-callums.”

Pa Treat was a silent man of old, as my mother had often
informed me; and years, it appeared, had not added much
to his capacities for oratory. After the first outburst of excitement,
he subsided into a smiling taciturnity, only diversified
by an occasional friendly grunt of immense significance,
over and around which Ma Treat's conversation babbled like
a brooklet among pebbles. Into the little prim parlor I went
again, and epitomized my life since we last parted. So
prodigious was their interest in the narrative, that I half felt
for the time as if no man before me had ever got an education,
or steamed across the Atlantic, or landed at Liverpool,
or made the grand tour of Europe.

“Well, that's a great ways to travel,” observed Pa Treat,
taking a long breath as if he had just arrived, “hot-foot,”
from performing the whole immense journey in person.
“And here we've been doing nothing but sit round the same
old fireplace. Had troubles, though, if we han't travelled,”
he added gravely. “John's dead.”

“Yes, John's dead,” said Ma Treat, shaking her head
and winking watery eyes. “The Lord gave, and the Lord
hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord; Job,
first, twenty-first. Sally died, you know, Lewy, when you
was at school; and two years ago last winter, John's wife
died in childbed; and then, the summer after, John he died
of a lung fever; and now, Lewy, we're all alone except little
Johnny here.”

She reached her hand behind her and gently drew forward
the urchin whom I have already noticed. He had been sitting
on a low wooden cricket in the rear of her skirts, his
chubby face very solemn, and a trifle stupefied with awe, not
a leg, arm, or finger stirring, and his whole childish vivacity,
if he had any, quite extinguished for the time by bashfulness.
He was a broad-bottomed, high-shouldered, thick-limbed,
younker, the exact reproduction on a small scale of his

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

grandfather. At first sight he seemed a mere tadpole, whose
principal characteristics were a big belly and means of locomotion;
though afterwards, when I came to know him better,
I discovered that he had a soul as well as another. A painful
blush overspread his tanned features, extending from
forehead to throat, and very possibly down to his toes, as he
advanced in front of Ma Treat's knee, and speechlessly made
his short-necked manners. I patted his spacious back encouragingly,
and asserted my belief that he was a nice boy,
and a great comfort to his grandparents.

“Oh Lewy! we should be awful lonesome without him,”
said Ma Treat, much moved. “We bless the Lord-that-is-on-high's
great mercies for preserving him to us. He is, indeed,
a monstrous comfort to us. That is, when he's a good
boy,” she added in a solemn aside. “But sometimes his sinful
heart gets the upper hands; and then he's a great grief
to his poor old granpa and granma. A foolish son is a grief
to his father; Proverbs, seventeenth, twenty-fifth.”

Nothing could be more sepulchral than the tone with which
she thus alluded to the lad's natural, and occasionally, it
seems, ungovernable wickedness of soul. Johnny's small
flicker of self-righteousness went out under it, like a candle
in the breath of a mephitic cavern, and he drooped upon
his cricket again in a state of the gloomiest spiritual humiliation.
It was evident that if his brief legs were not early
trained to walk in the way they should go, it would not be
for lack of orthodox reproof and instruction on the part of
his grandmother. By way of changing a subject which
stung so sharply through the rents in Johnny's conscience,
I remarked that the old house still stood in spite of winter
winds.

“Yes; it's used to 'em I reckon,” said Pa Treat. “It's an
antic old house, and no mistake.”

“Antic?” inquired I, with some amazement, at the same
time picturing to myself a venerable brown dwelling dancing
madly up and down the shore to the tune of some ocean

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

hornpipe, or skurrying away over land to some witch revel
on the wings of a January gale.

“Yes; right down antic; my grandfather built it; much
as a hundred years old,” explained Pa Treat.

I saw that he meant antique. “And who built the house
on the hill?” I asked. “Mr. Westervelt?”

“No; another New Yorker,—Mr. Nathan Skelton,—
awful great bank and railroad man,—regular stiffy. I tell
you, he cut a swath. But he busted.”

“Some speculator tickled him into swelling and then
cracked him open, I suppose, as boys serve a bladder-fish.”

“No tellin'. Most all them New Yorkers do bust. I expect
it's their company ruins 'em.”

“Their company? Oh, you mean their visitors. So
Skelton had a great many visitors?”

“Acre lots full. Then such goings on! Such eating and
drinking! Such jigs and jigamarees! People driving up
night and day. But they dwindled down finally to pretty
much nothing but sheriffs.”

“And how do you like the Westervelts?” I inquired,
hoping, perhaps, that he would say something of the young
ladies or of the mystery.

“A good deal better. Ma Treat knows more about 'em
than I do.”

“Well, Lewy,” said Ma Treat, thus appealed to, “they are
pretty nice folks, though ruther curious. Mr. Westervelt's a
mild, meeching sort of a man, with no more harm in him
than a blind kitten. He makes me think of a lame rooster,
keeping away by himself and not crowing any, for fear the
others will peck at him. Mrs. Westervelt is mighty genteel,
but a leetle too lofty to suit me. Pride's a dreadful sin,
Lewy; and I, for one, can't bear it. Pride ruined Satan,
and pride can ruin you and I. Pride goeth before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall; Proverbs, sixteenth,
eighteenth. Remember that, Johnny. Sometimes Johnny's
proud, and then he's a naughty boy. (This in the glum,

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

funeral aside which usually italicized her allusions to Johnny's
moral baseness.) But the girls are real little darlings;
and Miss Mary especially is the sweetest creetur that ever I
saw, or Pa Treat either. Some folks think she ain't so handsome
as her sister; but handsome is, that handsome doos,
Lewy; and that sets Miss Mary on high. That's Mr.-Jacobs-that-preaches-in-Rockford's
opinion, too, I reckon; and glad
enough he'd be to get her, I know; and a splendid minister's
wife she'd make. Now Miss Genevieve ain't a bad little
thing, neither, and beautiful she is, to be sure. But then
she's mighty uncertain; you don't know what she'll do next;
you can't calculate on her, as you can on her sister. One
day she's as friendly and cosy as a robin-redbreast, and the
next she chatters and snaps about like a sassy cat-bird. If
one thing don't suit, nothing suits, and she has a peck for
everything. I guess she means to be kind-hearted, but don't
realize other people's feelings. Now Mary is quite different,
because she considers that there may be two sides to a question,
and that her neighbors have a right to their opinion as
well as she to hers. Then she's such a charitable, forethoughted
one! Whenever there's any sick folks to be
watched with, or any poor folks to be fed and sewed for, you
may cut around as fast as ever you can, and you'll find that
Miss Mary has been everywhere before you. Ain't it so, Pa
Treat?”

“Ex—actly!” said my foster-father with great emphasis.
“Always fixing up soups and jellies, and crinkum-crankums,
and what-nots, for somebody. The best, handiest, puttiest
little angel that ever I see or heerd of.”

“Well, I must go up and make a call on the little angel,”
said I, looking at my watch and rising.

“Do, Lewy!” urged Ma Treat. “Go right up, and ask
to see her particular. And if you can court her and get her
for a wife, Lewy, don't fail to do it. Ma Treat recommends
her, and she's a good one. She is the daughter who has done
virtuously and excelled them all; Proverbs, thirty-first,

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

twenty-ninth. I had sot my heart on having her for Mr.
Jacobs-our-minister's wife; but I'd ruther by a great sight see
you carry her off; and so had Pa Treat. Good-bye, Lewy.”

Smiling in my sleeve at the eagerness with which my old
nurse plunged into the matrimonial question, I ran up stairs
to get a fresh pair of gloves, and take a precautionary survey
of myself in the twelve-by-twenty looking-glass which
adorned my mantel.

p545-058 CHAPTER V. CEREMONIAL AND MORAL.

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While I was still at my toilet, voices resounded in the
little front yard, and presently Ma Treat bustled up
with the intelligence that Mr. Somerville and those
Van Leers had called to see me.

“Shall I tell them that you'll come down?” she asked.
“Our parlor is yours, Lewy, and you may do whatever you
like there,—smoke or what not. Don't you be afraid because
it's the best room in the house. The best room that we've
got is none too good for your company, Lewy.”

Without knowing Ma Treat or some similarly immaculate
housewife of the olden kind, it would be impossible fully to
estimate the immensity of the sacrifice which was contained
in that proffer. To smoke in her parlor was about equivalent
in her eyes to smoking in church; and I am persuaded that
to no mortal beside myself and my intimates would she have
conceded that fragrant privilege. Thanking her as she deserved,
I told her that it would be more agreeable to see the
gentlemen in my chamber; and in a moment afterwards the
naked staircase rang and the ancient flooring of the passage
creaked beneath the tread of my visitors. First entered,
with his usual forwardness and vivacity, the skipping-jack,
then the two ponderous Van Leers, and lastly Somerville,
suavely nodding precedence to his companions.

“Well, Mr. Fitz Hugh, what sort of a night did you pass

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

after our carouse?” said Hunter, flinging himself into a rocking-chair
and slapping his boots with a riding-whip. “I assure
you, gentlemen, that I consider myself a man of pretty
strong head; but for once the demon of wine was almost too
much for me, and I hooted and sang like a bacchanal all the
way back to Seacliff. Unless Mr. Fitz Hugh has the most
powerful nerves in the world, I think he must have got between
his sheets in a remarkably happy frame of mind.”

He spoke so glibly, so pleasantly and with such assurance,
that I really hated to spoil his story, although astonished at
its enormous exaggeration. Still, thinking it best for principle's
sake to set him right, and not wishing to make my debut
at Seacliff in the character of a wine-bibber, I expressed my
surprise at the effect of sherry on his system, inasmuch as we
could hardly have drunk more than three glasses a piece.

“Not more than three glasses, you think!” he exclaimed,
with a crestfallen look. “Why, I was just telling Mr. Somerville,
I think, that we must have finished the bottle. Didn't
I say something of that sort, Somerville?”

“Two bottles, you said, my dear fellow. But it makes no
difference. A bottle more or less is of no account.”

Mr. Hunter willingly retreated behind this frail apology
for his flight of fancy, and subsided into a momentary silence,
perhaps somewhat humiliated.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Somerville, “our visit is partly
ceremonial and partly moral. The ceremonial portion consists
in giving you formal welcome to Seacliff, when you
know already that we are delighted to see you here. As for
the moral or practical portion, I suppose it lies in accepting
your hospitalities. (I was handing cigars and matches.)
Thank you;—I vastly prefer the cheroots; they are milder
and sooner finished. By the way, smoking is quite a moral
exercise since the Reveries of a Bachelor were written. I
have a friend who reads that book through once a year, solely
for the purpose of enjoying his cigars in a proper frame of
spirit. He thinks that, with that preparation, one of these
weeds is equal to high mass.”

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

“If that is so,” broke in Mr. Hunter, “then I ought to
be one of the best Christians a-going. Gentlemen, I think
I am speaking within bounds when I say that I have smoked
more cigars than any other man of my age. Why, when I
was in college I never thought of going through the day
without puffing off at least thirty. I think you will allow,
Mr. Fitz Hugh, that that was a pretty fair allowance, considering
that I graduated at twenty.”

“You han't graduated yet, and you an't twenty,” put in
Robert Van Leer, rather gruffly.

“I am aware of the ill-natured justice of your correction,
Bob,” said Hunter; “but I shall graduate, and shall be twenty
on or about the same time; vide Family Bible and College
Catalogue. The essential of my assertion remains uncontradicted,
and that is that I have smoked thirty cigars per
diem.”

“Thirty cigars a day is enormous,” I remarked. “I wonder
you haven't destroyed your digestion.”

“It demands a constitution of iron,” he obligingly admitted,
but seemed to consider that a sufficient concession, and did
not offer to let my faith off at a lower figure. Later in our
acquaintance he retracted ten cigars, and only insisted on
twenty a day, explaining that the others were exhausted in
treating his classmates or purchasing the favorable countenance
of one of the tutors.

Meantime I felt a gentle craving at my heart, which no
observations concerning cigars could satisfy, and which, I
knew, would not be quieted, until I should be able to bring
up the Misses Westervelt as a subject of conversation. To
gain this end after a roundabout, undetected fashion, I turned
to the married Van Leer, and hoped that his wife and the
other ladies of Seacliff had not suffered by the excitement of
the previous evening. Before the slow creature's brain could
realize the meaning of my remark, Hunter answered for
him.

“Thank you, Mr. Fitz Hugh; my sister and cousins are

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

quite well. They will be happy to see you this afternoon, or
whenever you feel disposed to call.”

“I believe that the only person who has suffered in consequence
of the evening is Miss Capers,” smiled Somerville.

“Come now, Mr. Somerville! none of that! no exposures!”
exclaimed the skipping-jack, rising from his chair,
and striding to and fro with all the dignity of port that his
short legs would warrant. “A lady's name should be sacred.
We must make allowance, too, for the inexperience of a
mere country girl. When I told you those circumstances,
Mr. Somerville, I understood, although, perhaps, I forgot to
say, that the confession was made under a supposition of the
profoundest secrecy. I feel free to blame you for your imprudence,
because I am able at the same time to declare that I
never before knew you to transgress the slightest, the most
airy boundary of instinctive delicacy. It is the only error,
my friend, with which I have to charge you during all our
acquaintance. In point of fact, however, I can't find much
fault with you for it. The joke was too good a one to keep,
by Jove! Mr. Fitz Hugh, that young lady must be a very
sensitive one, who ventures on sentimentalities and quotes
love verses the first time that she ever meets you. But, gentlemen,
notwithstanding some slight indiscretion in Miss Capers,
I think I can assure you,—and I want you to mark my
words,—that if ever she has a year's experience of good
society, she will emerge from it one of the most entrancing
creatures that ever wore figured stockings. She has the stuff
in her to make a reigning toast of.”

“Milk toast, or dry?” asked Somerville, with a good-natured,
tired smile, like that of a polite man who has heard
insipidities enough.

“Mr. Somerville,” replied the original, stopping short in
his promenade and throwing out his right hand tragically,
“allow me to tell you that you are the most diabolical fellow
at spoiling poetry that I ever met. But I will answer: milk

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

toast, in her present state of pastoral innocence; dry, when
she has been held long enough to the slow fire of fashion.”

Quite satisfied with his final effort, he took to his rocking-chair
again, crossed his legs, fell back gracefully and lighted
another cheroot. I was unwilling now to recall the names
of the Misses Westervelt to notice, for fear that this voluble
youth might proceed to hint that they too had fallen down at
his feet and worshipped.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Somerville, taking advantage of
our small friend's brief silence, “I am very glad that you
have joined our little coterie. The circle was large enough
before, to be agreeable; but one or two more well-selected
persons were needed to make it a luxury. I don't think that
you will find time hang heavy on your hands. Indeed, it
would be no compliment to you to prophecy the contrary; for
I believe that, in general, it is only empty-headed people who
find their time a burden. Things here are decidedly pleasant.
I don't, of course, include myself among the attractions of
the place. I am a mere guest, or, in hotel phrase, a transient
and not a permanent. But the long and short of it is, that
there are just about women enough here, and just about men
enough, and they are all interesting.”

“Thank you, Mr. Somerville,” observed Hunter, nonchalently,
at the same time looking with one eye through a smoke-ring
which he had just exhaled.

“You will certainly find them so when you come to know
them better,” continued Somerville. “The salient point of
my friend Mr. Henry Van Leer's character is, that he has
one of the prettiest, handiest sloop-yachts that ever lay off
Hoboken.”

“That's a fact, Somerville, if you are a joking,” observed
the individual referred to, speaking for the first time since
he bade me good-morning and asked me how I found myself.

“As for Mr. Robert Van Leer,” pursued Somerville, “his
originality breaks out chiefly in shark-fishing. He will catch

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

his weight in sharks any day that the weather is at all favorable.”

“Double that, old feller; hooked about four hundred
weight of 'em one day,” was Robert's remark.

“Mr. Frederick Hunter I shall not praise,” added Somerville.
“Mr. Hunter will praise himself, as the jockey said
of his best horse.”

The two Van Leers burst into a loud laugh, enjoying the
sarcasm ponderously, and, as it were, hippopotamus fashion.

“Gentlemen, I insist upon justice,” exclaimed the satirized
youth, starting up and skating about in his characteristic walk,
one hand holding his cheroot, the other waving as if he were
addressing a jury. “I will not be tried and condemned at
the bar of my friend's wit, without claiming right of appeal.
I lay my case before the world and Miss Capers.”

“Interested parties,” said Somerville.

Hunter shook hands with him in recognition of the flattery,
and sat down again to his cheroot, satisfied with himself and
with all things sublunary. He was not annoyed at being
bantered by his clever friend, but took it as a compliment to
the force and conspicuousness of his own individuality; for,
incredible as it may seem to the modest reader, there is a
vanity so dense that it is proof against all wit, and can be
shattered only by downright billingsgate or a fisticuff.

I learned by this interview that Somerville was the social
bully of Seacliff, driving the men with the same ease that he
seemed to wheedle the women, and managing both with so
much tact, wit, and grace, that it was difficult for them to
detect his tyranny. He was just satirical enough on his
male comrades to make them afraid of him, yet not sufficiently
severe to provoke them into risking a rebellion.
I thought to myself that he would not be able either to
scare or hoodwink me, and I therefore suspected that some
day or other we should have a controversy. However, I felt
amicably disposed toward him for the present, notwithstanding
a slight pang of jealousy when I thought of the Misses

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

Westervelt; and knowing that he would be a dangerous antagonist,
capable of making a man exceedingly uncomfortable, I
resolved to avoid a rupture with him as long as possible.

“Well, Messieurs Van Leer and Hunter,” said he presently,
“I propose that we depart. We have bored Mr. Fitz
Hugh sufficiently, this morning, to make him free of Seacliff
hospitalities for all the summer. We must remember, too,
that he has a right to his dinner. I think I smell hot meat,
and I fancy that our friend's knife and fork are ready for him.
Good morning, Mr. Fitz Hugh. We depend on you for this
afternoon at three. Van Leer the senior, here, proposes to
put his yacht at your service, and let you hunt in his shark
preserve.”

“Very happy; depend on you, sir,” remarked the said
personage, concisely, but with a face full of sincerity. As I
surveyed that broad moon of stolid amiability, his countenance,
I could not but wonder that he should be a hard husband,
wearing matrimony like a crown of thorns rather than
of roses. His brother, Robert, slowly rolled out of his chair,
nodded, and lumbered into the hall, without speaking. Meantime
the skipping-jack uncrossed his legs, tossed the stump of
his cigar out of the window, rose to the fullest altitude of his
five feet four inches, and, by his whole manner, prepared us
for something very impressive in the way of a valedictory.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh,” he enunciated, “I never fancied shiptimber,
nor horseflesh, but I do know that I have a perfect
genius for Jamaica Rum. If you will call at my room, at
any time, I can offer you some of the rarest rum that ever
dispensed its perfume to the Atlantic breeze as it sailed the
Gulf Stream. Will you come? Ah! you will be very
happy—that is the old phrase. But, will you promise to
come? Thank you. Good-morning.”

The rhetorical flourish with which he uttered the commonest
things was one of the most amusing points in the deportment
of this young gentleman. When he bade you a good-morning,
it seemed as if he were taking you up into an

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

exceeding high mountain, and offering you the kingdoms of
the earth and the glory of them, so magniloquent were the
gestures, attitudes, and expressions which he contrived to extract
from his small frame and undersized countenance. As
he marched out of the gate I could not avoid overhearing his
judgment of me. “When I first saw that Fitz Hugh, I
thought he was a gigantesque wooden-spoon, and took no
notice of him,” said he. “But I was mistaken, and propose
now to cultivate him as much as possible. He is a perfect
gentleman, and a remarkably shrewd, well-informed fellow.”

“I understand,” replied Somerville. “He has turned out
a good listener, and that is all you want, you most sociable
and inventive of creatures.”

“Come, come, Mr. Somerville! I have already protested
against being judged on the merits of your satire,” was the
self-satisfied response of a man whose monstrous vanity would
not let him understand that he had been called a babbler and
a liar.

Somerville's prophecy, that time would hang lightly on
my hands at Seacliff, was agreeably fulfilled. Mornings, afternoons,
and evenings, I called on the people of the country-house,
walked, rode, drove, sailed, and fished with them, went
to church at Rockford in their double carriage, accompanied
them to an agricultural fair at Bridgeport, and assisted at all
their evening entertainments of dancing, charades, and tableaux
vivants. By the end of a week I could associate more
pleasant emotions with the spot than with some other places
where I had remained months or years. It was curious, too,
though possibly not incomprehensible, that as my affection for
Seacliff increased, just so, in exact proportion, did I become
more interested in the Misses Westervelt, one or both of them,
I could not tell which. The sentimental reader will perhaps
suspect that it was the Misses Westervelt chiefly who made
the place so charming. I will not undertake to dispute the
sentimental reader altogether; he is often wonderfully sagacious
in his surmises, especially concerning the feelings of the

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

young; and then my conscience tells me that, had the two
young girls been two old maids, I should not have gone to
Seacliff, no matter what mystery haunted it.

But the other members of our little coterie were also,
in my eyes at least, a peculiar people. Somerville was the
most wonderful incarnation of blandness, grace, and social
flexibility that I had ever met, reminding perpetually of those
famous carpet-knights, sans peur et sans reproche, the Chesterfields
and Richelieus of old. This idea of his elegance, indeed,
is taken from a young man's point of view, and it is very possible
that had I been a few years older, had I seen more of
society, his polish would not have seemed to me so dazzling
and incomparable. There was a noticeable difference between
his manner toward men and his manner toward women.
In the company of us male beings he had the tone of a man
of the world; clever, practical, feely exhibiting his superior
abilities, full of gay badinage, and often sarcastic; never irritating,
however, because his satire was conveyed in delicate
language, and sweetened with a smile of the suaviest friendliness.
“If I did not know your good nature and your excellent
sense,” this smile appeared to say, “I should not dare to
venture upon such an unworthy piece of pleasantry.” But
Somerville uttered no sarcasms, not even upon his masculine
fellow-creatures, in the presence of women. He thought,
perhaps, that no subject should be presented for their consideration,
which was not perfumed, roseate, halcyon, calculated
to bring out their gentlest emotions, or at least unlikely to
vex their fair faces with ungracious excitement. If he contradicted
them, his doubts were as insinuating as sleep, his
arguments an appeal to their vanity, and his adverse decisions
figures of speech. His whole deportment, indeed, through all
its ingredients of posture, gesture, look, voice, words, and ideas,
was a marvellously soothing prescription, perfectly adapted
to assuaging moral inflammations, producing cheerful opiate
illusions, and leaving the subject of treatment in a delicious
trance of self-satisfaction. Nothing could be more demulcent

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

and balsamic; it made me think of anodynes and cherry pectorals;
it was enough to cure a cold only to hear him talk.
Occasionally, indeed, I wondered whether there might not be
some harshness, some vulgarity of soul, under this downy
coating of courtesy. Might he not, like that fair dissembler,
a peach, have a stone for a heart? It was an interesting
question, but I let it lie for the present, not being able to
answer it.

Another person who deserved and got a great deal of my
wonder was little Mr. Hunter. Only nineteen years old, as
we have learned, he looked twenty-four and talked sixty.
He was one of the most braggart, garrulous, shallow, puppyish,
superficially plausible, mischievous, well-meaning, restless,
skipping creatures, who ever had a high opinion of
himself without meaning thereby to depreciate his fellow
men. He was not malicious, nor uncommonly vicious; his
failings, in fact, partook more of the character of suicide than
of murder: they were considerably to his own injury, without
doing much damage to others. His stature was small and
his weight trifling, but he was not in the least suspicious of
it. His conversation was nicotian and spirituous, hovering
with tireless satisfaction about the subjects of tobacco and
strong liquors, and dispensing a moral aroma which reminded
one of the odors of a bar-room. He had such high
sentiments of honor that I cannot blame him severely for not
always trying to act up to them; and perhaps it was in consequence
of his immense respect for the truth, that he usually
magnified and adorned it as much as possible. One result of
this last peculiarity was that his talk had an inexhaustible
variety; he never, or hardly ever, told the same story twice
in the same way; his freedom from the monotony of facts
was delightful. In short, he seemed to converse on the
principle that two lies make a truth, just as two negatives
make an affirmative. In all his communications concerning
his own history he acknowledged the existence of the ideal
Hunter much more distinctly than that of the real Hunter.

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

If, on any trying occasion, his Objective had told a cowardly
lie, when his Subjective had conceived a heroic truth, he related
the circumstance as if the latter alone had spoken, and
had thereby conferred immortal honor on the name of Hunter.
So of physical courage: the actual man sometimes trembled
for his person; the fictive man was invariably as brave as
Achilles; and the lion-like emotions of the latter were
reported as the deeds of the former. During the first few
days of our acquaintance I made various absurd mistakes as
to the identity of these two individuals, and, hearing of the
transcendent worthiness of Hunter the poetic, imputed it all
to Hunter the prosaic, who in fact was subject to the ordinary
weaknesses of humanity. By a little effort you can easily
see a common person's ideal standing up alongside of him;
and the loftier, the more ethereal it is, the smaller and
earthier it makes the poor reality appear. Hunter, however,
never could distinguish between himself and his parhelion.
He made a mistake in the morale which would be
very nearly paralleled in the physical world, by a man who
should ignore his own body and only acknowledge the existence
of his shadow or his reflection in the mirror. What
an extremely ridiculous blunder, and how fortunate for the
dignity of humanity that so few of us fall into it!

The Van Leer brothers would commonly be considered
very uninteresting individuals. They were as silent as
Spartans, and as stupid as Bœotians. Their intellectual and
moral nature seemed to be feeble and imponderable in proportion
as their physique was muscular and weighty. They
were so much alike that when one was present you did not
miss the other, and so dull that when both were absent you
did not miss either. Yet, in spite of this unusual vacuity
of character, they afforded another proof of the great rule that
no human being exists, whose mind, like his face, has not
some distinctive features, some indestructible expression of
individuality. They had a certain brute resistance, a vis
inertia, a “strength to sit still,” which unobtrusively

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

demanded, and finally obtained, some small measure of consideration.
Honesty of purpose, when they had a purpose,
was as natural to them as the hair of their heads; and in
their broad faces appeared a bovine modesty and mildness
which expressed the stolid benignity of their characters.
The only superficial difference between them was, that Robert
was the least taciturn and the most easily attracted. He
soon granted me his friendship, his trust, his confessions, his
admiration, and rather more of his presence than I would
have required if the choice had been left me.

As for his brother, it was weeks before I penetrated his
seven-fold bullhides of phlegmatic reserve, to where the blood
was warm and the heart was beating. One cause of this
greater reticence, doubtless, was that he had a wife; for the
confidences of a married man do not easily flow out toward
his bachelor acquaintance. He has another duct for his emotions;
he has told his tale to one who always hears him well;
he need not repeat it at reckless random; his desire for sympathy
is satisfied. And yet this poor fellow and his wife are
always quarrelling, I said to myself; for no other hypothesis
can satisfactorily explain the words of wrath which exhaled
through the keyhole of the boudoir. No wonder at it, I
added; they are totally different in tastes and temperament;
and her levity must naturally become impatient of his heaviness.
I had not yet observed how steadily Nature tries to
obviate extremes, and to restore endangered equilibriums,
by leading us to love and unite with our opposites. Tall men
marry short women; dull men marry lively women; and so
it should be. I myself was six feet high, and prayed for a
little wife, if any. Returning to Mr. and Mrs. Van Leer, I
confess with shame, that their matrimonial disagreement was
a humorous spectacle to me, and that I watched its symptoms
with a malicious gusto, for which, in all poetical justice, I
ought to have been punished by the gift of a Xantippe. In
a spirit of still deeper compunction, I admit that I one day
related to Somerville my eaves-dropping adventure at the

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

door of the boudoir. He laughed in such a constrained manner
that I took it as a reproof to my babbling, and proceeded
to stammer forth that very likely the whole proceeding was a
mere boisterous joke on the part of Mr. Van Leer.

“A charitable suggestion,” said he; “but don't be deceived
by it. Our friend Henry will have to go through several
processes of transmigration, and be a monkey at least once,
before he becomes capable of a joke. I am afraid that he
and Mrs. Van Leer are simply getting used to each other,
and wearing off their corners by attrition.”

About the only discord in the life of Seacliff was an occasional
sharp note from Miss Genevieve. At least once every
day she seemed to remember some unpleasant mystery in the
household existence, and gave tongue to a sarcasm or two,
meant to startle, I could not exactly swear whom, although I
always glanced inquiringly at the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Van
Leer. Clever and handsome as the girl was, I began to dislike
her as a tartar. But in spite of these little jars, my first
week at Seacliff was wonderfully pleasant, and lingers on my
memory now like an echo of gay music. Van Leer's yacht
played the chief instrumental part in our social harmony. In
this fleet, fragile skimmer, we waged fierce maritime war
against the sharks and other finny tribes, besides making excursions
to the Narrows, Long Island, Bridgeport, and New
Haven. Mrs. Van Leer always went, always got sea-sick, always
blamed her husband for it, and vowed she would never
go again. The rest of us were good sailors, and endured her
sufferings with much philosophy. The Van Leers considered
themselves very clever in working their coquettish little clipper,
and quite equal to taking the conceit out of a stiff breeze;
but, in case of a long excursion, they remembered the possibility
of a northeaster, and reinforced their seamanship with
the amphibious wisdom of Pa Treat. My foster-father was,
like Ulysses, a knowing navigator, and a much enduring man:
in a squall he could manage the yacht as easily as trundle a
wheelbarrow, and in a calm he could let the Van Leers have

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

their own blundering way. The only circumstance which prevented
him from being a perfect commander, was his entire
inability, except in a blow, to think of the right word at the
right time; for on sea as on shore he had temporary names for
things, and was in a fair way, if his influence should become
extensive and permanent, to make an entirely new speech of
the Anglo-Saxon, and necessitate a radical revisal of Webster's
Dictionary. The helm, for instance, was sometimes the
thingumbob, sometimes the jigamaree, sometimes the rinktum.
He used to amuse us immensely by observing, in his slow,
stammering way, that it was about time to furl the crimkumcrankum,
or to set the rigajig, or to port the what-d'ye-callum,
at the same time pointing with his forefinger to illustrate
his imperfect utterance. But it was interesting to observe
how this impediment fell from off him in a moment of danger,
and how clearly and promptly his orders came when the
yacht was dipping her bulwarks, and the sea was whitening
under the angry breath of a squall. Who has not known of
similar or parallel cases? Many an experienced surgeon feels
his knife shake until the moment that he applies it to the
flesh. I once travelled with a dead shot, whose hand used to
tremble like a leaf while he raised his weapon, but who in
the act of firing, was transformed to marble, and never missed
his mark.

But let us linger no longer among such helter-skelter
reminiscences of character and unimportant incident. Really,
these writers of books sometimes become excessively tedious.

p545-072 CHAPTER VI. EQUESTRIAN AND EMOTIONAL.

[figure description] [Page 067].[end figure description]

ABOUT a week after my domiciliation an adventure
befell me which I shall presume to call noticeable
because it made me, heart and soul, an actor in the
domestic drama of Seacliff. I had an engagement to ride
with the Misses Westervelt and Somerville, but on entering
the house at the hour appointed, I found the young ladies still
in their morning dresses.

“We can't go yet,” said Genevieve. “One of the horses
has cast a shoe and been sent to the blacksmith's. But
come in and wait. We can play backgammon till he comes
back.”

Instead of backgammon we chose cards, and amused ourselves
for half an hour with solitaire, old-maid, telling fortunes,
&c. I remember perfectly what a succession of thrills
I underwent when the magic slips of paper declared that I
was to be the young man who admired Mary,—who became
engaged to her,—who married,—yes, ye gods, married her!
I consulted Mary's face at each of these heart-shaking announcements,
and was disappointed, almost incensed, to discover
there only the faintest, the most ethereal of blushes,
and that perhaps the mere child of laughter. I would have
preferred something warmer than rose-tint, I had become so
singularly partial to the Misses Westervelt.

“I hear the horses,” said Mary, throwing down the cards.
“Come, Jenny; we must hurry.”

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

As she rose from the table her sleeve caught a miniature
case and flung it on the floor. Picking it up and rewarding
myself by opening it, I found it to be her portrait; a daguerreotype,
indeed, and therefore doing her blonde beauty unavoidable
injustice; but, for all that, remarkably like, especially
in the sweet expression.

“Ah, that is the only good daguerreotype that ever was
taken of me,” she observed, glancing at it over my shoulder.
It seemed to me at that moment as if my blood must be full
of little bubbles, like champagne. If the youth lives who can
feel, totally unmoved, that a beautiful girl's neck-ribbon is
fluttering and rustling against his coat-collar, he must excuse
me for regarding him with mingled curiosity and pity.

“Excellent! perfect!” I muttered, anxious to say something
nice about the original, but unable to think to the
purpose.

“I know three persons who are dying to have that picture,”
laughed Genevieve, looking back from the doorway.

“Am I one of them?” I asked, with an eager bluntness
which scared me.

“No,” replied Genevieve, very coolly, as she shut the door
after herself and sister.

I was painfully cut and offended, I remember, by this
reply, and wasted the next ten minutes in wondering what
the deuce the saucy little chit meant by it. Another annoying
circumstance was, that when we came to mount, Somerville,
as the oldest cavalier, took charge of the oldest sister,
aided her into the saddle with enviable dexterity, and set off
by her side as gracefully as he would have started in a polka.
Evidently I need not hope to eclipse him in the field any
more than in the parlor.

The mounting of the young ladies was their own, a present,
as I understood, from their grandfather, and consisted of
a perfectly matched pair of wiry little blacks, spirited and
speedy, broken alike to saddle and harness. My horse, the
property of the same wealthy senior, was a slender bay,

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

halfblooded, and the best animal that I ever bestrode. Somerville
had Henry Van Leer's beast, a dark chestnut, with white
feet, powerful and swift, but with shies enough in him to unseat
a squadron of dragoons. I began to feel, before we had
been long on the road, that if he should scare his rider to
death, or break his handsome nose, it would be no enormous
drawback on my happiness. I was very anxious to gain the
admiration of the Misses Westervelt, and Somerville was
making himself alarmingly attractive to them. By means of
his leading questions and Socratic stratagems of dialogue he
kept Mary constantly talking, except when he himself discoursed,
rolling out his superb mellow tones with a sort of
poetic elation quite congenial to the surrounding gay summer
flowers, the sweet exuberance of green meadow, and the
gladdening tide of sunlight.

Before long, I suspected that Miss Genevieve was even
more dissatisfied than myself with the division of our party.
She became sententious, sulky, and finally silent, taking small
notice of my many offers at conversation, and checking her
lively black until she rasped him into a foaming, snorting
tempest of horseflesh. I was surprised at this; the day
before, Genevieve had not seemed to like Somerville; to-day,
she was evidently annoyed by his preference for her sister.
Women are full of apparent contradictions, I soliloquized;
not so much because they are unstable, as because they are
restricted. Society will not let them speak frankly: but demands
that they should seem to avoid those whom they prefer,
and that they should often endure with smiles what they
detest. Upon this hint I spake.

“Miss Genevieve, do women often wish themselves men?”

She colored so quickly that I queried whether I had not
touched upon the very subject of her thoughts.

“Cé'st selon;—that depends,” said she, translating herself.—
“That depends upon what? may I ask. The woman's
nature, or her position?”

“Both, of course,” she answered, and then fell to

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

disciplining her horse, who had started at sight of a distant
scarecrow. As it occupied her a full minute to bring the
nervous creature into a snuffling semi-subjection, I lost the
thread of my remarks, and had to begin on a fresh spindle.

“Has any one ever mentioned to you a resemblance between
yourself and Guido's Beatrice de' Cenci?”

“My father has.”

“I am curious to know whether you can see the likeness.”

“No.”

Another paroxysm of disagreement now ensued with the
unfortunate black, who fairly squealed with indignation, and
evidently looked upon himself as a cheval incompris.

“Genevieve! Genevieve!” begged Mary. “Please don't
fret that poor horse so. Treat him gently, do, dear. He is
a good little fellow.”

Genevieve sulkily declined to reply, or even to turn her
head; but for a minute we cantered on peaceably, though in
embarrassing silence. Presently I tried a new topic, and
gave the wheel of conversation another revolution.

“This is a picturesque country in a small way. The presence
of sea view makes up for the lack of high relief in the
landscape. I wonder that more New Yorkers do not come
here to find sites for their country-houses.”

“Yes.”

“We were speaking the other day of the beauties of New
Haven. Have you ever visited Norwich in the eastern
part of the state?”

“Never.”

“Useless to ask your opinion of it, then. For my part, I
consider it one of the most fortunate towns in point of situation,
that can be found in the country. It perches on both
sides of a river, with high, irregular banks, which command
each other so perfectly, that from every salient point in the
city you can obtain a view of the whole. It has rare advantages
for showing itself to itself, and, so to speak, mirroring
its excellences in its own vision.”

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

“Like some people,” observed the gracious little lady,
without turning her eyes from her horse's forelock.

“Oh! you are satirical,” said I, quite desperate, “you
insinuate a charge of vanity. Well, I shall plead not guilty,
merely for form's sake, and stand a trial. Please to open
the examination.”

“I have none to make. I did not allude to you,” was the
discouraging reply.

I felt indignant at last, and resolved to let her hold her
tongue just as long as that should be her ladylike pleasure.
I was puzzled as well as annoyed; for this was the first
irksome interview that I had ever had with Genevieve, notwithstanding
her general independence and occasional captiousness;
and I felt tolerably certain, that I personally had
done nothing which could justify her in thus consuming me
with her indignation. Some one else had perturbed her, it
was clear; and I suffered, simply for the crime of contiguity.
There are certain persons,—we have all seen them,—whose
instinct it is, when they receive a wrong, to revenge it upon
the first living creature that comes within reach. They are
not necessarily termagants; they may have, at other times,
very gentle and generous emotions; but they are as illogical
and inconsiderate in their ebullitions as tea-kettles; they
know no better than to boil over and scald what is nearest.
Genevieve must sulk at me because she is separated from
Somerville, I concluded; for a girl rarely quarrels with one
marriageable man except for the sake of another.

On we rode for ten or fifteen minutes, glumly inarticulate,
and chiefly occupied, as I believe, in listening to the snatches
of animated colloquy which now and then reached our ears
from the pair behind us. Coming to a short, but steep rise
in the ground, where the road was guttered by recent rain,
and the footing uncertain in consequence of large, loose pebbles,
we drew up our horses and fell into a walk, so that
Somerville's conversation became distressingly audible. He
was evidently shining in his fullest lustre, and perhaps

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

sending his rays deep into the hearts of both the Misses Westervelt.
But on reaching the brow of the hill, a change came
over the face of things, and I, the opaque one, the unexpressed,
the unappreciated, suddenly found my moment of glory, and
put on a splendid halo. Genevieve and I, riding in advance,
had just passed a blackberry thicket, when I noticed an
Italian organ-grinder seated in its shadow, his uncouth
music-box towering above his shoulders, and that surmounted
by a little ruffian of a monkey in a scarlet blouse. Just then,
he rose to his feet and staggered abruptly forward, as a
heavily weighted man is apt to do when he suddenly overbalances
himself. Somerville's fractious chestnut shied with
great violence against Miss Westervelt's animal, bearing him
half round by sheer weight, and then dashed across the road
in such headlong ponderous terror, that his rider could not
prevent him from leaping a rail fence which divided us from
a sunken meadow. The black caught the panic, and reared
so violently, that Miss Westervelt nearly lost her saddle.
As he came on all fours again, he discovered the unlucky
musician, and, wheeling short on his haunches, went off like
lightning down the stony, dangerous hill towards Seacliff.

“Catch her! stop her!” shrieked Genevieve, losing her
presence of mind, and wildly backing her own animal;
while, giving the whip to my beast, I bounded away at full
speed after the fugitive, who by this time had gained a start
of twenty rods, and was increasing it rapidly. A horse,
running toward home, is not easily arrested short of it, so
that I did not much hope that Miss Westervelt would be
able to pull up before she reached Seacliff. I could see,
indeed, that she was drawing vigorously on the bit, and
even reducing her pace somewhat; and I took courage as I
felt the steady, grey-hound stride of the bay under me, covering
more than a rod at a bound, and lessening the gap at
every double: but in another moment the black's bridlerein
flew out in a single strand and swung under his feet,
broken, useless. I knew at once that Miss Westervelt had

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

lost all command over him, and I prayed only that she might
be able to cling for one minute more to her saddle. Her
horse now leaped out with all the power that lay in his fine
lathy quarters, and, though he ran very irregularly, reeling
from one side of the road to the other, he still ran with terrific
swiftness. Frightened as he was, however, lightly
weighted as he was, wiry, game, and spirited, he was no
match for the bay. His lean, light neck stretched to its full
length, his delicate muzzle pointed low, his thin mane flying
like a pennon of victory, my noble creature swept over the
ground with long elastic leaps, hardly jarring me in the saddle,
never jerking, never swerving, running as straight as the
flight of an arrow, and as stanch as a thorough-bred racer.
In less than half a minute, the black's lead of twenty rods
had been reduced to as many yards, and in ten seconds more
the bay was neck and neck with him. I lapped him on the
left, notwithstanding the risk of sheering against Miss Westervelt,
partly because I saw the broken rein flying loose on
that side, and partly because I wanted my right hand for the
approaching struggle. It had been easy to overtake him, but
it looked perilously difficult to stop him. From the moment
that my horse challenged him, he ran faster than ever, struggling
with all the pluck in his little body, and staggering so
wildly in his worry and eagerness, that, had I not forged
ahead of him in a couple of strides, Miss Westervelt would
have been badly bruised between his flank and the bay's.
As I passed his quivering muzzle, he flung it up in such a
way that I was able to catch the swinging end of the rein and
grasp it firmly. Now came the task of drawing in my own
horse, so delicately as to get him and keep him a little behind
the runaway's lead, yet not have the strip of leather
wrenched from my hold by any sudden plunge of either animal
forward or sideways. Of course I succeeded; the true
prince always succeeds on such occasions; if he did not, the
world would be as dissatisfied as he. The black's nose
swerved toward me, while his body swerved from me, until

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

he ran at a disadvantage; and in a hundred yards more, his
violent flight had fallen to a jerking, rearing, canter, only
dangerous by its irregularity. Still doubting my power to
check him altogether, I called ou, “Jump!”

Miss Westervelt leaped to the ground, fell once, but rose
instantly and ran to the roadside. Free now to pursue my
controversy with blackie, regardless of anybody's safety but
my own, I soon brought him to terms, and consigned him to
the hands of a stout farmer boy who came up from a neighboring
field. Dismounting hurriedly, and tying the bay to a
tree, I ran back to Miss Westervelt. She sat, or reclined
rather, on a bank by the road, her cap fallen off, her beautiful
hair disordered, her head resting on her palm, her elbow
on the turf, and her face so pale that I hastened to her,
more alarmed than I had been during the heat of the mad
escapapde. She did not change her posture as she saw me
coming, but she lifted one hand to me with a beautiful gesture
of gratitude, and her one sweet word was, “Thank
you!”

I bent over her;—I dared to take the small trembling fingers;—
I dared to kiss them once, twice, passionately.

“Thank you,” she said again. “Thank you, my dear
friend.”

“Oh, God bless you!” I cried. “I am glad I had strength
given me to do it.”

I had found out which of the Misses Westervelt it was
that had brought me to Seacliff, that had kept me there, and
that could keep me there during life. It was a blessed discovery
to me, but I am afraid that the great world will not
properly appreciate it. Let us say no more on the subject,
for if I give myself full speech, I shall appear like a fool to
that large and respectable class of people whose hearts cannot
keep step with other men's, and whose ideas, like the
works of a watch, are always tightly encased in the precious
metals.

Horses' feet were heard not, furiously trampling the road

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

behind us; and looking round, we saw Genevieve coming at
full speed, closely followed by Somerville.

“You are not hurt, Miss Westervelt?” asked the latter,
when he reached us. “Did you stop him, Mr. Fitz Hugh?
Then you did a hard thing.”

Genevieve sprang from her horse, and covered Mary's
face with kisses and tears. Turning to me at last, she
thanked me over and over again, with a very humility of
fervor, which, I felt assured, was partly prompted by a remorseful
remembrance of her late unsociability. Presently
I shifted Miss Westervelt's saddle on to the bay, and we
mounted again, but only to canter slowly back to Seacliff.

Immediately on our arrival, my gallantry was promulgated
in the most flattering manner, through the well-oiled and melodious
trumpet of Somerville. He praised me so delicately
and gracefully, he threw in such a humorous allegro concerning
his own forced escapade into the meadow, he sounded the
danger of Miss Westervelt in such pathetic notes, that he
actually appeared to better advantage in telling the story
than I in being the hero of it. Certainly, it is an enviable
thing to be an accomplished man of the world, never at a loss
for a bow, a smile, a good saying, and a compliment. Seated
as I was in the state-coach of my illustrious deed, I could not
help feeling belittled by the presence of Somerville, even
while he had the air of walking uncovered before me, and of
blowing, “Hail to the chief who in triumph advances!”
But my friends were not quite charmed by him into an entire
forgetfulness of my merits. Mrs. Westervelt thanked me,
and pressed my hands with such a simple, natural warmth
of feeling, as melted away all her waxen affectations, and
made her seem for a moment like a deep-souled, earnest
woman.

“Be mod—est now, Mr. Fitz Hugh,” whispered Mrs. Van
Leer. “You have a claim on my cousin, but don't ask too
much. You gentlemen are so exigeant!”

“Brayvo! your'e a trump, Mary,” said Henry Van Leer,

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

more stirred than was his heavy wont. “Glad you kept
such a stiff upper lip. Little hoss run like a lamplighter;
did he? Wish I'd been there to see it. Brayvo for the
bay! he's a regular flyer, and no mistake. I wish my hoss
hadn't bolted, though; it would have been such a pretty
race! I say, Fitz Hugh, I'll run my hoss against the bay
with you for anything you want to name, and me the heaviest
weight.”

One other person took upon himself to be so officiously
and boisterously grateful for my salvatory exploit, that he
gave me a sensation of uneasiness unpleasantly akin to jealousy.
This was my beefy erony, Robert Van Leer, who
clamored about me like a happy earthquake, fairly astonishing
me by the volubility which took the place of his usual
aptitude for silence. If my Egyptian mummy should clap
me on the shoulder, and enter into an animated discourse
concerning his eternal obligations to me for delivering
him from the catacombs, I should not be much more surprised
than I was at this garrulous outburst of emotion in
Robert.

“Oh, Fitz Hugh! my dear feller!” he roared, dragging
me to one side so that he could shake my arms off without
being interrupted. “I thank you,—I do, old feller,—from
the bottom of my heart. I say, I'm so glad you was there
to put in and help her, that I don't know whether I'm on my
head or heels.”

Miss Westervelt blushed, and hurried out of the room,
muttering something about changing her dress. The other
ladies followed; Mrs. Westervelt and Genevieve smiling in
an embarrassed way; Mrs. Van Leer laughing outright with
gay malice. The light-hearted, heavy-brained youth noticed
them no more than if they had been thistle-downs blowing
by, and kept right onward in his boisterous, thankful eloquence.

“I tell you, Fitz Hugh, Bob Van Leer's your friend, from
this time forward and forever. If there's anything in the

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

world that I can do for you, just let me know what it is,
that's all, now won't you, old feller?”

“Very good,” said I, a little annoyed. “The first
favor I wish to ask is that you won't crush my hands
to pieces. I may want them again, for some purpose or
other.”

“What! did I hurt you, old feller?” he exclaimed, dropping
my numbed fingers, and beginning to slap me violently
on the back in a paroxysm of athletic remorse. “I'll be
hanged if I meant to, and I'm sorry, by Jove! I am. But,
you see, I didn't know what I was about. I tell you, I'm so
glad you went in and saved her, that I feel as if I could bile
over. Come right up to my room and take a drink of
brandy; you must want it, my dear feller. My room is
close by hers, and I want to be in it now, so as to feel as if I
was near her, you know. By Jove! I can scarcely believe
yet that she's safe there, and not on that infernal black.
Come up, and perhaps we'll hear her talking, I love to hear
her there, of mornings; her voice sounds so sweet, and—and
angel-like, you know; only the blasted walls are so thick that
I can't understand a word she says.”

May you get your neck broke, you officious boor! I
thought, as I stared him in the eyes with a grimness which
made poor return for his gaze of affection. If the black
would run away with you to Patagonia, I should take it as a
favor. What do you mean by your stupid, intermeddling
gratitude? Room opposite hers, where you can hear her
voice of mornings! oh, good heavens! that is too bad.

I declined the offer of brandy, and retreated sulkily to my
own lodgings, but could not shake off my grateful tormentor.
Catching hold of my arm, and griping it hard, as if he were a
constable and I a pickpocket, he clung to me, blundered into
my room, lit a cigar, flung himself on the lounge, and talked
uninterruptedly until I told him that it was dinner-time.
Never before had I seen him when he was able to take the
lead, or even to show in the ruck of a conversation; but

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

his heart was fairly astride of his tongue now, and he had
more to say than I found agreeable to hear.

“I suppose, Fitz Hugh,” he ran on,—“in fact I've no doubt
you are puzzled why I should be so much obliged to you for
saving Miss Mary. It isn't for every woman that I'd thank
you in this way,—no, no! If half the girls I'm acquainted
with should get flung, and break their bones, whalebones and
all, I wouldn't care much. But Miss Mary, you see, is different
to me.”

She was indeed so different, that his bass voice trembled,
and his great brown eyes filled with tears as he suddenly
turned his face from me.

“Yes, she's very different,” he resumed, and then added,
after searching for a word which could faintly express his
emotions,—“tremendously different. Fitz Hugh, I'll—I'll
tell you all about it.”

“No, don't,” said I, hardly knowing whether to laugh or
get angry. “Don't make me your confidant. If you are in
love with her,—if that is what you are going to say,—don't
swear me to any secrecy or good faith on the subject. I may
take a fancy to fall in love with her myself.”

“You fall in love with her!” he laughed. “She wouldn't
have you. Why, I've known her ever since she was a child;
and then my cousin is married to her father. I always liked
her, even when I was a little chug—always! But I never
felt particular towards her,—not different, you understand,—
till she got grown up and wore long dresses. I tell you,
when she went to Europe, it cut into me dreadfully, and I
wanted to go along with them. But I couldn't; father was
alive then, and would put me through College. It took me an
awful long while to graduate, Fitz Hugh,” he parenthesized,
with a sigh of weariness at the recollection; “it took me six
years to scuffle through, when other fellows, you know, do it
mostly in four. It almost wore me out, Fitz Hugh, and I've
been resting my head ever since. Well, when she came
back, full-blown and handsomer than ever, and all dressed up

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

in Paris rig, and speaking ever so many foreign languages,
French and what-not, a blasted sight easier than I could read
Latin with a grammar and dictionary,—when she came back
so,—as she is now,—you may believe that that put a finisher
to me. I'll be hanged if I didn't fall in love at first sight. I
tell you, Fitz Hugh,—in confidence, you understand,—that
I'm bound up in that girl; and they all know it, every one
of them; the old man knows it, and Mary knows it. You see,
the old man, (I mean Mary's father,—not Westervelt, senior,
who's as rich as Crœsus,) the old man would be glad to get
both his daughters off his hands. He's short of funds almost
always; has to shin it a good deal, they say, to get along;
and he's borrowed a few thousands of me under extra pinches
in the money market. The fact is, he depends on me to help
him out of a speculation, now and then; and so, naturally, he
feels uncommon friendly and anxious for a closer acquaintance;
do you take? Well, now, Fitz Hugh—by Jove, old
feller! here's an idea,—suppose you take Genevieve; then,
there's both the girls settled at once. By Jove! I never
thought of that before, but it's a good egg. What do you
say, old boy?”

“But it seems to me that Somerville is a favorite with
Miss Genevieve,” I replied, not anxious to commit myself to
his proposition. “I couldn't trump such a player as he. It
seems to me that I am out of the game.”

“Somerville be hanged!” observed Bob. “No, he ain't a
favorite with Genevieve, neither, and he don't want to be. I
don't know what he comes here for. I sometimes wish he'd
stay away, for he's too confounded elegant and insinuating to
please me; but Sis (that is Henry's wife) thinks he's ever so
fine a feller, and will have him invited. Don't you be afraid
of Somerville. He's great family, I know,—tip-top aristocratic;
but his father has turned him off,—cut him completely,—
don't give him a cent. He hasn't the first solitary
red; and Westervelt couldn't afford a poor son-in-law. Now
I'm just the sort that he can afford; for father left me and

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

Henry a cool two hundred thousand a-piece. I an't bragging,
Fitz Hugh, that an't my way, I assure you; but I want to let
you know just how things stand.”

“Well! now, my dear man!” said I, suddenly assuming a
serious air, which, in point of fact, well befitted my feelings,—
“do you mean to say that you are engaged to Miss Westervelt?”

“Engaged!” he repeated, with an earnest, troubled stare,
as if the idea of a formal betrothal were new to him, and at
the same time daunted him by its delicate difficulties. “Do
you mean engaged with a ring, and all that? Why, I haven't
exactly pinned her down to it;—I haven't kissed her, nor
anything of that sort, you know. But then—why, it's all as
good as settled, I reckon, Fitz Hugh,” he added, brightening
up again. “Mrs. Westervelt is my cousin, and of course
agreeable; and as for the old man, I know he's delighted at
the idea; he as much as told me so when he borrowed the
last batch of money.”

“Oh!” returned I, with a sigh of relief, which would have
gone far to make him throw a chair at my head, could he
have understood it. Mary had not pledged her word to this
fellow; that I felt certain of, and that was ecstasy.

“And so, Fitz Hugh,” concluded Bob, who had been retracing
the thread of his discourse to discover why he had
begun it,—“so you see what it is makes me so grateful to
you. I wish I could have saved her in your place; but, for
all that, I say again, thank you!”

“Very good,” I returned. “Much obliged to you in a
small way. Now, then, take yourself off, or I shall invite
you to eat dinner with me, and you know that you are not
fond of boiled beef and greens.”

His face shining with happy abstraction, he lounged away,
making my stairs creak despairingly under his cumbrous
descent. For a little while I felt as if his heavy footstep
were on my heart also. The possibility that this coarse,
earthy creature might climb on his pile of filthy lucre up to

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

my cloud-castle, break into it with the aid of Mr. Westervelt,
and make prize of the “rare and radiant maiden” whom I
had just hidden there, was altogether too terrifying to be
contemplated calmly in the seesaw repose of my rocking-chair.
I rose and walked about the room uncertainly, from
side to side, from corner to corner, very nearly as unhappy as
if I had not saved Miss Westervelt, and she had suffered
some grievous harm. Then the recollection of the rescue
intervened and swept me off into a comforting reverie, half
sentimental, half amusing. I had met a beautiful lady in
alien lands;—I had lost her among awful mountain gleams
and thick vapors; — I had tracked her over multitudinous
billows, and found her once more;—I had seen her flying in
extremest peril, with death following hard after;—I had
spurred a fiery steed to her succor and saved her, regardless
of my own life; and now I seemed justified before all men
in demanding her eternal love as my guerdon. This was
romance; this was what I had read of; this was what I had
often fancied. What youth old enough to wear a dress coat,
has not a hundred times, in his imagination, delivered this or
that lovely girl from the jaws of death, and then, without further
trouble, or any danger of refusal, claimed her grateful
heart, to accept or reject it as he chose? Yes, the adventure
was a realization of one of my boyish dreams, and all the
more astonishing for that very reason, because so few of those
same dazzling visions had ever been verified. It was not a
novelty in some respects, certainly: the idea was trampled
threadbare centuries ago by a crowd of poets and romancers;
the Perseuses have been saving the Andromedas ever since
the days of the Greeks, and earlier; the brave deserved the
fair, I doubt not, in the good old times when Cain built the
first city; but, nevertheless, I have observed that such things
rarely happen to people of my acquaintance. I declare
frankly, though with proper shame, that Miss Westervelt is
the only lady that I ever rescued from anything like mortal
peril. I shall have no more such glorious exploits to boast

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

of, and I hope therefore that the reader will permit me to talk
of this at my pleasure. He may have multitudinous flocks of
such incidents in his mind or even in his history; but I warn
him that this is my one ewe lamb, and that I shall make a
woful outcry if I am robbed of it.

p545-088 CHAPTER VII. A MOTHER IN ISRAEL, AND TWO SONS OF BELIAL.

[figure description] [Page 083].[end figure description]

Ever since the commencement of authentic history,
at least, men have been pretty punctual at dinner,
whatever might be their passions and aspirations,
their joys and their sorrows. Fixed times for meals are one
proof of civilization; it is only animals, children, Hottentots,
and other savages, who eat at any and every hour of the
day; and so, in my character as citizen of an enlightened
republic, I obeyed Ma Treat's prandial summons, although
not hungry.

My respected foster-parents, their chubby grandchild, and
I, just filled the four sides of a small cherry table, spread now
with a clean brown linen cloth, and laden with fried fish,
boiled corned beef, boiled greens, baked potatoes, lettuce, and
dried-apple pie. Pa Treat asked a blessing in his usual
stammering style, but with an uncommon tremor of emotion.
Before long, I observed that Johnny was staring at me in
even more reverential wonder than ordinary, and that Ma
Treat's moon-like, silver-bowed spectacles shone upon me
with an unusual effulgence of affectionate pride and interest.

“Ah, Lewy!” said the good creature, at last, “we know
all about it, and you needn't keep so silent and secret. I do
bless God sincerely that he spared your life, and that he gave
you strength to save that dear child's life. Oh, Lewy! a
horse is a vain thing for safety; Psalms, thirty-third,

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

seventeenth; and I'm afraid whenever I see anybody trust one;
and I do say that it's one of the greatest mercies of
Heaven—”

Here her voice broke down and crumbled away to an indistinct
whimper; she drew out her handkerchief, smothered
her emotions, and wiped her spectacles.

“That's so,” coincided Pa Treat; “not that all hosses are
quite so awful; but a runaway is the dragon.”

“Oh, it wasn't so serious an affair as you imagine,” observed
I, a trifle flattered, however, at the immediate spread
of my fame. “But who was in such a hurry to tell you of
it?”

“Why, I just went up to the great house, to show them
Irish helps of Mrs. Westervelt's how to bake an Injun puddin',”
said Ma Treat. “Stupid, awkward, catholic creeturs
they are to be sure; and I wish they'd stay in their own
popish countries and worship their saints to home. But Mrs.
Westervelt, she was down in the kitchen, and she let me
know the whole story, and she told it real handsome too,
Lewy, with her heart in her mouth. I declare I was so
scared, and proud, and glad, and grateful, I like to cried
right in the puddin'. Says I, Mrs. Westervelt, says I, I
don't wonder at it a bit, says I, for he was the finest, handsomest,
strongest, best-hearted baby that ever was, and it's
just like him; yes, Mrs. Westervelt, says I, it's just what I
should have expected of him, for I nursed him, and I know
exactly what a nater he had, says I. Mrs. Westervelt she
nodded and looked as amiable as pie, as much as to say that
she was glad to hear it. And now, furthermore, Mrs. Westervelt,
says I, if Miss Mary don't take a liking to him, and
say Yes just as soon as he asks the question, I say that she's
an unnateral, ungrateful girl, not worth paying any attention
to, and ought to die an old maid, says I. Mrs. Westervelt
she smiled, and says she, I think he ought to stand a good
chance. Yes she did, Lewy; you needn't laugh so; she said
just that, and looked as though she could say a sight more;

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

only she wouldn't, I suppose, for fear it would seem like
courting you right out.”

“But, Ma Treat, what if you have been spoiling my
chances!” was my answer. “I fancy that young ladies dislike
to be dictated to in love affairs. They want their
matches made in heaven, unsuspected by their earthly fellow
creatures, and not certainly known even to themselves
until the decisive moment. They like to move in a mysterious
way, and not have the world pointing out their goal.
You will surely ruin my prospects with Miss Westervelt if
you keep on as you have begun. She won't bear being told
that I am to win her without an effort. Depend upon it,
that, like other handsome girls, she means to be loved long
and well before she loves back. Don't you see that you
have been setting up her pride against me?”

“Not a bit of it, Lewy,—not one bit of it, I tell you,” responded
Ma Treat resolutely, but looking a little alarmed.
“No, Lewy, she ought to govern her pride, and favor you because
you deserve it, without thinking any such foolish nonsense
as you've been talking of. However, I won't say
nothing more about it up there; not another word, Lewy.
You shan't say that I go a-doing you mischief.”

Ma Treat was touched, but I did not attempt to soften her
annoyance, because I wanted to keep her well-meaning, voluble
tongue under bonds of discretion. For the present her
feelings found vent in lecturing Master Johnny. That hearty
youngster, moved doubtless by original sin, had already devoured
two platefuls of greens, and being refused a third,
stuck out his under lip silently but vindictively.

“Johnny! Johnny!” said Ma Treat with exceeding glumness,
“take in that under lip; pull it right in or I shall snap
it. Oh, Johnny! Johnny! how often has granma told you
to govern your temper! and Johnny don't do it. It's your
wicked, sinful heart, Johnny, that sticks out your lip. As a
man thinketh in his heart, so he is; Proverbs, twenty-third,
seventh. It's the original sin of your wicked nater; that's

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

the trouble, Johnny; and not because you haven't had greens
enough. Now eat your potato, and try to put down your
naughty heart. See! Mr. Fitz Hugh is looking at you, and
granpa is looking at you, and granma is looking at you, and
the angels are looking at you, and they all feel sorry to see
your sinful disposition.”

Johnny slowly sucked in his rebellious lip; his eyes rose
dolefully to mine, and dropped in profound humiliation; he
swallowed his potato and his spunk together. The one sorrow
of this healthy urchin's life, was the excessive difficulty
of being a good boy. To attain this distinction, at least in
the estimation and according to the teachings of his grandmother,
it was necessary to undergo labors and trials compared
with which a barefooted pilgrimage round the world
would have been a trifle. He must be blameless in deed,
word, and thought; eschew alike sins of commission and
sins of omission; resist the world, the flesh, and the devil;
love all Orthodox Christians, indiscriminately; desire vehemently
the conversion of the heathen; set much store by the
restoration of the Jews to Canaan; understand the prophecies,
and take an interest in their fulfilment; anticipate with
perpetual longing and gladness the coming of the millennium;
besides several minor duties, such as hankering after his catechism,
keeping Sunday, and obeying his grandparents. All
these excellent works, moreover, he was to perform, not because
he liked to be obliging, not out of any good natural
instincts, but from the most mystical and spiritual, the most
unchildlike, the most unearthly of motives. And finally,
when all was said and done, he was to get no manner of
praise for it, because he was still a miserable, detestable victim
of the original sin entailed upon him by his remote
ancestor, Adam. In fact his intrinsic and necessary wickedness
was enforced upon him by his grandmother, with a theological
rigor, and, as it were, ferocity, which appeared to
leave him small hopes of ever becoming anything better than
a perfected scapegrace. She represented him as buried

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

under an amount of original and acquired iniquity that might
have thrown a small universe into despair; as full of every
evil imagination, capable of committing any crime, and more
than ordinarily responsible for the expulsion from Eden, the
flood and other judgments. Indeed, if Ma Treat's words
were worth anything, Johnny's case was entirely desperate,
both for this world and the world to come. Yet, in spite of
the fiendish wickedness which she constantly attributed to
him, Ma Treat, by some strange contradiction, was exceedingly
fond of Johnny; and if the fat little demon fell down
stairs, or had an indigestion, she worried and watched, and
even cried over him as if she were in peril of losing a cherub.
It was a curious commentary on her hard, literal system of
divinity, and showed that the same was believed by her head
rather than by her heart. In truth, she was a good, kindly
woman, full of natural affection and practical Christian charity,
notwithstanding the grim unswerving faith with which
she reasoned up to her New England puritanism.

By the way, I am inclined to think that our inclement theology
has some connection with our austere and intolerant
climate. If there is no spiritual sympathy, there certainly is
a picturesque similarity of effect, between our comminatory
dogmas and our savage winters, between our fervent religious
aspirations and our resplendent and torrid summers. How
can a population be equable and moderate in its faith when
its thermometer is perpetually raging in the most radical extremes?
With our rheumatic springs, no wonder that we
have been tempted to damn infants, and turn all the heathen
into hell without distinction. There is nothing, to my mind,
which so encourages one to a belief in the existence, power,
and malignity of the devil, as one of your ordinary, obstinate,
hopeless, sullen, savage, and vicious easterly rain storms of
Boston.

“Come now, don't be hard on Johnny,” observed Pa Treat
pityingly, as he surveyed the profound humiliation of that
Lilliputian reprobate. “He an't such a dreadful hard case;

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

leastwise, not all the time. He only wanted a little more of
the what-d'ye-call-it. Cherk up, Johnny; there'll be another
dinner to-morrow. You shan't want for something to put in
your thingumbob (stomach?)”

Pa Treat could no more call up the right word by land
than by sea; and he had all sorts of unimaginable titles for
furniture and table utensils. In his nomenclature a knife was
generally a tomahawk; a candlestick, a lightning-rod; the
sugar-bowl, the old hat; butter, goose grease, or pomatum;
the rocking-chair, old sneezer; the mantel ornaments, jigamarees.
The world seemed to acquire a new aspect whenever
he spoke of its details.

Doubtless the reader has already noticed, with proper admiration,
Ma Treat's ready quotations of Scripture. Perhaps
it may seem somewhat ill-natured in me to hint that there
was a little harmless pretence in this fluent repetition of
texts, and this careful reference to chapter and verse. After
wondering for a week or so at her extraordinary memory,
which appeared to comprehend the entire Bible in all its minuti
æ, I discovered that she used the same passages over and
over, and that most of them were drawn from the Book of
Proverbs, of which the brief, pungent antitheses stick so
easily to the mind. There was no meant deception, however;
it was unconscious, harmless, and sprang from the best
intentions; the fruit of vanity, it may be, but not of hypocrisy.

But the world does not, perhaps, care to be enlightened
concerning the moral and social peculiarities of my foster-parents,
and, if it good-naturedly takes any interest at all in
my story, would very likely prefer to see me hurry up to the
country-house, and inquire for Miss Westervelt. Well, I
was as impatient to do this as any one could be to have me;
but the Seacliff damask was laid two hours after Ma Treat's
brown linen; and so linger I must, no matter how wearisomely
to myself and the rest of my species. It was not
till three o'clock that I dared think that the moment had
come to venture into the Westervelt presences. Laying

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

down In Memoriam, with which I had been preparing for a
great lyric effort in conversation, I climbed the bluff, strolled
through the thicketed garden, and entered the open front door
without ringing. It was no novelty, no liberty, this; for I
had done it repeatedly before, and by the invitation of Mrs.
Westervelt: but it led me into another adventure of unintentional
eavesdropping. Finding the parlor empty, I lounged
up to the copy of the Cenci, and amused myself with studying
out the points of resemblance between it and Genevieve.
Suddenly I heard earnest voices and hasty footsteps in the
back boudoir; it was a rush and murmur as if one person
was following and urgently imploring another; it ended when
the door jarred open and closed again behind Somerville.
Flushed, excited, hurried, like a man escaping from reproaches
or importunities, he came in alone, muttering a curse between
his teeth, and, not seeing me, stopped by a window to wrap
up some bright object in a handful of lace. He was not so
quick but that I caught the gleam of gold and the prismatic
flash of diamonds.

What does this mean? I thought. Does my elegant friend
indulge in the eccentricity of pilfering, and rob his hosts in
the very peace and sanctity of after-dinner? That is a lady's
bracelet, and I would swear that I heard the rustle of a
lady's dress in the boudoir. It is not Mr. Henry Van Leer,
then, who is the hero of these mysterious bullyings; it is our
mild and mellifluous exemplar, Somerville. But who is the
lady? Mrs. Van Leer? I will watch, and discover.

I tapped the floor with a boot-heel to warn Somerville of
my presence, but did not feel in the least bound to keep my
eyes from his face, or otherwise humor his supposed evil conscience.
If he had been guilty of any ungentility, his air, as
he turned to me, was the very apotheosis and sublimity of
impudence. He was quite able to endure my stare; he
neither started nor stammered under it; he simply nodded,
and smiled a friendly good-afternoon.

“A broken ornament, which I am to get repaired in New

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

York,” he added, as he dropped the valuable package into
his breast-pocket. “The ladies will be mortified to find that
you have been left alone. They are full of admiring gratitude
for your heroism, I assure you. Mrs. Van Leer has
just had a quarrel with me because I threatened to repeat
her last compliment on Mr. Fitz Hugh. Of course, she carried
her point, and I had to promise secresy.”

Mrs. Van Leer! thought I. Thank you for telling me so
much. I understand now who is the lady of the boudoir.
As for the cause of the quarrel, my friend, I fancy that you
would hardly swear for such a trifle as you mention.

“Very hard and uncharitable in Mrs. Van Leer to deny
me such a gratification,” I said, aloud. “But where is Miss
Westervelt? I hope she has not suffered at all from her
escapade.”

“A little more than she chose to confess at first. Good
pluck the girl has; but nerves and pluck are separate things.
Ladies will have their faint turns, you know; and she had to
drink her camphor-water and go to bed. That is why you
were not sent for to dinner. At the risk of committing flattery,
I must tell you that she insisted on staying up to receive
you, and that I had to use all my authority, as the senior
gentleman of the family, to make her retire. So don't be
surprised to hear Mrs. Van Leer call me Doctor Somerville.
I want to forestall her satire.”

By this time my mind was somewhat drawn away from
that incident of the bracelet. I was gratefully titillated by
the compliments which Somerville had contrived to stick into
me, while I was somewhat indignant at the jesting tone in
which he had spoken of Miss Westervelt's faint turn, and still
more at his exerting any domination over her, especially such
as tended to keep her out of my way. He might have acted
for the best in his interference, but it was not pleasant to
know that he dared interfere. Of course, I did not make
myself ridiculous by either looking or uttering my annoyance:
I simply twisted my moustache with a nonchalant air, and

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

asked him if he did not think Mrs. Van Leer clever; yes, I
twisted my moustache, and surveyed myself in the glass as
if I didn't care a straw for Mrs. Van Leer or any other
woman.

The entrance of the lady referred to prevented Somerville
from replying to my question. Within two or three minutes
thereafter, her husband and his brother, Genevieve and
Hunter made their appearances successively, while Miss
Westervelt sent excuses, thanks, and a promise to see me
to-morrow. The conversation was general and just tolerably
uninteresting. I spent some little time in furtively watching
Mrs. Van Leer and Somerville, and finally left the house
none the wiser for my sidelong investigations, but followed by
a brood of harassing doubts and suspicions which vexed me
sorely in my lonely chamber.

One thing was perfectly clear, and that was that I had
made a great mistake in my brief life at Seacliff. Taking it
for an opera comique, I had whirled round the stage dancing
and smiling like a crowned bacchanal, when all the while it
was a tragic theatre in which some grave mystery or woful
drama was evolving. Suddenly my festive garland had been
torn from my head; a word of dark, weighty significance had
been whispered in my ear; and I had become sensible of
the solemnity of the place and time.

The longer I thought of the secret understanding or misunderstanding
which evidently existed between Mrs. Van
Leer and Somerville, the more momentous it appeared.
She was just the vain, light-headed, flippant-tongued flirt
that one naturally expects to find astray, when the world's
busy bellman, Rumor, goes about the streets crying, Lost!
As for him, he was, or at least seemed to my young eyes, a
cool, adroit, brilliant man of the world, a perfect master of
flattery, a connoisseur of the female heart, as handsome in
person as he was modish in manner, and in short, the ideal
of a woman-killer and cavalier servente. Whether his morals
were bad I did not know, although since the afternoon I

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

more than suspected it. But why was he so harsh and menacing
toward Mrs. Van Leer, or whomsoever else may have
been the weeping woman of the boudoir? What was the
meaning of that bracelet which he had torn away with violence
and curses? Would he condescend to torment a
woman by robbing her of her trinkets? Had he quarrelled
with Mrs. Van Leer, and demanded back some pledge of
former affection? Was he jealous of this ornament because
it had been presented by another? What? Why? Who?
I went through a round of perplexing questions, and found
no satisfactory answer.

Leaving this part of my enigma, I became quite indignant
at the thought that such a questionable intrigue should exist
under the same roof with so much purity. Who should
interfere and put a stop to the painful contradiction? I was
too much of a stranger to do it; the Van Leers' were too
leaden-headed, and Hunter too feather-brained; the lady of
the house was too enervate; the girls were too young. I
fell back on Mr. Westervelt as the only possible champion
of the outraged, or, at least, endangered sanctity of the
family; as master of the house, husband, father, churchmember,
and social aristocrat, his was the right to sweep
away with a swift hand this spider's nest of scandal. I remembered
him, to be sure, as a small, frail, light-complexioned,
light-haired man, very neat in dress and fastidious in
manner, extremely afraid of dirt and dirty people, and painfully
timid in approaching porters, baggage-masters, hackmen,
and in general all hale, sanguineous, muscular personages.
Not by any means had he impressed me as a heroic
nature, or commanded my confidence in case of emergency,
whether physical or moral. But then he was in alien lands,
surrounded by mysterious and unreasonable police regulations,
bullied by his passport, and ill at ease in French.
Under the wings of the American eagle, standing on his
country's laws, fighting for his hearth, I hoped that he would
be another creature and show himself worthy of the

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

household throne. He was to come home next day, and I might
trust in his presence to turn the troublesome mystery out of
doors.

But would he discover the intrigue? Had any one but
myself appeared to discover it? This last question had not
hitherto occurred to me, and it staggered my suspicions, for if
Somerville and Mrs. Van Leer were not doubted by the
members of the family in which they lived, I might be very
wrong in doubting them. Well, I would still be watchful,
but I would be cautious, silent, charitable. There is no more
common mark of a mean soul, no more certain index of low
instincts, if not of low breeding, than to question, on slight
grounds, the moral worth of our fellow-creatures. Besides,
the subject was a disagreeable one, and I hated to think of it
seriously.

There was still another bugbear looming in my future.
The two facts, that Mr. Westervelt needed rich sons-in-law,
and that Bob Van Leer was worth two hundred thousand
dollars, frightened me not a little when I had fairly surveyed
them in unison; they made up a very gigantic and horrible
scarecrow, which to the eyes of my imagination towered
grimly on the brow of Seacliff, and seemed to say to my
heart, as it circled longingly about the place, “Don't try to
light here, you vagabond!” Would Miss Westervelt marry
for money? was an impertinent question which presented
itself. I rejected that hypothesis with indignant negation,
but admitted lugubriously that she might marry to save
her father. What man in my condition of spirit would not
have wasted at least an hour in running over the list of his
effects, and speculating as to how he could double, treble,
quadruple the modest aggregate? How could I quickest
change thirty thousand dollars into two hundred thousand?
I thought of operating in stocks, of buying western lands, of
hunting up a mine, of digging for Kidd's treasure, of begging
a government contract, of trying a lottery ticket, of importing
a cargo of Shanghae roosters. “`Let me be quickly rich,'

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

said Ortogrul; `let the golden stream be swift and violent.”'
I would have been willing to go early to bed and early to
rise for the remainder of my life, if it would certainly have
made me wealthy, according to the blessed promise of the
proverb.

Finally, in my aspirations after riches, I bethought me of a
certain good genius, whom I had hitherto intended as my
guide only to fame. For the sake of a woman, that greatest
of tempters, I resolved to turn Literature into a gold-digger,
and make her slave in Demas's filthy mine, instead of leading
me through some æsthetic land of Beulah toward the
shining towers of Fame's Eternal City. In the first place,
Messrs. Bookworm and Binder should immediately, and
without any further nonsense, publish MY BOOK. I made
a calculation, that, if they could but sell the certainly conceivable
number of one hundred thousand copies, the profits
therefrom would go far toward making me acceptable
to a needy father-in-law, while the literary glory would be
sure to win the daughter. I believe that many a young
fellow, who, after all, is not particularly vain, has some such
delusion concerning the possibilities of his first book. I wrote
to Messrs. Bookworm and Binder;—I besought them to let
me loose at once on the public;—I exhorted them not to be
afraid of summer as a bad season for sales; in short I tried
to communicate to them some of my own enthusiasm concerning
myself. The publishing matter arranged, and no other
short and easy way to riches seeming to be just then open, I
went to bed immediately, and to sleep as soon as might be.

p545-100 CHAPTER VIII. MR. WESTERVELT.

[figure description] [Page 095].[end figure description]

OF course I could not let the next morning pass away
without seeing Miss Westervelt. I meant to speak
warmly; to rejoice frankly in having delivered her
from peril; to claim by some subtle word an interest in that
life which I had perhaps preserved: to attempt boldly to
read a secret in her eyes, careless whether my own revealed
one; to touch her hand with a pressure which should demand
recognition and answer. I set off for Seacliff with a brow
as elate and a step as light, as if the crown of wealth and
the wings of fame which I had proposed to win were already
mine. A few moments of lonely waiting in the parlor dispelled
this cheerful illusion, and made me sensible that I had
not mounted above the doubts and diffidences of ordinary humanity.
Presently a sweet rustle of dress,—a fragrance of
silken sound,—a descent without foot-falls,—told me that Miss
Westervelt was coming; and my heart began to beat as if it
meant to finish its threescore years and ten in as many
minutes.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh,—I am so obliged to you! I shall never
forget what I owe you,” she said, putting out her hand
timidly.

“You are very kind. I am glad that—that I have been
able to do you a service,” I replied, taking the soft and pliant
fingers, only to let them slide quietly away from me.

How stagnant, and frigid, and mean, often are the words

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

that a man utters at the very moment when his nature is
stirred most passionately. Deep down in the dungeons of
the soul, in the “black hole” of the heart, the imprisoned
emotions are wrestling and shrieking for air; but no sound
of the agony penetrates the dumb walls, and the placid, dissembling
jailer at the gate babbles of the news and the
weather. My face, I believe, was respectably calm, and I
am sure that what I said would not have startled the attention
of a stranger. I misplaced some words: her eyes dropped
as she gently answered; and that was all there was of
visible emotion. How often it happens thus! The moment
of moments,—the moment that of all we most longed for and
cherished in anticipation,—it arrives at last, and we are so
paralyzed that we cannot stretch out our hands to improve it.
The carrier-dove of opportunity appears in the distance; it
circles over our heads and alights with soft flutter of loving
wings on our shoulders; it rises into the clouds again, and
we have neither secured its message nor charged it with an
answer.

How differently from me would Somerville have behaved
and talked, and how differently he did talk when he entered
the room five minutes after Miss Westervelt! I was a mere
militiaman, awkward in manœuvre, and subject to panics,
compared with this disciplined mercenary of society, drilled
from childhood in the manual exercise of politeness, proof
against every surprise, master of every feint and stratagem.
Blandly and dulcetly he prated away the time until the whole
family had gathered in the parlor. Humbled at my inferiority,
and vexed that I had let slip my golden chance, I was
more silent than usual, notwithstanding that Mrs. Van Leer
seated herself by me and opened a coquettish chatter which
should have been enough to win small-talk from a fossil ichthyosaurus.

“Mary!” she called, at last, “Mr. Fitz Hugh is melancholy
this morning. He thinks that he hasn't been fairly
rewarded, I sup—pose; and he is quite right. You haven't

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

done anything that young ladies in novels usually do to their
preser—vers. Get the pic—ture now; let him see what is
coming.”

“You naughty creature!” says the blushing Mary. “I
told you not to speak of that till it was done, and not even
then. That was my right.”

“Well, go and get it now,” returned Mrs. Van. “I have
spoilt your sur—prise, you see, and there is no use in keeping
half a secret.”

Miss Westervelt left the room for a moment, and returned
with a drawing-book, from which she produced, with the
usual maidenly flutterings, a crayon sketch, spirited though
unfinished, representing our runaway adventure. The moment
chosen was the very crisis of the rescue; both horses
rearing magnificently; the black foaming in the background;
the bay on the near side, half a length behind; the lady
bending forward as if shaken in her seat by the sudden
check of speed; the champion clutching the broken rein with
a sublime indifference to his equilibrium. The picture was
not yet half completed, but enough was done to show a respectable
talent at composition, and the animals, in particular,
were remarkably lifelike and vigorous.

“It is beautiful,—it is wonderful!” I exclaimed, with an
earnestness of gratification which brought a burst of laughter
from Mrs. Van Leer. “But really it is well done,” I asserted,
reddening consciously. “The horses are perfect.
Why, Miss Westervelt, you will make Rosa Bonheur shake
in her horseshoes.”

“Ah! you suspected me,—you have found me out,” she
said. “The horses I could not do; and so I copied them,
separately, out of some engravings that I will show you.
But I did the grouping, and you shall see whether I can
finish the human figures. I like drawing, and I faintly hope
to design something original yet.”

“No doubt you will; you are naturally a designing creature,
Mary,” observed Mrs. Van Leer.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

“All women are,” said her husband, and laughed tremendously
at what he considered his joke.

Coloring a little, perhaps at Mrs. Van Leer's accusation,
perhaps at my immense interest in the little picture, Miss
Westervelt went to a window and fell to sketching industriously.
I took my stand beside her, as might reasonably
have been expected; for was not the drawing mine, and was
not my portrait needed to its completeness? The white, plump
hand, bold in touch, and flexile in movement, brooded over
and quickened into warmer life its creations. It is a rare luxury,
I imagine, that of seeing one's own likeness wrought out
by the fingers that in all the world one holds the dearest;
and I enjoyed something more than this even, for I discovered
that Miss Westervelt could hit off my profile without
glancing at me, as if transferring it from memory. Of
course she flattered it, and of course I thanked her in my
soul. But the devil is a malicious creature, ever anxious,
they say, to disturb anything which reminds him of heaven;
and he presently stirred up Mrs. Van Leer to throw her
shadow and Somerville's over my enjoyment. Passing her
arm through his in a pert, familiar way, which was particularly
offensive when associated with my suspicions of her,
she drew him to my side, obliging me to give her place, and
watched with a knowing smile the process of filling in my
portrait.

“Excellent!” said she. “Mr. Fitz Hugh's moustache to
a hair; only the expression should be a little more worried;
ter—rible anxiety for the la—dy, you know. But really,
Mary, you must let Mr. Somerville sketch your face. He
has a par—ticular talent for taking ladies. I mean taking
their likenesses, of course; nothing else. He has done my
face and Mrs. Westervelt's to per—fection. Come, cousin,
let him try his hand on you, that's a dear girl.”

“Not a stroke of it,” replied I, positively. “I beg your
pardon for the contradiction, Mrs. Van Leer; but every
line of the drawing must be done by Miss Westervelt, or I
refuse it.”

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

“You see how unreasonable he is,” said my artist, with a
little laugh, which I thought indicated gratification.

“Well, I nev—er would permit a man to dictate in that
style,” observed Mrs. Van Leer, half piqued, half jesting.
“You must not al—low it, Mary; it is encouraging the ugly
sex in bad man—ners. Now, Mr. Somerville has been better
taught; he is meekly, and to the smallest fragment of him,
under my thumb; and to prove it he is going now to flirt in
the library, quite away from Mr. Fitz Hugh's naughty example.”

Oh, you brazen, affected, drawling flirt! I thought. I
wish that your husband had sense enough to keep an eye
on you. I wish that Mr. Westervelt would arrive and put a
stop to this shameless trifling.

Just then the doorbell rang, and Genevieve ran to the
front of the parlor, crying, “Papa! papa!”

Mr. Westervelt stood in the verandah, tapping on a window
with his umbrella, and smiling at us through the plate-glass.
Mary sprang from her seat, and flew into the hall to give
him entrance. He came in presently, his arm around her
waist, kissing her very fondly and calling her pet names,
while she held up her drawing before his face, saying, “See
there, papa; see what has happened to me.”

“What is that, my child?” he asked, but immediately
pushed it away to embrace Genevieve. Mrs. Westervelt
had started up at sight of him, but had not advanced, and
stood awaiting him with a strange air of hesitation, which
was perfectly manifest, although of course, incomprehensible
to me, who knew so little of his conjugal character. He did
not notice it; seemed very glad to see her; kissed her and
called her his dear Ellen. Her eye followed him with illconcealed
anxiety, until his gaze rested on the calm, smiling,
handsome countenance of Somerville. She, too, has guessed
the dark secret, I thought; she knows that she ought not to
have let that wolf into the fold; she expects blame for her
unfaithful watch and ward.

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

“How do you do, Mr. Westervelt?” said the wolf, coming
forward and shaking the hand of the family chief with such
a mien of respect, that it was like incense. “I have an
impertinent air of welcoming you to your own house, sir.
You will excuse it?”

“Certainly, certainly. You are very welcome. I hope
you have been made comfortable, sir,” murmured Mr.
Westervelt, in a hesitating, troubled tone, as if half choked
by the civilities which he felt compelled to utter.

I was now introduced to him, in form; for he seemed not
to remember me.

“Oh!” said he,—“Mr. Fitz Hugh,—yes, we parted somewhere
in—in Switzerland, I believe. Yes, yes, I remember
now, perfectly. Excuse me for not recollecting you at once;—
I am a little short-sighted. I hope that you have—have
been very well, sir.”

My health during the very considerable space of time
since our last meeting, had been excellent; and I told him
so, with thanks for his inquiry, although I suspected that he
set small store by the information. “I am glad,” he rejoined,
bowing, “very glad to—to welcome you to my house, sir.”

“Thank you, sir. I have the pleasure of lodging near
you, with your neighbour, Mr. Treat,” I replied, anxious to
be received on my proper footing, and not as an intruder.

“Oh, you are not staying in the house? Well, we shall
always be most happy to have you call, Mr.—Mr. Fitz
Hugh.”

He now turned cordially to the Van Leers, addressing
Robert, especially, with a warmth so almost paternal, that it
annoyed me exceedingly. The salutations over, he begged to
be excused, and went off to wash away the dust of his journey.
I had studied him well, and felt disheartened: he was
clearly, not the man for my imagined exigency; no match
for Somerville, and hardly for Mrs. Van Leer. Since I left
him shivering amidst the misty morning glories of the Righi,
he had altered little, but altered for the worse, that is for the

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

weaker. He looked thinner, and frailer in body, more
worn, more worried, more timorous in spirit, more incapable
than ever of energetic resolve or execution. His dress, even
taking into consideration a railroad trip of two hours, seemed
careless; his thin, blonde faintly-silvered hair, hung in a disorder
unknown of old even to diligences and glaciers; and,
altogether, that halo of spruceness, which marked him in the
earlier days of his second marriage, had faded sadly in glory.
His tones had softened beyond their former hesitating softness;
his mild eye rarely rose to your face, when he addressed
you; or, if by chance it met yours, it dropped
hastily.

He returned presently, followed by his daughters, who had
run out to wait on him. Mrs. Van Leer, still keeping Somerville's
arm, was promenading the parlor with a semi-polking
step, and talking nonsense. Her husband and his brother
occupied separate window-seats, whence they could stare at
the Sound, and so enliven their heavy minds with the white
sails which brightened and darkened as they tacked across
its tremulous expanse. Miss Westervelt resumed her
sketch, and Genevieve her embroidery. Mr. Westervelt
seated himself on a sofa beside his wife, fidgeting there like
a nervous visitor, and occasionally casting glances of timid
inquiry at the passing and repassing Somerville. As for
me, I had been captured by Mr. Hunter, who made me sail
down the meandering frothy current of one of his tedious
stories about himself; but in spite of his interminable stream
of babble, and in spite of my efforts not to listen to what
was not intended for my ears, I overheard the general
purport of Mr. Westervelt's conversation. It consisted of
sighing complaints concerning the hard times and the unprofitableness
of business.

“But everybody else says that it is good times, papa, and
that business is lively,” observed Genevieve.

“Lively!” he returned with a groan. “It is lively, just
as a cheese is lively when it is full of nibbling mice. The

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

stock gamblers and swindlers are lively, Jenny, and real
honest business is suffering. Almost everybody that I can
hear of,—almost everybody, I tell you,—has been making
losses,—making losses in private that never get into the
papers,—things that you don't hear of, Jenny. If the slightest
pressure should come, multitudes of men would collapse
who are supposed to be as sound and solid as granite. People
are doing a great deal,—frightful amount of business,—
but it is mostly out of pocket. It is perfectly astonishing
how many houses I know of that are only keeping along,—
preserving splendid appearances and keeping along,—that is
all.”

When a man has the dropsy, or the rheumatism, or the
bronchitis, or the dyspepsia, it is incredible how many people
he finds who are afflicted like unto himself; while his robust
neighbor, whose juices are healthy, bones painless, throat
sound, and digestion uniformly triumphant, is hardly aware
that there is an invalid in all his acquaintance. Mr. Westervelt's
ill-luck in business was a chronic affair, which led him
into a wide sympathetic knowledge of other cases of financial
decrepitude. Misery not only loves company, but usually
finds plenty of it.

“But the papers say that there is plenty of money,” persisted
Genevieve. “I should think you must finally pick
up some of it, papa, looking about as sharp as you do. I
suppose that when a man has plenty of money he has good
times.”

“Ah! there is too much of it,” he moaned. “Too much
of it. Everything is inflated; everything is too high; the
cost of living is frightful. I wish that you,—that you women
could ever realize how much it takes to dress you. But that
is what you never can be got to think of.”

“But, papa, one bad speculation costs you more than all
our dresses for all our lives,” retorted Genevieve, with her
accustomed acuteness. “What makes you speculate, papa?”

“You don't know what you are talking about, child,” said

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

he, evidently bothered by the question. “Well, well, let's
have done with the subject; let's have done with it.”

Mr. Westervelt, like the majority of my respected fellow
countrymen, was business-bitten. During the early part of
my sojourn at Seacliff, money matters were the only things
on which he could talk fluently and earnestly. Say, “Stocks,”
in his hearing, and he turned upon you as full of excitement
as a dog when you say, “S't-boy.” Eager to get rich, eager
to become independent of a father who bullied him, he had
plunged into the sea of exchange gambling, without the coolness
necessary to take advantage of its onsets, or the sanguine
temperament fitted to bear its reverses. Whether
lucky or unlucky, he was always low-spirited, and generally
looked as if he had eight or ten notes out, lying among his
bank accounts, like lighted bombshells in a magazine, and
sure to blow him to atoms the moment their brief fuses were
consumed.

In this matter of melancholy he was well paired with his
wife, who often bore about a joyless look, which was not so
much downright sorrow as disheartenment and calm weariness.
Somewhere in her life, there seemed to be a dreary
ache, of which she herself, perhaps, could not have explained
the cause. It might have been the slow, dull oppression of
delicate health, or it might have been the empty sadness
which overtakes all frivolous natures when the first flush of
youth leaves them and they are removed from their accustomed
scenes of social gayety. This depressed air gave her
a fitful interest in my eyes, although I felt all the while that
she was not worth a moment's serious study. Sometimes the
veil lifted, and she was chatty, frolicsome, almost boisterous,
for a day or two together; then, without any apparent cause,
it would redescend, silencing her puerile mirth, and draping
her brow once more with its gauzy, deceptive romance.

Presently Mr. Westervelt lifted his eyes to his eldest
daughter, and asked languidly, “What are you drawing
there, Mary?”

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

She put the sketch in his lap and laughed out blushingly,
“Who are they, papa?”

“Why, the young lady,—let me see,—looks like—why,
I should say she looks a little like you. And the other,—
the gentleman;—well, Mary, who is the gentleman, and
what does the picture mean?”

“Between Mary and Genevieve the story was at length
narrated, Mr. Westervelt rose, approached me and shook
both my hands with an excitement of manner which contrasted
strongly with his ordinary languor. “I thank you,
sir,” said he. “I thank you with all my heart for saving my
child's life. I am ashamed, sir, that I have suffered you to
remain here so long without expressing my gratitude to you.
But, you see, I did not know of this, sir;—I did not know
how indebted I was to you;—I beg to offer you my excuses
and my warmest thanks. I am heartily glad to see you
under my—but stop—I—it seems to me that you said you
were stopping at my neighbor's. How is that, Mrs. Westervelt?
My dear sir, you must come directly to our house,
and let us see to your comfort.”

“Ah, papa, papa!” broke in Genevieve, laughing; “the
house is full; there isn't a room. It is too bad, but there
isn't even a closet.”

“Oh—ah—no room,” he stammered. “That is very unfortunate.
I am sorry, sir, on my own account; exceedingly
mortified.”

“Don't think of it, I beg of you, sir,” said I, stammering
as much as himself; for I was surprised, proud, and happy,
to hear him express so much gratitude. “I am exceedingly
comfortable,—perfectly well off with Mr. Treat.”

“With your Pa,” interposed Mary; and then that story
had to be told.

“Well, it is remarkably interesting,—quite a romantic
incident,” observed Mr. Westervelt. “Old foster-parents;
that reminds me of Irish novels; very interesting, indeed.—
But our house, by the way, I don't see how it can be full.

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

Oh! I comprehend,” he added, glancing at Somerville.
After a moment's hesitation, during which he looked particularly
flurried and low-spirited, he addressed his wife in a
whisper. “My dear, how comes he—how comes Mr. Somerville
to be here?”

“Why, he is visiting us, papa,” put in Genevieve suddenly,
and almost tartly.

Mrs. Westervelt moved her lips, but made no reply that
was audible, at least to me.

Mary bent lower over the drawing, and continued to work
in silence.

“Ah—yes,” sighed the husband and father, and let his
head fall back languidly, with the air of a man who has been
only half answered but dares not insist upon his inquiries. I
felt actually angry with him as I noted his irresolute hands
playing over and over each other, and his faded blue eyes
wandering out of the window, as if seeking to avoid any possible
cause of conflict within. If he wishes to prosecute the
subject, why doesn't he? I thought. How can he, the master
of the house, the head of the family, permit himself to be so
disconcerted and checked by a spunky little slip of a youngest
daughter? His home might become a nest of Lotharios and
blacklegs, for all such a guardian as he.

This was not my first discovery, it will be remembered,
that the beautiful Miss Genevieve had more spirit than was
absolutely necessary to keep her sweet. Loving and lovable
to her friends as long as they pleased her, the moment they
contradicted her fancies, she could fly at them, be it sister or
father, like a little tigress. At times she confessed, with delightful
frankness, to having a high temper; but, like many
other people similarly blessed, she rather thought it a convenient
thing to have; and even, when not using it, she often
kept it in sight and in terrorem, like a bully's bowie-knife
peeping from his bosom.

Annoyed beyond measure at the upshot of the conversation,
I paid my compliments and retired. Hurrying through

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

one of the thickest shrubbery walks of the garden, I came
across Mrs. Van Leer, leaning on Somerville's arm, and listening
to his talk with a downcast eye of mock timidity. She
colored slightly, but otherwise concealed all feeling under a
smile of heroic impudence, while her companion was as calm,
pensive, majestically innocent in air, as Plato might have been
when he talked his platonic love nonsense to some Aspasia of
his time under the shades of Academus. As I passed them,
he touched my arm, and pointed smilingly through the evergreens.
Following the line of his white forefinger, I saw Mr.
Westervelt on the edge of the bluff, holding Robert Van
Leer by the arm, and conversing with an earnestness which
smacked of notes to meet and loans to make.

“Sanguinary, isn't it?” whispered Somerville. “Our
robust young friend is being bled for funds. Westervelt has
spent all his cash in western lands, and is undoubtedly hard
up.”

If he meant to divert my thoughts from himself and Mrs.
Van Leer, he had accomplished his design. Of course,
thought I dolorously, Robert must have something for his
money; and of course he will never get anything nor ask for
anything but Miss Westervelt. I felt as if I had been bled
myself, not figuratively, but physically, and to a most weakening
extent, as I turned away and marched toward my
boarding-place.

p545-112 CHAPTER IX. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

[figure description] [Page 107].[end figure description]

WALKING up and down the beach in front of Pa
Treat's, next morning, I writhed through a tormenting
meditation on the character and circumstances of
Mr. Westervelt. How unlucky, that of all the fathers of
families in the United States, this particular one, with his
empty exchequer, and woman heart, and baby muscles,
should have fallen to the lot of the imperilled household of
Seacliff! He needed wealth to keep him from under the pecuniary
thumb of Robert Van Leer; he needed courage to
render him a match for the cool, resolute, “interesting villain,”
Somerville; and here he was, poor in pocket and poor
in spirit, a most inadequate and unsatisfactory domestic hero
indeed. A voice at my back, young and impudent as the
abrupt scream of a child's whistle, startled me from the
thorny revery in which I was wandering.

“This is the prince of summer mornings, my dear fellow,”
crowed the debonair Hunter, skipping down the green bank
behind me and clapping a patronizing hand on my shoulder,
with the air of one who expounds the universe to some dulleyed
brother.

Here is the man whom I can profitably question about Mr.
Westervelt, I reflected; here is the man who will tell me the
truth, the whole truth, and, alas! a good deal more than the
truth.

“Good morning, Mr. Hunter,” I said. “I have been

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

taking peeps at Seacliff from various points on the beach. I
can't say that I admire the house;—I candidly admit that the
house is not to my taste; but, on the whole, your friend Mr.
Westervelt has a beautiful place.”

“My dear sir, I passionately wish it were Mr. Westervelt's,”
he replied, lifting his small head so as to look the
house in the face, and flinging out his hand toward it with as
much grandeur of action as if he were a magician, creating
enchanted palaces. “Mr. Fitz Hugh, if there is any one
thing on earth which pains and irritates me more than another,
it is to see a man, sir, a lord of creation, ripe in years
and experience, the sire, perhaps, of lovely daughters, at the
mercy of his wife for the roof under which he shelters his
head. That house, garden, verdant bluff, everything, belongs
to Mrs. Westervelt. Mr. Westervelt cannot touch it to obtain
bread for his lips or save his limbs from prison. It must
be a mortifying reflection to him. My dear sir, I am not
independently rich, but I have an independent spirit; and I
do say that I would never, no matter how provoked and
solicited, place myself in the position of my noble-hearted
and sensitive friend, Mr. Westervelt; never would accept a
penny from a woman which I could not repay on demand.”

He dropped his hand and watched my admiring countenance
with calm satisfaction. I knew that it was unnecessary
to set him agoing again with questions, for, once tapped
on a subject, it flew like new ale, and he ran freely, effervescently,
down to the very emptyings. After enjoying the effect
of his magnanimous declaration for a moment, he proceeded.

“Yes, sir, Mrs. Westervelt is proprietor of Seacliff. Her
husband, too generous and grandly-natured for a man of business,
seldom keeps a place of his own for more than a year
or two. What a situation, Mr. Fitz Hugh! His wife owns
Seacliff, and his children are supported by a cold and unsympathizing
grandfather. Of course you have heard of Westervelt,
senior,—Westervelt, senior, of 800 South Street,—
Westervelt, senior, the millionaire. He has made at least

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

five millions in the China trade, and has dispensed to his only
son the miserable pittance of perhaps one hundred thousand
dollars, in several remittances, all of which has been successively
swallowed up by pecuniary reverses. Westervelt,
senior, still wraps himself in his five millions, and looks on
frigidly while Westervelt, junior, struggles with his circumstances.”

He paused again, turned half round and fixed his shiny
black eyes on my face to see whether I appreciated his antithesis.

Mr. Frederick William Hunter, as I ought to have stated
long ago, was an under-graduate of the University of North
America, a junior, by the rules of college, but an unchangeable
and lifelong sophomore by the dispensations of Providence.
Some men are born sophomores; remain sophomores until
death, in spite of sheepskins and every other human circumstance;
perhaps go into the next world and exist through the
intermediate state as sophomores. He was a wise fool in
the profoundest and truest sense of the compound. His
memory was remarkable; he committed with enviable facility;
he could spout long passages of Greek and Latin hexameter;
he was equally familiar with the poetry of his own language;
he wrote fluently, and was the most copious orator of his
society debating-club; but in spite of all these things, he was
incurably and inevitably ridiculous. In short, he was one of
those remarkable persons who are undeniable fools, without
being exactly underwitted. He had no prudence, no common
sense, and no modesty, except the mock species. His lying
was so brazen and barefaced, so extravagant, unnecessary,
and purposeless, that it would have been disgusting, had it
not been done with a certain curious taste and artistic feeling.
Is there not, for instance, something graceful and æsthetic in
the account which he gave me of the troubles of Mr. Westervelt?
What sublimity of eulogium, what tenderness of
sympathy! Yet there was nothing in it, for at other times
he made sport of the poor gentleman's situation, grinning at

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

his sorrows, and pointing an ironical finger at his weaknesses.
But just now it tickled his whim to be the pathetic orator;
and his whim was his god, which he worshipped and obeyed
reverently. On the whole, his conversation had a high degree
of personality, picturesqueness, and interest. There was
one particularly good thing in it, and that was, that he
sunk the student as much as he possibly could, in the man of
the world, rarely troubling us with college songs and immemorial
anecdotes, and only recurring to such words as rushing,
flunking, fizzling, in his moments of supreme excitement.

Just now Mr. Hunter was suffering a temporary ostracism
from the university, in consequence of having entered a tutor's
room clandestinely, and demonstrated his delicate humour by
breaking the furniture. The college police had surprised him;
single-handed he had dispersed the official mercenaries;
but in their precipitate flight they had contrived to drag him
before the Faculty. As it was not his first offence, nor thought
likely to be his last, unless something was done to moderate
his wit, and as, furthermore, he had already been rusticated
without much apparent benefit, he was this time punished
with downright dismissal, only softened by a hint at future
reinstatement in case of suitable reformation and humiliation.
Accordingly he was continuing his class studies, nominally, at
Rockford, but actually at Seacliff.

I nodded with an air of entranced comprehension to his
last sentence, and he resumed the history. “I am informed,
on the best of authority, that Westervelt, senior, considers
his son an imbecile in money matters, and only grants him an
annual allowance of three thousand dollars, which is strictly
dedicated to the support of the family. Whenever I write a
novel, Mr. Fitz Hugh, I shall introduce a portrait, somewhat
satirical, you understand, of this Westervelt, senior. He is
a most curious, whimsical, prejudiced, opinionated old covey,
as dry and withered and bitter as snakeroot. Among his
other singularities he has taken a violent dislike to me, for no
reason, that I can imagine, except that I once drove by his

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

aristocratic carriage on the Bloomingdale road with a common
livery-stable pacer. I looked back and politely lifted my hat
to him in apology; but the old gentleman's bile was stirred,
and he totally refused to recognize me; indeed, he had had
the insolence to cut me once or twice before. Since that time
the breach has been past healing;—I never call on him in
New York, and he never comes to Seacliff. As for his
granddaughters, they make him one stiff visit annually, when
he lectures them furiously on economy, and sends them off
with two hundred and fifty dollars a-piece to buy new dresses.
I don't think he exactly hates them, but he doesn't care to be
troubled with them. The fact is, they are women; and Westervelt,
junior, he says, is another woman; and women, in his
opinion, are bores; an opinion, Mr. Fitz Hugh, with which I
am sometimes tempted to coincide. I have had a great deal
of trouble with the fair sex in my time. You have no idea
how frantic the city girls are after us North America fellows.”

While Hunter poured forth his little stream of information,
foaming, so to speak, with conceited grimaces and gestures,
I subsided rapidly into a low condition of spirits. Miss
Westervelt, then, was grandchild of Westervelt, senior, of
South Street; was heiress, more or less apparent, to a considerable
share in an estate of four or five millions; was, in
short, so throned on golden expectations as to be entirely out
of reach to an undistinguished, semi-indigent person like myself.
To conceal my distress I remarked gayly, “He must
be a tremendous character, this Westervelt, senior. Whenever
I pass through South Street again, I shall try to peep
into his den and get a view of the old tiger.”

“Somerville goes to New York to-day,” said Hunter.
“Somerville would be delighted to present you to him; or
perhaps I had better give you a letter of introduction; in fact
I will do so, I insist upon it.”

He had forgotten what he had told me five minutes before
about the cessation of intercourse between himself and Westervelt,
senior. He often lost track of his own stories thus,

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

this short-sighted Hunter. The real state of the case was, as
I learned long afterwards, that he had never been acquainted
at all with Westervelt, senior, who would have nothing to do
with the Van Leers or their kindred.

“Is Somerville off?” I asked eagerly. “Why—how—
what sends him away?”

“Mr. Fitz Hugh, I beg your confidence,” said he, with an
impressive wave of that significant right hand, and a circular
glance of caution which swept the horizon. “You are a man
of the world, like myself; a word to the wise is sufficient:
secrecy!! My friend Mr. Somerville, for whom I have the
highest, the profoundest respect and admiration, is a man of
fascinating manners, accomplishments, and social powers, who
has the misfortune to be irresistibly attractive to women, and
is therefore the terror of suspicious husbands and fathers.
My friend Mr. Westervelt indulges in the one solitary weakness
of dreading his influence. Westervelt, senior, hates
him; has forbidden his own house to him; has requested
that he shall not be invited to Seacliff. [And yet Somerville
was to present me to this Westervelt, senior.] You may
well suppose that the knowledge of these facts grates on the
susceptibility of a man so delicate and courteous in soul as
Somerville. He sees that the politeness of the master of the
house is constrained, that there is no heart in it; and he
leaves. For my part, if I were Mr. Westervelt, I would
scorn these miserable doubts and suspicions. They are a
reflection, as unnecessary as undeserved, on his wife and
daughters, Mr. Fitz Hugh.”

You poor fool! I thought. Can't you see that he is simply
looking to the safety of your own feather-brained sister?

I had learned a great deal from Mr. Hunter, though, to be
sure, I could not exactly decide what was wheat in his narrative,
and what was chaff, inasmuch as he invariably related
the true and the false with the same fluency, the same picturesqueness
of circumstance, the same animation of voice
and gesture. He was the most unfathomable liar that I ever

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

saw, for the reason, perhaps, that in the moment of invention
he actually believed what he said, or, at least, felt a sensation
delusively similar to belief. His very heart went out in his
fibs, and experienced an emotion of pride and gratitude when
they were well received.

I resolved to walk up to Seacliff and see for myself
whether Somerville was really about to leave. For once,
possibly in a fit of absence of mind, Hunter had told the
truth; our elegant friend, dressed in travelling attire of
English plaid, was suavely, smilingly, but with a mild melancholy
in his Grecian countenance, bidding farewell to the
ladies. Mrs. Van Leer expressed her regret at his departure
with a brazen liberty of speech which amazed and disgusted
me. Mr. and Mrs. Westervelt were embarrassed,
and at a loss for remarks, wandering up and down with that
look which people have when they feel themselves at liberty
to say anything but what they feel. Mary was reserved;
Genevieve silent also, but sullen; the Van Leer men as inexpressive
as usual.

A sudden fancy seized me to go to New York with Somerville
and learn something positive concerning his habits and
character. When I proposed to be his companion down, he
welcomed the offer with a warmth of manner, which, in itself,
without a single compliment, conveyed the impression that he
was not only delighted, but surprised and positively grateful,
as if I had accorded to him some especial favor and honor.
It is so easy for an elegant veteran of the world to flatter a
young fellow, without even taking the trouble to lie!

In those my migratory days I always kept a carpet-bag
ready packed for short trips, and thus I was able to present
myself fully equipped in five minutes. Robert Van Leer
drove us in the double carriage of the family to the Rockford
station. Robert was in good spirits, which, indeed, was commonly
the case with him when he had eaten well and the
weather was fine, for he had strong sympathies with the
physical creation.

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

“I say, Fitz Hugh, old feller, come back in a hurry now,”
he roared at me over his shoulder. “Don't you stay more'
n a couple of days now. We shall miss you like thunder.
Genevieve 'll miss you particular, haw haw haw. I say,
Somerville, I've got a plan for Fitz Hugh; he's got to marry
Genevieve the very day I marry Mary. An't that a good
idea, eh?”

“Too young, Robert,” said I, coolly, although disturbed.
“A girl of seventeen isn't old enough to be married.”

“Genevieve an't old enough!” exclaimed Bob, contemptuously.
“An't she, though! An't she, Somerville? What
was that you said the other day about women being like
potatoes?”

“Don't recollect. You are thinking of Hunter, perhaps,”
observed Somerville.

“No, I an't thinking of Hunter; it was you,” insisted Bob.
“You said women were like potatoes;—old enough when
they were big enough.”

The coarse blockhead roared with delight over the comparison,
never suspecting that it was an absolute insult to
Genevieve. All the way to Rockford he continued to babble
about the two marriages; but interesting as the subject
was to me, I did not find his remarks worth remembering.

The New Haven train soon screamed down upon us, and
halted with the usual snorting and shuffling to receive passengers.

“Good bye! good luck, old boys!” shouted Robert; and,
tumbling into the baggage-car, we were off.

Let us rejoice that there exists in this world, not everywhere
indeed, but in some extra-civilized countries, that
free-and-easy institution, that ambulatory club-room, the
smoking-car. There you can enjoy one of the greatest and
cheapest of luxuries; there, too, you can get rid of those disagreeable
people who don't smoke. But in this wonderful
land of ours, the brag of all creation, such a thing as a
smoking-car is nearly unknown; and in consequence a

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

traveller whose time weighs heavy on his brain, and who is
dying for his customary Havana, must generally resort to
the baggage-car: a gloomy, contracted pen, almost windowless,
where he has nothing to sit on but a hat-box, and where
he is sure to be smashed flat in case of a collision: a pen,
too, which an inhospitable placard forbids to him, and from
which he is liable to be excommunicated by the conductor,
on suspicion that he is a mail-robber or a trunk-picker.
Somerville and I were both smoking, and hence the baggage-car.
Seating ourselves on a sailor's grimy sea-chest, Somerville
talked of Paris, Florence, Greece, and Constantinople,
while I meditated my objects in leaving Seacliff. In the first
place I meant to stick close to my friend and inveigle his
secrets from him by artful conversation; to track his doubles
in New York, ascertain his haunts, and take note of his companions;
in short, to learn his character and his possibilities
for evil. In the second place, I proposed to make the acquaintance
of Westervelt, senior, by whatever unforeseen
means might present itself; with some dim, vague, unlikely,
stupid intention of giving him a hint concerning the mystery
of Seacliff; with some hope also, that I should engage him
in the task of barring the demon from my paradise.

Accident favored me at first, and I made a suspicious discovery.
Drawing out his handkerchief suddenly to intercept
a sneeze, Somerville jerked from his breast pocket a little
chinking package. As it fell against my pantaloons, slipped
down between my feet and unfolded there, I naturally picked
it up for him, and could not avoid seeing that it was a lady's
watch, costly in make and furnished with a heavy chain, at
the end of which dangled some jewelled trinkets.

“Doubly obliged,” said he, coolly wrapping up the expensive
trifle in the scrap of newspaper from which it had
dislodged, and restoring it to his pocket. “I think your
pants saved it from smashing. I should have been annoyed
to see it injured. It was handed to me to get it cleaned.”

“You seem to be the patron saint of damaged gimcracks,”

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said I. “They all come to you to get healed of their fractures
and maladies. I saw you in possession of a lady's
bracelet the other day.”

“I am a jeweller's man, you see. I have benefited the
trade largely in my time; and I know where to get a thing
done well and quickly.”

“And you are quite skilful too, I suppose, in getting a
cracked reputation mended,” I observed, pushing on my
cross-examination.

“Really, I never tried;—I keep clear of those reputations,”
he said, bursting into a laugh in spite of an evident
effort to check himself. Whether he was amused at the
clumsy cunning of my remark, or at the immense hypocrisy
of his own answer, he very naturally did not explain, nor I
demand an explanation. I simply saw, what I had half
noticed before, that his laugh was peculiar and disagreeable.
It lifted the middle of his upper lip and exposed two long
white teeth which gleamed beneath the black moustache in a
manner that reminded me of snakes, alligators, and such like
slimy, dangerous creatures. Perhaps he knew that it was an
unpleasant laugh to look upon, for he generally smiled his
merriment quietly, and in a very gracious, becoming fashion.

“You are wise,” I observed. “It shows both charity and
good sense to let the poor broken trifles alone.”

I had been a little alarmed by his laugh, and a little posed
by his affectation of virtue. I did not wish to have him think
me either silly or vulgar; for a young man generally craves
the respect of other persons, even of those whom he dislikes;
and I had a particular regard for Somerville's unquestionable
cleverness and knowledge of society.

“I quite agree with you,” said he, following out his usual
trick of complimenting people for ideas which he had himself
suggested. “Let us avoid scandal. The less we roll it
about, the less there will be of it. It is only weak or dirty
people who enjoy dirty insinuations and give easy credit to
dirty stories. Human nature is bad enough, but not near so

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bad as the wicked would have us believe. The respectable
classes may be none too worthy of the name, but they are far
more worthy than the disreputable classes represent them.
The corrupt are engaged in an eternal conspiracy against
the good fame of the decent. For instance, a rumor comes
out that some lady in a fashionable or religious circle has
fallen from virtue. The tale is instantly welcomed by all
the rakes and harlots in town; they rejoice in it, plead for
it, magnify it, proclaim it; they fairly wallow in it like hogs
in the mire. For my part, I can easier credit that a gay
Lothario will lie, or that circumstances will deceive, than
that a woman, who has been educated purely, will commit
that folly which in her is the crime of crimes, the sin inexpiable,
the misstep from which there is no recovery. I
think that such would be the creed of every true gentleman.”

Oh, the interesting villain! I thought; the sentiments are
just and magnanimous; but what does he mean by counterfeiting
them? Has he mistrusted my suspicions of him, and
does he intend to shame me out of them with the fear of
being considered one of the vulgar and disreputable? I
must be cautious, or I shall put myself in a false position.

He threw away his cigar now, and seemed to be awaiting
my pleasure to leave the baggage chaos. Determined to be
polite and insinuating, at no matter what cost of the means
of happiness, I tossed out of the window a delicate cheroot
only half smoked, bowed him through the door, and followed
him into the passenger cars. Disappointment and derision
pursued my novitiate in detective-policemanship. As we
sidled through the second car, looking for a vacant place in
the long rows of crimson velvet cushions, a fan touched Somerville
on the arm, and a genteel pretty lady of twenty-two
or twenty-three, who seemed to be travelling alone, blushingly
pronounced his name. With a gesture of apology for quitting
me, he halted, and took the single unoccupied seat by
her side. Another Mrs. Van Leer, perhaps, I thought, as I

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crushed my way onward into the third car, and found
rest at last by the side of a tobacco-chewing mariner, the
owner, possibly, of the aforementioned grimy sea-chest. The
task of amusing myself on the way down was not a difficult
one, for I had only to think of Seacliff and its inhabitants.

Arrived at New York, I sought out Somerville again, but
he had already got into a hack with his lady friend, and I
could guess but very vaguely at their destination from seeing
them drive up Broadway. The station of the New York
and New Haven Railroad was then in Canal Street, close by
the St. Knickerbocker. I took a coach to that palatial hotel,
exchanged a nod with the condescending and gentlemanly
proprietor, secured with some difficulty the grandiose attention
of one of the perfumed clerks, and was graciously designated
to a room in the seventh story, with a sublime look-out
over New York City and State. Having washed, dressed,
and lunched, I walked down to the reading-room, carried a
paper to one of the front windows and watched an hour or
so for Somerville. There were a hundred chances to one
that I should not see him; and the majority carried it, as it
ought in a democratic country. Admitting at last, with much
indignation, that I had totally lost scent of him, I resolved to
visit the lair of Westervelt, senior, and see what sort of
game he looked like.

I set off on foot down Broadway. The sweeping crowd
of earnest-eyedd pedestrians soon effected a diversion in my
ideas, and became an amusement. As I noted the endless
diversity of faces, the multitudinous dissimilarities of height
and form which passed me, I imagined how infinitely greater
would be the contrasts presented to my eyes, could I see the
spirits of that hurrying throng, as I now saw its merely outward,
temporal presences. One visage would be black with
the passions of hell, and another luminous with the purity of
Paradise. This man would shrivel into a dwarf of grovelling
meanness, while that would tower majestically above my
dim sight, holding his glorious brow even with the heaven of

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heavens. Deformities of soul, hideous hunchbacks of spirit
would present themselves in unimaginable varieties of hatefulness.
The monsters that spawn in the sunless caverns of the
sea, the unnamed creatures that inhabited the first ages of
creation, the ghostly, formless shapes of Chaos and Old Night,
the chimeras, hydras, sphinxes, griffins, and centaurs of antique
credence, would not be so abnormal to my sight as
would be these incorporeal fellow-beings of mine, could I
behold them. How many a man, with the spirit of a murderer,
goes through life innocent of blood! How many
another, who longs to commit foul outrage upon innocence,
and who does not slay his passions but secretly feeds them
with vicious reveries, is always held by the chains of fear or
of circumstance within the limits of external virtue! Such,
at least, is the orthodox theological view of these moral dissimilitudes.
If the transcendentalists and optimists are right,
they are not monstrous, but normal, and the mere “steppingstones
to better things.” It is a gentle belief, certainly, and
very attractive in its catholic charity.

Apropos of these reflections, I tried to fancy the spiritual
man of Somerville, walking beside his physical man, and
contrasting hideously with its graceful and dignified beauty.
Would it so contrast, or was I doing him injustice? That
was exactly the question which I intended to solve. In the
mean time neither his spiritual nor his physical man appeared
to me.

Turning into South Street, I looked for No. 800, resolved
to know Westervelt, senior, at least by sight, and perhaps
hoping, in my silly heart, that I should fall into accidental
conversation with him, and win his instant favor. Would it
not have been a beautiful thing to charm his stony nature,
to coax him to offer me his granddaughter, and to be the
means of reconciling him with the family of Seacliff? There
was the Quincy granite portal of the money god's temple,
and there was that name which represented so many dollars,
painted unostentatiously on a small tin placard, scratched

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and grimy, which was fastened to one of the plain gray door-posts.
I think that I felt somewhat as Christian did when he
passed the cave of Giant Pope in the shadowy valley. This
is the den of an ancient caitiff, I said, who could do me fearful
harm, dungeon my life in despair, break my heart on the
wheel, crack all my sinews of hope, and surround my feelings
with consuming fagots of disappointment. Then I nearly
laughed to think of the angry astonishment of the old gentleman,
if I should walk in some day and address him as
Grandfather!

While I loitered, a small, thin, alert man of seventy or
seventy-five, with large Roman features, great gray eyes,
and short stiff white hair, brushed upright, stepped briskly
into the doorway from the interior, and stared sternly at the
Quincy granite stores opposite, very much as if he had
resolved to knock them down that afternoon, and build better
ones next morning. He talked impatiently to himself, and
beat a sharp tattoo with his cane on the granite doorstone.
As I resumed my walk, and passed slowly by him, a tall,
portly gentleman came to his side and looked down at him
with precisely the same expression as if he were looking up
at him. “So,” said he, “you decidedly disapprove of the
operation, Mr. Westervelt?”

“Yes, sir,” returned the senior, in a voice as sharp, distinct,
and decided as the click of his cane. “Disapprove of
it altogether, sir. You don't want two more clippers any
more than you want two camel-leopards. Shouldn't weight
yourself, so, sir. Why, sir, my dunce of a son couldn't have
a worse idea. No, sir; no more clippers. Good-morning,
Mr. Jones.”

Down he came from the doorstone, brushing against my
shoulder, and stamping vigorously away ahead of me, without
a single glance, favorable or unfavorable, for my person.

So that is her grandfather! I said to myself. He resembles
her rather less than the dry root of a peach-tree resembles
the golden fruit which swings among the green branches
above it.

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