PART II. MR. CROMWELL HICKS AND THE “OLD MAN. ”
Two days after the scene recorded in part
I. late in the afternoon, Mr. Cromwell Hicks
ascended the marble steps of his father's mansion
in Walnut street. Dressed in a light blue
frock, buff vest and plaid pants, Cromwell was
covered with the dust of the cars; and his
whole appearance betrayed the tokens of anxiety
and fatigue. His heart fluttering under his
buff vest, he pulled the bell. It was answered
by a strange servant, who answered his inquiry
in regard to his father, with the information
that Mr. Hicks and family had left four
days previous for Cape May.
This was an unexpected blow. Surveying
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first the vacant face of the servant, and then
casting a glance at his dusty attire, Cromwell
for a few moments was in doubt as to his future
course. It was a broiling day; the streets
were almost deserted; to his eye the town
looked black and gloomy as in mid-winter.
He was without a dollar in the world, having
spent the last cent in defraying his passage
from New York.
“Will you leave your name, sir?” asked
the servant.
“Never mind,” exclaimed Cromwell, “I'll
stop at the counting house and leave my message
with Mr. Grimly.”
The “counting house” was an old brick
building, which stood in an alley near Chesnut
and Front, amid warehouses of more modern
construction, beside which it looked like
an old fashioned “man of business,” dressed
in Quaker garb, compared with the high collared
and dapper built men of business of the present
day. It was antiquity itself. Its bricks
were faded, its windows small and dark, its
cellars deep and cavernous: it was in fact one
of the old houses belonging to old firms, which
do more business in one day, with all their
cobwebs and dust, than your modern house
does in a year. To this aged edifice, determined
to try his powers of persuasion upon
Mr. Grimly, his father's head clerk, Cromwell
bent his steps.
He entered the counting room. It was hidden
away at the farther end of a large gloomy
place, and was fenced off from bales of goods,
and hogsheads of cogniac, by a dingy railing of
unpainted pine.
“Where is Mr. Grimly?” asked young
Hicks, of the negro porter, who was the only
person visible.
“Jist gone out,” answered the porter, who
did not recognize his employer's son; “back
d'rectly.”
“I'll wait for him,” was the answer, and
Cromwell sauntered into the counting room,
which was furnished with an old chair, a large
desk and a range of shelves filled with ledgers.
It was a gloomy place, with a solitary window
looking out upon a gloomier yard. An opened
letter, spread upon the desk, attracted the eye
of the hopeful youth. It was from Cape May,
bore the signature of his father, was addressed
to Mr. Grimly his head clerk, and contained
this brief injunction:
“Grimly —I send you a check for $5,000. Cash it
and meet that note of Tompkins & Co.—to-morrow—
you understand?”
“Where the deuce is the check?” soliloquised
Cromwell, and forthwith began to look
for it, but in vain. While thus engaged, his
ear was attracted by the sound of a footstep.
Looking through the railing, he beheld a short
little man, with a round face and a hooked
nose, approaching at a brisk pace. As he saw
him, his fertile brain hit upon a plan of operation.
“Grimly, my good fellow,” he said, as the
head clerk opened the door of the counting
room, “I've been looking for you all over
town. Quick! — At Walnut street wharf! —
There's no time to be lost!”
He spoke these incoherent words with every
manifestation of alarm and terror. As much
surprised at the sudden appearance of the vagabond
son in the counting room, as at his hurried
words, the head clerk was for a few moments
at a loss for words.
“You here — umph! Thought you was at
College — eh!” exclaimed Grimly as soon as
he found his tongue —“Walnut street wharf?
What do you mean?”
“Mr. Grimly,” responded the young man
slowly and with deliberation, “I mean that in
returning from Cape May father has been
stricken with an apoplectic fit. He's on board
the boat. Mother sent me up here, to tell you
to come down without delay. Quick! No
time's to be lost.”
Grimly seemed thunderstricken. He placed
his finger on the tip of his nose, muttering —
“Old Hicks struck with apoplexy — bad! bad!
Here's this check to be cashed, and that note
of Tompkins & Co. to be met. What shall I
do —”
“I'll tell you, Grimly. Give me the check—
I'll get it cashed and then go and take up
the note, while you hurry down to the wharf.”
He said this in quite a confidential manner,
laying his hand on Grimly's arm and looking
very affectionately into his face.
In answer to this, Mr. Grimly closed one
eye—arranged his white cravat—and seemed
buried in thought, while Cromwell stood waiting
with evident impatience for his answer.
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“You've been to Cape May—have you?”
he said, regarding Cromwell with one eye
closed.
“You know I haven't. I have just got on
from New York, and met one of father's servants
as I was coming off the boat. He told
me the old gentleman had been taken with apoplexy
on the way up. I went into the cabin
of the Cape May boat which had just come to,
and saw father there. Mother gave me the
message which I have just delivered. Indeed,
Mr. Grimly you'd better hurry—”
“Then you had better take this check,”
said Grimly extending his hand, “Get it
cashed and take up that note. It is now half
past two, it must be done without delay.”
His eyes glistening Cromwell reached forth
his hand to grasp the check, when Mr. Grimly
drew back his hand, quietly observing at the
same time “I think Cromwell you had better
ask your father. Here he is. Rather singular
that he's so soon recovered from his fit of
apoplexy?”
Scarcely had the words passed his lips,
when at his shoulder appeared the portly
figure of the father, Mr. Jacob D. Z. Hicks, a
gentleman of some fifty years, dressed in black
with a white waistcoat. His ruddy face was
overspread with a scowl; he regarded his son
with a glance full of meaning, at the same time
passing his 'kerchief incessantly over his bald
crown. He had overheard the whole of the
conversation between his son and his head
clerk. He had indeed returned from Cape
May, but had seen his clerk, only five minutes
previous to this interview. His feelings as
he overheard the conversation may be imagined.
“Scoundrel!” was his solitary ejaculation,
as he gazed upon his son, who now stood cowering
and abashed, in one corner of the counting
room.
“Father—” hesitated Cromwell.
The merchant pointed to the door.
“Go!” he said, and motioned with his
finger.
“Forgive me, father — I've been wild. I
know it —” faltered Cromwell.
“You saw me in a fit, did you? And you
would have got that check cashed and taken
up Tompkins & Co's note — would you?
You're a bigger scoundrel than I took you
for. Go!”
Cromwell moved to the door. While the
head clerk stood thunderstricken, the father
followed his son into the large room, which
filled with hogsheads and bales, intervened between
the counting room and the street. Cromwell
quietly threaded his way through the
gloomy place, and was passing to the street
when his father's hand stopped him on the
threshold.
“Cromwell,” said he, “let us understand
one another.”
Cromwell turned with surprise pictured on
his face, the countenance of his father was
fraught with a meaning which he could not
analyze.
“In the first place,” said the Merchant,
“Read this.”
He handed his son a copy of the New York
Herald dated the day previous. The finger of
Mr. Jacob D. Z. Hicks pointed a paragraph
embodied in a letter from Cape May. Cromwell
read in silence, his face displaying every
change of incredulity succeeded by surprise.
“By the bye you have heard that a distinguished
scion of the British Aristocracy, who passes under the
title of Sir Charles Wriothelsy has been figuring rather
extensively at this place. The Baronet is a gallant
gentleman, with a pale mouse colored mustache and
aristocratic air.—He has excited quite a sensation. He
is altogether a man of ton—elegant and fascinating,
so much so, that yesterday the young wife of one of our
old Philadelphia merchants was detected in a rather
embarrassing situation with the gallant Briton, and
worst of all, the discoverer was her venerable spouse.
The affair has created a great talk. To-morrow I will
send you full particulars.”
“Well — what of this?” said Cromwell,
looking into his father's face.
“Nothing much. Only that young wife of
an old merchant, was your mother. I married
her at sixteen; married her out of regard
for her family, and have lived with her these
nineteen years. She is now about thirty-four,
but as young and lively as ever. The day-before
yesterday she disgraced me at Cape May,
and strengthened a resolve which I have long
indulged, to wit, to cast her and her son to the
winds, or the d—l. You comprehend,
Cromwell! You are not my son. The conduct
of your mother breaks all ties between us.
(By the bye I may remark that yesterday she
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eloped with her Baronet.) For nineteen years
I have supported you. You can gamble, drink
and act the gentleman in every way. Your
education is complete. My advice to you, is,
to follow your mother, who yesterday eloped
with her British Baronet. From me, from this
hour, you can expect nothing. Beg, starve or
steal — as you please — do it in a gentlemanly
way if you like — but from me you shall
never receive one cent. We understand one
another. Good day Sir.”
With these words the old man turned away,
leaving Cromwell pale and thunderstricken on
the threshold. The thunderbolt which had
fallen upon him, deprived him for the time of
all control over his reason.
At last, still holding the New York Herald
in his hand, he took his way from the store of
his late father. As he passed along the alley
into Front street, he tried — for a long time
without success — to realize his situation.
His mother a disgraced woman — himself pronounced
an illegitimate by the man whom he
had always known as his father — he could
not believe it. But the New York Herald was
in his hands, the words of the old Merchant
still rang in his ears. Then, when he contrasted
the youth of his mother with the age
of her husband, her fondness for admiration
and show with the sedate and rather old fashioned
habits of the Merchant, the story appeared
more reasonable. A thousand things
came to the memory of Cromwell, which seemed
to confirm the story of Mr. Jacob Hicks.
Suffice it to say, that after an hour's walk up
and down the street, Cromwell found himself
at the corner of Second and Walnut street, with
three facts impressed rather vividly upon his
mind; He was without a father; his mother
had eloped with a mustache (appended to a
British Baronet;) and he, Cromwell Hicks,
late of Yale College, was without a cent in
the world.
Lippard, George, 1822-1854 [1850], The killers: a narrative of real life in Philadelphia (Hankinson and Bartholomew, Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf257].
