CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE NIGHT PROCESSION.
The unparalleled outrage of clearing the upper
Wabash, being sufficiently insisted upon,
answered the purpose as well as any device
they could have contrived. The triumph of
Puffer was complete. He had carried his election
by a handsome majority—bowling down
Mr. John Blinker, majestically as he carried
himself, as easily as a ninepin with a rolling
bottom—Hobbleshank's strong recruits (of
which Puffer had just now heard) coming in to
give the decisive blow. The popular mind, still
heaving and surging, searched for a channel
through which to vent the enthusiasm (in such
cases there's always a little over) which had
not been exhausted in the contest itself. The
Bottomites resolved to make a public demonstration
of their victory—one to allure new
friends and terrify old enemies—and a streetparade,
a grand procession by torchlight, was
fixed upon as most imposing. The newspapers
began immediately to trumpet the show; the
wire-pullers and busybodies in every direction
were on the alert, dusting their banners and
waking up their retainers. In a week from
the election the preparations were concluded,
and at sundown of the day appointed, the forces
of the procession began to assemble in the
Houston street square, East river. Two men
were seen with highly flushed faces, the dawn of
the procession, to roll off a couple of barrels
around a corner from a neighboring pump, and
hoist them upon a truck behind a canvass banner,
which denoted that these were two genuine
and unadulterated barrels of the water of
the upper Wabash, in its aboriginal condition
before the clearing under the new bill. A
few minutes after, two other flush-faced gentlemen
came around another neighboring corner
with a couple of rolling barrels, which
were duly planted on a second truck, and which
were, in like manner, given out as so much
pure fluid drawn from the mighty Hudson by
an aged sailor, who would ride in one of the
barouches. Presently, a body of horsemen,
with new beaver hats and blue ribands at their
buttonholes, came seampering distractedly into
the square, and rode about issuing enthusiastic
orders, and inspecting with military
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activity the condition of the square, from one
end to the other. These were the marshals
of the procession; and in less than a couple of
minutes they were followed by numerous detachments
of one kind and another, dropping
in at different points. In an hour the square
was full of horsemen, pedestrians, barouches,
carts, banners—and, for a time, there was an
unbroken hubbub of shouting voices, and an
inextricable confusion and entanglement of all
classes and orders of society.
By dint of driving up and down at the top of
their speed—riding every now and then over
a child or an old woman, assailing a detachment
of clamoring clerks in a high voice of
command, or imploring, with bended knees in
their saddles, a squad of mounted cartmen—
they succeeded in forming the line. A gentleman
in a dirty round jacket, filled his trumpet
till it overflowed; a short-legged drummer
dashed his sticks against the parchment; the
crowd gave three cheers, as they do when a
ship breaks from her stays, and the great Bottomite
procession was launched upon the streets.
There was a barouche, containing a standardbearer,
with two committee-men to fill up, that
led the van; then a barouche bearing two ancient
residents on the Wabash (brought on expressly
for this occasion), extremely pale and
sickly—as might have been expected—and
obliged to be fed out of a bottle, by a boy in
the carriage with them, to keep the breath in
their body. This device the crowd approved
of, and gave three cheers more as they trotted
in the wake of the procession. Then there
was a barouche with two fishermen—great,
sturdy, grampus-like fellows—educated, of
course, on the banks of the Hudson, and chewing
pigtail in evidence of the holiness and majesty
of the anti-Wabash cause.
But when, behind these, the crowd caught
sight of another barouche—wrapped round and
round with banners—the very horses trotting
forward in trowsers made of striped bunting,
there was no limit to the popular enthusiasm.
In this, the Hero of Kipp's bay—the redoubtable
Champion of New York—the illustrious
Hopkins himself, stood up, and removing his
hat, waved it pleasantly to the crowd, at full
arm's-length, as though he was bailing up their
cheers, and pouring them out of the hat into
the barouche. High above his head danced the
banner wrought by the dark-eyed young lady—
the blank filled as she had wished—“Uncompromising
hostility to the clearing of the Wabash.—
For Congress, Puffer Hopkins, the Hero
of New York!”
In the carriage with Puffer rode Mr. Halsey
Fishblatt, who had assumed a clean ruffle, of extraordinary
dimensions, and whose very waistcoat
seemed swelling and ready to burst with a
speech, with which he was no doubt prepared
to explode the moment he should be touched.
Then there were the fire companies—the earnest
and ardent friends of the successful candidate—
all in their red shirts and leather caps,
dragging their engines by the rope, and joining
in the cheerings of the crowds with lusty voice.
A throng of sailors, surging and swaying along,
twelve abreast and arm-in-arm, in duck trowsers,
blue shirts, and hats of tarpaulin; and
then, in an uninterrupted line, in seventeen
carriages, the seventeen wards of the city, represented
by as many emblematical gentlemen;
the first second and third being solid, substantial
old fellows, with well-fed persons, and a
cross of the Dutchman in their look; the sixth,
a strapping, raw-boned genius, with a cane in
his hand quite large enough for a club or shillelah;
the seventh, a plain citizen, evidently,
by his dress and aspect, rising rapidly in the
world; the fifteenth, a dainty gentleman, with
a well-plaited ruffled shirt, and copious rings
upon his fingers; and so throughout the seventeen.
In strong contrast came a shoal of wo-begone,
unhappy-looking gentlemen, who called
themselves, in a portentous banner which they
bore above their heads, the “Proscribed watchmen”
(they complained that the public offices,
to which they had acquired a legal right, by
ten years' uninterrupted possession, had been
taken from them), and they wore their caps
hind-foremost to denote the depth and agony
of their bereavement. With these—a fellowsufferer
in a common cause, there rode, in a
single gig, a lady of a venerable aspect, who
had for fifteen years dispensed at one of the
public watchhouses, pigs'-feet and coffee to the
watchmen, as they came in from their rounds.
She was the mother of five children—her husband,
now dead, had lost an arm in an election
riot—and she, a widow, had been ruthlessly
thrust from the watchhouse. All this was expressed
in the banner which her eldest boy carried
above her, on which were painted the goddess
of liberty, with a crape around her libertycap
(to denote the lady's widowhood); a onearmed
ghost, appearing from a neighboring
tomb (her late husband); and a table spread
in a corner of the standard, at which five small
skeletons were represented as feeding on peasoup
out of a large blue bowl.
This division of the show was received by
the crowd with an outbreak (as it was described
in the newspapers) an outbreak of irrepressible
indignation. Public opinion is always outraged
in such cases, and follows the perpetrators,
they said, as surely as the shadow the
sun; and here came public opinion itself.
Through all the length and breadth of the
United States there is, at all times, supposed to
be rolling a great sphere or ball—pausing sometimes
at villages which it takes in its way, then
at cities or hamlets—but ever rolling on, on,
along the seaboard, up mountain-sides—bounding
and rushing through valleys—growing steadily
larger, larger, and keeping up a horrible
rumbling and tumult wherever it moves. The
knocking to and fro of this mighty ball is a favorite
sport of congress-men, editors, and others,
who find a great diversion, in their sedentary
and arduous labors, in racketing it about.
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It was this mighty ball that was set in motion
in behalf of the lady in the single gig;
and typifying this—public opinion, which rolls
and gathers like an avalanche—a great canvas
wheel was now pressed forward at the rear
of the single gig, by an axle, at either end of
which toiled a dozen or two sallow gentlemen
with rickety legs, who, in the present case,
stood for Congress and the public press. Directly
behind public opinion, and taking such
advantage of its motions as he could, in a special
hackney-coach, to preserve his invaluable
health from the assaults of the night-air, came
Colonel Clingstone, a venerable revolutionary
veteran, whose patriotic ardor had been incontestably
established by his eating an entire British
ox (the property of a cowboy) during the
first week of the war, which proved to be so
substantial diet that he was able to live on the
very name or shadow of it ever after—seasoned
with a rumor of some gunshot wound or other.
In the rear of the venerable colonel—who did
not fail from time to time to show his frosty
head at one window or the other, just to see
how public opinion got along—there swarmed
a lean, cadaverous, deadly-looking troop, in
soiled garments and battered hats, and headed
by our electioneering agent, Mr. Nicholas
Finch, with a banner representing a group of
citizens greatly cast down and with pocket-handkerchiefs
at their eyes, weeping profusely
at the tomb of Washington. It was observed
of these gentlemen, who had chalked their faces
to an interesting paleness to create public sympathy,
that whenever the revolutionary veteran
thrust his portly person into view, one or other
of them would mutter between his teeth, “Cu's'
that old chap! he's had fat pickings forty years
from a pin-prick!” The sympathies of the crowd
were evidently with the cadaverous followers
of Mr. Finch.
“I know them fellers,” said a squint-eyed
bar-tender, who was on the look-out; “them's
Finch's hunters; they're wonderfully ill-used
gem'men—they wants berths in the custom-house,
for the sake of their country, and their
country wont let 'em take the berths! Ain't that
a hard case, Joe?”
“Crueller nor the anaconder!” answered
Joe, a dependant of a neighboring bakery;
“I say let every man bake his bread in the
gov'ment oven, if he likes to. Don't we own
the gov'ment—and what's gov'ments good
for if they can't do a man's private washing,
and ironing, and bread-baking? That's my
views?”
The lean gentlemen, in a word, were office-seekers,
ambitious to serve the public on any
terms; belonged to either side, or both sides,
as occasion required. It was a great wrong
to keep them out of place, for if they expended
half the ardor in serving the public which they
did to serve themselves, public affairs must have
been managed with extraordinary prudence and
despatch. Poor fellows! they were in a sad
plight; no bread nor beef at home, and their
ungrateful country refusing to cash their bills.
It was as much as Mr. Finch could do, moving
about and whispering cheerful promises in their
ears, to keep them in spirits to go through their
parts in the procession.
Behind these, comfortably quartered in a series
of light wagons, followed a body of gentlemen
in high glee, rosy-gilled, laughing and
making merry of every object on the road.
They seemed entirely at their ease, and to have
nothing to do in this world but to carry certain
torches which they waved and flaunted about
their heads as in pastime, and merely to show
the world how comfortable they were. It is
hardly necessary to add, that the gentlemen in
the light wagons were office-holders; and that
in evidence of their grateful remembrance of
the man who founded such a government, they
carried a full length of the Father of his country.
On a closer inspection, certain members
of the Bottom Club might have been discovered
settled in the light wagons; they had doubtless
left off ameliorating the condition of society in
order to devote their undivided attention to
their own comfort and the public service, on
which their outcry had quartered them. Behind
these, singling himself out from the common
herd, a little man marched about a platform,
which he had caused to be built at his
own private expense, and borne up on the
shoulders of four sturdy partisans, blowing a
small brass trumpet, of great depth of wind,
from time to time, and waving a small white
flag with great earnestness about his his head.
This gentlemen, too, was ambitious of office,
and by no means inclined to have the magnificence
of his claims confounded with the demerits
of the gentry who plodded on foot.
And then came scampering forward, Mr.
Sammis at the head of a hundred and fifty
mounted cartment; and as they rode in their
frocks, tottering and tumbling in their saddles,
they resembled not a little a hundred and fifty
clowns in an equestrian pantomime, slightly beside
themselves with strong drink.
There was a part of the line obscured by a
cloud of hangers-on, from which a report of
lusty voices constantly broke in cries of “Here's
the extra infantry!” “Terrible murder, sir,
don't tread on my toes!” “Only three cents,
and full of pipin'-hot soocides and seductions!”
When, in turning a corner, the cloud broke,
it disclosed, in their usual undress uniforms of
baggy caps, half coats, and inadequate breeches,
a detachment of newsboys, bearing aloft,
with an air of haughty defiance, numerous paper
ensigns, on which were inscribed “Freedom
of speech and plenty o' pies!” “Longnines
and liberty!” and other decisive axioms
of the newsboy creed.
At the heels of the news-boys, there fell in
great swarms of citizens, in long coats, short
coats, hats, caps, badges, and locked arms; and,
when every joint was set, it began, at first slowly,
but afterward with increased motions, to creep
like a three-mile snake, along the streets. As
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far as the eye could reach either way, there
was a tumultuous flow of faces—lighted up
by torches, borne on high shadowed by banners
and emblems, seeming to fill the city, and hold
possession of the night at every point.
The drum beat, the trumpet sounded, the
marshals in an ecstacy of excitement, hurried
up and down the line—there was one in buck-skin
breeches and military top-boots, who did
immense execution in clearing the line of the
kerbstone by riding over loafers and women
who stood in the gutters—the procession moved
on. With flaring torches they filed through
the streets, turned the distant corners—and
swept in in their course whole armies of recruits.
About the chief divisions of the line the populace
clustered in swarms, and the rear-ward
was swelled with a great crowd of laggards,
who in tattered garments, many of them shoeless
and hatless, shambled after. Wherever
they passed there were innumerable faces at
the windows, peering out; and the sidewalks
were thick with gazers. Like a turbid stream
it rolled on, street after street, staying itself
only for an instant, at different houses, to heave
a great cheer in compliment to some friend of
the party who dwelt within, or a portentous
groan in condemnation of an enemy. When
they arrived at a narrow street that crossed
their way, they came to a dead halt. A stumping
noise, in the deadly silence, was heard upon
the steps of an oyster-vault—a jolly face presented
itself—the crowd burst into a cheer of
recognition—Mr. Jarve Barrell laid his hand
upon his breast, waved his hat—and the crowd
passed on.
At length, in an overwhelming flood of a
thousand tributaries, they poured down upon the
great square in front of Fogfire hall. At a
given signal, and as one man, the vast gathering
bellowed forth cheer after cheer—the very
air rocked. The torches were gathered in a
ring, shedding a gloomy light upon the Park,
and on the tall gaunt buildings hard-by; a
gallows-tree was brought from a neighboring
deposite. As soon as it was planted in the
centre of the square, the red-shirted firemen
swarmed in from every direction at its foot—a
chain dropped from its summit—a blazing fire
kindled beneath, and a hoarse voice shouted
through a trumpet, “bring him forth!” The
crowd shuddered involuntarily—but when they
saw what it was that hung dangling from the
chain, they burst into a huge laugh. All the
uplands and winding ways of the city, whereever
the eye could reach, were set thick with
faces, fixed upon the gallows with its iron
fingers ready to pounce upon the victim. It
was a portly little figure with a white head
and green coat—a pair of supercilious eyes,
(these they couldn't see), altogether not more
than eighteen inches high. Such as were near
enough said it was the great insurance president—
Mr. Blinker, the late opposition candidate,
reduced half a dozen sizes or so, and it
was given out that he was brought to his
present ignominy by the firemen, who may be
supposed to have harbored a special ill-will
against one who, by his constant presence at
burnings and conflagrations, caused their sport
to be stayed half way. However this was, he
had been brought thither in an engine chamber,
and was now swinging above the flames
which crackled up and lovingly licked his feet,
while the engine men stood grinning about.
For a long time he hung, swaying to and
fro, toying as it were with the fire, to the infinite
delight of the crowd, who gathered in
masses upon the wagons, barouches, trucks,
even upon each other's shoulders, watching the
progress of the immolation. At length fire
took upon his person. “It's caught his right
boot!” cried one. There was an uproarious
shout. “It's caught his left!” There was
another still louder. But when the flame began
to invade the vital parts, there were no
limits to their satisfaction, which they expressed
by ironical calls to the firemen to put him
out.
“Why don't you play upon his second story
and upper-works, you fellers! Give him a jet
in th' abdomen! Why will you let the cruel
flame take the venerable man by the nose in
that way!” It was to no purpose; and though,
as the blaze twinkled in his eyes—looking
mischievously into their very sockets—he
seemed to frown scornfully upon them, in the
course of half an hour, during which the
volunteers had given the fire many an ugly
stir, the great insurance president, with all his
dignity of person and majesty of look, was a
cinder, picked up by a quidnunc, and in less
than an hour deposited in the neighboring
museum, among the bears and alligators, and
potted beetles there preserved. Some say that
this was Crump, the secretary of the Phœnix
company, who had made himself active in feeding
the flame by which the president had been
burned.
This business over—Mr. Blinker done to a
turn—to the entire satisfaction of everybody
present, there was a loud call upon Puffer
Hopkins for a speech; which call his associate,
Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, was quite anxious to
respond to.
“Let me answer it!” said Mr. Fishblatt;
“I'll tell them a thing or two about the old villain
we've just burnt. I know him from his cradle.
They expect something about him.” And
while Puffer kept his seat, Mr. Fishblatt
mounted to his legs in answer to the summons.
A broad, universal sibilation or hissing, admonished
Mr. Fishblatt that his orations were
not, just then, in request, and he dropped back
into his seat like one stricken with a ball.
There was the broad sky above them—the
surging sea of heads—the goddess of justice,
in snow-white wood, at his back—the streaming
banner and refulgent transparency of Fogfire
hall in front, and, by no means least of all,
the two pure barrels of Hudson, and two of
reeking upper Wabash, under his very eye,
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upon the trucks; could Puffer fail out of all
these to frame a triumphant speech? He
could not, and, as he concluded, three peals,
four times renewed, rent the circuit, and made
the very pennons rustle in the air.
Re-forming as soon as they could recover
from the bewilderment of the harangue, and in
much less order than they had set out, the procession
returned up the city in the direction of
the Tombs. Though the music still sounded,
and the torches still flared against the sky, a
sudden depression seemed to have fallen upon
the crowd. Many of the standard bearers
dropped their standards, and allowed them to
trail in the dust; great numbers left their
places in the ranks and skulked away. A
change had come over the very heaven itself;
the face of the sky was dark—not with accustomed
clouds or shadows—the great shadow of
the earth itself was spreading over the firmament;
an eclipse was at hand. At this moment,
and while yet there was some show of
triumph and rejoicing in the crowd, Puffer's
attention was withdrawn to a dark figure,
which, scudding away from the glare of the
procession, coasted along the walls, turned
a corner and disappeared, as though it had
dived into the earth. The contrast of this
single silent figure, and the great tumultuous
crowd, was so marked, that Puffer's mind was
strongly fixed upon it.
The darkness deepened, and multitudes kept
falling off; among others, Puffer descried Mr.
Sammis, as he left his place and passed by,
looking up and smiling as he passed.
Then Mr. Fishblatt ordered a sudden halt,
and without a word of explanation disappeared
from his side. What could this mean? Were
all things coming to an end? He was meditating
upon the incident, when a small, spare
figure—which he had noticed throughout the
night hovering about the carriage, and keeping
its face turned constantly toward his own, on
whichever side he looked, but which, in the
uncertain light he could not more closely discern—
leaped upon the wheel and twitched him
by the sleeve. How like it was to a similar
summons at the very outset of his career! A
voice was at his ear entreating him to leave
the carriage.
“You know you are mine, now!” said the
voice.
It sounded other than it ever had before.
“To see your friends at the farm-house, I
know,” answered Puffer, bending toward the
questioner; “but why not come into the carriage
with me, and ride out together?”
“No, no, you could not get out of the line,”
answered the other quickly. “You will not
deny me this wish? Come quickly—it darkens
apace.”
Puffer did not hesitate—the pageant was fast
growing to an end—but seizing a favorable
pause, escaped to the ground and followed the
other cautiously through the crowd.
In a few minutes they were beyond its skirts,
and moving at a good pace toward the suburbs.
Hobbleshank led the way at such eager speed,
looking forward to his path and back to Puffer,
constantly, that it was some time before the
young steps that followed reached him, and
when they did, Puffer found him so pale and
shaken by fatigue, it seemed, he begged him to
borrow his support.
Hobbleshank accepted it at once, and, with
a smile of hope and trust in his look as he
turned to answer, leaned upon Puffer, and they
pursued their way. The old man's guidance
and the young man's strength bore them swiftly
on. When they looked back, from an eminence
they had reached in travelling up the
city, the procession, they saw by the flaring
torchlight, was crumbling in pieces; detachment
after detachment falling off in flakes, and
with drooping banners, melting in the neighboring
streets.
As the old man and his companion moved
along, there crept out upon the air a thick darkness—
the earth's shadow lay, every minute,
closer and closer to the pale moon above. The
houses seemed, in the ghastly light, like ghosts
or spectres of their former selves; the churchsteeples,
quenched in the dim atmosphere,
were broken off at the top.
The passengers they met as they advanced
came toward them, wrapped in the strange
darkness, like travellers from another world.
The great heart of the city itself seemed to
grow still and be subdued to a more quiet beating
under the heavy air that oppressed its
church-towers and its thoroughfares. Hobbleshank
and Puffer drew closer to each other's
side at every step.
“You had not forgotten that you were mine
to-night?” asked Hobbleshank.
“Not at all!—how could I?” answered
Puffer. “I am yours now and at all times.”
“You are?” interrupted Hobbleshank, quickly;
“thank Heaven for that!”
“To be sure I am,” continued Puffer. “You
have made me what I am (I know this in more
ways than one), and I am your creature as
much as the pitcher is the potter's to carry me
where you will, and to put me to what uses you
choose. I am not sorry that the farm-house,
now your own again, is the first to visit.”
“Never mind that,” returned the old man.
“But now that you have grown to be a great
man, no matter how, won't the world be asking
questions of your early life and history?
What can you tell them, eh?”
Although this was spoken in a cheerful tone,
he drew a hard breath as it escaped him.
“Not much,” answered Puffer; “I don't
know that I would tell the world anything, let
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them ask as much as they choose; but to you,
my good old friend, always true, I may say that
I had no early life.”
“You don't mean,” interrupted Hobbleshank,
quickly, “that you ever suffered from
want of food, or lodging, or warmth? In God's
name, you don't say that!”
Puffer was startled by the old man's eagerness,
and seeing with how anxious a look he
hung upon him, he answered at once:
“Oh, no—never that—I meant merely that
my childhood had neither father's nor mother's
care; and can there be life without them? But
I ought not to repine—I had kindness and some
friends. As I meant to tell you, my first seven
years were passed with a boatman, who lived
on the edge of the North river, near Bloomingdale;
where I came from at first, I dont know—
although he used to tell me I was found by
him in the woods when an infant.”
“In the woods?” said Hobbleshank, cheerfully,
“Go on, go on, you couldn't have been
found in a better place.”
“The boatman's wife or some one that was
near to him died,” continued Puffer, wondering
at the old man's enthusiasm. “His heart
broke, his affairs went into decay, and I into
the Banks street asylum, as an orphan. When
I had been there some six or seven years, one
day there came into the room where we were
all seated, our faces just shining from the towel,
a stout, white-headed, rosy gentleman, of a
middle age; and pitching his eye upon me, after
ranging up and down the bench, said,
“This is the boy I spoke of?” The matron
answered it was.
“Very good,” said the rosy gentleman.
“His name is Puffer Hopkins; and when he's
of age let him draw this check.” He handed
a paper to the matron, and, smiling upon me
once more, went away.
“What does this mean?” asked Hobbleshank,
anxiously. “He was no relation of
yours.”
“I don't believe he was,” answered Puffer,
laughing. “Although I learned on inquiry
in the neighborhood, years after, when I had
drawn the money he had left me, that he had
been a bachelor who had married late in life,
and been much mocked and joked at for having
no children. He had given out that they
might be mistaken, and, by frequent visits to
the asylum and this goodness toward me, succeeded
in getting his gossips and aspersers off
the scent. He was dead, and his wife too,
when I inquired, and that was all I ever knew
of him.”
“It was a joke, then; a mere joke?” said
Hobbleshank.
“I suppose it was,” answered Puffer. This
answer seemed to be a great comfort to the old
man, for he breathed more freely, and they
hurried on at a quicker pace.
The mighty shadow of the eclipse deepened
and grew heavier upon the earth. Foot-passengers
paused and stood still in the
road. The trees in the fields looked like solid
shadows; the sound of wheels died away in
every thoroughfare. All life and motion were
arrested for the time; everything was at a
pause but Puffer and Hobbleshank; they were
moved by impulses, it would seem, not to be
stayed or dampened even by a disastrous darkness,
or the obscuration of the sky. The blue
heavens, they knew, lay beyond the apparent
shadow, and they pressed on. They came to
a steep road, and as they climbed this, Hobbleshank
clung closer than ever to Puffer. At its
top was an old country house, from the windows
of which cheerful lights gleamed upon
the darkness. The moment they came in sight
of this the old man trembled as with an ague,
and fell upon Puffer's arm for support.
They were almost at its threshold, when,
Hobbleshank arresting Puffer, they paused,
and the old man turned so as to look him full
in the face. It was evident there was something
on the old man's mind he had reserved
to this moment.
“Was there nothing,” he said at length, like
one who lingers to gather resolution, “was
there nothing the boatman gave you as evidence
of the place you were found in?”
“To be sure there was!” How the old
man's look was renewed to youth, by these
few words, and shined in Puffer's. “To be
sure there was—I forgot to mention it, but not
to wear it with me always in my breast, with
a hope.” His hand was in his breast, but Hobbleshank
stayed him, and told him “not yet—
not yet—it will be time presently.” He would
not trust himself to look at it.
Puffer knew something of the old man's
mood, and followed him silently as he led the
way. There had been cheerful voices from
within the house, but when it was known that
Hobbleshank and Puffer were at hand, a dead
stillness fell upon the place; it was as if the
old house itself listened, in expectation of what
was to be told.
They were no sooner within the hall than
Hobbleshank, pointing to a door at the left
hand, said, “In there—go in quickly—God
grant that all may be right!”
While Hobbleshank walked the old hall, the
dim figures on its walls, watching him, as he
might regard them as so many good spirits, or
evil spectres, Puffer found himself in a small
room, an antechamber, with two persons, one
a woman, stout, hale, and of middle age; the
other, a man, spare of person, and of a sorrowful
and forlorn look. They both stood before
him as he entered, with looks riveted upon
the door with a steady gaze. The moment he
crossed its threshold, a swift change crossed
their features—their whole expression was
shifted, like a scene, from that of dreadful
doubt to one of certainty and confirmation.
“It's Paul—little blackberry Paul—although
the berry's worn out in course of time,” said
the woman, speaking first and closely perusing
Puffer's features; “do you know us?”
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Puffer's mind was sorely vexed and troubled;
he knew them, and yet it seemed he knew them
not, for he could call neither by name.
“If I dared to hope it,” he answered at
length, scrutinizing his countenance, “I might
say this is my early friend, who brought me
to be a boy seven years old; but I don't believe
it!”
The man seized his hand quickly, and told
him he must, for he was no other.
“You don't recollect me, then?” said the
woman, somewhat cast down by the inequality
of Puffer's memory; “you sartainly haven't
forgot Hetty—Hetty Simmons, it was then,
Hetty Lettuce now—your old nurse? Ah, me!
I can't be changed so sadly since then!”
After a while Puffer—she pressed him to it—
admitted that he caught now and then a tone
in her voice that he ought to know.
“Now, to tell the truth,” said Hetty, a little
vexed, “I didn't know your face either; but I
knew your voice the minute I heard it at Bellevue
the other night; it was me that fastened
that bracelet on your arm the night you were
stolen away.”
“What bracelet?” said Puffer. “You don't
mean the one I wear in my breast?”
“Sartain—the very one,” answered Hetty;
“Let's see; I guess it's a match.” Hetty held
in her hand a half bracelet; in a minute more
she had Puffer's;—they were matches, as she
had guessed; the same auburn hair—the same
golden clasp. She threw open the door. Hobbleshank
stood there like one in a swoon—
white and trembling, his two hands hanging
like dead branches at his side.
“Come in,” said Hetty; “good heavens,
it's all as we thought!”
At this bidding Hobbleshank staggered across
the door-sill, and casting himself upon Puffer's
neck, muttered brokenly, “My son—my son!”
The tears fell from his old lids like rain. Mrs.
Lettuce, and the other, laying the broken
bracelet upon a table by the side of the great
breast-pin which was there already, took each
other by the hand and silently withdrew, leaving
father and son to know each other, after a
lifetime's separation, in peace. With halting
words, with tears and passionate embraces,
Hobbleshank made known to Puffer the chances
of his past life, how his mother died—he
did not tell him all, there were dreadful words
he could not trust himself with—how he was
lost—how in twenty years he had often thought
his child found again, but was so often sore
baffled and almost broken in hope. From the
first he felt that Puffer was his child and no
other; he dared not claim him till the last
rivet fastened him back, as it had to-night.
For many hours they had lingered together,
dwelling upon the past, so full of hope and
fear and strange vicissitude, when Hobbleshank,
starting up as though it had just come
into his mind, said:—
“What will they think of us? Come,
Paul, we have friends hard by that must not be
forgotten.”
He led him along the hall, and, with his
hand in his own, they entered another room,
larger than the first, where a company sat, in
an attitude of expectation, looking toward the
door, and watching it as it opened. They
knew, without a word, what the story was. It
was Hobbleshank and his long lost, new-found
son. They looked upon him whom they had
all known as Puffer—now that he was Paul,
and the old man's child—with new eyes. How
kind in Hobbleshank, to bring together such,
and such only, as he knew Puffer (for so we
love to call him still), would most desire to
meet. There was Mr. Fishblatt, standing
with his skirts spread, in the middle of the
floor, ready to open upon the case at the first
opportunity; and at his side Mr. Sammy Sammis,
whose face, from being a cobweb of smiles
on ordinary occasions, was now a perfect net,
in every line and thread of which there lay
lurking a gleam of welcome. Then there was
old aunt Gatty, who smiled too, but afar off,
like one who has not quite so sure a hold of
the occasion of her smiling as might be desired,
and seated near Dorothy, who whispered in
her ear, and did what she could to make her
conscious of the change that had come over
the fortunes of her old friend. Not far from
these, something of a shadow in their midst,
was Puffer's early friend, the forlorn stranger;
and Mrs. Hetty Lettuce, who had not altogether
recovered her spirits from the shock of
not being recognised by her boy and nursling.
But who are next—to whom Puffer gave his
earliest gaze—where his eye lingered so long?
No other than the little old aunt and the dark-eyed
young lady.
Puffer shook hands with them one and all;
as if he were starting the world anew, and
wished to set out well. There was no lack of
voices, one might be well assured. Mr. Fishblatt,
at the top of his, declaiming upon it as
one of the most extraordinary, unparalleled,
wonderful histories he had ever known. (He
had heard but the half yet.) Mr. Sammy Sammis
corroborating, and Hobbleshank running
from one to the other, and demanding, in a
highly-excited state of mind, opinions upon his
boy. Then he would come back again, requiring
to be informed whether he hadn't
done well—whether all had not been managed
with great discretion, and as it should have
been.
“Hold there a minute,” cried Mr. Halsey
Fishblatt at one of these questionings. “Are
you sure of your title here?”
“Quite sure,” answered Hobbleshank.
“What, sir!” retorted Mr. Fishblatt, “won't
the state come in as the successor to the broker,
who, as a prisoner, is a dead man in the
law, and seize the farm-house?”
“Ah! you haven't heard the story of the
deed,” answered Hobbleshank, quickly. “Who
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has kept that back from you? You ought to
know that.”
And he proceeded to give him a full and authentic
account of the marvel by which it had
been preserved, rescued, and transmitted to his
hands by Fob and his pale country friend.
“Come and sit by me,” said aunt Gatty, in
a voice so affected by age that every other
word was at the ceiling and the next plumbdown
upon the floor, “come here by your old
aunt.” Puffer placed a chair by her side; she
seized both his hands in hers, regarding him
steadily for some minutes, and then said, still
gazing, “How like his mother!—very like—
don't you see it, Dorothy?”
Dorothy, although she had never seen that
lady, rather than cross her old companion in
her whim, admitted it was marvellous.
“That's her eye exactly—but her hair—was
that black or flaxen—how was that, Dorothy,
you remember? How old are you, my child—
ten—perhaps twelve—ah, I forget ages wonderfully,”
and she fell off into an idle pondering.
She evidently supposed the world had
stood still for at least fifteen or twenty years.
Dorothy shook her head to the company round,
and soothed her aged friend as she could. She
presently after brightened a little, and asked if
this old man they saw was the Hobbleshank
whom she was bound to watch and guard as a
death-bed trust—by a promise at his mother's
bed-side fifty years old at least. It was the
same, Dorothy answered, and this was his son.
Aunt Gatty smiled at the news, and fell into a
new vacancy.
There was a close and whispered interview
on Puffer's part with the dark-eyed young
lady, which, strain their ear as they might,
was pitched in far too gentle a key to be guessed
at by any round, unless it might have been
the smart little aunt who sat by, brightening
up as it advanced as though it afforded her infinite
satisfaction to see how close and whispered
it was.
“I buried my only daughter,” said the sorrowful
boatman, when Puffer questioned him,
“many months ago—you remember her—your
little play-fellow—whose blue eyes you used to
watch so closely?”
Puffer did—but years had changed the hue
of his mind, and with that the color of the eye
that fixed his fancy most.
The sorrowful stranger sighed, and Puffer
turning away with some kindly thought at his
heart, fell into the hands of Mrs. Lettuce, who
stood near by with a candle and motioned
Puffer to follow her. She crossed the room and
led him into a small chamber at its side. The
chamber, unlike the other parts of the house
he had seen, was unfurnished; it held nothing
more than a low, narrow bed, a tattered blanket,
and a few broken bed cords, trailing upon
the floor. It was cold and damp, and a chill
struck through Puffer as his companion closed
the door and shut them in, what seemed to
Puffer, from the first moment, a hideous place.
“It's strange you didn't recollect your old
nurse,” said Mrs. Lettuce, “but never mind
that; all your troubles and tribulations began
in this room; and I want to tell what your
old father's heart failed him to speak of. This
was Fyler Close's sleeping-room for more than
a year; all the while your poor mother was
sick—what snake's eyes that old villain had!—
and when he stretched his neck toward that
door, when your poor mother was a dying, and
spread out his old ugly hands, as if he had 'em
hold of her young throat squeezing the life out—
but that isn't it. You'll ask what all this
means? The long and the short of it is this.
Fyler Close and your father loved the same woman;
and there wasn't a brighter angel out of
heaven than that girl; they both loved her,
Paul, but your father married her; and from
that day to this, he has had the shadow of the
devil, yes the devil himself in the form of that
broker, at his heels. Your father, Paul, was
always quick, and free, and lavish with his
money; and that Fyler Close knew well. He
made believe that he didn't care which married
the girl, but he hated your father to the death;
and as he knew your father's weakness, he
worked upon it; he urged him to all sorts of
extravagance; to buy this, and buy that, and
buy the other—till the tide begun to run back
with him—and then Fyler comes in, and like
a dear friend, lends him all he wants. He
was always of a lending nature, more for
spite than gain, I always thought; and so he
went on lending till your father wasn't worth
a cent he could call his own. Then Fyler began
to call it in by degrees, so that your father
didn't see what he was driving at; first he
had to sell a picture, then an up-stairs carpet;
then Fyler came to board in this house, to keep
an eye on things. He thought plainer living
proper; and the family was put upon a short
allowance.”
“This is a devil, as you say,” said Puffer,
from his closed teeth, while the sweat started
to his brow. “A devil with two hoofs!”
“By-and-by your mother fell sick—it was
the presence of the old broker and a change
in her way of living; she grew worse day by
day; it was no seated sickness, the doctors
said, nothing they could name; she was perishing,
I verily believe, of hunger, for every
day the table was more spare than before; the
broker himself seemed to live on air, to keep it
in countenance, and all that time—all the while
that poor dear creature was famishing with the
pangs of hunger at her heart, which made her
cry out, though for his sake—your father's
sake, and lest some direr calamity might be
brought upon him, she said not a word. But
such cries as she uttered, so sharp and awful,
I never heard in my life; and Fyler Close lay
on that couch, that very couch, drinking them
all in like music. The devils must have him,
if any man! Your mother was buried.”
“Starved to death!” gasped Puffer.
“Even so, I fear,” answered Mrs. Lettuce,
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“and her grave is just by the house-wall, where
the broker could thrust forth his head from
this chamber window, and gloat upon it any
time he chose. Your father saw her in her
grave, but more like one raving mad than a
rational creature; immediately after the funeral
he disappeared, was gone—no one knows
whither to this day, though it is said he lived
during that time upon the roads and highways
of the country, and sheltered himself in sheds
and barns. The old broker lodged here a few
nights, grew disquieted it is thought, and went
into the city. Paul, Paul,” said Hetty, breaking
into tears, “I never thought when you
were a month's infant on my lap, that I should
live to tell you a tale like this. You didn't remember
me, but I forgive you.”
Puffer stood gazing upon the bed with a
blanched face, and glassy eye, and rigid in every
limb. Hetty would not let him dwell upon
it longer, but, taking him by the arm, led
him gently back. So pale and unearthly was
his look and action when he came forth, they
all gathered about and asked what sudden sickness
shook him so?
“Nothing, nothing,” he answered. Before
they could put further question, Hobbleshank
entreated them to pardon him for a while, and
drew Puffer away. They went into the open
air, and treading gently on the earth, as though
a grave lay under every step, they stood beside
a tomb built close under the wall. It heaved
above the earth, and Hobbleshank, laying his
hand upon its top, said to Puffer, “This is
your mother's grave.” The swelling vines,
crested with pure white blossoms, broke like a
green wave over its marbled top.
As they recrossed the threshold the trouble
passed away from heaven, and the pale, clear
light lay on all the country round.
Hobbleshank led Puffer again into the little
chamber.
“I have a favor to ask of my child,” he said,
“but one that he will not fail to grant—I am
sure, am I?”
To be sure he was, let him ask anything he
chose.
“I want you,” said Hobbleshank, “to fix
this breastpin in your bosom and get married
to-night.”
To-night! Puffer hadn't thought of such a
thing. Twenty-five years to come would be
time enough. The young lady was in the other
room—the parson at hand—how could it be
avoided—he'd like to know from Puffer how it
was to be avoided? Puffer could suggest no
practicable means of escape, and proceeded
with the old man to the other room, to be married
with as good a grace as he could. The
little parson had come; there was the bride,
too, whose consent had scarcely been asked,
in her snow-white dress, the smart old aunt
smoothing the folds and rubbing her hands alternately.
In half an hour a change had come
over the aspect of Puffer's sky as great as the
eclipse without—brightening, not darkening,
all that lay beneath. Who can tell what gossip
the old farm-house rung with that night—
what plans, what jests were broached—what
good cheer went abroad among them all? How
Halsey Fishblatt declaimed—how the little old
aunt chattered—how Hobbleshank shambled
up and down the room in a constant glow—
how it was finally determined that Hetty Lettuce
and Dorothy and Aunt Gatty should come
to live in the old farm-house (there was a
chirping house full), with Hobbleshank and
Paul and the new wife. How Mr. Halsey
Fishblatt would strike out some grand scheme
or other, by which they should hear and know
all that the city did, or thought, or said; how
Mr. Sammy Sammis and the little old aunt
would come out and visit them, twice a week
at least, in a new one-horse to be immediately
established; and the poor stranger, too, Puffer's
early friend—there was a pleasant berth
to be thought of for him—a nice little office
Mr. Sammy Sammis had pitched upon in
his own mind already, and about which he
would see seventeen influential gentlemen tomorrow.
A blessing upon the old household and the
young—having spun out a long sorrow as the
staple of their life, they have come upon a clear
white thread, which will brighten on in happiness
and mirth to the very grave's edge!
THE END OF PUFFER HOPKINS.
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Mathews, Cornelius, 1817-1889 [1843], The various writings (Harper & Brothers, New York) [word count] [eaf265].
