Daybreak.
Chapter I.
"O jewel in the lotos: amen!"
A wide, slow whitening of the east, a silent stealing away of shadows, a growing radiance before which the skies receded into ineffable heights of pale blue and gleaming silver, and a March day came blowing in with locks of gold, and kindling glances, and girdle of gold, and golden sandals over the horizon.
Louis Granger, standing in the open window of his chamber, laughed as he looked in the face of the morning, and stretched out his hands and cried, "Backsheesh, O Howadji!"
Not many streets distant, another pair of eyes looked into the brightening east, but saw no gladness there. Margaret Hamilton remembered that it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and that she had cried herself to sleep the night before, thinking of it. But she would not remember former birthdays, celebrated by father, mother, and sisters, before they had died, one after one, and left her alone and aghast before the world. This, and some other memories still more recent, she put out of sight; and, since they would not stay without force, she held them out of sight. One who has to do this is haunted.
The woman looked haunted. Her eyes were unnaturally bright and alert, and shadows had settled beneath them; her cheeks were worn thin; her mouth compressed itself in closing. At twenty-five she looked thirty-five.
And yet Miss Hamilton was meant for a beauty—one of the brilliant kind, with clear gray eyes, and a creamy pallor contrasting with profuse black hair. The beautiful head was well set; something vivid and spirited in the whole air of it. Her height was only medium, but she had the carriage of a Jane de Montford, and there were not wanting those who would have described her as tall.
While she looked gloomily out, a song she had heard somewhere floated up in her mind:
"The years they come, and the years they go,
Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
From dark to dark they come and go,
All in the dew-fall and the rain."
It was like a dreary bitter wind sobbing about the chimneys when the storm is rising. She turned hastily from the window, and began counting the hideous phantoms of bouquets on the cheap wall-paper, thinking that they might be the lost souls of flowers that had been wicked in life; roses that had tempted, and lilies that had lied. The room, she found, was sixteen bouquets long, and fourteen and a half wide.
When her eyes began to ache with this employment, she took up a book, and, opening it at random, read:
"A still small voice said unto me,
'Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?'"
Was everything possessed to torment her? She dropped the book, and looked about in search of distraction. In the window opposite her stood her little easel with a partly finished cabinet photograph on it a man's face, with bushy whiskers, round eyes, an insignificant nose, the expression full of a weak fierceness superficially fell and determined, as though a lamb should try to look like a lion. One eye was sharply finished; and, as Margaret glanced at the picture, this stared at her in so grotesque and threatening a manner that she burst into a nervous laugh.
"I must turn your face to the wall, Cyclops, till I can give you another eye," she said, suiting the action to the word.
A pile of unfinished photographs lay on a table near. She looked them over with an expression of weariness. "O the eyes, and noses, and mouths! Why will people so misuse the sunbeams? And this insane woman who refuses to be toned down with India ink, but will have colors to all the curls, and frizzles, and bows and ends, and countless fly-away things she has on her! She looks now more like an accident than a woman. When the colors are put in, she will be a calamity. Only one face among them pleases me—this pretty dear."
Selecting the picture of a lovely child, Margaret looked at it with admiring eyes. "So sweet! I wish I had her here this moment with her eyes, and her curls, and her mouth."
A sigh broke through the faint smile. There seemed to be a thorn under everything she touched. Laying the picture down, she busied herself in her room, opened drawers and closets and set them in order; gathered the few souvenirs yet remaining to her—letters, photographs, locks of hair—and piled them all into the grate. One folded paper she did not open, but held an instant in fingers that trembled as they clung; then, moaning faintly, threw it on to the pyre. Inside that paper were two locks of hair—both silver-threaded—twined as the two lives had been; her father's and her mother's.
The touch of a match, and the smoke of her sacrifice curled up into the morning sky.
Then again she came to a stand-still, and looked about for something to do.
"I cannot work," she said. "My hand is not steady enough, and my eyes are dim. What was it that Beethoven wrote to his friend? 'At times cheerful, then again sorrowful; waiting to see if fate will listen to us.' Suppose I should drop everything, since I am so nerveless, and wait to see what fate will do."
Here again the enemy stood, The picture of waiting that came up before her mind was that of Judge Pyncheon in the House of the Seven Gables, sitting and staring blankly as the hours went by—a sight to shriek out at when at length he was found. With a swift pencil this woman's imagination painted a companion picture: the door of her room opening after days of silence; a curious, frightened face looking in; somebody sitting there cold and patient, with half-open eyes, and not a word of welcome or questioning for the intruder.
A clock outside struck ten. Margaret rose languidly and dressed for a walk, after pausing to rest. Raising her arms to arrange her hair and bonnet, she felt so faint that for a moment she was obliged to lean forward on her dressing-table.
At length she was ready, only one duty left unperformed. Miss Hamilton had not said her prayers that morning, and had not even thought of saying them, or of reproaching herself for the omission—a scandalous omission, truly, for the granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor John Hamilton, and daughter of that excellent but somewhat diluted deacon, John Hamilton, his son. But to pray was to remember; and beside, God had forgotten her, she thought.
Miss Hamilton was not a Catholic, To her, Christ died eighteen centuries ago, and went to heaven, and stayed there, only looking and listening down in some vague and far-away manner that was easier to doubt than to believe. The church into which, at every dawn of day, the Beloved descends with shining pierced feet and hands; with the lips that spoke, and the eyes that saw, and the locks through which had sifted the winds of Olivet and the dews of Gethsemane; with the heart of infinite love and pity, yes, and the soul of infinite power—this church she knew not. To her it was an abomination. The temples where pain hangs crowned with a dolorous majesty, and where the path of sorrows is also the path of delights, her footsteps had never sought. To her they were temples of idolatry. Therefore, when troubles came upon her, though she faced them intrepidly, it was only with a human courage. What wonder if at last it proved that pain was stronger than she?
With her hand on the latch of the door she paused, then turned back into her chamber again. The society face she had assumed dropped off; a sigh went shivering over her lips, and with it a half-articulated thought, silly and womanish, "If I had some one to come in here, put an arm around me—I'm so tired!—and say, 'Take courage, dear!' I could bear up yet longer. I could endure to the end, perhaps."
A silly thought, but pitiful, being so vain.
Miss Hamilton was not by nature one of those who, as Sir Thomas Browne says, looked asquint upon the face of truth. But she had not dared to fully realize her circumstances, lest all courage should die out of her heart. Now you could see that she put aside the last self-delusion, and boldly looked her life in the face. It was Medusa.
One of the bravest of soldiers has said that in his first battle he would have been a coward if he had dared. Imagine the eyes of such a fighter, a foe within and a foe without, and but his own right arm and dauntless will between the two!
Such eyes had this woman. Of her whole form, only those eyes seemed to live. But for them she might have been Margaret Hamilton's statue.
At length she moved; and going slowly out, held on to the railing in descending the stairs. Out doors, and down Washington street, then, taking that direction involuntarily. It was near noon when she found herself in a crowd on Park street, hastening through it, without caring to inquire what the cause of the gathering was. Coming out presently in front of the state house, and seeing that there was space yet on the steps, she went up them, and took her stand near a gentleman whom she had long known by sight and repute. Mr. Louis Granger also recognized her, and made room, quietly placing himself between her and the crowd. Miss Hamilton scarcely noticed the movement. She was used to being attended to.
This gentleman was what might be called fine-looking, and was thoroughly gentlemanly in appearance. He was cast in a large mould, both form and features, had careless hazel eyes that saw everything, and rather a lounging way with him. Indeed, he owned himself a little lazy, and used laughingly to assert his belief that inertia is a property of mind as well as of matter. It took a good deal to start him; but once started, it took still more to stop him. His age might be anywhere from thirty to forty, the few silver threads in his fine dark hair counting for nothing. You perceived that they had no business whatever there. He was not a man who would catch the eye in a crowd; but, once your attention was directed toward him, you felt attracted. The charm of his face depended chiefly on expression; and those who pleased him called Mr. Granger beautiful.
He stood now looking attentively at the lady beside him, finding himself interested in her. Her eyes, that were fixed on the advancing procession, appeared to see no more than if they had been jewels, and her mouth was shut as if it would never open again. The pale temples were hollow, the delicate nostrils were slightly pinched, the teeth seemed to be set hard. He studied her keenly, secure in her perfect abstraction, and marked even the frail hand that clinched, not clasped, the iron railing. Mr. Granger could read as much in a hand as Washington could; and this hand, dazzlingly fair, full-veined, pink-palmed, transparent, dewy, with heart-shaped finger-tips that looked as though some finer perception were reaching out through the flesh, was to him an epitome of the woman's character.
It was the 17th of March, and the procession in honor of St. Patrick an unusually fine one. It flowed past like a river of color and music, with many a silken rustling of the flag of their adoption, but everywhere and above all the beautiful green and gold of that most beautiful banner in the world—a banner which speaks not of dominion, but of song and sunshine and the green earth. While other nations, higher-headed, had taken the sun, the star, the crescent, the eagle, or the lion for an emblem, or, with truer loftiness, had raised the cross as their ensign, this people, with a sweetness and humility all the more touching that it was unconscious, bent to search in the grasses, and smilingly and trustfully held up a shamrock as their symbol. Those had no need to inscribe the cross upon their escutcheon who, in the face of the world, bore it in their faithful hearts, and upon their bowed and lacerated shoulders.
A pathetic spectacle—a countless procession of exiles; yet, happily for them, the generous land that gave them a home grew no dark willows to rust their harp-strings.
The music was, of course, chiefly Irish airs; but one band in passing struck up "Sweet Home."
Margaret started at the sound, and looked about for escape. She could not listen to that. Happening to glance upward, she saw a company of ladies and gentlemen in the balcony over the portico. Governor A—— was there, leaning on the railing and looking over. He caught her glance, and beckoned. Margaret immediately obeyed the summons, getting herself in hand all the way, and came out on the balcony with another face than that she had worn below. She had put on a smile; some good fairy had added a faint blush, and Miss Hamilton was presentable. The governor met her with a hearty smile and clasp of the hand. "I am glad to see you," he said. "Will you stand here, or take that seat Mr. Sinclair is offering you?"
"Yes, sir," he exclaimed, as Margaret turned away, continuing his conversation with a gentleman beside him, "the English treatment of the Irish is a clear case of cussedness."
"Our good chief magistrate is slightly idiomatic at times," remarked a lady near by.
A poetess stood in the midst of a group of gentlemen, who looked at her, while she looked at the procession. "It is Arethusa, that bright stream," she said with soft eagerness, "Pursued and threatened at home, it has crept through shadowy ways, and leaped to light in a new land."
Margaret approached Mr. Sinclair, who sat apart, and who made room for her beside him.
Even now she noticed the splendid beauty of this man in whom every physical attraction was perfected. Mr. Maurice Sinclair might have posed for a Jupiter; but an artist would scarcely have taken him for a model of the prince of the apostles. He was superbly made, with a haughty, self-conscious beauty; his full, bold eyes were of a light neutral tint impossible to describe, so transparent were they, so dazzling their lustre; and his face was delicately smooth and nobly-featured. One could scarcely regret that the long moustache curling away from his mouth, then drooping below his chin, and the thick hair pushed back from his forehead, were of silvery whiteness. It did not seem to be decay, but perfection. Mr. Sinclair used to say that his head had blossomed.
He smiled as Miss Hamilton stepped slowly toward him, the smile of a man entirely pleased with himself.
"Own now," he said, "that you are wishing to be Irish for the nonce, that you might feel the full effervescence of the occasion."
She shook her head listlessly.
Mr. Sinclair perceived that she needed to be amused. "See the governor wave his handkerchief!" he said. "That man has been born twice, once into Massachusetts, and the second time into all creation."
She glanced at the object of his remarks, noting anew his short, rotund figure, his round head with all its crow's-nest of black ringlets, his prompt, earnest face that could be so kind. "There isn't a drop of mean blood in his veins," she said. "He is one of those rare men in whom feeling and principle go hand in hand."
Mr. Sinclair gave his shoulders a just perceptible shrug. "Do you know all the people here?" he asked, observing that Margaret looked searchingly over the company. "Let me play Helen on the walls of Troy, and point out the notables whom you do not know. That antique-cameo-faced gentleman whom you are looking at now is the Rev. Mr. Southard. He is misnamed of course. He should be called after something boreal, Does not he make you shiver? He lives with my cousin, whom I saw you standing beside down there. Louis likes him, or pretends to. Mr. Southard is not so much a modern minister, as a theological reminiscence. He belongs among the crop-heads; I have somewhere heard that he was a wild lad, and is now doing penance. It is likely. One doesn't bar a sheep-fold as one does a prison. He appears to be a little off guard now, for a breath seems to have forgotten predestination. When he looks like that, I am always reminded of something pagan, He'd be horrified, of course, if he knew it. Mark that Olympian look of painless melancholy, and the blue, motionless eye. What a cold, marble face he has! Being too polished to retain heat, he remains unmoved in the midst of enthusiasm. That's philosophy, isn't it? He is one of those who fancy that ceasing to be human, they become superhuman. They mistake the prefix, that's all. But Mr. Southard bristles with virtues. I must own that I never knew a man so forgiving toward other people's enemies."
"I know Mr. Southard well by reputation," Margaret interrupted rather warmly. "He is human, of course, and so, fallible; but every mountain in his soul is a Sinai!"
"Oh! he has his good points," Mr. Sinclair admitted tranquilly. "I have known him to be surprised into a glorious laugh, for which, to be sure, he probably beat himself afterward; and he has a temper that peeps out now and then in a delightfully human fashion. I have detected in him, too, a carnal weakness for French chocolate, and a taste for pictures, even the pictures of the Babylonians. Once I saw him stand five minutes before a faded old painting of Cimabue's; I believe it was a virgin standing between two little boys who leaned to kiss each other, a hand of hers on either head, I don't condemn the man in toto. I like his faults; but I detest his virtues!
"That stout, consequential person, with his chin in his cravat, who as Suckling says of Sir Toby Mathews, is always whispering nothing into somebody's ear, is Mr. ex-councilman Smith. He was thrown to the surface at the time of the Know-Nothing ebullition, and when that was over, was skinned off with the rest of 'em. He considers himself a statesman, and looks forward with prophetic goggle eyes to the time when his party shall be again in the ascendant. He comes here to nurse his wrath, and I haven't a doubt that he feels as though this procession were marching down his throat. He used to be to a joiner, then a house-builder, then he got to be a house-owner. Twenty years ago, my aunt Betsey, who lives in the country, paid him two dollars to build a trellis for her grape-vine, and he did it so well that she gave him his dinner after the family had got through. Now he has a mansion near hers that dwarfs her cottage to a bird-cage. His place is really fine, grounds worth looking at, and a stone house with bronze lions at the door. I don't know what he has lions there for, unless to indicate that Snug the joiner lives within. I'm not afraid of 'em. You've never heard of him here; but out there he is tremendous. 'Imposteur à la Mecque, et prophète à Médine.'
"Still there are people even here who blow about him. Psaphon's birds, of course, fed on Smith's oats, He hates me because he thinks that I laugh at him; but I don't doubt that it soothes his soul to know that the roses on his carpets are twice as large as those on mine, and that he has ten pictures to my one. The first thing you see when the vestibule door opens is a row of portraits, ten of 'em, Smith and his wife, and eight children. Ames painted 'em, and he must have had the nightmare regularly till they were done. They are larger than life, and their eyes move. I am positive that they move. I guess there are little strings behind the canvas. There they hang and stare at you, till you wish they were hanged by the necks. The first time I went there, I shook my fist at 'em behind Smith's back, and he caught me at it. I couldn't help it. The spectacle is enough to excite any man's worst feelings. The parlor walls are covered with landscapes painted from a cow's point of view, strong in grass and clover, with pleasant drinking-places, and large trees to stand under when the sun gets high. I never see such trees and water in nature, but I dare say the cows do. My wife and I dined there once. The eight children sat in two detachments and ate Black Hamburg grapes, skins and all; and the peaches were brought in polished like apples. My wife got into such a giggle that she nearly strangled. I see, you sharp-eyed Bedouin, you want to remind me that I have eaten of this man's salt. True, but he made it as bitter as any that Dante ever tasted.
"That sober, middle-aged man in a complete suit of pepper and salt, hair and all, is Mr. Ames, the member from N——, Polliwog Ames they call him, from his great speech. Is it possible you have never heard of it? It was the speech of the session. Some one had introduced a bill asking an appropriation of ten thousand dollars toward building a new museum of natural history. There was a little palaver on the subject, then Ames got up. All winter nothing had been heard from him but the scriptural yea and nay; so, of course, every one was attentive, 'Gentle-men,' he said, 'while thousands of men, women, and children, in the city, and tens of thousands in the commonwealth, are hungry to-day, and will be hungry to-morrow, and are and will be too poor to buy food; while paupers are crowding our almshouses, and beggars are swarming in our streets; while all this poverty is staring us in the face, and putting to us the problem, how are we to be fed and clothed and sheltered, and kept from crime, and taught to read and to pray? it would seem to me, gentlemen, an unnecessary not to say reprehensible act, to appropriate ten thousand dollars of the public money, in order that some long-nosed professor might be enabled to show us how polliwogs wiggle their tails.' Having said this, Mr. Ames shut his mouth, and sat down covered with glory."
Margaret's only comment was to look earnestly at this man who had remembered the poor.
They were silent a little while; then Mr. Sinclair spoke again, in a lower voice. "I am going to Europe in a few weeks."
She had nothing to say to this. His going would make no difference with her.
"You know, and everybody knows," he went on hastily, "that my wife and I have not for years lived very happily together. I think that few blame me. I would not wish all the blame to be thrown on her, either. The fact is, we never were suited to each other, and every day we grew more antagonistic. We had a little sensible talk last week, and finally agreed to separate. She will remain here, and I, as I said, shall go to Europe for an indefinite time, perhaps for ever."
At any other time Margaret might have felt herself embarassed by such a confidence. As it was, she hardly knew what reply to make; but, since he waited, managed to say that if people could not live peacefully together, she supposed it was best they should separate.
He spoke again abruptly.
"Margaret, you cannot, if you would, hide your misery from me. You are fitted to appreciate all that is beautiful in nature and art, yet are bound and cramped by the necessity of constant labor for your daily bread. You suffer, too, what to the refined is the worst sting of poverty, the being associated with, often in the power of, vulgar and ill-natured people, who despise you because you are not rich, and hate you because, being poor, you yet will not and cannot be like themselves. I know that there are those who take delight in mortifying you, in misinterpreting your every act and word, and in prejudicing against you persons who otherwise might be your friends. What a wretched, double life you live; petted by notable people on one hand, and insulted by inferiors on the other! How long is it to last? You must be aware that you are slipping out of the notice of your early friends. You cannot accept their invitations, because you have not time, and moreover, are not suitably dressed. By and by they will cease to invite you. Do you look forward to marriage? Every day your chances are lessening. You are growing old before your time. I cannot see that you have anything to look forward to but a life of ill-paid toil, a gradual dropping out of the place that you were born and educated to fill, a loss of courage and self-respect, a lowering of the tastes, and at last, a sinking to the level of what you must despise. If you should be taken ill now, what would become of you?"
"I should probably go to the charity-ward of the public hospital," Miss Hamilton replied coldly.
"What do you hope for?" he asked.
"I hope for nothing," she answered. "I know all that you tell me, and far more."
Mr. Sinclair's eyes brightened. "What good are your fine friends to you? You would never ask them to help you, I know; but if you could bring yourself to that, would you not feel a bitter difference? It is not mean to shrink from asking favors, when they are for ourselves. Walter Savage Landor was neither mean nor a fool; yet he makes one of his best characters say that the highest price we can pay for a favor is to ask for it, and everybody who has tried knows that. You would sink at once from a friend to a dependent. Now your friends ask no questions, and you tell them no lies. If they give the subject a thought, they fancy you in some quiet, retired, and highly genteel apartment, if rather near the eaves, then so for a pure northern light, leisurely and elegantly painting photographs, for which you receive the highest prices, and thanks to boot. They don't see an upstartly assistant criticising your work, or a stingy employer taking off part of the price for some imaginary flaw. And if they did, they would only tell you that such annoyances are trivial, that you must rise above them. I've heard that kind of talk. But those who go down to battle with the pigmies know how tormenting their bites are. The worst of it is, too, that you cannot long maintain the dignity and purity of your own character in this petty strife, It isn't in the nature of things, I don't care what may be said to the contrary by parlor ascetics and philosophers. They have no right to dogmatize on the necessary influence of circumstances in which they have never been placed. Moreover, constant labor is lowering to the mind, and any work is degrading to the person who can do a higher kind of work. It may be saving to him whose leisure would be employed in frivolity and license; but that person is already base. The time you spend in studying how to make one dollar do the work of five makes a lower being of you. I can see this in you, Margaret. Your manners and conversation are not what they were. You have no time to read, or think, or look at pictures, or hear lectures, or listen to music—none. You have only time for work, and, the work finished, are too weary for anything but sleep; perhaps too weary for that even, How long do you expect to keep up with such a life dragging at you?"
Miss Hamilton lifted between her finger and thumb a fold of the dress she wore. "All the time I could spare from my painting in the last three weeks has been devoted to the task of making this dress out of an old one," she said. "It was a difficult problem; but I solved it. I was always fond of the mathematics. Of course, during those three weeks my universe revolved around a black bombazine centre. O sir! I know better than you can tell me, how degrading such labor is. God in the beginning imposed it as a curse; and a curse it is!"
There was again a momentary pause, during which Mr. Sinclair's merciless eyes searched the cold face beside him. Margaret did not observe that all the company had gone, that the procession had disappeared, the crowd melted away. She had sat there and listened like one in a dream, too dull and weary to be angry, or to wonder that such words should be addressed to her, and such bold assertions made, where her most intimate friends had never ventured a hint even.
When Mr. Sinclair spoke again, his voice was soft and earnest. "Have you any friend so dear and trusty, that his frown would make your heart ache yet more? In all the world, do you know one to whom your actions are of moment, who thinks of you anxiously and tenderly, for whose sake you would walk in a straight path, though it might be full of thorns? Is there one?"
"There is not one," she said.
"Come with me, then!" he exclaimed. "Think of Italy, and what that name means, of the east, of all the lands that live in song and in story. Drop for ever from your hands the necessity for toil, and let your heart and mind take holiday. 'Not one,' you said; but, Maud, you mistook, I thought of you all the time, and got your troubles by heart. Leave this miserable, cramping life of yours, and come with me where we shall be as free from criticism as if we were disembodied spirits. Forget this paltry Boston, with its wriggling streets and narrow breaths. Fancy now that the breeze in our faces blows off the blue Mediterranean, the little dome above us rises and swells to St. Peter's, that last flutter of a banner over the hill is the argent ground with golden keys. Or Victor Immanuel has got Rome for his own, and there floats the red, white, and green of Italy. How you would color and brighten like a rose under such sunshine! Come with me, Margaret, come!
She looked at him with troubled, uncomprehending eyes, groping for the meaning under the flowery speech. His glance dazzled her.
"It is like a fairy-tale," she said. "How can it come true? I am poor, yet you bid me travel as only the rich can. How am I to go with you? who else is going?"
He smiled. "O silly Margaret! since there is no other way, and since in all the world there is no one to care for or to question you, come with me alone."
Then Margaret Hamilton knew that her cup of bitterness had lacked one poisoned drop. She got up from the seat, shrinking away, feeling as though she lessened physically.
But when she reached the door, Mr. Sinclair was there before her.
"At least, forgive me!" she heard him say.
"Let me go!" she exclaimed, without looking up.
"Remember my tenderness and pity for you," he urged.
"You have none!" she said. "Let me go."
"And you are not indifferent to me," he continued.
She lifted her face at that, and looked at him with eyes that were bright, gray, and angry as an eagle's.
"Maurice Sinclair," she said haughtily, "I thank you for one thing. Weary, and miserable, and lonely as I have been, I could not have been certain, without this test, that such a temptation would not make me hesitate. But now I know that temptation comes from within, not from without, and that infamy attracts only the infamous. I care for you, you think? My admiration and my friendships are free; but I am not a woman to tear my hands on other people's hedges. Let me tell you, sir, that I must honor a man before I can feel any affection for him. I must know that, though being human he might stumble, his proper stature is upright. If I cared for you, I could not stand here and scorn you, as I do; I should pray you to be true to your noble self, to give me back my trust in you. I should forgive you; but my forgiveness would be coals of fire on your head. If I could love a man well enough to sin for him, I should love him too well for that. Oh! it was manly, and tender, and generous of you, was it not? I had lost all but self-respect, and you would have taken that from me. But, sir, I have wings which you can never entangle!"
"You have nowhere to turn," he said.
She stood one instant as though his words were indeed true, then threw her hands upward, "I turn to God! I turn to God!" she cried out.
When she looked at him again, Mr. Sinclair stepped aside and let her pass.
But the strength that passion gives is brief, and when Margaret reached the street, she was trembling with weakness. Where to go? Not home; oh! not to that gloomy place! She walked across the Common, and thence to the Public Gardens, every step a weariness.
"I must stay out in the sunshine," she thought, taking a seat under the great linden-tree that stands open to the west. "Darkness, and chilly, shadowed places are terrible. Oh! what next?"
Though she had called on God, she yet believed not in him, poor Margaret! Hers had been the instinctive outcry of one driven to desperation; and when the impulse subsided, then darkness fell again.
Sitting there, she drew from her pocket a little folded paper, opened it in an absent way, and dreamily examined the delicate white powder it contained. More than once, when life had pressed too heavily, the enchanter hidden under this delusive form had came to her aid, had loosened the tense cords that bound her forehead, unclasping them with a touch as light and tender as love's own, had charmed away the pain from flesh and spirit. She recollected now anew its sinuous and subtile ways. First, a deep and gradually settling quietude of mind and body, all disturbing influences stealing away so noiselessly that their going was imperceptible, a prickling in the arms, a languor in the throat and at the roots of the tongue, a sweet fainting of the breath, an entire and perfect peace. Then a slowly rising perception of pleasures already in possession yet unnoticed before.
How delightful the mere involuntary act of breathing! How airily intoxicating the full, soft rush of blood through the arteries, swinging noisily like a dance to a song, never lost, in whatever labyrinthine windings it might wander. How the universe opened like a folded bud, like myriad buds that bloom in light and color and perfume! The air and the sunshine became miracles; common things slipped off their disguise, and revealed undreamed-of glories. All this in silence. And presently the silence would be found rhythmic like a tune.
She went no farther. The point at which all these downy influences became twined into a cord as potent as the fabulous Gleipnir, and tightened about both body and soul with its soft, implacable coils—that her thought glanced away from.
She carefully shook the shining powder into a little heap in the paper. There was ten times as much as she had ever taken at once; but then she had ten times greater need of rest and forgetfulness. Her head felt giddy, as if a wheel were going within it. Catching at that thought of a wheel, her confused memory called up strange eastern scenes, a temple in a gorge among rocky mountains; outside, the dash of a torrent foaming over its rough bed between the palms; not far away, the jungle, where the tiger springs with a golden flash through the shadows; within, hideous carved idols with vestments of cloth of gold, and silver bowls set before them, the noiseless entering of a gliding lama, the bowed form and hand outstretched to twirl the praying-wheel, whereon is wound in million-fold repetition the one desire of his soul, "Um mani panee, houm!" O jewel in the lotos! Rest and forgetfulness! So her thought kept murmuring with weary persistency.
As she raised the morphine to her lips, some one touched her arm.
"Madam!" said a man's voice just behind her shoulder.
She started and half turned. "Well, sir!"
"What have you there?" he asked, without removing his hand.
She shook herself loose from him. "Will you go on, sir? you are insolent!"
"I cannot go while you have such a face, and while that paper is in your hand," Louis Granger said firmly; and reaching, took the morphine from her.
Her glance slid away from his face, and became fixed.
"O child! what would you do?" he exclaimed.
She did not appear to hear him. She was swaying in her seat, and her breath came sobbingly.
Mr. Granger called a carriage that was passing, and led her to it. She made no resistance, and did not object, scarcely noticed, indeed, when he seated himself opposite her.
"Walk your horses till I find out where the lady wants to go," he said to the driver.
When, after a few minutes of sickening half-consciousness, Margaret began to realize who and where she was, and looked at Mr. Granger, she met his eyes full of tears.
"I have no claim on your confidence," he said, "but I desire to serve you; and if you can trust me, I assure you that you will never have reason to regret it."
Margaret dropped her face into her hands, and all the pride died out of her heart.
"I was starving," she said. "I have not tasted food for twenty-four hours; and for a week I have eaten nothing but dry bread."
Mr. Granger leaned quickly and took her hand in a strong grasp, as we take the hands of the dying, to give them strength to die.
"I worked day and night," she sobbed; "and I only got enough to make me decent, and pay for my room. I have done all I could; but I was losing the strength to do. I have been starving so for more than a year, growing worse every day. I wasn't responsible for trying to take the morphine. My head is so light and my heart is so heavy, that everything seems strange, and I don't quite know what is right and what is wrong."
Mr. Granger's sympathy was painfully excited. He was not only shocked and hurt for this woman, but he felt that in some way he was to blame when such things could be. He had also that uneasiness which we all experience when reminded how deceitful is the fair surface of life, and what tragedies may be going on about us, under our very eyes, yet unseen and unsuspected by us. "What if my own little girl should come to this!" he thought.
"What was Mr. Sinclair saying to you up there?" he asked abruptly.
She told him without hesitation.
"The villain!" he muttered.
"No," Margaret replied sadly, "I think that according to his light, he had some kind meaning. You know he doesn't believe in any religion, that he denies revelation; yet you would not call him a villain for that. Why then is he a villain for denying a moral code that is founded on revelation? He is consistent. If God and my own instincts had not forbidden me to accept his proposal, nothing else would have had power."
She sighed wearily, and leaned against the back of the carriage.
"Promise to trust all to me now," Mr. Granger said hastily, "I am not a Maurice Sinclair."
"Have I not trusted you?" she asked with trembling lips. "Besides, it seems that God has sent you to me, and trusting you is trusting him. I didn't expect him to answer me; but I called, and he has answered."
Chapter II.
A Louis D'or.
With the exception of that perfect domestic circle not often beheld save in visions, there is perhaps no more delightful social existence than may be enjoyed where a few congenial persons are gathered under one roof, in all the freedom of private life, but without its cares, where no one is obliged to entertain or be entertained, but is at liberty to be spontaneously charming or disagreeable, according to his mood, where comfort is taken thought of, and elegance is not forgotten.
Into such an establishment Mr. Granger's home had expanded after the death of his wife. It could not be called a boarding-house, since he admitted only a few near friends; and he refused to consider himself as host, The only visible authorities in the place were Mrs. James, the housekeeper, whose weapon was a duster, and Miss Dora Granger, whose sceptre was a blossom.
The house was a large, old-fashioned one, standing with plentiful elbow-room in a highly respectable street that had once been very grand, and there were windows on four sides. All these windows looked like pleasant eyes with spectacles over them. There was a rim of green about the place, a tall horse-chestnut-tree each side of the street, and an irrepressible grape-vine that, having been planted at the rear of the house, was now well on its way to the front. This vine was unpruned, an embodied mirth, flinging itself in every direction, making the slightest thing it could catch at an excuse for the most profuse luxuriance, so happy it could never stop growing, so full of life it could not grow old.
In the days when Mr. Granger's grandfather built this mansion, walls were not raised with an eye chiefly to the accommodation of Pyramus and Thisbe. They grew slowly and solidly, of honest stone, brick, and mortar. They had timbers, not splinters; there wasn't an inch of veneering from attic to basement; and instead of stucco, they had woodwork with flutings as fine as those of a lady's ruffle. When you see mahogany-colored doors in one of those dwellings, you may be pretty sure that the doors are mahogany; and the white knobs and hinges do not wear red. Cannon-balls fired at these houses stick in the outer wall.
Such was Mr. Louis Granger's home. Miss Hamilton had looked at that house many a time, and sighingly contrasted it with the dingy brick declivity in which she had her eyrie, Now she was to live here.
"How wishes do sometimes come fulfilled, if we only wish long enough!" she thought, as the carriage in which she had come drew up before the steps. Mr. Granger stood in the open door, and there was a glimpse of the housekeeper behind him, looking out with the utmost respect on the equipage of their visitor—for one of Miss Hamilton's wealthy friends had offered her a carriage.
But as the step was let down, and the liveried footman stood bowing before her, Margaret shrank back with a sudden recollection that was unspeakably bitter and humiliating. In spite of the mocking show, she was coming to this house as a beggar, literally asking for bread. On the impulse of the moment, she could have turned back to her attic and starvation rather than accept friendship on such terms. In that instant all the petty spokes and wheels in the engine of her poverty combined themselves for one wrench more.
"I have been watching for you," said Mr. Granger's voice at the carriage-door.
Margaret gave him her hand, and stepped out on to the pavement, her face downcast and deeply blushing.
"I hope I have not incommoded you," she said coldly.
He made no reply, and seemed not to have heard her ungracious comment; but when they reached the threshold, he paused there, and said earnestly, "I bid you welcome to your new home. May it be to you a happy one!"
She looked up gratefully, ashamed of her bitterness.
Mr. Granger's manner was joyful and cordial, as if he were receiving an old friend, or meeting some great good fortune. Bidding the housekeeper wait, he conducted Margaret to a room near by, and seated her there to hear one word more before he should go to his business and leave her to the tender mercies of his servants. As she sat, he stood before her, and leaning on the high back of a chair, looked smilingly down into the expectant and somewhat anxious face that looked up at him.
"I am so cruel as to rejoice over every circumstance which has been influential in adding to my household so welcome and valuable a friend," he said. "I have worlds for you to do. First, my little Dora is in need of your care. It is time she should begin to learn something. I have also consented, subject to your approval, to associate with her two little girls of her age, who live near, and will come here for their lessons. Besides this, a friend of mine, who is preparing a scientific work, and who does not understand French, wishes you to make some translations for him. Does this suit you?"
"Perfectly!"
"But first you must rest," he said. "And now I will leave you to get acquainted with the house under Mrs. James's auspices. Do not forget that your comfort and happiness are to be considered, that you are to ask for whatever you may want, and mention whatever may be not to your liking, Have you anything to say to me now?" pausing with his hand on the door-knob.
"Yes," she replied, smiling, to hide emotion; "as in the Koran God said of St. John, so I of you, 'May he be blessed the day whereon he was born, the day whereon he shall die, and the day whereon he shall be raised to life!'"
He took her hand in a friendly clasp, then opened the door, and with a gesture that included the whole house, said, "You are at home!"
Margaret glanced after him as he went out, and thought, "At home! The French say it better: I am chez vous!"
"You have to go up two flights, Miss Hamilton," the housekeeper began apologetically, with the footman still in her eye. "But Mr. Granger said that you want a good deal of light. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis occupy that front room over the parlor, and the next one is the spare-chamber, and that one under yours is Mr. Granger's, and that little one is Dora's, and the long one back in the L is Mr. Southard's. Up this other flight, Miss Aurelia Lewis has the front chamber. She likes it because the horse-chestnut tree comes up against the window. In summer you can hardly see through. It's like being in the woods. There, this is your chamber," flinging open the door of a large, airy room that had two deep windows looking over the house-tops straight into the eyes of the east. The coloring of this room was delightfully fresh and cool, the walls a pale olive-green, the wood-work white, and the wide mantel-piece of green marble. There were snow-white muslin curtains, Indian matting on the floor, and the chairs were all wicker, except one, a crimson-cushioned arm-chair. The old-fashioned bureau and wardrobe were of solid mahogany adorned with glittering brass knobs and handles, and the black and gilt framed looking-glass had brass candle-sockets at each side. The open grate was filled with savin-boughs, and a bright shell set in the midst. In the centre of the mantle-piece was a white vase running over full of glistening smilax sprays, and at each end stood a brass candlestick with a green wax candle in it. There were three pictures on the three blank walls; one a water-color of moss-roses and buds dew sprinkled, the second, a chromo of a yellow-gray cat stretched out in an attitude of slumbrous repose, her tail coiled about her lithe haunches, her head advanced and resting on her paws, her eyes half shut, but showing a sly line of watchful golden lustre. The third was a very good engraving of the Sistine Madonna. A large closet with drawers and shelves, delightful to feminine eyes, led back from this quaint and pleasant chamber.
Margaret glanced around her pretty nest, then flung off her bonnet and shawl, and, seating herself in the armchair by the window, for the first time really looked at the housekeeper. Till that moment she had not been conscious of the woman.
Mrs. James was hospitably making herself busy doing nothing, moving chairs that were already well placed, and wiping off imaginary specks of dust. She looked as though she would be an excellent housekeeper, and put her whole soul in the business; but appeared to be neutral otherwise.
"Everything here was as clean as your eye this morning," she said, frowning anxiously as she stooped to bring a suspected table-top between her vision and the light.
"Everything is exquisite," Miss Hamilton replied. "One can't help having a speck of dust now and then, The earth is made of it, you know."
The housekeeper sighed wofully. "Yes, there's a great deal of dirt in the world."
When she was left alone, Margaret still sat there, letting the room get acquainted with her, and settling herself into a new and delicious content. Happening after a while to glance toward the door, she saw it slowly and noiselessly moving an inch or two, stopping, then again opening a little way. She continued to look, wondering what singular current of air or eccentricity of hinge produced that intermittent motion. Presently she spied, clasped around the edge of the door, at about two feet from the carpet, four infinitesimal fingertips, rosy-white against the yellow-white of the paint. Miss Hamilton checked the breath a little on her smiling lips, and awaited further revelations.
After a moment, there appeared just above the fingers a half-curled, flossy lock of pale gold-colored hair, and softly dawning after that aurora, a beautiful child's face.
"Oh! come to me!" exclaimed Margaret.
Immediately the face disappeared, and there was silence.
Miss Hamilton leaned back in her chair again, and began to recollect the tactics for such cases made and provided by the great law-giver Nature. She affected not to be aware that the silken locks reappeared, and after them a glimpse of a low, milk-white forehead, then a blue, bright eye, and finally, the whole exquisite little form in a gala-dress of white, with a gay sash and shoulder-knots.
Dora came in looking intently at the mantel-piece, and elaborately unconscious that there was any one present but herself. Miss Hamilton's attention was entirely absorbed by the outer world.
"I never did see such a lovely flower as there is in that window," she soliloquized. "It is as pink as ever it can be. Indeed, I think it is a little pinker than it can conveniently be. It must have to try hard."
Dora glanced toward the stranger, and listened attentively.
"And I see three tiny clouds scudding down the east. I shouldn't be surprised if their mother didn't know they are out. They run as if they didn't mean to stop till they get into the middle of next week."
Dora took a step or two nearer, looked warily at the speaker, and peeped out the window in search of the truant cloudlets.
"And there is another cloud overhead that has gone sound asleep," Miss Hamilton pursued as tranquilly as if she had been sitting there and talking time out of mind. "One side of it is as white as it can be, and the other side is so much whiter than it can be, that it makes the white side look dark. If anybody wants to see it, she had better make haste."
"Anybody," was by this time close to the window, looking out with all her eyes, her hand timidly, half unconsciously touching the lady's dress.
"Oh! what a splendid bird!" cried the enchantress. "What a pity it should fly away! But it may come back again pretty soon."
Silence, and the pressure of a dimpled elbow on Margaret's knee.
"I suppose you don't care much about sitting in my lap, so as to see better," was the next remark, addressed, apparently, to all out-doors.
The child began shyly to climb to the lady's knee, and was presently assisted there.
"Such a bird!" sighed Margaret then, looking at the little one, thinking that by this time her glance could be borne. "It had yellow specks on its breast," illustrating with profuse and animated gestures, "and a long bill, and a glossy head with yellow feathers standing up on top, and yellow stripes on its wings," pointing toward her own shoulders, her glance following her finger. Then a break, and an exclamation of dismay, "What has become of my wings?"
Dora reached up to look over the lady's shoulder, but saw only the back of a well-fitting bombazine gown.
"I guess they's flied away," said the child in the voice of a anguid bobolink.
"Then I'll tell you a story," said Margaret. "Once there was a lady who lived in a real mean place, and she didn't have a good time at all. She was just as lonesome and homesick as she could be. One day she brought home the photograph of a dear little girl, and that she liked. And she wished that she could see the real little girl, and that she could talk to her; but she had only the paper picture. Well, by and by she went to live in a delightful house; and while she sat in her chamber, the door opened, and who should come in but the same dear child whose picture she had loved! Wasn't the lady glad then?"
"Who was the little girl?" asked Dora with a shy, conscious look and smile.
The answer was a shower of kisses all over her sweet face, and two tears that dropped unseen into her sunny hair.
To Be Continued
Comparative Morality Of Catholic
And Protestant Countries.
It is truly refreshing to read in Putnam's Magazine for January, 1869, the article entitled, "The Literature of the Coming Controversy," written, as we now know, by Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, a Protestant minister of Brooklyn, In it, he castigates most soundly the well known anti-popery society called "The American and Foreign Christian Union," "numbering," as he says, among its vice-presidents and directors, some of the most eminent pastors, bishops, theologians, and civilians of the American Protestant churches. Some of its publications he calls "wicked impostures" and "shameful scandals," and wonders "how they can stand, from year to year, accredited to the public by some of the most eminent and excellent men in the country." Our wonder is still greater how he can call men who countenance such things "excellent." He says: "All the time that this society has been running its manufactory of falsehoods and scandals, only the resolute good sense of the public, in not buying the rubbish, has saved the church of Christ from a burning and ineffaceable disgrace." The disgrace to the church, it seems to us, is the same, since its chief men are implicated in this proceeding, "whether the public buy the rubbish or not." We honor Mr. Bacon for his manly, straightforward conduct, and thank him for this act of justice. It is the first we have had to rejoice in for a long while, but we hope it will not be the last. The time seems to be approaching, when calumny and abuse will no longer be received with favor by the public, and the Catholic Church be allowed to speak in her own defence, and listened to, and judged of, according to her own intrinsic merits. All we ask is fair play, and we are confident the truth will make itself known.
But the Rev. Mr. Bacon, after denouncing the lying and scurrilous attacks against the church, goes on to say: "It is a pleasant relief to take up another author—the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, of the Church of England. His two books, entitled Mornings with the Jesuits at Rome, and Evenings with the Romanists, are models of religious controversy. The latter of the two, especially, being the more popular, is peculiarly fitted to be effective in general circulation." …. "This sprightly, instructive, and interesting book has gone out of print." … It is out of print in English; but desiring to gladden our eyes with a copy of this model of "courtesy, fairness, ability, and religious feeling," we procured a translation into Spanish, entitled, Noches con los Romanistas, issued by The American Tract Society, for the use of benighted Spaniards. We have read the opening chapter, and found it enough. We are tempted to exclaim with bitter disappointment, Is this all the fairness and justice we are to expect from one who is described as the "model" of a Protestant controversialist? We prefer the McGavins, the Brownlees, or the Kirwans whom Mr. Bacon so justly holds up to public scorn. This man stabs you in the dark; he is a Titus Oates, who swears away your life by false testimony—by telling just enough to convict you, when he knows enough to give you an honorable acquittal.
This opening chapter has for its theme the relative effects of Protestantism and the Catholic religion upon the morality of those under their respective influence; and to show that Catholic countries, in comparison to Protestant, are sinks of crime and impurity. This, if fairly proved, would be a practical argument of overwhelming force, sufficient to close the mind against all that can be said in favor of the Catholic Church; and be a sufficient reason, with most people, for refusing even to entertain her claims to be the Church of God. We know that she is Christ's Church, and that just in proportion as she exerts her influence, virtue and morality must prevail; and that it is impossible to prove, unless through fraud and misrepresentation, that the practical working of her system produces a morality inferior to that of any other.
We know all the importance of the question; it is one that touches our good name, and we feel indignation against any one who shall attempt to rob us of it, by any mean or unfair tricks. Let us see how our "model" controversialist deals with this matter. "In order not to cause a useless waste of time by going over all sorts of crimes," he selects the greatest one, that of murder or homicide. Then he selects England, and compares it with nearly all the Catholic countries of Europe, and shows it to be at least four times better than the very best of them. We do not propose to ferret this out; we cannot lay our hands upon the statistics of this particular crime, which seem to be everywhere very loosely given; but we can show shortly, that his conclusions are utterly false. He gives the number of persons imprisoned on this charge of homicide in England and Wales, during 1852, as 74, and the annual mean for three years as 72. This will strike every one as simply ridiculous. Luckily, the Statistical Journal of 1867 gives the following tables of this crime for 1865, as follows:
| Verdicts Of Coroners' Juries. | |
| Wilful murder | 227 |
| Manslaughter | 282 |
| Total | 509 |
| Police Returns | |
| Wilful murder | 135 |
| Manslaughter | 279 |
| Concealment of birth | 232 |
| Total | 646 |
| Criminal Tables | |
| Wilful murder cases tried | 60 |
| Manslaughter, cases tried | 316 |
| Concealment of birth, cases tried | 143 |
| Total | 519 |
If 519 were tried, we may judge of the number imprisoned. The author of the article in the Journal says: "The police returns do not correspond with the coroners', and the discrepancy is so great that I can only account for it on the supposition that, according to the police view of it, infanticide is not murder." The number of coroners' inquests held in 1865, in England and Wales, was
| Total | 25,011 |
| Verdict of accidental deaths | 11,397 |
He continues, "Open verdicts, as they are termed, such as, 'found dead,' or 'found drowned,' are rendered in many cases when a more accurate knowledge would have led to the verdict of 'wilful murder.'"
It is just as easy to compare the total of first-class criminals of all sorts, as to select homicide.
Alison [Footnote 19] says, "The proportion of crime to the inhabitants was twelve times greater in Prussia (Protestant) than in France, (Catholic,) and in Austria, (Catholic,) the proportion of convicted crime is not one fourth of what is found in Prussia." The Statistical Journals for 1864-65 show that France is better than England.
[Footnote 19: History of Europe, vol. iii. chap, xxvii. 10, 11.]
There were no less than 846 deaths of children under one year old, in 1857, in England and Wales from violent causes, [Footnote 20] from which we may form some little idea of the extent of only one sort of homicide.
[Footnote 20: Statistical Journal, 1859.]
Only 74 incarcerations for homicide in all England and Wales for the year 1852! Why, it is stated in the New York Herald of February 4th, that 78 persons were arrested last year for murder in New York alone. We can easily imagine what the grand total for the United States must be, and how much better is England, with its pauperism and crime, than the United States?
Mr. Seymour undoubtedly is "sprightly" enough, but only "instructive" by showing us the amount of nonsense which the public is expected to swallow without examination, where the Catholic Church is concerned, and the amount of fair play to be expected from a "model" of a Protestant controversialist.
But as a comparison based on "homicide" alone would prove nothing, any more than one based on drunkenness or robbery, Mr. Seymour institutes another, in respect to unchastity, or immorality, and here he sets up as his criterion the amount of illegitimacy among Catholics and Protestants respectively. In any community, the moral condition is to be estimated by the greater or smaller proportion of illegitimacy. We object to this as a very unreliable test. In some communities, an illegitimate birth is almost unknown, and yet they are the most corrupt and licentious on the face of the earth. Infanticide and foeticide replace illegitimacy. A young woman falls from virtue; but in spite of the finger of scorn which will be pointed at her, her sense of religious duty restrains her from adding a horrible crime to her sin. What is her moral condition in the sight of God, compared with that of the guilty one whom no fear of the Almighty has restrained from the commission of this crime? The absence of illegitimacy may be the most convincing proof of a state of moral corruption, as in Persia and Turkey, where no children except in wedlock, are suffered to see the light of the world. [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Storer, Criminal Abortion, p. 32.]
There are good reasons why more illegitimate children might be expected to be born among Catholics than among Protestants, and yet the former be much more the moral than the latter. "The doctrine of the Catholic Church," says Bishop Fitzpatrick, "her canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without exception teach, and constantly have taught, that the destruction of the human foetus in the womb of the mother, at any period from the first instant of conception, is a heinous crime, equal at least in guilt to that of murder." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 72.]
This is understood by Catholics of all classes, and inspires a salutary horror of the crime. Protestantism does not teach morality in this definite way, but leaves people to reason out for themselves the degree of criminality of particular offences. Let us listen to Dr. Storer, an eminent Protestant physician. "It is not, of course, intended to imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages, or indeed permits, the practice of inducing abortion; its tenets are uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is the popular ignorance regarding this offence, that an abstract morality is here comparatively powerless; our American women arrogate to themselves the settlement of what they consider, if doubtful, purely an ethical question; and there can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance, flanked on the one hand by the confessional, and by denouncement and excommunications on the other, has saved to to the world thousands of infant lives." [Footnote 23] Rev. Dr. Todd, a Protestant minister of Pittsfield, Mass., to his honor be it said, has had the courage to declare the same thing in similar words. [Footnote 24] Dr. Storer proceeds, "During the ten years that have passed since the preceding sentence was written, we have had ample verification of its truth. Several hundreds of Protestant women have personally acknowledged to us their guilt, against whom only seven Catholics, and of these we found, upon further inquiry, that but two were only nominally so, not going to the confession." [Footnote 25]
[Footnote 23: Criminal Abortion, P. 74.]
[Footnote 24: Serpents in the Dove's Nest.]
[Footnote 25: Criminal Abortion, p. 74.]
Two communities exist, in which, say, an equal amount of unchastity occurs. In one, religion restrains from the commission of further crime, and there is much illegitimacy apparent; in the other, criminal abortion destroys all the evidence, and though horribly corrupt in comparison, the appearance is all the other way. Some such comparison might be made between Paris and Boston; with what truth, each one can determine for himself, And there is another reason which adds force to what has been said. In Catholic countries, foundling hospitals, established for the very purpose of saving infant life, exist everywhere, Knowing that the temptation to conceal one's shame will, in many cases, be too strong to be resisted, and thus one crime be added to another, the impulse of Christian charity has caused the founding of these hospitals, so that the infant, instead of being killed, may be provided for, and the mother have a chance to repent, without being for ever marked with the brand of shame. Scarcely any such exist among Protestants. To set up, then, illegitimacy as the best criterion of the morals of a community, is a palpable injustice to Catholics.
But let us, nevertheless, follow Mr. Seymour on his own chosen ground, He thinks the Catholic country people may, in the absence of peculiar temptations, be as good as the Protestant; and that the state of great cities will show more the influence of religion on the morals of the people, We think the opposite; for in great cities there are immense masses of degraded people, who abandon the practice of religion, never go to church, and for whom the Protestant church, at least, would be apt to disclaim all responsibility. The country people are within the knowledge and the voice of the preacher or the priest, and religion exercises its proper influence upon them.
He selects London, on the Protestant side, as the largest city in the world, the richest, and where there are "the most numerous, the strongest, and the most varied temptations;" and, of course, where there should naturally be the most vice and crime. But facts contradict theory. The percentage of illegitimate births in London is 4.2, while that for all England and Wales is 6.5, and in the country districts, where the "numerous, strong, and varied temptations" are wanting, it varies from 9 to over 11. [Footnote 26]
[Footnote 26: Statistical Journal, 1862.]
London is compared with Paris, Brussels, Munich, and Vienna; and the rates are given as follows:
Proportion Of Illegitimate Births.
| In Paris | Roman Catholic | thirty-three per cent |
| In Brussels | Roman Catholic | thirty-five per cent |
| In Munich | Roman Catholic | forty-eight per cent |
| In Vienna | Roman Catholic | fifty-one per cent |
| In London | Protestant | four per cent |
and then, to show that this fearful disproportion exists not only in the capital cities, but also in other smaller ones, we have another table:
| Protestant England. | R. C. Austria | |||
| Bristol and Clifton | 4 per ct. | Troppau | 26 per ct. | |
| Bradford | 8 per ct. | Zara | 30 per ct. | |
| Birmingham | 6 per ct. | Innspruck | 22 per ct. | |
| Brighton | 7 per ct. | Laybach | 38 per ct. | |
| Cheltenham | 7 per ct. | Brunn | 42 per ct. | |
| Exeter | 8 per ct. | Linz | 46 per ct. | |
| Liverpool | 6 per ct. | Prague | 47 per ct. | |
| Manchester | 7 per ct. | Lemberg | 47 per ct. | |
| Plymouth | 5 per ct. | Klagenfort | 56 per ct. | |
| Portsea | 5 per ct. | Gratz | 65 per ct. |
The inference from these figures, drawn with many exclamations of surprise and horror, is, that the Protestant religion is ten times as powerful against crime and vice as the Catholic, and to create an overwhelming conviction of the essential corruption of the latter. Nothing is further from the truth. London, Liverpool, Birmingham, etc., are as corrupt as any cities of the world. The cities of France and Austria need not fear the comparison, and the more thoroughly it is made the better.
J. D. Chambers, Recorder of Salisbury, a Protestant, says: [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: Church and World, 1867.]
"And here a few words on the unhappy reason why London and other large towns of Great Britain and also Holland are comparatively moral in this respect, and that in their cases the average of this species of immorality is far below that of the great cities of the continent; the fact that in this respect the urban population of Great Britain appears to be what it most certainly is not, comparatively pure, the rural the most corrupt; whilst on the continent the reverse is evident. There can be no doubt, as Mr. Lumley, in his able Poor-Law Reports, has often hinted, that this difference is owing to the prevalence of what has been justly called the 'social evil;' to the license, it may, in truth, be called encouragement, which, in the populous districts of this country, and notoriously in Holland, is given to public prostitution. Of course there will be no illegitimacy among Mohammedans and Hindoos, in Japan and China, or the African tribes, nor also among those who live much in the same manner." And, we might add, who practise infanticide and foeticide as they do. He goes on, "In London, the fallen women may be taken, at the mean of the estimates, at 40,000. … In Birmingham, in 1864, there were 966 disreputable houses where they resorted; in Manchester, 1111; in Liverpool, 1578; in Leeds, 313; in Sheffield, 433. [Footnote 28] And here we have revealed a plague-spot in English society which runs through every grade, especially the artisan, manufacturing, and lower commercial classes, who, as we have seen, in general never enter a church. … There is no need, in addition, to dwell on the revelations of the divorce court, which prove that Englishmen are nearly as bad in this respect as the northern Germans. There is no one who is acquainted with the condition of the families of artisans who does not know the sad frequency with which they abandon their wives, and how frequently they live in a state of concubinage."
Alison corroborates this: "In London the proportion (of illegitimacy) is one to thirty-six, the effect, it is to be feared, of the immense mass of concubinage which there prevails, under circumstances where a law of nature renders an increase of the population from that source impossible." [Footnote 29]
[Footnote 28: Statistical Journal, 1864.]
[Footnote 29: Vol. ii. chap. xvii. 122.]
"In London, however, and the English cities, there are more illegitimate births than appear on the registers, because children of people who live together without being married are registered 'legitimate.'" [Footnote 30] So much for London, Liverpool, etc.
[Footnote 30: Statistical Journal, 1862.]
In Paris, a great proportion of the children reckoned illegitimate are born in the lying-in hospitals, or brought to the foundling hospitals, and the greater proportion of the mothers are from the provinces, as will be seen from the following table for 1856:
| Mothers known | 3383 |
| Department Seine | 551 |
| Other departments | 2550 |
| Foreign countries | 282 |
Children born in concubinage are reckoned illegitimate, and about one-ninth of such children, on an average, are afterward legitimated. The proportion of illegitimacy, then, for Paris proper, on the best calculations, is not over 12 per cent; and that of London, calculated on the same data, would probably be quite as large, if not larger.
The same considerations apply to Brussels, Vienna, and Munich. Large foundling and lying-in hospitals exist in al these places, and are resorted to by all the country round. The figures for these cities are in no sense a criterion of their morals.
In Munich and Vienna, there is another important thing to be taken into account, which we shall explain when we come to speak of countries. We see, then, how much value is to be attributed to the heavenly purity of Protestant London, Liverpool, etc., in comparison to the "astonishing," "horrible" corruption of Catholic capitals on the continent. Moreover, in the latter the "social evil" is kept within strictest limits, and under the complete control of the government, and is not allowed to flaunt itself in public, as in London and New York, These considerations are strengthened by the case of Protestant Stockholm, where, public prostitution being prohibited, the rate of illegitimacy is over fifty to the hundred—quite equal to that of Vienna. [Footnote 31] Why did not Mr. Seymour cite Stockholm, which is notorious? I will answer: It was not convenient to spoil a good story.
[Footnote 31: Appleton's Cyc., art. "Foundling Hospital.">[
Now as to the smaller cities of Austria, which, according to Seymour, beat the world for corruption, what is to be said? Simply, that they are no worse than their neighbors. What we have said of the foundling and lying-in hospitals of Paris explains the whole matter. "In Austria, excluding Hungary, there are forty foundling and forty lying-in hospitals, and the number of foundlings provided for by the government is over 20,000." [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: Ibid.]
These hospitals exist, without doubt, in all these cities; and if we subtract their inmates who come from the country we should find that they do not compare unfavorably with their neighbors. They include the chief cities of the German provinces of the empire; and allowing only 4273 foundlings from the country to be in their hospitals, which is certainly a very moderate calculation, their own proper rate of illegitimacy would not exceed ten per cent. This would be the case in Innspruck, for example, if 53 only were received. Our "model of fairness" from such data draws his main conclusions, which prove that he is very "sprightly" at the figures, if nothing else. Shall we excuse him on the plea of ignorance? No! he was bound to verify his statements, and the conclusions from them; and if he had chosen to take the pains, the sources of information were open to him. An infamous calumny against the Catholic Church is invented by somebody, and the whole tribe of popery-haters forthwith swear roundly that it is "undoubted," "notorious," etc., and, by dint of clamor, force the public to give credit to it.
But, seemingly aware that comparing London with cities so different in climate, position, language, etc., has rather an unfair look, he says he will take cities of two adjoining countries of the same race, and gives us the following table:
| Austria, Rom. Cath. | Prussia, Protestant. | |||
| Vienna | 51% | Berlin | 18% | |
| Prague | 47% | Breslau | 26% | |
| Linz | 46% | Cologne | 10% | |
| Milan | 32% | Konigsberg | 28% | |
| Klagenfort | 56% | Dantzig | 20% | |
| Gratz | 65% | Magdeburg | 11% | |
| Lembach | 47% | Aix la Chapelle | 4% | |
| Laybach | 38% | Stettin | 13% | |
| Zara | 30% | Posen | 19% | |
| Brunn | 22% | Potsdam | 12% |
The only thing this table proves is, that in Prussia the two Catholic cities of Cologne and Aix la Chapelle are better than any of the Protestant ones. They show excellently well in the Protestant column; but then the reader who is not well-posted or observant might suppose that, being in Protestant Prussia, they are Protestant cities. We can hardly suppose Mr. Seymour, who is a traveller, to be ignorant of so well known a fact. And how comes it that Protestant Prussia makes so poor a show alongside of the pure and virtuous cities of Birmingham and Liverpool, where there are "so many and varied temptations"?
"If, then," he says, "the question of the comparative efficacy of Romanism and Protestantism to restrain vice and immorality is to be decided by the comparison of Austria and Prussia, we have as a basis of a certain judgment this notable fact, that in ten cities of Austria we find forty-five illegitimate births in the hundred, and in ten cities of Prussia, sixteen only." We have seen what this is worth. It seems to us that it would be more satisfactory to compare Austria and Prussia at once than to pick out cities here and there to suit one's purpose. And this seems to strike our author; for he says, "They often assure us that some Protestant countries, as Norway, Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemberg are as demoralized as Roman Catholic countries. I shall not deny the allegation; but if a profound demoralization exists in some Protestant countries, that in Catholic countries is much worse." Then he goes on in this style to make his assertion good:
| Protestant | Catholic | |||
| Norway | 10% | Styria | 24% | |
| Sweden | 7% | Up. & L. Austria | 25% | |
| Saxony | 14% | Carinthia | 35% | |
| Denmark | 10% | Salzburg | 22% | |
| Hanover | 10% | Prov. of Trieste | 23% | |
| Wurtemberg | 12% | Bavaria | 24% |
Here we have Styria, Upper and Lower Austria, Carinthia, Salzburg, Trieste, which are not separate countries at all, but simply the German provinces of the Austrian empire, and Bavaria, compared with countries so different and wide apart as Norway, Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemberg. This is tricky in the extreme. Moreover, there is no reliance to be placed on the figures which express their rate of illegitimacy, for a very good reason. Marriage is forbidden to great numbers in German Austria and Bavaria. "No person in Austria can marry if he does not know how to read, write, and cipher." [Footnote 33] Besides, in both countries, a man, before being permitted to marry, had to possess a sum of money quite out of reach of a great many. Appleton's Cyclopaedia [Footnote 34] says, "In some German states the obstacles to legal marriage are so great that numbers of people prefer to live together in what would be perfectly legal wedlock in Scotland and America, but is only concubinage by the local laws of the state."
[Footnote 33: Alison, vol. iii. chap, xxvii. 9.]
[Footnote 34: Article Europe.]
They marry, but the state will not recognize the children as legitimate, and the official registers are no criterion of the real state of the case. Mr. J. D. Chambers says, [Footnote 35] "In Bavaria, moreover, where the population is one-third Protestant, there exists an atrocious state of law which forbids marriage unless the contracting parties satisfy the authorities that they are capable of maintaining a family without extraneous aid. This, of course, leads to many secret marriages and illicit connections, so that this country ought to be excepted from the average."
[Footnote 35: Church and World, 1867.]
The Bavarians are as good a people as any in Germany, and it is a shame to libel them. If countries are to be compared—and it is the only fair and honest way to proceed—why not compare them in a straightforward, obvious way—France and England, Prussia and Austria—in fact, all the countries we can get the statistics of, and show the result in a tabular form, so that we can understand the whole thing at a glance? This would effectually put a stop to the cry of the vice of Catholic countries, which the Chicago Press, of January 11th, declares to be "notorious throughout the country." It is "notorious," because statements like Seymour's, cooked up for a purpose, give rise to utterly false conclusions, which are easily caught up and trumpeted, through the pulpit and the press, all over the country.
We shall now, leaving out Bavaria, for the reasons above given, give the latest and best statistics, in respect to illegitimate births, which it is possible to get. They are taken from the journals of the Statistical Society of London of the years 1860, 1862, 1865, 1867, the principal portions being compiled by Mr. Lumley, Honorary Secretary of the society, and contained in that of 1862, to be seen in the Astor Library. It will be interesting to the general reader, apart from its controversial bearings.
In Prussia, we have statistics according to the religious creed of the people. We shall, therefore, divide it into Catholic and Protestant. We wish the same could be done for Holland and Switzerland. Where there is a large minority differing from the majority, it would be most interesting; but it cannot be done except in Prussia. The number of illegitimate births in the hundred is as follows, according to the latest accounts given:
| Catholic Countries. | ||
| 1828-37 | Kingdom of Sardinia | 2.1 |
| 1859 | Spain | 5.6 |
| 1853 | Tuscany | 6. |
| 1858 | Catholic Prussia | 6.1 |
| 1859 | Belgium | 7.4 |
| 1856 | Sicily | 7.4 |
| 1858 | France | 7.8 |
| 1851 | Austria | 9. |
| Protestant Countries. | ||
| 1859 | England and Wales | 6.5 |
| 1855 | Norway | 9.3 |
| 1858 | Protestant Prussia | 9.3 |
| 1855 | Sweden | 9.5 |
| 1855 | Hanover | 9.9 |
| 1866 | Scotland | 10.1 |
| 1855 | Denmark | 11.5 |
| 1838-47 | Iceland | 14. |
| 1858 | Saxony | 16. |
| 1857 | Wurtemberg | 16.1 |
Mixed countries, where the Catholic population approaches the half:
| 1859 | Holland | 4.1 |
| 1852 | Switzerland | 6. |
Lest we be deemed to wish to conceal the depravity of Ireland, we give what is given by Mr. J. D. Chambers, [Footnote 36] who probably has access to the registrar's reports, which, of course, we have not:
| 1865-66 | Catholic Ireland, | 3 |
and these, we remark, are mostly in the north, which is Protestant.
[Footnote 36: Church and World, 1867.]
The particulars of the statistics throw a good deal of light on the morality of the different countries, for instance, in France and England. The rate of illegitimacy in all
| England and Wales is | 6.5 |
| London only | 4.2 |
| Birmingham | 4.7 |
| Liverpool | 4.9 |
In spite of the "numerous and varied temptations" of the large towns, the rate is much less in them than in the country, which runs after this fashion:
| Nottingham | 8.9 |
| York, N. Riding | 8.9 |
| Salop | 9.8 |
| Westmoreland | 9.7 |
| Norfolk | 10.7 |
| Cumberland | 11.4 |
In France, it is just the other way. The rate is,
| In all France | 7.8 |
| In Paris | 27. |
| Urban districts | 12. |
| Rural districts | 4.2 |
| La Vendée | 2.2 |
| Brittany, Dep't. Cote D'Or | 1.2 |
Brittany and La Vendee remained Catholic through the storm of the French Revolution, and at this moment are thoroughly so. In Austria, the rate is: whole empire, only 9; urban districts, from 25 to 65; therefore, rural districts cannot be more than 5 or 6.
Prussia gives us, perhaps, the most conclusive test of the effects of religion on morals; for the census has been carefully taken according to creed, for many years, with uniform result thus. There are over 11,000,000 Protestants, and over 7,000,000 Catholics, principally in the Rhine provinces, Westphalia, and Posen. [Footnote 37] The rate
| Among Catholics | 6.48 | Among Protestants | 10.0 | |
| Westphalia | 3.7 | Prov. of Prussia | 6.7 | |
| Rhineland | 3.7 | Pomerania | 10.3 | |
| Posen | 6.8 | Brandenburg | 12.0 |
[Footnote 37: Historische Blätter, 9th Heft, 1867.]
Rev. T. W. Woolsey, of Yale College, New Haven, bears testimony to this relative state of morals in regard to the kindred subject of divorce, in an address before the Western Social Science Convention, at Chicago, as follows: "We have made some comparisons between the frequency of divorce in this country and in other parts of Protestantism. Prussia had the reputation of having the lowest system of divorce laws anywhere to be found. But the ratio there of annual divorces to annual marriages in 1855 was, among non-Catholics, one to twenty-nine, or about 3.5 per cent less than in Vermont or Ohio, and far less than in Connecticut, where it is 9.6 per cent. The greatest ratio nearly thirty years ago in the judicial districts of Prussia was 57 divorces to 100,000 inhabitants; the least, 16 to 100,000: nay more, in the Prussian Rhenish provinces, where the law is based on the Code Napoleon, and where the Catholic inhabitants, being numerous, must have some influence on the social habits of Protestants, there were but four fair divorces to 100,000 Protestants, or twenty-four in all among 600,000 of that class of inhabitants. I write this in pain, being a Protestant, if, as the Apostle Paul says, 'I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them.'"
Scotland might be supposed by our Protestant friends to be high up on the list, having always been so completely under the influence of the pure gospel of Calvin and Knox; but the rate for Scotland is 10.1.
In the Lowlands, where Presbyterianism carried all before it, the rate is from 10 to 15. In the Highlands, which remained to a considerable extent Catholic, the average is 5.6.
Supposing the immorality of the large cities, Protestant and Catholic, to be the same, though it is pretty sure the Catholic are much the best, and confining our comparison to the mass of the rural population, which is the fairer test, and the countries would stand in the following order, beginning with the most favorable:
| Sardinia | Catholic |
| Ireland | Catholic |
| Holland | Mixed |
| Spain | Catholic |
| Switzerland | Mixed |
| Tuscany | Catholic |
| Catholic Prussia | Catholic |
| Belgium | Catholic |
| France | Catholic |
| Sicily | Catholic |
| Austria | Catholic |
| England | Protestant |
| Norway | Protestant |
| Protestant Prussia | Protestant |
| Scotland | Protestant |
| Denmark | Protestant |
| Sweden | Protestant |
| Hanover | Protestant |
| Iceland | Protestant |
| Saxony | Protestant |
| Wurtemberg | Protestant |
Thus, to sum up, the Catholic countries of Europe, perhaps without an exception, are above the Protestant, if the number of illegitimate births is accepted as a criterion of morality. Could we get the statistics of infanticide, and of a still more common and destructive crime, foeticide, and add them to the above, then we could form a more just idea of the benefit the Catholic religion, with her divine ordinance of Confession, has conferred on the human race. But of course it is impossible to determine with exactness the amount of this crime which hides itself in profound darkness; we can only conjecture from sure indications that it is one of fearful magnitude.
We need not go abroad; the evidence is at our own door. Take the State of Rhode Island as a specimen. The number of children annually receiving Catholic baptism exceeds the half of all the children born in the State, although the Catholic population does not exceed the third part; in other words, there are two Protestants to every Catholic, and yet there are more Catholic children born than Protestant. Illegitimacy is almost unknown among Catholics, and the birthrate is at least 1 to 25, which demonstrates that criminal abortion cannot exist to any extent worth speaking of. The birth-rate among Protestants is i to over 50. What becomes of the children who ought to be born? Let Dr. Storer speak: [Footnote 38] "Hardly a newspaper throughout the land that does not contain their open and pointed advertisements. … The profits that must be made from the sale of the drugs supposed abortifacient, may be judged from the extent to which they are advertised and the prices willingly paid for them." "We are compelled to admit that Christianity itself, or, at least, Protestantism, has failed to check the increase of criminal abortion." [Footnote 39] To the same effect we have a writer in Harper's very anti-popery Magazine: "We are shocked at the destruction of human life upon the banks of the Ganges, as well as on the shores of the South Sea Islands; but here in the heart of Christendom, foeticide and infanticide are extensively practised under the most aggravating circumstances. … It should be stated that believers in the Roman Catholic faith never resort to any such practices; the strictly Americans are almost alone guilty of such crimes." And Bishop Coxe, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, has published to his people the following: "I have hitherto warned my flock against the blood-guiltiness of ante-natal infanticide. If any doubts existed heretofore as to the propriety of my warnings on the subject, they must now disappear before the fact that the world itself is beginning to be horrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile our land."
[Footnote 38: Criminal Abortion, p. 55.]
[Footnote 39: Page 69.]
How is it with Protestant England? Dr. Lankester, one of the coroners of London, declares that there are 12,000 mothers in London alone, guilty of infanticide. [Footnote 40] In Prussia, Mr. J. Laing says that, "Chastity, the index virtue of the moral condition of the people, is lower than in almost any part of Europe." [Footnote 41] Let us look at home. Our attention has been so diverted to the vice and immorality of our Catholic neighbors, that we have begun to imagine ourselves the most moral, the most virtuous, the most enlightened people on the face of the earth, while, in reality, we are fast getting to be the most corrupt and abominable. It would be well to call to mind a little oftener the saying of our Lord, "First pull the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to pull the mote out of thy brother's eye."
[Footnote 40: Church and World, 1866, p. 57.]
[Footnote 41: Spald. Miscell. p. 484.]
We have thus exposed the untrustworthiness of Mr Seymour's Nights among the Romanists. With the evidence before him, he has kept back any honest and fair statement of it, and only put forward such portion as would serve to substantiate an utterly false conclusion, most injurious to us Catholics, both religiously and personally; for we cannot be looked upon in the mass as corrupt and vicious, without a great deal of personal ill-will and contempt and hatred being engendered.
We call the attention of the Rev. Mr. Bacon to this. He has taken a noble stand against base and unfair practices in the controversy with the Catholic Church, and we hope he will persevere in spite of the opposition he has raised against himself. We feel inclined to forgive him for some sins of his own, in this respect; for example, in speaking of the "Tax-Book of Roman Chancery," when Bishop England has so clearly shown it to be a base forgery. We hope our exposure of Mr. Seymour will be met in a generous and Christian spirit, and that he will promptly disavow all connection with him as an amende honorable for having recommended him.
We see, by The Christian World of September, that the American and Foreign Christian Union are going to reissue this book, and we hope these "eminent and excellent" men, now that their attention is called to it, will clean this out with the rest of the filth of their Augean stable. And also the directors of the American Tract Society are requested to consider seriously whether defamation is exactly the most Christian weapon to fight with, or the one most likely in the long run to overcome the Catholic Church, and whether they should not withdraw from circulation a book so damaging to their reputation as lights of the pure Protestant Gospel, shining amongst the darkness and moral corruptions of Popery.
Heremore-Brandon; Or,
The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.
Chapter VIII.
As might have ben supposed, Dick was at Mr. Brandon's office long before that gentleman made his appearance down-town. It was a sultry morning, with occasional snatches of rain to make the gloomy streets more gloomy, and the depressing atmosphere more depressing. Mr. Brandon was sensitive to heat; he had no cool summer retreat to go to in the evenings, and return from with a rose in his button-hole in the mornings; and as, instead of being grateful for the many years in which he had enjoyed this luxury, he was disposed to consider himself decidedly ill-used in not having it still, so soon as he found Dick waiting for him, he began his repinings in the most querulous of all his tones:
"Pretty hard on a man who has had his own country-place, and been his own lord and master, to come down to this blistering old hole every morning, isn't it, Mr. Heremore? Well, well, some people have no feeling! There are those old nabobs who were hand and glove with me, mighty glad of a dinner with me, and where are they now? Do they come around with 'How are you, Brandon?' and invitations to their dinners? Indeed not!"
"Mr. Brandon, I have come to talk to you about some business," began Dick, who had prepared a dozen introductions, all forgotten at the needed moment; then abruptly, "Mr. Brandon, did you ever hear my name, the name of Heremore before?"
It would be false to say that Mr. Brandon showed any emotion beyond that of natural surprise at the abruptness of the question; but it is safe to add that the surprise was very great, almost exaggerated. He replied, coolly enough, as he hung up his hat and sat down, wiping his face with his handkerchief: "Heremore? It is not, so to say, a common name; and I may or may not have heard it before. One who has been in the world so long as I have, Mr. Heremore, can hardly be expected to know what names he has or has not heard in the course of his life. I suppose you ask for some especial reason."
"I do," said Dick, a little staggered by the other's unembarrassed reply, "Did you not once know a gentleman in Wiltshire, called Dr. Heremore?"
"This is close questioning from a young man in your position to an old gentleman in mine, and I am slightly curious to know your object in asking before I reply."
"I believe you were married twice, Mr. Brandon, and that your first wife's maiden name was Heremore?"
"Well—and then?"
"And that she died while you were away, believing you were dead; and and that she had two children," said Dick, who began to feel uneasy under the steady, smiling gaze of the other—"and that she had two children, a son and a daughter."
"Almost any one can tell you that my family consists of my first wife's daughter, and two sons by my second wife. But that's of no consequence. Two children, a son and a daughter, you were saying."
"Yes, two; although you may have been able to trace only one. She died in great poverty, did she not?"
"I decline answering any questions, I am highly flattered—charmed, indeed—at the interest you show in my family by these remarks; and I can only regret that my fortunes are now so low that I know of no way in which to prove my grateful appreciation of the manner in which you must have labored in order to know so much. In happier times, I might have secured you a place in the police department; but unfortunately, I am a ruined man, unable to assist any one at present."
At this speech, which was delivered in the most languid manner, and in a tone that was infinitely more insulting than the words, Dick was on the point of thrusting his mother's letter before the man's eyes, to show by what means he had obtained his knowledge; but the cool words, the indifferent manner, had a great effect upon our hero, who found it every moment more difficult to believe in the theory that from the first had seemed so likely to be the real one, and so he answered respectfully:
"I assure you, I mean no rudeness to you, Mr. Brandon; but I am engaged in the most serious business in the world, for me. I may be mistaken in you, and shall not know how to atone for the mistake, should I come to know it; but I hope you will be sure of my respectful intention, however I may err."
Mr. Brandon bowed, smiled, and played with his pen, as if the conversation were drawing to a close. Dick, heated and more embarrassed than ever, was obliged to recommence it.
"But was not your first wife's name Heremore? I beg you to answer me this one question, for all depends upon it."
"A very sufficient reason why I should not answer it. But as you to have something very interesting to disclose, perhaps we had better imagine that her name was Heremore before it was Brandon. Permit me to ask if, in that case, I am to own a relation in you? I certainly cannot make such a connection as advantageous as I could a year or so ago; but though I cannot prove the rich uncle of the romances, I shall be glad to know what scion of my wife's noble house I have the honor of addressing."
It seems easy to have answered "your son" but the words would not come. More and more the whole thing seemed a dream. What! a man so hardened that he could sit before his own son, whom by this time he must have known to be his son, and talk after this fashion of his dead wife's house! Impossible! If, then, he should tell his tale, and tell it to an unconcerned listener, what a sacrilege he would commit!
"A very near relative," Dick said at last. "I know that Dr. Heremore's daughter married a Charles Brandon about twenty-five years ago."
"Ah! I see! And you thought there was but one Charles Brandon in in the world! You see I shall have to learn a lesson in politeness from you; for I could conceive that there should be room in this world even two Richard Heremores."
Poor Dick was silenced for the moment. He knew he was taking up Mr. Brandon's time, and so the time of his employer. He walked up and down the little office and thought it all over. Certain passages in his mother's letter came to his mind. In this way, perhaps, had her appeals been sneered at in the olden times!
"Mr. Brandon," he said, standing in front of his tormentor, his whole appearance changed from that of the hesitating, embarrassed boy to the resolute, high-spirited man— "Mr. Brandon, there has been enough trifling. I insist upon knowing if you were or were not the husband of Miss Heremore. If you were not, it is a very simple thing to say so. There are plenty of ways by which I can make myself certain of the fact without your assistance; but out of consideration for you, I came to you first."
"I am deeply grateful," with a mock ceremonious bow.
"But if you persist in this way of treating me, I shall have to go elsewhere."
"And then?"
"Heaven knows I do not ask anything of you, beyond the information I came to seek. I wondered yesterday why she should have given me her father's name instead of mine; now I can understand it. I had doubts while first speaking to you, but now they are gone. I believe it is so. If you will not tell me as much as you know of Dr. Heremore, I can go to his old home for it. It would have saved me time and expense if you had answered my questions; but as you please."
He was clearly in earnest. Mr. Brandon saw it, and stopped him at the door.
"My wife's name was Heremore," he said very indifferently, "and her father has been dead these twenty years. You have your answer. Permit me to ask what you mean to do about it?"
"Dr. Heremore was my grandfather," said Dick, coming back and sitting down.
"Ah! indeed!" politely; "he was a very excellent old gentleman in his way; it is much to be regretted that he and you should have been unable to make each other's acquaintance."
"When my mother—your first wife—died, you knew she left two children."
"One—a daughter. I think you have met her."
"There were two. I was the other."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Mr. Brandon in the same languid tones; but, for the first time, it seemed to Dick that they faltered.
"I am quite sure. You would know her writing."
"Possibly. It was a great while ago, and my eyes are not as good as they were."
"You would recognize her portrait?"
"If one I had seen before, I might."
"I should say this was a portrait of the first Mrs. Brandon," he said, taking that which Dick handed him and, looking at it, not without some signs of embarrassment, "or of someone very like her. And this is not unlike her writing, as I remember it. Oh! you wish me to read this?"
Dick signed assent, watching him while he read. Whatever Mr. Brandon felt while reading that letter, he kept it all in his own heart.
"This is all?" he asked when he had read and deliberately refolded it.
"It is all at present," answered Dick.
Then Mr. Brandon arose, handed the paper back, and said very quietly but deliberately:
"My first wife is dead and gone; her daughter lives with me, and, as long as I had the means, received every luxury she could desire. The past is past, and I do not wish it revived. Understand me. I do not wish it revived. I want to hear nothing more, not a word more, on this subject. If I were rich as I once was, I could understand why you should persist in this thing. I am not yet so poor that the law cannot protect me from any further persecution about the matter. Your mother, you say, named you for your grandfather, not for me. If you wish paternal advice—all that my poverty would enable me to give, however I were disposed—I advise you to go for it to her father, for whom she showed her judgment in naming you. Good morning."
"You cannot mean this! You must have known me as a child, and known my name before, long, long ago, and surely consented to it, or she would not have so named me. Of course, it was by some mistake the Brandon was dropped at first, not by her, but by those who took care of me when she died; she could never have meant such a thing; it was undoubtedly an accident. You cannot mean to end all here—that I am not to know, to see, my sister!"
"I tell you I wish to hear not another word of this matter; do you hear me? Have I not troubles enough now without your coming to bring up the hateful past? You shall not add to your sister's, whatever you may do to mine."
"I insist upon seeing her."
"You shall not. I positively forbid you to go near her. Now leave me! I have borne enough."
"But I cannot let the matter rest here; you know I cannot. The idea of it is absurd! If you do not wish me for a son, I have no desire to force myself upon you. I do not know why you should refuse to own me; I am not conscious of any cause I have given you to so dislike me."
"I don't dislike you, nor do I like you particularly; I have no ill-feeling against you, but I don't want this old matter dragged up. I am not strong enough to bear persecution now."
"But I do not want to persecute you. I want—"
"Well, what do you want?"
"I hardly know. I may have had an idea that you would welcome your oldest child after so many years of loss, however unworthy of you he might be. I may have thought that if you once were not all you should have been to one who, likely, was at one time very dear to you, it might be a satisfaction to you, even at this late day, to retrieve—"
"You thought wrong, and it is not worth while wasting words on the matter. I have got over all that, and don't want it revived. I can't put you out, but I beg you to go; or, if you persist in forcing your words upon me, pray choose some other subject."
"I will go, since you so heartily desire it; but I warn you that I will not give up seeing Miss—my sister."
"As you please. You will get as little satisfaction there, I fancy; though it may not be quite as annoying to her as to me."
"I shall try, at all events."
"Try. Go to her; say anything to her; make any arrangement with her you choose; take her away altogether. I don't care a button what you do, so you only leave me."
"I will leave you willingly, and am indeed sorry to have put you to so much pain."
"Not a word, I pray you," answered Mr. Brandon, now polite and smiling. "You have performed a disagreeable duty in the least disagreeable way you could, I do not doubt. All I ask is, never to hear it mentioned again."
Dick stayed for no more ceremony. Glad to be released from such an atmosphere of selfishness and cowardice, he hardly waited for the answer to his good-morning before turning to the street.
In less than an hour he was in the dreary room, with boarding-house stamped all over its walls, saying good-morning to a stately young lady, very pale and weary-looking, who kindly rose to receive him. The little room was hot and close; there were no shutters to the windows; the shades were too narrow at the sides; besides being so unevenly put up that the eyes ached every time one turned toward them, and the gleaming light was almost worse than the heat.
"I have been trying for the dozenth time to straighten them," said Mary, drawing one down somewhat lower, "but it's of no use."
"Are they crooked?" asked Dick innocently.
"Well, yes, rather," answered Mary, smiling. "I think I never saw anything before that was so near the perfection of crooked."
"I have seen your father this morning," Dick began, taking a chair near the table.
"There is nothing the matter, I hope?" she questioned nervously.
"Nothing that any one but myself need mind. I made some discoveries about myself last evening that I would like to tell you. Have you time?"
"I have nothing to do. I shall be very glad if my attentive listening can do you any service." She moved her chair, in a quiet way, a little farther from his, and looked at him in some surprise. She saw he was very earnest, excited, and greatly embarrassed. She could not help seeing that his eyes were anxiously following her every movement, eagerly trying to read her face.
"I am afraid I shall shock you very much, and you are not well; I am sorry I came. I thought only of my own eagerness to see you; not, until this moment, of the pain I may cause you."
"Do not think of that. I do not think, Mr. Heremore, you are likely to say anything that should pain me. I think you too sensible—I mean, too gentlemanly for that."
"I hope you really mean that. I am sure I must seem very rude and unpolished in your eyes; but I would have been far more so, had it not been for you."
"For me?"
"Yes." And he told her about the Christmas morning in Fourteenth Street.
"And you remembered that little thing all this time!" Mary exclaimed. "And you were once a newsboy!"
"Yes; I was once a great, stupid, ragged newsboy. I do not mean to deny, to conceal anything. I am so very sorry, for your sake; but I hope you will like me in spite of it all. If just those few words and that one smile did so much for me, what is there your influence may not do?"
"Mr. Heremore, I do not in the least understand you."
"I don't know where to begin; this has excited me so that I do not know what I am saying, and now I wish almost that you might never know it; there is such a difference between us that I cannot tell how to begin."
"Is it necessary that you should begin?" asked Mary. "You told me you wished to speak to me, of some discoveries you had made in regard to yourself. To anything about yourself I will listen with interest; but I do not care to have anything said about myself; there can be no connection between the two subjects that I can see; so pray do not waste words on so poor a subject as myself; but tell me the discovery, if you please."
"But it concerns you as much as it does me. Do you know much about your own mother? She died, you told me, long ago."
"I know very little about her. I presume her death was a great grief to papa; for he has never permitted a word to be said about her, and anything that pains papa in that way is never alluded to. The little I do know I have learned from my old nurse."
"You do not remember her?"
"Not in the least; she died when I was a mere baby."
"Did you ever see her portrait, or any of her writing, or hear her maiden name?"
"No, to all your questions. Does papa know you are here, this morning?"
"Yes; I went to him at once. At first he was very determined I should not see you; but in the end, he seemed glad to get me silenced at any price, and I was so anxious to see you that I did not wait for very cordial permission."
"You did not talk to papa about my mother?"
"Yes, that is what I went for."
"How did you dare to do it? Was he not very angry? I am sure you know something about mamma."
"Yes, I do. I have her portrait; this is it."
"Her portrait! My mamma's portrait! O what a beautiful face! Is this really my mamma? Did papa see it? Did he recognize it?"
"I showed it to him. He did not deny it was hers."
"Deny it was hers! What in the world do you mean, Mr. Heremore? Where did you get it?"
Then Dick, in the best way he could, told the whole story of the box, and gave her the letter to read. When Mary came to the part which said, "Will you love your sister always, let what may be her fate? Remember, always, she had no mother to guide her," she turned her eyes, full of tears, to Dick, saying no words.
"She did not know that it would be the other way," Dick replied to her look, his own eyes hardly dry. "She would have begged for me if she had known that—" farther than this he could not get. Mary put her hands in his, and said earnestly:
"No need for that; her pleading comes just as it should. Will you really be my brother—all wearied, sick, and worn-out as I am? Oh! if this had only come two years ago, I could have been something to you!"
But Dick could not answer a word, He could only keep his eyes upon her face; afraid, as it seemed, that it would suddenly prove all a dream.
But the day wore on and it did not prove less real. The heat and the glaring light were forgotten, or not heeded, while the two sat together and talked of this strange story, and tried to fill up the outlines of their mother's history.
"I feel as if our grandpapa were living, or, if not living, there must be somebody who knows something about him," she said.
"I think I ought to go and see. Mr. Staffs was very particular in urging that."
"I think so; even if you learned nothing, it would be a good thing for you just to have tried."
"I know I can get permission to stay away for a few days longer; there's nothing doing at this season, Would it take long?"
"I don't know much about it; not more than two days each way, I should think. There is a steamer, too, that goes to Portland, and you can find out if Wiltshire is near there. The steamer trip would be splendid at this season. Are you a good sailor?"
"I don't know. You have got a great ignoramus for a brother. I have never been half a day's journey from New York in my life."
"Is that so? Well, you must go to Portland. How you will enjoy the strong, bracing sea-breezes; they make one feel a new life!"
Then suddenly Dick's face grew very red, but bright, and he said eagerly: "Would you trust me—I mean could your father be persuaded—would you be afraid to go with me?"
"Oh! I wish I could! I would enjoy it as I never did a journey before! Just to see the sea again, and with a brother! I can't tell you how I have all my life envied girls with great, grown-up brothers. Nobody else is ever like a brother. Fred and Joe are younger than I, and have been away so much that they never seemed like brothers. A journey with you on such a quest would be something never to be forgotten."
"It doesn't seem as if such a good thing could come to pass," answered Dick. "I don't know anything about travelling; you would have to train me; but if you will bear with me now, I will try hard to learn. Do you think your father would listen to the idea?"
"No; he would not listen to ten words about it. He hates to be troubled; he would never forgive me if I went into explanations about an affair that did not please him; but if I say, 'Papa, I am going away for a couple of weeks to New England, unless you want me for something,' he will know where I am going, what for, and will not mind, so he is not made to talk about it; that is his way."
"Will you really go, then, with me? You know I shall not know how to treat you gallantly, like your grand beaux."
"Ah! don't put on airs, Mr. Dick; you were not so very humble before you knew our relationship. Remember, I have known you long."
"I wonder what you thought of me."
"I thought a great deal of good of you; so did papa, so does Mr. Ames."
"You know Mr. Ames?"
"Ah! very well indeed; he comes to see us every New Year's day; he actually found us out this year, and I got to liking him more than ever; he has come quite often since, and we talked of you; he says you are a good boy. I am going to be grande dame to-day, and have lunch brought up for us two, unless Madame the landlady is shocked."
"Does that mean I have staid too long?"
"No, indeed. Mrs. Grundy never interferes with people with clear consciences, at least in civilized communities; in provincial cities, and country towns she will not let you turn around except as she pleases; that's the difference. There are no bells in this establishment, or, if there are, nobody ever knew one to be answered, so I will start on a raid and see what I can discover."
In course of time she returned with a servant, who cleared the little rickety table, and then disappeared, returning at the end of half an hour with a very light lunch for two; but that was not her fault, poor thing!
Then hour after hour passed and still Dick could not leave her; he had gone out and bought a guidebook, which required them to go all over the route again, and there was so much of the past life of each to be told and wondered at, that it was late in the afternoon and Mr. Brandon's hand was on the door before Dick had thought of leaving. Of course he must remain to see Mr. Brandon, who, however, did not seem any too glad to see him. Nothing was said in regard to the matter which had been all day under discussion. Mr. Brandon talked of the news of the day, of the weather, and the last book he had read, accompanied him to the door, and shook hands with him quite cordially, to the surprise of the landlady, who was peeping over the banisters in expectation of high words between them. Mr. Brandon even went so far as to speak of him as a very near relative, as several of the boarders distinctly heard. Mr. Brandon hated to be talked to on disagreeable subjects, but he knew the world's ways all the same.
"Come very early to-morrow morning," Mary said in a low voice as they parted, "and I will let you know if I can go."
Dick did not forget this parting charge, and early the next morning had the happiness of hearing that her father had consented to let her go.
"Papa isn't as indifferent as he seems," she said. "When it is all fixed and settled, he will treat you just as he does the rest of us, only he hates a scene and explanations. I suppose he was unkind to poor mamma, and now hates to say a word about it; but you may be sure he feels it. And now you must take everything for granted, come and go just as if you had always been at home with us, and he will take it so."
"But what will people say?"
"Why, we will tell the truth, only as simply as possible—as if it were an everyday affair—that papa's first wife died while he was away from home, and that when he returned from Paris, where he says he was then, the people told him you were dead too. I don't know why that old woman should have told such a story."
"Nor I, but perhaps, poor, ignorant soul, she thought the boy was better under her charge than given over to a 'Protestant,' who had acted so like a heathen to the child's mother; but good as was her motive, and perhaps her judgment, I hope she did not really tell a lie about it, so peace to her soul. Who knows how much Dick owes to her pious prayers?"
A very proud and happy man was Dick in these days, when he journeyed to Maine with his newly-found sister. It is true that the change in Mr. Brandon's circumstances did not enable Mary to have a new travelling suit for the occasion, and that she was obliged to wear a last year's dress; but last year's dress was a very elegant one, and almost "as good as new;" for Mary, fine lady that she was, had the taste and grace of her station, and deft fingers, quick and willing servants of her will, that would do honor to any station; so her dress was all à la mode, and Dick had reason to be proud of escorting her. She had, however, something more than her dress of which to be proud, or Dick would not have been so grateful for finding her his sister; she had a kind heart, which enabled her always to answer readily all who addressed her, to make her constantly cheerful with Dick, and to keep everything smooth for the inexperienced traveller, who otherwise would have suffered many mortifications; she had, too, a womanly dignity, a sense of what was due to and from her, not as Miss Brandon, but as a woman, which secured her from any incivility and made her always gentle and considerate to every one. Dick could never enough delight in the quiet, composed way in which she received attentions which she never by a look suggested; for the gentle firmness, the self-possession, the quiet composure, the perfect courtesy of a refined and cultivated woman were new things to him; and to say he loved the very ground she walked on would be only a mild way of expressing the feeling of his heart toward her.
Added to all this, giving to everything else a greater charm, Mary's mind was always alive; she had been thoroughly educated, and had mingled all her life with intelligent and often intellectual people, whose influence had enabled her to seek at the proper fountains for entertainment and instruction. Whatever passed before her eyes, she saw; and whatever she saw, she thought about. In her turn, Mary already dearly loved her brother; although two years younger than he, she was, as generally happens at their age, much more mature, and she could see, as if with more experienced eyes, what a true, honest heart, what thorough desire to do right, what patience and what spirit, too, there was in him, and again and again said to herself, "What would he not have been under other circumstances!" But she forgot, when saying that, that God knows how to suit the circumstances to the character, and that Dick, not having neglected his opportunities, had put his talent out to as great interest as he could under other influences. There was much that had to be broadened in his mind, great worlds of art and literature for him to enter; but there was time enough for that yet; he had a character formed to truth and earnestness, and had proved himself patient and energetic at the proper times. It now was time for new and refining influences to be brought to bear; it was time for gentleness and courtesy to teach him the value of pleasant manners and self-restraint; for the conversation of cultivated people to teach him the value of intelligent thoughts and suitable words in which to clothe them; for the knowledge of other lives and other aims to teach him the value or the mistake of his own. These things were unconsciously becoming clearer to him every day that he was with his sister, who, I need hardly say, never lectured, sermonized, or put essays into quotation marks, but whose conversation was simple, refined, and intelligent, whatever was its subject. Others greater than Mary would come after her when her work was done, we may be sure; but at the present time Dick was not in a state to be benefited by such.
To Be Continued.