I.
"Sweet music has been heard
In many places; some has been upstirred
From out its crystal dwelling in a lake,
By a swan's ebon bill; from a thick brake,
Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
About the earth."
In an old sea-board town, once famous from its commerce and fisheries, lived a boy, who, as his mother told her gossip, had a good talent for music. Over his adopted place the salt winds blew; beside it, a river rolled its murmurous, mountain-born waters; behind it, green woods forever rustled. A poet still blows his bugle-notes across the three streams that braid its garment in silver; a painter has left there the shadow of cherubs cleaving the clouds; but till Fauntleroy Verrian came, music had owned there no apostle.
The name that he wore had been his father's, and seemed sufficient, in itself, to prove him of gentle blood—the father, of whom no one knew much, who had married his mother against the wish of her friends, and who one day went out, having kissed his young wife, and never returned. She hoped, at last, that he was dead; but something in her heart assured her that he would one day meet the son whom he had never seen. And later, as that son matured, she remembered strange stories once read by her, where demon or Afrite, in the guise and mask of most dark and fascinating manhood, has espoused such lady as he chose; and she trembled with half a fear lest the father of Fauntleroy might be such an one, and traced with terror the growing likeness there, remembering her brief period of passion and delight. But name and face were not the only gifts that the child inherited from his father.
For a time the mother remained in the town where her husband had left her, lest some day he might come to find her, and fail; but the impression of the past, instead of wearing off, daily cut deeper into her soul, and at length the perpetual remembrance grew too painful. Thus, although in this place she procured sufficiently genial occupation in teaching, exertion being necessary, since part of her little store had been deposited in some unknown quarter, she nevertheless chose to remove to another spot; and now all alone in the world, but for her child, she labored fitfully at her needle. So she lived in the small house by the water-side, owning it herself, and renting the larger half.
All things were auspicious to the youth of this boy, though nothing seemed so. His mother was, it appeared, a widow, and therefore he encountered few but the gentle influences of feminine culture. She was poor, and poverty is a discipline. She had received, of course, an education beyond her present station, and poured it lavishly into his thirsty mind. When he numbered fourteen years, she died, and a loneliness befell him which is the crown of genius, and out of which marvellous jewels may be plucked.—Very early in his life, he had manifested an ardent love of the art to which subsequently he devoted himself. Before he spoke, he sang his own lullabies; when he first went alone, his mother lost him all one summer's day, and he was found only at moon-rise, fast asleep beside a fence, whither, bare-footed, bare-headed, and all day without food, he had followed the band of a street company, still repeating in his pretty sleep parts of the tunes they had lent him. He was scarcely older, when two tickets for a rare concert (in a day when concerts were like rain in the desert) were given to his mother, and the poor seamstress, who could neither leave her child nor resign the pleasure, took him with her as a protector. The gay lights, the brilliant toilettes and bouquets, the chandelier swinging all its waxen flames in the glitter of ormulu and prismatic pendents, the laughing and commotion previous to the opening, these filled the child with strange exhilaration, so that he danced upon the seat, repeatedly embraced his mother, and sung to her once or twice, in a low caressing voice, a few notes of his choicest remembrance. But when the musicians had spread their magical pages before them, and, out of a wilderness of sweet sounds, his childish ear drew the measure and melody of one air, his transport knew no bounds. The music was not of a difficult order, nor did it require a great effort of comprehension; yet, while one child, who had been taken that the effect upon him might be observed, whispered dismally, 'What a yacket!' Fauntleroy stood with his clasped hands hanging before him, his head bent forward, and his little face bathed in tears. The last piece was a fantasia upon several of the exquisite waltzes of Beethoven: during the performance one of the sheets fluttered from the stage to the floor, and lay there unnoticed; at the conclusion, as they stepped into the aisle, it caught the child's eye, and, springing forward, he seized it. The strange characters enchanted him, he followed them along with his finger; of their meaning he was, of course, ignorant; but they had some connection with the passing splendor, they were akin to the music that had brimmed his childish soul, they were precious to those gods upon the stage, and so he made a theft of them; or rather, one should say, bore them off calmly, as if by his own right and possession.
His letters he found it difficult to conquer, but day after day he sat in the sun, poring over the stolen sheet, singing the air as he recalled it, dividing it first into parts, and then into distinct sounds, until, if he had been conscious of the fact, he had almost literally deciphered the meaning of those quaint emblems. Hornbook and catechism retired before them, for to those worthies he had given but an inconsiderable portion of his acquaintance.
At the completion of his sixth year, there came a memorable day to Fauntleroy Verrian. He was no longer to remain with the other lodger during Sabbath mornings of perfect calm, that breathed of woods and brooks and dewy winds, and brought to him vague sensations of distant and unknown delights; but jacket and trowsers lay, one sunrise, by his bedside, and he was promoted, not only to the dignity of breeches, but to that other goal of his desires, to see clouds of music, laden with all gorgeous imaginings, blown from the great golden organ-pipes; to go, morning and afternoon, to church. Through the quiet prime, he discoursed of this anticipation to his mother, and she, with maternal wont, did her best to check it, telling him, not the choir, but the preacher, and the sweet voice of the prayers, should draw him there, where she took him not to delight his ear but to save his soul. Fauntleroy had thought his soul safe enough, if he took it round with him, and did not understand his mother's dogmas. 'I know,' he answered, when she tried to elicit his ideas of immortal things, 'that God holds me in my sleep, and makes the ocean cry so in the night, and all the winds whistle and clap their wings when the dark comes, because you told me, and I always thank Him in my prayers, mother. I wish, sometimes, He had made a field for me, with flowers in it; but I suppose there is one growing against I am a man.'
'But, in all this,' said his mother, 'you think too much of yourself, and very little of God.'
'Mother, I love God with all my heart,' he replied; 'but when I say it, somehow I feel like a bird, and sing it.'
His mother's seat at church commanded a view of the choir, and here, regardless of every thing else, Fauntleroy remained, his eyes fixed on the loft, and his ears expectant of the moment when the great crypt of silent sound should open its gates, and send forth its winged worshipping ghosts. At last, through the vestry-door, stole the white-robed priest, and a hush reigned in the assembled congregation. As the first hum stole over their heads, like the breath of a wandering wind, slowly flanking itself with allies of massive chords, and winding into vast volumes of involved harmonies, the boy sat rapt in a seraphic trance. No motion marred the marble-like repose, his shadow never quivered, and, but for the blood that bounded up and down the cheek, one could have dreamed him transmuted into some delicate sculpture. At length, the little statue gave a sigh, the lashes fell and hid the starry eyes, and he covered his face with his hands. In the confession, a slight motion did not disturb his mother, but when, on rising, he was not to be seen in the pew, she knew he had gone to seek an ascent to the idol, where she soon caught sight of the dark little head, as its owner sat perched on a stool beside the organist. The service over, the mother remains in the pew, with a mouthful of reproofs for the truant; but he still lingers in the loft.
'Well, what is it?' asks the organist, amused at the unceremonious freedom of the visitor.
'Would you be so kind,' asks the latter, with much sweetness, but no fear, 'as to let me put my fingers on the music?'
'On the keys? With pleasure.'
The child extends his hands, and lays them on the polished ice, although extracting no murmur.
'Well, what do they say to you, the sirens? What do they tell you?'
'O Sir! all sweet things!'
'Do they, little enthusiast? And, if they say so much without sound, what do they say when their lips move?'
The child lifts his hands from the keys, crosses them behind him, and says imperiously: 'Play!'
The man obeys, and evolves a slow movement from Cherubini. If the composer's soul never mirrored the extremest depths of Nature, or if the present performer has in his own soul no complete expression for the strain, there is yet enough. The child's eyes sparkle over cheeks whiter than snow, his quivering lips part, he shivers at each roll of harmony, he stands with self-forgetful, outstretched hands, and, as it closes, every pulse thrills beneath the surge of the silver thunders. He had found that day a new revelation, and unconsciously to himself had learned that in the organ—'great omnipotence of sound'—was slumbering all the delight and purpose of his life.
His mother had often taken him with her, when calling on an elderly lady who lived a few streets higher than herself, the town sloping up from the river; and during these visits he had amused himself with an old English piano that stood, neglected and forlorn, on very slender legs, in a corner of the room. Round the edges, ivory had once been damaskeened in the notes of an air in vogue at the time of its construction; but they, together with the harp of St. Cecilia, elaborately let into the centre of the lid, had long been yellow as gold. Opened, it displayed the delightful mysteries of the black and white key-board. But alas! what different sounds issued thence; what tormented sprites shrieked in short pain from the shrunken wires, and how many others refused to answer his summons at all. Just over it was a small window, which Fauntleroy incidentally noticed to be destitute of fastening. A few weeks after his first attendance at church, he learned from his mother that this neighbor was dead, and that the house would be closed until her heirs, who were foreign, should send an agent from Europe, preparatory to the settlement of her affairs, and the sale of household stuff. During these weeks, his mother had been greatly harassed by her son's evident propensity to music, for though he now learned and digested whatever was set before him, all his avidity was manifested in the former direction. In despair of his ever becoming a useful member of society, she took from him the precious sheet of Beethoven, forbade him to speak on the subject of his predilection, broke in pieces and consumed the violin left behind by his father, and, above all, commanded him never to approach the piano at the old lady's house, and, finally, since she saw the restless longings of the little face at every visit, ceased to go there at all herself. At last, when Fauntleroy heard the announcement, he resolved to attain the mastery of that valueless old piano, and revolved a thousand schemes by which his object could be effected. Music drew him as a magnet draws a needle; resistance never occurred to him, but concealment was absolutely necessary. The more his mother opposed, the more she pushed him forward: with a pertinacity equal to her own, Fauntleroy followed his bent. On his way home from school, he passed the deserted house, even opened the little gate, and took a quick but satisfactory survey of the premises, and as hasty a resolution.
That night at tea-time, his share was taken away untouched, he went early to bed, but not to sleep, frequently calling on his mother to put by her work. It seemed as if the evening would never end, while he tossed impatiently about, yet entertaining myriad fantastic presences, and marshaling an ever-shifting procession of varied song. At length his mother lay down by his side, and the candle was extinguished. Soon the regular breathing of the tired needle-woman announced her sleep, and her treacherous little boy slipped down the other side, silently donned his clothes, and stole from the house into the mid-night street, leaving the door and his mother at the mercy of the open bolt. Up the long street he ran till out of hearing distance, past the churchyard like a spirit, and over the garden-wall. He stopped at last on the moss-grown flags of the garden-walk to look about him. The softest brilliancy of a June moon, but two hours high, flooded all the nodding boughs with a silver frosting; the althea and flox and narcissi dropped their heads, heavy with dew, and spread their untrained fragrance on the sweet, cool wind—the wind that wandered in and out the darker green glooms of the aromatic alleys, and was the only stirring thing beside himself. How free he was, and how glorious such liberty! He hardly believed that another soul in the world was up and in a garden at this hour. The garden, which had been his admiration all his summers, with its beds of pansies and violets, and its great swinging boughs of juiciest fruit, down whose walks he had timidly stepped with dainty delight, this garden was now his own dominion, as much his as ever it had been any bee's; the people who owned it slept and forgot it, and cancelled their right in oblivion; any one of the flowers he could pluck if he chose. The universal hush and peace waited upon him. Truly he was Lord of the Night. At least, without having been stated in words to himself, this was the sum and meaning of his sensations. But when the first bloom of his midnight experience wore away, he remembered the piano, and sought the window that opened behind it. It was almost higher than he could reach, but by dint of an arbor-seat, which, inch by inch, the little burglar dragged along, he raised himself to a sufficient height. A sweet-brier climbed round this window, and, in feeling for the sash, the thorns tore and scratched his hands. When found, all his strength could not raise it. He hesitated a little while, and then took a big stone, deliberately broke through the space of two panes, inserted his head and arm, and drew himself through. In a moment, the mystic instrument was open and tinkling outrageously beneath his empiric hands. To his horror, this was not the music he wanted, and the connection between each separate key and the characters on his excommunicated sheet suddenly flashed upon him. Solving the riddle with a patience most wonderful, he sat working in the slowly-wheeling moonlight until the clock of the opposite church struck three: still delaying, minute after minute, till the last quarter warned him how near the day might be, he hastily closed the lid, and retreated as he had entered. Passing the graves, this time he was hardly so fearless, but scampered down the gray street at full speed. Nevertheless an unutterable satisfaction filled him, and noiselessly securing the door, he crept up the stair, tore off his clothes, and slipped into bed again, silently giving a little prayer of thanks that he had succeeded in his naughtiness. Having the first time accomplished so much, he on the next night lost no sleep, but woke when his mother retired, and again, when she slept, escaped. A half-dozen nights, while the moon lasted, the child continued his excursions, but at length was obliged to cease for want of the friendly light.
During the intervening space, he employed himself in running errands and gathering sixpences, till he had amassed a sum sufficient for the purchase of strings, which, in his search through the mechanism of the instrument, he had found requisite. One sunset he returned with them in his pocket, carefully secreted among peg-top, white ally, whittlings and ginger-bread, and great was his joy when the thin crescent of the new moon lay above a long orange cloud, but equally great his sorrow to see the slender boat float down the lucid currents of the west, and leave no sign. A few nights more, however, and she was again his leaguer, fortified and reïnforced by certain candles pillaged from his mother's scanty store. Meanwhile he had lost no time for ingratiating himself with the church organist, had not suffered a day to pass without seeing him, had beset him with flocks of questions, had received hints and instructions that seemed to him as comprehensive as a library, and had, as he soon found, acquired, in this interval of rest, real knowledge and satisfactory progress.
The June passed into the harvest moon, October began to array herself in all the beautiful decadence of the year, and still his new pleasure had not palled upon Fauntleroy. He had repaired to the best of his ability the injuries time had wrought on this mine of enjoyment, had tuned it according to his inventive skill, and, when in the latter business strength failed, had resorted to a thousand expedients, had contrived infantile levers and screws, and, at one time, had even secured the refractory subject by a cord to the jambs across the room, thinking that being thoroughly wetted it would contract, as he had seen his mother's clothes-line do, and draw the tone to the required pitch. And although I doubt if by these methods he effected much, still he met with a certain success that sufficed, and they were excellent schemes of instruction. Remembering as he did, every line and mark of his one-paged volume of Beethoven, he had compared with it what every hour over the instrument taught him, and having obtained a book of tunes from the organ-desk at church, together with much more assistance from the friend there, had found his knowledge to be perfectly accurate if small, and that from these notes he could produce, though in how much less degree! the same melodies that enraptured him on Sabbaths. Moreover, so much attained, he now by practice became to a great extent master of difficulties to which most pupils yield, and of a convenient if not always elegant style, in which his little fingers would twinkle over the keys at some prestissimo, or slowly oar along through what seemed to him a sea of solemn harmony.
Such frequent loss of sleep, as might be expected, soon showed its results in the boy. Languid and pale during day-light, with large purple shadows beneath his eyes, thin and without appetite, yet animated by a constant liveliness of mind, joyous and over-flowing with inner happiness, he grew the subject of his mother's tenderest anxieties, and often in her sleep she turned to take the truant into her bosom. Once or twice not touching him in her drowsiness, his absence did not occur to her, but another time she started up filled with keen alarm, as he closed the street-door. Her quick call was smothered in affright. It was the work of an instant to gather a few garments and follow him just as he turned the corner of the street. Never dreaming of looking behind him, Fauntleroy hurried on, scaled the wall, and for the last time entered his sanctuary. His mother, less nimble, toiled up the hill, and, despairing at the wall, ran round to the gate. In the tremor that ruled her, she found it locked, and succeeded only, after several minutes, in remembering a broken part of the inclosure. Here she effected an entrance, but Fauntleroy was no where to be seen. Down one aisle and up another, across grassy plots and weed-choked flower-beds she ran breathlessly, and perhaps had not found him to this day, if a thought of the old piano had not struck her simultaneously with its sound. With suddenly-illumined thoughts she turned to the window whither the thread of music led her, and bending from one side, looked in. There was the dark, old-fashioned book-case, filling one side of the room from floor to ceiling, with a white bust of some irate Apollo in a niche of the arched carving, like a crown; the curtains swept apart for all the light the night could give; the buffet yielding a sidelong gleam, half drowned in shade, of silver and glass and gorgeously-flowered china; the chancel-chairs and velvet-covered table; and the mysterious portrait above the chimney-piece, that gathered all the spare light into itself and leaned from the dingy frame a pale, witch-like face, in a net of golden hair. All this his mother received at a glance, although that glance lighted instantly on her child, where he sat rapt in a softly-improvised welcome to his Egeria. So motionless was he, with uplifted eyes in the clear moon-light that streamed upon and over him into the room, that she half-feared him to be in a somnambulic state. Yet those violet eyes, so dark, so lustrous, wore no fixed stare, nor any trace of sleep; they were rather filled with spirit, brimmed with the wakefulness of life, and the heavenly dream of music alone overshadowed the transfigured face. The mother felt this as she gazed, and hung on the sweetness that his fingers drew into the air. Did ever any one do so beautifully, she thought; and, as if to mock her, a golden robin stirred in his nest and trilled his mid-night song, as full of joy as the whippowil's of sorrow.
As Fauntleroy's fancy lightened from the theme he followed, his eye pursued a cloud across the sky, and falling, lay upon his mother's face. He ceased a moment in terrible dismay, then starting to his feet, looked back at the portrait on the wall, lest she had stolen out of her frame, mastered by all the charm of the old house. But as quietly as ever, in the Greek cap of vivid scarlet and gold zequins falling from her hair, she looked through her prison-door. Again his fascinated eyes sprung back to the white face pressed against the vacant panes. It was all quicker than thought, and hardly a minute had elapsed when he comprehended it. If his mother had been Solomon, he would have expected summary chastisement; as it was, he resumed his seat and played with his best execution the very piece upon which she had laid her ban. He fancied himself to have accomplished a fine revenge, but silly child! his mother no more understood his meaning than did the portrait, for of the identity between what he played and what the sheet contained his unskilled senses were ignorant. Hardly had he struck the closing chord, when the door behind him opened, and a tall gentleman, in flowing robes and with long, dark hair, entered, bearing a light, which the draught at once extinguished.
'What does this mean?' he asked in apparent amazement, first of the child and then of the white face beyond. The mother pushed up the sash.
'Sir,' she cried, 'he is my son; and having been forbidden by me, when Madame Fardeau was living, to touch this piano, has escaped from me in the night! Send him here to me, I implore you.'
'Is this so?' asked the stranger doubtingly, and with that strange manner which, however perfectly one speaks the tongue, always indicates the foreigner.
'Yes, it is so!' answered Fauntleroy stoutly, as his mother's words were impugned. 'Mother never knew of my coming till to-night; and where's the harm?'
'You have been here before, then?'
'Oh! yes,' answered Fauntleroy, into whose nature there had not been instilled sufficient awe of any one to make it seem to him worth while to tell a lie.
'Several times?'
'Several times.'
'When did you first come?'
'Oh! a great while ago; a great many years, I should think.'
'A great many years, Fauntleroy!' exclaimed his mother, while the gentleman moved uneasily as she spoke. 'Madame Fardeau has not been dead a great many years. You are not a great many years old!'
'Why, mother, the little lilies were in bloom, the first time.'
'And that was in June, Sir,' she said, half-laughingly, and appealing to the stranger.
''Well, well, you make too much noise to be about a bad business. So you like this tinkling cymbal?'
'Sir—so much!'
'Who taught you to play?'
'I do not yet play; but I shall.'
'That does not answer my question. Have you had a teacher?'
'No.'
The gentleman stooped and examined the piano. 'Who keeps your instrument in order?' he asked with a comical shrug.
'I do.'
It was all like a dream to Fauntleroy, and which was real, which false, he could not tell; suddenly two hands seized his waist, swung him through the casement to his mother. 'See, little monkey,' said the great black-bearded face close to his own, while the cheery laugh rung in his terrified ear like a booming bell, 'I shall set a trap here to-morrow. Good night!' and he abruptly closed the sash.
Fauntleroy felt as if he had just fallen out of bed, and expecting that the next minute would reveal the falsehood of so long and so delightful a hallucination, was yet farther surprised when his mother took his hand and led him home without a word. She was trembling in every nerve herself, she did not cease throwing a frightened glance over her shoulder as they walked, and she seemed unable to recal her thoughts from the region to which they had strayed.
'Naughty child,' said she at last with tears, as she sat once more in the little bed-chamber; 'cruel boy, to occasion me such trouble!'
'Mother, didn't you like to hear me play?'
'You played well; but you have stolen it all.'
'No one else has lost it.'
'Fauntleroy, I would rather you had never played a note than to have deceived me so.'
'Did you hear the piece you took away from me?'
'Are you going to increase your disobedience by dishonesty? Have you been at my trunk? Have you unlocked that, and got it?'
'Pooh! no. I remembered that.'
'I wish you would learn your multiplication-table as easily.'
'Sixteen times sixteen are two hundred and fifty-six, and that's as far as the table goes!'
'You are in high glee to-night. Does it make you happy to be wicked?'
'O mother! not to be wicked! but to be up, to have been out, to have seen my beauty, and oh! I never shall see her any more, I never can go there again!' and bursting into tears, he went crying to bed and sobbing to sleep.
The next day, when the mournful Fauntleroy returned at night from school, there stood in his mother's small sitting-room the beloved piano, a roll of old and invaluable musical MSS. upon it, and an envelope containing a sum of money, with directions that it should be employed in paying a teacher for Master Fauntleroy Verrian.
The mother entering soon from an unusual day's work abroad—for she was assisting at a trousseau—first looked about her in amaze, and then hung long above the writing on the envelope, holding it to the light, and trying it by a thousand whims.
'Yes,' she murmured at length, 'with all the false color of hair and beard, with all the disguised tones and hidden pen-strokes, he is unchanged. This is he, and strange it is that my heart does not break. Of what, of what can I be made? How hard that heart must be; for my love is as utterly extinct as his.'
Nevertheless, she hurried on shawl and hood again, and returned to the house from which she had lately issued. She never had occasion to seek it again, for the trousseau upon which she had worked, was from that evening abandoned.
For two or three days the money lay untouched, the music unrolled, the piano unopened. At their close his mother extracted the confession, that if he had been dishonest he was 'making up for it,' and that he would show her how well he could deny himself.
At the end of another week, during which the donor had settled his affairs and departed, as she heard, she engaged a music-teacher, herself displayed the crabbed manuscript, opened the piano, and placed him before it.
'You have my leave, dear,' she said, and with a sigh perhaps, resigned the laudable intention which all American mothers are supposed to entertain, of making him on one day President of the Republic; for the fine arts, as we all know, are not the road to that distinction.
'Mother,' said Fauntleroy, a few days afterward, 'I never shall enjoy my music the way I did when it was, as you say, stolen.'
There was little for his teacher to correct in what he had previously gained, and at every lesson he astonished and outstripped her. Finally she buried him in the intricacies of the science till it became clear and glorious as the firmament, and reflected back to him the features of his own mind like the brazen sea of the Temple crowned at the brim with flowers of lilies. The gradual opening of the child's genius gave his mother a great awe; with that she dared no longer interfere, but in the moral part of his character he was, she saw, fearfully deficient. He met all her arguments with an unconscious sophistry, and was almost incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. The creature of impulse, she declared it providential that all his impulses were good.
As time passed, Fauntleroy's supple fingers gathered strength, and he was pronounced equal to the anticipation of his life. To be a great performer on any instrument, or to create fresh forms for any or all instruments to unfold, did not at that time belong to his visions; he only desired to live for and in music, however humbly, and to serve it entirely. It was not, meantime, so easy a task to obtain an opportunity for this exercise. Wealthy committees of wealthy churches declined affording his genius the assistance; had they willed it, they might have ministered to the heavenly visitant, but unwilling, he was nevertheless not to lose his service. At last the organ of a poorer church, fine and powerful for its size, was placed at his disposal, and he entered with the years of childhood upon the career of a man. Frequently, after becoming accustomed, he played for the usual organist of his place: his performances being so excellent that ungodly crowds flocked to hear them; and on the departure of his first friend from the church which his mother attended, he was invited to fill his place, at a salary which, far too small as it was, was a fabulous amount to the boy and his mother.
Thus he grew. His teacher had no more to impart; if it were possible, he had exhausted the MSS. with which he had been so unexpectedly enriched: he had finished fourteen years, and his mother died. Slowly and imperceptibly, yet with the sureness of fate, she had drooped and wearied from the day, eight years since, in which she had abandoned her son to his determination; and without ever knowing that it was so, Fauntleroy watched his mother fade away before his eyes. Had he been an ordinary person, the reäction would now inevitably have come. But the grief that so suddenly overwhelmed him only goaded to farther effort, and in almost unbroken seclusion he turned himself partially to a more general study, pursued with no less ardor or success. Nothing that he attempted seemed to require an effort, or rather the effort he saw fit to put forth always covered the attempt, and thus in time his learning became more than liberal. Again then he returned to his chosen pursuit, and day after day he sat in the old church alone, except for his single attendant, pouring forth melodies, and teaching the echoes of the place such resonances as they had never breathed before.
There was at no great distance from the church a school, the tumult of whose greetings and recesses reached the young organist in a murmur, as he sat studying black tomes in the sheltered choir. Often through the blush of sunrise he passed its neat grounds, and its bells broke in upon his sweetest reveries. The boy grows as he dreams, and Fauntleroy was already gathering a look into his face that did not belong to the child. Up the gallery-stairs now, unperceived by him, stole every day a little girl—pale, though not from lack of health, and elegantly clad—who sat upon the upper step and listened to his music. When the bell struck she would hasten down, as frequently taking the balustrade for her method of conveyance as any other. Time increasing, she became more daring, and stole on tip-toe round the organ, though never obtaining a view of the performer's face, and never caring to do so. Sometimes now the stroke of the bell was disregarded by her, and until some motion of the organist surprised her, she sat listening through the warm noons to his necromancy; the long roll of the sound made her tremble with a delicious pain, and her face grew paler as the childish soul fed upon such ecstatic sweetness. Pinafore and pantalette vanished by degrees, while a maturer maidenly attire assumed predominance; and the flying hair, swept away in a long satin gloss, was secured in twisted coils. Once she had brought a cluster of the school-girls to partake her feast, but each borrowing courage from the other, their congregated boldness frightened her, and she did not repeat the experiment.
One noon she had stood sheltered by the wing of the organ; so entranced through the music, and so lost in the mazes whither it had led her, that when its last throb died away she was first startled from her abstraction by the clang of the church-door. She ran down, but the organist and his attendant had gone, and she was locked in. Knowing he would return, she entered the body of the church, and, having wandered at her pleasure over the forbidden precincts, ensconced herself finally among the piled hassocks of a square pew, and opened the school-book which to save her conscience she had brought in her hand. Never a very courageous student, the book ere long wearied her, letter chased letter over the page, and the head sinking among the crimson cushions, she was soon fast asleep. In a short time the young organist returned, quietly ascended, and busied himself in fresh problems, combinations and intervals, over the old cabalistic volumes. Rising at length, he leaned over the rail of the gallery, and looked down into the church: his mind full of pleasant dreaming. Thus the girl slumbering in the warm coloring of the old pew below, with a broad pencil of light guarding her presence as it slanted through the chancel window and swum in gorgeous motes, seemed to him like a fay curled in the cups of ruby cacti, or the visible spirit and creation of his music, and so passed along his dream without exciting other emotions than its thousand fantasies and gay processions were wont to do. Turning again to the keys, he was soon lost in the more beautiful ideas of men older and greater than he. Soon there stole through the girl's half-waking mind a gentle murmuring, swelling till all the air about her pulsed with long waves of melody, and she awoke to hear the golden pipes pealing as she had never dreamed they could, while every atom throbbed with conscious sound.
So the music stole along the aisles, shaking from its flowing folds fragments of delicious airs, dim remembrances of meadow-greens, wreaths of palest wood-flowers. Now the quiet ripple of a forest-brook crept down; and now the summer wind, taking the pine-tree tops, shook them in a hurried storm of notes till the wild crescendo broke into a myriad murmurs, each rocking in the breeze. Slowly through this, out of untrodden depths, a grander and more solemn movement rose, and all the mysterious beauty of a fugue of Bach bathed the place in a fairer sanctity. Filled with indescribable awe, she glided from the church at its close, and returned to her vacant seat at school, regardless of reprimand and trifles, and only repeating in her mind the sublime strains she had heard.
For some time Fauntleroy Verrian had been quietly growing in the public favor. Indeed it would have been singular if the chord so powerfully touched by him had never drawn any response; and thus when a musical impulse, apparently unaccountable, seized the town, all his quiet became disturbed, and he was compelled to direct it. Yet so sincerely did he love his art, that he deemed no self-sacrifice too great, and his genial advice and enthusiastic sympathy were never sought in vain. A class of eager students came into his own hands, and soon with their help he had reörganized the ancient order of singing-schools into institutions replete with zeal and science. While the fever, as it was called, was at its height, it was determined to introduce the pursuit of music into the schools, and certain of his class undertaking younger pupils, he reserved to himself the older, and therefore more stupid and refractory. Among these, it chanced, was his unrecognized disciple.
It was a warm afternoon when he first mounted that seminary staircase, in company with the Principal. A class in history sat in the recitation-desks, and the girl who, unknown to him, had so haunted the organ-loft, was standing in the act of answering a question. She was rather taller than the usual height, and wore a dress of some thin purple tissue, out of whose dark shades rose her snowy shoulders like a Naiad from a flag-flower, and short sleeves with little puffs of cloudy lace displayed the round fair arms. The hair, naturally of a soft brown, was transmuted into sunshine by the beams that showering through the dome, illumined the beautiful forehead, and was fastened by a narrow silver comb. The long-cut hazel eyes with darker brows distinctly pencilled; the finely-moulded features and self-repressed lips; and the white colorless skin, all made a piece of rare beauty. The contrast of her complexion and dress first caught the eye of Fauntleroy as the principal would have conducted him to a seat. His glance lingered unconsciously, and he scanned her keenly to discover the soul that animated such loveliness. An ordinary observer might have passed heedlessly, but he read in her the tone that answered to his dimmest dearest thought. Perhaps she had spent more serious study on the present lesson than ever on any before, yet now the answer, ready not a moment since, hung trembling on her lips and slipped away from her treacherous memory, while as earnestly and forgetfully she returned his gaze. Yet in an instant, as I said, Fauntleroy had seen something in her face, neither of feature nor of color; something that comprised a beautiful ideal, that sprung forward and met his own soul. He had felt her presence before he fairly saw her, and now while she stood with those little white hands calmly crossed on the cherry-wood desk beside her, and her eyes fearlessly meeting his own; the gusty maps that swayed upon the wall; the shadow of the maples through the open windows; the form of the teacher and the hum of the scholars all disappeared, and he felt only this girl and himself alone in the world. In a moment more the class was dismissed. Suddenly awakened, the girl fled to her seat, which was at the opposite extremity of the room.
The teacher now briefly explained the affair on hand, assured the scholars that all diffidence should be laid aside, and that each one must sing such a verse as she could remember; that their separate capabilities might be ascertained. A few, the first summoned, declared themselves totally without ear and voice; for the nonce they were left undisturbed, and perhaps the whole number would have confessed to a similar inability had not one whispering little thing struck up an impudent air, and sung it through with spirit. After this, sentimental songs found favor, a faded opera-tune tawdrily rendered, and some drawled out long-metred hymns, or raced through the best of the negro-melodies extant, which at that time numbered but few. Mechanically the young organist noted these, while a new and strange impatience fired him to hear that other voice. As for her, she had never, as you know, seen his face before, yet was sure of his identity as much as he was amazed at finding here the creature of his reverie. At last her turn came.
'Miss Sara,' said the teacher.
She rose calmly, as if thinking what to sing, while he waited longingly; then ran lightly up and down the scale, with liquid, airy, ringing notes as ever sung by any spray-swung bird.
'A tune, Miss Sara,' said the preceptress, according to the letter of her instructions; 'is it not, Mr. Verrian?'
The scales answered far better, but impossible as it was to speak, and in his quick desire to hear more, he bowed. Again the lips parted, and the mournful words of the old Scotch chorus flowed on the bosom of its wild sweet tune in a luxury of pathos and melody:
'Lochaber na mair
May be to return to Lochaber na mair.'
Tears filled his eyes while she sung, and her competitors exhibited their skill to inattentive ears. When all were through, he walked directly to her desk. She rose to meet him.
'Will you come to my house after school?' he asked in his sweetest tones. 'Will you come and sing with me?'
The frank glad consent of her eyes was answer enough; he named his place of residence, and without another word left the school, nor did he ever return.
There was a beautiful calmness about this girl, a natural freedom from anticipation and tumult; impatience never interrupted her quiet, surprises were impossible with her; all things came to her as if by an appointed sequence of events. Thus this new friend did not startle her, and in all the tedious employments of the school that day she was not for an instant restless.
As soon as the recitations closed, Sara obeyed his request, reached the small house by the water-side, and entered the low room. Fauntleroy was standing by the window, looking out upon the river; as she lingered at the handle of the door, he turned, instantly advanced and led her in with the happiest of smiles, but with no words. He seated himself at the piano, and placed certain vocal exercises before her. Not to his astonishment, since he could have believed her capable of all things, she sang them with entire ease, as her music-teacher, who once had been also his, could have prophesied to him. His fingers lingered on the accompaniment when she had finished, as if loth to conclude. She trembled a minute, half in doubt, and then, her lithe figure swaying to the song, warbled an air more familiar to him than day, because it was his own. The expression with which she rendered his song, the interpretation of all its indefinite grace, could not have been more exquisitely given by the most finished cantatrice alive. He turned in a rapture of admiration.
'It is yours, Sir,' she said. He had not presumed that another soul had knowledge of it.
'And yours! You have made it so!' he replied, seeing her as no pupil, but rather on an equality with himself. 'And you—surely you have melodies where your delights are written down.'
'The clouds, Sir, have neither color nor shape till the sun shines on them; and such as I sing only what is made for us.'
The clock tolled nine before he allowed her to rest, and then conducting her to her home, he returned. A new light had been given to his eye that day; a new fire kindled at his hearth. His heart had been like a flower waiting for the dawn, and that now expanded in all the warmth and beauty of its rich growth. There were but three Fates: the first he had met on the Sunday, now so long ago, when he threw himself upon the organ's universe of sound; his second he knew well he had found to-day, and were she hostile or propitious, still how fair and calm and beautiful! When should he find his third Fate?
(END OF PART FIRST.)
[THE MAN AT THE DOOR.]
BY FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN.
How joyous to-day is the little old town,
With banners and streamers and that sort of thing:
They flutter on turrets and battlements brown,
And the ancient Cathedral is fine as a king.
The sexton a nosegay has put in his breast,
And his face is as bright as a Jericho rose
That, after a century's withering rest,
Unwrinkles its petals and suddenly blows.
The brown-breasted swallows aloft and alow,
Swoop faster and farther than ever before,
And I'm sure that the cock on the steeple will crow
When he hears from the city the jubilant roar.
The girls are as gay as a holiday fleet,
And ribbons are streaming from bosom and hair,
And they laugh in the face of each young man they meet,
And the young men reply with an insolent stare.
'Tis not without reason the old town is gay,
And banners and ribbons are reddening the air,
For beautiful Bertha will marry to-day
With gallant young Albert, the son of the Mayor.
He is brown as a nut from the hazels of Spain:
Her face, like the twilight, is pensive and sweet;
As they march hand in hand through the murmuring lane,
Low blessings, like flowers, fall unseen at their feet.
While they sweep like twin barks through the waves of the crowd,
A story is falling from many a tongue
Of the young Gipsy Prince who a year ago bowed
At the shrine where a hundred their passion had sung.
And how Bertha heaped scorn on his love and his race,
How she flung in the street the rich presents he sent,
Until he with the hatred of hell in his face,
Went sullenly back to his tribe and his tent.
Soon all stories are hushed in a gathering roar,
And the people sway back like the ebb of a tide,
And the rosy old sexton stands by the church door,
To merrily welcome the bridegroom and bride:
But his glee is so great that he does not behold
The tall man that stands near the pillar hard by,
Nor the flash of the dagger that's hafted with gold,
Nor the still keener flash of the lowering eye.
On they come, and the sexton bows low to the ground,
The bride smiles a welcome, the bells ring a chime,
While a grand acclamation in surges of sound
Thrills up through the sky like a sonorous rhyme.
They are under the porch—when one dash through the crowd,
One flash of a dagger—one shriek of despair,
And Bertha falls dead; while stern-faced and proud,
The swarthy-skinned Prince of the Gipsies is there!
How sombre to-day is the little old town,
With mourning and sables and funeral display;
Long weepers are hanging from battlements brown,
And the ancient Cathedral is haggard and gray.
The sexton a white rose has put in his breast,
While his face is as blank as a snow-laden sky,
For Bertha and Albert have gone to their rest,
And the Prince of the Gipsies is swinging on high.
[THE VAN GELDERS OF MATINECOCK.]
BY JOHN T. IRVING, AUTHOR OF 'THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.'
Many years since I had a relative on the mother's side, an elderly gentleman, who prepared to write a history of Long Island. He was a man of great acquirements and thorough research. He was eminently qualified for the task, for there was no fact so astounding that it staggered him, nor any tale so remarkable that it was beyond his belief. He did not confine his investigations to books alone. He visited spots rendered classic by the deeds of departed worthies. He commenced his explorations at Coney Island, and terminated them at Montauk Point. To sum up his character and qualifications: he was a gentleman of great perseverance and extraordinary swallow. Under these circumstances, it is much to be regretted that he did not live to complete his work. The odd scraps of information, and the strange tales which he had gathered in the course of his labors, fell into my hands—for he was my third-cousin, on the mother's side; and after careful examination, I am satisfied that there is much information contained in these blotted manuscripts of a kind that is not often met with; and that I shall be doing a great favor to the public in general, and to historians in particular, by bringing it to light. The following account of Matinecock and the Van Gelder family is from his papers.
The Volkert Van Gelder referred to was a personal friend of my respected relative, and a man very much of the same kidney. The same taste for antiquarian research and for forgotten lore, was a strong feature in the character of each. In the case of Van Gelder, it led to no useful results; in that of my respected relative—had he lived—it would have culminated in the production of a work of research, which would have shed undying light on the history of Long Island, and would have been a blessing to future generations.
About thirty miles from the city of New-York is a headland jutting out into Long Island Sound, fortified against the wash of the sea by huge boulders of rock. The banks of the shore are rough and rugged, and bear marks of the wear and tear of the waves. On the upland are tall trees, twisted into fantastic shapes by the force of the winds which sweep down the Sound. Between this promontory and the mainland is a land-locked bay, from whose borders a dense forest stretches off in various directions. The whole of this region is known by the name of Matinecock.
Matinecock is a place of great antiquity, and derives its name from an Indian tribe, which once held sway there. Like many places on Long Island, it is very much behind the rest of the world in matters of every-day experience; and being situated at the end of several very crooked lanes, and hemmed in by water and sand-beaches, it is no easy matter for the world to get at it. In this neighborhood stands a large rambling house, made up of gables and angles, with low roof, and over-shadowed by lofty trees, which show the growth of centuries. It was originally built of squared logs, and was quadrangular in shape; but each successive owner added a wing or an elbow as it suited his fancy, until it seemed to be made up of odds and ends of architecture.
It had been founded nearly two hundred years by one Teunis Van Gelder, a stalwart warrior, who had followed the Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, in his various campaigns. His portrait was in one of the rooms of the mansion. It represented a stark warrior with high cheek-bones, a mouth closed like a steel-trap, shaggy eye-brows, and a slash across the nose and part of the cheek as if from a sword-cut. The whole denoted an iron character.
He had been a staunch campaigner, and had stood by his old commander until the city of Manhattan capitulated to the English. But he would not remain to see it under their domination. Bestowing on the invaders his malediction, he turned his back upon it forever, and retired to the fastnesses of Matinecock, where he took possession of a tract of land without inquiring who was the owner, erected a dwelling, and set himself down to brood over his wrongs, and to meditate revenge.
Scarcely, however, had he got warm in his new nest, before he was beset by the myrmidons of Matinecock, led on by one Ebenezer Cock, a tall, hard-fisted pioneer of the New-England breed. He claimed the ground on which the Dutchman had settled, by virtue of a grant from the Indian owners of the soil. He flourished under Van Gelder's nose a parchment signed with the hieroglyphics of four Sachems of the Matinecock tribe, by which, in consideration of three shirts and a shoe, the aforesaid sachems had conveyed to Ebenezer Cock, Eliphalet Frost and Sampson Latting several thousand acres of ground about Matinecock. This was too much for the gunpowder disposition of the warrior. He glanced grimly over the instrument, then handed it back, and swore he would defend his rights against all the 'Cocks' in Christendom, and prepared for battle.
There is no doubt, however, that matters were compromised without recourse to arms. For, among the old records is a memorandum dated some years after in 1676, of his going with 'his man Ryck and his square-nosed dogge to meet one Ebenezer Cock and others on the subject of his difficulties aboute the lands of Matinecock.' Whatever may have been the nature of the compromise, it is certain that Teunis Van Gelder retained his possessions, and transmitted them to his descendants.
Years passed while he yet lived there. He had grown gray, but not one whit less grim. The nature of his first reception rankled in his mind, and he held his neighbors at arm's length. He kept a keen watch on all their movements, ready to show his teeth at any symptom of aggression. He looked upon their assault upon his domain as but a continuation of the wrongs which had driven him from his native city; he was ready to renew at any moment, in his own person, the war between Holland and England, and was equally ready to take to his bosom any one who avowed animosity to the English.
At that time Captain Kidd was buccaneering on the Spanish Main. Rumors were rife of his having been seen in various quarters. At one time he was said to have been seen off Montauk, heading for Gardiner's Bay; at another at Sandy Hook. These reports would die away, and then would be revived by the arrival of some vessel which had been chased by the redoubted 'Rover' in the Carribean Sea, and escaped only by night setting in.
Late one afternoon, a tall, gaunt courier, mounted on a switch-tail mare, galloped through the county in hot haste. He brought news that Kidd had landed at Sag Harbor, and had rifled the town. Teunis Van Gelder rubbed his hands in keen satisfaction, and his eye lighted up with a kind of venomous glow. He longed for a sight of the gallant freebooter, who was in a manner visiting upon the English commerce the wrongs which the nation had committed on his native city.
On that same night he was aroused from his sleep by a sound like the report of a gun booming across the water. He opened his casement and gazed out. In the distance he observed lights dancing on the Sound, and apparently approaching the land. Shortly after there was a loud hail from the shore.
Teunis thrust his head out of the window, and answered by a bellow which might have been heard a mile. Guided by his voice a figure groped its way through the rocks and bushes, and stopped at his door.
The Dutchman was always on the look-out for plots and pitfalls on the part of his foes, and was prepared for emergencies. He seized his gun and sallied out to meet the stranger. At the door stood a square-built, storm-beaten fellow, with a keen watchful eye, a nose like a hawk's, and a mouth like a bull-dog's. He had a cutlass and a pair of pistols in his belt. As the veteran eyed him, and marked his gaunt, hard features, he felt that he was a kindred spirit, and his heart warmed to him. A few words sufficed to explain that he was second in command of Kidd's vessel, which was at anchor a short distance off and in want of supplies.
No news could have been more acceptable, no visitor more welcome. Teunis received the freebooter with open arms. His house and all that he had were placed at his disposal. For several days groups of slashing fellows, armed to the teeth, were seen hanging about the premises, carousing, shooting at marks, swearing hard, and making the neighborhood ring with their revelry. Teunis was in the thick of them, and as they related their encounters on the Spanish Main, their hand-to-hand fights, and described the din and thunder of battle, the martial spirit of the veteran fairly broke out, and he swore to Kidd that he loved him as his own son.
During their sojourn the old house fairly echoed with their carousals; and the fierce indomitable spirit of the Dutchman, and his bitter animosity to the English, so won upon the buccaneer, that under a solemn injunction of secrecy, he took him into his confidence. His want of supplies was but a pretext. His vessel was laden with treasure, and he was in quest of a place to secrete it.
He suggested Matinecock Point, but Van Gelder shook his head, and cautioned him against the marauding spirit of the neighborhood. He declared that no honest man was safe there, that they were a hybrid race, a cross between the Quaker and the steel trap, and that he might better trust the 'Old Boy.'
The freebooter shrugged his shoulders and remarked, 'that they might trust a worse person than the one last mentioned.'
Teunis did not argue the point, but suggested Sand's Point as more remote and safer, and added: 'Ryck can show you the way.'
'Agreed,' replied the freebooter.
That night at midnight several boats, heavily laden, set off. Van Gelder took a warm interest in the whole proceeding, accompanied them to the boats, and swore to watch over the treasure as if it were his own. He gave minute directions to Ryck, and stood by the shore until the boats were hid by the darkness.
Late at night Ryck returned home, grinning with satisfaction at a broad gold piece which had been bestowed on him. He and his master were closeted together for more than an hour, and they parted with a caution to secrecy on the part of the latter, accompanied by a promise to curry his hide in case of his failure. As Teunis was very exemplary in keeping promises of this kind, Ryck remained true to his trust.
After the execution of Kidd, it became known to the English government that he had communicated to Van Gelder the spot where his treasure was buried, and Commissioners were appointed to examine him. They found the veteran in the extreme of age, gaunt, grisly, with dim eyes, like an old hound, and tottering up and down the walk in front of his house, supported by a withered negro, as decrepit and time-battered as his master. He heard their errand in savage silence. For a minute his energies rallied at the idea of an encounter with his old foes. It was but an expiring flash in the socket. He refused to give them any information, and turned his back upon them. Ryck shared all his master's antipathies, was equally taciturn, and they departed with their mission unaccomplished.
In a week from that time Teunis Van Gelder was gathered to his fathers.
Ryck, after languishing about the place for a few weeks, was found dead, sitting on his old master's grave.
The present owner of the house, a lineal descendant of Teunis Van Gelder, is a little dried-up fellow named Volkert, who seemed to have grown up behind a pair of large round rimmed spectacles, through which he views the world on a magnified scale.
The feuds and animosity which had existed between Teunis and his neighbors died with him, and his descendant was regarded by them as a kindly-disposed and well-meaning little man, somewhat peppery in temper and fantastic in his notions.
Much of his time was spent in out-of-the-way research and ferreting in the dust-holes of the past, from which he now and then would fish up some unsavory fact or useless piece of information. Those twilight portions of history in which fable and fact are mingled, were his delight. He would travel a day's journey to visit a spot where a ghost had been seen, or a murder committed. He regarded a superannuated negro as a mine of legendary wealth, and would hold him by the button by the hour to get at the truth of some incident recollected by the negro's great-grandmother, and detailed to him when he was a boy. In fact his foibles were so well known, that every vagabond in the country who could coin a plausible story, half-romance and half-fact, was sure of a welcome and a hearty meal in his kitchen.
He was not a little proud of his Dutch descent, and had small respect for any whose genealogy was not, like his own, lost in the fog which surrounded the Dutch dynasty.
His prime minister and confidential adviser was a gray-headed, wrinkled negro named Zeb. He had been in his youth a sturdy fellow, but had dried up into an old codger who looked like a frosted persimmon. He was tough and leathery, with a head as hard as adamant, an obstinacy of disposition which required the full strength of his skull to keep it in. He had been born and bred on the place, and looked upon it and his master as his own property.
In early life he had been somewhat of a reprobate, so that his name and the gallows had frequently been coupled together in a very familiar manner; but he had disappointed all their prophecies, and in spite of his faults had steered clear of the halter.
As he grew old he became proportionably steady in his habits, and his evil name seemed to peel off. By the time he had become entirely useless and good for nothing, he had acquired quite a good character, and of late years he had never been known to swear when he had his own way, nor get drunk at his own expense. He, however, retained the habit of shooting with a long bow, and the marvellous character of his stories was only exceeded by the pertinacity with which he stuck to them.
His memory was a perfect magazine of mysterious experiences, of encounters with spirits of every denomination. The whole neighborhood of Dosoris, Matinecock and Lattingtown was but so many weird spots, noted in his memory as scenes of ghostly adventure. He could point out the very tree at Flag Brook where Ralph Crafts had a friendly chat with the Devil, who volunteered to whip Ralph's wife for him, and was beaten himself; and he could show the large tulip-tree at Dosoris, under which Parson Woolsey had an encounter of a more hostile character with the same personage, in which he so exorcised the Old Boy in bad Latin, and raised such a din about his ears with hard Scripture texts, that he took to flight, and never dared show his hoof there while the old clergyman lived.
Volkert Van Gelder pretended to turn an incredulous ear to these tales when Zeb happened to speak of them in public, and put his old retainer off with a 'pish;' but he always took occasion when no one was by to glean from him the full particulars. These were committed to writing, and stowed away in an ancient book-case mounted with brass, which is a perfect repository of abstruse history.
Zeb, however, had a crony in his own sphere, though not of his own color, equally versed in legendary lore. This was an old weather-beaten fellow with a red nose and a moist eye, of the name of Nick Wanzer.
Nick was born and bred at Matinecock. Many of his family had gone off to seek their fortunes in other parts of the world. Nick quoted the old saw, 'A rolling stone gathers no moss,' and staid at home. He grew no richer, but in process of time he certainly acquired a kind of moss-grown look, as if he were reaping the reward of his resolution.
He was addicted to strong drink and long stories, and by dint of constant indulgence in both, it became a matter of doubt whether his head or his stories had become toughest. He was usually to be met with either on the borders of the Dosoris mill-pond, with a fishing-rod across his shoulder, or trudging along the sand-bars, carrying a gun as battered as himself, with a slouch-tailed dog at his heels. He however was indigenous to the place, and belonged to that class of worthies, one or two of whom hang about every country village, and who drift through life always in sight, living no one knows how or where, and winding up their career by being found dead under some hedge or in some hay-mow.
In his youth he had been a harum-scarum fellow, a keen sportsman, and a persevering fisherman. Every rock from the Stepping Stones to Lloyd's Neck, was as familiar to him as his own dwelling, and there was not a corner of any swamp, or nook of woodland, which he had not traversed with dog and gun.
He had been terribly harried in the early part of his life, by a termagant wife, but he had at last deposited her in the Lattingtown church-yard, with a heavy stone over her to commemorate her virtues and to keep her quiet.
He had been too much cowed by stringent petticoat government, ever to be the man that he had been before his marriage; but it was a great weight off his mind to know that she was at rest, as well as himself. From that time he had been his own master, loitered about the country, attending to every body's business except his own. When the weather was fine, and the Sound smooth, he and Zeb passed whole mornings in a rickety boat, paddling about in search of fish. When the fish did not bite, the worthies might be descried upon one of the rocks at Martinecock, philosophizing over the past, while Nick's dog slept in the sunshine at their feet.
Of late Volkert had shown a strong yearning toward Nick. There was something in his good-for-nothing character which harmonized with the taste of Volkert, who had a weak spot in his affections for vagabonds. Nick, from a casual loiterer about the place, was gradually become a kind of appendage to it: running of errands, catching a mess of fish, or dropping a few woodcock at Volkert's door; ringing the noses of his pigs, and making himself generally useful. But the great secret of their intimacy was a certain adventure which Nick had met with, many years previously, in which Teunis Van Gelder bore a conspicuous part. It did not speak very well for the old pioneer, but Volkert took a strange pride in the evil odor which hung round the skirts of his ancestor. He forthwith took Nick by the hand, and although the tale was scouted by many as the fabrication of Nick's drunken brain, Volkert cross-examined him faithfully; took the whole down in writing, decided it to be both plausible and true, and forthwith deposited it among the arcana of his historic lore, from which I have drawn it. The adventure was as follows: