“But one day he read in the financial column of the newspaper certain facts that roused the old propensity. His near neighbor was a rich retired tailor, a Mr. Maloney, an Irishman, who used to come over to play billiards with the venerable stock-jobber. Pompilard had made a visit to Wall Street the day before. He had been fired with a grand scheme of buying up the whole of a certain stock (in which sellers at sixty days at a low figure were abundant) and then holding on for a grand rise. He did not find it difficult to kindle the financial enthusiasm of poor Snip.
“Brief, the two simpletons went into the speculation, and lost every cent they were worth in the world. Simultaneously with their break-down, Purling, the son-in-law, managed to lose all that had been confided to his hands. The widowed daughter, Mrs. Ireton, gave up all the little estate her father had settled on her. Poor Maloney had to go back to his goose; and Pompilard, now almost an octogenarian, has been obliged, he and his family, to take lodgings in the cottage of his late gardener.
“The other day Mr. Hicks, a friend of the family, learning that they were actually pinched in their resources, ventured to call upon Charlton for a contribution for their relief. After an evident inward struggle, Charlton manfully pulled out his pocket-book, and tendered—what, think you?—why, a ten-dollar bill! Hicks affected to regard the tender as an insult, and slapped the donor’s face. Charlton at first threatened a prosecution, but concluded it was too expensive a luxury. Thus you see he is a miser. It was with no little satisfaction, therefore, that I called to communicate the state of his affairs in New Orleans.
“He lives on one of the avenues in a neat freestone house, such as could be hired for twenty-five hundred a year. There is a stable attached, and he keeps a carriage. Soon after he burst upon the fashionable world as a millionnaire, there was a general competition among fashionable families to secure him for one of the daughters. But Charlton, with all his wealth, did not want a wife who was merely stylish, clever, and beautiful; she must be rich into the bargain. He at last encountered such a one (as he imagined) in Miss Dykvelt, a member of one of the old Dutch families. He proposed, was accepted, married,—and three weeks afterwards, to his consternation and horror, he received an application from old D., the father-in-law, for a loan of a hundred thousand dollars.
“Charlton, of course, indignantly refused it. He found that he had been, to use his own words, ‘taken in and done for.’ Old Dykvelt, while he kept up the style of a prince, was on the verge of bankruptcy. The persons to whom Charlton applied for information, knowing the object of the inquiry and the meanness of the inquirer, purposely cajoled him with stories of Dykvelt’s wealth. Charlton fell into the trap. Charlotte Dykvelt, who was in love at the time with young Ireton (a Lieutenant in the army and a grandson of old Pompilard), yielded to the entreaties of her parents and married the man she detested. She was well versed in the history of his first wife, and resolved that her own heart, wrung by obedience to parental authority, should be iron and adamant to any attempt Charlton might make to wound it.
“He soon found himself overmatched. The bully and tyrant was helpless before the impassive frigidity and inexorable determination of that young and beautiful woman. He had a large iron safe in his house, in which he kept his securities and coupons, and often large sums of money. One day he discovered he had been robbed of thirty thousand dollars. He charged the theft upon his wife. She neither denied nor confessed it, but treated him with a glacial scorn before which he finally cowered and was dumb. Undoubtedly she had taken the money. She forced him against his inclination to move into a decent house, and keep a carriage; and at last, by a threat of leaving him, she made him settle on her a liberal allowance.
“A loveless home for him, as you may suppose! One daughter, Lucy Charlton, is the offspring of this ill-assorted marriage; a beautiful girl, I am told, but who shrinks from her father’s presence as from something odious. Probably the mother’s impressions during pregnancy gave direction to the antipathies of the child; so that before it came into the world it was fatherless.
“Well, I called on Charlton last Thursday. As I passed the little sitting-room of the basement, I saw a young and lovely girl putting her mouth filled with seed up to the bars of a cage, and a canary-bird picking the food from her lips. A cat, who seemed to be on excellent terms with the bird, was perched on the girl’s shoulder, and superintending the operation. So, thought I, she exercises her affections in the society of these dumb pets rather than in that of her father.
“I found Charlton sitting lonely in a sort of library scantily furnished with books. A well-formed man, but with a face haggard and anxious as if his life-blood were ebbing irrecoverably with every penny that went from his pockets. On my mentioning your name, his eyes brightened; for he inferred I had come with your semiannual remittances. He was at once anxious to know if rents in New Orleans had been materially affected by the war. I told him his five houses near Lafayette Square, excepting that occupied on a long lease by Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, would not bring in half the amount they did last year. He groaned audibly. I then told him that your semiannual collections for him amounted to six thousand dollars, but that you were under the painful necessity of assuring him that the money would have to be paid all over to the Confederate government.
“Charlton, completely struck aghast, fell back in his chair, his face pale, and his lips quivering. I thought he had fainted.