New York: Its Upper Ten and Lower Million

by George Lippard

"To this estate I have offered up twenty-one years of my life,—of my soul. For it I have denied myself the companionship of a wife, the joy of hearing a child call me by the name of 'father!' I have traversed the globe in its behalf; made myself a dweller in all lands; have left the beautiful domain of that science which loses itself among the stars, to make myself a student in the science of human misery, in the dark philosophy of human despair. I have made myself the very slave of this estate. Believing that one day, its enormous wealth would be devoted to the amelioration of social misery, I have made myself familiar with the entire anatomy of the social world; have dwelt in the very heart of its most loathsome evils; have probed to the quick the ulcer of its moral leprosy. But at all times, and in every phase of my career, I did hope, that out of this son of Gulian's, cast like a waif upon the voyage of life, and made the subject of superhuman misfortune, Providence would at length mould a good, strong man, with heart and intellect, to wield the Van Huyden estate, for the social regeneration of his race. My hope is ashes."

With words like these in his soul, only half-uttered on his tongue, he opened a door and passed into the banquet-room.

It was brilliantly lighted by an antique chandelier which hung from the lofty ceiling. It was arranged for the last scene.

In this banquet-room, twenty-one years ago, there was the sound of merry voices, mingled with the clink of wine-glasses; there were hearts mad with joy, and faces dressed in smiles; and there was one face dressed in smiles, which masked a heart devoured by the tortures of the damned.

Now the scene was changed. The doors, windows, the pictures of the Van Huyden family which lined the lofty walls, were concealed by hangings of bright scarlet. A round table, covered with a white cloth, and surrounded by eight antique arm-chairs, alone broke the monotony of that vast and brilliantly lighted banquet-hall. The chandelier which shone upon the hangings, and lighted up every part of the room, shone down upon the white cloth of the table, and upon a single object which varied its surface,—a small portfolio, bound in black leather.

In that portfolio were comprised the mysteries of the Van Huyden estate.

Beneath the table, and shaded by it from the light, dimly appeared an iron chest, and a coffin covered with black cloth,—both were half-concealed beneath a pall of velvet, fringed with tarnished gold.

Martin Fulmer attentively surveyed this scene, and a sudden thought seemed to strike him. "It will not do," he said, "let the old place, in this hour, put on all its memories."

He rang the bell, and four servants, attired in gray liveries, appeared from beneath the hangings. Martin whispered his commands in a low voice, and they obeyed without a word. Moving to and fro, without uproar, in the course of a few minutes they had completely changed the appearance of the hall. Thus changed, the banquet-room has, indeed, put on its old memories; it wears the look, it breathes the air of the past.

The light of the chandelier, no longer dazzling, falls in subdued radiance around a lofty hall, whose ceiling is supported by eight pillars of cedar, grotesquely carved from base to capital, with the faces of monks and nuns,—all of the round and oily stamp,—with beasts, and birds, and fruits, and flowers. The glaring scarlet hangings cluster in festoons around the capitals of the pillars; and between the pillars appear, upon the panneled walls, portraits of the Van Huyden family, in frames of oak, and walnut, and gilt, for seven generations; beginning with the grim face of the ancestor, who landed on Manhattan Island in the year 1620, and ending with the youthful, artist-like face of Carl Raphael, painted in 1842. (This portrait of Nameless, Martin Fulmer procured from the study of Cornelius Berman.) The lofty windows on one side, were hidden by curtains of dark purple. At one end of the spacious hall, was a broad hearth, blazing with a cheerful wood-fire; at the other, on a dark platform, arose a marble image of "the master," as large as life, and thrown distinctly into view by the dark background.