During all this time Gabriel Bennet is becoming a merchant. Every morning he arrives at the store with the porter or before him. He helps him sweep and dust; and it is Gabriel who puts Lawrence Newt’s room in order, laying the papers in place, and taking care of the thousand nameless details that make up comfort. He reads the newspapers before the other clerks arrive, and sits upon chests of tea or bales of matting in the loft, that fill the air with strange, spicy, Oriental odors, and talks with the porter. In the long, warm afternoons, too, when there is no pressure of business, and the heat is overpowering, he sits also alone among those odors, and his mind is busy with all kinds of speculations, and dreams, and hopes.
As he walks up Broadway toward evening, his clear, sweet eyes see every thing that floats by. He does not know the other side of the fine dresses he meets any more than of the fine houses, with the smiling, glittering windows. The sun shines bright in his eyes—the street is gay—he nods to his friends—he admires the pretty faces—he wonders at the fast men driving fast horses—he sees the flowers in the windows, the smiling faces between the muslin curtains—he gazes with a kind of awe at the funerals going by, and marks the white bands of the clergymen and the physicians—the elm-trees in the hospital yard remind him of the woods at Delafield; and here comes Abel Newt, laughing, chatting, smoking, with an arm in the arms of two other young men, who are also smoking. As Gabriel passes Abel their eyes meet. Abel nods airily, and Gabriel quietly; the next moment they are back to back again—one is going up street, the other down.
It is not one of the splendid houses before which Gabriel stops when he has reached the upper part of the city. It is not a palace, nor is it near Broadway. Nor are there curtains at the window, but a pair of smiling faces, of friendly women’s faces. One is mild and maternal, with that kind of tender anxiety which softens beauty instead of hardening it. It has that look which, after she is dead, every affectionate son thinks he remembers to have seen in his mother’s face; and the other is younger, brighter—a face of rosy cheeks, and clustering hair, and blue eyes—a beaming, loyal, loving, girlish face.
They both smile welcome to Gabriel, and the younger face, disappearing from the window, reappears at the door. Gabriel naturally kisses those blooming lips, and then goes into the parlor and kisses his mother. Those sympathetic friends ask him what has happened during the day. They see if he looks unusually fatigued; and if so, why so? they ask. Gabriel must tell the story of the unlading the ship Mary B., which has just come in—which is Lawrence Newt’s favorite ship; but why called Mary B. not even Thomas Tray knows, who knows every thing else in the business. Then sitting on each side of him on the sofa, those women wonder and guess why the ship should be called Mary B. What Mary B.? Oh! dear, there might be a thousand women with those initials. And what has ever happened to Mr. Newt that he should wish to perpetuate a woman’s name? Stop! remembers mamma, his mother’s name was Mary. Mary what? asks the daughter. Mamma, you remember, of course.
Mamma merely replies that his mother’s name was Bunley—Mary Bunley—a famous belle of the close of the last century, when she was the most beautiful woman at President Washington’s levees—Mary Bunley, to whom Aaron Burr paid his addresses in vain.
“Yes, mamma; but who was Aaron Burr?” ask those blooming lips, as the bright young eyes glance from under the clustering curls at her mother.
“Ellen, do you remember this spring, as we were coming up Broadway, we passed an old man with a keen black eye, who was rather carelessly dressed, and who wore a cue, with thick hair of his own, white as snow, whom a good many people looked at and pointed out to each other, but nobody spoke to?—who gazed at you as we passed so peculiarly that you pressed nearer to me, and asked who it was, and why such an old man seemed to be so lonely, and in all that great throng, which evidently knew him, was as solitary as if he had been in a desert?”
“Perfectly—I remember it,” replies Ellen.
“That friendless old man, my dear, whom at this moment perhaps scarcely a single human being in the world loves, was the most brilliant beau and squire of dames that has ever lived in this country; handsome, accomplished, and graceful, he has stepped many a stately dance with the queenly Mary Bunley, mother of Lawrence Newt. But that was half a century ago.”
“Mamma,” asks Ellen, full of interest in her mother’s words, “but why does nobody speak to him? Why is he so alone? Had he not better have died half a century ago?”