"But we could not let a gentleman marry a nameless girl under a false impression."
"Certainly not. We would explain all to any gentleman who had a right to know; and if he was a gentleman, I do not think it would prevent the marriage; but that is quite different from proclaiming a poor girl's misfortune."
"Think the matter over, Penelope, and I am sure you will come to see it as I do. Meanwhile there is no hurry. We need not converse to visitors about our protégée, she is too little yet to be shown to company, and as the weather is growing cold, I propose we arrange that room at the top of the house as a nursery, and establish her there with Smithers. She will be out of the way both of draughts and idle curiosity."
CHAPTER X.
[TEN YEARS LATER].
Ten years later. What a startlingly abrupt transition for the onlooker from the "then" to the "now!" And yet how intimately the two are connected, and how utterly the one is dependent on the other! Two cities on the same broad river, the upper spreading along the stream, set in a fruitful plain, the key to fertile regions farther up, gathering the produce and shipping it down the current; the other perched upon cliffs and overhanging shores, and twice each day lapped by the turning tide from the distant sea whither everything is tending. Yet to the voyager the transition is gradual enough, and smooth, and natural. But for the retreating objects along the shore he would not recognize that he was moving, save when descending a rapid, or running on a sandbank--the events, marriages, deaths, failures, and successes of his onward way. It is the same river still, in part the very drops of water which tumbled over Niagara long ago, passed through Ontario, and down the rapids to Montreal, and onward through the broads and the deeps till it meets tide-water at Quebec, and still with all the gathered tributes it hurries on, a river still for scores and scores of miles between ever widening banks, on to the misty everlasting sea, where the voyager disappears for ever from the view.
Not that my friends have moved their dwelling-place down stream to Quebec, but there is a sadness in the thought of the slowly passing years which makes one moralize and grow metaphoric before he is aware. No, the people of this history are still geographically where they were, standing on their own ground, while the big tumultuous river rushes by--but the figure which their permanence suggests is even a sadder one, that of the fabled maidens drawing water in their sieves, water which will not be drawn or held, but keeps oozing through and slipping away, just as the stream runs by and will not wait; for life is but a sorry comedy with its stayless passing. Yet which of us would stop it if we could, even at its best? It always seems as if a sweeter drop were somewhere up the stream, and even if the present could be held, we would let it pass to taste the fancied sweeter yet to come.
In ten years the American war had ended and specie payments were resumed. In ten years Ralph Herkimer had made a fortune and a "position"--the terms are interchangeable in the moneyed world, and elsewhere too. No one was better liked or more respected as a good fellow, a clear-headed business man, and a high-souled altogether superior person. Even General Considine--who had been taken prisoner during the war, exchanged, "paroled," withdrawn from the game like the slaughtered pawn from a chess board--had quite forgotten having grandly dropped his acquaintance in Natchez and the reasons for so doing; and, on taking up his abode in Montreal, was very pleased to renew intimacy with his young friend of ante bellum times. Ralph was happy to respond. If there ever had been an imputation on his courage, it seemed well to support the only one who could remember, in forgetting it; though really, as he told himself, there was nothing to be ashamed of. He had merely shown disapproval of a bloodthirsty and barbarous custom in a state of society already passed away; and no one who was anybody would have the bad taste to be amused at anecdotes told at the expense of a man so well off as himself, and who entertained so liberally. Still, since it is wiser to humour fools than to fight them, he would be civil to this broken-down fireater, heap coals of fire on his head like a good Christian, and make him thoroughly ashamed of his rudeness in former years.
Considine, too, was no very cumbrous protégé. He was better supplied with money than many of his compatriots at that time, having inherited some property in New York, which the same events which had ruined his estate in the South had rendered four times as valuable as before, in the paper money of the period. His deportment exhibited a fair share of the manly pathos becoming a fallen hero, and made him an interesting guest to the dwellers in a city at peace. It is true he wore red studs in his shirt front, as his way of mounting his country's colours--red and white--and would defiantly puff out his chest so decorated whenever a Yankee uniform came in sight. But something must be permitted to the bruised susceptibilities of the warrior overcome, and at least he did not travesty the conspiracies of exiled Poles and old time Jacobites by joining in absurd schemes to capture towns on the lakes, or infect the capital with yellow fever; in which crack-brained escapades the excitement for the plotters lay not so much in their design, as in communicating it to one another with infinite stage mystery of whisperings, signs, passwords, and secret information. In those days a party of refugees on one of the St. Lawrence steamboats would make the voyage as interesting to their fellow-passengers as a pantomime, with their dark glances, stealings aside, mysterious beckonings to each other, and hasty whispers, followed by backward glances in search of spies. There may have been real plots, but they were carried on by practical persons who showed no sign, and it was rumour of these which impressed the rest, and filled them with emulation. They imagined they were being watched and reported on at Washington, though what interest their vagaries could have for Mr. Lincoln's government it is hard to imagine. Much, however, should be excused to people deprived by war of their fortunes and their homes, often with but slender means of support, and no occupation, driven to spend eight hours of their day in euchre playing, and the other eight in unending discussions of the war news. To such, conspiracy must have seemed the most delightful of pastimes, even if barren of practical results.
When Considine approached Ralph with a most respectable sheaf of "greenbacks" under his arm, and appealed to him as an old friend for advice as to their conversion into specie, and their subsequent employment, Ralph was genial, and by-and-by showed him the way to the gold-room, where good Canadians, following the lead of New York, sold each other stacks of foreign currency which the sellers could not deliver and the buyers had no wish to receive. The telegraph clerk hung up the quotations from New York at certain hours, the "operators" took note and paid their losses--no! "held settlements" is the proper expression, for this was business. Respectable gentlemen, church members, and heads of families, brushed their hats each morning and walked down to their offices, gloved and caned, the very pink of respectability, and from thence went on "'Change," where the money would change hands with astounding celerity--all in the way of "business."