"Ah!" thought Chip, "I am getting to be a merchant of the right sort, I see,—and by the time he is ready to change that low-hung little chariot for the hard, angular ebony with raven plumes, I shall be ready to step into the other plump little vehicle, which is really so nice and cozy."
But we must leave Chip to the easy task of ballooning upward in public estimation, with his well-inflated bank-account. He was, in fact, reformed by his great commercial success to this extent, that his vices had become of the most distinguished and unvulgar grade. He was now courted by the highest artists in iniquity, and had the means of accomplishing results that none but men who are known to be really rich can command. He, therefore, now quitted all vulgar associations, and determined not to outrage any of the virtues, except under varnish, gilding, and polish that would keep everything perfectly respectable. Let him trust to that as long as he can.
Don't talk of the solitude of a night in the primeval forests, however far from the abodes of man;—the squirrels and the partridges may be asleep then and there, but the katydids are awake, and, with the support of contralto and barytone tree-toads, manage to keep up a concert which cannot fail to impress on you a sense of familiar and friendly company. Don't talk of the loneliness of a deserted and ruinous castle;—the crickets have not left it, and, if you don't have a merry time with their shrill jokes, it will be your own fault. But if you would have a sense of being terribly alone, come from long residence in some quiet country-home on the border of a quiet country-village, into the hurry-skurry of a strange city, just after nightfall. Here is an infinite brick-and-stone forest, stern, angular, almost leafless. Here is a vast, indistinguishable wilderness of flitting human shapes, not one of which takes half so much notice of you as a wild bush would. Speak to one; it answers without the slightest emotion, and passes on. Your presence is absolutely no more to any soul of them, provided they have souls, than if you were so much perfectly familiar granite. You feel, that, with such attention as you receive, such curiosity as you excite, you must be there hundreds of years to be either recognized or missed.
Had you been a stranger in Boston, one moist and rather showery summer-evening, not a year after the events we have narrated, you might have been recovered from the sense of loneliness we have described by observing one pretty female figure hurrying along the crowded sidewalk with a very large and replete satchel, and without any of the sang-froid which characterizes city pedestrianism. You might have noticed that this one human being, like yourself, was evidently not at home. Every glare of gas-light revealed a deeply-flushed face, eyes that had been weeping and which were now flashing with a wild earnestness and an altogether preternatural resolution. A gazelle, started by the huntsman's pack, could not have thrown more piercing glances at every avenue of escape than this excited girl did at every cross street, and indeed at everything but the human faces that passed her. All of them she shunned, with a look that seemed equally anxious to avoid the known and the unknown. She should seem to have narrowly escaped some peril, and was carrying with her a secret not to be confided to friend or stranger, certainly not to either without due consideration. Had you watched her, as the crowds of people, returning from the various evening amusements, died away in the streets, you would have seen the deep color of her cheeks die away also to deadly paleness; had you been sufficiently clairvoyant, you might have seen how two charming rows of pearls bit the blanched lips till the runaway blood came back into the sad gashes, how the tears welled up again, and with them came relief and fresh strength just as she was about to faint and drop in the street. Then returned again the throb of indignant resolution, as her mind recurred to the attempted ruin of her paradise by a disguised foe; then succeeded shame and dread lest the friends she had left in her childhood's rural home should know how differently from her fond anticipations had turned out the first week of her sojourn in the great city. She was most thoroughly resolved, that, if possible, they should not know anything of the wreck of her long-cherished hopes till she had found some foothold for new ones. She felt that she was a Yankee girl in the metropolis of New England, with wit, skill, and endurance equal to any employment that ever falls to the lot of Yankee women; but having given up the only chance which had ever opened to her, how could she find another? Were she of the other sex, or only disguised in the outer integuments of it, with the trifling sum in her purse, she would get lodgings at the next hotel, and seek suitable employment without suspicion. In the wide wilderness of a city there was not an acquaintance she did not dread to meet, in her present circumstances, even worse than death itself, or, what is next door to it, a police-station.
The streets had emptied themselves of their rushing throngs, the patter of feet and the murmur of voices had given place to measured individual marches here and there, the dripping of cave-spouts and the flapping of awnings could be heard tattling of showers past and future, and the last organ-grinder had left the ungrateful city to its slumbers, when the poor girl first became conscious that she had been lugging hither and thither her entire outfit of wardrobe, valuables, and keepsakes. Aggravated by fatigue, her indecision as to how she should dispose of herself was gradually sinking into despair, and the official guardians of the night, who had doubtless noticed her as she passed and repassed through their beats, were beginning to make up their official minds, generally and severally, that the case might by-and-by require their benevolent interference, when she was startled by a female voice from behind.
"Arrah, stop there, ye rinaway jade! I know ye by yer big bag, ye big thafe, that ye are!"
Glad at any voice addressed to her, and gladder at this than if it had been more familiar or more friendly, our forlorn maiden turned and said, in the sweetest voice imaginable,—
"Oh, no, my friend, I am not a thief."
"Och, I beg your pardon, honey! I thought sure it was Bridget, that's jist rin away wid a bagful of her misthress's clo'es and a hape o' mine, and it's me that's bin all the way down to Pat Mahoney's in North Street to git him to hunt her up; and the Blessed Mother forgive me, whin I seen you in the dark, stalin' along like, wi' that bag, I thought it was herself it was, sure. Och, ye're a swate lass, I see, now; but what makes ye out this time o' night, dear?"
"Well, I'm too late for the train, you see, and I really don't know what to do or where to go," said the Yankee girl, putting on the air natural to such circumstances, with the readiness of her race.