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PECULIAR

A Tale of the Great Transition

By EPES SARGENT

NEW YORK

CARLETON, PUBLISHER, 413 BROADWAY

M DCCC LXIV

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

EPES SARGENT,

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

University Press:

Welch, Bigelow, and Company,

Cambridge.

CONTENTS.

PECULIAR.

CHAPTER I.
A GLANCE IN THE MIRROR.

“Wed not for wealth, Emily, without love,—’tis gaudy slavery; nor for love without competence,—’tis twofold misery.”—Colman’s Poor Gentleman.

It is a small and somewhat faded room in an unpretending brick house in one of the streets that intersect Broadway, somewhere between Canal Street and the Park. A woman sits at a writing-table, with the fingers of her left hand thrust through her hair and supporting her forehead, while in her right hand she holds a pen with which she listlessly draws figures, crosses, circles and triangles, faces and trees, on the blotting-paper that partly covers a letter which she has been inditing.

A window near by is open at the top. March, having come in like a lion, is going out like a lamb. A canary-bird, intoxicated with the ambrosial breath and subduing sunshine of the first mild day of spring, is pouring forth such a Te Deum laudamus as Mozart himself would have despaired of rivalling. Yesterday’s rain-storm purified the atmosphere, swept clean the streets, and deodorized the open gutters, that in warm weather poison with their effluvium the air of the great American metropolis.

On the wall, in front of the lady at the table, hangs a mirror. Look, now, and you will catch in it the reflection of her face. Forty? Not far from it. Perhaps four or five years on the sunny side. Fair? Many persons would call her still beautiful. The features, though somewhat thin, show their fine Grecian outline. The hair is of a rich flaxen, the eyes blue and mild, the mouth delicately drawn, showing Cupid’s bow in the curve of the upper lip, and disclosing, not too ostentatiously, the whitest teeth.

Her dress is significant of past rather than present familiarity with a fashionable wardrobe. If she ever wore jewels, she has parted with all of them, for there is not even a plain gold ring on her forefinger. Her robe is a simple brown cashmere, not so distended by crinoline as to disguise her natural figure, which is erect, of the average height, and harmoniously rounded. We detect this the better as she rises, looks a moment sorrowfully in the glass, and sighs to herself, “Fading! fading!”

There is a gentle knock at the door, and to her “Come in,” an old black man enters.

“Good morning, Toussaint,” says the lady; “what have you there?”

“Only a few grapes for Madame. They are Black Hamburgs, and very sweet. I hope Madame will relish them. They will do her good. Will she try some of them now?”

“They are excellent, Toussaint. And what a beautiful basket you have brought them in! You must have paid high for all this fruit, so early in the season. Indeed, you must not run into such extravagances on my account.”

“Does Madame find her cough any better?”

“Thank you, Toussaint, I do not notice much change in it as yet. Perhaps a few more mild days like this will benefit me. How is Juliette?”

“Passablement bien. Pretty well. May I ask—ahem! Madame will excuse the question—but does her husband treat her with any more consideration now that she is ill?”

“My good Toussaint, I grieve to say that Mr. Charlton is not so much softened as irritated by my illness. It threatens to be expensive, you see.”

“Ah! but that is sad,—sad! I wish Madame were in my house. Such care as Juliette and I would take of her! You look so much like your mother, Madame! I knew her before her first marriage. I dressed her hair the day of her wedding. People used to call her proud. But she was always kind to me,—very kind. And you look like her so much! As I grow old I think all the more of my old and early friends,—the first I had when I came to New York from St. Domingo. Most of them are dead, but I find out their children if I can; and if they are sick I amuse myself by carrying them a few grapes or flowers. They are very good to indulge me by accepting such trifles.”

“Toussaint, the goodness is all on your side. These grapes are no trifle, and you ought to know it. I thank you for them heartily. Let me give you back the basket.”

“No, please don’t. Keep it. Good morning, Madame! Be cheerful. Le bon temps reviendra. All shall be well. Bon jour! Au revoir, Madame!”

He hurries out of the room, but instantly returns, and, taking a leaf of fresh lettuce out of his pocket, reaches up on tiptoe and puts it between the bars of the bird-cage. “I was nigh forgetting the lettuce for the bird,” says he. “Madame will excuse my gaucherie.” And, bowing low, he again disappears.

The story of Emily Bute Charlton may be briefly told. Her mother, Mrs. Danby, was descended from that John Bradshaw who was president of the court which tried Charles the First, and who opposed a spirited resistance to the usurpation of Cromwell in dissolving the Parliament. Mrs. Danby was proud of her family tree. In her twentieth year she was left a widow, beautiful, ambitious, and poor, with one child, a daughter, who afterwards had in Emily a half-sister. This first daughter had been educated carefully, but she had hardly reached her seventeenth year when she accepted the addresses of a poor man, some fifteen years her senior, of the name of Berwick. The mother, with characteristic energy, opposed the match, but it was of no use. The daughter was incurably in love; she married, and the mother cast her off.

Time brought about its revenges. Mr. Berwick had inherited ten acres of land on the island of Manhattan. He tried to sell it, but was so fortunate as to find nobody to buy. So he held on to the land, and by hard scratching managed to pay the taxes on it. In ten years the city had crept up so near to his dirty acres that he sold half of them for a hundred thousand dollars, and became all at once a rich man. Meanwhile his wife’s mother, Mrs. Danby, after remaining fourteen years a widow, showed the inconsistency of her opposition to her daughter’s marriage by herself making an imprudent match. She married a Mr. Bute, poor and inefficient, but belonging to “one of the first families.” By this husband she had one daughter, Emily, the lady at whose reflection in the mirror we have just been looking.

Emily Bute, like her half-sister, Mrs. Berwick, who was many years her senior, inherited beauty, and was quite a belle in her little sphere in Philadelphia, where her family resided. Her mother, who had repelled Berwick as a son-in-law in his adversity, was too proud to try to propitiate him in his prosperity. She concealed her poverty as well as she could from her daughter, Mrs. Berwick, and the latter had often to resort to stratagem in order to send assistance to the family. At last the proud mother died; and six months afterwards her firstborn daughter, Mrs. Berwick, died, leaving one child, a son, Henry Berwick.

Years glided on, and Mr. Bute had hard work to keep the wolf from the door. He was one of those persons whose efforts in life are continual failures, from the fact that they cannot adapt themselves to circumstances,—cannot persevere during the day of small things till their occupation, by gradual development, becomes profitable. He would tire of an employment the moment its harvest of gold seemed remote. Forever sanguine and forever unsuccessful, he at last found himself reduced, with his daughter, to a mode of life that bordered on the shabby.

In this state of things, Mr. Berwick, like a timely angel, reappeared, rich, and bearing help. He was charmed with Emily, as he had formerly been with her half-sister. He proposed marriage. Mr. Bute was enchanted. He could not conceive of Emily’s hesitating for a moment. Were her affections pre-engaged? No. She had been a little of a flirt, and that perhaps had saved her from a serious passion. Why not, then, accept Mr. Berwick? He was so old! Old? What is a seniority of thirty years? He is rich,—has a house on the Fifth Avenue, and another on the North River. What insanity it would be in a poor girl to allow such a chance to slip by!

Still Emily had her misgivings. Her virginal instincts protested against the sacrifice. She had an ideal of a happy life, which certainly did not lie all in having a freestone house, French furniture, and a carriage. She knew the bitterness of poverty; but was she quite ready to marry without love? Her father’s distresses culminated, and drove her to a decision. She became Mrs. Berwick; and Mr. Bute was presented with ten thousand dollars on the wedding-day. He forthwith relieved himself of fifteen hundred in the purchase of a “new patent-spring phaeton” and span. “A great bargain, sir; splendid creatures; spirited, but gentle; a woman can drive them; no more afraid of a locomotive than of a stack of hay; the carriage in prime order; hasn’t been used a dozen times; will stand any sort of a shock; the property of my friend, Garnett; he wouldn’t part with the horses if he could afford to keep them; his wife is quite broken-hearted at the idea of losing them; such a chance doesn’t occur once in ten years; you can sell the span at a great advance in the spring.”

This urgent recommendation from “a particular friend, entirely disinterested,” decided Bute. He bought the “establishment.” The next day as he was taking a drive, the shriek of a steam-whistle produced such an effect upon his incomparable span, that they started off at headlong speed, ran against a telegraph-pole, smashed the “new patent-spring phaeton,” threw out the driver, and broke his neck against a curb-stone; and that was the end of Mr. Bute for this world, if we may judge from appearances.

Emily’s marriage did not turn out so poorly as the retributions of romance might demand. But on Mr. Berwick’s death she followed her mother’s example, and married a second time. She became Mrs. Charlton. Some idea of the consequences of this new alliance may be got from the letter which she has been writing, and which we take the liberty of laying before our readers.

CHAPTER II.
A MATRIMONIAL BLANK.

“Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.”

Shakespeare.

To HENRY BERWICK, Cincinnati.

Dear Henry: You kindly left word for me to write you. I have little of a cheering nature to say in regard to myself. We have moved from the house in Fourteenth Street into a smaller one nearer to the Park and to Mr. Charlton’s business. His complaints of his disappointment in regard to my means have lately grown more bitter. Your allowance, liberal as it is, seems to be lightly esteemed. The other day he twitted me with setting a snare for him by pretending to be a rich widow. O Henry, what an aggravation of insult! I knew nothing, and of course said nothing, as to the extent of your father’s wealth. I supposed, as every one else did, that he left a large property. His affairs proved to be in such a state that they could not be disentangled by his executors till two years after his death. Before that time I was married to Mr. Charlton.

Had I but taken your warning, and seen through his real feelings! But he made me think he loved me for myself alone, and he artfully excited my distrust of you and your motives. He represented his own means as ample; though for that I did not care or ask. Repeatedly he protested that he would prefer to take me without a cent of dowry. I was simpleton enough to believe him, though he was ten years my junior. I fell foolishly in love, soon, alas! to be rudely roused from my dream!

It seems like a judgment, Henry. You have always been as kind to me as if you were my own son. Your father was so much my senior, that you may well suppose I did not marry him from love. I was quite young. My notions on the subject of matrimony were unformed. My heart was free. My father urged the step upon me as one that would save him from dire and absolute destitution. What could I do, after many misgivings, but yield? What could I do? I now well see what a woman of real moral strength and determination could and ought to have done. But it is too late to sigh over the past.

I behaved passably well, did I not? in the capacity of your step-mother. I was loyal, even in thought, to my husband, although I loved him only with the sort of love I might have entertained for my grandfather. You were but two or three years my junior, but you always treated me as if I were a dowager of ninety. As I now look back, I can see how nobly and chivalrously you bore yourself, though at the time I did not quite understand your over-respectful and distant demeanor, or why, when we went out in the carriage, you always preferred the driver’s company to mine.

Your father died, and for a year and a half I conducted myself in a manner not unworthy of his widow and your mother. At the end of that period Mr. Charlton appeared at Berwickville. He dressed pretty well, associated with gentlemen, was rather handsome, and professed a sincere attachment for myself. Time had dealt gently with me, and I was not aware of that disparity in years which I afterwards learned existed between me and my suitor. In an unlucky moment I was subdued by his importunities. I consented to become his wife.

The first six months of our marriage glided away smoothly enough. My new husband treated me with all the attention which I supposed a man of business could give. If the vague thought now and then obtruded itself that there was something to me undefined and unsounded in his character, I thrust the thought from me, and found excuses for the deficiency which had suggested it. One trait which I noticed caused me some surprise. He always discouraged my buying new dresses, and grew very economical in providing for the household. I am no epicure, but have been accustomed to the best in articles of food. I soon discovered that everything in the way of provisions brought into the house was of a cheap or deteriorated quality. I remonstrated, and there was a reform.

One bright day in June, two gentlemen, Mr. Ken and Mr. Turner, connected with the management of your father’s estate, appeared at Berwickville. They came to inform me that my late husband had died insolvent, and that the house we then occupied belonged to his creditors, and must be sold at once. Mr. Charlton received this intelligence in silence; but I was shocked at the change wrought by it on his face. In that expression disappointment and chagrin of the intensest kind seemed concentrated. Nothing was to be said, however. There were the documents; there were the facts,—the stern, irresistible facts of the law. The house must be given up.

After these bearers of ill-tidings had gone, Mr. Charlton turned to me. But I will not pain you by a recital of what he said. He rudely dispelled the illusions under which I had been laboring in regard to him. I could only weep. I could not utter a word of retaliation. Whilst he was in the midst of his reproaches, a servant brought me a letter. Mr. Charlton snatched it from my hand, opened, and read it. Either it had a pacifying effect upon him, or he had exhausted his stock of objurgations. He threw the letter on the table and quitted the room.

It was your letter of condolence and dutiful regard, promising me an allowance from your own purse of a hundred dollars a month. What coals of fire it heaped on my head! To please Mr. Charlton I had quarrelled with you,—forbidden you to visit or write me,—and here was your return! The communication coming close upon the dropping of my husband’s disguise almost unseated my reason. What a night of tears that was! I recalled your warnings, and now saw their truth,—saw how truly disinterested you were in them all. How generous, how noble you appeared to me! How in contrast, alas! with him I had taken for better or worse!

I lay awake all night. Of course I could not think of accepting your offer. In the first place, my past treatment of you forbade it. And then I knew that your own means were narrow, and that you had just entered into an engagement of marriage with a poor girl. But when, the next day, I communicated my resolve to my husband, he calmly replied: “Nonsense! Write Mr. Berwick, thanking him for his offer, and telling him that, small as the sum is, considering your wants, you accept it.” What a poor thing you must have thought me, when you got my cold letter of acceptance. Do me the justice to believe me when I affirm that every word of it was dictated by my husband. How I have longed to see you in person, to tell you all that I have endured and felt! But this circumstances have prevented. And now I am possessed with the idea that I never shall see you in this life again. And that is why I make these confessions. Your marriage, your absence in Europe, your recent return, and your hurried departure for the West, have kept me uncertain as to where a message would reach you. Yesterday I got a few affectionate lines from you, telling me a letter, if mailed at once, would reach you in Cincinnati, or, if a week later, in New Orleans. And so I am devoting the forenoon to this review of my past, so painful and sad.

Let me think of your happier lot, and rejoice in it. So your affairs have prospered beyond all hope! Through your wife you are unexpectedly rich in worldly means. Better still, you are rich in affection. Your little Clara is “the brightest, the loveliest, the sunniest little thing in the wide world.” So you write me; and I can well believe it from the photograph and the lock of hair you send me. Bless her! What would I give to hug her to my bosom. And you too, Henry, you too I could kiss with a kiss that should be purely maternal,—a benediction,—a kiss your wife would approve, for, after all, you are the only child I have had. Mr. Charlton has always said he would have no children till he was a rich man. He and the female physician he employs have nearly killed me with their terrible drugs. Yes, I am dying, Henry. Even the breath of this sweet spring morning whispers it in my ear. Bless you and yours forever! What a mistake my life has been! And yet, how I craved to love and be loved! You will think kindly of me always, and teach your wife and child to have pleasant associations with my name.

All the rich presents your father made me have been sold by Mr. Charlton; but I have one, that he has not seen,—a costly and beautiful gold casket for jewels, which I reserve as a present for your little Clara. I shall to-morrow pack it up carefully, and take it to a friend, who I know will keep and deliver it safely. That friend, strange as it may sound to you, is the venerable old black hair-dresser, Toussaint, who lives in Franklin Street. Your father used to say he had never met a man he would trust before Toussaint; and I can say as much. Toussaint used to dress my mother’s hair; he is now my adviser and friend.

Born a slave in the town of St. Mark in St. Domingo in 1766, Pierre Toussaint was twelve years the junior of that fellow-slave, the celebrated Toussaint l’Ouverture, born on the same river, who converted a mob of undrilled, uneducated Africans into an army with which he successively overthrew the forces of France, England, and Spain. At the beginning of the troubles in the island, in 1801, Pierre was taken by his master, the wealthy Mons. Berard, to New York. Berard, having lost his immense property in St. Domingo, soon died, and Pierre, having learnt the business of a hair-dresser, supported Madame Berard by his labors some eight years till her death, though she had no legal claim upon his service. Bred up, as he was, indulgently, Pierre’s is one of those exceptional cases in which slavery has not destroyed the moral sense.

I know of few more truly venerable characters. A pious Catholic, he is one of the stanchest of friends. One of his rules through life has been, never to incur a debt,—to pay on the spot for everything he buys. And yet he is continually giving away large sums in charity. One day I said, “Toussaint, you are rich enough; you have more than you want; why not stop working now?” He answered, “Madame, I have enough for myself, but if I stop work, I have not enough for others!” By the great fire of 1835, Toussaint lost by his investments in insurance companies. The Schuylers and the Livingstons passed around a subscription-paper to repair his losses; but he stopped it, saying he would not take a cent from them, since there were so many who needed help more than he.

An old French gentleman, a white man, once rich, whom Toussaint had known, was reduced to poverty and fell sick. For several months Toussaint and his wife, Juliette, sent him a nicely cooked dinner; but Toussaint would not let him know from whom it came, “because,” said the negro, “it might hurt his pride to know it came from a black man.” Juliette once called on this invalid to learn if her husband could be of any help. “O no,” said the old Monsieur, “I am well known; I have good friends; every day they send me a dinner, served up in French style. To-day I had a charming vol-au-vent, an omelette, and green peas, not to speak of salmon. I am a person of some importance, you see, even in this strange land.” And Juliette would go home, and she and Toussaint would have a good laugh over the old man’s vauntings.[^[1]]

But what has possessed me to enter into all these details! I know not, unless it is the desire to escape from less agreeable thoughts.

I have a request to make, Henry. You will think me fanciful, foolish, perhaps fanatical; and yet I am impelled, by an unaccountable impression, to ask you to give up the tickets you tell me you have engaged in the Pontiac, and to take passage for New Orleans in some other boat. If you ask me why, the only explanation I can give is, that the thought besets me, but the reason of it I do not know. Do you remember I once capriciously refused to let your father go in the cars to Springfield, although his baggage was on board? Those cars went through the draw-bridge, and many lives were lost. Write me that you will heed my request.

And now, Henry, son, nephew, friend, good by! Tell little Clara she has an aunt or grandmother (which, shall it be?) in New York who loves to think of her and to picture the fair forehead over which the little curl you sent me once fell. By the way, I have examined her photograph with a microscope, and have conceived a fancy that her eyes are of a slightly different color; one perhaps a gray and the other a mixed blue. Am I right? Tell your wife how I grieve to think that circumstances have not allowed us to meet and become personally acquainted. You now know all the influences that have kept us apart, and that have made me seem frigid and ungrateful, even when my heart was overflowing with affection. What more shall I say, except to sum up all my love for you and all my gratitude in the one parting prayer, Heaven bless you and yours!

Your mother, Emily Charlton.

CHAPTER III.
THE WOLF AND THE LAMB.

“Bitten by rage canine of dying rich;

Guilt’s blunder! and the loudest laugh of hell!”

Young.

The poor little lady! First sold by a needy parent to an old man, and then betrayed by her own uncalculating affections to a young one, whose nature had the torpor without the venerableness of age! Her heart, full of all loving possibilities, had steered by false lights and been wrecked. Brief had been its poor, shattered dream of household joys and domestic amenities!

It was the old, old story of the cheat and the dupe; of credulous innocence overmatched by heartless selfishness and fraud.

The young man “of genteel appearance and address” who last week, as the newspapers tell us, got a supply of dry-goods from Messrs. Raby & Co., under false pretences, has been arrested, and will be duly punished.

But the scoundrel who tricks a confiding woman out of her freedom and her happiness under the false pretences of a disinterested affection and the desire of a loving home,—the swindler who, with the motives of a devil of low degree, affects the fervor and the dispositions of a loyal heart,—for such an impostor the law has no lash, no prison. To play the blackleg and the sharper in a matter of the affections is not penal. Success consecrates the crime; and the victim, when her eyes are at length opened to the extent of the deception and the misery, must continue to submit to a yoke at once hateful and demoralizing; she must submit, unless she is willing to brave the ban of society and the persecutions of the law.

Ralph Charlton, when he gave his wife Berwick’s letter the night before, had supposed she would sit down to pen an answer as soon as she was alone. And so the next morning, after visiting his office in Fulton Street, he retraced his steps, and re-entered his house soon after Toussaint had left, and just as Mrs. Charlton had put her signature to the last page of the manuscript, and, bowing her forehead on her palms, was giving vent to sobs of bitter emotion.

Charlton was that prodigy in nature,—a young man in whom an avarice that would have been remarkable in a senile miser had put in subjection all the other passions. Well formed and not ungraceful, his countenance was at first rather prepossessing and propitiatory. It needed a keener eye than that of the ordinary physiognomist to penetrate to the inner nature. It was only when certain expressions flitted over the features that they betrayed him. You must study that countenance and take it at unawares before you could divine what it meant. Age had not yet hardened it in the mould of the predominant bias of the character. Well born and bred, he ought to have been a gentleman, but it is difficult for a man to be that and a miser at the same time. There was little in his style of dress that distinguished him from the mob of young business-men, except that a critical eye would detect that his clothes were well preserved. Few of his old coats were made to do service on the backs of the poor.

Charlton called himself a lawyer, his specialty being conveyancing and real estate transactions. His one purpose in life was to be a rich man. To this end all others must be subordinate. When a boy he had been taught to play on the flute; and his musical taste, if cultivated, might have been a saving element of grace. But finding that in a single year he had spent ten dollars in concert tickets, he indignantly repudiated music, and shut his ears even to the hand-organs in the street. He had inherited a fondness for fine horses. Before he was twenty-five he would not have driven out after Ethan Allen himself, if there had been any toll-gate keepers to pay. His taste in articles of food was nice and discriminating; but he now bought fish and beef of the cheapest, and patronized a milkman whose cows were fed on the refuse of the distilleries.

Charlton was not venturous in speculation. The boldest operation he ever attempted was that of his marriage. Before taking that step he had satisfied himself in regard to the state of the late Mr. Berwick’s affairs. They could be disentangled, and made to leave a balance of half a million for the heirs, if a certain lawsuit, involving a large amount of real estate, should be decided the right way. Charlton burrowed and inquired and examined till he came to the conclusion that the suit would go in favor of the estate. On that hint he took time by the forelock, and married the widow. To his consternation matters did not turn out as he had hoped.

As Charlton entered his wife’s room, on the morning she had been writing the letter already presented, “What is all this, madam?” he exclaimed, advancing and twitching away the manuscript that lay before her.

The lady thus startled rose and looked at him without speaking, as if struggling to comprehend what he had done. At length a gleam of intelligence flashed from her eyes, and she mildly said, “I will thank you to give me back those papers: they are mine.”

“Mine, Mrs. Charlton! Where did you learn that word?” said the husband, really surprised at the language of his usually meek and acquiescent helpmate.

“Do you not mean to give them back?”

“Assuredly no. To whom is the letter addressed? Ah! I see. To Mr. Henry Berwick. Highly proper that I should read what my wife writes to a young man.”

“Then you do not mean to give the letter back, Charlton?”

Another surprise for the husband! At first she used to speak to him as “Ralph,” or “dear”; then as “Mr. Charlton”; then as “Sir”; and now it was plain “Charlton.” What did it portend?

The lady held out her hand, as if to receive the papers.

“Pooh!” said the husband, striking it away. “Go and attend to your housework. What a shrill noise your canary is making! That bird must be sold. There was a charge of seventy-five cents for canary-seed in my last grocer’s bill! It’s atrocious. The creature is eating us out of house and home. Bird and cage would bring, at least, five dollars.”

“The letter,—do you choose to give it back?”

“If, after reading it, I think proper to send it to its address, it shall be sent. Give yourself no further concern about it.”

Mrs. Charlton advanced with folded arms, looked him unblenchingly in the face, and gasped forth, with a husky, half-chocked utterance, “Beware!”

“Truly, madam,” said the astonished husband, “this is a new character for you to appear in, and one for which I am not prepared.”

“It is for that reason I say, Beware! Beware when the tame, the submissive, the uncomplaining woman is roused at last. Will you give me that letter?”

“Go to the Devil!”

Mrs. Charlton threw out her hand and clutched at the manuscript, but her husband had anticipated the attempt. As she closed with him in the effort to recover the paper, he threw her off so forcibly that she fell and struck her head against one of the protuberant claws of the legs of her writing-table.

Whatever were the effects of the blow, it did not prevent the lady from rising immediately, and composing her exuberant hair with a gesture of puzzled distress that would have excited pity in the heart of a Thug. But Charlton did not even inquire if she were hurt. After a pause she seemed to recover her recollection, and then threw up her head with a lofty gesture of resolve, and quitted the room.

Her husband sat down and read the letter. His equanimity was unruffled till he came to the passage where the writer alludes to the gold casket she had put aside for little Clara. At that disclosure he started to his feet, and gave utterance to a hearty execration upon the woman who had presumed to circumvent him by withholding any portion of her effects. He opened the door and called, “Wife!” No voice replied to his summons. He sought her in her chamber. She was not there. She had left the house. So Dorcas, the one overworked domestic of the establishment, assured him.

Charlton saw there was no use in scolding. So he put on his hat and walked down Broadway to his office. Here he wrote a letter which he wished to mail before one o’clock. It was directed to Colonel Delaney Hyde, Philadelphia. Having finished it and put it in the mail-box, Charlton took his way at a brisk pace to the house of old Toussaint.

That veteran himself opened the door. A venerable black man, reminding one of Ben Franklin in ebony. His wool was gray, his complexion of the blackest, showing an unmixed African descent. He was of middling height, and stooped slightly; was attired in the best black broadcloth, with a white vest and neckcloth, and had the manners of a French marquis of the old school.

“Is my wife here?” asked Charlton.

“Madame is here,” replied the old man; “but she suffers, and prays to be not disturbed.”

“I must see her. Conduct me to her.”

“Pardonnez. Monsieur will comprehend as I say the commands of Madame in this house are sacred.”

“You insolent old nigger! Do you mean to tell me I am not to see my own wife?”

“Precisement. Monsieur cannot see Madame Charlton.”

“I’ll search the house for her, at any rate. Out of the way, you blasted old ape!”

Here a policeman, provided for the occasion by Toussaint, and who had been smoking in the front room opening on the hall, made his appearance.

“You can’t enter this house,” said Blake, carelessly knocking the ashes from his cigar. Charlton had a wholesome respect for authority. He drew back on seeing the imperturbable Blake, with the official star on his breast, and said, “I came here, Mr. Blake, to recover a little gold box that I have reason to believe my wife has left with this old nigger.”

“Well, she might have left it in worse hands,—eh, Toussaint?” said Blake, resuming his cigar; and then, removing it, he added, “If you call this old man a nigger again, I’ll make a nigger of you with my fist.”

Toussaint might have taken for his motto that of the old eating-house near the Park,—“Semper paratus.” The gold box having been committed to him to deposit in a place of safety, he had meditated long as to the best disposition he could make of it. As he stood at the window of his house, looking thoughtfully out, he saw coming up the street a gay old man, swinging a cane, humming an opera tune, and followed by a little dog. As the dashing youth drew nearer, Toussaint recognized in him an old acquaintance, and a man not many years his junior,—Mr. Albert Pompilard, stock-broker, Wall Street.

No two men could be more unlike than Toussaint and Pompilard; and yet they were always drawn to each other by some subtle points of attraction. Pompilard was a reckless speculator and spendthrift; Toussaint, a frugal and cautious economist; but he had been indebted for all his best investments to Pompilard. Bold and often audacious in his own operations, Pompilard never would allow Toussaint to stray out of the path of prudence. Not unfrequently Pompilard would founder in his operations on the stock exchange. He would fall, perhaps, to a depth where a few hundred dollars would have been hailed as a rope flung to a drowning man. Toussaint would often come to him at these times and offer a thousand dollars or so as a loan. Pompilard, in order not to hurt the negro’s feelings, would take it and pretend to use it; but it would be always put securely aside, out of his reach, or deposited in some bank to Toussaint’s credit.

Toussaint stood at his door as Pompilard drew nigh.

“Ha! good morning, my guide, philosopher, and friend!” exclaimed the stock-broker. “What’s in the wind now, Toussaint? Any money to invest?”

“No, Mr. Pompilard; but here’s a box that troubles me.”

“A box! Not a pill-box, I hope? Let me look at it. Beautiful! beautiful, exceedingly! It could not be duplicated for twelve hundred dollars. Whose is it? Ah! here’s an inscription,—‘Henry Berwick to Emily.’ Berwick? It was a Henry Berwick who married my wife’s niece, Miss Aylesford.”

“This box,” interposed Toussaint, “was the gift of his late father to his second wife, the present Mrs. Charlton.”

“Ah! yes, I remember the connection now.”

“Mrs. Charlton wishes me to deposit the box where, in the event of her death, it will reach the daughter of the present Mrs. Berwick. Here is the direction on the envelope.”

Pompilard read the words: “For Clara Aylesford Berwick, daughter of Henry Berwick, Esq., to be delivered to her in the event of the death of the undersigned, Emily Charlton.”

“I will tell you what to do,” said Pompilard. “Here come Isaac Jones of the Chemical and Arthur Schermerhorn. Isaac shall give a receipt for the box and deposit it in the safe of the bank, there to be kept till called for by Miss Clara Berwick or her representative.”

“That will do,” said Toussaint.

The two gentlemen were called in, and in five minutes the proper paper was drawn up, witnessed, and signed, and Mr. Jones gave a receipt for the box.

Briefly Toussaint now explained to Charlton the manner in which the box had been disposed of. Charlton was nonplussed. It would not do to disgust the officials at the Chemical. It might hurt his credit. A consolatory reflection struck him. “Do you say my wife is suffering?” he asked.

“Madame will need a physician,” replied the negro. “I have sent for Dr. Hull.”

“Well, look here, old gentleman, I’m responsible for no debts of your contracting on her account. I call Mr. Blake to witness. If you keep her here, it must be at your own expense. Not a cent shall you ever have from me.”

“That will not import,” replied Toussaint, with the hauteur of a prince of the blood.

Felicitating himself on having got rid of a doctor’s bill, Charlton took his departure.

“The exceedingly poor cuss!” muttered Blake, tossing after him the stump of a cigar.

“Let me pay you for your trouble, Mr. Blake,” said Toussaint.

“Not a copper, Marquis! I have been here only half an hour, and in that time have read the newspaper, smoked one regalia, quality prime, and pocketed another. If that is not pay enough, you shall make it up by curling my hair the next time I go to a ball.”

“But take the rest of the cigars.”

“There, Marquis, you touch me on my weak point. Thank you. Good by, Toussaint!”

Toussaint closed the door, and called to his wife in a whisper, speaking in French, “How goes it, Juliette?”

“Hist! She sleeps. She wishes you to put this letter in the post-office as soon as possible. If you can get the canary-bird, do it. I hope the doctor will be here soon.”

Toussaint left at once to mail the invalid’s letter and get possession of her bird.

CHAPTER IV.
A FUGITIVE CHATTEL.

“The providential trust of the South is to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing, with freest scope for its natural development. We should at once lift ourselves intelligently to the highest moral ground, and proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from God, and in its occupancy are prepared to stand or fall.”—Rev. Dr. Palmer of New Orleans, 1861.

The next morning Charlton sat in his office, calculating his percentage on a transaction in which he had just acted as mediator between borrower and lender. The aspect of the figures, judging from his own, was cheerful.

The office was a gloomy little den up three flights of stairs. All the furniture was second hand, and the carpet was ragged and dirty. No broom or dusting-cloth had for months molested the ancient, solitary reign of the spiders on the ceiling. A pile of cheap slate-colored boxes with labels stood against the wall opposite the stove. An iron safe served also as a dressing-table between the windows that looked out on the street; and over it hung a small rusty mirror in a mahogany frame with a dirty hair-brush attached. The library of the little room was confined to a few common books useful for immediate reference; a City Directory, a copy of the Revised Statutes, the Clerk’s Assistant, and a dozen other volumes, equally recondite.

There was a knock at the door, and Charlton cried out, “Come in!”

The visitor was a negro whose face was of that fuliginous hue that bespeaks an unmixed African descent. He was of medium height, square built, with the shoulders and carriage of an athlete. He seemed to be about thirty years of age. His features, though of the genuine Ethiopian type, were a refinement upon it rather than an exaggeration. The expression was bright, hilarious, intelligent; frank and open, you would add, unless you chanced to detect a certain quick oblique glance which would flash upon you now and then, and vanish before you could well realize what it meant. Across his left cheek was an ugly scar, almost deep enough to be from a cutlass wound.

“Good morning, Peculiar. Take a chair.”

“Not that name, if you please, Mr. Charlton,” said the negro, closing the door and looking eagerly around to see if there had been a listener. “Remember, you are to call me Jacobs.”

“Ah yes, I forgot. Well, Jacobs, I am glad to see you; but you are a few minutes before the time. It isn’t yet twelve. Just step into that little closet and wait there till I call you.”

The negro did as he was directed, and Charlton closed the door upon him. Five minutes after, the clock of Trinity struck twelve, and there was another knock at the door.

Before we suffer it to be answered, we must go back and describe an interview that took place some seven weeks previously, in the same office, between Charlton and the negro.

A year before that first interview, Charlton had, in some accidental way, been associated with a well-known antislavery counsel, in a case in which certain agents of the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves had been successfully foiled. Though Charlton’s services had been unessential and purely mercenary, he had shared in the victor’s fame; and the grateful colored men who employed him carried off the illusion that he was a powerful friend of the slave. And so when Mr. Peculiar, alias Mr. Jacobs, found himself in New York, a fugitive from bondage, he was recommended, if he had any little misgivings as to his immunity from persecution and seizure, to apply to Mr. Charlton as to a fountain of legal profundity and philanthropic expansiveness. Greater men than our colored brethren have jumped to conclusions equally far from the truth in regard not only to lawyers, but military generals.

Charlton’s primary investigations, in his first interview with Peek, had reference to the amount of funds that the negro could raise through his own credit and that of his friends. This amount the lawyer found to be small; and he was about to express his dissatisfaction in emphatic terms, when a new consideration withheld him. Affecting that ruling passion of universal benevolence which the fond imagination of his colored client had attributed to him, he pondered a moment, then spoke as follows:

“You tell me, Jacobs, you are in the delicate position of a fugitive slave. I love the slave. Am I not a friend and a brother, and all that? But if you expect me to serve you, you must be entirely frank,—disguise nothing,—disclose to me your real history, name, and situation,—make a clean breast of it, in short.”

“That I will do, sir. I know, if I trust a lawyer at all, I ought to trust him wholly.”

There was nothing in the negro’s language to indicate the traditional slave of the stage and the novel, who always says “Massa,” and speaks a gibberish indicated to the eye by a cheap misspelling of words. A listener who had not seen him would have supposed it was an educated white gentleman who was speaking; for even in the tone of his voice there was an absence of the African peculiarity.

“My friends tell me I may trust you, sir,” said Jacobs, advancing and looking Charlton square in the face. Charlton must have blenched for an instant, for the negro, as a slight but significant compression of the lip seemed to portend, drew back from confidence. “Can I trust you?” he continued, as if he were putting the question as much to himself as to Charlton. There was a pause.

Charlton took from his drawer a letter, which he handed to the negro, with the remark, “You know how to read, I suppose.”

Without replying. Peek took the letter and glanced over it,—a letter of thanks from a committee of colored citizens in return for Charlton’s services in the case already alluded to. Peek was reassured by this document. He returned it, and said, “I will trust you, Mr. Charlton.”

“Take a seat then, Jacobs, and I will make such notes of your story as I may think advisable.”

Peek did as he was invited; but Charlton seemed interested mainly in dates and names. A more faithful reporter would have presented the memorabilia of the narrative somewhat in this form:

“Was born on Herbert’s plantation in Marshall County, Mississippi. Mother a house-slave. When he was four years old she was sold and taken to Louisiana. His real name not Jacobs. That name he took recently in New York. The name he was christened by was Peculiar Institution. It was given to him by one Ewell, a drunken overseer, and was soon shortened to Peek, which name has always stuck to him. Was brought up a body servant till his fourteenth year. Soon found that the way for a slave to get along was to lie, but to lie so as not to be found out. Grew to be so expert a liar, that among his fellows he was called the lawyer. No offence to you, Mr. Charlton.

“As soon as he could carry a plate, was made to wait at table. Used to hear the gentlemen and ladies talk at meals. Could speak their big words before he knew their meaning. Kept his ears and eyes well open. An old Spanish negro, named Alva, taught him by stealth to read and write. When the young ladies took their lessons in music, this child stood by and learnt as much as they did, if not more. Learnt to play so well on the piano that he was often called on to show off before visitors.

“Was whipped twice, and then not badly, at Herbert’s: once for stealing some fruit, once for trying to teach a slave to read. Family very pious. Old Herbert used to read prayers every morning. But he didn’t mind making a woman give up one husband and take another. Didn’t mind separating mother and child. Didn’t mind shooting a slave for disobedience. Saw him do it once. Herbert had told Big Sam not to go with a certain metif girl; for Herbert was as particular about matching his niggers as about his horses and sheep. A jealous negro betrayed Sam. Old Herbert found Sam in the metif girl’s hut, and shot him dead, without giving him a chance to beg for mercy.[^[2]] Well, Sam was only a nigger; and didn’t Mr. Herbert have family prayers, and go to church twice every Sunday? Who should save his soul alive, if not Mr. Herbert?

“In spite of prayers, however, things didn’t go right on the plantation. The estate was heavily mortgaged. Finally the creditors took it, and the family was broken up. Peculiar was sold to one Harkman, a speculator, who let him out as an apprentice in New Orleans, in Collins’s machine-shop for the repair of steam-engines. But Collins failed, and then Peek became a waiter in the St. Charles Hotel. Here he stayed six years. Cut his eye-teeth during that time. Used to talk freely with Northern visitors about slavery. Studied the big map of the United States that hung in the reading-room. Learnt all about the hotels, North and South. Stretched his ears wide whenever politics were discussed.

“Having waited on the principal actors and singers of the day at the St. Charles, he had a free pass to the theatres. Used often to go behind the scenes. Waited on Blitz, Anderson, and other jugglers. Saw Anderson show up the humbug, as he called it, of spiritual manifestations. Went to church now and then. Heard some bad preachers, and some good. Heard Mr. Clapp preach. Heard Mr. Palmer preach. After hearing the latter on the duties of slaves, tried to run away. Was caught and taken to a new patent whipping-machine, recently introduced by a Yankee. Here was left for a whipping. Bought off the Yankee with five dollars, and taught him how to stain my back so as to imitate the marks of the lash. Thus no discredit was brought on the machine. A week after was sold to a Red River planter, Mr. Carberry Ratcliff.

“Can never speak of this man calmly. He had a slave, a woman white as you are, sir, that he beat, and then tried to make me take and treat as my wife. When he found I had cheated him, he just had me tied up and whipped till three strong men were tired out with the work. It’s a wonder how I survived. My whole back is seamed deep with the scars. This scar over my cheek is from a blow he himself gave me that day with a strip of raw hide. He sold me to Mr. Barnwell in Texas as soon as I could walk, which wasn’t for some weeks. I left, resolving to come back and kill Ratcliff. I meant to do this so earnestly, that the hope of it almost restored me. Revenge was my one thought, day and night. I felt that I could not be at ease till that man Ratcliff had paid for his barbarity. Even now I sometimes wake full of wrath from my dreams, imagining I have him at my mercy.

“I went to Texas with a bad reputation. Was put among the naughty darkies, and sent to the cotton-field. Braxton, the overseer, had been a terrible fellow in his day, but I happened to be brought to him at the time he was beginning to get scared about his soul. Soon had things my own way. Braxton made me a sort of sub-overseer; and I got more work out of the field-hands by kindness than Braxton had ever got by the lash.

“One day I discovered on a neighboring plantation an old woman who proved to be my mother. She had been brought here from Louisiana. She was on the point of dying. She knew me, first from hearing my name, and then from a cross she had pricked in India ink on my breast. She hadn’t seen me for sixteen years. Had been having a hard time of it. Her hut was close by a slough, a real fever-hole, and she had been sick most of the time the last three years.

“The old woman flashed up bright on finding me: gave me a long talk; told me little stories of when I was a child; told me how my father had been sold to an Alabama man, and shot dead for trying to break away from a whipping-post. All at once she said she saw angels, drew me down to her, and dropped away quiet as a lamb, so that, though my forehead lay on her breast, I didn’t know when she died.

“After this loss, I was pretty serious. Wasn’t badly treated. My master, an educated gentleman, was absent in New Orleans most of the time. Overseer Braxton, after the big scare he got about his soul, grew to be humane, and left almost everything to me. But I felt sick of life, and wanted to die, though not before I had killed Ratcliff. One day I heard that Corinna, a quadroon girl, a slave on the plantation, had fallen into a strange state, during which she preached as no minister had ever preached before. I had known her as a very ordinary and rather stupid girl. Went to see her in one of her trances. Found that report had fallen short of the real case. Was astonished at what I saw and heard. Saw what no white man would believe, and so felt I was wiser on one point than all the white men. My interviews with Corinna soon made me forget about Ratcliff; and when she died, six weeks after my first visit, felt my mind full of things it would take me a lifetime to think out and settle.

“After Corinna’s death, I stayed some months on the plantation, though I had a chance to leave. Stayed because I had an easy time and because I found I could be of use to the slaves; and further, because I had resolved, if ever I got free, it should be by freeing myself. A white man, a Mr. Vance, whose life I had saved, wanted to buy and free me. I made him spend his money so it would show for more than just the freeing of one man. But Braxton, the overseer, who was letting me have pretty much my own way, at last died; and Hawks, his successor, was of opinion that the way to get work out of niggers was to treat them like dogs; and so, one pleasant moonlight night, I made tracks for Galveston. Here, by means of false papers, I managed to get passage to New Orleans, and there hid myself on board a Yankee schooner bound for New London, Connecticut. When she was ten days out, I made my appearance on deck, much to the surprise of the crew. Fifteen days afterwards we arrived in the harbor of New London.

“Old Skinner, the captain, had been playing possum with me all the voyage,—keeping dark, and pretending to be my friend, meaning all the while to have me arrested in port. No sooner had he dropped anchor than he sent on shore for the officers. But the mate tipped me the wink. ‘Darkey,’ said he, ‘do you see that little green fishing-boat yonder? Well, that belongs to old Payson, an all-fired abolitionist and friend of the nigger. Our Captain and crew are all under hatches, and now if you don’t want to be a lost nigger, jest you drop down quietly astern, swim off to Payson, and tell him who you are, and that the slave-catchers are after you. If old Payson don’t put you through after that, it will be because it isn’t old Payson.’

“I did as the mate told me. Reached the fishing-boat. Found old Payson, a gnarled, tough, withered old sea-dog, who comprehended at once what was in the wind, and cried, ‘Ha! ha!’ like the war-horse that snuffs the battle. Just as I got into the boat, Captain Skinner came up on the schooner’s deck, and saw what had taken place. The schooner’s small boat had been sent ashore for the officers whose business it was to carry out the Fugitive-Slave Law. What could Skinner do? Visions of honors and testimonials and rewards and dinners from Texan slaveholders, because of his loyalty to the institution in returning a runaway nigger, suddenly vanished. He paced the deck in a rage. To add to his fury, old Payson, while I stood at the bows, dripping and grinning, came sailing up before a stiff breeze, and passed within easy speaking distance, Payson pouring in such a volley of words that Skinner was dumbfounded. ‘I’ll make New London too hot for you, you blasted old skinflint!’ cried Payson. ‘You’d sell your own sister just as soon as you’d sell this nigger, you would! Let me catch you ashore, and I’ll give you the blastedest thrashing you ever got yet, you infernal doughface, you! Go and lick the boots of slaveholders. It’s jest what you was born for.’

“And the little sail-boat passed on out of hearing. Payson got in the track of one of the spacious steamboats that ply between the cities of Long Island Sound and New York, and managed to throw a line, so as to be drawn up to the side. We then got on board. In six hours, we were in New York. Payson put me in the proper hands, bade me good by, returned to his sail-boat, and made the best speed he could back to New London, fired with hopes of pitching into that ‘meanest of all mean skippers, old Skinner.’

“This was three years ago. The despatch agents of the underground railroad hurried me off to Canada. As soon as I judged it safe, I returned to New York. Here I got a good situation as head-waiter at Bunker’s. Am married. Have a boy, named Sterling, a year old. Am very happy with my wife and child and my hired piano. But now and then I and my wife have an alarm lest I shall be seized and carried back to slavery.”

Here Mr. Institution finished his story, which we have condensed, generally using, however, his own words. Charlton did not subject him to much cross-questioning. He asked, first, what was the name of the schooner in which Peek had escaped from Texas. It was the Albatross. Charlton made a note. Second, did Mr. Barnwell, Peek’s late master, have an agent in New Orleans? Yes; Peek had often seen the name on packages: P. Herman & Co. And, third, did Peek marry his wife in Canada? Yes. Then she, too, is a fugitive slave, eh?

Peek seemed reluctant to answer this question, and flashed a quick, distrustful glance on Charlton. The latter assumed an air of indifference, and said, “Perhaps you had better not answer that question; it is immaterial.”

Again Peek’s mind was relieved.

“That is enough for the present, Mr. Jacobs,” continued Charlton. “If I have occasion to see you, I can always find you at Bunker’s, I suppose.”

“Yes, Mr. Charlton. Inquire for John Jacobs. Keep a bright lookout for me, and you sha’n’t be the loser. Will five dollars pay you?”

Charlton wavered between the temptation to clutch more at the moment, and the prospect of making his new client available in other ways. At length taking the money he replied, “I will make it do for the present. Good morning.”

CHAPTER V.
A RETROSPECT.

“Any slave refusing obedience to any command may be flogged till he submits or dies. Not by occasional abuses alone, but by the universal law of the Southern Confederacy, the existing system of slavery violates all the moral laws of Christianity.”—Rev. Newman Hall.

Before removing Peculiar from the closet which at Charlton’s bidding he has entered, we must go back to the time when he was a slave, and amplify and illustrate certain parts of his abridged narrative. His life, up to the period when he comes upon our little stage, divides itself into three eras, all marked by their separate moral experiences. In the first, he felt the slave’s crowning curse,—the absence of that sense of personal responsibility which freedom alone can give; and he fell into the demoralization which is the inherent consequence of the slave’s condition. In the second era, he encountered his mother, and then the frozen fountain of his affections was unsealed and melted. In the third, he met Corinna, and for the first time looked on life with the eyes of belief.

It will seem idle to many advanced minds in this nineteenth century to use words to show the wrong of slavery. Why not as well spend breath in denouncing burglary or murder? But slavery is still a power in the world. We are daily told it is the proper status for the colored man in this country; that he ought to covet slavery as much as a white man ought to covet freedom. Besides, since Peek has confessed himself at one time of his life a liar, we must show why he ought logically to have been one.

To blame a slave for lying and stealing, is about as fair as it would be to blame a man for using strategy in escaping from an assassin. For the slaveholder, if not the assassin of the slave’s life, is the assassin of his liberty, his manhood, his moral dignity.

Mr. Pugh of Ohio, Vallandigham’s associate on the gubernatorial ticket for 1863, presents his thesis thus: “When the slaves are fit for freedom, they will be free.”

The profundity of this oracular proposition is only equalled in the remark of the careful grandmother, who declared she would never let a boy go into the water till he knew how to swim.

“When the slaves are fit!” As if the road were clear for them to achieve their fitness! Why, the slave is not only robbed of his labor, but of his very chances as a thinking being. Yes, with a charming consistency, the slavery barons, the Hammonds and the Davises, while they tell us the negro is unfitted for mental cultivation, institute the severest penal laws against all attempts to teach the slave to read!

The first natural instinct of the slave, black or white, towards his master is, to cheat and baffle that armed embodiment of wrong, who stands to him in the relation of a thief and a tyrant. Thus, from his earliest years, lying and fraud become legitimate and praiseworthy in the slave’s eyes; for slavery, except under rare conditions, crushes out the moral life in the victim.

Any conscience he may have, being subordinate to the conscience of his master, is kept stunted or perverted. The slave may wish to be true to his wife; but his master may compel him to repudiate her and take another. He may object to being the agent of an injustice; but the snap of the whip or the revolver may be the reply to any conscientious scruples he may offer against obedience.

In the first stage of his slave-life, Peculiar probably gave little thought to the moral bearings of his lot; although old Alva, his instructor, who was something of a casuist, had offered him not a few hard nuts to crack in the way of knotty questions. But Peculiar did precisely what you or I would have done under similar circumstances: he taxed his ingenuity to find how he could most safely shirk the tasks that were put upon him. Knowing that his taskmasters had no right to his labor, that they were, in fact, robbing him of what was his own, he did what he could to fool and circumvent them. Thus he grew to be, by a necessity of his condition, the most consummate of hypocrites and the most intrepid and successful of liars. At eighteen he was a match for Talleyrand in using speech to conceal his thoughts.

He saw that, if slaves were well treated, it was because the prudent master believed that good treatment would pay. Humanity was gauged by considerations of cotton. Thus the very kindnesses of a master had the taint of an intense selfishness; and Peculiar, while readily availing himself of all indulgences, correctly appreciated the spirit in which they were granted.

The devotional element seems to be especially active in the negro; but it has little chance for rational development, dwarfed and kept from the light as the intellect is. The uneducated slave, like the Italian brigand,—indeed, like many worthy people who go to church,—thinks it an impertinence to mix up morality with religion. He agrees fully with the distinguished American divine, who the other Sunday began his sermon with these words, “Brethren, I am not here to teach you morality, but to save your souls.” As if a saving faith could exist allied to a corrupt morality!

Peculiar could not come in contact with a sham, however solemn and pretentious, without applying to it the puncture of his skeptical analysis. He saw his master, Herbert, go to church on a Sunday and kneel in prayer, and on a Monday shoot down Big Sam for attaching himself to the wrong woman. He saw the Rev. Mr. Bloom take the murderer by the hand, as if nothing had happened more tragical than the shooting of a raccoon.

And then Peculiar cogitated, wondering what religion could be, if its professors made such slight account of robbery and murder. Was it the observance of certain forms for the propitiation of an arbitrary, capricious, and unamiable Power, who smiled on injustice and barbarity? The more he thought of it, the more inexplicable grew the puzzle. Herbert evidently regarded himself as one of the elect; and Mr. Bloom encouraged him in his security. If heaven was to be won by such kind of service as theirs, Peculiar concluded that he would prefer taking his chances in hell; and so he became a scoffer.

His residence in New Orleans, in enlarging the sphere of his experiences, did not bring him the light that could quicken the devotional part of his nature. Dwelling most of the time in a hotel which frequently contained three or four hundred inmates, he was thrown among white men of all grades, intellectual and moral. He instinctively felt his superiority both ways to not a few of these. It was therefore a swindling lie to say that the blacks were born to be the thrall of the whites, that slavery was the proper status of the black in this or any country. If it were true that stupid blacks ought to be slaves, so must it be true of the same order of whites.

He heard preachers stand up in their pulpits, and, like the Rev. Dr. Palmer, blaspheme God by calling slavery a Divine institution. “Would it have been tolerated so long, if it were not?” they asked, with the confidence of a conjurer when he means to hocus you. To which Peek might have answered, “Would theft and murder have been tolerated so long, if they were not equally Divine?” The Northern clergymen he encountered held usually South-side views of the subject, and so his prejudices against the cloth grew to be somewhat too sweeping and indiscriminate. Judged of by its relations to slavery, religion seemed to him an audacious system of impositions, raised to fortify a lie and a wrong by claiming a Divine sanction for merely human creeds and inventions.

This persuasion was deepened when he found there were intelligent white men utterly incredulous as to a future state, and that the people who went to church were many of them practically, and many of them speculatively, infidels. The remaining fraction might be, for all he knew, not only devout, but good and just. Indeed, he had met some such, but they could be almost counted on his ten fingers.

One day at the St. Charles he overheard a discussion between Mr. James Sterling, an English traveller, and the Rev. Dr. Manners of Virginia. Slaves are good listeners; and Peculiar had sharpened his sense of hearing by the frequent exercise of it under difficulties. He was an amateur in key-holes. On this occasion he had only to open a ventilating window at the top of a partition, and all that the disputants might say would be for his benefit.

“Will you deny, sir,” asked the reverend Doctor, “that slavery has the sanction of Scripture?”

“I exclude that inquiry as impertinent at present,” said Sterling. “If Scripture authorized murder, then it would not be murder that would be right, but Scripture that would be wrong. And so in regard to slavery. On that particular point Scripture must not be admitted as authoritative. It cannot override the enlightened human conscience. It cannot render null the deductions of science and of reason on a question that manifestly comes within their sphere.”

“Ah! if you reject Scripture, then I have nothing more to say,” retorted the Doctor. But, after a pause, he added, “Have you not generally found the slaves well treated and contented?”

“A system under which they are well treated and made content,” replied Sterling, “is really the most to be deplored and condemned. If slavery could so brutalize men’s minds as to make them hug their chains and glory in degradation, it would be, in my eyes, doubly cursed. But it is not so; the slaves are not happy, and I thank God for it. There is manhood enough left in them to make them at least unhappy.”[^[3]]

“You assume the equality of the races,” interposed the Doctor.

“It is unnecessary for my argument to make any such assumption,” said Sterling. “I have found that many black men are superior to many white men, and some of those white men slaveholders. I do not assume this. I know it. I have seen it. But even if the black men were inferior, I hold, that man, as man, is an end unto himself, and that to use him as a brute means to the ends of other men is to outrage the laws of God. I take my stand far above the question of happiness or unhappiness. Have you noticed the young black man, called Peek, who waits behind my chair at table?”

“Yes, a bright-looking lad. He anticipates your wants well. You have fed[fed] him, I suppose?”

“I have given him nothing. I have put a few questions to him, that is all; and what I have to say is, that he is superior in respect to brains to nine tenths of the white youth who suck juleps in your bar-rooms or kill time at your billiard-tables.”

“As soon as the Abolitionists will stop their infatuated clamor,” replied the Doctor, “the condition of the slave will be gradually improved, and we shall give more and more care to his religious education.”

“So long as the negro is ruled by force,” returned Mr. Sterling, “no forty-parson power of preaching can elevate his character. It is a savage mockery to prate of duty to one in whom we have emasculated all power of will. We cannot make a moral intelligence of a being we use as a mere muscular force.”

“All that the South wants,” exclaimed the Doctor, “is to be let alone in the matter of slavery. If there are any alleviations in the system which can be safely applied, be sure they will not be lacking as soon as we are let alone by the fanatics of the North. Leave the solution of the problem to the intelligence and humanity of the South.”

“Not while new cotton-lands pay so well! Be sure, reverend sir, if the South cannot quickly find a solution of this slave problem, God will find one for them, and that, trust me, will be a violent one. American civilization and American slavery can no longer exist together. One or the other must be destroyed. For my part, I can’t believe it to be the Divine purpose that a remnant of barbarism shall overthrow the civilization of a new world. Slavery must succumb.”[^[4]]

“I recommend you, Mr. Sterling, not to raise your voice quite so high when you touch upon these dangerous topics here at the South. I will bid you good evening, sir.”

CHAPTER VI.
PIN-HOLES IN THE CURTAIN.

“The reader will here be led into the great, ill-famed land of the marvellous.”

Ennemoser.

The conversation between the English traveller and the Virginia Doctor of Divinity was brought to a close, and Peek jumped down from the table on which he had been listening, refreshed and inspired by the eloquent words he had taken in.

A week afterwards he made a second attempt to escape from bondage. He was caught and sold to Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, who had an estate on the Red River. Here, failing in obedience to an atrocious order, he received a punishment, the scars of which always remained to show the degree of its barbarity. He was soon after sent to Texas, where he became the slave of Mr. Barnwell.

Here he was at first put to the roughest work in the cotton-field. It tasked all his ingenuity to slight or dodge it. Luckily for him, about the time of his arrival he found an opportunity to make profitable use of the ecclesiastical knowledge he had derived from the Rev. Messrs. Bloom and Palmer.

Braxton, the overseer, had been frightened into a concern for his soul. He had a heart-complaint which the doctor told him might carry him off any day in a flash. A travelling preacher completed the work of terror by satisfying him he was in a fair way of being damned. The prospect did not seem cheerful to Braxton. He had found exhilaration and comfort in whipping intractable niggers. The amusement now began to pall. Besides, the doctor had told him to shun excitement.

In this state of things, enter Mr. Peculiar Institution. That gentleman soon learnt what was the matter; and he contrived that the overseer, seemingly by accident, should overhear him at prayers. Braxton had heard praying, but never any that had the unction of Peek’s. From that time forth Peek had him completely under his control.

Peek did not abuse his authority. He ruled wisely, though despotically. At last the accidental encounter with his dying mother introduced a new world of thoughts and emotions. Short as was his opportunity for acquaintance with her, such a wealth of tenderness and love as she lavished upon him developed a hitherto inactive and undreamed-of force in his soul. The affectional part of his nature was touched. She told him of the delight his father used to take in playing with him, an infant; and when he thought of that father’s fate, shot down for resisting the lash, he felt as if he could tear the first upholder of slavery he might meet limb from limb, in his rage.

The mother died, and then all seemed worthless and insipid to Peek. Having seen how little heed was paid to the feelings of slaves in separating those of opposite sex who had become attached to each other, he early in life resolved to shun all sexual intimacies, till he should be free. He saw that in slavery the distinction between licit and illicit connections was a playful mockery. The thought of being the father of a slave was horrible to him; and neither threats of the lash nor coaxings from masters and overseers could induce him to enter into those temporary alliances which Mr. Herbert used pleasantly to call “the holy bonds of matrimony.” His resolution grew to be a passion stronger even than desire.

Thus the affections were undeveloped in him till he encountered his mother. He knew of no relative on earth, after her, to love,—no one to be loved by. Life stretched before him flat, dull, and unprofitable; and death,—what was that but the plunge into nothingness?

True, Mr. Herbert and the clergyman who drank claret with Mr. Herbert after the latter had shot down Big Sam talked of a life beyond the grave; but could such humbugs as they were be believed? Could the stories be trustworthy, which were based mainly on the truth of a book which all the preachers (so he supposed) declared was the all-sufficient authority for slavery? Well might Peek distrust the promise that was said to rest only on writings that were made to supply the apology of injustice and bloody wrong!

While in this state of mind, he heard of Corinna, the quadroon girl. Unattractive in person, slow of apprehension, and rarely uttering a word, she had hitherto excited only his pity. But now she fell into trances during which she seemed to be a new and entirely different being. At his first interview with her when she fell into one of these inexplicable states, she seized his hand, and imitating the look, actions, and very tone of his dying mother, poured forth such a flood of exhortations, comfortings, warnings, and encouragements, that he was bewildered and confounded.

What could it all mean? The power that spoke through Corinna claimed to be his mother, and seemed to identify itself, as far as revelations to the understanding could go. It recalled the little incidents that had passed between them in the presence of no other witness. It pierced to his inmost secrets,—secrets which he well knew he had communicated to no human being.

And yet Peek saw upon reflection that, though a preternatural faculty was plainly at work,—a faculty that took possession of his mind as a photographer does of all the stones, flaws, and stains in the wall of a building,—there was no sufficient identification of that faculty with the individual he knew as his mother. Little that might not already have been in his own mind, long hidden, perhaps, and forgotten, was revealed to him.

He also concluded that the intelligence, whatever it might be, was a fallible one, and that it would be folly to give up to its guidance his own free judgment.

He renewed his interviews daily as long as the quadroon girl lived. Skeptical, cautious, and meditative, he must test all these phenomena over and over again. And he did test them. He established conditions. He made records on the spot. He removed all possibilities of collusion and deception. And still the same phenomena!

Nor were they confined to the imperfect wonders of clairvoyance and prophecy. Once in the broad daylight, when he was alone with the invalid girl in her hut, and no other human being within a distance of a quarter of a mile, she was lifted horizontally before his eyes into the air, and kept there swaying about at least a third of a minute, while the drapery of her dress clung to her person as if held by an invisible hand.[^[5]]

A bandore—a stringed musical instrument the name of which has been converted by the negroes into banjo—hung on a nail in the wall. One moonlight evening, when no third person was present, this African lute was detached by some invisible force and carried by it through the room from one end to the other! It would touch Peek on the head, then float away through the air, visible to sight, and sending forth from its chords, smitten by no mortal fingers, delectable strains. The same invisible power would tune the instrument, tightening the strings and trying them with a delicate skill; and then it would hang the banjo on its nail.

After this improvised concert, Peek felt all at once a warm living hand upon his forehead, first lovingly patting it and then passing round his cheek, under his chin, and up on the other side of his face. He grasped the hand, and it returned his pressure. It was a hand much larger than Corinna’s, and she lay on her back several feet from him, too far to touch him with any part of her person. Plainly in the moonlight he could see it,—a perfect hand, resembling his mother’s! It shaded off into vacuity above the wrist, and, even while he held it solid and flesh-like, melted all at once, like an impalpable ether, in his grasp.[^[6]]

These phenomena, with continual variations, were repeated day after day and night after night. Flowers would drop from the ceiling into his hands, delicious odors of fruits would diffuse themselves through the room. A music like that of the Swiss bell-ringers would break upon the silence, continuing for a minute or more. A pen would start up from the table and write an intelligible sentence. A castanet would be played on and dashed about furiously, as if by some invisible Bacchante. A clatter, as of the hammering of a hundred carpenters, would suddenly make itself heard. A voice would speak intelligible sentences, sometimes using a tin trumpet for the purpose. Articles of furniture would pass about the room and cross each other with a swiftness and precision that no mortal could imitate. The noise of dancers, using their feet, and keeping time, would be heard on the floor.

Once Corinna asked him to leave his watch with her. He did so. When he was several rods from the house she called to him, “You are sure you haven’t your watch?” “Yes, sure,” replied Peek. He hurried home, a distance of two miles, without meeting a human being. On undressing to go to bed, he found his watch in his vest pocket.

These physical thaumaturgies produced upon Peek a more astounding effect than all the evidences of mind-reading and clairvoyance. In the communications made to him by the “power,” there was generally something unsatisfying or incomplete. He would, for instance, think of some departed friend,—a white man, perhaps,—and, without uttering or writing a word, would desire some manifestation from that friend. Immediately Corinna would strip from her arm the drapery, and show on her skin, written in clear crimson letters, some brief message signed by the right name. And then the supposed bearer of that name (speaking through Corinna) would correctly recall incidents of his acquaintance with Peek.[^[7]]

Thus much was amazing and satisfactory; but when Peek analyzed it all in thought, he found that no sufficient proof of identification had been given. A “power,” able to probe his own mind, might get from it all that was spoken relative to the individual claiming identity; might even know how to imitate that individual’s handwriting. Peek concluded that one must be himself in a spiritual state in order to identify a spirit. The so-called “communications” he found, for the most part, monotonous. They were, some of them, above Corinna’s capacity, but not above his own. Erroneous answers were not unfrequently given, especially in reply to questions upon matters of worldly concern. He was repeatedly told of places where he could find silver and gold, and never truly.

He concluded that to surrender one’s faith implicitly to the word of a spirit out of the flesh, either on moral or on secular questions, was about as unwise as it would be to give one’s self up to the control of a spirit in the flesh,—a mere mortal like himself. He was satisfied by his experience that it was not in the power of spirits to impair his own freedom of will and independence of thought, so long as he exercised them manfully. And this assurance was to his mind not only a guaranty of his own spiritual relationship, but it pointed to a supreme, omniscient Spirit, the gracious Father of all. If the words that came through Corinna had proved, in every instance, infallible, what would Peek have become but a passive, unreasoning recipient, as sluggish in thought as Corinna herself!

We have said that the “communications” were generally on a level with Peek’s own mind. There was once an exception. Said a very learned spirit (learned, as to him it seemed) one night, speaking through Corinna:—

“Attend, even if you do not understand all that I may utter. The great purpose of creation is to exercise and develop independent, individual thought, and through that, a will in harmony with the Supreme Wisdom. Men are subjected to the discipline of the earth-sphere, not to be happy there, but to qualify themselves for happiness,—to deserve happiness.

“What would all created wonders be without thought to appreciate and admire them? Study is worship. Admiration is worship. Of what account would be the starry heavens, if there were not mind to study and to wonder at creation, and thus to fit itself for adoration of the Creator?

“My friend Lessing, when he was on your earth, once said, that, if God would give him truth, he would decline the gift, and prefer the labor of seeking it for himself. But most men are mentally so inert, they would rather believe than examine; and so they flatter themselves that their loose, unreasoning acquiescence is a saving belief. Pernicious error! All the mistakes and transgressions of men arise either from feeble, imperfect thinking, or from not thinking at all.

“The heart is much,—is principal; but men must not hope to rise until they do their own thinking. They cannot think by proxy. They must exercise the mind on all that pertains to their moral and mental growth. You may perhaps sometimes wish that you too, like this poor, torpid, parasitical creature, Corinna, might be a medium for outside spirits to influence and speak through. But beware! You know not what you wish. Learn to prize your individuality. The wisdom Corinna may utter does not become hers by appropriation. In her mind it falls on barren soil.

“We all are more or less mediums; but the innocent man is he who resists and overcomes temptation, not he who never felt its power; and the wise man is he who, at once recipient and repellent, seeks to appropriate and assimilate with his being whatever of good he can get from all the instrumentalities of nature, divine and human, angelic and demoniac.”

Peek derived an indefinable but awakening impression from these words, and asked, “Is the Bible true?”

The reply was: “It is true only to him who construes it aright. If you find in it the justification of American slavery, then to you it is not true. All the theologies which would impose, as essentials of faith, speculative dogmas or historical declarations which do not pertain to the practice of the highest human morality and goodness, as taught in the words and the example of Christ, are, in this respect at least, irreverent, mischievous, and untrue.”

“How do I know,” asked Peek, “that you are not a devil?”

“I am aware of no way,” was the reply, “by which, in your present state, you can know absolutely that I am not a devil,—even Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Each man’s measure of truth must be the reason God has given him. But of this you may rest assured: it is a great point gained to be able to believe really even in a devil. Given a devil, you will one day work yourself so far into the light as to believe in an angel.”

“Is there a God?” asked the slave.

“God is,” said the spirit, “and says to thee, as once to Pascal, ‘Be consoled! Thou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst not found me.’”

These were almost the only words Peek ever received through Corinna that struck him by their superiority to what he himself could have imagined; and he was impressed by them accordingly. Though they were above his comprehension at the moment, he thought he might grow up to them, and he caused them to be repeated slowly while he wrote them down.

Corinna died, and Peek kept on thinking.

What rapture in thought now! What a new meaning in life! What a new universe for the heart was there in love! Henceforth the burden and the mystery of “all this unintelligible world” was lightened if not dissolved; for death was but the step to a higher plane of life. The old, trite emblem of the chrysalis was no mere barren fancy. Continuous life was now to his mind a certainty; arrived at, too, by the deductions of experience, sense, and reason, as well as intimated by the eager thirst of the heart.

The process by which he made the phenomena he had witnessed conduce to this conclusion was briefly this. An invisible, intelligent force had lifted heavy articles before his eyes, played on musical instruments, written sentences, and spoken words. This force claimed to be a human spirit in a human form, of tissues too fine to be visible to our grosser senses. It could pass, like heat and electricity, through what might seem material impediments. It had a plastic power to reincarnate itself at will, and imitate human forms and colors, under certain circumstances, and it gave partial proof of this by showing a hand, an arm, or a foot undistinguishable from one of flesh and blood. On one occasion the human form entire had been displayed, been touched, and had then dissolved into invisibility and intangibility before him.

Now he must either take the word of this intelligent “force,” that it was an independent spiritual entity, or he must account for its acts by some other supposition. The “force,” in its communications to his mind, had shown it was not infallible; it had erred in some of its predictions, although in others it had been wonderfully correct. If its explanation of itself was untrue,—if no outside intelligent force were operating,—the other supposition was, that the phenomena were a proceeding either from himself, the spectator, or from Corinna. And here, without knowing it, Peek found himself speculating on the theory of Count Gasparin,[^[8]] who has had the candor to brave the laugh of modern science (a very different thing from scientia) by recounting as facts what Professor Faraday and our Cambridge savans denounce as impositions or delusions.

Peek was therefore reduced to these two explanations: either the “force” was a spirit (call it, if you please, an outside power), as it claimed to be, or it was a faculty unconsciously exerted by the mortals present. In either case, it supplied an assurance of spirit and immortality; for it might fairly be presumed that such wonderful powers would not be wrapt up in the human organism except for a purpose; and that purpose, what could it be but the future development of those powers under suitable conditions? So either of Peek’s hypotheses led to the same precious and ineffable conviction of continuous life,—of the soul’s immortality!

On one occasion a Northern Professor, who had given his days to the positive sciences, and who believed in matter and motion, and nothing else, passed a week, while visiting the South for his health, with his old friend and classmate, Mr. Barnwell; and Peek overheard the following conversation.

“How do you get rid of all this testimony on the subject?” asked Mr. Barnwell.

“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the Professor. “That a poor benighted nigger should believe this trash isn’t surprising. That poets, like Willis and Mrs. Browning, should give in to it may be tolerated, for they are privileged. In them the imaginative faculty is irregularly developed. But that sane and intelligent white men like Edmonds, and Tallmadge, and Bowditch, and Brownson, and Bishop Clark of Rhode Island, and Howitt, and Chambers, and Coleman, and Dr. Gray, and Wilkinson, and Mountford, and Robert Dale Owen, should gravely swallow these idiotic stories, is lamentable indeed. The spectacle becomes humiliating, and I sigh, ‘Poor human nature!’”

“But Peek is far from being a benighted nigger,” replied Barnwell; “he can read and write as well as you can; he is the best shot in the county; he is a good mechanic; for a time he waited on one of the great jugglers at the St. Charles; he can explain or cleverly imitate all the tricks of all the conjurers; he is not a man to be humbugged, especially by a poor sick girl in a hut with no cellar, no apparatus, no rooms where any coadjutor could hide. It has been the greatest puzzle of my life to know how to explain Peek’s stories.”

“Half that is extraordinary in them,” said the Professor, “is probably a lie, and the other half is delusion. Not one man in fifty is competent to test such occurrences. Men’s senses have not been scientifically trained; their love of the marvellous blinds them to the simplest solutions of a mystery. How to observe is one of the most difficult of arts; and one must undergo rigid scientific culture in the practical branches before he can observe properly.”

“Under your theory, Professor, ninety-eight men out of every hundred ought to be excluded as witnesses from our courts of justice. It strikes me that a fellow like Peek—with his senses always in good working trim, who never misses his aim, who can hit a mark by moonlight at forty paces, and shoot a bird on the wing in bright noonday, who can detect a tread or a flutter of wings when to your ear all is silence—is as competent to see straight and judge of sights and sounds as any blinkard from a college, even though he wear spectacles and call himself professor of mathematics. Remember, Peek is not a superstitious nigger. He will feel personally obliged to any ghost who will show himself. He shrinks from no haunted room, no solitude, no darkness.”

“Truly, Horace, you speak as if you half believed these absurdities.”

“No,—I wish I could. Peek once said to me, that he wouldn’t have believed these things on my testimony, and couldn’t expect me to believe them on his.”

“Our business,” said the Professor, “is with the life before us. I agree with Comte, that we ought to confine ourselves to positive, demonstrable facts; with Humboldt, that ‘there is not much to boast of after our dissolution,’ and that ‘the blue regions on the other side of the grave’[^[9]] are probably a poet’s dream. Let us not trouble ourselves about the inexplicable or the uncertain.”

“But you do not consider, Professor, that Peek’s facts are positive to his experience. Besides, to say, with Comte, that a fact is inexplicable, and that we can’t go beyond it, is not to demonstrate that the fact has its cause in itself; it is merely to confess the mystery of a cause unknown.”[^[10]]

“Well, Horace, I’m sleepy, and must retire. I’ll find an opportunity to cross-examine Peek before I go, and you shall see how he will contradict and stultify himself.”

Before the opportunity was found, the Professor had passed on. Less modest than Rabelais was in his last moments, he did not condescend to say, “I go to inquire into a great possibility.” The physician in attendance, who was a young man, and had recently “experienced religion,” asked the Professor if he had found the Lord Jesus. To which the Professor, making a wry face, replied, “Jargon!” “Have you no regard for your soul?” asked the well-meaning doctor. “Can you prove to me, young man, that I have a soul?” returned the Professor, trying to raise himself on his pillow, in an argumentative posture. “Don’t you believe in a future state?” asked the doctor. “I believe what can be proved,” said the Professor; “and there are two things, and only two, that can be proved,—though Berkeley thinks we can’t prove even those,—matter and motion.[^[11]] All phenomena are reducible to matter and motion,—matter and motion,—matter and mo-o-o—”

The effort was too much for the moribund Professor. He did not complete the utterance of his formula, at least on this side of the great curtain. Probably when he awoke in the next life, conscious of his identity, he felt very much in the mood of that other man of science, who, on being told that the microscope would confute an elaborate theory he had raised, refused to look through the impertinent instrument.

For several months Peek retained his place under Braxton. But even overseers, whip in hand, cannot frighten off Death. Braxton disappeared through the common portal. His successor, Hawks, had a theory that the true mode of managing niggers was to overawe them by extreme severity at the start, and then taper off into clemency. He had been lord of the lash a week or two, when he was asked by Mr. Barnwell how he got along with Peek.

“Capitally!” replied Hawks. “I took care to put him through his paces at our first meeting,—took the starch right out of him. He’d score his own mother now if I told him to. He’s a thorough nigger—is Peek. A nigger must fear a white man before he can like him. Peek would go through fire and water for me now. He has behaved so well, I have given him a pass to visit his sister at Carter’s.”

“I never knew before that Peek had a sister,” said Barnwell.

Peek did not come back from that visit.

CHAPTER VII.
AN UNCONSCIOUS HEIRESS.

“She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life, my fate;

The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near’;

And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late’;

The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear’;

And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’”

Tennyson.

We left Peek (known in New York as Jacobs) in the little closet opening from the apartment where Charlton sat at his papers. The knock at the outer door was succeeded by the entrance of a person of rather imposing presence.

Mr. Albert Pompilard stood upwards of six feet in his polished shoes and variegated silk stockings. He was bulky, and could not conceal, by any art of dress, an incipient paunch. But whether he was a youth of twenty-five or a man of fifty it was very difficult to judge on a hasty inspection. He was in reality sixty-nine. He affected an extravagantly juvenile and jaunty style of dress, and was never twenty-four hours behind the extreme fashions of Young America.

On this occasion Mr. Pompilard was dressed in a light-colored sack or pea-jacket, with gaping pockets and enormous buttons, the cloth being a sort of shaggy, woollen stuff, coarse enough for a mat. His pantaloons and vest were of the same astounding fabric. He wore a new black hat, just ironed and brushed by Leary; a neckerchief of a striped red-and-black silk, loosely tied; immaculate linen; and a diamond on his little finger. A thick gold chain passed round his neck, and entered his vest pocket. He swung a gold-headed switch, and was followed by a little terrier dog of a breed new to Broadway.

Mr. Pompilard’s complexion was somewhat florid, and presented few marks of age. He wore his own teeth, which were still sound and white, and his own hair, including whiskers, although the hue was rather too black to be natural.

“I believe I have the honor of addressing Mr. Charlton,” said Pompilard, with the air of one who is graciously bestowing a condescension.

“That’s my name, sir. What’s your business?” replied Charlton, in the curt, dry manner of one who gives his information grudgingly.

“My name, sir, is Pompilard. You may not be aware that there is a sort of family connection between us.”

“Ah! yes; I remember,” said Charlton, looking inquiringly at his visitor, but not asking him to sit down.

Pompilard returned his gaze, as if waiting for something; then, seeing that nothing came, he lifted a chair, replaced it with emphasis on the floor, and sat down. If it was a rebuke, Charlton did not take it, though the terrier seemed to comprehend it fully, for he began to bark, and made a reconnoissance of Charlton’s legs that plainly meant mischief.

Pompilard refreshed himself for a moment with the lawyer’s alarm, then ordered Grip to lie down under the table, which he did with a quavering whine of expostulation.

“I see,” said Pompilard, “you almost forget the precise nature of the connection to which I allude. Let me explain: the lady who has the honor to be your wife is the step-mother, I believe, of Mr. Henry Berwick.”

“Both the step-mother and aunt,” interposed Charlton, somewhat mollified by the language of his visitor.

“Yes, she was half-sister to his own mother,” resumed Pompilard. “Well, the wife of Mr. Henry Berwick was Miss Aylesford of Chicago, and is the niece of my present wife.”

“I understand all that,” said Charlton; and then, as the thought occurred to him that he might make the connection useful, he rose, and, offering his hand, said, “I am happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Pompilard.” That gentleman rose and exchanged salutations; and Grip, under the table, gave a smothered howl, subsiding into a whine, as if he felt personally aggrieved by the concession, and would like to put his teeth in the calf of a certain leg.

“My object in calling,” said Pompilard, “is merely to inquire if you can give me the present address of Mrs. Henry Berwick. My wife wishes to communicate with her.”

Charlton generally either evaded a direct question or answered it by a lie. He never received a request for information, even in regard to the time of day, that he did not cast about in his mind to see how he could gain by the withholding or profit by the giving. He took it for granted that every man was trying to get the advantage of him; and he resolved to take the initiative in that game. And so, to Pompilard’s inquiry, Charlton replied:

“I really cannot say whether Mr. Berwick is in the country or not. The last I heard of him he was in Paris.”

“Then your intelligence of him is not so late as mine. He arrived in Boston some days since, but left immediately for the West by the way of Albany. I thought your wife might be in communication with him.”