it was about this time that mr. waddy received the following letter from mr. tootler:
“the shrine, august, 1855.
“dear ira:
“i have leased your store, no. 26 waddy buildings, to godfrey bullion & co., for five years at $5000 a year.
“wool is up and fleecing prospers. i am glad, for mrs. t. asked me the other day what i thought had better be the name of our boy. how would you like to be n. or m. to him—ira if it’s he, irene if it’s a girl? ira and irene—wrath and peace—that’s just the difference between boy and girl.
“but this is not what i am writing about. you know, my dear old boy, that i was never inquisitive about your affairs. still, you can’t suppose that i have not divined something with regard to you and a certain old friend of ours. i don’t ask information now, because i believe if you had the right, you would have given it long ago.
“of course you remember sally bishop. the day[149] after you bought pallid, cecilia went over to see her. (the dear girl is always going to see people that have diseases. i wonder she don’t take the smallpox and yellow fever twice a month the year round.) it seems old bishop had spoken of you, and when my wife arrived, sally, who is dying fast, was very curious to hear more. cecilia was surprised to find that sally knew you, but would have supposed her inquiries only the ordinary interest of a neighbour in the return of a neighbour, except for something very singular in her manner. sally asked if you were as fine-looking as ever. mrs. t., of course, gave the proper reply. were you married? did you look happy? cecilia thought it a strange question—but said that though you were cheerful and very amusing, she found you sometimes very sad—she had observed, in fact, as i had, that there seemed to be some unhappiness at the bottom of your indifferent manner. sally bishop burst into tears, in such a distressed and almost agonised manner that my wife feared she would kill herself with weeping. cecilia prayed her to say what this meant, and she answered in a frightened voice, ‘remorse!’—she would not or could not say anything more, and has always refused to see cecilia since.
“i have good reason to suppose that sally had at one time the most intimate relations with belden. she may have been his mistress. i only much suspect, without being able to fully prove. there was a[150] child, a filius nullius, who died, and it was the feeling of shame at this, though i believe that not five people knew it, that drove her father to hard drinking.
“ira—what cause can she have to feel remorse at the mention of your name? is it possible that she may have been drawn by belden into some devilish plot against you? and against someone else?
“i can make no conjectures, as i do not know facts enough. cecilia, who seems to have her own theory, which she will not impart, will endeavour to learn more from sally.
“meantime, do you watch belden! i know that he went several times to see sally, and each time she was more ill. he is capable of anything, the rotten villain!—as two of my family know, cecilia and myself. is he disposed to be friendly with you now? something may appear in conversation, if you have a clew. watch him!
“yours,
“thomas tootler.”
mr. waddy read this letter very carefully twice. he folded and filed it with a bundle of old yellow letters, written in a hand like his own, with so much difference only as there may be between writing of man and boy-man. he then, with the same extreme deliberation, took from a portmanteau a mahogany[151] box. in it were two eight-inch six-shooters, apparently fired only once or twice for trial. both were loaded in every barrel of the cylinder with conical ball. the caps were perfectly fresh, but mr. waddy changed them all.
while he was thus engaged, major granby came in.
“at your armory, eh?” he asked. “you were always a great amateur in shooting-irons. what’s in the wind now? you look like an executioner. what do you intend to slay—beast, man, or devil?”
“if i shoot, it will be to slay all three in one,” said waddy gravely.
he had a manner of intense and concentrated wrath, quite terrible to see. the ira of the man’s nature was dominant.
granby understood that this meant mischief.
“do you want me?” he asked, quick but quiet.
“not yet,” replied his friend; “perhaps not at all. i don’t like to talk of shooting until the time comes to do it. aiming too long makes the hand tremble. you can understand, granby, that the world becomes a small and narrow place to walk in when we meet an enemy deadly and damnable. now, without nourishing any ill-feeling, i begin to half perceive that there may be a person whose life and mine are inconsistent. you said i looked like an executioner—it may be that i shall be appointed executioner of such a person.”
[152]“i know you too well,” said granby, “to suppose you capable of any petty revenge—this is grave, of course.”
“it is grave. personal revenge is necessary for the protection of society. there is crime that laws take no notice of. public opinion—public scorn—is never quite reliable. nor does public opinion protect the innocent ignorant. there may be such an absolutely dastard villain that, for the safety and decency and habitableness of the globe, he must die—and it is fortunate for society when he outrages anyone to the point of deadly vengeance.”
“do you begin to see any light on the part of your life that we have talked over by so many campfires? fifteen years is long to wait.”
“no years are lost while a man is learning patience. i remember that it took thirty years of my life to teach me to regard my moral and mental tremors and stumbles and falls with the same unconcern that in my fifteenth year i did my childish physical weaknesses. i suppose that one hour of actual happiness now, which i am certainly not likely to have, would explain my dark fifteen years. patience!”
“you expect to win happiness by killing your man, eh?” questioned granby.
“no; if i kill him, it will merely be from a quickened sense of duty. don’t think i’m going to[153] lie in ambush like a thug. i wait information and entertain a purpose.”
here, sir comeguys knocked at the door. they had an appointment for a sailing party.
as they passed the parlour, belden was sitting with mrs. budlong. it was as much contact as was possible in public, and some women allow liberal possibilities.
“how much that belden looks like your friend dunstan,” said granby. “no compliment to dunstan, who is just the type american, chivalrous, half-alligator, not without a touch of the non-snapping but tenderly billing and cooing turtle. a graceful union of valentine and orson. he is the finest fellow i have seen and his giant friend, paulding, is made of the same porcelain in bigger mold. they seem to have been everywhere and seen and done everything, except what gentlemen should not do. you’ll do well, ambient, to model after them for your yankee life.”
“doosed fine fellows,” said ambient, “and dunstan has told me lots about buffalo hunting. this fellow may look a little like harwy dunstan—but he is older, seedier, and hawder. harwy looks as fresh as adam before the fall. if he was not such an out-and-outer and my fwiend, i should be savage at him for cutting me out with diana. she seemed to like him, by george!—fwom the start.”
“i thought it was miss clara,” said ira, “and[154] that granby would be gouging the young hero. paulding seems to me more devoted to diana.”
“do you know,” said granby, “to pass from bipeds to quadrupeds—that mr. belden is trying to make up a race with that wide-travelling horse of his? i heard him phrase it the other day that he could ‘wipe out’ pallid.”
“if he should offer a bet on that, i wish you would take it—for me, you understand—to any amount,” said ira. “his horse is a singed cat, but pallid don’t need any fire singeing him to make him go. i didn’t think he could go as he does, but he is working into it every day.”
“belden won’t stand a very large bet. he has been subscribing, as they call it, to the frenchman lately. are both those men lovers of your fat friend’s wife? what villains some women are! bless them!” said granby. “didn’t you tell me, ambient, that you had seen that frenchman somewhere?”
“i’m looking at him every day,” replied sir com. “i lost a thousand pounds to some fellows in pawis two years ago. i was gween then—a pwecious sight gweener than i am now. those fellows showed me about pawis, and all i know of the money is that i lost the thousand one night at what they call a pwivate hell. i was vewy dwunk at the time, i’m ashamed to say, and have no doubt they plucked me. i’m almost suah that this fwenchman is one of the[155] same chaps. he’s diffewently got up, but if i can spot him (as skewwett says) i shall pound him more or less—more, i think.”
“do so, o six-feet nemesis! and you will take the house down. if you will mill the gaul and waddy beat that contemptible fellow in the race—io triumphe! which means i not only owe but will pay a triumphal supper.”
with talk like this, the gentlemen arrived at the wharf. why the boat they embarked in should be called a “cat,” they could not discover. a cat is fond of fish, as the poet hath it——
“what female heart can gold despise?
what cat’s averse to fish?”
newport female hearts of the summer population despise not, but, several of them at least, do fitly esteem the yellow boys, and newport cats and those who sail in them are not averse to fishing for fish and taking them. so waddy smiled with his friends and thought too much of tootler’s letter. he would watch belden.
meantime, mr. waddy saw the world continuously,—and continuously was lionised. this has its pleasures and its pains. it does not build up lofty structures of respect towards the lioniser. mr. waddy, however, always had the charm of sweet refuge with his cousin, as he called her, clara, fairest of the fair, and her friend, the divine diana.[156] mrs. waddy made immense dinner parties for the returned kinsman, where he met the people one meets in that best world, of which his hostess is so distinguished an ornament, etc.
the particularly distinguished guest of that summer was the hon. and rev. gorgias pithwitch, the epideiktic sophist of the nadir orient. mr. pithwitch was sometimes called “the wizard of the north.” he drew immense houses to his pleasant jugglery. he had, that summer, as always, excellent man! some amiable charity to assist—such as to relieve mahomet’s coffin from the painful uncertainties of its position—or to purchase ashes of roses to fill the cenotaph of mausolus. anything elegiac or pensively sepulchral gave him a cue for epideiktics or showing off.
mr. pithwitch spoke on the character of mahomet at newport at the request of the ladies’ coffin down society. all the people who figure in this history went. people always go to hear things. the boys and girls thought the oration “thweet,” and so it was—just about. mr. belden went with mrs. budlong and whispered her safely through, playing meanwhile familiarly with the fringe of her flounces. how they began to eye each other now, those two! tim budlong escorted miss saccharissa mellasys. a young poet, edmund waller by name, had fallen desperately in love with the soft, startled eyes of saccharissa. she cast upon him sugar-melting[157] glances, and he loved. girls like poets and poets like girls. but edmund, in the intervals of his sonnetteering miss mellasys, had been so unfortunate as to beat tim budlong regularly at billiards. tim was in a porcupine state of mind and resolved to be revenged. he devoted himself to saccharissa and she, well-knowing the cipher of the poet’s fortunes and the chiffre of tim’s, reciprocated the devotions. they first began to appear together in public at pithwitch’s oration. people began to whisper. it was at this period of his life that waller wrote his spasmodic poem, “the beldame, or blasted hope.”
mrs. waddie, as has been said, made a dinner for mr. pithwitch. it was part of her active business in society to have all the lions properly treated, and this was not the first whom mr. waddy had met at her house. mr. pithwitch was, of course, an accomplished, gentlemanly person and very much liked.
“so that is your type orator,” mr. waddy murmured through his cheroot to dunstan, as they walked home together; “the best among a myriad talkers from a platform. i suppose he’s not able to balance himself on a stump, and therefore is not out doing his duty to what you call the cause of freedom in this campaign. is he ardent for that cause? is he ardent for any cause? is he a strong fiery spirit? i trow not. tell me of him.”
whereupon dunstan gave ira that sketch of the[158] character and genius of mr. pithwitch which has just been read. dunstan was quite familiar with the men of this country who had done aught to distinguish themselves, either positively or negatively. the active life he had led had given him an independence of thought not common among scholars. he had already been through some tough political experience in california in the free state struggle and was now, on his re-establishment at home, nominated for congress in his north river district to replace a person who had voted for the nebraska bill. dunstan was wanted at this very time in the county of his nomination, and on the stump everywhere; he was a young man of fervid and passionate nature, quite untrammelled by any law of life other than his own sense of right. if he was needed elsewhere, why did he stay at newport? men will often stay where they should not, longer than they should, for several reasons, but principally for female ones.
ira and dunstan were much together. they talked over society and socialisms at much greater length than can be here repeated. the younger man represented the party of confident hope—the elder did not see life, living, and livers in such brilliant colours. perhaps his sight was jaundiced.
in fact, for all his friends of the best, and for all his lionising, mr. waddy did not cease to be often lonely and often forlorn. was he growing bilious[159] again, or bored, that he found himself uneasy and unhappy, and became again often filled with bitter longing, and was forced to harden his heart with study of a certain old yellow letter? he knew also that it would be well if he looked less at his pistols. it seemed an unworthy thing to be a spy upon mr. belden’s movements. he saw that that gentleman avoided him and he indulged himself in interferences with this artful dodger—not spitefully, but because he wished to observe him, and because he did not love that a man he so thoroughly distrusted should have power anywhere with anyone who might confide.
all this was unhappy, unhealthy business. why return for such life as this? he began to talk with granby of their journeys and their hunts proposed; but granby, who, perforce, had become a stoic, hopeless of any return to his happy happiness, satisfied himself very well where he was. there were snipe and plover to be bagged; the bay still yielded as good fish as had ever been taken. all the ladies who rode were ready to be companioned by so distinguished a cavalier. all who drove thought him an agreeable and decorative object on the front seats of the drivers’ drags. he knew all the catsmen of the docks. at every yachting party he, as well as waddy, was an indispensable. he bathed; he danced; he astonished people at late, sleepy breakfasts by coming in with vast appetite from seven-league[160] walks and presenting this pallid danseuse of the last night’s hop with a wild rosebud from a hill a dozen miles away, or that weary, nightless, ballful dowager with a creamy, new-laid egg. he held his own at the club, at billiards with the three ponies of the summer: with mr. skibbereen, the cool, cautious man and dashing player: with blinders, the dashing man and accurate, mathematical player: with bob o’link, the sentimental man and nonchalant player. poor bob o’link used to hum lugubrious airs, such as the serenade from “trovatore,” and sigh to granby, particularly when he made a scratch, that a man whose destiny it was to be a poet could only attain to billiard-marker results.
“i’m too lucky,” said bob o’, “to lose money. then i might grow poor and work. but i’m like cæsar—wasn’t it cæsar aut nullus?—everything i touch turns to gold.” and then he would make a lunging stroke that the tyros talked of all summer.
“poor fellow!” said granby. “you have reason to be a disappointed man. i’ve known whole families in the same condition. you’ll have to marry a strong-minded woman and learn to run a sewing machine.”
“i don’t see any strong-minded women,” replied link, looking into an empty chalk-cup for chalk.
“there’s miss anthrope,” suggested granby. “besides, peter skerrett says it’s one of the oldest[161] and most respectable families. they came in, did the anthropes, with the creation. marry her.”
“now you mention it, i believe i will,” cried bob; and he did. and miss anthrope, now mrs. o’link, is one of the lights of the woman’s question, while bob o’ is really happy at home in a cradle elysium, and would not give an obolus to be ferried back to the mundane joys of his former life.
major granby was thus, in truth, useful as well as agreeable, and with the feelings of a man who is doing his duty towards himself and incidentally towards others, including his protégé, ambient, he determined to keep mr. waddy at newport.
i should be doing great injustice to granby did i fail to say that, with all his pretence of personal enjoyment, it was mainly on ira’s account that he stayed. granby had not found his friend any less malcontent out of the world than in it. he had seen the same dreariness and utter dissatisfaction overcome him in camps, in desert or forest; under the special and immediate influence of nature, kindly restorer, he had seen him unrestored. not that his friend was morbid, inactive, sulky, dull, selfish—never these. such traits terminate companionship, if not friendly regard. ira was always, when the time came for exertion, alert, bold, a trapper of the most up-to-trap kind. but when the moment’s fleeting purpose was o’ertook, he seemed to care not for changing purpose into result. when[162] need for vivacity ceased, he returned into gloom. his mental hermitage was always ready, where he could become a trappist of the carthusian variety. voyaging over the wild regions of the earth had done him no good. granby saw that his friend had not been happy out of society. the old wrong, whatever it was, rankled—but it was old. might it not become out of date, obsolete? no man can ever forget, no man wishes to forget; but he can console himself. why could not mr. waddy love, or like in the range of loving, someone who might be made a wife of? that would distract him—in one or other sense.
“there is the beautiful clara, his cousin. how happy might a man be in loving her,” thought granby, with a sigh for himself. “that fancy of hers which i have detected for dunstan, will pass away when she sees he is diana’s. of course waddy is charmed with clara. i believe the dog actually presumes upon his kinsmanship and youthful antiquity to the point of a kiss—confound him!”
