The Doctor's Daughter Part 14

Hortense had not volunteered to open the subject with me, neither had her mother, though both must have known full well that my suspicions were aroused. I did not therefore intend to ask a confidence which could not be given willingly and freely. It was virtually nothing to me what this man did or did not, and as his experience had probably a painful halo about it, I was not eager to refer to it in the remotest possible way.

Before he left with Madame de Beaumont he came into the sitting-room where I was standing, looking out of the window, to bid me good-bye.

He wore a traveling costume of a becoming gray color, and held his hat in one gloved hand. I heard him come in, but purposely did not look around. As he was generally engaged with business of his own when he went in or out of a room, I was not supposed to know that, on this particular occasion, he was making a flattering exception for me. I went on biting my lips abstractedly, with my head leaning against the cas.e.m.e.nt. He cleared his throat emphatically, but what was that to me?

"Ahem" was not enough like either of my names, to justify my looking around.

He walked to the mantel-piece and inspected its familiar furnishings for a moment, making what seemed to me unnecessary noise and fuss as he did so. I would have given worlds for a pair of keen eyes at the back of my head during this artful performance, but as no such abnormal desire could be favored, I had to be satisfied with my conjectures and suppositions about his motives, and the various expressions that were chasing one another over his face as he went through this programme of failures.

At last, having spent his every indirect effort to attract my absorbed attention, he took a book from the table, and placing it deliberately under his arm, as if it were one of the many things that brought him into the room, he strode quietly towards me, saying in a very non-committal and yet courteous tone.

"I shall say goodbye, Miss Hampden, I hope you will take every care, of yourselves, and that we shall find you well on our return."

"Thank you," I answered, very politely, "there will be no fear of me.

Good bye."

He took the tips of my three longest fingers, my thumb and little finger not having been ordained by nature to meet the cordial grasp of men of this stamp, and having repeated his good-bye, he stalked out of the room in conscious dignity and grandeur.

I made a mocking face, I know I did, when his back was turned. I hated him for not taking more notice of me than this. I did not want any violent attentions or silly love-making from him. He need not think I was a frivolous heart-hunter, for I was not. If I had been a man, he would have discussed politics or science or newspaper topics with me long before this. How did he know I could not match him in these being a woman? He was one of those wonderful erudites, I supposed, who think that a girl's conversational power lies rigidly between dry goods and sentiment. Poor things! What a heresy they foster? But what need I care? He was a glum, unsociable recluse anyway, may be at a loss for a second idea to keep his mind busy. He was certainly not worth worrying about, so I gathered up my needle-work that rested on the window-sill, and with a deliberate sullenness went in search of Hortense.

She had fallen asleep on the lounge in her bedroom, and the old nurse, having closed the shutters and drawn the curtains to keep out the afternoon light, was seated in the adjoining room, busily knitting a stocking.

Free, therefore, to dispose of myself as I wished for the next hour, I put on my things and went to stroll about the busy streets of the city.

Avoiding the fine, open thoroughfares, where business and pleasure were airing themselves, I leisurely turned down a gloomy by-way which was lined on either side by the ma.s.sive walls and rear wings of huge, dismal, commercial establishments. Not a soul was visible anywhere, it was long and narrow and dirty, with deep ruts in the mud that lay in a thick covering over the road. It was intercepted, some distance down, by another street much worse to look at, and a little farther on, the woeful panorama became still more awful and repulsive. A little pa.s.sage which seemed to have strayed away from all connection with human decency or sympathy ran to the left. It was so very narrow that though the surrounding buildings straggled up to only an ordinary height, the daylight scarcely penetrated it. And indeed it is to be wondered whether a bright sunlight would not but bring out more clearly than ever the appalling features of the place. Could gold and silver sunbeams hope to beautify the heaps of refuse and rubbish that were piled up here and there at intervals against some staggering fence? Could a flood of sunlight improve the dingy house-fronts that looked drearily out upon this cheerless prospect, or lend a charm to the hardened faces of those that peered through dirty window-panes, or who stood idly in some rickety doorway?

The spectacle was indeed heart-stirring.

"Why shines the sun except that he Makes gloomy nooks for grief to hide? And pensive shades for melancholy When all the earth is bright beside?"

The words seemed written on the dingy house-tops before me, and borne on the gusty breeze that wafted noxious odors far and wide. My heart turned sick, and yet this was what I had come out to see. I could not have gone away from a lively city like this, where towers and steeples of lofty and majestic buildings reared themselves in proud beauty towards heaven, without having also looked on the picture's gloomy side. Where so much wealth and fashion and finery dazzled the casual eye, there must, said I, be also 'poverty, hunger and dirt,' and were my words not fully verified now?

I have been warned more than once of the danger of going unattended along these haunts of misery and vice, but whether or not it is because my motive is one of pure philanthropy, and my sentiments exclusively sympathetic I do not know, I have, however, escaped up to this without interference from the lowly inhabitants of these obscure corners, and can vouch for the latent gallantry of many a ragged hero, who restored a fallen umbrella or parcel with as much courtesy as his brother clad in broadcloth ever showed me.

That human mind which feasts exclusively upon the dainty morsels of life is only half educated, though there are grand fragments of knowledge and experience to be gathered among the haunts of high art, and where stand the immortal monuments of power and fame, though the heart may swell with a just enthusiasm at sight of the marvels which have risen out of gold piles, the coffers of nations or individuals, I hold that all the majesty of the best-spent wealth has not power to awaken such a depth of feeling in the human breast as one of these tottering huts with its mouldy walls and mud-spattered window-panes, the "Home Sweet Home" of flesh and blood as real and as sensitive as our pampered own.

To think that in the world's great capitals there is squalor which could never compare with what my eyes then beheld! Think of Murray Hill and the Alaska District, Fell's Point, or the Basin, and what a sea of human wrecks we contemplate in a fraction of America's continent alone. And again, think of the waste of wealth the wide world over. Think how vice is wined and dined, and clad in the finest of fabrics, while honest humanity, in helpless hunger, cries out to ears that are deaf and hearts that have turned to stone. Oh, well may it be said that the rich man's chances of heaven are as those of the camel going through the eye of a needle, if the recording angel pencils down the use and abuse of every dangerous penny that might have been well spent, and was not.

With such reflections as these I turned my steps slowly back through the dingy by-ways.

The afternoon was waning, and the hour was near when daily toil would be suspended, and the workers would repair to these their miserable homes. I had met a few already with their picks and shovels on their ragged shoulders, and had stood to see them vanish under these crooked doorways where little children lingered waiting and watching for their cheerless coming. I saw some others lay down the instruments of their honest labor outside the corner entrance of a large but smoky row of wooden tenements that skirted one gloomy street. A doorway cut through the sharp angles of the corner of the building, allowed a small canopy to project in a triangular peak over two dirty battered steps that led into a dimly-lit room on the ground floor. Suspended from the point of the canopy was a lamp of a dull red color, which with rain spatterings and droppings, and a long-standing acc.u.mulation of cobwebs and dust had grown barely translucent, and must have emitted but a sickly light at night-fall. A worn and ragged rope-mat lay on the second step, and across the upper half of the dilapidated door (which was of gla.s.s) a faded screen was drawn that kept the inner room secure from the curious gaze of pa.s.sers-by.

Those who had been born and brought up under the shadow of this ominous establishment, must have known many a tale of sorrow and woe that owed its origin to that vile ground-floor.

I discovered, on closer scrutiny, that some faded letters across the dirty lamp, intimated to the general public that this was the "Ace of Spades." And in the money-till of the Ace of Spades, doubtless was the price of many a poor man's toil, the bread and meat of his hungry children squandered and sacrificed with a fiendish recklessness.

Within the dingy walls of the Ace of Spades was bartered the domestic happiness of many a home that had been cheerless enough, G.o.d knows, without this extra curse.

I shivered as I pa.s.sed it by, to think that amid such haunts of misery and starvation, a place like this could flourish, growing fat upon the life-blood of famishing humanity, and a pity that is akin to a most contemptuous hatred swelled my breast, when I asked myself: What sort of being presides over this soul-trap? Can it be rational? Can it have a soul? Can it ever understand what even animal sympathy is?

The gold that is stolen from the rich man's coffers has some claim to respectability, over these ill-gotten coins that are so many mouthfuls of bread s.n.a.t.c.hed from the jaws of perishing hunger.

I turned away feeling sick at heart, and directed my vagrant steps towards home. All the pomp and glory of the world's wealth were dimmed and darkened before my eyes by this huge black shadow of penury and suffering, that had darted across my way at that moment. If such thoughts as these could be ever with us, if such vivid reminders of the shallowness and vanity of earth's transient splendors would abide with us constantly, how paltry would our idolized and coveted honors appear, and how much more profitable would our wasted energies become!

But our minds are frivolous, and easily distracted from great pursuits by petty, external circ.u.mstances. We become too readily absorbed in the study of our own selves, and those elements of experience that may yield us pleasure or pain during our sojourn among mortal men. Very often our own instability of purpose annoys and discourages us. Our spirit has desired the accomplishment of one thing, but our contrary flesh has silenced these better demands in gratifying its own caprice.

It takes us a very long time to learn the danger of trusting our fallible natures too far. The man who goes forward to defy temptation, telling himself he will not fall, is running down towards a steep precipice, and has not the power of self-control when he reaches the critical point.

I was faithful to my wholesome meditation while I sauntered back alone through the busy streets. When I raised my eyes to look upon glittering carriages, bearing beauty and ease and comfort along the highway, I said to myself in all sincerity, What will it avail them in the end?

But, gentle reader, if I have found fault with the weakness of human nature, and censured its infidelity to n.o.ble purposes, it is because I have taught myself the realization. Think you, I have stood where my brothers and sisters have fallen? or have been much the better for knowing so well where the straight path of duty lies?

When I entered the house of my friend I left the best part of my new convictions upon the threshold, and bounded up the stairway with as light a step as if life's darkest phases were unheard of mysteries to me.

Hortense was still lying on the lounge, and the curtains were still drawn, but her eyes were wide open, and the rosy warmth of a recent happy slumber lay on each delicate cheek.

I crept softly towards her, lest perhaps I should find her dozing, but her sleep had not left a languid trace behind. She looked up at me with a bright smile, saying,

"Oh, you naughty truant, where have you been?"

"I went for a little walk," I answered, stooping over her and kissing her brow. "I saw you were sleeping, and having nothing to do, I took a fancy to explore the town. Have you been awake long?"

"Oh, yes! for hours!" she said playfully. "I have counted my fingers about a dozen times. I have discovered that that picture between the windows hangs to one side, and the table-cover is longer at the back than in the front. That bottle casts a shadow just like a man's face and--"

"Oh, come!" I broke in, "you are improvising as you go along. You would not look so rosy and good-humored if you had been lying awake all that time. You will not make me believe such ponderous fibs," I added, throwing my hat and parasol wearily on the bed.

"You are quite too cute, Amey," she answered, rising slowly and taking my arm affectionately, "in fact you are a genius my dear," she added in a pompous tone.

"So they all tell me," I retorted quietly, "and yet I feel very much like other people."

"Well, you are not like other people, indeed you are not!" she exclaimed earnestly. "If you were I would never have liked you."

"Don't you like 'other people'?"

"Not generally, some other people I do, but not all _Mon Dieu! non pas tous !_" she added, shaking her head emphatically and looking abstractedly before her.

The current of her thought must have changed suddenly, for she raised her face with a bright expression upon it now and said

"Let us do something--something to keep us alive--What shall it be?"

"We might drink your cod liver oil," I suggested; "it is recommended for that purpose, is it not?"

"How smart you are Miss Hampden!" she exclaimed. "Well, I will leave all that sport to yourself, it has no charm for me, I know," she then cried, interrupting herself, "let us go to your room, and you will show me all your pretty things. I have not seen anything since you came, such a prisoner as I have been."

"I hope you will feel repaid," I said, putting one arm tenderly around her frail waist, and leading her out, "but I have not much to show you, Hortense."

We repaired to my room at the other end of the corridor, and Hortense, seating herself on a pile of pillows on the floor, insisted on being shown all the new jewellery and trinkets that had been bestowed on me when I "came out."

This trivial circ.u.mstance is, I am fully conscious, quite enough to provoke the blandest of smiles from masculine lips.

"Such a paltry distraction for sensible people!" I hear them utter. So be it; we will not dispute the point in our own favor, but we will confess that whether it reflect or not upon the tone and dignity of our leading tastes, there is an undeniable gratification for every woman in the contemplation of another's wardrobe or jewel-box. It is a rest for our eyes that are wearied of gazing upon our own familiar belongings, to search among the novel trinkets of a friend. We like to touch them, to hold them, to try them in our ears, or on our fingers, or to twine them around our wrists, not that we covet them either, for a moment's inspection gratifies us, and we tire of them quickly.