Vassall Morton Part 38

CHAPTER L.

_Fab._ ... Elle est----.

_Sev._ Quoi?

_Fab._ Mariee!

_Sev._ ... . . Ce coup de foudre est grand!--_Polyeucte_.

The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.--_Henry IV_.

Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.--_Oth.e.l.lo_.

Morton walked down Broadway at a rapid pace, entered his hotel, mounted to his room, seated himself, rested his forehead on his hand, and, with fixed eyes and compressed lips, remained in this position for some minutes, motionless as if carved out of oak. Then, rising, he paced the room, buried his face in his hands, and groaned with irrepressible anguish. Suddenly the door was burst open, and an Irish servant, apparently in a great hurry, bolted in, and tossed a card on the table, saying at the same time,--"Gen'lman down stairs wants to see you."

Morton broke into a rage, to hide the traces of a different pa.s.sion.

"Why do you come in without knocking? Learn better manners, or I shall teach them to you."

"I beg pardon, sir," said the servant, reduced at once to the depth of obsequiousness, "there's a gentleman, sir--an officer, sir,--would like to see you, sir."

"An officer!--I don't know any officers. There's some mistake."

"He _said_ Mr. Morton, sir. This is his card, sir."

Morton looked at the card, and read the name of his cla.s.smate Rosny.

"Very well. Ask the gentleman to come up.--No,--here,"--as the servant was retreating along the pa.s.sage,--"where is he?"

"In the reading room, sir."

"Tell him I will come down in a moment."

"Yes, sir, I will, sir."

Morton adjusted his dress, strove to banish from his features all traces of the emotion which had just overwhelmed him, went down stairs, and met Rosny with an air of as much cordiality as if there were nothing in his mind but the pleasure of seeing an old friend.

Rosny, his first welcome over, surveyed him from head to foot.

"A good deal changed! Thinner,--darker complexioned, decidedly older.

And yet you've weathered it well. It's a thing that I could never stand,--to be boxed up in four stone walls. I would throttle the jailer first, and then knock my brains out against the stones."

"Did Shingles tell you of my being here?"

"Yes, I met him just now, with his eyes bigger than ever. When I saw him making a dive at me across the street, among the omnibuses and carriages, I knew that something extraordinary was to pay."

"_You_ have changed your outward man, too, since I saw you last," said Morton, looking at his companion's costume, which consisted of a gray volunteer uniform.

"Yes, I'm in Uncle Sam's pay now.--Off for Mexico in a day or two;--revel in the Halls of the Montezumas, you know."

"What rank do you hold in the service, d.i.c.k?"

"You'll please to address me as Major Rosny; that is, till good luck and the Mexican bullets make a colonel of me.--I have just dropped in to shake hands with you. I have an appointment to keep in five minutes. You have nothing particular to do to-day--have you?"

"Nothing very particular," said Morton, hesitating.

"Then come and dine with me at Delmonico's at four o'clock. What!--you don't mean to say no, do you?--Is that the way you treat your friends?

Come, I shall be here at four, precisely. _Au revoir._"

And, with his usual celerity of motion, Rosny left the hotel.

Morton slowly remounted to his room, locked the door this time, to keep out intruders, seated himself, and gave himself up to his dark and morbid reveries.

"G.o.d! of what is this world made! Villany thrives, and innocent men are racked with the pangs of h.e.l.l. Poverty starving its victims,--luxury poisoning them;--the pa.s.sions of tigers and the mean vices of reptiles;--treacherous hatred, faithless love;--deceitful hope, vain struggles, endless suffering,--a h.e.l.l of misery and darkness. A fair sunrise, to cheat the eye;--then clouds and storms, blackness and desolation! To look back over the last five years! Then I was basking in sunshine; and out of that brightness what a doom is fallen on me! My life--my guiding star quenched in a vile mora.s.s--lost forever in the arms of this accursed villain!"

Morton rose abruptly, went to the window, and stood looking out with a fixed gaze, wholly unconscious of what was before him. In a moment he turned again, and there was a wild and deadly light in his eyes. A thought had struck him, shooting an electric life through all his veins, and kindling him into a kind of fierce ecstasy. He would go to Vinal, charge him with his perfidy, challenge him, and put him to death. He paced the room in great disorder. A resistless power seemed to have seized upon him, sweeping him forward with the force of a torrent. He clinched his teeth and breathed deeply. The thought of action and of vengeance lighted up his perturbed and gloomy mind as the baleful glare of a conflagration lights up a stormy midnight.

Suddenly he stopped, seated himself again, and remained for some minutes in violent mental conflict. "I thank G.o.d," he murmured at length, apostrophizing his enemy, "that you were not just now within my reach. You have ruined me for this life; you shall not ruin me for the next. Live, and work out your own destruction."

He walked the room again, calmly enough, but in great dejection. "It may be," he thought, "that I am not his only victim. Perhaps the same art that snared me, has, by some infernal machination, entrapped her also. I believe it;--at least, I will try to believe it."

He looked from the window upon the keen and busy crowds pa.s.sing below in unbroken streams, to and from their places of business; and his mind tinged them with its own moody coloring.

"You flight of human vultures! How many of you can show lives governed by any generous purpose or n.o.ble thought? Behind how many of those sharp and sallow features, furrowed with early wrinkles, lies the soul of a man? Desperate chasers after wealth, which, when you have won it, you have never been taught to use;--reckless pleasure hunters, beguiling others that your victims may beguile in turn, and both sink to perdition together. What you win with trickery, you throw away in vanity or debauch. The counting room or the broker's board by day;--brandy, billiards, and the rendezvous by night;--so you go,--a short, quick road;--driving to your doom with a high-pressure power of rapacity, vain glory, and l.u.s.t. Man!--the thistledown of fortune, the shuttlec.o.c.k of pa.s.sion;--whirled on to destruction by the wildfire in his veins, unless by struggling and by prayer he can keep the narrow adamantine track laid down for his career!"

In such distempered reflections he pa.s.sed some time. Even in the darkest pa.s.sages of his imprisonment, his mind had scarcely been shaken so far from its habitual poise. Growing weary at length of solitude, he went out of the house; and, avoiding the great thoroughfares, where he might perhaps meet an acquaintance, he threaded at a rapid pace those meaner streets and lanes, where even the best balanced mind may find abundant food for gloomy meditation.

From time to time, as the image of his enemy rose before him, the desire for vengeance came upon him afresh, like a fever fit. He burned to seize Vinal by the throat, and, at least, force him to unmask his iniquity to the world.

As he was pa.s.sing down Water Street, he recollected, with some vexation, that Rosny had promised to call for him at four o'clock, and retraced his steps to the hotel, where, true to the minute, that punctual adventurer presently appeared.

"Come," said Rosny; "if you are ready, we will walk down street."

They repaired to Delmonico's, where, in a private room, a sumptuous repast had been made ready. Morton, over his companion's claret, was obliged to recount the circ.u.mstances of his imprisonment. Rosny, on his part, gave an outline of his own fortunes since they had last met.

He had been once or twice on the point of very considerable success, but his vaulting ambition had always overleaped itself, and by too great eagerness and grasping at too much, he had repeatedly failed of his prize, only, however, to rally after every reverse with undiminished confidence and spirit. Such, at least, were the conclusions which Morton drew from his companion's somewhat inflated account of himself.

After the cloth had been removed, Rosny bit off the end of a cigar, lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, and then, holding it between his fingers, went on with an harangue which the operations of the waiter had interrupted.

"I tell you, these are great times that we live in. The world has seen nothing like them since the days of Columbus and Cortes. These are the times and this is the country for a man of merit to thrive in. Let him identify himself with the progressive movements of the age,--yes, faith, let him be a leader of them,--and there's nothing too large for him to hope for. Why, sir, the day is not far off, when the stars and stripes will be seen from Hudson's Bay to Panama. Cuba will come next; Brazil next. Lord knows where we shall stop. There's a field for a man of ability and pluck!"

Morton smiled. Rosny relighted his cigar, which, in the fervor of his declamation, he had allowed to go out, gave a vigorous whiff or two, and proceeded.

"We have just lost a splendid chance. I _did_ flatter myself that there was going to be a row with England, on the Oregon question; but it was a flash in the pan; it all ended in smoke."

"Why do you want to fight with John Bull?" asked Morton.

"For two good reasons. In the first place, I hate him. I hate him in right of my French ancestors, and I hate him as a true American democrat. Then, over and above all that, a war with the English would be the making of me. I should rise then. I would be their Hannibal.

But now we have nothing better to do than giving fits to these yellow Mexican vagabonds."

"A shabby employment," said Morton, "and yet I think I should like it."