Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

"Miss Birch, I presume?"

"Yes, Sir," said Laura, with a curtsy, not quite so large as those that
grow in dancing schools, but, nevertheless, very pretty.

"Well, Miss Birch," said Chip, blandly advancing and taking her nice
little hand, half covered with her working-mitts,--whereat the
aforesaid outposts promptly did their duty,--"or shall I call you Miss
Susan Birch?"

"No, Sir, my name is Laura," said the girl, shrinking a little from a
contact which rather took her by surprise.

"Oh, Laura!--that is better yet," proceeded Chip. "Now, Miss Laura, I
have got myself into a terrible scrape; can you help me out of it?"

"I can't tell, indeed, Sir, till I know what it is," said Laura, with a
bright twinkle of reassurance.

"Well, it is this:--I have mortally offended your brother,--for so I
take him to be by his looks,--and I most sincerely repent it, for he
owns the only team left in Waltham. If I cannot hire that team for an
hour, I lose money enough to buy this house twice over. I want you to
reconcile us. Will you offer my apology and prevail on him to take this
and be my coachman for an hour?" asked Chip,--slipping a gold eagle
into her hand with the most winning expression at his command.

"Oh, yes, Sir,--I'm sure I'll try without that, Sir. He will be glad to
oblige you, when he knows how you need it," she said, offering to return
the coin.

"No, no, Miss Laura, I want to pay him well; and if you succeed,--why,
no money can pay _you_, Miss Laura; I don't profess to be rich enough to
do it."

Here the outposts gave another alarm, and again the hosts of the ruby
uniform were gathering hurriedly in their two muster-fields.

"Why, I will go and try, Sir," said Laura, so much confused by the
novelty and magnitude of the circumstances that she opened the
closet-door before opening the only one that led out of the room.

Fairly out of Chip's presence, she saw instantly and instinctively the
worthlessness of that gold eagle, however genuine, compared with her
sisterly love, in her mission to Frank. So she ran directly to her
mother in the long kitchen, and, planking the American eagle upon the
sloppy little table where the eels were rapidly getting dressed, said,--

"Why, mother, that gentleman wants to hire Frank to carry him to Captain
Grant's, and I'm sure he ought to go without hiring. I'll go right out
and see him."

"That's right, Laury; tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself!"

"Oh, no, mother, I won't tell him any such thing," said Laura,
laughingly, as she hopped and skipped towards the barn.

"Well, Frank, how's Nell Gwyn, this morning?" cheerily cried Laura to
Frank, who seemed to be getting his harness into a worse snarl, in his
grouty attempts to get it out of one.

"The mare's well enough, if she hadn't been insulted."

"Why, that's abominable, Frank! But let me get that snarl out."

"You get it out! You get out yourself, Laule."

"Why, that's all I'm good for, Frank; I always pick out the snarls in
the house, you know, and I should like to try it once in the barn."

"The tarnal old thing's bewitched, I believe," said Frank, allowing his
sister to interfere and quietly untwist and turn right side out the
various parts which he had put wrong by all sorts of torsion. "I'll
teach Boston chaps to know that there are some things they can't have
for money! When Nell and I have agreed to have a good time, we a'n't
goin' to be ordered off nor bought off;--we'll _have_ it."

"So _I_ say, Frank. But suppose _I_ wanted you to give _me_ a ride,
Frank?"

"Why, Laule, you know I would go to the North Pole with you. If Mam
would only let _you_ go to Concord with me, I'd wait till noon for you."

"Well, maybe she will, Frank. She wants you to carry that man to
Captain Grant's bad enough to let me go in the afternoon."

"But I told him I wouldn't carry him,--and, gol darn it, I won't!"

"Of course you won't carry him on his own account, or for the sake of
his money,--but for my sake perhaps you will."

"Well, Sis, perhaps I will. But, mind, before I do, Mam shall promise,
sartin sure, to let you go by half-past twelve o'clock, and not a minit
later."

"Well, I'll see she does; you harness Nell, and get the buggy. The man
says he's sorry he spoke to you so. If he's carried to Captain Grant's
and back, I'll answer for it's being the best for all of us."

She was off to the house like a bird, and the rest of her diplomacy was
too simple and straightforward to need special record.

As the buggy was at the door before the table presented the savory
temptation of fried eels, Chip declined breakfast at present, but
decidedly promised to take it on his return. He dropped in on Captain
Grant, as he was careful to tell that gentleman, having had business in
Waltham that morning, and thinking he might perhaps save him a journey
to town. The ship-owner had just finished the news of the morning
papers, for which he had sent a messenger express to the post-office,
and said, after the cordial salutation which a rough sort of man always
gives in his own house,--

"Well, Mr. Dartmouth, I see the market is as close-reefed as ever.
Maybe you think I will sell at five and three-fourths to-day, but I've
concluded to make a floating warehouse of the 'Orion' for the winter,
rather than do that."

"I don't blame you for that, my friend; but in the present state of
advices, six at two months is the highest mill that will do. If you will
close the 'Orion's' cargo at that, I am your man."

"What I've said, I'll do, Sir, of course," said the tough old salt; "and
since you've taken the trouble to come out here and save my lame toes,
let's nail the bargain with a bottle of my old Madeira,--some of the
ripest this side of the herring-pond, I'll be bound."

"Not a drop, I thank you; for, besides being a teetotaller, Captain, I'm
behind time to-day, and must bid you good-morning."

"Well, Sir, I'm much obliged to you; the bill of sale shall be at your
counting-room directly; the clerk will receive the notes and deliver the
cotton. Good-morning, Sir,--good-morning!"

In truth, Chip had not the slightest objection to wine, as wine, even
had it not been the ripest on this continent; but, like any other
mitigated villain, he did not quite relish taking wine with the man he
was basely cheating. He would much rather partake of Ma'am Birch's fried
eels and coffee, especially if Laura Birch should, peradventure, be the
Hebe of such an ambrosial entertainment. She was not, however,--and the
disappointment considerably overclouded the commercial victory of the
morning. Madam Birch herself did the honors of whatever sort, while Chip
played a fantasia solo at the _table d'hote_. The good lady enlarged
volubly on her destitution of help, and how, if she had any such as
we get now-a-days, they were more plague than profit,--how Laura was
getting ready to go with Frank to the cattle-show, and she herself was
likely to be the only living mortal in the house for the rest of the
day.

"Such a son as you have is a fortune, Madam; and as for the daughter,
she is a gem, a genuine diamond, Madam."

"Ha! ha! do you really think so, Sir?" said the mother, evidently
gratified with the superlativeness of the compliment. "Well, they do say
children are jewels.--but I've found, Sir, they are pretty
troublesome and pretty costly jewels. Mine, as you say, are very good
children,--though Frank is pretty wilful, and Laury is always gettin'
her head above the clouds. Oh, dear! they want a great deal done for
'em,--and the more you do, the more you may do. Frank is bewitched to
sell out and go to Kansas or Californy, or, if he stays here, he must go
to college or be a merchant. And Laury, even she isn't contented; she
wants to be some sort of artist, make statters or picters,--or be a
milliner, at least. So you see I haven't a minute's peace of my life
with 'em."

Of course Chip saw it, and the more's the pity.

"All the better, Madam," said he. "Young America must go ahead. There's
nothing to be had without venturing. If I can ever be of service to
either of your children in forwarding their laudable ambition, I am sure
it will give me the greatest pleasure."

"You are very kind, Sir, but I only wish you could persuade 'em to let
well alone, and at least not try the world till they know more of it."

"Not touch the water till they have learned to swim, eh? That's not
quite so easy, Madam. Never fear; I'll be bound, a boy that can say _No_
like yours is perfectly safe anywhere; and as to Laura, why, Madam, I
never heard of an angel getting into difficulty in the wickedest of
worlds."

"Our old minister, Parson Usher that was, used to say some of the Bible
angels fell,--and I am sure, Sir, the human angels have a worse chance.
They are about the only ones that run any risk at all."

"True, true enough, Ma'am, in one point of view. Too much care cannot be
taken to select the society in which young people are to move. In the
right society, such a girl as Laura would win homage on every side, and
make herself happy by making everybody else so."

"I believe you are right there, Sir," said Mrs. Birch, quite charmed
with such beautiful appreciation of what she felt to be Laura's
excellence; "and I don't wonder sometimes that she should be
discontented with the society she has here, poor girl!"

"When you see the sun begin to shine in the morning, you may be sure
enough it will keep rising all the forenoon," said Chip, with the air
of a great moral philosopher, conscious of having made a decided
impression. And suddenly recollecting how valuable was his time in town,
and that the train would be due in five minutes, he swallowed the last
of his coffee, paid his bill, told the landlady how happy he was to have
made her acquaintance and that of her interesting family, promised he
would never stop in Waltham without calling, and strode away.

The lightning flashed from a good many eyes in the telegraph-office when
the morning members of the associated press inquired why they had not
been served with the latest news,--why, in fact, the only item of any
significance was reserved for the evening papers of the day. Not a press
of all the indignant complainants was ready to admit that it had locked
up its forms and gone to bed before the wires had completed their task.
Very bitter paragraphs testified, the next day, that, in the opinion of
many sage and respectable editors, the wires had been tampered with
by speculators. The poor little half-frozen telegraph-boy was closely
catechized, first by the officers of the telegraph-company, and
afterwards by certain shrewd detectives, but no clue could be got to the
fine gentleman who so generously relieved him of his responsibility, and
no result followed, except his dismissal and the employment of another
lad of more ability and probably less innocence. Captain Grant was the
man most likely to have come to a discovery in the matter, and most
heartily did he curse his luck--his "usual luck"--of giving away a
fortune by selling a cargo a day too soon. But being kept at home
by uncomfortable toes, no suspicious mortal, such as abound in the
lounging-rooms of insurance-offices and other resorts of business-men in
town, happened ingeniously to put his suspicions on a scent, and he did
not come within a league of the thought that Chip Dartmouth could have
had anything to do with the strange and blamable conduct of the wires.
As he made no proclamation of his loss, and no other case of sale
during the abeyance of the news came to the knowledge of the parties
interested, the matter, greatly to Chip's comfort, fell into entire
oblivion before a fortnight had passed. The understanding was, that,
though great mischief might have been done, none had been,--and
that somebody had simply made waste-paper of the little yellow
thunderbolt-scrawls.

For the first fortnight, Chip's nervousness, not to say conscience, very
much abated the pleasure of the many congratulations he received from
his friends, and from hundreds of people whom he had never before known
as his friends. He couldn't get through the streets any day without
meeting the solidest sort of men, with whom he had never exchanged
a word in his life, but whose faces were as familiar as that of the
Old-South clock, who took him by the hand quite warmly, and said,--

"Ah, Mr. Dartmouth, permit me to congratulate you on your good-fortune.
You have well deserved it. I like to see a young man like you make such
a ten-strike, especially when it comes in consequence of careful study
of the market."

The truth was, Chip had been playing a pretty hazardous game in the
cotton-market, chiefly at the risk of other parties; and the slice he
had so feloniously carved out of poor Captain Grant was quite small
compared with the gains he had managed to secure by thus venturing a
little of his own and a great deal of other people's money. The shrewd
minds in the secrets of the business world were not slow to see that
he must have realized at least a hundred thousand units of commercial
omnipotence by the operations of the first week after the rise.
Everybody was glad of an opportunity to speak to such a man. Even Mr.
Hopkins, immensely retired as he was, driving into State Street
about noon one genial day to receive a bank dividend or two, stepped
considerably out of his way, in walking from his low-hung turnout to the
door of one of the banks, in order to catch Mr. Dartmouth's notice, and
say to him, "Good-morning, Mr. Dartmouth! I hope you are very well,
Sir!" Chip recognized the salutation with a superb nod, but without the
accompaniment of any verbal rhetoric which was audible above the buzz of
the pavement; and the retired millionnaire passed on about his business.

"Ah!" thought Chip, "I am getting to be a merchant of the right sort, I
see,--and by the time he is ready to change that low-hung little chariot
for the hard, angular ebony with raven plumes, I shall be ready to step
into the other plump little vehicle, which is really so nice and cozy."

But we must leave Chip to the easy task of ballooning upward in public
estimation, with his well-inflated bank-account. He was, in fact,
reformed by his great commercial success to this extent, that his vices
had become of the most distinguished and unvulgar grade. He was now
courted by the highest artists in iniquity, and had the means of
accomplishing results that none but men who are known to be really rich
can command. He, therefore, now quitted all vulgar associations, and
determined not to outrage any of the virtues, except under varnish,
gilding, and polish that would keep everything perfectly respectable.
Let him trust to that as long as he can.

Don't talk of the solitude of a night in the primeval forests, however
far from the abodes of man;--the squirrels and the partridges may be
asleep then and there, but the katydids are awake, and, with the support
of contralto and barytone tree-toads, manage to keep up a concert which
cannot fail to impress on you a sense of familiar and friendly company.
Don't talk of the loneliness of a deserted and ruinous castle;--the
crickets have not left it, and, if you don't have a merry time with
their shrill jokes, it will be your own fault. But if you would have a
sense of being terribly alone, come from long residence in some quiet
country-home on the border of a quiet country-village, into the
hurry-skurry of a strange city, just after nightfall. Here is an
infinite brick-and-stone forest, stern, angular, almost leafless. Here
is a vast, indistinguishable wilderness of flitting human shapes, not
one of which takes half so much notice of you as a wild bush would.
Speak to one; it answers without the slightest emotion, and passes on.
Your presence is absolutely no more to any soul of them, provided they
have souls, than if you were so much perfectly familiar granite. You
feel, that, with such attention as you receive, such curiosity as you
excite, you must be there hundreds of years to be either recognized or
missed.

Had you been a stranger in Boston, one moist and rather showery
summer-evening, not a year after the events we have narrated, you might
have been recovered from the sense of loneliness we have described by
observing one pretty female figure hurrying along the crowded sidewalk
with a very large and replete satchel, and without any of the
_sang-froid_ which characterizes city pedestrianism. You might have
noticed that this one human being, like yourself, was evidently not at
home. Every glare of gas-light revealed a deeply-flushed face, eyes that
had been weeping and which were now flashing with a wild earnestness
and an altogether preternatural resolution. A gazelle, started by the
huntsman's pack, could not have thrown more piercing glances at every
avenue of escape than this excited girl did at every cross street, and
indeed at everything but the human faces that passed her. All of them
she shunned, with a look that seemed equally anxious to avoid the known
and the unknown. She should seem to have narrowly escaped some peril,
and was carrying with her a secret not to be confided to friend or
stranger, certainly not to either without due consideration. Had you
watched her, as the crowds of people, returning from the various evening
amusements, died away in the streets, you would have seen the deep
color of her cheeks die away also to deadly paleness; had you been
sufficiently clairvoyant, you might have seen how two charming rows of
pearls bit the blanched lips till the runaway blood came back into the
sad gashes, how the tears welled up again, and with them came relief and
fresh strength just as she was about to faint and drop in the street.
Then returned again the throb of indignant resolution, as her mind
recurred to the attempted ruin of her paradise by a disguised foe;
then succeeded shame and dread lest the friends she had left in her
childhood's rural home should know how differently from her fond
anticipations had turned out the first week of her sojourn in the great
city. She was most thoroughly resolved, that, if possible, they should
not know anything of the wreck of her long-cherished hopes till she had
found some foothold for new ones. She felt that she was a Yankee girl in
the metropolis of New England, with wit, skill, and endurance equal to
any employment that ever falls to the lot of Yankee women; but having
given up the only chance which had ever opened to her, how could she
find another? Were she of the other sex, or only disguised in the outer
integuments of it, with the trifling sum in her purse, she would get
lodgings at the next hotel, and seek suitable employment without
suspicion. In the wide wilderness of a city there was not an
acquaintance she did not dread to meet, in her present circumstances,
even worse than death itself, or, what is next door to it, a
police-station.

The streets had emptied themselves of their rushing throngs, the patter
of feet and the murmur of voices had given place to measured individual
marches here and there, the dripping of cave-spouts and the flapping of
awnings could be heard tattling of showers past and future, and the last
organ-grinder had left the ungrateful city to its slumbers, when the
poor girl first became conscious that she had been lugging hither
and thither her entire outfit of wardrobe, valuables, and keepsakes.
Aggravated by fatigue, her indecision as to how she should dispose of
herself was gradually sinking into despair, and the official guardians
of the night, who had doubtless noticed her as she passed and repassed
through their beats, were beginning to make up their official minds,
generally and severally, that the case might by-and-by require their
benevolent interference, when she was startled by a female voice from
behind.

"Arrah, stop there, ye rinaway jade! I know ye by yer big bag, ye big
thafe, that ye are!"

Glad at any voice addressed to her, and gladder at this than if it had
been more familiar or more friendly, our forlorn maiden turned and said,
in the sweetest voice imaginable,--

"Oh, no, my friend, I am not a thief."

"Och, I beg your pardon, honey! I thought sure it was Bridget, that's
jist rin away wid a bagful of her misthress's clo'es and a hape o' mine,
and it's me that's bin all the way down to Pat Mahoney's in North Street
to git him to hunt her up; and the Blessed Mother forgive me, whin I
seen you in the dark, stalin' along like, wi' that bag, I thought it
was herself it was, sure. Och, ye're a swate lass, I see, now; but what
makes ye out this time o' night, dear?"

"Well, I'm too late for the train, you see, and I really don't know what
to do or where to go," said the Yankee girl, putting on the air natural
to such circumstances, with the readiness of her race.

"Och, I see, that's the mailing o' the bag, thin. Poor thing! ye jist
come along wid me. I'll lift the bag for ye, me darlint, an' I'll pit
clane sheets on Bridget's bed, and ye're welcome to slape there as long
as ye like; for the Blessed Mother knows it's powerful tired ye're
lookin', it is. I'm cook for more nor twinty years for the Hopkinses in
Bacon Street, and I can make ye jist as welcome in my quarthers as if it
was nobody but meself that owned it at all at all."

"Oh, my dear woman, I thank you kindly! That bag _was_ beginning to grow
heavy," replied the overjoyed outcast; and presently, with a ready eye
to business, she added, "And since Bridget is gone, who knows but I can
take her place? I came to the city on purpose to find something to do,
and I can do anything that is not dishonest."

"Och! the likes o' ye take her place? Niver a bit of it! Why! I see by
the gas-light ye're a leddy as iver was at all at all; and ye could
niver come in the shoes of sich a thafe as Bridget Maloney, as is gone,
and the Divil catch her!"

"No, no, not in her shoes to steal anything, I hope; but I can do
housework, sweep, make beds, sew, and make myself useful,--as I will
show, if I can have a trial."

"An' ye may well say that's a hape more nor _she_ iver could. But if
it's a thrial ye want, it's me that'll give't ye as soon as ye plase.
I'll answer for ye's to Misthress Millicent,--and that's what I niver
did for Bridget, and it's right glad I am of that. Now niver fear, me
darlint, it's a powerful good place, it is too, to thim as kapes the
right side o' Misthress Millicent; for she's the only daughter, and the
mother is dead and gone, poor soul!"

They were now approaching the opulent mansion over the _cuisine_ of
which our special police-woman had so long had the honor of presiding.
Almost delighted enough with her capture to forget, if not forgive, her
fugitive fellow-servant Bridget, the florid and fat Aunt Peggy Muldoony
hurried along as if the bag were a feather, her words flowing like a
spring flood, and introduced her charge at a postern-door into her own
house, as she called it. This was, in fact, a very comfortable and
somewhat spacious dwelling, which stood almost distinct in the rear of
the mansion in which the Hopkins family proper resided, so that there
should be ample accommodations for servants, and the steam of cooking
could not annoy the grand parlors. Here we might leave the beautiful
waif, so strangely picked up in the dark street, to the working of her
own genius. She had fallen into a place which had control of all the
chamber-work of a modern palace, with ample assistance. Aunt Peggy, her
guardian angel, at once instructed her in the routine of the duties, and
she very soon had occasion to wonder how the care of so many beautiful
flowers, vases, statues, pictures, and objects of splendor and taste,
not to speak of beds that the Queen of Sheba might have envied, could
have been committed to a domestic who could be tempted to run away with
a few hundred dollars' worth of silks and laces. The legal owner himself
could hardly enjoy his well-appointed paradise better than she did, in
keeping every leaf up to its highest beauty. It must require a pretty
strong dose of tyranny to drive her away, she thought.

But tyranny, if it were there, did not show itself. After a number of
serious, but vain attempts, on the part of Miss Millicent, to gratify
her curiosity by unravelling the mystery of her new servant, whose
industry, skill, and taste produced visible and very satisfactory
effects in every part of the mansion, she settled down to the
conclusion, that, finally, a treasure had fallen to her lot which it was
best for her to keep as carefully as possible and make the most of. She
could now smile and assume airs of great condescension when her worthy
female friends complained of careless, incompetent, and unfaithful
domestics, and have the pleasure of being teased in vain to know what
she did to be so well served.

The satisfaction of Miss Millicent at having found and attached to her
service a young woman of such superlative domestic genius and taste, who
seemed to be so thoroughly contented with her situation, was especially
enhanced by the fact, that her own marriage was approaching, an occasion
which any bride of good sense would wish to have free from the annoyance
of slack and untrustworthy Bridgets.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21