Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859

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Greenleaf was so completely absorbed by the danger of losing the last
hold upon Alice, that he forgot his most excusable anger against the
vindictive woman who still lingered, enjoying her victory. He sank into
a chair, buried his face in his hands, and for some time neither looked
up nor replied to her taunts.

"Come, now," said she, "don't take it so hard. Is my handsome
sister-in-law obdurate? Never mind; don't be desolate; other women will
be kind,--for you are just the man to attract sentimental damsels. Cheer
up! you will find a new affinity before night, I haven't a doubt."

Roused at length, Greenleaf stood up before the mocking fiend, so
radiant in her evil smiles, and said,--

"You enemy of all that is good, what brought you here? Keep in your own
sphere, if there is one for you in this world."

"I came to see my sister, as you know. It was a most unexpected pleasure
to meet you. I came to tell her that brother Henry has either run away
or killed himself, it doesn't matter which."

"Pray, follow him. I assure you we shall mourn your absence as bitterly
as you do his."

"Well, good-bye," she said, still laughing in the same terrible tone.
"Better luck next time."

The door closed upon her, and Greenleaf drew a long breath--with a sense
of infinite relief.

"Come," said Easelmann, entering a moment later,--"come, let us go. We
have done quite enough for one day. You wouldn't take my advice, and a
pretty mess you have made of it."

CHAPTER XXXII.

When the remains of John Fletcher were borne to the grave, the memory
of his faults was buried with him. "Poor fellow!" was the general
ejaculation in State Street,--at once his _requiescat_ and epitaph. But
the great wheels of business moved on; Bulls and Bears kept up their
ever-renewing conflicts and their secret machinations; new gladiators
stepped into the ring; new crowds waited the turn of the wheel of
Fortune; and new Fletchers were ready to sacrifice themselves, if need
were, for the Bullions of the exchange. Who believes in the efficacy of
"lessons"? What public execution ever deterred the murderer from his
design? What spectacle of drunkenness ever restrained the youthful
debauchee? What accession, however notable, to the ranks of "the
unfortunate" ever made the fascinated woman pause in her first steps
toward ruin?

No,--human nature remains the same; and the erring ones, predestined to
sin by their own unrestrained passions, wait only for the overmastering
circumstances to yield and fall. When any of these solemn warnings are
held up to the yet callow sinner, what does he propose to do? To stop
and repent? No,--to be a little more careful and not be caught.

Not that precepts and examples are useless. All together go to make up
the moral government of the world,--pervading like the atmosphere, and
like it resting with uniform pressure upon the earth. Crime and folly
will always have their exemplars, but retribution furnishes the
restraining influence that keeps evil down to its average. As locks and
bolts are made for honest men, not for thieves, so the moral law and its
penalties are for those who have never openly sinned.

If Mr. Bullion had been ten times the Shylock he was, he could not have
disregarded the last injunction of Fletcher. The turn in the market
enabled him to make advantageous sales of his stocks, and in less than
a week he resumed payment. The first thing he did was to pay over to
trustees the notes he had given Fletcher, thereby securing the widow at
least a decent support. He also sent Danforth & Co. the ten thousand
dollars for which their clerk had paid such a terrible forfeiture.
After discharging all his obligations, there was still an ample margin
left,--a large fortune, in fact. Mr. Bullion could now retire with
comfort,--could look forward to many years; so he flattered himself.
His will was made, his children provided for; and some unsettled
accounts, not remembered by any save himself and the recording angel,
were adjusted as well as the lapse of time would allow. So he thought of
purchasing a country-house for the next season, and of giving the rest
of his days to the enjoyment of life.

But it was not so to be. A swift and sudden stroke smote him down. In
the dead of night, and alone, he met the angel for whose summons all of
us are waiting, and went his way without a struggle. The morning sun,
as its rays shot in between the blinds, lighted the seamed and careworn
face of an old man, resting as in a serene, dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

Mr. Tonsor found, on consulting the best legal authorities, that he
could not maintain his claim upon the notes he had received of Sandford;
and, rather than subject himself to the expense of a lawsuit in which he
was certain to be beaten, he relinquished them to Monroe, and filed his
claim for the money against Sandford's estate. Ten _per cent._ was the
amount of the dividend he received; the remainder was charged to Profit
and Loss,--Experience being duly credited with the same amount.

* * * * *

It was with the greatest difficulty that the judicious Easelmann
prevented his friend from making a second visit in the evening of the
same day. Greenleaf had come to a full conviction, in his own mind, that
his difference with Alice ought to be settled, and he could not conceive
that it might take time to bring her to the same conclusion. Some people
adapt themselves to circumstances instantly; the aversion of one hour
becomes the delight of the next; but those who are guided by reasoning,
especially where there is a shade of resentment,--who are fortified by
pride of opinion, and by the idea of consistent self-respect,--such
persons are slow to change a settled conviction; the course of feeling
is too powerful and too constant to be arrested and turned backward.
Easelmann thought--and perhaps rightly--that Alice needed only time to
become accustomed to the new view of the case; and he believed that any
precipitation might be fatal to his friend's hopes.

"Give her the opportunity to think about it," he said; "if she loves
you, depend upon it, the wind will change with her. Due east to-day,
according to all you have told me; and the violets won't blossom till
the sun comes out of the sullen gray cloud and the south wind breathes
on them.--The very contact with a lover, you see, makes me poetical."

"But her thoughts may take another direction. Who can tell what
impression that malicious vixen has made upon her?"

"Alice, I fancy, is a sensible young woman; and Miss Sandford, in her
rage, must have shown her hand too freely. To be sure, Alice might
wonder how you could ever have been captivated; but she could not blame
you for getting out of reach of such a Tartar. Besides, the exemplary
widow is your friend, you know, and I'll warrant that she will set the
matter right. Marcia won't trouble you again; such a mischance couldn't
happen twice. You are as safe as the sailor who put his head into the
hole where a cannon-shot had just come through. Lightning doesn't strike
the same tree twice in one shower."

Greenleaf was at length persuaded to wait and let events take their
course. If he remained inactive, however, Easelmann did not; from Mrs.
Sandford he heard daily the progress of affairs, and at length intimated
to his friend that it might be judicious to call again.

Once more Greenleaf was seated in the drawing-room of the
boarding-house. At every distant footstep his heart beat almost audibly;
and when at last the breezy rustle of a woman's robes came in from the
hall, he thought, as many a man has, before and since,--

"She is coming, my life, my fate!"

She entered, not with the welcoming smile he would have liked to see,
nor with the forbidding cloud of sadness which veiled her face a few
days before. But how lovely! Time had given fulness and perfection to
her beauty, while the effect of the trials she had undergone was seen
only in the look of womanly dignity and self-control she had acquired.
It was the freshness of girlhood joined to the grace of maturity.

Nothing is more inscrutable than the working of the human will; argument
does not reach it, nor does persuasion overcome it. It holds out against
reason, against interest, against passion; no sufficient motive can be
found with which to control it. On the other hand, it sometimes stoops
in a way that defies prediction; pride is vanquished or disarmed,
resentment melts away like frost, and the resolution that at first
seemed firm as the everlasting rock proves to be no barrier. Nor is this
uncertainty confined to the sex at whose foibles the satirists have been
wont to let fly their arrows.

Feeling is deeper than thought; and as the earthquake lifts the mountain
with all the weight of its rocky strata and of the piled-up edifices
that crown its top, so there comes a time when the emotional nature
rises up and overthrows the carefully wrought structures of the
intellect, and asserts its original and supreme mastery over the soul of
man.

Alice felt sure that every trace of her love for Greenleaf had
disappeared. She looked in her heart and saw there only the memory of
neglect and unfaithfulness. If love existed, it was as fire lurks in
ashes, unrecognized. She had conversed freely with Mrs. Sandford, and
learned that Greenleaf's version of the story was the correct one. Still
the original treason remained without apology; and she had determined
to express her regret for what had happened, to assure him of her
friendship, but to forbid any hope of reestablishing their former
relations. With this intention, she bade him good-morning and quietly
took a seat.

"I did not think that so many days would pass before I should see you;
but now that you have had time to reflect, I hope your feelings have
softened towards me."

"You mistake, if you suppose that giving me time for reflection has
produced any such change."

"Then, pray, forget the past altogether."

"I cannot forget."

"If your memory must be busy, pray, go back to the pleasanter days of
our acquaintance."

"I remember the days you speak of; I shall never forget them; but it is
a happiness that is dead and buried."

"Love will make it live again."

"It is hard to recognize love when it comes like Lazarus from the tomb."

"Still we don't read that the friends of Lazarus were displeased with
his return and wished him back to his grave-clothes."

"You can turn the comparison as you choose; but it is not necessary that
an illustration should be perfect in every respect; if one catches a
gleam of resemblance, it is enough."

The perfect command of her faculties, and the deliberate way in which
she sustained her part in the conversation, thus far, were sufficiently
disheartening to Greenleaf. He longed to change the tone, but feared to
lose all by any rapid advance. He answered deprecatingly,--"But all this
intellectual fencing, my dear Alice, is useless. Love is not a spark
to be struck out by the collision of arguments; I shall in vain try to
_reason_ you into affection for me. I have already said all I can say by
way of apology for what I have done. If there yet lingers any particle
of regard for me in your heart, I would fain revive it. If it is your
pride that withstands me, I pray you consider whether it is well to make
us both unhappy in order to maintain so poor a triumph. I am already
conquered, and throw myself upon your generosity."

"You would put me in the wrong, then, and ascribe my refusal to an
ungenerous pride? Is it generous in you to do so? Have you the right to
place such a construction upon my conduct? I appeal to you in return.
Remember, it is you who are responsible for this painful interview. I
never sought you to cover you with reproaches. You force me to say what
I would gladly leave in silence."

"Forgive me, Alice, if I wrong you; but my heart clings to you and will
not be repulsed. I would fain believe, that, beneath all your natural
resentment, there yet survives some portion of the love you once bore
to me. If it were the first time I had ever approached you, a sense of
delicacy, to say nothing of my own self-respect, would have prevented
my importuning you in this way. But my fault has given me warrant to
be bold, and if you finally cast me off,--but that is what I won't
anticipate; I can't give you up. You once loved me,--and am I not the
same?"

"No, not the same; or, rather, you have proved to be not what I
thought."

"You persist in fixing your attention upon one dark spot. Do you
remember this miniature? It has never been out of my bosom, and there
has never been but one day in which I might not loyally carry it there.
At that time, when I opened it, your eyes looked out at me with a tender
reproach, and I was instantly recalled to myself. It was only the
illusion of a moment, through which I had passed. Whatever may happen, I
have one consolation: this dear image will remind me of the love I once
possessed. I shall fold to my bosom the Alice that once was mine, and
strive to forget our estrangement."

Alice was sensibly touched by this appeal, and much more by the tone in
which it was made. In the momentary pause, Greenleaf raised his eyes and
saw the struggle in her face. He rose, came nearer, and quietly took a
seat on the sofa beside her.

"I heard you distinctly where you sat," she said, making an effort to
keep down the tumult within, and shrinking, perhaps, from the influence
of his presence.

"I wished to hear you, dear Alice, and therefore came nearer. Tell me,
are you not mistaken? You have not forgotten me: you do love me yet. Let
your heart speak; if you imprison it and force the dissembling lips to
deny me, the dear traitor will make signals: it looks out of your eyes
now."

He seized and imprisoned her hand, and still watched the current of
feeling in her face.

"I thought myself strong enough for this," she said, tremblingly, "but I
am not. I meant only to say that we would part----friends, but that we
must part. It is not so easy to be calm, when you distract me so."

"Alice, you only deceive yourself; you love me. You have covered
the spring in your heart with snow, but the fountain still flows
underneath."

Her tears could be kept back no longer; they fell not like November
rain, but rather like those sudden showers of spring from passing
clouds, while the blue sky still looks down, and rainbow smiles
transfigure the landscape.

His heart gave a mighty throb as those softly humid eyes were turned
upon him. He drew her, half consenting, still nearer. She hesitated, but
not long.

* * * * *

"Hard a-port!" shouts the master; and the helmsman, with firm hand,
holds down the wheel. Slowly the ship veers; the sails flutter and back,
the yards are swung; waves strive to head the bow off, but the rudder is
held with iron grasp; now comes the wind, the shaking sails fill with
the sudden rush, and the ship bounds on her new course over the heaving
waters.

Shall I fill out the comparison? Not for you, elders, who have seen the
struggle of "tacking ship," and have felt the ecstatic swell of delight
when it was accomplished! Not for the younger, who must learn for
themselves the seamanship that is to carry them safely over the
mysterious ocean on whose shore they have lingered and gazed and wished!

The conversation that followed it would be vain to report, even if
it were possible; for the force of ejaculations depends so much
on _tone_,--which our types do not know how to convey; and their
punctuation-marks, I fear, were such as are not in use in any
well-regulated printing-office. In due time it came to an end; and when
Greenleaf took his unwilling departure, having repeatedly said good-bye,
with the usual confirmation, he could no more remember what had been
said in that miraculous hour than a bee flying home from a garden could
tell you about the separate blossoms from which he (the Sybarite!) had
gathered his freight of flower-dust.

One thing only he heard which the wisely incurious reader will care
to know. Alice had met her cousin, Walter Monroe, the day before, had
received a proper scolding for her absurd independence, and, after a
frank settlement of the heart-question which came up on the day of her
flight, had promised at once to return to his house,--where, for the
brief remainder of our story, she is to be found. Let us wish her
joy,--and the kind, motherly aunt, also.

Greenleaf went directly to Easelmann's room, opened the door, and spread
his arms.

"Have you a strawberry-mark?" he shouted.

"No."

"Then you are my long-lost brother! Come to my arms!"

Easelmann laughed long and loudly.

"Forgive my nonsense, Easelmann. I know I am beside myself and ready for
any extravagance,--I am so full of joy. I feared, in coming along the
street, that I should break out into singing, or fall to dancing, like
the Scriptural hills."

"Then you have succeeded, and the girl is yours! I forgive your stupid
old joke. You can say and do just what you like. You have a right to
be jolly, and to make a prodigious fool of yourself, if you want to. I
should like to have heard you. You were very poetical, quoted Tennyson,
fell on your knees, and perhaps blubbered a little. You _are_
sentimental, you know."

"I am happy, I know, and I don't care whether you think me sentimental
or not."

"Well, I wish you joy anyhow. Let us make a night of it. 'It is our
royal pleasure to be'--imagine the rest of the line. 'Now is the winter
of our discontent.' 'My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne.' Come,
let us make ready, and we'll talk till

"'Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty'--

misty steeple of Park-Street Church,--since we haven't any misty
mountaintops in the neighborhood."

"One would think _you_ the happy man."

"I am; your enthusiasm is so contagious that I am back in my twenties
again."

"Why do you take your pleasure vicariously? There is Mrs. Sandford, the
charming woman; I love her, because"--

"No, Sir, not her,--one is enough."

"Then why not love her yourself? We'll make a double-barrelled shot of
it,--two couples brought down by one parson."

"Very ingenious, and economical, too; but I think not. It is too late. I
was brought up in the country, and I don't think it good policy to begin
agricultural operations in the fall of the year; my spring has past. But
is the day fixed? When are you to be the truly happy man?"

"No,--the day is not fixed," said Greenleaf, thoughtfully. "You see,
I was so bent upon the settlement of the difficulty, that I had not
considered the practical bearing of the matter. I am too poor to marry,
and I am heartsick at the prospect of waiting"--

"With the chance of another rupture."

"No,--we shall not quarrel again. But I shall go to work. I'll inundate
the town with pictures; if I can't sell them myself, I will have Jews to
peddle them for me."

"Hear the mercenary man! No,--go to work in earnest, but put your life
into your pictures. If you can keep up your present glow, you will be
warmer than Cuyp, dreamier than Claude, more imaginative than Millais."

"But the desperate long interval!"

"I don't know about that. I quite like the philosophy of Mr. Micawber,
and strenuously believe in something turning up."

"What is that?" asked Greenleaf, noticing a letter on his friend's
table. "It seems to be addressed to me."

"Yes,--I met a lawyer to-day, who asked me if I knew one George
Greenleaf. As I did, he gave me the letter. Some dun, probably, or
threat of a suit. I wouldn't open it. Don't!"

"You only make me curious. I shall open it. To-day I can defy a dun even
from--What, what's this? Bullion dead?--left in his will a bequest--forty
thousand--to _me_?"

Easelmann looked over his friend's shoulder with well-simulated
astonishment.

"Sure enough; there it is, in black and white.--What do you think of
Micawber?"

"I think," said Greenleaf, with manly tears in his eyes, "that you are
the artfullest, craftiest, hugger-muggering, dear old rascal that ever
lived. Now let me embrace you in good earnest. Oh, Easelmann, this is
too much! Here is Alice--mine! Here is Europe, that I have looked at as
I would heaven, beyond reach in this life! _Now_ we will go to work; and
let Cuyp, Claude, and the rest of them, look out for their laurels!"

"Softly, my boy; you squeeze like a cider-press. But how came the old
miser to give you this?"

"My father was his partner; he was thought to be worth a handsome sum
while he lived,--but at his death, though Bullion and another junior
went on with the business, there was nothing left for us. My mother died
poor. I am the only child living. This, I suppose, is the return for the
property that Bullion wrongfully detained,--with compound interest, too,
I should say. Let us not speak ill of the dead. He has made restitution
and squared the books; I hope the correction has been made above."

"How lucky for you that Bullion was your banker! Suppose you had grown
up with the expectation of having this money, what would you have
been good for? You would have run all to patent-leather boots, silky
moustaches, and black-tan terriers. Your struggles have developed your
muscles, metaphorically speaking, and made a man of you."

"Two sides to that question. It is true, luxury might have spoiled me,
for I am accessible to such influences; but, on the other hand, I should
have escaped some painful things. No one who has not been poor can
understand me, can know the wounds which a sensitive man must receive as
he is working his way up in the world,--wounds that leave lasting scars,
too. I am conscious of certain feelings, most discreditable, if I were
to avow them, which have been cultivated in me, and which will probably
cling to me all my days. What I have gained in hardiness I have
gained as the smith gains his strength, at the expense of symmetry,
sensibility, and grace."

"Nonsense, you mimosa! Don't curl up your leaves before you are
touched."

"But if I am a sensitive-plant, as you say, I can't help it; if I were a
burdock, I might."

"You'll get over that. By-the-by, you may as well tell Alice. I know
you will be uneasy; go, go,--but come back soon. It is jolly that she
accepted you poor; if the report had got abroad, you might have thought
she was influenced by golden reasons."

"That's because you don't know her, my cynical friend. She is incapable
of mercenary motives."

"'What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?'"

"Well, for an hour, good-bye. Have a good fire and the pipes ready."

"Yes, truly,--and a magnum, if my closet is not empty. The king will
drink to Hamlet."

* * * * *

Little more remains to be told. After the long period of probation, it
was not deemed necessary that the nuptials should be deferred beyond
the time necessary to make due preparation. In a month the wedding took
place at Mr. Monroe's house, Mr. Easelmann giving away the bride. I do
not say that the bachelor felt no twinges when he saw among the guests
the lovely Mrs. Sandford in her becoming white robes; in fact, he
"thought seriously," as all such people do while there remains even the
recollection of youth--but his habits were too fixed. He saw and sighed,
and that was all. However, he is on the right side of----forty, we will
call it, and there is hope for him. We may find him in some adventure
yet; if so, the reader shall assuredly know it.

In the spring, Greenleaf with his wife went abroad and took up their
residence in Rome.

"What pictures has he painted?" did you ask?

Really, Madam, a great many; but I have not the least idea of letting
you come at the name of my hero in this way. You have seen them both
here and in New York, and you thought them the productions of a rising
man,--as they are.

* * * * *

Our friend Monroe is now a partner in the house of Lindsay & Co. He
makes frequent visits to the villa at Brookline, and is always welcome.
Mr. Lindsay considers him a most sensible and worthy young man, and his
daughter Clara has implicit confidence in his judgment of literature as
well as in his taste for pictures. One fine day last summer, Mrs. Monroe
was prevailed upon, after some weeks of solicitation, to get into a
carriage and take a drive with her son. "She's a nice girl," said the
mother, fervently, on their return; "and if you _must_ marry anybody, I
don't think you can do better." Walter's smile showed that he thought
so too, although the alternative was hardly so painful as she seemed to
consider it,--from which we infer that his relations with the senior
partner of the house have become, or will be, still more intimate.

Mrs. Sandford has left Boston and gone to live with her relatives some
fifty miles distant;--the place Mr. Easelmann can tell, as he has had
occasion to send her a few letters.

The personages of our drama are all dismissed; the curtain begins to
fall; but a voice is heard, "What became of the Bulls and Bears?" What
became of Mars and Minerva after the siege of Troy? Men die; but the
deities, infernal as well as celestial, live on. Fortunes may rise like
Satan's _chef d'oeuvre_ of architecture, may be transported from city to
city like the palace of Aladdin, or may sink into salt-water lots as did
the Cities of the Plain; success may wait upon commerce and the arts,
or desolation may cover the land; still, surviving all change, and
profiting alike by prosperity and by calamity, the secret, unfathomable
agents in all human enterprises will remain the BULLS AND BEARS.

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