Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 28

"It is but a step from the palace to the tomb."

True, and so it seemed this night; for ere I had fairly realized the fact that I had pa.s.sed over the short step of two squares between the City prison--the Tombs--and Broadway, I stood looking into that great palace hall on the corner of Franklin street, known as Taylor's Saloon.

Was ever eating and drinking temptation more gorgeously fitted up? How the gilt and carving, and elaborate skill of the painter's art glitter in the more than sun-light splendor of a hundred sparkling gas-burners.

Are the windows open? No. The ten-feet long plates of gla.s.s are so clear from speck, it seems as though it were open s.p.a.ce. Look in. It is midnight. Is all still? Do the tired servants sleep? No. They are flitting up and down, with noiseless tread, to furnish late suppers and health-destroying luxuries, to a host of men and gayly dressed women.

'Tis the palace of luxury--'tis but a step from the palace to the tombs--'tis but a step beyond to the home of "the Rag Picker's Daughter"--'tis here that the first step is taken which leads to infamy like that of that daughter's mother. 'Tis here that he, whose trade is seduction, walketh unshamed at noonday, or prowls at midnight, to select his victims. 'Tis here that mothers suffer young daughters to come at this untimely midnight hour to drink "light wines," or eat ice cream, drugged with pa.s.sion-exciting vanilla.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the fiend as we pa.s.sed, on, "rag-picking mothers are not the only ones who traffic away the virtue of young daughters in this rum-flooded city."

"What," said I, as I pa.s.sed on, "if all the mis-spent s.h.i.+llings, worse than wasted in this palace, were dropped into the treasury of the House of Industry?"

"Cow Bay, Farlow's Court, and Rotten Row, would be no more, and my occupation would be gone," said the fiend. "It must not be. Dry up rum, and murder would cease and misery have no home here. It must not be.

_Our_ trade is in danger; I must alarm my friends!"

And he clattered his cloven foot down the steps of a nearby cellar, where there were loud sounds of blasphemous words, the noise of jingling gla.s.ses, and much wrangling, amid which I heard female voices in one of the "private rooms," and then an order for more wine--then I heard old cloven foot say, "give them a bottle of two-and-sixpenny cider, they are so drunk now they wont know the odds."

Then I understood why the fiend said "our trade"--it is one which none else than such delight in.

I listened again. There was an awful string of oaths coming up out of the infernal regions, where men and women--street-walkers--were getting drunk upon alcohol, carbonic acid, and cider, mixed into three dollar bottles of "wine"--pure champagne.

"Give me my pocket-book, you----"

I cannot repeat the horrid expletives. Why does a man call a woman with whom he a.s.sociates, such vile names? Why does the woman retort upon him that he is the son of a female dog, and call upon G.o.d to send his soul to perdition? Because they have "tarried long at the wine; have looked upon it when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup." Now "it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder."

Now the woman has picked the pocket of her male companion--I cannot say gentleman; now he utters those terrible oaths; now she pours out such a stream of words as would pollute the very air where virtue lives; now there is a struggle; now a man is stabbed by a woman; now there is a crash of broken gla.s.s, a female street-walker is knocked down with a bottle in the hands of a man who has picked her up, and whose pockets she has picked; surely it was no vision of the brain that fancied we saw the incarnate fiend go down there; now there is a cry of murder; now there is a rapping of clubs upon the pavement, and running of men with bra.s.s stars upon the left breast of their coats; now the police bear up a wounded man--if, Madalina was here her wounded breast would ache with new pain--she is avenged at last; now they drag up a woman, a young girl, on her way to the Tombs--it is Julia Antrim.

Drop the curtain. Surely you would not look into a prison cell, or go into the police court, or with a "vagrant," not yet fourteen years old, to Randall's Island. In some change of the scene you may see her again.

_Quien sabe?_

"It was late next morning," said Mr. Pease, "when I woke up, and then I lay in a sort of dreamy reverie, thinking what a world of good I could do if I had plenty of means, until near ten o'clock. Finally, I heard an uneasy step outside my door and at length it seemed to venture to approach, and then there was a timid rap."

"May I come in?"

"Yes, Tom, come in. What is it, Tom?"

"If you please, sir, I want to go away to-day."

"Oh, no, Tom, don't go away to-day, you remember what you promised to do for Madalina."

"Yes, sir, and I am going to do it. I am going to see where they put her, and then I will plant a flower there, and I will water it too, and that is not all, either, that I am going to do with water before I die.

I am going to teach people to drink it, and not drink rum."

"Going to see where they put her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tom, do I understand you?"

"I don't know, sir, she did."

"Tell me, my boy, what you mean. You seem a little wild, your eyes are very red. Did you sleep any last night?"

"Sleep! could you sleep, with those words ringing in your ears all night? Her last words--she never spoke again."

"By this time I had reached the window. I looked out. There was a 'poor house hea.r.s.e' in Cow Bay. A little coffin was brought down and put in, and it moved away. It carried the Rag-picker's Daughter."

CHAPTER XII.

ATHALIA, THE SEWING GIRL.

"Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths: "Win us with honest trifles, to betray us In deepest consequence."

At the close of chapter nine, we left Athalia standing by the side of her trunk and bandbox on the sidewalk, in front of her now empty home.

After paying up the rent, and a few outstanding little bills, she had but a scanty store left in her little purse. Of this she set apart, as a sacred deposit, almost the entire sum, to redeem her Bible and watch--the locket at any rate. Now she wished she could see Nannette, for she was the only instrument she knew, that she could employ in the negociation. She could not go where she lived, for fear of meeting Walter, whom she had determined never to see again. She had sent for a hack to take her away, she really knew not where. She had but few, except business acquaintances in the city; none upon whom she felt willing to call in her emergency. She felt so cast down, that she could not look one of them in the face. She had made up her mind to go to a hotel for the night, and leave the city in the morning; whither she knew not; anywhere to get away, Then she thought that she could not go without seeing Nannette, and making an effort to regain her valued keepsakes How should she see her? what should she do?

It is an old proverb, "Wish for the devil and he will appear." Just then a carriage drove up and stopped where she stood. She was so certain it was the one she had sent for, that she did not observe that it contained two ladies, until the driver had opened the door, and one of them spoke.

"Why, Mrs. Morgan, are you going away? How unfortunate. I wanted three or four dresses made. When will you be back?"

When? How could she tell, since she did not know where she was going?

She was in a fever of excitement to go somewhere, to get away before Walter should come. She felt as though it would kill her to see him then.

All day she had been calm; she had found it absolutely necessary, in order to keep herself so, to drink two or three gla.s.ses of wine. If it had been wine, such as the fermented juice of grapes will make, it had not done her material harm; but it was such as is made in this city, or "got up" expressly for this market; and she began to feel the effects of the alcohol it contained dying away. She felt as though she was dying, too. She did not, therefore, hesitate long, or refuse the pressing invitation of Mrs. Laylor to go home with her and stay all night.

Although she began to suspect the character of Mrs. Laylor's house, she did not know it, or her either, or she would have spent the night where she stood rather than in her best room.

She was still further induced to go, when she found that her companion was Nannette. True, there was a flash, a mere flash of thought across her mind, why so common a woman as Nannette should be in the carriage of so reserved a lady; one who, if she was guilty of slight improprieties herself would not be suspected for the world, and had no charity for the inmates of houses in M---- street.

Little thought Athalia, that Nannette, when she visited Mrs. Laylor's, pa.s.sed for "a very respectable married lady, who would not be known for anything--it would ruin her;" or else, when dressed in deep mourning, with a thick veil over her face, which nothing could induce her to remove, was a "very interesting young widow, of one of the first families in the city, who was obliged, by necessity, to accept the love of a gentleman--a married gentleman--who visited her house, but would not make the acquaintance of any woman except one in just such a condition as this 'sweet young widow.'"

I know, I speak it boldly, a woman now living in this city, in up-town style, upon money obtained from six dupes, every one of whom she had "on a string" at the same time, and some of whom she used to meet at that very house, under just such guises. I say it, still more boldly and truly, for "old sores must be seen to be healed," that she has thus duped the whole six in one day. I know the woman--I know five of the dupes, and that each one of them has a wife. Two wear the t.i.tle of Judge; one deals in flour; one in dry goods; and one has another employment I dare not speak so boldly of, for the sake of his children and unsuspecting wife. He drives fast horses, and truth, might drive a good woman to despair.

Athalia little suspected all this; still less did she suspect that she had been watched all day; that her order for a carriage even had been intercepted, and Mrs. Laylor had come in its stead. She did not know then that the stable owner was the paramour of Mrs. Laylor, and Nannette the pimp of this most dangerous woman--dangerous, because she struck her game, both male and female, out of the upper cla.s.s of society, giving them a fair start on the road down to a cellar in Cow Bay.

We have seen one of the Morgan family that she started on that course, who run a swift race. She is now fis.h.i.+ng for another--already has her in her net, for she has ordered Cato to put up the baggage--already has Athalia seated by her side, condoling with her in her afflictions, giving her sweet sympathy, telling her a few truths and many lies--"instruments of darkness" win by such--wondering how she could have lived with her bad husband so long as she had, when she could live so much better--"_by the needle_"--without such a man. She does not propose another now--of course not; she will bide her time for that, when all her plots have ripened the seed she is now sowing.

They were soon at home; before Athalia had half done telling how fearful she was of meeting Walter, and how she wanted to get out of town before he discovered her; and then Mrs. Laylor told her how very private she could be at her house--she would give her the third floor back room, and send her meals up to her, and she need not see a single soul but Nannette and herself, besides the chamber-maid--"none but your best friends."

Why did Mrs. Laylor whisper Nannette, and why did she run in the bas.e.m.e.nt way, and why did they have to wait ten minutes for the door to be opened? And where was Athalia's thick veil, with which she had intended to hide her face so that no one would see her, for the excitement of the day had flushed her cheeks, and made her fascinatingly beautiful, and she had no desire to expose it to tempt the pa.s.sion of any one who might chance to meet her?

"Where can my veil be, I am sure I had it in my hand when I got in the carriage?"

"I cannot see; perhaps Nannette has gathered it up with her shawl."

So she had. It had been slipped into the folds of it on purpose, for Mrs. Laylor was already working her plans, and counting the hundred dollars that she was going to charge some rich fool for bringing about a meeting with "one of the handsomest women in the city--a dress-maker, fresh from the country." In furtherance of this object of a wicked woman, in pursuit of gain, she had sent Nannette into the house, to station one of her dupes where he could see, without being seen, the unveiled face of Athalia, as she pa.s.sed in, and up the stairs. For this purpose, the usually dark hall had been lighted, and the veil stolen.