Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 34

It would be entirely impossible for a stranger to form an idea what an emotion the very name of wine caused among them. They were fairly longing for it. We were in the good graces of all the household at once.

I pleaded headache not to drink. Lovetree took his gla.s.s with them. I fixed upon one that I thought perhaps might be Athalia, but soon found that she was called Nannette.

Another was Belle, and the third was Adelaide. The latter was one of the most perfectly beautiful girls in face and form I ever saw, and she had really pretty red hair. I have often met or pa.s.sed her since that in the street and never without admiring her beauty and thinking of her mother, and how she must mourn "a girl lost."

I was now satisfied that Athalia was not in the room, and I said carelessly. "Where is that other girl I saw here, with brown hair and blue eyes, not very tall?"

"What was her name?"

"Oh, confound names, I never can think of names."

"Oh, I know who he means," said Adelaide, "it is Lucy, Lucy Smith."

"Yes, yes, that is it. It is Lucy at any rate."

"She is in her room. She has got the dumps--the blues--I should not wonder if she was all melted by this time, she has been crying these three days."

"Crying, why what has she to cry about? I should not think anybody need to cry in this house, you never cry, do you?"

The very question almost brought a tear, but she drove it back.

"Well, Lucy must come down and have some wine. Get her down, and we will have another bottle."

"She won't come. We are all tired of trying. She has got the pouts, because Mrs. Laylor took her trunk away from her to keep for her board.

She don't make any thing. All she ever did make was out of Frank Barkley, and that she gave to redeem her watch and a good-for-nothing old Bible I don't see what she wants of that."

"Well, I am going to have her down--I have no opinion of having any girl in the dumps. Where is her room?"

"Third floor back room. That is right, go and bring her out whether or no. She has hardly been out for a week till to-day Mrs. Laylor took her out riding with her, to try to put a little life in her, for fear she would die on her hands, and she would have to bury her for charity."

"Well, well, I will bring her down, see if I don't. Come, Treewell, if she will not come without we will bring her."

So away we went upstairs, now satisfied that we were on the right trail, and that we had completely lulled all suspicion that we wanted anything of Lucy Smith, except to compel the poor heart-sick woman to join in a Baccha.n.a.lian revel, at which her soul revolted. Up, up we went, pa.s.sed three "private rooms," in which we will not seek to look, for they are occupied by those who come veiled and in the dark. Here is the room we want. We knocked but received no welcome "come in."

How quick she would open the door if she knew who was waiting for admission. Tired of knocking, we enter unbidden, and find the room empty. The prisoner has escaped.

The truth flashed upon my mind in a moment. She has gone off with Mrs.

May. Mr. Lovetree thought not, for Stella said they would not let her go out except some one in the house went with her to watch her.

"No matter. I am almost sure that woman has got her away. These women are great at contrivance. Very likely she came prepared for it, as Stella told her of course, all that Mrs. Morgan had told her."

We made a light and the first thing that Lovetree saw was the Bible, and Athalia's name--her age and birth-place and the age and names of her father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, a complete family record. I thought the man would go crazy. It would have made him nearly crazy if he had found her an inmate here, as much lost to shame as those we had just been carousing with, and now to find that she was not here put him into a perfect agony. He thought he could not live till morning without seeing her. At first we thought of going directly to Mrs. May's but then we recollected we did not know where she lived and could not find out, for I had lost her card that Stella gave me.

Finally we concluded to go down and talk a minute in the same kind of sang froid manner, to keep up our a.s.sumed characters and then go home and await coming events.

We were rallied as we entered the room with a jeering laugh at not being able to bring one woman between us both.

Then I pretended to get angry at being sent upon a fool's errand, to a room where n.o.body was at home. At that Mrs. Laylor started.

"Was she not in the room?"

"No, nor has not been lately. You are playing tricks with the wrong persons, trying to fool us."

"Indeed, gentlemen, upon my honor it is no trick."

She rang the servants' bell violently. "Martha, do you know where Lucy Smith is? She is not in her room. Have you let her out to-night?"

"No, ma'am. I have not let anybody out but that sewing woman."

"Where is Kate? Send Kate up. Kate have you let anybody out to-night?"

"Yes, ma'am. I let that sewing woman out."

"You let her out! Martha says she let her out."

"So I did."

"And so did I."

"Both of you."

"I did."

"Well, I did."

"You have let out the ----. Get out of the room, you stupid Irish ----s.

You have let out the sewing woman, sure enough. I have lost my bet which I made with Frank, of a hundred dollars that I would keep her here till she would not want to go away."

And there was such, a string of oaths as I never heard before, and hope I never shall hear again, particularly from female profane lips. None but a drunken slave driver, ever poured out such a stream of awful language, full of oaths, anger and billingsgate expressions, at the escape of one of his victims, as she did at the escape of a woman whom she had determined to debase to her own level, until she had brought her to that condition that she would feel degraded in the eyes of the world, would know that all her own s.e.x had closed and barred the door against her, so that she could never return to the paths of virtue, and she would be to her mistress a "profitable investment," for she would be attractive, by her beauty and manners, and "draw custom to the house."

But she had escaped--gone off too in a temper of mind which might send retribution back upon the head of one who under the guise of friends.h.i.+p had first robbed, then by pretended debt, enslaved her mind, coaxed and almost driven her into intoxication, and then prost.i.tuted her most shamefully. It would be idle to pretend that Athalia had escaped without sin. She had not. She had sinned deeply. She said afterwards while claiming some extenuation, though by no means trying to justify her fall, that her mind was so wrought upon by her disappointments of life, by her lone and friendless condition, by the acc.u.mulation of debt, by the terrible treachery of those she had entrusted herself with as such disinterested friends, by her anxiety to obtain her valued keepsakes and get money enough to redeem them, and then escape from the pandemonium she found that she had unwittingly entered, that she had determined to drown her thoughts in wine, and then she accepted the oft-repeated proposals of Frank Barkley to redeem her watch, which he honorably did, but which another _friend_, one of Mrs. Laylor's friends, whom she forced her to accept, and which cost her the friends.h.i.+p of Frank, robbed her of, and carried off so that she never saw it again; whether he kept it or gave it to Mrs. Laylor, she never knew.

Often she intended to fly, but it seemed to her that she could not get away; she was kept in one constant whirl of excitement so that she could not reason with herself long enough to determine what to do. What deterred her most, was that she had nowhere to go to, no friend to call upon for counsel or a.s.sistance, and thus she went on from day to day, adopting one plan in the morning to discard it at night.

Frank was very kind to her in a certain measure. He liked her, but it was a very selfish liking. He did not like to hear her talk about leaving. He liked her there, and he was almost as much her jailer as Mrs. Laylor. He took her out to all manner of dissipation, theatres, saloons, late suppers, b.a.l.l.s and frolics, in which strong drink--not Athalia Morgan--acted as wild a part as the wildest. But he offered her no means of escape. She began to have a sort of fondness for Frank. What woman can avoid liking one who is devoted to her? But this devotion to one was not what Mrs. Laylor wished. It was not what brought the most money to her iron chest. She would like to negotiate the charms of Athalia to some rich libertine every day, whenever she could meet with one fool enough to pay her well for her influence with the "young widow."

Among the most determined of her suitors, was a young Frenchman, who used every art which he knew well how to use with words and money, to win Athalia's favor. As a last resort, he pledged a splendid diamond ring to Mrs. Laylor, if she would accomplish what he could not.

When all other arts fail to work ruin and misery in a woman's mind, there is one left, one which concentrates all the power of all the lies of the father of deception. It is jealousy.

There is a little story in "Oth.e.l.lo," about the arts of a villain, to produce mischief by that power. It is nothing compared with the villainy and lies invented to produce jealousy between Frank and Athalia, so as to let in the Frenchman, and win that ring.

Villainy is too often successful in this life. It was in this case.

Jealousy, a feeling of revenge, drives more women to infidelity towards those they love, than all other causes.

It did its perfect work with Athalia, and then the fiend who had accomplished the work, laughed at her, and told her how she had been fooled, thinking it would have the usual effect, to make her careless of what she did in future. It had an entirely different effect upon Athalia. It was this that produced the state of mind that Adelaide called the dumps, the blues, and the tears that Stella saw her shed.

Stella had told her mother much that Athalia told her, much that the child did not understand, but the mother did, for she knew how girls were inveigled into those houses, and kept there as prisoners.

I have lately witnessed a scene, highly ill.u.s.trative of this fact. It is one of the "Life Scenes of New York."