Vassall Morton Part 40

"Come on, then. How are you, Buckland? Here's an old friend, redivivus."

Hearing himself thus accosted, Buckland turned towards the speaker a face which, though pale and sallow, was still handsome. His dress, contrary to his former habit, was careless and negligent; and, though he could not have been more than thirty, a few gray hairs had begun to mingle with his long, black moustache. Changed as he was, he had that air of quiet and graceful courtesy which can only be acquired by habitual intercourse with polished society in early life; and Morton saw in him the melancholy wreck of a highly-bred gentleman.

When the first surprise of the meeting was over, Rosny related the story of Morton's imprisonment to the wondering ear of Buckland.

Having urgent business on his hands, he soon after took leave of his two companions. Morton and Buckland, after strolling for a time up and down Broadway, entered the restaurant attached to Blancard's hotel, and took a table in a remote corner of the room, which was nearly empty.

Buckland was, as Rosny had described him, moody and abstracted, often seeming at a loss to collect his thoughts. He sipped his chocolate in silence, and, even when spoken to, sometimes returned no answer.

Morton, in little better spirits than his companion, sat leaning his forehead dejectedly on his hand.

"I am sorry," said Buckland, after one of his silent fits, "to be so wretched a companion; but I am not the man I used to be."

"We are but a melancholy pair," replied Morton.

"I saw from the first that you were very much out of spirits,--not at all what one would expect a man to be who had just escaped from sufferings like yours. There is some trouble on your mind."

Morton was fatigued and sick at heart. He had practised self-control till he was tired of it; and he allowed a shade of emotion to pa.s.s across his face.

"There is a woman in it," said Buckland, regarding him with a scrutinizing eye.

"Why do you say that?" demanded Morton, startled and dismayed at this home thrust.

"Are not women the source of nine tenths of our sufferings?" replied Buckland. "The world is a huge, clas.h.i.+ng, jangling, disjointed piece of mechanism, and they are the authors of its worst disorder."

"Sometimes," said Morton, "men will blame women for sufferings which they might, with better justice, lay at their own doors."

Buckland raised his head quickly, and looked in his companion's face.

"It may be so," he said, after a moment's pause. "Perhaps you are right,--perhaps you are right. But, let that be as it will, there are no miseries in life to match those which spring out of the relation of the s.e.xes."

Morton, for reasons of his own, did not care to pursue the subject, and his companion relapsed into his former silence. After a time, they went into the smoking room, where Buckland lighted a cigar. Morton observed that, as he did so, his fingers trembled in a manner which showed that his whole nervous system was shattered and unstrung.

"I would not advise you to smoke much," said Morton; "you have not the const.i.tution to bear it."

Buckland smiled bitterly. He had grown reckless whether he injured himself or not.

They seated themselves near the window; but Buckland soon grew uneasy, alternately looking at his watch and gazing into the street. At length he rose, and asked Morton to walk out with him. The latter, on the principle that misery loves company, readily complied; and they went down Broadway nearly to the Bowling Green. Here Buckland turned, and they retraced their steps to within a few squares of the Astor House.

This they repeated several times, Morton's companion constantly resisting every movement on his part to vary in the least the course of their promenade. While their walk was up the street, Buckland, though evidently restless and uneasy, had the same abstracted air as before; but when they moved in the opposite direction, his whole manner changed, and he seemed anxiously on the watch, as if for some person whom he expected every moment to meet. It was about eight in the evening. The street was brilliant with gas; crowds of people, men and women, were moving along the sidewalk; and upon each group, as it approached, Buckland bent a gaze of eager scrutiny.

They were pa.s.sing a large bookstore, when Morton felt his companion suddenly press the arm on which he was leaning. Hastily stepping aside, and dragging Morton with him, he ensconced himself behind the board on which the bookseller pasted his advertising placards, which partially concealed him, and, together with the projection over the shop door, screened him from the light of the neighboring gas lamp.

Here he stood motionless, his eyes riveted on some approaching object.

Following the direction of his gaze, Morton saw a tall man in the uniform of an army officer of rank, and, leaning on his arm, a light and delicate female figure, elegantly, but not showily dressed. They were close at hand when he discovered them, and in a moment they had pa.s.sed on under the glare of the lamp, and mingled with the throng beyond; but Morton retained a vivid impression of features beautifully moulded, and a pair of restless dark eyes, roving from side to side with piercing, yet furtive glances.

Buckland, stepping from his retreat, made a hesitating, forward movement, as if undecided whether to follow them or not. He stopped with a kind of suppressed groan, and taking Morton's arm again, moved slowly with him down the street. Two or three times, Morton spoke to him, but he seemed not to hear, or, at best, answered in monosyllables, with an absent air. When they reached the hotel, then recently established on the European plan, near the Bowling Green, Buckland entered, called for brandy, and, his companion declining to join him, hastily drank the liquor with the same trembling hand which Morton had before remarked. On leaving the house, they continued their walk downward till they reached the Battery. And as they entered the shaded walks of that promenade, the moon was s.h.i.+ning on the trees, and on the quiet waters of the adjacent bay.

"You must think very strangely of me," said Buckland, at length breaking his long silence; "in fact, I scarcely know myself. I am a changed man,--a lost and broken man, body and soul,--a sea-weed drifting helplessly on the water."

"You take too dark a view," said Morton, greatly moved; "there is good hope for you yet, if you will not fling it away."

Buckland shook his head. "I wish I had been born such a man as Rosny.

He is a practical man of the world, always in pursuit of something, with nothing to excite or trouble him but the success or failure of his schemes. He cannot understand my feelings. Yes, I wish to Heaven I had been born a practical, hard-headed man,--such, for instance, as your cool, common sense Yankees. What do they know or care for the troubles that are wearing me away by inches?"

"Buckland," said Morton, "your nerves are very much weakened and disordered, and particular troubles weigh upon and engross you, as they could not if you were well. What you most need is a good physician."

"'Could he minister to a mind diseased?' Come, sit down here--on this bench. Perhaps you have never felt--I hope you have never had occasion to feel--impelled to relieve some torment pressing on your mind, by telling it to a friend. Genuine friends are rare. When one meets them, he knows them by instinct. I need not fear you; you will not laugh at me to yourself, and tell me, as some others do, that a man of force and energy would fling off an affair like mine, and not suffer it to weigh upon him like a nightmare."

"When you have recovered your health, perhaps I may tell you so; but not till then."

"I am like the Ancient Mariner," continued Buckland, with a faint smile; "when I find the man who must hear my story, I know him the moment I see his face. Your good sense will tell you that I have been a knave and a fool; but your good heart will prevent your showing me that you think so."

Morton looked with deep compa.s.sion on his old comrade, and wondered what follies or misfortunes could have sunk his former gallant spirit so far. In his weakened and depressed condition, Buckland seemed to lean for support on his friend's firmer and better governed nature, and to draw strength from the contact.

"After all," he said in a livelier tone, "what right have I to bore you with this story of mine?"

"Any thing that you are willing to tell," answered Morton, "I shall be glad to hear."

CHAPTER LII.

On me laisse tout croire; on fait gloire de tout; Et cependant mon coeur est encore a.s.sez lache Pour ne pouvoir briser la chaine qui l'attache.--_Le Misanthrope_.

"I had an old friend," Buckland began, with some glimmering of his former vivacity,--"De Ruyter,--I don't think you ever knew him. He was the representative of a family great in its day and generation, but broken in fortune, and without means to support its pretensions. This did not at all tend to diminish their pride,--precisely of that kind which goeth before destruction. De Ruyter was a good fellow, however, and, if he had had twenty thousand a year, he would have spent it all.

One summer, four years ago, he went with his child--his wife had died the year before--and his two sisters to spend a few weeks at a quiet little watering-place on the Jersey sh.o.r.e, frequented by people of good standing, but not fas.h.i.+onably inclined. De Ruyter praised the sporting in the neighborhood, and persuaded me to go with him.

"His sisters were very agreeable women,--cultivated and lively, but proud as Lucifer, and desperately exclusive. A _nouveau riche_ was, in their eyes, equivalent to every thing that is odious and detestable; and to call a man a _parvenu_ was to steep him in infamy forever. The men at the house were, for the most part, of no great account--chiefly old bachelors, or sober family men run to seed, with a number of awkward young b.o.o.bies not yet in bloom. The two ladies liked the company of a lazy fellow like me, a b.u.t.terfly of society, with the poets, at least the sentimental ones, on my tongue's end, and the latest advices from the fas.h.i.+onable world. I staid there a week, and when that was over they persuaded me to stay another.

"On the day after, there was a fresh arrival,--a gentleman from Philadelphia, with his sister and his daughter. He only remained for the night, and went away in the morning, leaving the ladies behind.

The sister was a starched old person,--a sort of purblind duenna, with grizzled hair, gold spectacles, and cap. The daughter I need not describe, for you saw her half an hour ago.

"Her family was good enough; her father a lawyer in Philadelphia. She was well educated--played admirably, and spoke excellent French and Italian. How much or how little she had frequented cultivated society, I do not know,--her own a.s.sertions went for nothing; but she had the utmost ease and grace of manner, and an invincible self-possession.

Her ruling pa.s.sion was a compound of vanity and pride, an insatiable craving for admiration and power. Whatever a.s.sociates she happened to be among, nothing satisfied her but to be the cynosure of all eyes, the centre of all influence. I have known women enough,--women of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but such a one as she I never met but once. I shall not soon forget the evening when I first saw her, seated opposite me at the tea table. She was a small, light figure,--as you saw her just now,--the features, perhaps, a trifle too large. I never recall her, as she appeared at that time, without thinking of Byron's description of one of his mischief-making heroines:--

"'Her form had all the softness of her s.e.x, Her features all the sweetness of the devil, When he put on the cherub to perplex Eve, and paved--G.o.d knows how--the road to evil.'

"She was utterly unscrupulous. The depth of her artifice was unfathomable. She soon became the moving spirit of that little c.o.c.kney watering-place--some admiring her, some hating her, some desperately smitten with her. I can see through her manoeuvres now, but then I was blind as a mole. She understood every body about her, and held out to each the kind of bait which was most likely to attract him. There was a sort of _dilettante_ there whose heart she won by talking to him of the Italian poets, which, by the way, she really loved, for there was a dash of genius in her. She aimed to impress each one with the idea that in her heart she liked him better than any one else; and it was her game to appear on all occasions perfectly impulsive and spontaneous, while, in fact, every look, word, or act of hers had an object in it. In short, she was an accomplished actress; and, had her figure been more commanding, she might have rivalled Rachel on the stage. No two people were exactly agreed in opinion concerning her; but all--I mean all the men--thought her excessively interesting; and I remember that two young collegians had nearly fought a duel about her, each thinking that she was in love with him. Nothing delighted her more than to become the occasion of the jealousy of married women towards their husbands,--nothing, that is, except the still greater delight of fascinating a certain young New Yorker who had come to the house on a visit to his betrothed.

"For some time every one supposed her to be unmarried. She did her best, indeed, to encourage the idea, since she thus gained to herself more notice and more marked attentions. At length, to the astonishment of every body, it came out that she had been, for more than a year, married to a cousin of her own, a weak and imbecile youngster, as I afterwards learned, who was then absent on an East India voyage, and who, happily for himself, has since died.

"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision; and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company, where they would tell with the sharpest effect.

"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in her. Her pa.s.sions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the feeling she expressed were real or pretended.

"The grace and apparent _abandon_ of her manner, her beauty, her wit, her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put forth all her arts, and caught me.

"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is precisely a.n.a.logous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately.

Her pa.s.sions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane.

She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land on board one of the Cunard steamers.