III.
“Hack, sir? Hack, sir? Hack, sir?”
“Cab, sir? Cab, sir? Cab, sir?”
“This way, sir! This way, sir! This way, sir!”
“He's a rogue! Not him! he's a rogue!”
Pierre was surrounded by a crowd of contending hackmen,
all holding long whips in their hands; while others eagerly
beckoned to him from their boxes, where they sat elevated between
their two coach-lamps like shabby, discarded saints. The
whip-stalks thickened around him, and several reports of the
cracking lashes sharply sounded in his ears. Just bursting
from a scene so goading as his interview with the scornful Glen
in the dazzling drawing-room, to Pierre, this sudden tumultuous
surrounding of him by whip-stalks and lashes, seemed like the
onset of the chastising fiends upon Orestes. But, breaking
away from them, he seized the first plated door-handle near
him, and, leaping into the hack, shouted for whoever was the
keeper of it, to mount his box forthwith and drive off in a given
direction.
The vehicle had proceeded some way down the great avenue
when it paused, and the driver demanded whither now; what
place?
“The Watch-house of the — Ward,” cried Pierre.
“Hi! hi! Goin' to deliver himself up, hey?” grinned the
fellow to himself—“Well, that's a sort of honest, any way:—
g'lang, you dogs!—whist! whee! wha!—g'lang!”
The sights and sounds which met the eye of Pierre on re-entering
the watch-house, filled him with inexpressible horror and
fury. The before decent, drowsy place, now fairly reeked with
all things unseemly. Hardly possible was it to tell what conceivable
cause or occasion had, in the comparatively short absence
of Pierre, collected such a base congregation. In indescribable
disorder, frantic, diseased-looking men and women of
all colors, and in all imaginable flaunting, immodest, grotesque,
and shattered dresses, were leaping, yelling, and cursing around
him. The torn Madras handkerchiefs of negresses, and the
red gowns of yellow girls, hanging in tatters from their naked
bosoms, mixed with the rent dresses of deep-rouged white women,
and the split coats, checkered vests, and protruding shirts
of pale, or whiskered, or haggard, or mustached fellows of all
nations, some of whom seemed scared from their beds, and
others seemingly arrested in the midst of some crazy and wanton
dance. On all sides, were heard drunken male and female
voices, in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, interlarded
now and then, with the foulest of all human lingoes, that dialect
of sin and death, known as the Cant language, or the
Flash.
Running among this combined babel of persons and voices,
several of the police were vainly striving to still the tumult;
while others were busy handcuffing the more desperate; and
here and there the distracted wretches, both men and women,
gave downright battle to the officers; and still others already
handcuffed struck out at them with their joined ironed arms.
Meanwhile, words and phrases unrepeatable in God's sunlight,
and whose very existence was utterly unknown, and undreamed
of by tens of thousands of the decent people of the city; syllables
obscene and accursed were shouted forth in tones plainly
evincing that they were the common household breath of their
utterers. The thieves'-quarters, and all the brothels, Lock-and-Sin
hospitals for incurables, and infirmaries and infernoes of
hell seemed to have made one combined sortie, and poured out
upon earth through the vile vomitory of some unmentionable
cellar.
Though the hitherto imperfect and casual city experiences
of Pierre, illy fitted him entirely to comprehend the specific
purport of this terrific spectacle; still he knew enough by
hearsay of the more infamous life of the town, to imagine
from whence, and who, were the objects before him. But all
his consciousness at the time was absorbed by the one horrified
thought of Isabel and Delly, forced to witness a sight hardly
endurable for Pierre himself; or, possibly, sucked into the
tumult, and in close personal contact with its loathsomeness.
Rushing into the crowd, regardless of the random blows and
curses he encountered, he wildly sought for Isabel, and soon
descried her struggling from the delirious reaching arms of a
half-clad reeling whiskerando. With an immense blow of his
mailed fist, he sent the wretch humming, and seizing Isabel,
cried out to two officers near, to clear a path for him to the
door. They did so. And in a few minutes the panting Isabel
was safe in the open air. He would have stayed by her, but
she conjured him to return for Delly, exposed to worse insults
than herself. An additional posse of officers now approaching,
Pierre committing her to the care of one of them, and summoning
two others to join himself, now re-entered the room.
In another quarter of it, he saw Delly seized on each hand by
two bleared and half-bloody women, who with fiendish grimaces
were ironically twitting her upon her close-necked dress,
and had already stript her handkerchief from her. She uttered
a cry of mixed anguish and joy at the sight of him; and
Pierre soon succeeded in returning with her to Isabel.
During the absence of Pierre in quest of the hack, and
while Isabel and Delly were quietly awaiting his return, the
door had suddenly burst open, and a detachment of the police
drove in, and caged, the entire miscellaneous night-occupants
of a notorious stew, which they had stormed and carried during
the height of some outrageous orgie. The first sight of the
interior of the watch-house, and their being so quickly huddled
together within its four blank walls, had suddenly lashed the
mob into frenzy; so that for the time, oblivious of all other
considerations, the entire force of the police was directed to
the quelling of the in-door riot; and consequently, abandoned
to their own protection, Isabel and Delly had been temporarily
left to its mercy.
It was no time for Pierre to manifest his indignation at the
officer—even if he could now find him—who had thus falsified
his individual pledge concerning the precious charge committed
to him. Nor was it any time to distress himself about his luggage,
still somewhere within. Quitting all, he thrust the bewildered
and half-lifeless girls into the waiting hack, which, by
his orders, drove back in the direction of the stand, where
Pierre had first taken it up.
When the coach had rolled them well away from the tumult,
Pierre stopped it, and said to the man, that he desired to be
taken to the nearest respectable hotel or boarding-house of any
kind, that he knew of. The fellow—maliciously diverted by
what had happened thus far—made some ambiguous and
rudely merry rejoinder. But warned by his previous rash
quarrel with the stage-driver, Pierre passed this unnoticed, and
in a controlled, calm, decided manner repeated his directions.
The issue was, that after a rather roundabout drive they
drew up in a very respectable side-street, before a large respectable-looking
house, illuminated by two tall white lights
flanking its portico. Pierre was glad to notice some little remaining
stir within, spite of the comparative lateness of the
hour. A bare-headed, tidily-dressed, and very intelligent-looking
man, with a broom clothes-brush in his hand, appearing,
scrutinized him rather sharply at first; but as Pierre advanced
further into the light, and his countenance became visible, the
man, assuming a respectful but still slightly perplexed air, invited
the whole party into a closely adjoining parlor, whose disordered
chairs and general dustiness, evinced that after a day's
activity it now awaited the morning offices of the housemaids.
“Baggage, sir?”
“I have left my baggage at another place,” said Pierre, “I
shall send for it to-morrow.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the very intelligent-looking man, rather
dubiously, “shall I discharge the hack, then?”
“Stay,” said Pierre, bethinking him, that it would be well
not to let the man know from whence they had last come, “I
will discharge it myself, thank you.”
So returning to the sidewalk, without debate, he paid the
hackman an exorbitant fare, who, anxious to secure such illegal
gains beyond all hope of recovery, quickly mounted his box and
drove off at a gallop.
“Will you step into the office, sir, now?” said the man,
slightly flourishing with his brush—“this way, sir, if you
please.”
Pierre followed him, into an almost deserted, dimly lit room
with a stand in it. Going behind the stand, the man turned
round to him a large ledger-like book, thickly inscribed with
names, like any directory, and offered him a pen ready dipped
in ink.
Understanding the general hint, though secretly irritated at
something in the manner of the man, Pierre drew the book to
him, and wrote in a firm hand, at the bottom of the last-named
column,—
“Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Glendinning, and Miss Ulver.”
The man glanced at the writing inquiringly, and then said—
“The other column, sir—where from.”
“True,” said Pierre, and wrote “Saddle Meadows.”
The very intelligent-looking man re-examined the page, and
then slowly stroking his shaven chin, with a fork, made of his
thumb for one tine, and his united four fingers for the other,
said softly and whisperingly—“Anywheres in this country,
sir?”
“Yes, in the country,” said Pierre, evasively, and bridling
his ire. “But now show me to two chambers, will you; the
one for myself and wife, I desire to have opening into another,
a third one, never mind how small; but I must have a dressing-room.”
“Dressing-room,” repeated the man, in an ironically deliberative
voice—“Dressing-room;—Hem!—You will have your
luggage taken into the dressing-room, then, I suppose.—Oh, I
forgot—your luggage aint come yet—ah, yes, yes, yes—luggage
is coming to-morrow—Oh, yes, yes,—certainly—to-morrow—of
course. By the way, sir; I dislike to seem at all uncivil,
and I am sure you will not deem me so; but—
“Well,” said Pierre, mustering all his self-command for the
coming impertinence.
“When stranger gentlemen come to this house without luggage,
we think ourselves bound to ask them to pay their bills
in advance, sir; that is all, sir.”
“I shall stay here to-night and the whole of to-morrow, at
any rate,” rejoined Pierre, thankful that this was all; “how
much will it be?” and he drew out his purse.
The man's eyes fastened with eagerness on the purse; he
looked from it to the face of him who held it; then seemed
half hesitating an instant; then brightening up, said, with sudden
suavity—“Never mind, sir, never mind, sir; though rogues
sometimes be gentlemanly; gentlemen that are gentlemen
never go abroad without their diplomas. Their diplomas are
their friends; and their only friends are their dollars; you have
a purse-full of friends.—We have chambers, sir, that will exactly
suit you, I think. Bring your ladies and I will show you
up to them immediately.” So saying, dropping his brush, the
very intelligent-looking man lighted one lamp, and taking
two unlighted ones in his other hand, led the way down the
dusky lead-sheeted hall, Pierre following him with Isabel and
Delly.
