University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

ALTHOUGH Mr. Tremlett did not design that his adopted
son should embark his fortunes in mercantile speculations,
yet he was aware of the advantage which a methodical
mercantile education would confer upon him, let him embrace
whatever course of life he might; therefore he kept the
young man in his counting-room, and exacted from him a
close attention to his duties. It is true that the duties assigned
to him were very far removed from drudgery, and were
rather of a confidential nature; yet they required strict attention
and fidelity, although they allowed him the free use of
a good portion of his time. Perhaps one reason why the old
merchant compelled the attendance of his son in his counting
room was that he might be always near him, for the old gentleman
was always nervous and anxious whenever he was
half a day without seeing him.

There were certain masters of vessels in the employment
of Tremlett and Tuck, whose families drew half pay during
their absence, and it was one of the duties of young Tremlett
to act as cashier when their monthly allowances were paid
out. Amongst those who were in the habit of calling on the
first of every month for their stated allowances, was a hearty
old man who had once sailed in the service of the house, as

first mate of one of their vessels, and whose son now commanded
one of their ships, and had left an order for a certain
sum to be paid for the board of his daughter, an only child
who lived with the old sailor and his wife, her mother having
died when she was an infant.

This hearty old sailor had gained the kindly regard of
young Tremlett by his frank and quaint address, and as he
had not called for his last month's allowance, the young man
put a check in his pocket and called upon him to inquire the
cause of his absence. It was the evening of the day on which
Mr. Tuck was buried, and the presence of the young man
must have been more unexpected than at any other time.
The old sailor, whose name was Clearman, lived in a little
court leading out of the Bowery, and John had some difficulty
in finding the place, although the moment he set his eyes
upon it he knew that old Clearman must live there, every
thing about the house, which was a very humble one, looked
so much like him and seemed to partake of the quaintness and
honesty of his mind; even the little white washed palings in
front of the queerest little garden that could be imagined had a
nautical look; and the steps that led to the front door, with a
bit of tarred rope ornamented at the end with one of those mysterious
knots called a turk's-head, tied to the bannisters for
no conceivable purpose, at least, none that a lands-man could
conceive, looked more like the companion way of a ship, than
the entrance of a quite stationary house. John knocked at
the door, and it was opened by a young girl who showed him
into a little back parlor where he found the old sailor smoking
a pipe in an arm chair with one leg bound up in flannel
and resting upon a stool. An attack of the rheumatism had
kept him confined to the house, and this was the sole cause
of his not calling for the monthly allowance. John was unaffectedly
glad to learn that it was for no more serious cause
and having paid the old man the check and taken his receipt,
he rose to go, when the old sailor and his wife both urged
him with such an earnest but gentle good will to sit down

and take a cup of tea with them that he remained, as much
to his own satisfaction as theirs. There was such an air of
perfect neatness and propriety about the little room that he
could not persuade himself they had not known of his coming
and made preparation for him. The old man immediately
laid aside his pipe, and his wife and the young girl who had
opened the door, spread the table, at which they took their
seats, and the old lady reverently craved a blessing. This
was something new. He had never heard a blessing asked
upon the meat of which he partook at the merchant's table,
neither had he heard one at Mrs. Tuck's, nor at any of the
Louses at which he had visited. It filled his mind with serious
and melancholy thoughts; he had a dim recollection
that he used to hear grace over his dinners when he was an
inmate of the charitable institution from which Mr. Tremblett
had taken him, and he thought it a strange thing that the poor
should be more grateful to God for their poverty than the rich
for their riches. But the hearty voice of the old sailor, and
the cheerful manners of his wife, and above all the bright
countenance of the young girl who sat opposite to him, and
who ever and anon cast her hazel eyes upon him as she
reached him some of the delicacies with which the table was
covered, instantly put to flight and completely annihilated the
remotest shadow of any melancholy thought that had crossed
his mind. The young girl, or rather the young lady, for such
girls are called ladies in the Bowery, was the daughter of the
sea captain whose monthly allowance John had just paid;
she was apparently seventeen, or if more than that. Time
had dealt daintily with her, as though she were a favorite with
the stern old tyrant who shows favors to none; and yet she
must have been more than seventeen for how could such
charms as hers come to perfection in so short a time. In
truth, she was seventeen and six months, as John ascertained
from her grand father by personal inquiry. It is just the age
of which no young lady ever felt ashamed; and but few young
ladies ever had such endowments to grace it, if ever any had
beside Fidelia Clearman, and although John was fully sensible
of the slightest of her outward perfections, and gazed upon
them with a kind of entrancement yet her greatest charm in
his eyes was her cheerful and dutiful deportment to her
grand-parents, who seemed quite unconscious of her beauty,
it was so entirely overshadowed by her goodness. She was
neither tall nor short, but of a proper hight, which exactly
harmonized with her fair complexion, her sunny hair, her
hazel eyes, her smiling mouth and her beautiful neck, that
resembled nothing but itself, and therefore cannot be distinguished
by an epithet, as indeed no genuine beauty properly
can be; and we will not mislead our readers by making comparisons
which could give no just idea of the original.

When the supper table had been removed and the little
company had drawn around the fire, the old sailor asked Fidelia
to sing him the little ballad that he had taught her
when she was hardly old enough to lisp.

“O, my dear grandfather,” said Fidelia blushing, “you
must not insist upon my singing; remember that Mr. Tremlett
will not listen to me with your partial ears.”

“Well my little daughter,” said the old man “I will not
say you must if you say you musn't; but that's no excuse for
not singing; I larn't you the song, and I want you to sing it
to my visitor; but if so be that you won't, I must sing it myself.”

And the old man chuckled his fair grand-daughter under
the chin, and his old broad face and his two glistening black
eyes seemed all lighted up and alive with good humor.

“It's a ballad you see,” he said turning to his visitor and
taking his pipe from his mouth, “which I larn't from a young
lady which was a passenger with me, on a v'yage from City
Point to London, and arter that to Archangel, when I was second
mate of the ship Sukey, commanded by captain Josh

Davis, and belonging to the firm of Brumstead and Bishop
when your father was clark with them, before my son, this
little girl's father, was born. This young lady was going to
jine her sweet-heart, which was a clark in a ship chandlery
store in Wapping; a store which I knowed as well as I
knowed your father's store in South street; and she used to
sit on deck with me through my whole watch, whenever it
was a pleasant night and I had the first trick, and sing ballads
to me; and it was she that larn't the ballad to me and I
larn't it to my grand-daughter and now I want she should
sing it for you, for I never saw two young creatures look
more alike than she and the young lady. If I hadn't been
hitched on to the old woman that's sitting there I railly believe
that I should have made a match with that young
woman, for I saw enough to convince me she liked me.”

“Yes, well, it would have saved me a wonderful deal of
trouble if you had,” said the old lady, “but she wasn't such
a simpleton as I was.” And then the old lady laughed; and
the old sailor laughed more heartily than ever, and his great
brown under lip, and his double chin, as they shook and
trembled with mirth seemed the very incarnations of pleasantry
and good humor; and the young lady smiled from sheer
sympathy and displayed ravishing glimpses of her pearly teeth
which almost deprived their young guest of his senses.

“After hearing such an account of the ballad,” said John,
“I cannot think of leaving without hearing it, and if Miss
Clearman will not sing it her grandfather must.”

Fidelia blushed again, and said it was a poor trifle, but if it
would give any pleasure to her grandfather she could not
refuse to sing it, although she knew that Mr. Tremlett would
never ask her to sing it a second time. And then she drew a
guitar case from underneath an old mahogany bureau which
stood in the little room, and after she had tuned her instrument
she accompanied herself to the following words, while her
grandfather marked time with the bowl of his tobacco pipe,

and John listened to her bewitching voice with such intensity
of emotion that he quite forgot that he was gazing upon her.
We regret our inability to furnish the readers of this history
with the air to which the words were warbled, but we have
not been able to discover that it was ever put upon paper.

As soon as the young lady had ceased, her grandfather
kissed her fair forehead, and her young auditor felt an irrepressible
desire to manifest his satisfaction in the same manner;
but his thoughts were suddenly put to flight by a hollow
sepulchral voice which exclaimed in most unearthly
tones, “let us pray!” John involuntarily jumped upon his
feet at this strange sound and looked behind him, but saw
nobody; and looking at the old sailor for an explanation, he
perceived the old man's face and his double chin shaking
with laughter and his glistening eyes all festooned round with
smiles.

“What was it?” inquired the astonished youth.

“It's only Poll;” replied the old woman, “there she is.”

And looking in the direction of her finger he discovered a
venerable looking fowl dressed in a coat of respectable drab
colored feathers, with a rather unbecoming cap of crimson
plumage sitting with great gravity and composedness of features
on top of an old mahogany bureau.

“What a remarkable creature,” said John.

“Yes, yes,” replied the old man, “poll is older than you
and I put together; and I believe she knows as much too.
My father brought that bird from Holland more than fifty-five
year ago, and the marchant which he got it of in Amsterdam
which was his consignee, told him that he had owned her
more than thirty years.”

Such an undoubted specimen of antiquity deserved a close
inspection, and after John had examined her ladyship, he had
not the least doubt of her remote birth, for unlike many of
her sex she took not the slightest pains to disguise her age,
but on the contrary seemed to take considerable pride in her
venerable appearance. How it was possible to laugh, or even
smile, in the presence of such a grave and sedate personage,
was a wonder, but the old man's laughter appeared to come
and go of its own accord, neither giving him much thought
or disturbance, although it kept him well and hearty, and

sustained the brightness of his old black eyes, and the full
volume of his heavy sides and his double chin.

“Poll always reminds us,” said the old lady, “when it's
time for prayers, let who will be here.”

“I hope I do not interrupt you,” said John, but yet showed
no signs of going.

“O, no,” said Fidelia looking up to her grandmother,
“perhaps Mr. Tremlett will not refuse to join in our evening
service.”

“It would give me great pleasure;” he replied, and thereupon
the young lady drew out a little stand with a Bible upon
it, and having unclasped the holy book she read a chapter
with such sweetness and propriety of emphasis that John
wondered why he had never found such beauty in God's
Word before. When the chapter had been read, the venerable
old bird again exclaimed “let us pray” and they all
knelt down, except the old man, who was disabled by his
rheumatic leg, while the old lady repeated in devout and
measured tones the evening prayer from the prayer book, and
at the close their venerable feathered companion pronounced
a solemn. “Amen.”

John could not with propriety prolong his visit, so he bade
good night to his new friends, and hurried home to his father
whom he found alarmed and uneasy at his absence. He
hesitated to say how he had spent the evening, and yet he
blushed at the thought of doing so, he could not tell exactly
why, for assuredly he had done nothing amiss; but the
old merchant did not perceive his embarrassment, or he did
not notice it if he did, and the young man made some observation
which soon changed the subject.

“I cannot discover,” said Mr. Tremlett, “that there was
any foundation for Jeremiah's fears in regard to the sudden
death of my partner; the doctors all agree that it was caused
by a disease of his heart, and as there were no signs of violence
upon his person, I doubt not such was the fact. The

man whom he met at the door had probably get into the
house by means of false keys, and being alarmed by Jeremiah's
appearance had no time to carry anything off. But I
am puzzled at one thing, the will that was found in Mr.
Tuck's hand was not the last one he made, as I have learned
of his lawyer; but he is of opinion that the poor man afterwards
changed his mind and destroyed it; which is not unlikely.
The will which has been found places me in a position
towards his niece which I do not like. I know that her
uncle would have bequeathed to me his entire interest in our
firm if I had not, urged him not to do so. He used to say that
our property had been acquired by our joint exertions and
therefore, when either of us died, the survivor should become
possessed of the whole, but I would not, for your sake, consent
to such an arrangement; and he has left it to my discretion
either to give the young lady her portion of the estate on the
day of her marriage, or upon the settlement of the estate
at my own death; he was doubtless influenced in doing this
by the supposition that you would marry his niece, and that
then the entire property would be united in the possession of
his own representative and mine—seemingly the rightful
hands into which it should fall. And this to me would be
the disposition of it most in conformity with my own wishes,
for although I do not think that I have an inordinate love of
wealth, yet I cannot but feel a wish that our estate, which I
have labored so long to help to accumulate, should remain
entire after I am gone, and be enjoyed by those for whom I
feel a regard.

Mr. Tremlett paused a moment, but the young man made
no reply, for in truth he had not clearly understood all that
the old gentleman had been saying, his thoughts being full of
the antiquated old bird, and the beautiful young girl in whose
company he had spent the evening, and a great estate appeared
so trifling an affair when compared with either, that he
could not entirely divert his thoughts from them.

“But I shall cause the firm to he closed immediately,” resumed
Mr. Tremlett, “and when I have ascertained the
amount due to Mr. Tuck, I shall place it at the disposal of
Julia lest she should think that I wished to control her will.”

John commended his father's generosity, and the old gentleman
smiled at his seeming innocence.

“Julia is a spirited girl and I have loved her ever since the
day when she exposed her brothers, by restoring her uncle's
pocket-book, and I love her better now because she loves you.
It is a matter of great mortification to me, my son, that in so
important a transaction as marriage I am incompetent to give
you any advice. But I hope that advice will not be needed
by you and Julia; you will no doubt be happy in each other,
yet there is one thing that an old gentleman used to tell me
when I was of your age which I think you will do well bear in
mind. “Why don't you get married my boy?” he used to
say to me, `because,' I would reply, `I don't know how to
choose a wife, and I am afraid of getting a bad one,' `poo,
poo,' he would say, `any wife is good enough, if her mother
don't live with you, but the best wife will not be good enough
if she should.' Now I think, from what I have seen of Mrs.
Tuck that she will not add much to your happiness when
you are married if she should live with you.”

John thanked his father tenderly for his hint, and promised
to bear it in mind, and they bade each other good night, and
he was very soon in the pleasant land of dreams where he was
exceedingly amused by an appearance which he could not
look upon long enough to distinguish whether it were a very
old bird or a very young lady, and strange noises, sometimes
like the chaunting of angels, and sometimes like the hoarse
tones of an old friar calling to prayer, haunted his pillow until
daylight.