 | CHAPTER XXXIII.
REMINISCENCES AND SUSPICIONS. The Wetherel affair |  |
33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
REMINISCENCES AND SUSPICIONS.
BIG, burly, and boisterous John Bowlder was scarcely less bewitched
about Nestoria than the little and gentle Lehming.
This transcendent soul, this comet of the subjective universe, actually became
somewhat realistic and business-like in his desire to befriend the lonely
child. Divining by a prodigious effort of “insight” that she needed money
as well as sympathy, he used up what he picturesquely called “the slack of
his income” in buying her fans as presents for his other pets; the said other
pets, by the way, being not young ladies, but little ragged girls who went to
Lehming's Sunday-school, and who had no spare funds to expend on gewgaws:
“humble butterflies,” as the philosopher phrased it, “who need some
glorifying to fit them for life's sunshine.”
When Bowlder could no longer purchase, he appointed himself the artist's
drummer or commercial traveller, and hawked her delicate merchandise from
shop to shop with a pride which ennobled peddling. Such an outlandish pilgrim
has seldom been seen in the marts of our American Vanity Fair. The
shopmen of Broadway and Canal street were dumbfounded by his other-world
countenance, manners, and dialect.
“Fans, my worthy friend, fans!” he would say, patting a dealer condescendingly
on the shoulder. “Look at them! Not merely instruments to stir
the lazy wind and cool the languid brow, but visions to steal through the windows
of the eye and transport the longing soul. In judging the market value
of such a thing, you must look beneath the use and penetrate to the grace.
Beauty has an aureole which decorates related objects. See here,” spreading
a fan, and fluttering it about his great rosy face and bushy, grizzly beard, “I
am a finer creature than I was a moment ago. This little painting of birds
and flowers lends me somewhat of its own æsthetic nature. I am a handsomer
man because I have a handsome fan. There is loveliness, purchasable
at twenty dimes! What woman who should come to your counter could resist
such a bargain? With glory like that to sell, people will not only buy of
you, but go away feeling enriched, and so return to buy again. Take them,
my human friend take the lot and prosper. You can have the six infinite
wonders for nine poor, finite dollars.”
The bargain consummated, he would eagerly butt his way homeward
through the crowded streets, rush into Nestoria's presence with such vehemence
as to make little breezes all around him, toss the results of his peddling
into her lap, and wave his big red hand in deprecation of thanks.
Thus these three persons met and communed daily with tranquil countenances,
when recognition would have made them stare at each other like
startled ghosts. Bowlder and Lehming, both anxious to discover Nestoria
Bernard and to unveil the Wetherel mystery, helped her in earning means to
fly with it to the ends of the earth. It may seem incredible that they should
be her companions for weeks without causing her to suspect their intimate acquaintance
with the tragedy which had driven her into hiding. But they were
strange men, living mainly in a condition of isolation, and little addicted to
the gossip which forms so large a part of ordinary human converse.
“Relatives are less to me than my own shadow,” John Bowlder was accustomed
to boast, with some exaggeration. “My shadow is in a measure the
image of myself; but my cousin or brother may be discordant or antagonistic.
My true blood-connections are the people who share my thoughts and
heart-beats, though they abide at the antipodes and catch rats and puppies for
pies. Buddha is perhaps my father, and Confucius my uncle, and Ah Sin my
brother.”
Acting in accordance with these whimwhams, as far as his really strong
natural affections would let him, the ideological Bowlder prided himself on
treating the every-day, essential affairs of his life with sovereign contempt,
eschewing discourse concerning the people whom he knew and the things
which he did, and talking mainly of matters that he was not acquainted with.
Up to a certain point Lehming was very like him in this peculiarity of impersonal
conversation. Their speech with each other was usually subjective,
rather than objective. The one brimmed over with literature, and the other
spurted hogsheads of philosophy, but neither gave out much chitchat. Thus
it happened that they never mentioned in Nestoria's presence the names of
Dinneford and Wetherel. The murder they were the less likely to speak of,
because it had already taken on the character of a mystery, fatiguingly incomprehensible
even to policemen. Edward Wetherel, too, we may as well state
here, was the less present to their minds for the reason that he was absent in
body. In search of some reported trace of bloodstained feet, flying from the
scene of his uncle's assassination, the young man had undertaken a detective
journey to New Orleans, much to the disgust of such persons as held him to
be the homicide.
But the complications of this plot presently thickened into peril of revelations.
Long before Nestoria had saved money enough to set out for the Cannibal
Islands, Edward Wetherel returned to New York. Lehming heard of it,
and, mindful of his promise to stand by the suspected youth, resolved to go at
once and see him. Not finding him at his lodgings, he pushed on to the Dinneford
dwelling, and made a call there. Mrs. Dinneford, sitting spectacled
over Headley's “Women of the Bible,” beamed forth delight at sight of his
trivial figure, and bustled forward to greet him with capstrings a-flying.
“Why, Walter, how long you have been from us!” she cried in her hearty
and little less than boisterous way. “I began to believe that you had fled to
the desert and turned anchorite, like poor St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar, or
like the old person in the `Book of Nonsense,' who ran up a palm when the
weather was calm, and surveyed all the ruins of Philœ. It is more than a
fortnight since you have visited our tabernacle. And we expected that you
would give us the light of your countenance every evening!”
“I ought to be ashamed of myself, and am,” said Lehming. “But I have been
amused, and been at work. Ah, what a blessing work is! It is the real sugarcoating
of the pill of life. I have just finished a story which would not let me
go until I had done my best by it. Moreover, I have some interesting fellow-lodgers,
two young people who are developing under my eye, like buds turning
to flowers. It is fascinating business to watch the growth of souls. It is,
you know, my business. I am a school-teacher by nature and habit. It is my
daily occupation, and I love it. I am really more delighted with the toddling
of a youthful spirit from weakness toward strength than with the sublime
march of a mind which has reached its full power. I humbly venture to believe
that I can understand a little the pleasure which Deity takes in surveying
the evolution and glorious unfolding of his creation.”
“Ah, Walter, you should have been a preacher instead of a schoolmaster,”
replied Mrs. Dinneford. “I don't know how you kept out of the ministry.
If ever a man that I know was called to wear the ephod and attend on the
tabernacle, you are the man.”
“I did think of it and desire it,” said Walter gravely. “You remember
that I went so far as to take orders.” Then he added with a smile, “But how
awkward it would have been to be obliged to carry about a cricket to stand
on! Do you recollect a story about a little minister who made his audience
giggle by just lifting his nose over the pulpit cushion and saying in a piping
voice, `It is I, be not afraid'? That story, more than anything else perhaps,
rooted up my vain ambition to be a clergyman.”
Mrs. Dinneford laughed heartily. The anecdote bore hard upon her pygmy
favorite, but she knew that he would not be hurt by her merriment. Moreover,
she was one of those excitably jovial persons who do not find it easy to
rule their sense of humor. She was a zealous church-goer; when she heard
the bells ring, she rushed out like a fireman at the sound of the fire-alarm;
and on reaching the scene of combustion, she did her duty as a hearer with
heartfelt fervor; yet she had more than once “laughed in meeting.”
“But I must tell you of my fellow-lodgers,” continued Lehming. “There
are two of them who honor me daily with their society, both young ladies, if
I may apply the term to poor people—and to one of them I must apply it.
She is interesting; she is fascinating. The other is a schoolmistress, an old
acquaintance of mine, an untaught, uncultured soul, and rather a barren one.
But the little lady is very different. I don't yet know what to make of her.
She is a mystery and a waif. I wish you could see her.”
“I wish I could,” said Mrs. Dinneford sympathetically. Then her mind
was caught by that word “mystery,” and she flew away on the weird wings
of it. She was a butterfly in discourse, driven about by the chance breezes of
association, and capable of fluttering over a dozen topics in a minute.
“And what a mystery that tragedy of poor dear Cousin Wetherel has become!”
she continued. “Was there ever anything so huge and hideous of
mien which so swiftly and completely descended into the shadows! It seems
as if the Adversary himself, the great dragon of the Apocalypse, had come out
before us in all his most monstrous ugliness, so big and vast as to straddle
quite across the way of our lives, only to disappear in the twinkling of an eye.
One is tempted to imagine that he was permitted to show us his miraculous
power in revealings and vanishings. There we were in our little nest at Sea
Lodge, as unsuspecting of harm as children at play, when suddenly the awful
talons were in the midst of us, and one of our circle was stricken and lacerated
unto death, and we neither heard the flutter of the wings nor saw the
blow. Moloch, the bloody king, was gone as quickly as he had come. One
would say that he had authority over nature, and could march with a cloud
behind him, and cause earth to open under his feet. I never had anything so
tax and terrify my imagination. I am ready to believe in the physical influences
of the Lords of Hell, as Tennyson calls them, and a noble sounding name
it is, to be sure, and shows him to be a great poet. Do you remember how
the magicians of Egypt wrought with their enchantments, and how Elymas the
sorcerer was full of all malice and subtlety of the devil, and how Satan contended
with Michael for the body of Moses? It seems to me sometimes that
we had cause for thankfulness in that the remains of our dear old friend and
relative were spared us for sepulture. But Sin and Death left their victim;
be hid; but the iniquity of the wicked is covered. I cannot get over it. My
soul is in a perpetual astonishment. I have had to fly of late to the Bible for
utterances big enough to relieve my spirit. My favorite Tupper has lost his
power of charming. I find him as finite as myself.”
Lehming looked at Mrs. Dinneford with surprise and almost with reverence.
The under-abyss of sentiment and imagination in this variable, this
sometimes commonplace woman, had flamed up as it were through her inconsequences
of thought and oddities of diction, rendering her for the moment little
less than sublime.
“Happy is the soul which knows the Scriptures!” he said. “It can always
find fitting words for its mightiest impressions. There are occasional events
in life which make even Shakespeare seem as limited as Tupper. But the
School of the Prophets had an inspiration lofty enough to mate the highest spiritual
needs of man.”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Mrs. Dinneford, with an intonation of gratitude.
Then a sudden gleam of humor danced out upon her puritanic face, much
as if a Greek faun should appear capering upon Plymouth Rock.
“A poor, bewildered policeman came to me yesterday,” she resumed, “to
ask some further questions about the Wetherel affair, as he called it. The
helpless man looked utterly disconsolate over his lack of success in discovering
even a trail of the serpent. He said he had been working at this millstone
for a month without finding a hole in it. I did want to take up my Bible
and read him a chapter to comfort him. But a false shame caught hold of
my garments of worldliness and held me back. All I could muster the spirit
to do was to quote a text or so.”
“I dare say you confounded him,” smiled Lehming. “I doubt whether
many New York policemen understand the speech of Zion.”
“Ah, the speech of Zion!” repeated Mrs. Dinneford with a sort of spiritual
smacking of the lips. “What a power and two-edged sharpness there is in
that language, meaning thereby the plain words of the Scriptures without note
or comment. Did you ever hear how poor Cousin Wetherel hewed a Perfectionist
in pieces before the Lord with a single text? It was at a prayer-meeting
in West Haven last summer. This Perfectionist got the floor, and exhorted
with wonderful glibness and zeal, and fairly seemed to have the universe
his own way for a while, so that one almost looked for the host of heaven to
bow down and reverence him. The poor deluded creature had not committed
sin for a week, he said, and he was hot with us all to go and do likewise.
When he sat down Cousin Wetherel arose—and a grand, kingly, saintly spectacle
he was, to be sure, with his white hair and persuaded countenance, and
his settled eyes piercing through all the nonsense of earth unto the heavenly
realities. It was an apparition. The West Haven brethren stared as if they
expected a revelation. I thought of that regicide judge who used to appear to
our New England fathers now and then, when they were in great straits, and
work out some deliverance, or impart some counsel. He uttered just this one
sentence: `If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us;' then he sat down. It was awful. It seemed as if the
longest-lived of the apostles had himself revisited earth to remind us of his
own text. There was an end of perfectionism for that evening.”
Mrs. Dinneford had related this anecdote with as much gusto and cheerfulness
as if Cousin Wetherel were still in the land of the living. Although he
eccentricities had not lost their power of amusing her, and she could laugh as
well as weep over his tombstone.
“But didn't I interrupt you a while ago, Walter?” she inquired, after
catching her breath. “It seems to me that you were saying something which
I broke into like a wolf into a fold. I am always blowing out other people's
luminaries. Alice says I am as troublesome in a general conversation as a
hornbug among lighted candles, flying now into this one and now into that,
and extinguishing the whole batch.”
“I think I was speaking of my fellow-lodgers,” replied Walter. “But I
had pretty much finished with them.”
“One of them was a young lady, wasn't she?” pursued Mrs. Dinneford.
“And she interested you? I don't wonder. Young ladies are such pretty
things! Woman as I am, I can feel their charm. Every now and then I meet
a girl in the street whom I want to take home and adopt. And when they are
alone in life, as I think you said this poor thing is, they pull at one's very
heartstrings. They are so utterly helpless amidst the great rushings and
strivings of this tumultuous, selfish world! A pretty girl without home or
parents is scarcely better off than a baby left on a doorstep. If she doesn't
meet with charity, she meets with death. Oh dear! the subject is a sad one;
it cuts me like a knife. There is our poor little friend who vanished from
among us as if Satan had put up his hand through the solid crust of the earth
and drawn her into his abysmal darknesses. If she is alive, she is alone,
and where? She hadn't a relative, nor scarcely an acquaintance, on this
broad continent. I do wish, Walter, that you could have seen her. Such a
beautiful, sweet, touching little thing! She fairly bewitched me. As Tupper
says, `There is none enchantment against beauty, magician for all time.' And
her loveliness had such an innocence, such an other-world purity! She was
like a beam of heavenly starlight visiting and cheering a lost planet. I never
saw such sunny hair and such sky-like eyes and such a lily of a face. She
was a vision, and vanished like one. What is the matter with you, Walter?
You seem to be absent-minded this evening.”
Lehming's eyes were bent upon the floor with an expression of profound
musing. Mrs. Dinneford's enthusiastic description of Nestoria had struck him
with the force of a revelation. For the first time, and with a vividness which
made him wonder at his blindness hitherto, the suspicion reached him that
the fugitive from Sea Lodge and Nettie Fulton might be the same person.
| CHAPTER XXXIII.
REMINISCENCES AND SUSPICIONS. The Wetherel affair | |